Sandy, George, Kevin and I went to the Koscinski Recovery Benefit today at the Moose Lodge. We had some good food & snacks, bid on some raffles, and Sandy and Kevin had their faces painted. Here’s a few photos.
Tag Archives: Kevin
Alienated
We went to see “Paul” this weekend, and as they say, “There’s a app for that!” Kevin “alienated” all four of us just for the occasion. Yes, I’m a bad dad, taking 13-year-olds to see an R-rated movie. We really enjoyed it though. It explained a lot about Area 51 and what’s been going on there, and even revealed how Steve Spielberg got a lot of his ideas for “Close Encounters” and ET! There were so many jokes and references to old movies and history, that I’m not even sure the kids caught or even understood half of them.
Kevin’s 13th Birthday
We celebrated Kevin’s birthday on Sunday with a Pool Party at Best Western Harborside. Everyone had a great time, especially those that swam! The kids really wore me out in the water. Here’s a ton of photos we took.
Snow Sculpting 2010
We went to the US Nationals Snow Sculpting Championships this weekend! The competition was all this week and the judging was yesterday. Today was viewing day, so we went today to check them out. There were several great ones this year, and it looked like only one of them collapsed this time. Click on the thumbnail image to view the photo set. As usual, there are several photos of each sculpture along with their original drawings and the team signs. I missed the actual names for a couple of the best sculptures though, so I did my best to name them appropriately. There’s also a few photos of Kevin and Ty who accompanied me. We listened to the audiobook “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez on the trip there and back. I got Ty hooked on it–now he wants to listen to the whole thing. It sure made the drive go by quick–as usual!
Trick or Treating
We went trick-or-treating today and Kevin had a blast. First we had to stop back at the haunted yard we visited earlier in the month, just to see it during the day, and to see if the death row prisoner actually gets electrocuted. We weren’t disappointed. The display was working great, and the prisoner got zapped and shook violently for several seconds every few minutes. It was quite startling, even during the day. And as usual, Kevin kept his distance from everything, afraid of what might happen. A zombie was there at the front door handing out candy bars wrapped in dollar bills! It took some coaxing, but Kevin finally agreed to go up and get one. I even talked him into going up a second time””this time for a photo with him and the zombie. That’s the first photo in the set (and the one in this article). Click on it to go view the rest of the photos from throughout today’s trick-or-treating. It was pretty funny knowing Kevin was so frightened and paranoid around all the scary creatures and decorations at the haunted yard, while at the same time wearing a pretty scary costume himself. He really frightened a few children pretty good during trick-or-treating, and he wasn’t even trying to!
Troha’s Yard…Scary as HELL! … Literally!
On Wayne’s advice, we stopped by the Troha house tonight with Kevin and took a gander. As I said in the shoutbox earliier, “Holy Crap!” It’s at 1709 32nd Avenue, and if you’re into the whole Halloween thing, this is really a treasure! I just didn’t want to leave. There’s just so much to see, such vivid detail, gore, blood & guts… Kevin was pretty nervouse about the whole thing, and never got too close to anything, afraid of what might happen. There was a guy in a cage, strapped into an electric chair with his head slumped down–obviously his sentence had already been carried out–and I’m sorry I missed it. I have a feeling this particular display has more life to it at other times. I’m going to stop by on Halloween during trick-or-treat hours just to see it all again, and hopefully see a bit more activity this time. I would so love to volunteer to be a zombie for an evening at this place! There are a lot of ways to really scare people with a setup this elaborate… I could blend in great with a good costume and makeup and “play dead” until just the right times. I fancy myself a pretty good “Boomer” from Left 4 Dead, if you’re familiar with that awesome game. Wayne took some great pictures the other day, check them out. I also took a bunch more, along with some great closeups, so take a look at those too, you’ll see what I mean.
Kevin’s Halloween Costumes
At just over 18,000 photos, I’m finally done moving to Flickr. What a relief! One of the nice things about Flickr is how you can use any of your photos in multiple sets easily, allowing you to create custom groups of photos with things in common. So here’s my first set. This is “Kevin’s Costumes” – A photo of every Halloween costume Kevin has worn, from when he first went trick-or-treating at 2 years old (in 2000) right up to last year. Click on the thumbnail and take a look.
Blizzard of 2008
The paper says that we officially got 8-14 inches of snow yesterday, depending on what part of town you were in. Further North, in and around Milwaukee they got even more—as much as 20 inches. It’s been an interesting couple days, to say the least. Here’s my story:
I left work at 3:30pm. Well, actually it was much later, because I couldn’t leave the parking lot—I was stuck in my parking space. When I got to my car in the parking lot of Vista Medical Center East, it was covered in several inches of heavy, wet snow. One thing that was a bit amusing to see was our car antenna. We have a “Homer Simpson in a Donut” antenna topper on our car (so Sandy can find the car in a parking lot) and that thing had accumulated several pounds of ice and snow, shaped itself into a huge ball, bending the antenna 180 degrees so it rested back onto the car! I looked pretty funny, and I wished I had a camera with me to capture the image. No such luck, so I proceeded to start up the car and clean the snow off of it. After clearing all of the snow from the car (it was still snowing like crazy, making it hard to keep up) I got in and tried to pull out of my space. I rocked it a few inches forward and back, and kept doing that for awhile, but it wasn’t budging much. Someone eventually walked up to my car with a shovel and just started shoveling me out. He told me when it was clear, I thanked him, and then he directed me out of the space. I got stuck again trying to go forward through the parking lot, but I was able to move fine in reverse, so I backed all the way out of my parking space and out of the lot and onto Sheridan Road in reverse all the way. Fortunately traffic was extremely slow-moving on Sheridan Road, so I was able to pull all the way onto the street without stopping. Stopping anywhere within the parking lot probably would have resulted in me getting immediately stuck again.
Once I hit Sheridan Road it wasn’t so bad. The roads were someone plowed for the most part, and the tire treads from other cars made the going easier in a few areas that didn’t seem to be plowed at all. It took a lot of time to travel the 12 miles home traveling at 15 mph or less the entire way. I spoke to Sandy on the phone during the trip and she told me that a few cars had already gotten stuck on our street. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I didn’t want to end up stranded in the middle of the road and have to leave my car in an unsafe place, so I decided to park in a nearby parking garage and walk the few blocks home. The remaining ride to the parking garage was uneventful, luckily. I made it safely, locked up the car, bundled up, and proceeded to walk home on foot.
I got about a block away, walking on the sidewalk, and realized it was just too difficult to trudge through this all the way home. The snow was at least a foot high, and sometimes past my knees as I walked, and very hard to get through. Looking at the street, however, I realized it was much clearer there. So I switched to walking in the street for the rest of the walk home. The street, however, had its own drawbacks—it was solid ice in some places, and there was also traffic to watch out for. Sheridan Road turned out to be the worst part of it (aside from the first block I walked in the deep stuff). Sheridan Road looked like solid ice, and it was very slippery. I slipped a few times, but didn’t hurt myself. I was pretty nervous about all the traffic zipping by me though.
Eventually I got home, but I had to pause a few times along the way to catch my breath and rest a bit. By the time I got a few houses from home my back was really killing me. Once inside the house I rested in a chair, and my legs and feet felt pretty numb, and my feet were soaked. I warmed up after awhile and felt fine again, so no harm done I guess. After Kevin went to bed, Sandy and I went out to start shoveling. It was still snowing a little, but we knew it was stopping soon after I checked the radar map. After shoveling for some time we ran out of places to put the snow. The piles we had built up were so high that it was very difficult to throw the snow high enough to get it to stay there any more.
After managing to get everything cleared I was about to come back in the house when I saw a flash in the sky and heard a loud boom and a bzzzzz bzzzzzzp followed by everything in the neighborhood going dark for a couple seconds and then coming back on. It looked and sounded like a transformer blew somewhere close by, but I couldn’t tell exactly where. Sandy checked the flashlights and made sure some candles were ready in case we needed them. The power stayed on the rest of the night though, so we lucked out.
In the morning I got up early, and as expected, the plow had come through in the night and plowed 2 to 3 feet of snow back into our driveway. There was also about another inch on snow on our sidewalk. So I shoveled the walk and the driveway again and moved the plow’s aftermath. We had an open section of shoveled lawn that our neighbor was nice enough to clear for us after the previous snow storm, which was for our garbage and recyclables, so I ended up having to use this spot to move the driveway snow to. So right now we don’t have a good spot for our garbage to sit for pickup, but at least our sidewalk and driveway are clear.
We went and got our car back from the parking garage today too, so everything worked out ok. I even took the camera with me and snapped some photos when I took Kevin to school this morning, so I’ve created a “Blizzard of 2008” folder and posted those pictures in it. Click here to take a look at them.
Snow Sculpting 2008
The photos are now online from our visit to the 2008 National Snow Sculpting Competition in Lake Geneva. We were there today and it seemed much more crowded than previous years… probably because the weather was decent instead of the below-zero blizzard conditions I remember from last year. We had to park a few blocks away, but even that was ok–Kevin and I got a chance to walk and talk together and enjoy the brisk outdoors a bit.
My favorite one–and it’s gotta be in the top 3 if not the top prize winner–was “Sharks Lair.” Great detail all around and very well done. We even got photos of the team that did that one, posing with their finished sculpture. On the downside, one I thought was in pretty bad taste was called “Till the fat lady swings.” It was just that–a fat lady swinging on a swing. I didn’t care for it much, although, I must admit, much of the detailed surroundings in the sculpture were nicely rendered.
Click on the thumbnail image to view the photos. I’ll update the captions with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners as soon as the results are released.
Snow Sculpting 2007
The judging for the 2007 Snow Sculpting Nationals were held at Riviera Park in Lake Geneva today. Kevin and I went out there to take a look. With the below-zero temperatures and much worse wind chill, we didn’t stay long! We practically ran from exhibit to exhibit, snapping a few quick photos, then moving on to the next one. After about 15 minutes my hands and face were numb and we had had enough.
So here are all of the photos, most of them I named appropriately, remembering to also snap a shot of the credit signs. One of the sculptures remains unnamed because I missed the sign, so if anyone out there could help identify it, I’d appreciate it.
I’ll mark which ones were the winners after I get the results from tomorrow’s paper or off of their website. Click on the thumbnail to view all of the photos.
Father’s Day 2006
This Father’s Day was a little messed up for me. I worked Saturday night, and got probably less than an hour or two of sleep before our cookout. So I was a little drained, to say the least. It was a great get-together though, despite the bad weather. We spent the day at Rosemary’s, swam, cooked out, and played some Left, Right, Center for nickels. It rained a lot of the time, so we moved the picnic table into the garage and ate there. Later on the weather cleared up and we were able to finish the party outside where everyone wanted to be.
I missed a good chunk of the party myself though. Bear and I swam for a while before we ate, and that, combined with my lack of sleep, really knocked me out. I went in the house and rested on Rosemary’s couch for awhile and I passed out. When I woke up, Sandy had already taken my dad back to the nursing home and they were having some great desserts–including a great ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. Sandy said my dad had a great time though, so that’s good.
I expected Kevin to join us in the pool, but he chickened out this time. I think he remembered how cold the water was the last time we went swimming at Rosemary’s, and it wasn’t much warmer today. So he was happy just to stay out, retrieve our balls when we threw them too far, and yell at us when we got him wet.
Everyone had a great time, the food was great, and we all went home stuffed, so it was a huge success. Click here for a few photo highlights.
Shocking discovery
We discovered something “shocking” today! Kevin likes to wear those “blinking” shoes–you know, the kind that flash different colors whenever you step or stomp your feet. I had originally thought they used some sort of mercury switch that made contact whenever you took a step, but now I’m not so sure. Kevin was playing with his energy ball and I noticed that whenever he touched it, his shoes would start blinking frantically! I guess just enough energy is released through Kevin and into his feet and shoes to set off the light switches. I find this fascinating, but now I’m wondering just what’s happening and how these shoes really work. Anybody else know? I’m going to have to start doing a little research on this before it drives me nuts now.
Mothers Day 2006
Sandy had a very nice Mother’s Day today. Kevin picked out everything for her. We went shopping on Saturday while she was at work. Kevin knew ahead of time exactly what he wanted to get her, which was flowers and a bracelet. So first we went to the florist. Knowing her favorite color is purple, Kevin picked out several nice purple flowers (including purple roses) and a purple vase. The florist added thier usual nice touch, and then he picked out a balloon to go with it.
Next we went on a quest to find a bracelet. We knew mama liked gold, so Kevin found a few nice gold bracelets and we eventually narrowed it down to one and bought it for her. Next we spent some time picking out a nice Mother’s Day card. We went through a ton of them, and Kevin finally settled on a Spongebob Mother’s Day card that he really got a kick out of.
When we got home he signed the card and added dozens of X’s and O’s to the inside for mom, and we wrapped her card and gift and left them with the flowers on the dining room table. When mom got home Saturday evening she could see the flowers, but he made her wait until Sunday morning to open her card and gift. She enjoyed everything a great deal, and Kevin topped things off by taking us out for a Mother’s Day Brunch at The Parkway Chateau. They had a great brunch buffet, complete with everything you can imagine for breakfast and lunch, including eggs, bacon, jumbalaya (with shrimp and brats), steak, twice baked potatoes, and much much more. Click on the thumbnail images if you’d like to see Sandy’s flowers or gift up close. I added the quarter to add scale to the bracelet to show it’s actual size.
Easter
Easter was a little different this year. More depressing than previous ones though. First of all, my dad is now in a nursing home. He is very negative on nursing homes, so we had to assure him that if he can get better with the rehab, and get to walking on his own again without the risk of falling, then he can go home. The doctor isn’t so sure, but who knows, miracles can happen. He went into the home straight from the hospital on Saturday. Sunday night I got a call from the nursing home–he tried to go to the bathroom on his own again already, bare feet, and fell again. An aide was supposedly helping him walk back from the bathroom when he fell though, and he landed on his butt, so there was no injury. Now he’s wired with an alarm. Any attempt to get up o his own, and everyone instantly knows about it with a shriek.
Sandy had already bought everything for a big Easter dinner at my dad’s, so she still cooked over at his house and Kevin, Matt, Sandy and I had a wonderful Easter Feast there. Afterward she brought a nice Easter dinner plate to my dad at the nursing home.
Sandy and Kevin decorated eggs Easter Eve, and I took a few pictures. The kids got their Easter baskets Easter morning, and we took a few photos and a little video. Kevin got the Narnia movie in his basket, and he’s already watched it at least 3 times, as expected.
Kevin’s off school for spring break and enjoying himself. Matt’s out of town for a couple days doing some testing and getting a complete physical for his military recruitment. He’s going in the Army. He’s be doing his Basic Training this summer, and he gets work experience credit toward his high school diploma if all goes well. We’re rooting for him, whether he believes it or not. If this is what he wants to do, more power to him. Defending your country is not to be taken lightly.
A hard lesson for an 8-year-old
Kevin had a short day at school Friday and no after-school program, so we decided to go to the museum and the park, two of his favorite places. The museum was nice, but we went a bit soon since last time, so not much had changed. They change the second-floor collections often, but those were still mostly the same things we saw last time. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, it just means we get to spend more time looking at details, reading more about the things we see, and basically learning more. We took in a lot of the civil war paintings this time–something we largely overlooked in the past””and also learned more about native Americans, their tools and weapons, and saw some huge (live!) giant millipedes from Africa. Kevin even found some “hidden” cabinets that you can open to reveal lots of artifacts he had never seen before.
Before we left, we visited the gift shop as we always do. Kevin still loves getting a plaster dinosaur egg now and then and spending hours excavating the egg with the small pick and brush included with it. Each eggs holds a hand-painted ceramic dinosaur. He has a collection of 5 of the dinosaurs now. Since the first one, we have reminded him many times that they are fragile, but they look so much like just another dinosaur toy that he plays with them. I’ve already had to repair 3 of them, supergluing legs and tails that have broken off. Anyway, along with the dinosaur egg he also wanted one of those wooden animals with the spring-loaded thumb-button underneath them. They’re assembled with strings attached to the spring, so when you push the button underneath up the string loosen and the animal appears to collapse, or “dance” with repeated pushing and releasing of the spring.
After the museum we went to the park for a short time and then went home. On the ride home Kevin said “Dad, my toy broke!”. I checked it when we got home and sure enough a string had broken and one whole leg had fallen off””4 pieces in all””leaving him with a 3-legged animal. I couldn’t repair it myself after trying several times last night, so I left it for Sandy to try to fix. This morning he played with his 3-legged animal some more and the head fell off. He refuses to let me throw it away though, wanting to wait to see if Sandy can fix it for him. And so it waits.
This morning he spent over 4 hours with his latest one and he was very excited to finish it. We washed the remaining plaster powder from it and he was all grins. Shortly after this he was dancing around in the dining room with it when he said “ooopsie!” and it hit the floor with a crunch. The tail and one leg had broken off and flew across the floor. He found the leg and it looks like another clean break, so I could probably repair it easily. But he’s still searching for the tail. Without the tail it’s pretty pointless to repair it at all. He’s still searching the area, and neither of us can figure out where the heck it could have went that we can’t find. He’s searching for it right now, refusing to give up. So basically, all of his little treasures from this weekend were a total loss. He’s pretty sad right now, but still searching.
Update: It’s about 45 minutes after writing that last paragraph and Kevin has found the tail! Using superglue I have performed emergency dinosaur surgery, reattaching his tail and leg. He is resting well now, and we expect a full recovery. Whew. I guess it wasn’t a total loss after all. We’ll see how he holds up after recovery. Kevin is now relieved, glad to have one trinket intact, and I think he might even be willing to give up on the three-legged headless spring-loaded animal now and put him to rest. We’ll see.
Photography
Kevin’s birthday is this week! We’re having his party at one of his favorite restaurants, so he’s quite excited about it. He wants a Plasma Ball and a Darth Vader Voice Changer, among other things. It should be a great party, I’ll take lots of photos.
Mahirose, Kevin and I are planning to go to the Snow Sculpting Championships in Lake Geneva on Saturday. We’re really looking forward to it. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures there as well.
Mahirose and I also recently joined the PhotoKenosha Club “Kenosha’s Very Own Shutterbugs”. We haven’t been to a meeting or outing yet, but it should be fun. The club is pretty new, from what I hear, so it’s just starting out and still has a pretty small membership. It’s totally free though, so you can’t beat the price! If you’re into photography, whether it’s digital or not, and you’re in or around Kenosha, why not consider joining! Check out the website for more information.
And since this posting seems to be all about pictures, I might as well explain my recent dilemma. I’ve been trimming down the photo gallery lately. We’ve been getting dangerously close to using up all of our 2 GB of space lately. I managed to whittle it down a few times previously, but apparently the cache is just eating it back up as users view the photos. I empty the cache again, but that’s only very temporary relief.
So far though, I’ve managed to not have to remove any of my own photos or other users’ photos. I had hundreds of stock photos of sunsets, animals, space, etc., which I removed first. This helped quite a bit. As a second step I’ve been resizing and compressing the remaining albums. Since I started using photo gallery I tended to keep my photos large, usually at least 1280×1024. Everyone else seemed to only have small images 640×480 or less on their sites, and I figured why not off some better quality? Well, now I’ve learned my lesson. Gallery 2 makes it fairly easy to trim down entire albums of photos though, so it’s not a big deal. I just end up with smaller images on my website.
So if you happen to see a photo you like on the site, like a sunset or something else, but it’s too small to use as you wallpaper or for developing, feel free to contact me directly and I’ll be glad to send you a full-sized version of the photo you want. Keep in mind, however, that I don’t have larger-sized versions of any images in the humor galleries and other user galleries, only the photos I’ve taken myself.
Christmas Tree Lighting
We attended Kenosha’s Christmas Tree Lighting tonight at the Museum. The weather was pretty rough though–blizzard conditions! Kevin, Matt and I toughed it out though, and sat in the cold on a bench in front of the tree outside the museum for about 45 minutes for the ceremony. I took a few photos, and Matt even managed to capture the entire audio of the ceremony with my Olympus DS-2 Digital Recorder. Thanks, Matt!
Kevin froze most of the time, and got mad when I called him Rudolph because he had a red nose. He just kept asking to go home. I kept reminding him that it wouldn’t be long and that we’d go to Christmas Lane and see the Christmas Train afterward, but he said he just wanted to go home. After the ceremony we warmed up in the car, got nice and toasty and we headed over to Christmas Lane feeling much better. Matt took some more photos and Kevin talked to Santa and got a couple of gifts from him at the Christmas Train House. They even served cookies, treats and popcorn! We stood around a fire pit they had set up and kept warm while we drank hot cider, hot chocolate, and had a few snacks. It was a very nice evening all around and we had a nice, Christmastime night, even if it was a bit early.
Click here for the audio from the Tree Lighting Ceremony, and click here for the photos we took. And as an added bonus, click here for an awesome display now showing at the museum: David Valentine Holmes: The Mystical Mechanical Menagerie. When viewing the images in this gallery, be sure to view them FULL SIZE. The detail is amazing on all of them, and I left the original images quite large to show the detail.
Armageddon Better!
My arm feels pretty good now. I saw the doctor yesterday, and he drained it, cleaned it up and re-dressed it and had me make another appointment in a week, but said I could cancel it if keeps getting better. I sure wish I had known I could have gotten better this quickly before I went through the whole 2-day hospital stay with all the IV’s.
Anyway, there was an inch of snow on the ground this morning, but it melted by late afternoon. And it’s supposed to be in the 50’s tomorrow, so we’re going to have a heat wave! Kevin and I ran a few errands today and tried to stop at Menards because I needed a few things. I circled the parking lot twice and couldn’t find a single open spot, so we gave up and went home. Sheesh, how do they manage to get everyone to shop on the same day every year? Aren’t there many people out there like me, who hate the long lines enough to try to avoid any kind on shopping on Thanksgiving weekend? Are the sales just that good?? And who are these people that actually GET any of the items on sale?? I gave it one chance–Yesterday I tried to pick up one big-ticket Christmas gift at Target. I got there early in the morning, actually found a parking spot, and wedged my way through the crowds to the proper department. When I finally got some help I was told that they sold out of the item just after opening the store. I should have known. I went home and that was it for me.
Kemper Haunted House
We went to the Kemper Haunted House tonight. We haven’t done much of anything this year for the Halloween season because Sandy and I have both been so busy with our jobs, helping my dad, and my leg problems, and I just felt like doing something fun with Kevin. So Sandy and I took him to a haunted house. It was pretty neat, except Kevin never made it further than the front door.
We assured him over and over before we even left the house and when we got there that none of it was real, there’s no real monsters and it’s all for fun, and he seemed to accept it very well. From just after we got out of the car though, things changed. If you haven’t been there before, The Kemper Center seems to be the perfect place for a haunted house. It’s a very very old structure, several floors, lots of trees around it, and it’s just perfect for a scary setting at night. So when we got out of the car, we immediately noticed darkly dressed people wandering slowly through the parking lot, lawn, and all around the area. They would even walk up to you (or SNEAK up to you, if they could) and just stand perfectly silent and stare. They were usually dressed all in black, and most of them were covered in blood and injuries. One that stood out quite well still had a huge chunk of glass sticking out of his face. I figured he was an auto accident victim. Nice effect. The top floor of the building had flashing strobes in most of the rooms, and when they flashed you could make out figures in the rooms and windows.
From this point on, Kevin was very nervous, requiring us to hold his hand the entire time. We bought our tickets and got in line. The line formed between two buildings, lined appropriately with tombstones, lots of fog, and the walking dead. They’d stand with you in line and stare just to be intimidating. Kevin was thoroughly spooked. There was even a young girl, she seemed about Kevin’s age, who appeared to be walking dead, holding a teddy bear and just standing in the fog where it came out of the ground, near a couple of tiki torches lining the entrance. By the time we got through the line and up to the entrance Kevin was freaked. We were greeted by our tour guide and invited into the house�she was dressed in white, holding a large knife, and covered in blood. Kevin said I don’t wanna do this! I don’t wanna do this! We nudged him, but he refused. A nice lady at the entrance (not in costume) offered to keep him with her until we got back, so he became her helper and Sandy and I reluctantly went in without him. It was kind of a disappointment, since we mainly went for him, but we had already paid and they had a no refund policy.
It was a bit short, but fun nonetheless. Our guide took us into various rooms that with scary surprises, including the girl from The Ring, Lizzy Borden killing her mother, etc.. Various high-pitched screams, some very close most of the time, were really effective. A pitch-black maze topped things off, and contain weird-feeling things hanging around, on the walls, and a strangely textured floor in some places. Afterward we ended where we had started, and Kevin was helping the lady at the entrance and was glad to see that we had survived the experience unscathed.
All in all it was pretty fun and I enjoyed myself. I only wish Kevin would have taken the plunge. I think he would have come out feeling pretty good at having made it and he’d have something to tell his friends afterward. Oh well, maybe next year.
Oh, I did bring the camera, but everything was so dark I didn’t think much would turn out. I took one photo near the entrance that I really like. It’s pretty spooky, take a look. That’s the little girl I mentioned at the entrance, just standing there. You can also see a portion of a headstone to the right.
Lillian Vernon Fiasco
Back in early September (September 10th to be exact) Kevin found a really neat costume set for Halloween from a catalog we received in the mail. It was a Lillian Vernon catalog. I checked them out online and they sounded legit, so we decided to order the costume for Kevin. It was a Harry Potter costume, complete with magic wand, tattoos for the forehead scar and others, and of course, the robe along with a few other things.
We ordered the costume that day, 9/10/05, and we were assured shortly after that it would be delivered no later than 9/28/05 — in plenty of time for Halloween. Well, you can guess the rest, but I’ll give you all the painful details. A couple weeks after we ordered the costume we got a postcard informing us that it was now on backorder and there would be a delay in shipment. We were called on the phone by someone at Lillian Vernon and asked if we still wanted the item, which they assured us would still be shipped in plenty of time for Halloween. Since we were assured to get it in time, naturally we said we’d still take it, so they kept the order going.
Now here’s where it gets bizarre. Last week we received a postcard in the mail telling us that our order has shipped, and to please allow 5-7 days for delivery. Excellent, we thought! So we waited, checking the mail every day, waiting for the package, until it got well over 7 days and into this week. Today we got another postcard in the mail that says “SORRY, BUT WE CANNOT FILL YOUR ORDER AS REQUESTED. We are unable to deliver the items listed as they are sold out. YOU WILL NOT BE CHARGED FOR THESE ITEMS.
BUT IT SHIPPED!?!?!?! How can a company simply LIE like that?!?! And what would be the point?? To keep us from cancelling while they try to find a costume for us?? This is rediculous! So Sandy called their Customer Service number on today’s postcard to complain. She explained to the customer service rep and asked what the heck was going on, and they checked on what had happened. The lady apologizes and then says that the system shows that they now have the costume available for immediate delivery, and that we could have it here by Friday is we would like to order it.
We were thoroughly confused at that point, and very frustrated at having been spun around so many times we were now dizzy. Sandy gave me the phone and had her explain it to me. Once she did, I was very angry and no longer willing to trust them at all. But I had one more question for her first. She had a heavy accent, and I wanted to confirm what I already thought: That this was just some outsourced “Customer Service” Service located overseas, like every other company is doing these days, and she really knows nothing about the actual company at all, but is just following a written (or computer-based) procedure. She admitted that yes, she is located in the Phillipines. I then told her that I would NOT like to order it any longer, and told her we no longer trusted this company, and would not be ordering from them in the future, and I hung up frustrated. Needless to say, I also removed their link from our Bookmark section on this site. We’re no longer willing to support or recommend them.
Sandy went out searching for a costume solution for Kevin after this call today, and I think she did a nice job. It’s totally different than what Kevin originally wanted, but she must know what he likes, because after we explained the situation to him and showed him his new costume he really liked it. We told him that if he still wanted to be Harry Potter instead, we would return this one and look for Harry Potter, which we had even seen recently at Toys R Us. He said no, he’d keep this one, and was very excited about it.
I’ll save the “Shock and Awe” of what his new costume is for when we post the Halloween photos, but this sentence is enough of a clue in itself, so there ya go. 😉
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