However, they’re selling my exact model on their website right now with indication that they are “in stock”, so the claims of being out of stock ring false. Additionally, per Jawbone’s One Year Limited warranty, “If Jawbone, in its sole discretion, determines it is not reasonable to replace the defective Product, Jawbone may refund to Consumer the purchase price paid for the Product.” However, not surprisingly, they don’t seem to be interested in pursuing that option either. Basically, Jawbone is telling me that I can either ship my unit back and wait an indeterminate amount of time for a replacement, or I can “check back with [Jawbone] periodically” to see if a replacement is available and ship it back at that point.

This feels very much like an attempt to get out of honoring the warranty by putting the consumer off and/or making it so unappealing as to discourage pursuit of the warranty. At best, I suspect that they’re simply “out of stock” of replacement units, i.e., re-furbished units, even though the warranty says replacement will be either new or re-furb and not limited to re-furbished units. I don’t think that it’s honoring the spirit of the warranty to delay replacement on that basis. I further think it’s against the spirit if not the actual wording of the warranty to refuse to replace a faulty unit in any way when the unit failed in less than 60 days from the point of purchase. Finally, I think it’s beyond the sense of reason to tell a customer with a ~$200 product that is now little more than a paperweight that it’s up to them to keep contacting you periodically to find out when the warranty will be honored. Admittedly, I’ve been lucky enough to not have very many issues requiring warranty service for my electronics, but when I have, I have never run into this sort of shenanigan. (For all of people’s complaints about Microsoft and XBox support, their support called me personally when the repair was in process and provided periodic e-mail status updates as well as an ETA that was accurate and reasonable.)

I informed Jawbone that they lost a customer over this. There is no way I will spend money with them again, and I advise others to do the same. It may be within Jawbone’s legal right to handle warranty requests in this way, but I think it shows an unwillingness to stand behind the quality of the product as well as a lack of caring about their customers once the sale is complete. As for my specific situation, I’m basically out of luck. I’m past the return window to return it to Amazon (though I will ask to see if they’ll make an exception, considering the circumstances). I’m posting the story here as well as in an Amazon review. I also sent it in to a few consumer interest blogs, for what it’s worth.

Our flight from Venice to Frankfurt was rather awesome, as we flew over the Alps.  That is definitely an impressive mountain range.  It was great to see it from above in addition to the train ride.  Also, Lufthansa’s flight attendants for that flight were hot German guys.   And they handed out this stuff called Tender Milch Leche that ended up being like a small Little Debbie Swiss Roll with better chocolate and stuff.  Hey!  I wonder if that’s why it’s called a Swiss Roll!  I bet it came from there.   Anyways, it was yummy, so DH asked a flight attendant if we could have more of it, and he brought us a pile of four of them.  Score!

In Frankfurt, we ended up having dinner at a cafe, and we decided to have German food, namely sausages!  We each got a different sausage and then split them between us.  I liked the beef sausage the best, as it was firm and mildly spicy. (I like my sausage like I like my men, bada bing!)  Then, we headed to the gate.  There was a brief delay for our flight because, “there were many children on the previous flight, and we need to do extra cleaning.”  They cleaned well, though…no signs of child-mess.   We weren’t worried about the delay, because we were arriving in London at around 10pm local time, and our next flight out was at 7:30am the following morning.  When we booked, we had no idea how this would work.  We didn’t know if we’d even be allowed to leave the terminal if we wanted to (turns out we could have…we even could have had our luggage), but given the short time we had, we didn’t want to have to go in and out of customs.  We were going to be adventurous and camp out in the airport, TAR-style. 

It really wasn’t all that bad.  To re-adjust to US time, we needed to be mostly awake then anyways.   What was odd is that, about an hour after we got there, a man came by and started barking at all of the (fifty or so) people camped out like we were to wake up and move.  We figured maybe they needed to clean the area we were in.  Then, the guy started walking us all away.  I was like, whoa…shouldn’t someone tell us where we’re going?  It felt a bit like a death march or something.  Also, I hadn’t put my shoes on (because I thought we were just moving temporarily), and I wanted to know if I should stop to put them on or not.  We later passed another worker (the barking person was too scary to ask) who kindly explained that they just re-locate all the overnight international people to one gate and essentially do a lock-in to prevent theft and also allow them to monitor all of us (in case someone has a medical issue or something) with minimum staff (vs. us all being spread out all over the airport).  Thus reassured, we re-joined the march and shortly thereafter, we were at a brightly lit gate for a few hours.  We camped out, and both of us managed to get a little sleep during the late US evening there as well as catching up on e-mail and whatnot.  (I hate the new Facebook news feed, btw, and I really wish I could convince all the people there to shift to Google+ or Twitter so I wouldn’t have to go to FB anymore.  Facebook took the one damn thing that I thought they did very well and broke it with this whole “recent top posts” thing.  In fairness, Google+ doesn’t do that well either, yet.  I may go back to using Brizzly or some other client to read FB.  TweetDeck’s FB support has dropped considerably since Twitter bought it, unfortunately. I can post from there, but I can’t read posts from it very well.  It hasn’t been reliable, but that may well be FB’s fault and not TweetDeck’s.)

Unfortunately, a few hours later, they shifted us back out into the airport at large.  So, that was a bit annoying, but the process makes sense logistically.  We napped in the main terminal some more (both of us either sleeping on our bags or, in my case, crafting an elaborate way that would wake me up if anyone tried to move my bag).  About ten minutes before the United lounge (which we *would* have access to) was scheduled to open, I woke up and roused DH to guard my stuff while I went to the bathroom.  (frank girl talk follows, skip to the next paragraph if you want to skip it)  Now, my period had started two days ago, and fortunately, I had remembered to bring my divacup with me (it was the last thing I packed, literally).  Unfortunately, somehow all of the shifting around or something had dislodged it, and it turned out that while I was sleeping, I was leaking.  I had giant stains on my pants.  And, I had no spare pants with me.  I had a spare shirt, but no spare pants.  D’oh!  I initially tried washing it out in the sink, figuring I’d use the XCelerator hand dryers to dry them, but my pants were heavy denim.  The stains came out, mostly, but the pants were soaked and not wearable for the long term.  My undies, though, washed and dried super-fast.  (I love those fancy travel undies I bought for this trip.  You really can just wash them in a sink, wring them out, pat them with a towel and have dry and clean undies.)  So, I started brainstorming about what I could do.  The shirt I was wearing was a wide necked tunic style, so I hit upon an idea.  I went back out into the terminal in my wet pants just long enough to retrieve my other shirt.  Then, back in the bathroom, I shimmied my current shirt down to my waist and tucked the sleeves into the neck, and bam…I had a skirt that was clean and dry.  I am brilliant.   I put on my other shirt, and I was good to go.

We headed into the United lounge after that, where we were able to get English-style breakfast (lots of meat and toast, and sauteed mushrooms), juice, and soda.  DH also took a shower.  I didn’t think about taking a shower until too late, or I would have taken one, too.  Then, we just hung out until our flight was called…and right now, we’re flying home.  I slept for about half of the flight, and I may still nap some more.  I’m looking forward to being home, though I’m not looking forward to the pile of work waiting on me!  I miss Pancake!  I hope he still remembers us!

Now, I had put them in a very specific spot that was not prone to getting knocked either on the ground or into the hot tub, so I was shocked they were not there.  The only thing I could figure, especially after DH and I hunted for them as well as checking with the bars near the pool, is that one of the foreign couples had picked them up accidentally while gathering their things, thinking they were their glasses or sunglasses.  Our new ex-pat friend, Bridget, hunted around for them with us until her husband returned from checking on the kids, but we had no luck.  We were told that the main lost and found is at reception, so we went down to that floor to check, but again, no luck.  They said to check back as it might take awhile for whoever had them to get them over to reception.  But, at that point, I was tired and now sad, so I was pretty much done for the evening.

The next morning, we checked again after breakfast with no luck.  This was a sea day, so at least there wasn’t much to see.  I did have my prescription sunglasses with me, so I was stuck with the piteous choice of things being dark but clear or unclear and bright.  As is normal for NCL sea days, they had a liquor tasting scheduled.  What was not normal is that this ship, for whatever reason, scheduled all the tastings back to back on one day.  It was martini tasting (my favorite) at 2pm, followed by wine tasting at 3pm, and then beer tasting at 4pm.  DH and I chuckled about how there were sure to be some crazy people who did all three because of how they were scheduled.

We had told Bridget about how the ‘tini tastings tend to be both fun and a good value, and so we weren’t surprised when she joined us there along with her husband, Dave.  Another person we’d met, Sally, also sat with us while we enjoyed various martinis.  DH had gone to a frequent cruisers’ reception before the ‘tini tasting where they handed out free rum punch, so he decided to sit out the ‘tinis.  (He’s not much of a ‘tini drinker anyways.)  Well, as normal, I was schnockered after sampling 5 mini-tinis plus extras from the bartender.  Bridget and Dave also wanted to go to the wine tasting, and DH was up for that, so I went along though I sat that one out.  We ran into some of Bridget’s other acquaintances there, one of whom grew up in Charleston, so that was great fun. 

The beer tasting was next, but Bridget, Lindsay (from Charleston), DH, and I had no interest in it.  Lindsay’s husband, Ian, and Bridget’s husband, Dave, headed down to give it a go.  DH and I checked again at the front desk for my glasses (no luck), and then went to the bar city area to meet up again with our group.  So…DH and I were drunk, but our companions were definitely wasted.  They were barely walking without tumbling.  Bridget was chatting up random men and showing her boobs to them.  It was crazy.  It was hilarious, mind you, but crazy.  Then, DH and I wanted to do the progressive trivia round 1 at 5:45 that was right nearby so we went there.  (I should note that DH and I are enablers, as we fetched spare drinks from the casino for our companions while we got ones for ourselves at the same time.)  We decided our team name should be, “We are so drunk.”  Bridget kept falling out of her bar stool, so she eventually sat in a regular chair and then couldn’t stay in that successfully.  The whole group was loud and raucous.  But, we still somehow managed to get 11.5 questions right and narrowly avoided the best score for that round.  Some spoilsports came over and complained to us about the noise, but, in fairness, we sat at the bar, as far from the main trivia group as we could…and we were able to hear and answer the questions, despite being right next to the drunken crew, so yeah…screw you, old angry men!  We even had some people defect from their teams and come to ours to help answer questions for us (mainly due to Bridget luring them with her assets), so that may have been the real issue at hand.  

Anyways, after trivia, DH and I left the rest of the group and headed to dinner, figuring we needed some food in our stomachs.  Then, we went back to the room to rest (read: pass out) until the evening entertainment started.  We always enjoy the evening game show activities.  We got up eventually to go to one show and perhaps unsurprisingly, none of our companions made it there.    Also, DH and I both needed to go running, and we felt sober enough to manage that after our brief nap, so we went running around 10pm.  I’m proud to say that either I’m a better runner when inebriated (possible) or the track on the ship is shorter than it says it is (also possible).  I want to think the alcohol was the main contributor, so I can someday plan to do those wine-filled 10K’s.  We also stopped again at the desk to check for my glasses, and they were there!  As suspected, one of the couples had picked them up by accident.  Yay!  I could see!  And just in time, too, as the next day, we’d be in Piraeus/Athens.

RuPaul, who I’m growing to love more and more every week, responded (as best as I can remember…I can’t find a video online and I already deleted it from the DVR), “That is something, isn’t it? The power of Fuck You.”

Yeah, Ru, it is. It is everything. In a world where far too many people want to tell the different and the creative to go away and not be seen, there’s incredible power in knowing it’s okay to say, “fuck you.” It’s okay to not be loved by people who are determined to hate. And most of all, it’s okay for you to tell them that they don’t matter to you, even if you only say it in your head *and* even if you say it out loud.

I’m starting a running program in earnest. I’ve never exactly been inactive. I generally do something active at least once a week, but it wasn’t regular, and I had no real goals around it. I’ve never been a fast walker, and until maybe a year ago, I really hadn’t run at all for more than a few seconds at a time. When I did my very first 5K in 2009, I procrastinated on training for it and basically got saved by it turning out to not have the stringent time limit that I thought it did. I walked the vast majority of it and finished in something like 70 minutes…and that was with me walking fast and full of adrenaline (and I was far from last). The fastest time I’ve ever really done in a timed event was a 20:30 mile. (If you dig around, there’s faster results showing for me on the Corn Maze 5K, but we’re all pretty sure that was a shorter-than-5K course. But, it was a PR for me, we think…just no way to know exactly how much.) I do other things like Dance Central, skiing, and biking, but it’s really hard to gauge progress on those activities as other factors get in the way of the data.

Anyways, I started on the Couch-to-5K (C25K) plan, but I had some problems with that plan’s aggressiveness. I was having cramping in my bad ankle trying to keep up with it. So, on DH’s suggestion, I decided to change to the Galloway Run-Walk-Run method. Jeff Galloway does the course design and training plans for the Disney runs, and he’s well known in the running community for having created a method that lets you run without injury, even for larger and/or older runners. As of last week, I was at 30 seconds of running with 2 minutes of walking, which is the target goal of Galloway’s beginning running Silver plan (intended for people wanting a moderate training cycle and who have never done any real physical activity at all). So, now, I’m following Galloway’s half-marathon training plan (posted on the Disney running site), which is 3 days a week. I do two nights of 30 minute sessions, including 5 minutes of warm-up, 20 minutes of run-walk-run intervals, and 5 minutes of cool down (which I admittedly combine with a sprint and thus a longer cool down, because I like to run super fast at the end when/if I feel up to it). The idea at this point is that I’m gradually reducing the amount of walking time until I get to 30 seconds of running followed by 30 seconds of walking. On the weekend, I do a longer session for distance. Last weekend, I did 2.5 miles. That didn’t go so well (even though I do nearly that much on a weeknight), because the day before, I had walked around 4 miles at the zoo. What I should have done was do a quick 20 minute run-walk-run session instead of the distance because I’d done so much distance the day before (even lackadaisically), but I wanted to stick to my goal. I suffered for it, though…it was painfully slow-going because my muscles were tired. In good news, though, tonight was my first attempt at 30 second run/1:45 walk, and it was so easy that it felt almost too easy! I also averaged 3.9mph, which is much faster than I’ve done in the past. I noticed that my walking pace was faster when I was walking. It’s actually presenting a problem for me, because I’m doing more distance than I anticipate in the time, so I end up looping around the block a few times at the end.

While I was out tonight, I was thinking about that line from Drag Race. You see, my mom has been having to deal with doctors and hospitals recently. She has to deal with them a lot, but in particular lately, she’s been having trouble breathing, and she had to basically throw a fit in order to get them to run tests on her to see what was wrong. In the medical system, they have these ways of taking away the power of fuck you, especially for fat folk, and it is demoralizing. They use the VFHT, the Vague Future Health Threat (tm Ragen Chastain), to intimidate and scare fat people. They tell them to go away until they’re thin…or more accurately, until they die. Doctors, even more than the rest of the US, have a big old hang-up about fat people. They don’t want to treat them, and they don’t want to see them. They’d rather amputate your organs than treat you, nevermind that doing so will definitely impair your quality of life, may make you less healthy, and could in rare cases kill you. And, they have power assigned to them such that they get to put action to their prejudice in very scary ways.

Thinking about that, I realized that a big part of why I’m doing the running and training…and why I signed up to do a half-marathon in January at Disney (!!! squee !!!)…is the power of fuck you. It’s because I know my body pretty damn well. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this level of exercise. And the fact of the matter is, I’m not going to lose weight as so many will probably think I will. I’m sure I’ll lose some. But, I’ve never been thin, and I don’t think I ever will be. It’s not in my chemistry. I have speculation as to why, but it’s just speculation. And, while I’ve always been pretty active in various activities, I’ve never had something good I could point to and say “look, I did [physical activity], you stupid idiot…your prejudices about me are wrong.” I can say that I’m active, more than most Americans, even more than most thin Americans…but without something concrete, I think people think I’m lying or exaggerating. Even when I was doing Karate 3-4 times a week while stupidly doing a starvation diet at the same time (and damn near killing myself in the process…passing out periodically as a matter of course), that wasn’t concrete enough. Saying I had a green belt had some value, but not enough. Also, I wasn’t as militant then as I am now. I still thought I was wrong for being who I was then, hence the starvation diet.

This will give me something concrete. I can point to it, for me and for all the fat folk out there, and say, FUCK YOU stupid doctors! (not all of them, mind you, just the stupid ones) FUCK YOU for equating fat and unhealthy! FUCK YOU and your stupid prejudice! FUCK YOU for making my fat brothers and sisters feel like crap! Because here I am! I have awesome cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar…and I’m more active than all you bitches! You can’t doubt it now…I have DATA on my side! I will fight them with science. I am so looking forward to getting to do what many of my favorite HAES bloggers have gotten to do…to wait for the doctor to say “you need to lose weight…maybe try walking sometimes” and to look them dead in the eye and say, “I ran 7 miles last weekend. I do about 10 miles a week on average. I go through running shoes like you go through TOILET PAPER, you IGNORANT PREJUDICED ass! Now, treat me like you’d treat a thin person, since you’re too fucking stupid to understand this any other way!”

And yeah, I know, they’ll throw out another VFHT and insist that I must be eating too much or whatever (which is bullshit)…but I will have data and science and accomplishments on my side. I’m going to get some power of Fuck You, and I’m going to use my powers for good.

–
* Now, granted, that was hypocritical as hell coming from one of the Heathers. Raja and Manila are both in my hate book because of how mean they were to the other girls, especially the fat queens. Granted, I think Carmen was the source of much of the grinchiness, but Raja was right there in the thick of it.

For example, let’s say that you were working with a team on a project for class and for part of that project, at 8pm every Sunday, a decision might need to be made within the half hour, but you specifically don’t understand the reasoning behind the decision. Two other teammates do. First, at 8pm, do you even log into the game to see about the decision? Maybe you do…but then, having done so and seeing that a decision is needed, do you
a) call, text, and e-mail your teammates to bring their attention to it
b) make a decision on your own that is essentially random in nature and that, if you’re wrong, will cost the faux-company approximately $35M

If you chose b, you might be my teammate. Specifically, our team had discussed in the past where we might want to build our next plant. We agreed, as a team, that having a plant in the NA region didn’t make much sense. A plant in LA or or EA might make some sense, and which of those two regions is TBD. We discussed that we’d watch for capacity to become available in either of those regions. So, Teammate logs on at 8pm, sees that capacity is available in NA and EA…and buys it in NA. I know that Teammate didn’t attempt to call, text, or e-mail me, as I was online about five minutes later. I saw the decision, rolled my eyes, and bought capacity in EA.

Oh, our company is completely screwed now. We couldn’t afford the first purchase much less the second. But damn it all, if we’re going to be screwed, I want us to be screwed in a logical way, not an insane way. The EA capacity is at least useful, and with the game-generated exchange rates, we actually end up doing much better producing there than producing in AP.

But what kills me? I swear, Teammate is completely ignorant of the crazy. Like, Teammate is probably sitting around thinking that I and other-Teammate are crazy. Nevermind that Teammate has no demonstrated knowledge of the game…in fact, Teammate actively shows a *lack* of game knowledge on a regular basis. I and other-Teammate have both offered to explain, to help, to go through examples or walk Teammate through things…nope, not interested. Teammate is only interested in swooping in and fucking around with things at 7:50pm and 8:05pm…precisely the times when the rest of us can do nothing to stop it.

And yet the precursors that get brought up are, “have you tried diet and exercise already?” That just doesn’t compute to me. If not eating as much worked on any sort of long term basis for the given subject, then the diet would have worked and gastric surgery would be unnecessary. Really, what an interest in or recommendation for gastric surgery means is that a) diet changes do not work for this person or b) this person has not actually tried changing diet. If it’s case A, then gastric surgery won’t do anything either. If It’s B, then we’re doing major physical organ destruction to accomplish a change in mental condition.

That’s why I can’t get behind gastric surgery for anyone.

Anecdotally*, I’ve never seen it work in the long term for the people I know who have done it…and to me, that just means they’re in category A, and they (and their insurance) got screwed out of $$$s by a procedure that never had a chance of working on them. For the people it works for, I suspect they’re in category B…which, great that it worked, but if we’re okay with that from an ethical perspective, we could also start doing castrations to cure sexual addiction…or removing livers to cure alcohol addiction. Or, we could go back to ye olden days of lobotomies to “cure” mental illness.

Originally posted as a comment on jezebel.com

* This is not a real word. I don’t care. I’m making it a word.

So, as some of you may know, I bought a new bike this past weekend:

Tonight, I planned to bike to Old Navy, shop for some clothes, and then go somewhere for dinner, followed by a leisurely ride through the neighborhood to home. First, I had to dig out my bike lock. I knew I had put it in some closet in the house during a fit of organization, but I couldn’t remember which one. I spotted it in the hall closet after about 20 minutes of searching. It was buried under some other items on the top shelf, so I caused a minor avalanche getting it down. Nonetheless, I was not daunted. I grabbed my lock, helmet, a shopping bag, and a bungee cord. I downloaded the My Tracks app to my phone (my favorite way to keep up with where I’ve gone…but I hadn’t used it since I got my new phone), started up some tunes (one ear only for safety’s sake), strapped everything to the bike’s rack, and headed out.

The first part of the trip was largely uneventful. I locked the bike up to a bench outside of Old Navy (no bike racks at that shopping center, but I locked it unobtrusively). I bought some summer cardigans (primarily for the purpose of being able to wear sleeveless shirts to work without freezing to death when the AC starts pumping in the afternoon) as well as a long patterned scarf that I thought would go well with one of my dresses. They also had some of my favorite sundresses, in colors I don’t have, on the clearance rack, so I grabbed one in brown and one in sapphire blue. I had brought my own shopping bag (the Target one that I got while I was in DC), both to stow my helmet and such while in the store and to have a sturdy bag to bungee to the back of the bike for the subsequent rides. Happily, everything fit in the shopping bag (woot for careful shopping…and woot for biking keeping me from doing too much shopping!). I unlocked my bike, packed lock and shopping into my bag, bungeed it to the rack, and headed out.

I decided to go to Noodles & Company for dinner. So, I repeated the procedure of locking my bike up and whatnot. I took my shopping bag, helmet in hand, into N&Co with me. I ended up having a small spaghetti and meatballs, which I’d never had from them before. It was quite tasty, and the meatballs satisfied the meat craving I was having nicely, plus I added spinach to the dish to get some extra veggies. I’m in the middle of re-reading a Sookie Stackhouse novel on my Kindle app for Android, so I was enjoying that while I ate. (Side note: Amazon releasing the Kindle app for Android saved me from spending $189 on a second Kindle. Now, I keep my Kindle at home on the bedside table and use my phone for “quick” reading when I’m out and about.)

I finished dinner and checked my work e-mail before heading back out to my bike. When I went to unlock my bike, the lock wouldn’t come undone. I tried several variations on my combination with no luck. Then, I remembered something very important.

As implied by the search for the lock, I hadn’t used this lock in awhile, which is my excuse for why I had forgotten that the lock’s combination gets reset every time you lock the lock. It isn’t a fixed combination. Whatever the numbers are set to when you push the lock closed is your combination. When I’d locked the bike up at N&Co, I’d had some trouble getting the lock pushed in because of the position it was in, and I realized that I had probably spun some number of the reels while locking it up. I had forgotten until this moment how the lock worked and so wasn’t careful about making sure I kept the reels still while pushing the lock together. And, of course, like a diligent secure person, I had twisted all of them to 0000 before going into the restaurant. So, aside from the combination being something vaguely close to my usual combination, I had no way to know what the combination currently was.

I tried a few logical things immediately…one number up on all reels, one number up on each reel on its own, one number down on all reels, etc. No luck. I Googled for a default or master reset online, figuring there probably wasn’t one but couldn’t hurt to try. No luck. I called my Dad just in case he (a frequent cyclist) knew of some trick…again, I figured it was probably a fruitless effort, but I had to try. No luck. Finally, after hanging up with my Dad and noticing the sun getting lower in the sky, I called the Gurnee Police department’s non-emergency line. I explained the situation, and after a few moments, they said they’d send a car over from the Fire Department with some tools to try to break the cable of my lock mechanism. (The Gurnee Fire Department is right around the corner from where I was…it was actually on my planned route home.) They took my name and cellphone number down, and then we hung up.

I decided there was no sense in just waiting aimlessly, so I started trying some other variants of my combination on the lock. On the third attempt, bam, it opened. Of course, right?!?! So, no more than five minutes after hanging up, I called the police back again, got the same guy, and explained that I’d tried a random combination successfully. He said he’d try to radio the Fire Department, but they were probably already nearby. I dawdled putting my bag back on the rack and such just in case, but I didn’t see them. I’m guessing he got in touch with them.

Next, I zoomed home on the most direct route, switching to sidewalk from road as soon as it was an option. Both sidewalk and road biking are legal here. I normally bike in the road, but it was very nearly dark out (~9:10pm) and I didn’t have a headlamp with me because I hadn’t planned to be out that late. I got home safe and all was well. Whew.

Having a fence and gate around it…okay, I can buy into that, for safety. Especially given that we get so much snow here, it could get covered up and someone could really hurt themselves or potentially die. I don’t buy into the attractive nuisance portion of the law, but I can buy into the need for general safety given the conditions in this area. The item that pissed me off is that you’re required to put an alarm on any door of your house that has access to the pool directly. So, if you build the fence using your house as part of the barrier (as is typical), your back door has to have an alarm on it. This isn’t a security alarm…it’s an alarm that goes off if the door is left open for more than 6 seconds, kind of like the one on some refrigerators. The alarm is explained as necessary to alert the household in case a child wanders out. It is required to be loud enough to be heard throughout the entire house.

First, there’s no provision for households that don’t have a child, like mine. Second, that’s going to be damn annoying. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to leave my screen door open temporarily to bring food in and out. (I can’t do that because of Pancake, but I want to do it.) Third, this law clearly assumes your child was raised in a barn, to borrow an old expression. How stupid is your (old/tall enough to open a door) kid that they don’t close the door behind them? I mean, first, let’s assume they know they’re doing something wrong, because, if you’re smart enough to have not only bought a pool but followed the village regs in installing this alarm, you’re not as dumb as the kid and have thus taught the kid that the pool is off-limits when they’re not with you. I mean, we are talking about a kid that is old enough to open a door by themselves…who is also old enough that you’re letting this kid wander around rooms of the house unsupervised. (It’s worth noting that I also think most parents have the good sense to teach their kids about safety around *ALL* dangerous household items, not just the pool…there are plenty of items that are far more dangerous laying about the typical home. Kids get into stuff regardless of what you teach, but, if you haven’t even made the effort, you’ve got only yourself to blame when something goes wrong, IMO.) So, given all of this, we’re then talking about protecting a kid who, knowing all of this, is so stupid that (s)he, knowing that there’s an alarm there (because you’re also required to test it regularly) and knowing you don’t want the kid going there, goes out the door and doesn’t close it.

So basically, this is a useless alarm. Any kid that could trigger the alarm is going to very likely know how to *not* trigger the alarm and/or not trigger the alarm out of a taught reflex to close exterior doors behind them. Who is this alarm really protecting? Well, I guess it could protect me from accidentally letting my cat out. I guess by that logic, if an adult leaves the door open, it reminds them to close it. But, then I’d have to assume than an adult parent is dumber than a child, and I’d hate to do that.

And that’s it. Work has been so hectic that I’ve barely had time to pee, much less eat…and then I had to run to class last night (hence managing to grab a sandwich from McD’s, which did make me a little late to class), which meant that by the time I got home, it was really too late to eat. This morning, I skipped breakfast because of a presentation that needed polishing ASAP…and spent the whole damn day working on that same presentation at the expense of everything else that needed to get done.

Oh, by the way, I still have work to do. I’m just taking a break while some things I need are being assembled. And I’ve ordered a pizza.

In other news, for those who don’t watch the twitter feed, my dear husband did it again. I guess we’re going to the Dominican Republic in Feb. Here’s where we’re staying: http://foxyurl.com/N3J

Now, first, what can you deduce from this sign?

ANSWER (highlight to the right of this to see): The floor is frequently slippery.

If you got it right, congratulations on your skills of deduction. I guess if you can’t make that deduction, you deserve to fall on the floor.

Also, from the graphic, it seems like the sign is actually warning you that the floor frequently contains Portals.

PS – This is a joke, not a real test. If you got here by googling…this probably wasn’t what you were looking for.