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Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Alyson Saxe and I have been a customer of yours for several years. That's a fair amount of time to stay loyal to one brand and up until recently I can't say I've ever been dismayed by my experience with your company. As a Verizon Wireless customer, I have used your service for both personal and business communications. Currently, and in the last couple of years, I have used Verizon Wireless for business purposes including mobile email, internet and storage of customer data including contact information. I have come to rely heavily on both my smartphone of choice (currently a Blackberry) and your service. And your service is what prompts this open letter to everyone at Verizon Wireless. Not your cellular service, your customer service. My experience with your customer service employees this week has been so deplorable that I am unable to sleep and am instead writing down my grievence. Allow me to explain.

I have made four trips to my local Verizon Wireless store in the last week. The first was last Sunday to explain that my Blackberry, of which I've had less than a year, is acting "buggy." The customer service representative barely glanced up at me as I tried to explain the problems, took my phone without asking a single question, and rebooted the device. I left thinking everything was fine. It was not. The phones issues became worse the next day.

I took it back on Thursday (four days later), and low and behold the same gentleman was behind the counter. I said, "Hello, I was in here a few days ago and you rebooted my phone." His response: " I see a lot of people," and shrugged his shoulders. Now...why should that matter? I was a customer. His customer at the moment and his job, as a customer service representative, is to make me feel like a welcomed customer. Instead, his body language and his words made me feel like just another rnumber. So I explained that the issues have gotten worse, and asked if he could try to reboot. He walked away. He had a text message that he had to attend to. I'm not kidding. Fortunately there was one young man who saw this and came over to ask if he could help. Nice! someone is going to help me. He played around with the phone and then told me to come back on Friday, after 3 pm, and they would just replace my Blackberry. Great!

So I came back today, at 4 pm. I counted 8 customer service representatives on the floor. Two customers were bring helped. what were your employees doing? they were chatting, playing on their own Verizon Wireless phones, staring into space. It was really quite amazing. Finally I walked up to someone who said they could help me. I explained the situation and his response was, "Sorry, those phones aren't here yet." I waited....waited....he stared at me. I decided to help him out. "When do you anticipate them being here?" His reply: "I don't know." I'm not kidding. It took about 10 more minutes of "conversation" for me to learn that the shipment would likely be there by 5. Fine.

I came back at 6:30 tonight. The first person I saw, standing around, was the customer service rep who had "helped" me before. I said hi, he asked if he could help me. I reminded him that he had just helped me about 2 and a half hours before. Instead of acknowledging me, or even pretending to remember, he said he'd get someone and walked away. Which brings us to our final customer service rep, the one that put the icing on this whole ambivalent cake. I explained the situation, again from the beginning and a lot longer of an explanation now. To which she told me the new phones weren't in. I said, "Really? Can you just go in the back and check for me please?" A roll of the eyes and hefty sigh and she was gone, only to come back with...guess what? you'll never guess. A box of new Blackberry phones right off the truck! "Would you like me to transfer your contacts?" she says (and this is important Verizon Wireless, pay attention). Why yes, please do. 15 minutes later, she tells me everything is set up and I'm good to go. I ask if she has any of the instruction booklets that come with this Blackberry. "No." What about the ones that you give to customers who buy this phone for the first time? "We don't have them." I should mention that between her transferring of my contacts and not helping find me an instructions booklet, she was texting, taking phone calls and looking at some new devices that had just come in.

So I left, it was over and I had a working smartphone again. Imagine my sheer PANIC when I get home, try to place a call, and realize that NONE OF MY CONTACTS WERE TRANSFERRED! Now remember how I said I use this device and the Verizon Wireless service for business? Here's what not having my contact information means: I'M FUCKED.

So here's my final thought for you Verizon Wireless: Stop counting on the devices you distribute to carry the quality of your brand and customer experience. It starts in the stores, where your customers interact with your employees. These people on the front lines make or break your customer's loyalty to Verizon Wireless and if you're not willing to invest in their training then you're basically saying fuck you to your customers. And don't believe for a second that making your customer service reps evangelists for your company is an impossible task given the size of your lousy corporation. Companies like Starbucks, Apple, Method and Nordstroms are perfect examples of large enterprises that have successfully created a valuable customer experience from the moment customers walk into their stores (or call their service lines as it were with Method).

Tomorrow morning I am going to cancel my service with Verizon Wireless. My guess is the next wireless carrier is not going to be any better, as bad customer service is really an epidemic that Verizon Wireless is simply caught up in. But I'll feel good knowing I'm not giving any more of my money to you.
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Deng Linlin: sixteen my arse

In no particular order:

1) Enough beach volleyball already. Seriously. I know it involves (sort of) hot girls in bikinis, but that can't be enough to sustain anyone, even the horniest of men, through ten hours a day of this drudgery. Is anyone else bored out of their freaking gourds from all this sand and skin? If I never hear the name Misty May-Treanor again, it'll be too soon. Oh, and that preposterous-looking black medical tape on Kerri Walsh's shoulder is highly distracting. Even if I wanted to watch the game action, I couldn't because I spend all my time staring at that damn swirly tape.

2) The gymnastics coverage is keeping me up way, way, way too late. Starting that shizit at 11 pm? I mean, come on. I know it's because of the time difference and what not, and that it's coming to us live. But can't they do the competitions earlier in the day or something for our viewing convenience? I'm kidding, but only sort of.

3) I love me some Nastia Liukin. Shawn Johnson is all about raw athleticism and power, but Nastia is poised, elegant, and looks the way a gymnast should look. My only suggestion is that she should probably cut some bangs. She has a very high hairline. Still, quite delightful.

4) I also love me some Bela Karolyi. That dude rocks the house, especially when he's sneak-attacking Bob Costas with a big old hug. His accent, enthusiasm, and fierce mustache are totally charming.

5) Okay, I know there's been a lot of discussion about this. But let's not beat around the bush. There is simply no freaking way that those Chinese gymnasts are all at least sixteen years old. Check out Deng Linlin, the one on the far right. If she is a day older than thirteen, I will eat my hat. Really. I know Bela Karolyi is getting criticized for calling the Chinese a bunch of cheaters, but I must concur with him. Look at that girl! She smiled at one point, and you could see that she still had baby teeth. How stupid do they think we are? Pretty stupid, apparently. So here they are fielding a bunch of pre-pubescent tweens, and we've gotta field full-grown women who are tripping over their breasts. It makes last night's medals that much sweeter. However, we were robbed in the team finals.
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I was reading Real Simple magazine tonight, and there was a blurb asking readers to submit essays about "the most important day of your life." Which got me thinking. So I hollered from the living room into the office, where Jay was sitting, and we had this conversation.

Me: Jay-bird, what was the most important day of your life?

Jay (without so much as a pause): Well, it would be a three way tie between the day we got married, the day Alex was born, and the day Andy was born.

At which point I concluded that Jay should become a politician.
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And now one of the toilets needs to be rebuilt because it's been running and all the innards are apparetly worn out and not functioning properly. So that'll be another $400 to rebuild it, or about double that to get a new toilet, have it installed, and have the old one hauled off.

Have I mentioned how much I hate old houses? I HATE OLD HOUSES.

*** Update***
Looks like this can be resolved somewhat more affordably if we get Home Depot or Lowe's to do the installation. BUT STILL.
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Here's what we got in exchange for several thousand dollars. A completely torn up front yard, a death sentence for a lovely old tree, and a spanking new sewer line, undoubtedly the newest and shiniest in all of Candler Park. Oh joy.


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This weekend we ran into a friend at the zoo, and got to talking about kids since his wife just had a baby too. He mentioned something about how we might as well give up on having future children if we're hoping for a girl. Because, he said, once you have a couple of boys, the odds are very low of having a girl after that. I'd heard something about that, but didn't know much about it.

After that convo, I decided to do some googling on the matter. Here's an interesting page with data about birth gender, and an analysis of it. Turns out that the odds *do* increase of having another boy if you've had multiple boys in the past, but only somewhat.

Long story short about our specific situation: For people who have two boys already, there's a 47.7% chance of the next child being a girl. So, a little less than 50%. If we have a third boy, then our chances of having a girl on the fourth try would go to 43.6%.

Here is the conclusion they reach:

Although we often hear the "statistic" that you are 30% or even 70% more likely to keep having the same gender, this is just an old wives tale. It is NOT a fact. The truth is, your odds stay pretty close to 50% for each child and only vary slightly. If you have had 2 or 3 boys, you are only about 2% to 6% more likely to have another boy. If you have had girls, you are slightly more likely to have a boy next.

All of that said, I'm pretty convinced that if we keep going, we'll have a whole gaggle of boys. But the good news is that then we can think about adopting a cute little girl from China or Guatemala. By that point we'll have ten kids and we can start a rock band. Or a small orchestra.
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Andrea Bocelli and Elmo

Two of Alex's favorite things are Elmo and computers. So we just spent quite a while watching Elmo videos on You Tube, and I'd say -- based on the demands for Elmo! Elmo! Elmo! still going on hours later -- that it was a hit.

There's all kinds of good Elmo stuff on there, including:

• this segment from 1991 when "Elmo's Song" was first introduced (now etched into the brains of every parent in America)
• this James Blunt performance of "My Triangle," a lovely homage to the shape he loves, sung to the tune of "You're Beautiful" (admittedly this one is with Telly, not Elmo, but it's still definitely worth checking out)
• this oooooold clip in which Jon Stewart sings with Elmo
• this prank call from Elmo to a pharmacist (this one isn't produced by the Sesame Street crew, but is pretty awesome nonetheless)

Just to name a few.

But the all-time best Elmo clip is this one in which Andrea Bocelli sings Elmo to sleep, to the tune of the opera song "Con te partirò," released in the 90s by Bocelli as "Time to Say Goodbye". The clip is funny on a lot of levels, but it's also super sweet and touching. Maybe I've still got some post-partum hormones hanging around, but it totally got to me.

The gist is that Elmo doesn't want to go to sleep, and is using all the usual tactics -- I'm not sleepy, I want another story, I want a drink of water. (Is there a parent on the planet who can't relate to this? Didn't think so.) Andrea Bocelli answers in song, and here's some of what he has to say:

Time to say goodnight / lie down, here is your bear / you have had such a wonderful day / playing and counting to twenty, singing songs / and going to the park with your friends / so now won’t you give me your hand / it’s time to say good night.

The lyrics, combined with the beauty of the song and the earnestness of the whole thing...it just really kills me. I'm with the guy who left this comment on the You Tube page: "Sometimes there oughta be a sixth star."
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This is going to be a speedy gonzalez style post. Both kids are sleeping right now, which hardly ever happens. And that means that I have all of about twenty-two seconds to type this.

So, just for fun, here's a list of a few highlights from the last day or two.

1) We found out that we have to replace some or all of the sewer line from the house to the street. Plumber Guy recommends the "complete fix" that will cost -- wait for it -- SIX THOUSAND MOTHER-F-ING DOLLARS. However, we can opt for the "cheaper" $3,500 fix, although that may not fix the problem long-term. Neither price includes having a landscaper re-lay the sod we had put down three months ago, or having a tree removal service take out the large tree that may die when the front yard gets dug up.

You probably don't need me to tell you how excited we are about spending a fortune on a plastic sewage pipe. Can you think of anything less fun to spend six thousand dollars on? Because I can't, and I've given it a lot of thought over the last few hours. It's a pretty dismal thing to spend your money on, when you get right down to it. Ah, the joys of home ownership!

Speaking of such things, did I mention that we are completely over old houses and want a new house right this very minute? Because, yeah, it turns out that it's sub-optimal when parts of your house's plumbing are almost a century old, and made from terra cotta. In other words, the same materials used by the ancient Romans. I told Jay maybe we should scrap the new PVC pipe, and just spring for a goddamn aqueduct.

2) In the last 24 hours, Jay and I have spent considerable time researching "green infant poop." Dr. Google says this is probably not indicative of a major problem, although it might be related to Andy's fussiness in the evenings. Nonetheless, it is unnerving to see a bright green substance coming out of your child's tuchus. Yuck.

3) Yesterday the determatologist removed a "dysplastic nevus" (aka atypical mole) from my back. It hadn't turned cancerous yet, but likely would have in the next few years. Not a big deal since it's not in a spot that anyone really sees, but it still isn't a lot of fun when someone uses a "one centimeter punch" to carve a large divet in your flesh. Now I've got stitches, some deep down and some on the surface. While not terribly painful, it does kinda hurt, and it begs the question of how I'm supposed to put the antibiotic ointment and bandage on it when Jay isn't around. It's smack dab in the middle of my back, in that spot that always itches since it's the one spot you can't reach.

That about covers it. Between the poop pipe in the yard, the poop pipe in the baby, and the hole in my back, we're having lots of fun here. Don't be jealous.

Everything else is going well, and we're finally settling into a routine. We had a few weeks of help from my mom and Jay's mom, which was invaluable, but now it's just back to the eight of us. It's definitely crazier with two kids, but we've decided that going from zero kids to one is a lot harder than going from one to two, at least so far. It's sort of like with cats. Getting one cat means you have all the responsibility and lifestyle changes that come with having a pet; when you get a second cat, you just put down some extra kibble.

We'll see, though. Andy is still in that cute, snuggly amoeba stage where he sleeps, eats and poops, and doesn't cause any trouble. Alex, on the other hand, is causing all kinds of mischief, and talking up a storm, and manipulating us like crazy. He's incredibly fun these days, in that "don't take your eyes off of him for four seconds for fear he'll set the joint on fire" kind of way. But lots of fun nonetheless.
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Complete with Dumpster backdrop and screaming toddler...


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