Jen’s Black Friday (November 27, 2009)

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black-friday

When Jen announced her plan to take KK (who wanted the “experience” – la dee da) and head out to Old Navy at 3 AM today, my jaw hit the floor. Jen has a hectic life, but yet and still, the woman likes her sleep when she can get it. We’re talking about a lady who could hibernate for 10-12 hours anytime, even while lying down for a nap, in high school. Work, household, KK and Rosebud leave little time for such indulgences now, but surely I belived Jen would have a bit of a lie in the day after Thanksgiving.

As it turns out, in a year of spiraling medical bills, a declining economy and little retail therapy for my baby sis, the pull of low cost schwag was a siren’s call too loud to ignore. She ran down the great list of items, in perfectly plotted coordinates, that she planned to score from Old Navy and Traget for less than $120, while we munched our Thanksgiving turkey. The variety was too much for my poor memory to handle, but I know a slow cooker, pajamas and an air mattress were in there. Door busters make stange bedfellows.

I will grant Jen that she did actually need all of these items, and I certainly admire her pluck, as well as KK’s in venturing out, to save some money. It was a witch’s tit of a windy morning too, the first bonafide winter day we’ve had this month.

Jen was kind enough to provide me fodder for this post by adding FaceBook status updates from her iPhone whilst wrestling with the chilly masses:

Yesterday at 10:39am: Mapped out my black Friday plan. Old Navy at 3 am, Target by 4am, then Kohls and maybe Wal Mart if I don’t receive any injuries before that.
15 hours ago: NOT enjoying my first doorbuster shopping experience. I spearheaded a 20+ person fight to get in line.
13 hours ago: Done!

Now by my calculations, since it’s 7:40pm now, Jen and KK briefed us on their initial doorbuster disaster at at 4:40am. Once I realized this, I felt a tremendous shudder of sympathy for my little lambs. Then I got angry.
My question is this: Why must retailers put people through this crap? If they can afford to introduce some loss leaders to bring foot traffic into the store, where they always offset the finacial hit, why can’t they do so on a normal day? And for Christ’s sakes, not at 4 AM. I have a funny feeling they enjoy the sight of us acting like desperate mice, saving the dollars that matter for our families and willing to do anything to get it. It’s like the ultimate reality show for the fat cats.
People are on hard times this Christmas season of 2009, more so than most of us can recall in recent memory. If the retailers want our consumer confidence back, the one we lost with the collapse of the nation’s financial institutions, job market and housing sector, throw us a bone. Let us get stuff we need at reasonable prices all year round. We will pay more for some luxuries than others granted, and that seems like a fair market practice. But let us get some rest too. Lord knows we all need it.

Foiled Again (November 23, 2009)

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Football

Granted, my recent posts have been a little dark, but it’s not always gloom and doom in Boop’s World. For the last four years, I have been competitively involved in my friend Wayne’s annual Pick a Winner football pool (better known as “PAW” by fanatics). For those of you who have never participated in this type of exercise, the premise is pretty simple. Pick one, and only one team to win their match each week. The catch is that you may use each franchise only once. So this year, when I used the New Orleans’ Saints in Week 1, who have gone on to dominate their division, they were lost to me for the ensuing 16 weeks. The game is pretty easy the first few rounds, but about Week 8 or 9, when you have used a lot of the best teams and have to start dipping your toe into the chaff, things can get messy. All it takes is one bad pick and you’re done. There are no second chances in PAW.

Here is a recap of my history in the pool. Needless to say, I have an aptitude for the game:

2006 – Made it to the final 5 competitors in Week 12.
2007 – Out in Week 2 (obviously, an unfortunate anomaly)
2008 – Final 3 in Week 17, only to be cruelly, painfully undone by that grey haired pig fu*&er better known as Brett Favre. There is still a lot of pain here.
2009 – ?

Yesterday was Week 11 of the NFL season, and I did something I normally do not: solicit advice. Up to now, my strategy has been to go with my gut, after a little bit of research. But lately my instincts appear to be on the fritz, so I thought I’d reach out. There is after all, $1800 at stake. My Yale-educated co-worker, a delightfully odd little man named Ned, provided me with his best calculations, based on my pick history and available teams. He not only selected the club I ought to have gone with this past weekend, Arizona, but suggested picks for the next two weeks as well. How lovely.

Only I went with my gut and picked Cinncinati. The rest, as they say, is now history.

http://www.realfootball365.com/articles/raiders/14609

Dammit! Wait ’til next year? What’s the point of soliciting Ivy League advice Boop (I ask myself) if it is not to be followed?!

I am quite the competitive one. After the game ended, with a pick thrown by Bengals’ QB Carson Palmer in the last seconds, my husband came and hugged me solemnly, whispering the words “I’m sorry” in my ear as though I’d just been laid off. I tend to distort loss/failures on my part under any circumstances, but when it comes to sports and money, my trauma can adopt epic proportions. Just ask Eddie about my Week 17 meltdown last year (Brett must die).

So I am hurt today. But will I ride again in 2010? You betcha! Come to think of it, PAW might just be the most appropriate metaphor for my life as a whole at the moment.

Holiday Chaos (November 20, 2009)

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Christmas Horror

Admittedly, I have always been a humbug about the holiday season, that blurry boundary between mid-November and the first week of January. Although if I am being fair to myself, I have good reasons for going Scrooge when the weather turns cold. An inordinate amount of bad juju, calamity and misery seems to creep it’s way into Boop’s World like clockwork every Christmas annum.

 
I foolishly lulled myself into the complacent assumption that I had already had enough this year: Eddie’s unemployment to ring in 2009, Jesika’s untimely and tragic death, the near implosion of my marriage over the summer and the ups and downs of youngest niece Rosebud’s health. 2009, by any personal measure has been trauma personified. But the 4th quarter of this year started peacefully enough, personally and professionally, and I wanted to believe I had been tested my quota.

 
I guess not because even after confronting all those aforementioned crises, Jen and I sit in the middle of the biggest shit storm yet. Whenever I make a claim like that you, dear readers, can always be sure it has something to do with our parents, the larger than life, Gloria and Gregg. You may notice that though I tend to be quite open with my personal struggles, in large part because it is free therapy for myself, I tend to shy away from mentions of my progenitors. There is good reason for this. The truth of mine and Jen’s upbringing is stranger than fiction, not to mention painful. Jen and I have both tried, as much as we are able, to leave the past where it belongs and move forward with our own reasonably successful lives.

 
But it seems one can never run from their past entirely. As long as the players are still living, the ghosts of afore will always rear their ugly heads. Jen and I are in the weird position of being simultaneously shocked and completely unsurprised by the fatherly mess we are trying to dig our way out of this month. Again, out of respect for loved one impacted, I am being purposely vague. Suffice it to say, I posted Shakespeare’s “Seven Stages of Man” speech a couple days ago because it is highly reflective of where things stand.
Is it 2010 yet?

Post One Fiddy (November 16, 2009)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

The Seven Ages of Man
William Shakespeare
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon
,With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

CTA: The Chicago Threatening Authority (November 13, 2009)

Becky Sarwate2 Comments

cta

I seriously cannot believe the gall of these people.

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/11/cta-board-approves-budget-with-no-fare-increases-but-service-cuts.html

This is not an exact figure but I think the last few days represent roughly the 10,000th time in the last two years that the CTA has threatened a “Doomsday” scenario without the aid of some immediate cash. Of course this bloated, corrupt, inefficent and retarded agency would never once consider pulling its head out of its ass as a cost saving measure. Do they truly think anyone would pay $3 for the “privilege” of riding that rickety, undependable shit in the first place? I know the good citizens of Chicago depend, in many cases, entirely on public transportation, which only makes this continuous extortionist chain yanking the more criminal. Be that as it may people, the time is upon us when we must declare “enough! We will endure no more!”

Where I ask you, does the hard earned cash that so many of us spend on fare cards even go? Does anyone actually work for the CTA anymore? Ah yes, I remember: as the #30 South Chicago bus driver Richard W. Linn, a 25 year veteran of the outfit (word used purposely), told me, upper management is so packed with Daley patrons, there is little left in the till for full-time, trained staff. You know, the kind that actually give a shit when you have an issue and don’t just yank your 30-day pass two days early (I remain fumed about this incident at the Damen Brown Line stop)?

What I love the most about this farce is that our fine Mayor would have you believe that despite the department being named the CHICAGO Transit Authority, rather than the State of Illinois Transit Authority, the City is in no way culpable for this mess. There is nothing the King does better than blame shift, and he is ever ready to place the villain’s mantel on Governor Pat Quinn. Our highly educated leader had this to say about the two year fare freeze compromise:

“They don’t permanent fix too much in Washington, D.C. or Springfield. They don’t permanent fix it.”

Um what? I am not even going to touch upon the rampant illiteracy of that statement. It’s fish in a barrel. Getting past that however, I actually have to give Pat Quinn a small hand. The two year fare hike at the very least gives us a 24-month reprieve from any more blackmail about hitting transit riders harder than they already are. And Governor Quinn accomplished this without yanking the free ride privilege from seniors, which if I may, was one of the few things ex-Governor Blago did right. Daley and his cronies were ready to charge Granny and Gramps full price again as long as the wheels continue greasing. Sickening.

This is a rhetorical question of course, but why is the answer never to fix the way the goddamned CTA operates? This fare freeze has not silenced the agency a whit when it comes to service cuts and layoffs. I say, let the layoffs start at the top. Let’s start with Daley.