Take that corn, ya Home Depot

Here's a nice email I just sent off to Home Depot.

---

I am writing because I was extremely dissatisfied with the tool rental at my local home depot (Highland Ave in Pleasant Ridge / Cincinnati Ohio). I rented a 2 man power auger to dig some post holes on Wednesday night. I planned on using it for 4 hours and returning it, but the bit got stuck in the ground.

I called up the store and spoke to Zach R. I asked him for assistance in how I might be able to get the bit out. He explained that the machine did not have any type of reverse motor and didn't really have any ideas for me to try, but he told me not to worry - he would put a note on my account to only charge me for the 4 hours. This was great and really set my mind at ease since we had already been trying to get it out of the ground for an hour or so.

I have a full time job so I was not able to get back over there till the evening of Thursday (the next day). We tried various ways to get it unstuck, including snapping a metal pipe wrench in half trying to reverse the bit, but with no success.

Finally on Friday I took a day of vacation from my job so that I could get this thing out. Zach from the store had told me that he would only be charging me for the 4 hours, but I wanted to be sensitive to your time and return it so it could be rented again if necessary. Finally, by digging a hole all the way around it to the depth of the bit we were able to extricate it. We cleaned it off and returned it to the store by Friday afternoon at 1:45 pm.

But when I got there, the man (Lawrence R) insisted that he could not charge me for only 4 hours. He did eventually give me a credit for 1 day of use, so instead of charging me for $140, I was charged for $70. I found it strange that he would discount $70 but not the additional $21 (to get it to the $49 rate for 4 hours that Zach had promised me over the phone). His explanation was that Zach must have meant that he would only charge me for 4 hours if I returned it by Thursday (rather than Friday). But Zach did not say that on the phone and I don't know how I possibly could have been expected to know that?

So, after being (in my mind) overcharged for $24.61 (the $21 extra fee, $2.10 extra damage protection and $1.51 extra sales tax), rather than continuing my shopping at the Home Depot store, I went 2 minutes down the street to Lowe's and bought my sump pump, kitchen faucet, 3 light fixtures and 5 4x4x6 posts (total spent at Lowe's was $196.26).

---

Since I'm in the middle of complaining about retail stores, let me paste one in I sent to GNC the other day

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I would like to comment about an experience I had today at the GNC store
inside the Kenwood Towne Centre in Cincinnati, OH.

I was on a tight schedule so I left the rest of my family in the parking
lot so I could run into the mall when it opened at 10 to make a
purchase.

I got to GNC at 10 but the store was closed. I waited around for a bit
until the employee finally showed up at 5 after.

Without any type of apology, she greeted me with "It's going to be a
bit" as she disappeared into the store to start the pre-opening
procedures.

About 5 minutes later she opened and I was able to finally make my
purchases at 10:10.

I was definitely disappointed since I was on a tight schedule. Though I
don't shop at GNC very often so perhaps this is standard procedure at
GNC or mall stores. I understand that sometimes people are running late
but what got me the most was even the lack of an apology. Even a "Hey -
sorry I was running late" would have gone a long way....

---

That one snagged me a $15 gift certificate to GNC. Too bad I just stocked up on melatonin and I don't really need much in the way of protein powder or whatever else they sell....

Lowe's are idiots

Lowe's is idiots? Lowe's is an idiot? Hmmm... I must be grammatically sound before I go OFF on the annoyances of the past few days. On the one hand, the store's name is Lowe's. If you go to one singular store, it says Lowe's, which I guess must be singular. But Lowe's is an idiot doesn't sound right. I guess what I'm really trying to say is the people at Lowe's are idiots, which works. Okay then.

So Wednesday afternoon I go down and buy the last of my deck materials. I covered this in the last post. So the guy there said that they could totally load up their truck for me to rent and come by Thursday to pick it up, and to just call tomorrow (Thursday which is now yesterday). So I called and of course nobody had heard of anything nor done anything. Not surprising. So they set to work on it and then they call back a little later and say it's a lot of stuff and would be like 2 or 3 trips / loads so would I rather just pay them $60 to deliver it. So I say okay. They say it would be delivered tomorrow (Friday which is now today).

So I call them up today to see when it might be delivered. After being transferred around several times, STILL nobody has heard of anything; the delivery guy does not have my "ticket". They're currently looking into that.

But that is not all; oh no, that is not all. Also on Wednesday (ear-lie in the morning before work) I went into a different Lowe's to get my carpet. The first step in that is to pay them to come out and measure the area so that I know how much carpet to buy. They put me in the system, I pay the $35 for that, and then they turn me over to a flooring installer who will call me within 48 business hours. Flash forward to today and of course nobody has called me. So I call them up, go through a few people and finally get someone who tells me that they have 48 business hours. And I'm thinking "Lady, I have the timestamped receipt right in front of me and it's been 50 hours". She says that they have all day today to do it.

Now normally it wouldn't be that big of a deal, because we're actually not ready for the carpet until we paint, so it will be probably a week or so before we can get it installed. But Lowe's has a promotion going on where for every $1000 you spend, you get $100 in gift cards. Well actually they have 2 similar promotions going on, but one of them expires 4/27. So I really need to pay for this carpet by Saturday (tomorrow) or I lose out on about $200 in gift cards.

So I ask for the name and number of this company that is supposed to call me. I call them, and of course Lowe's has sent them zip. So she takes my number and calls me back in a few minutes. She had called the store and gotten my order. Then she asks "Can we come by on Tuesday?" I mention how I really need this done by tomorrow and she tells me she'll see what she can do and will call me back.

In the meantime a lady calls me about renting our current house so I'm talking with her. And like 500 people call me while I'm on the phone with her. So I call back the deck Lowe's - they don't know anything and they're going to look at it. I call back Missy from the flooring company - they called back the store and had them switch it to a different installer so that they could get it done today. What? GOOD customer service? I'm floored!!! Goooooo Pro Flooring of Cincinnati!!

But then Lowe's calls the house and talks to Carolyn (even though I told them to call my cell) and she doesn't know what's going on with anything because I haven't kept her in the loop. The lady is snippy with her and so then she (Carolyn) calls me (one of the 500). Finally I get that straightened out and someone is coming to measure this afternoon (no thanks to Lowe's)

Good times!

Excuse me? No, excuse YOU!

So here's something that annoys me and I thought I'd write something about it to see if this is widely shared, or if I'm just easily annoyed.

Let me set the scene - 2 people are in a hallway talking to each other. Each one is on an opposite wall of the hallway, so between them they are taking up the entire hallway, forcing people to walk between them in order to walk down the hall. Now this, in and of itself, I don't necessarily have a problem with. It's annoying yes, but there have been times that I have done this. And of course anything that I have ever done could not POSSIBLY be annoying.

No, what I find incredibly annoying is the fact that it appears to be socially acceptable and mandated that the person who is just walking down the hall, minding his or her own business, is "supposed to" say "Excuse me". Why should THEY have to beg the pah-don of the blowhards that are taking up the entire hallway?

So I was trying to think of a way that we can discourage this behavior. I already walk right through them without excusing myself. Even if there's a tiny amount of room on one side of one person, I just barge right down the middle - your rude behavior is not making me have to try and squeeze myself through the very edge of the hallway. I thought maybe a dirty look, but that seems like it's not quite enough. Another thought I had was to "accidentally" throw a shoulder into one of the participants, but that seems to go too far the other way.

So the solution I have come up with (and I think it's a good one) is that the new socially accepted rule is that as you walk through the rudyheads, you say "Excuse you". It's just subtle enough, and because it's so close to what people will be expecting to hear ("Excuse me"), you could probably even get away with it. They'd be left thinking (if they even hear it) something along the lines of "Did I just hear that right? Nahh"

So what do you think, loyal reader(s)? Shall we do it? Let's take back the world, one hallway interaction at a time!!!

In which National City caves (Satisfaction part 2)

Oh yes National City, you WILL be mine. Following up on the post from the other day, here are the updates on my saga with National City.

Attempt 7: Going back on what the lady in Attempt 6, I called up what is apparently my "home branch", which is where I opened the account some 10 years ago, although I don't think I've been back since. Spoke to the lady that answered the phone and explained my problem. Well actually I didn't really explain my problem so much as just tell her I wanted these fees waived. She of course said she couldn't do that and I'd have to talk to the manager, who was conveniently on vacation until Monday. I pulled out one of the good phrases from that blog I linked yesterday - "I see this fee here and I'd really like to get it waived. What else can you do to help me?" Turns out there is also an "office manager" who can do it. But she was with a customer, so I could call back in 10-15 minutes. I instead opted to leave my name and number and have her call me when she was free.

Attempt 8: No call for an hour or two. So I called back - ended up speaking to the same lady. I introduced myself again and the lady explained that the manager lady was in with a different customer. I said nothing and eventually she put me on hold. After a moment or two, the manager lady answered. I again said I wanted the fee waived. Actually I said I got 2 of these overdraft charges and I'd like one of them waived, but she saw my trick and said that one of them was already waived, so I had to restate that I wanted the OTHER one waived too. She asked me if this is the first time my balance has been negative. I danced around the question since the answer is no and I didn't want to lie about it. And then she said "Okay I'll do it". We talked about various other overdraft options (none free :-/) and that was that.


And there's the proof! I'm kind of glad because I was totally going to drop National City if they didn't cave on this. And that would have been annoying.

I will not GIVE you the satisfaction

So a friend of ours was talking to Carolyn the other day. She was telling us a story from a few years ago. Apparently she got upset that she was the only one doing the dishes and that her husband never did them. So one day she decided to go "on strike" (i.e. not wash the dishes). As soon as I heard this part of the story I knew it was a bad idea.

Sure enough, as expected, nobody did the dishes forever, they both got angry at each other and the problem was not solved. This must be a guy thing, because as soon as I heard the story I told Carolyn "Man if you did that to me, I wouldn't do the dishes because I would not give you the satisfaction" For me that kind of passive-aggressive behavior would make it not only about the dishes but just about the principle.

Recently the cafeteria at work decided to (once again) nickel and dime us. You are now charged 21 cents if you want to use a cup (like for water). Also, if you take a to go container - ooh that's 25 cents. Errr wait. I mean if you DON'T use a to-go container, you get a 25 cent discount. But... conveniently, the price with discount is exactly the same as the old price. Hmmmm... The other day I forgot my water cup upstairs but I instead opted to just have no beverage with my meal. ARAMARK I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THE SATISFACTION!!!!!!

And now, fast forward to a week or so ago. I get a notice from National City about 2 overdraft charges. This is not the first time this has happened to me. I have money at National City, but in various accounts. And so sometimes the money just is not in the right place at the right time. I have fought these before with pretty good success (just this once). As this dude points out, a bank's cost to attract new customers can be up to $3500. So they have an incentive to bend over backwards to keep their existing customers.

This time though it's complete crap. I transferred enough money on March 11th to cover 2 transactions I knew were coming in on the 12th. They cleared, leaving me with a couple hundred bucks in the account. But due to "holds" on the card of $671.80 that triggered 2 over draft notices. Even though my account statement never shows me going negative. And oddly enough none of the future transactions (from the 12th to the 17th) add up to $671.80, no matter what combination you try

Added to that is that I have an alert set up that is supposed to email me any time that my balance goes below $250. Never got an email, despite supposedly having a negative balance.

But I WILL NOT GIVE NATIONAL CITY THE SATISFACTION

Here is my saga:

Attempt 1: Called up the customer service number on my overdraft notice. Spoke to a guy who was pretty rude. Got nowhere.

Attempt 2: Following the SlickDeals mantra - I immediately hung up with him and called the same number and spoke to someone else. She went on and on about those holds, and I countered by going on and on about where does this $671.80 come from - show me the transactions. Finally she offered to refunded me $34 (the cost of one of those overdraft fees) "as a courtesy". I told her hey that was nice, but I want them both. She wouldn't do it. I asked to speak to someone else. She said there was nobody else. I kept at it. Finally she said she'd take my name and number and have her manager call me.

Attempt 3: The next day I talked to the manager. I again wanted to know where this $671.80 came from. She said she couldn't tell me. I said I'd accept the $34 if and only if she could tell me where this money supposedly came from. Again we go on and on. Finally she tells me that I can get that information if I go into my branch. I say fine.

Attempt 4: I go in this afternoon to my local National City branch. I go up to the desk and say "Yes I have 2 things here - first I'd like to deposit this check for $35,000" and then I have this overdraft charges that they told me you could take care of. I figured if they saw what a high roller I was maybe I'd get better treatment. Of course, they don't know that I'm not REALLY a high roller (the check was the latest draw on the new house and has to be deposited so I can pay off the sub contractors) but hey :-). She couldn't do it and had me wait to talk to some other lady.

Attempt 5: A few minutes later I got called back into the office of said lady. Did the whole thing with flashing her my bling. She again gave me the whole rigmarole about holds and all that. I countered with talking about how much money I have (ha!) and how much business I do with them and how I don't want to have to go to 5/3 or PNC or wherever. She says there is nothing she can do unless it's a bank error. I say well to me it IS a bank error. I ask if there is anyone else that can do it. She says her manager will be in tomorrow. I leave it at that. Seriously folks - what is the interest they'd get in even ONE day on $35K? Not to mention that thanks to the wacked out Federal Reserve laws in the US, deposits of $35K mean that National City can make loans of I believe $350K!

Attempt 6: After reading those finance blog posts I linked to above (I had them in my memory but had to search for them), I decided I'd use the tips he had in his post and looked up National City's number off their website, which, oddly enough, was different than the number that I had called before (from my letter). This time instead of asking about these fees that I got, I straight out said "I see these fees and I'd like them waived". I thought she was going to do it but in the end gave me the excuse that the only place that could do that was my "home" branch, which is the branch where I opened the account up 10 years ago (down in Clifton). I suspect that is bogus but I will give them a call tomorrow and if that doesn't work I will keep calling. It just takes one person.

NATIONAL CITY I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THE SATISFACTION. I will seriously close down all my accounts over this $34. Just ask UC who will get ZIPPO of my millions until they apologize for screwing me on health insurance in summer 2000.

UPDATE - See part 2 for the thrilling conclusion

A few points to clarify

#1. I'll post when I'm good and ready.
#2. The goals bar only gets updated when I remember
#3. Exercising isn't even one of the goals on the goals bar anyways.
#4. I can't believe that my "stalker" wasn't Ray.

College Football

So last night was the big bad Bowl Championship Series National Championship game. Long title, huh? Wait, I think I missed a "Presented by Allstate" or a "dot com" or a "your mom"

Anyway, it was LSU vs. Ohio State. I have to say I am not a big Ohio State fan, but I marginally root for them. Growing up, I was a big Buckeye fan as there weren't really many (any) major college programs in Cleveland. I remember having rivalries with my cousin Jef who was a Michigan fan, and whose Thanksgiving visits often coincided with the annual OSU-UM game.

After my mission and attendance at UC, I adopted the Bearcats and my like for OSU faded. Still, though, I remember one year where to advance some team I wanted to do well in the national scene (probably BYU), I needed Michigan to beat Ohio State. I tried to root for Michigan but just could not bring myself to do it. It reminds me of the (I believe ESPN) commercial that shows a guy with an Ohio State shirt on and a girl with a Michigan shirt on it. They're on a couch making out and the camera shows them kissing for like 3-4 seconds. Then at the bottom of the screen it shows lettering that says "Without sports, this wouldn't be disgusting" :-) Good times.

There are a lot of Ohio State fans here in Cincinnati, and I talked to some of them at work about the game. Everyone was in full Buckeye paraphernelia mode. One of our consultant companies had sent one of the boss folks here (a big OSU fan) a tin of Ohio State cookies. I had a "Buckeye Chocolate Chip" one. It was good.

I made my prediction:

Ohio State 31
LSU 27
Number of annoying fireworks my neighbor (also a giant OSU fan) sets off after I'm already asleep: 10

Anyways, I didn't turn the game on when it started since, as I mentioned, I was being "Mr. Productive Pants". At about 8:15, I was upstairs and waiting for Carolyn for something, I heard massive cheering, hooting, hollering, and airhorning from out of doors. I thought "Hmm that seems early". I checked the box score online and it was 0-0 on about the 2nd play. I refreshed and saw that Ohio State had rushed for a 65 yard touchdown. "Aha that makes sense", I told myself.

After we got done cleaning the basement for the evening, I came back up and watched a bit of the game. OSU got out to a 10-0 lead but after that it was all LSU, who ended up winning. Which disappointed my neighbor I'm sure, but did not disappoint my lack-of-fireworks-loving self.

Dear Active.com - you suck

Active.com - you are dead to me.

For a few years I have been using CoolRunning.com as my exercise logger. For the past few months I have seen notices that they would be migrating their data over to Active.com.

The "transition" was this past weekend and boy did it go badly. Much of the data did not transfer over. Actually NONE of the data transferred over automatically and there was a process you could initiate to transfer your data over, but when I did that only about half the data came over.

I was not alone either - the messageboards were flooded with coolrunning refugees talking about how Active.com had screwed them up. In addition to the data migration problems, the logger didn't have all the features that we were accustomed to at CR. I mean, I know migrations and change can be a big deal, but this was ridiculous.

In one of the threads, someone posted how to get your data out of CoolRunning and there were various other sites proposed to accept us poor refugees. I think I have settled on RunningAhead.com and I will let you know how it goes. Maybe if you're lucky I'll update my blogger template to point to a link there instead of the old one that goes to CoolRunning :-)

School bui

The plural of bus of course is bui. Just ask Vanilla Ice.

In any case, we had the first snow of the year here today. There were lots of schools closed or delayed, though our schools were not affected. The roads were not very bad IMO at least in our part of town. While at the Y this morning there was a lady talking to the people at the front desk and she was saying how she was from Arkansas and if they got snow then everything was just shut down and she was all freaking out and the rest of us were just looking at her weird like mmmkay.

So while I was at work, I was talking to a co-worker when she got a call on her cell phone. It was from a friend of hers who was talking loudly so I listened in :-). Friend was saying how she was going to pick up my co-worker's daughter from school because she (friend) was definitely going to pick up her own daughter because "she did not want her riding the school bus today"

I assumed because of the snow and how she was worried about the bus getting in a wreck and her kid getting hurt or dying. I pointed out that school buses are by far safer than taking your kid yourself. She pshawd me of course.

And, of course, because that's the kind of person I am, I looked up some good ol' facts and sent them to her. Including:

• Riding the bus has become the safest way to get to school, even safer than walking. Researchers looked at the ways children get to school and found that school buses account for one-forth of all trips but only 2% of children's deaths in school related traffic accidents, making them the safest form of transportation.
  
• "In fact, it's 87 times safer for your child to take a school bus than driving them yourself, letting them ride with friends, or even walking and bicycling," LeMon said.
  
• There are 48 million school children in the United States. Half of them ride school buses and on average there are ten occupant fatalities a year. The other half get to school some other way and 600 of them lose their lives as a result.
  
• An average of only 10 children are killed each year as school bus occupants, and most of the deaths involved very severe crash circumstances that often were not survivable.
  
• Most of the 600 school-age children killed each year during normal school transportation hours while riding in a passenger vehicle other than a school bus would be alive today had they taken a school bus.
  
• Each year about 800 children are killed in motor vehicle crashes during school consisting of: 450 students die by teenage drivers, while 5 students die riding in a school bus, 15 are killed getting on or off the bus by passing motorist.
  

Caveat of course that I got all of this stuff randomly off of the Internet so "it must be true". I assume that the one site that said 600 deaths and the one with 800 deaths were just using slightly different methodologies for counting, or different years, or something.

So to try and top Carolyn's kale smoothie pictures, I searched for school bus crash, just for fun and found



That came from this USA Today article which reiterated some of the same stats I gave above.

Toilet Paper Investigative Journalism

Words you thought you might never see in the same sentence? Yes folks, it is time for some investigative journalism that TPMHTDM is known for. Well, er, maybe.

I come to you on the mighty subject of toilet paper. We all use it, but nobody is ready to ask the hard-hitting questions that the subject deserves. In a way, it's kind of surprising, since a lot of times some of our most quiet time for rumination occurs within 2 feet of a roll.

So anyway, let me explain my TP situation at work. In each stall (at least the men's ones) there are 2 rolls of TP on rollers, side by side. Either of these rolls is accessible for usage. I bring that up to point out that this is NOT one of those operations where you have the 2 rolls and the little sliding door underneath, with the idea that you use all of one roll first, while still having a "backup" roll in case things turn for the worst. I would estimate that each of these 2 rolls is used about 50% of the time.

So, on top of these two rolls, the cleaning crew usually leaves smaller rolls. My guess is that when they come to clean each day, if either of the rolls on the rollers has reached a pre-determined level of "smallness" they take it off the roll, put a brand new one on the roll, and then put the smaller roll on top.

Anyway, in the course of human events yesterday at work, I found myself in that aforementioned spot of rumination, and I began to wonder (not for the first time), what do they do with those old rolls? I never see empties, and since the people at work can barely be counted on to get their old paper towels in the trash, I'm not seeing the option that people are using them up and then throwing them away.

Later in the day, while refilling my water cup, I spotted one of the cleaning ladies (not to be sexist - we also have a cleaning guy, though I did not see him yesterday). So I asked her "Hey, what do you do with all those smaller rolls of toilet paper". And she said that they throw them away!!!!! She also said that I could take them if I wanted to.

Which of course brings up the question of whether or not I want to. I am a cheapskate (or, as I prefer it, frugal). I think I have no problem taking this if they're just going to throw it away. As a side note, the quality of this TP is not quite the Charmin that we got when I worked for P&G, but it is not quite travel plaza worthy either.

But what I'm most concerned about is people giving me crap about it, pardon the pun. I've received occasional crap from people for scavenging food from work. It is just amazing to me the amount of food and other servicable stuff that people will just THROW AWAY!. So if someone puts out pizza or other food in the breakroom, and it's not all gone by 5 p.m., I will take some of it home as I leave. Or once someone had thrown away a dozen donuts IN THE BOX that nobody had bothered to eat. So I rescued those too. Like I said, I have occasionally been given grief over this. So now, whenever I try to do things like this, I try to make sure nobody's watching. Not because I feel like I'm doing anything "wrong", but mostly just to minimize the crap I'm given.

So, loyal readers, what say you? What should I do in this situation?

Post Office and Library

So, one of the things that we've been doing off and on is cleaning our basement. Mostly, just de-cluttering all the JUNK that has accumulated there over the past 5 years or so. So one of the things that I found was a package of 24 "aerogrammes". I had these from my mission - the idea was that I could use them to send air mail letters home. But when I got down to the DR, I found that the church had a "pouch" system. How the pouch worked is that all the missionaries would send their letters into the mission office, and the mission office would ship them to Salt Lake. Once they got to SLC, they would just get dumped into the regular US mail. So, you just needed regular stamps, which is what I used.

So I've had these aerogrammes in my "stuff" for 10 years or so, just carting them around from place to place. So while cleaning, I decided to see if they could just be used as regular mail. They have 45 cent stamps embedded as part of the letter, so I figured with stamps going up to 41 cents, I could just use them in place of regular first class mail. I was going to send out a test one, but errands took me to the post office so I brought them in. Turns out, along with the recent uppage of first class stamps from 39 to 41 cents, Aerogrammes were eliminated. So I was just kind of figuring I was out of luck, when the lady told me that they could be exchanged for regular 41 cent stamps. Who knew we had $11 just sitting around....

I know, you are probably amazed. I mean, the Post Office actually NOT sucking for once?!?! It just boggles the mind! I mean when I think of the Post Office, I usually think of the insanely late times I get my mail delivered (5:30 p.m. yesterday), or maybe it's the times when they give me my mail back all crumpled and deformed with a "Ooh suerie about that" note (cough, cough the $18 cashier's check for my daughter's birth certificate) Okay maybe that's a little harsh - the Post Office does have some good qualities. I mean if I gave you 41 cents, would you take a letter across country?

In other news, we have been listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on audio book for awhile now. So Carolyn got an email saying that it was due, and when she went to renew it, she couldn't because there were "holds" on it. Which makes sense. Except for I then went online to the catalog and found that there were 17 available copies (and only 8 holds). So I called the local branch but there was nothing they could do. So I had to go in to the library, give them back the copy we had checked out, and CHECK OUT A DIFFERENT COPY OF THE EXACT SAME AUDIOBOOK!!! Madness....

Kickball

Okay, a little late, but I thought it worthwhile to take a bit of time to report on the kickball tournament that I mentioned in my last post.

There was some talk going back and forth in the morning about whether or not we were going to play. It had rained the last 2 nights, and we weren't sure about how muddy it was going to be. We decided to play anyways and the field was not wet or muddy at all - it was perfect conditions with the sun behind clouds and a temperature in the 60s. I guess originally 22 teams signed up but 5 cancelled leaving 17. We had a few of our players nancy up, so I had to scramble in the morning to find a few subs, but eventually we got a team of 9 together and headed down to the field.

The rules were 4 innings, and each inning was either 3 outs or going through your entire batting order, whichever came first. Games were played to 10 runs. We won our first game without too much difficulty. We had 3 girls on our team (you were required to play 2) and ours played pretty well. I was playing deep right-center field and played pretty well I think. I made a few good catches though I did bobble and drop one.

Then it was time for Game 2. While we were waiting for an open field, one of the players on our team was campaigning to play this other team (Team 7) that he knew. The tournament director set that up for us and off we went. If you will remember from my last post, I mentioned one particular guy that was very competitive among other things. Well this fellow was on this "Team 7" and all the things I worried about happening in the basketball game happened in kickball. They kicked first and in the very first inning there were fair/foul problems. There were cones down the left/right field lines but it wasn't very obvious and there weren't umpires. So they had a few guys on and one of their guys kicked it down there. They called it fair, we called it foul, and while we were "discussing" it, they continued to run. We eventually gave in and let them have it as fair, but in the meantime all their runners scored while we were talking about it. Not that big of a deal since it WAS fair after all. But then in the bottom of the first, the exact same thing happened and then they had the gall to complain about our runners doing the exact same thing! And the one we kicked was DEFINITELY fair as I was watching it down the line from behind home plate.

Now, before I can continue with this post, you will need to take this small quiz (don't worry you won't leave the page):


How do you feel about bunting in kickball?

Bunting is okay - it's a part of the game

Bunting is a travesty to all that is good and decent.





As you might have imagined, late in the game, the bunting started. We entered the 4th and final inning up 8-2, and then on came the bunting. So here's my major problem with bunting. The way the games were set up we had no catcher, nor did we have a pitcher (since you pitched to your own team). So yes, you COULD just tap the ball down the 3rd base line, and since the bases were so short (and the kickball itself was not very easily throwable), it was impossible to throw the person out at 1st. For awhile, we did move one of our players close in, but then they risk getting a hard fast one without enough time to react and catch it.

The bunting continued (accompanied by lame comments like "All day long baby") all inning long. It seems like it would be pretty easy to throw the person out at 3rd and/or home plate when the force was on, but I forget why that wasn't so. Maybe they kicked away at that point. In any case, we got no outs and they ended up tied 8-8 with a runner on 3rd and their last person up to bat. (Remember that you only got to go through your order once). As you may imagine, when you play like this, the last person pretty much has to just keep running until they get out. It does no good for him to get a double since there is nobody left to drive him in. There's no downside to continuing to run and hoping they miss you with the ball or something. Anyway, the guy kicked it deep and I caught it. The runner on 3rd tagged and went to home plate. We disputed that this run should not count, since once I caught the batter's ball, the inning should be over. We were saying that it was the 3rd out, which while not technically true (since it wasn't the fact that there were 3 outs that ended this particular inning but the end of the batting order), still seems like a valid comparison. They made the claim that there was only one out. I could see their reasoning but I think an impartial arbiter would side with us.

Anyways, we let them have it and then went up for our bats. We promptly scored the tying and winning runs on 3 hits and a sacrifice fly and the game was over. It was extra-satisfying to beat a bunch of bunters.

Game 3 was again vs. a bunch of bunters. Even though we talked loudly about how we hated bunting, they kept their 3rd baseman (a girl) in really close. One of our kickers nailed one right down the 3rd base line right at her (not intentionally AFAIK), and to her immense credit she caught it right in the stomach and held on for the out. We won this game too and proceeded to the finals. I led off the game with a long kick over everyone's head but they managed to get it in quickly and due to my not paying attention, I was thrown out between 3rd and home. We proceeded to lose 8-1. At least it wasn't to a bunch of bunters. They did have one girl kind of tap the ball but after all the crap she was given, she kicked away in her other times at bat.

It was a lot of fun. After the game, I did some Google searching and was pleased to find that just about every site I saw was anti-bunting. Including the aptly-named NoBunting.com, which even had cool T-shirts

National Employee Health and Fitness Week

So this week at work we are celebrating National Employee Health and Fitness week. Every day this week there are various events that the company is putting on, generally over lunch. Monday, there was a wiffleball tournament. Yesterday there was a 3-on-3 basketball tournament, cornhole, punt pass and kick, and a dunk tank. Today, a 5K race, tomorrow a kickball tournament, and Friday there is badmitton. It is weeks like these when Carolyn gives me some crap about the "difficult" job I have.

I didn't do wiffleball, but yesterday I did take part in the 3-on-3 tournament. There were 4 teams signed up, and annoyingly they didn't do any type of double elimination or round-robin tournament - just a single elimination. More annoyingly, the 2 best teams (including my team) got matched up in the first round (rather than in the finals). An interesting note - when trying to scout out our opponents, these were the adjectives used to describe one of the players (coming from 3 separate people)

• Aggressive


• Competitive


• Hyper


• Egotistical


• An A**hole

Sounds like a real great guy, huh? I was worried that he was going to start a fight or throw a punch or something. Happily though, the game went fine. They were aggressive and competitive, but not annoyingly so. It was a hard-fought game but we lost 10-8. They had this big guy that was quite good. We had a pretty tall guy on our team, and he held his own, but that big guy was hard to stop. I played well, and besides the annoyingness of the tournament structure, I was happy.

Today we had a 5K. The route was a little bit long (measured here at 3.24 miles, as compared to 3.10 for an actual 5K). When I found out this morning that it was long, I IMd several suggestions to the organizers of how the course could be shortened to an actual 5K distance, but they weren't very interested. I'm not sure why - it wouldn't have been that hard to do. Keeping the turnaround where it was made sense because it was a good spot to turnaround, but it wouldn't have been difficult IMHO to just move the start or finish lines. Anyways... the race itself went well. I started up at the front, and while I was quickly passed by all the really fast people, I did manage to keep somewhat of a pace with them. Well, behind them. I did slow down and walk one section at about the 2.7 mile mark, but not for very long. One annoying part of this was the fact that this was a run/walk. Now that, in and of itself, is not very annoying. But because it was an out and back course, and on sidewalks rather than streets, we ran into a particular problem, pardon the pun. As I (and I'm sure many of the other runners) were running back to the start/end point, MANY of the walkers were walking 2-abreast outbound, taking up the whole sidewalk. And while some (a small percentage) made some attempt to go single file or share the sidewalk, most just continued walking and taking the whole sidewalk, forcing us to run in the grass to get around them. One of my co-workers mentioned that a heavier woman waylaid him (i.e. actually collided with him). I managed to avoid hitting anyone but did have to get on to the grass about 5 times or so. This was also kind of an unofficial race, so there was no traffic control. Luckily I avoided getting stopped by any traffic lights, though at one point the light turned green against me while I was in the crosswalk. I waved to the lady as I continued running in front of her :-).

When I crossed the finish line, I was given a time of 26:01, though the stopwatch I was wearing said 26:27. Doing some pace calculations, that is a 5K time of 25:18, which matches up about with what I saw when I crossed the 3.1 mile marker (in my head). That would be a new (unofficial) personal record, beating the old record of 25:39. Of course, that time was on a long course too - I just can't win! My goal for this race was 25 minutes, so I ended up being just short of that. Still have the goal of the sub-20 minute 5K by the end of the year.

So, I was deciding that next year, I may just have to take over this fitness week thing. These events are just not being run up to my standards. Now, I appreciate the work that these folks are doing (I really do!) and I realize how difficult it is to organize these things and get volunteers and such. But in addition to the annoyances of the 5K route being long and the basketball tournament being too short, the cornhole tournament bracket got all messed up. There were like 78 teams enrolled. But due to various problems, the bracket just got all screwed up. Some teams got like 5 byes, only having to play 2 or 3 games to get to the finals, while others were playing 5 or 6. Now I understand that I am somewhat of a loser in this regard. After all, it should surprise nobody that knows me that I used to create giant double elimination brackets for myself, and play nerf basketball games on my bedroom door with every country in the world being a participant and going through the tournament (Goooo Central African Republic!) But it really would not be that hard to get it right. Heck, 20 seconds of googling got me a PDF of not only a 64 team bracket, but a 64 team bracket that was even designed for cornhole!!

Anyways.... I will (if you're lucky) update you on how the kickball tournament goes tomorrow...