Surprise, surprise - being heard feels good. So let's try that again.

First of all, I need to offer up a well-earned correction.  Happily.  Last week, with very little subtlety I tore into Williams-Sonoma for not attending to my initial plea for help in replacing or repairing a big ol' KitchenAid mixer gone kaput.  Thankfully somewhere out there in the collective dingy basement of those scouring the internets, my wee little post made its way up the ladder to the PR Director at Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco.  Fast forward through a few emails and you now find me dealing directly with the General Manager at our local Williams-Sonoma.  I'll keep you posted on the mixer.  But, rest assured, Williams-Sonoma has surprised and impressed me immensely.  

Which has me thinking - where have I missed out on past complaints that a special someone keeping an eye on little ol' us here @ andthefamilybuick might have been able to do something about?  So as I wait for a brake job on our generic family wagon (don't EVEN get me started on the enigmatic duality of Firestone here in Ballard), I think the time has come to pick at a few scabs.

Hey, NPR - remember that car we donated this past summer?  Yea, the Volvo with like 180K miles, the busted head gasket that essentially meant we needed a new engine, and the caked-on decade and a half of good memories.  Yea, you sold it at auction and gave KUOW here in Seattle 700 bucks.  That one.  Well, we never even got a travel mug.  Or a tote bag.  I know you have our address 'cause we get new pleas for pledges every few weeks, it seems.

Hey, Apple - remember me coming in nearly a year ago to see if you could repair my wife's old iPod (screwy internal drive) a few months after I'd replaced my laptop with the shattered screen (my daughter innocently pulled it by the power cord off the breakfast counter)?  Yea, the guy you told that you'd give 10% off a new iPod if we donated the old one.  I must have misheard you.  What did you really say?

Actually, this is pretty fun.  So one more.

Hey, President Obama - remember me, the guy who's been defending you even as seemingly every other dolt who could afford a bumpersticker back in '08 has jumped ship in protest of some sort of nonexistent gripe about your job performance? Remember, the dood with the broad historical reading of politics who's nonetheless learned a bit from past forecasting mistakes and the past election cycle called it for both your and McCain's nominations back in November '07?  No, I'm not one of those going all "MassHole" on this Scott Brown special election and calling it the end of ObamaCare while wasting time building strawmen and blathering about "revolution".  And no, I'm not those guys demanding that the Dems dig in their heels and fight back.  I'm that other one, up here in the Northwest wearing the Milwaukee Brewers hat.  Yea, the old classic logo one - that's me.  The one looking for you to show how well you can play the rope-a-dope routine on health care.  Pull the compromise bill.  Push through a smaller bill on the obvious stuff.  Pivot to the economy.  Frame the argument, don't take it spoon fed by the haters.  And play more basketball.  The country somehow seems to feel better about itself when we see you loose and lithe on the court.  Thanks for that.  Oh, and if you want, could you erase my NSA file?  You should be fine if you go back to about '87 or so.

Hope your own customer service success stories also go all the way to the top today.  Rock on.

What's my least favorite Customer Service excuse? All of them

Anyone who knows me well can answer the following question - aside from over-priced hipster cupcakes, what modern convenience do I find most irritating?  The answer, of course, is dealing with a"customer service representative".  It's an impossibly broad category, if you waste time thinking about it.  Any job, really, should be considered a customer service job.  But I'm specifically miffed by those generally still human members of society who have the task of answering our questions about, say, a broken Kitchen Aid mixer (Williams-Sonoma, I'm possibly looking in your general direction).  Those people are the ones that pee in society's coffeemaker, wrinkle our collective laundry, don't clean up after their dogs who always stop out front of our shared driveway, and/or just plain make certain tasks that, say, 30 years ago were not that big of a deal a whole ton more irritating.  Not that I'm talking about anyone in particular.  But if you decided to dump a whole bag of really obnoxious garbage in public to stage your own personal tea party protest, you may want to consider the front entrance of a Williams-Sonoma.  As an American who's also a big fan of all the Founding Fathers, I wouldn't try to stop you.

To be less opaque if you don't get that last reference - Sarah Palin did it again.  She's 500-miles-wide and an inch deep.  Which is as new and insightful as saying the ocean is wet.

From the wonderful adventure that is Maya's not-quite-5-year-old life, the new favorite word metaphor around our house is "rollerskates".  She just got a pair, after I returned the poorly received Razor scooter that Hanukah Harry left under the ol' Festivus pole.  She really only wanted the skates.  I was just being a wuss in thinking that she might be a bit young.  Hell, in little more than a year she can start kids roller derby here in Seattle.  So you can rightly expect that I'm psyched that she is picking it up pretty fast.  For a normally cautious kid, it's a treat to see her get a bit ballsy.  And it brings back memories of how I lived in rollerskates for a hearty chunk of most weekend days in the Winters of my youth.  My cousins who lived nearby and I had skates to run constantly evolving courses we set up in their huge cement floored basement.  I'm glad Maya got that gene.

Hope your own lost memories show up in genetic copies today.  Rock on.