Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The celebration continues......

With Harrison's birthday being the day before a popular Utah state holiday, the partying can take a few days to complete. I was close to dubbing this past week the "Week of Harrison", although there was no eating of whole blocks of cheese and very little decompressing (for some of us).

Friday was capped off with a party for Harrison's friends.
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Some musical chairs:
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Fabulous prizes:
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Shaan put a lot of work into planning this party so that everyone would have a good time. She really needed a better assistant but my rates are low so she went with me anyway. The good times rolled into Saturday with a small party for those family members who were in town.

The birthday boy:
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Zac (Yes, ladies, he's single and gainfully employed!) and Grandma Bartschi:

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"What, you can't blow out the candles??" Ha, haaaaaaaaa!!! Diabolical!!
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Thanks to everyone for sharing in Harrison's special day(s)!

Baseball and fireworks

Grandpa Back was able to pick up tickets for the Salt Lake Bees game on the 24th. The Bees won, the fireworks were great and everyone had a good time (especially the proprietors of the Snowie stands whose profit margins have to be in excess of 5,000%).

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Cool Shad:
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Adorable Shad:
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Cool Harrison:
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Adorable (if slightly out of focus) Harrison:
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Happy Birthday Harrison!!

The post is late but we celebrated Harrison's birthday on the correct date, July 23rd. Here is the card we gave him that morning before school:

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A larger image of the card is here if you'd like to get a better look.

He got to spend some time with Dad on a surprise outing to McDonald's for lunch and bowling afterwards. Dad won the first game but Harrison scored a dramatic come-from-behind win in the second game with a strike on the final frame. I forgot the camera so there aren't any pictures but the competition was intense.

After all the fun he wanted to catch the last part of school. This wasn't a surprise as he likes being with his friends and all the things that go on in his class.

We all went to Training Table for dinner as a family to end the celebrations for that day. We can't believe how quickly he and Shad are growing up.

Monday, July 28, 2008

'The List' : Origins and future

Like many of you, dear readers, I am just so sick of receiving poor service from anyone that I have to pay. It's been that way for a long time but it's now starting to drive me crazy. I must now be officially 'old' and you will soon hear me saying things like, "Kids these days..." and "I remember when _________". Your patience during this time of transition is very much appreciated.

So, for a number of years I've gradually been blacklisting businesses whenever I felt I received poor service and adding them to a 'list'. Unfortunately, the extent of my efforts to document these real and/or perceived slights consisted pretty much of me telling Shaan, "Well, looks like (fill in offending business name here) is getting added to my/our list" as we'd drive out of the parking lot.

Obviously, trying to rely on my occassionally keen memory to recall all the details of these occurences was the one glaring weakness of an otherwise fabulous idea. The lack of consistent documentation made it difficult to enforce these mini-boycotts as well. The circumstances of my previous post got me so bent out of shape that I was finally moved to action in terms of preserving these interactions.

Finally, a friend told me that I should put the list on our blog. It could be cathartic and maybe it might (big hint) motivate me to provide more timely updates. This was such a fabulous idea, and I was so distraught that I hadn't thought of it myself, that I considered taking full credit for it, but for a variety of reasons, I won't (Thanks, Masha!).

So, you'll find 'The List' on the sidebar above the blog archive. I'm going to try to keep it to more recent things that I can document in order to be fair, but if I can remember the details well enough, a poor experience from the distant past may show up.

Feel free to refer to it often as a public service as a thanks for your readership.

Under Construction

Adding a new feature and will be uploading new items shortly (by Tuesday, hopefully).