You will live to eat your words. Joe rocks. End of Story. 9 and 0 baby, 9 and 0.
Archive for the 'karma' Category
To all those who said Joe Paterno should retire
Published 25.October.2008 football , good things , karma , penn state , smiles , steadylife 0 CommentsSmall World
Published 23.October.2008 giving back , good things , karma , penn state , smiles , steadylife 0 CommentsI’ve donated to my alma mater every year since I graduated. I think that’s why they keep calling me. The conversation usually goes something like this:
“Hi mister DeVille, this is Jennifer and I’m a Penn State Student…” I’m always friendly, because well, I like Penn State and when you do get a talkative student, sometimes you hear something interesting about the university.
Last night it was Courtney on the phone. She was cheerful and I was feeling like I could make a donation to the libraries fund. So she’s confirming my address and she asks, “is that near DC?” I said, “yes it is, I work in Silver Spring.” She says that she’d like to move to the city after school and that she grew up in a small town in PA. I ask her which town. Gettysburg.
Well, I grew up 7 miles south of Gettysburg in Maryland, so I told her that, and here’s where it got interesting.
She says, “I went to Mother Seton in Emmitsburg”
“So did I,” I say, “and then I went on to Delone.”
“No way, so did I, and so did my father, he graduated from Delone in 1986.”
“I started at Delone in 1986, I missed going to High School with your father by a year”…
We laughed about it and talked briefly about some big families in the area and it was kind of cool. So the werid thing is that Penn State has roughly 40,000 undergrads. Delone graduates about 150 kids a year. Statistically speaking, I’m thinking its really unlikely that one of the Delone grads would call me. Mother Seton had about 30 kids per class, so it becomes even more unlikely that a Delone/MSS grad would call me from Penn State.
It really is a small world out there.
Old friends, old memories
Published 20.October.2008 family , fatherhood , good things , gson , karma , nostalgia , smiles , steadylife 0 CommentsTwenty two years ago, I “graduated” from 8th grade at Mother Seton School. We all dressed like Miami Vice for Graduation. We were 13. Several of my class mates went on to the same High School as I did, but there were some who didn’t. Largely I lost track of those folks.
Recently, my Mom discovered that a friend of mine from grade school lives in a townhouse on the next block behind her. We got together yesterday for the first time since we were 16. It was really great to see Carrington and his brother Jimmy.
We got together at Matt’s house and had a bunch of good food, some beer and caught up as much as you can in 4 hours when you’ve not seen each other in 20 years. I’m looking forward to catching up more and perhaps rekindling an old friendship.
As I drove home, Greyson slept in the back seat, and Nick Drake sang softly through the car stereo. I was remembering a lot of old times. I came across the memory of falling down the well at Carrington’s house when I was about 10 years old and was struck that I’m damn lucky to be alive.
I fell about 25 feet into the well, and luckily there was water in it. I remember at the time thinking that I might be able to climb out of the well, it had stone walls, but that wasn’t happening. Luckilly Carrington’s mom and Grandma were there and with the help of a neighbor (and by neighbor I mean someone who lived a mile away - this was the country) they pulled me out after being in there for about a half hour. It was November - snow was falling.
Only later in life did I realize how close I was to dying that day. Sometimes I relive it and think that it really is a miracle that I survived. The hole I fell thorugh was only about 1 square foot, and it was rocks all the way down. If I’d hit my head, it would have been over.
So, there I was driving down the road with my boy in the backseat and wondering, what the hell is Greyson going to do to scare the crap out of me when he’s 10. I’m hoping he doesn’t fall down any wells, but if he does, I hope he’s got some good friends around to pull him out.
William Carlos Williams and the Red Dodge Truck
Published 15.September.2008 america , entertainment , good things , karma , smiles , steadylife 1 CommentI was making my way to the beach today, when I took a second look at an old beater of a Dodge pickup. Now this old beater is old, certainly from the late 50s if not older. It’s paint is weathered red - dull, no shine left at all, like an old international tractor in a farmer’s field, except for the Dodge logo which is shiny new white paint, and underneath it, the quote:
so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow
Home Depot Saga Continued
Published 22.July.2008 business lunacy , customer service , disgust , frowns , frustration , home depot sucks , internet , karma , steadylife , stupidity 3 CommentsA few days ago I wrote about my recent experience with Home Depot. This is the update.
We never heard back from Non Stop Delviery about our chairs. My wife called them today three times, finally she got to a manager who told her that they would be ordering a new set of chairs for us and would advise us as to when they’d be delivered. Unfortunately, there was no email confirmation or even a claim number that they gave us. So, I decided to call Home Depot again.
I got a totally different story this time. I was told that I should have never been told to contact the shipper directly. Well, duh, of course not, I was doing business with the Depot, not Non Stop Delivery. I was also told that they’d do a RMA for me on the spot and could offer me a discount on a new set of chairs. Of course, I have to order them from the online group and they’ll be shipped by the same shoddy shipper as before.
I ordered them and the whole thing will end up costing me about 40 bucks less than the original order, which is nice, but I’m still incredulous.
Here are some things that still annoy me:
- The first guy at HD that I talked to said his name was Curtis. Curtis told me his agent id was 13. The woman that I spoke with tonight (who was significantly more interested in helping me from the get go) had an ID that was 6 digits long. Curtis needs to get his sorry ass fired.
- Any business you do with HomeDepot.com cannot be addressed in the store. I asked the agent I talked with tonight if they were two differnet companies. Her initial repsonse was yes. I then asked if they had the same CEO. Silence. Guess they are not two different companies after all. This forced me to do the re-order through Homedepot.com to get my discount. So I’m still looking at 10 to 14 days before my chairs might show up. The original order was on 6 July 2008. I could potentially not seem my order completed before 5 August 2008. That flat out sucks.
I’m going to continue to fight the good fight against HD by making contact with their corporate offices tomorrow. And next time, I’m going to Lowes - or better yet to my local hardware store Clements.
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