Misc Ramblings – Page 53 – a hippie with a minivan

the adventure of my xmas gift…

Simon has an Ipod which has most of our music on it… and I had a small mp3 player that was just not cutting it anymore… I had to change the music on it often because 1 gig just wasn’t enough to get me through the day…

So I asked Simon what he was getting me for xmas and then told him that I would love to have a new music player…

I didn’t want to spend too much and I wanted to have more space… So I looked on the net and starting “window shopping”… I was about to decide on a sansa 8g that was on amazon for 129$ and Simon “OK’d” the price… but then I saw that the brown Zune 30 was on special for the same price so I decided to go for that… of course since I am in Canada I would have to have it sent to a friend… By the time I got her response on if she minded or not the price had already went up… so… determined to get it around that price… there was a few places that had it at 99$ and I looked around and found it at Dell for 95$… I was so excited… I paypaled my friend the money and she bought it for me… then a few days later I noticed that I would only get it in Feb!! I checked on online a bit and saw that I was not the only one to have ordered it at that price and have a Feb delivery date… it was a “black friday” special so all the prices had since gone up… so people were stuck waiting or cancelling their orders…

So I decided to call Dell… I told them that I was in Canada and I had bought it though a friend and that I was dissapointed in the delivery date because it was a gift… they told me that I could cancel my order and give me a 45$ credit so I could get another colour (the other colours were being sold at 195$) so I told them that it was not fair that I should need to pay more for the same player in a different colour because they had sold too many and couldn’t deliver. So I got a 95$ credit! So I asked my friend to get one of another colour… then saw that with the 95$ credit the new Zune 80 would only be a 50$ price difference… and only 20$ more then I was originally going to pay for the Sansa… So I got that instead…

My friend was so amazing and patient because there was a wait and everything with the refund and credit but it all worked out and I did all of the talking with Dell so she didn’t have to deal with all of that…

I just got it on Friday and I am LOVING it… the software is not great but the player itself is amazing and I am LOVING listening to all my music and having podcasts etc… and I still have tons of space on it!

Not the same street…

Here is an article that appeared recently in the NY times

There is a new DVD out… Sesame Street: Old School… I really have to get my hands on that one!!!

However, the DVD comes with a warning… Adults only…

here is a bit of the article..

Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.

Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.

Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

and the article continues with other scenarios “that just wouldn’t slide with the kids of today”…

This really disturbs me…

What is so different with the kids of today that they can’t or shouldn’t be able to handle innocent situations at face value. Why would a child of today even have those ideas, those fears? Why are children being taught to fear so young that they could not watch the same shows without being traumatized?

I don’t believe that there is more crime than 30 years ago. I do think that it is more publicized and more heard… but I don’t believe that there is more.

I am tired of all of the “happy-happy-joy-joy”, over protect, always be politically correct, don’t talk to kids about death or anything dark, make them scared of strangers etc… that people seem to be teaching their kids.

We show the kids cartoons from our “Disney Treasures” and “Silly Symphonies” DVD’s and no, they are not always politically correct and one day I will talk about the themes to the kids, but for now they don’t see those themes, they just see the cartoon. … The boys like Charlie Brown, Garfield and other older cartoons and to be honest… Xavier enjoys shows that are older and have darker themes and loves Tim Burton etc…

Coming back to Sesame Street, I would really love to get my hands on those DVD’s and I would rather my children see them than the new ones that are so dumbed down, politically correct and cheery that make them a bit scary…

Do I really think that my kids will be traumatized by Cookie Monster eating cookies and smoking a pipe and eating it? Bert and Ernie living together? The count living in a really Cool old Castle…. (ok… I admit… the count scared me a bit as a kid because I used to be scared of thunder)…

but No, I don’t think they will be traumatized…

Oh… and Elmo makes me nauseous.

Eczema…

Colin has been battling with eczema for a while now. Last year his fingers were so dry and cracked he was often crying because of the pain. So, we cut a lot of his dairy intake to see if his fingers would get better and they did! However, I didn’t know if was due to the dairy or the season, so over the summer he started having more dairy again (Ice cream, whipped cream, Birthday cake etc). This time, he started to get eczema around his mouth and on his face and again his fingers became cracked and he was again in pain. Just look at them!

So again, we decided to cut down on dairy. This time we are doing it as a family though, cutting out as much as we can and maybe only keeping it for treats. In the 2 weeks that we have cut “most” dairy out of Colin’s diet his rash has started to fade and his fingers are now getting better. We are now finishing up the stuff in the house and I will not be buying anymore for a while. It will probably show quite a bit in our monthly spending also… Dairy is expensive!