Planniing for the Fall

You know it is time to get back into a routine when a week like this next one is about to hit you. No, not work. No, not sports. It's time to decide which TV shows am I going to follow this season.


I'm trying to keep it to a minimum as I really don't have a lot of time to be watching TV...or at least I should be doing other things rather than watching TV is more like it. But there are definately a few shows that I will be watching regularly this season:


The Office - if you are one of the 4 people who haven't started to watch this, go out, rent the first 3 seasons and then start watching Season 4 this week. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.


Criminal Minds - the last season ended with a bang and I want to know what is going to happen with those supposedly random killings in New York. This is a show I won't be missing.


CSI Las Vegas - This is the only CSI show I watch consistently. I can't stand Horatio in Miami. The New York one is ok but you can't watch them all. I love this original version and even though Grisam is going to be gone this season, hopefully Laurence Fishburne will be a good replacement.



Then there are a few shows that I like, but if I miss them it would be ok:


Prison Break - After breaking out of prison, then finding money, then going back to prison, then breaking out again, I'm starting to get bored with this whole thing. I thought they were going to end it after last season, but obviously someone threw a bunch of money at the right people because he's back again. Not sure if he's breaking in or out of prison yet...I'll watch some episodes but not sure if I'll follow it consistently. Which means I probably won't watch it much as you can't hit and miss episodes in a show like this.


Law and Order SVU - I like this show, but again it is not one I have to watch each week. Although there is some carry over from episode to episode, it is not huge and you can enjoy an episode even if you missed some others.




So You Think You Can Dance Canada - I really enjoyed this last season of the US version so I'll probably watch this a fair bit...especially since Shiela likes it a lot too. As long as the choreography is good I'll keep watching.


The big decision:


Survivor Gabon - Survivor has been around a long time. I remember the first season being on before I was even married. This is a show where I'll either get into it huge or never watch it. I haven't decided yet and will probably make a last minute decision on Thursday when it premieres.


So those are the shows I'll be watching. What do you think...am I missing a good one that I should have on my radar? Let me know!

Our Beautiful Girl

I stared to write a long post about the whole birth story, but then figured I'd just give you the main details and show some pictures.

The entire labour went fast. Shiela's water broke at home around midnight and off we went to the hospital. She was fine until she got to registration in the Emergency Room which is where she had her first major contraction...so much pain she couldn't talk. We went up to antepartum but they quickly realized she was 7-8cm dilated and off we went to the Labour and Delivery section.

Shiela was in a lot of pain and the contractions were probably 60 sec apart...so basically she was in pain the entire time. She asked for an epidural, but they said they also had to get an IV in her first. She was on all fours on the bed because that was the only position she could handle. Finally, they got in the IV and she managed to sit up long enough for them to put in the epidural (she was extremely strong there!). The epidural was in, but then they checked her again and she was fully dilated and they said she could start to push.

So she got into the pushing position and the pushing began. The epidural doesn't work during the pushing phase and so the epidural didn't have time to take effect at all because everything happened so quickly. The entire pushing part took only about 20 minutes and I then had a baby girl in my arms. The entire process took less than 3 hours!!

Shiela was phenomenal during the whole process. She was totally composed the entire time. She was saying "Thank You" when someone helped her. There was no yelling or threatening to remove body parts, etc. She was absolutely amazing...I was extremely proud to be married to such an amazing woman.

And then our daughter was in our arms. Shiela had no tearing at all and so she is recovering very well. For our last night in the hospital we also got the Victorian Room which is very nice room and I would suggest everyone try to get that one.

The Stats:

Kira Lynn Mathies (pronounced KEER-ah)

Sept 6, 2008 2:49am

7lbs 1oz

19.75 inches long

Blue eyes and blonde peach fuzzy hair

Extremely cute!!

Here are some photos of my precious daughter!

I celebrated my daughter's birth by giving everyone who came to visit her in the hospital a mini Coke to drink and then we toasted Kira Lynn. It was a lot of Coke to drink, but I managed as I of course drank a can everytime someone else did!

Two shots of the Victorian Room...we watched the Rider game on the great TV! You can also see the Queen size bed that massaged and vibrated!

It's a Girl

We had a baby girl on Sept 6 at 2:49am

Kira Lynn Mathies
7lbs 1 oz
19.75 inches long

More to come later (including photo)!

Do Businesses Want Our Help?

I have honestly started to wonder lately if businesses really care about what their customers say. Customer Service is all the rage right now. All the businesses are talking about how important customer service is and how they want to improve customer service. But I don't think they really do and I'll tell you why.

Story #1
I got rear ended a while ago and had to get some body work done on my car. I brought it to a popular location (Sherwood at the Auto Mall) and asked them to fix it. They took the paper work and I made an appointment for 3 weeks later. 3 weeks later we bring the car in, we get a rental car and they say it will be ready Wed. Wed afternoon rolls by and Shiela goes by there on her way home for work to get the car. "Oh, it's not ready yet," they say. "We just found out that we had to fix the frame and not just the bumper so we had to order more parts and get SGI to approve it so it will take longer. It will be done Thursday or Friday." Friday afternoon rolls around and about 4:30pm Shiela phones down to see if the car is ready. They say it is done but not detailed yet, so we can either keep it there for the weekend or else pick it up dirty and get it cleaned another day. She reminds them that we have a rental car and they then say that we should probably pick the car up then as SGI won't cover the rental car for the weekend since the car is technically done.

Shiela tells me this and so we decide to pick up the car. But I also decided to phone down there to talk about their customer service. The part that made me upset was that they never, ever phone us to tell us what was going on. When our car wasn't ready on Wed, they never phoned to let us know it would be a few more days. They weren't even going to phone on Friday to tell us our car was ready and then we would have been charged for the rental fee because of that. I told the manager that they were showing extremely poor customer service by not informing us of what was happening and that we always had to be after them to find out what was going on. The best part is that when we phoned Friday at around 4:30pm he said we needed to come by 5:00pm to pick up the car because they close at 5:00pm for the weekend. I asked why he didn't phone to let us know and he said he had a list of 7-8 other people yet that he hadn't phoned to tell them their cars were ready. So now it was past 4:35pm on Friday and he still was going to phone 7-8 other people to tell them that they needed to get down to the shop in the next 25 minutes or else they couldn't get their car. I told him that was poor customer service. What did he do...nothing...and he really didn't seem to care.

Story #2
The other day at Extra Foods in the Lakewood Suburban Centre I went to buy some toilet paper. After analyzing it all I chose the PC brand that said it was very soft. The price was around $7.30 for 24 rolls. I went and paid for it and it came to $8.29 (before tax if there was any). I decided to go back and look at the shelf to see if I had been mistaken on the price. Nope, I was right. I looked a bit to my left and saw some toilet paper there for $8.50 or so. I then looked at the tags even closer and saw that one of them was for 140 sheets per roll and the other was fofr 170 sheets per roll. Same brand and everything, but ironically the 140 sheets was more expensive. I then looked even closer and noticed that they had piled up all the 170 sheet packages in line with the price for the 140 sheets and vice versa. So not only was the price they were charging wrong, they even had them all stacked wrong so unless you paid extremely close attention you were bound to grab the wrong item.

I decided to go tell the store manager that both their price was wrong and more importantly, the items were all stocked on the shelf wrong. After waiting around 10 minutes for the store manager to arrive, I finally managed to explain to her the situation and that she may want to look at the way the items are stacked as it is deceiving and in the wrong places. She looked at me and then asked if I wanted to exchange what I had bought. I looked at her dumbfounded before just saying yes and I went and got a different roll that was cheaper. However, ironically, I ended up getting the Purex brand that had more rolls in it with the same # of sheets per roll for even cheaper. The problem was that on the shelf there was no price tag at all. So I came back and asked for a price check on the Purex rolls and told her that this brand didn't have any price on it. She just scanned it and asked if I wanted that one. And yes, I did.

Now after typing these stories I feel like maybe I'm being too picky. However, I was not mad in either situation. I only was talking to them to let them know there was an issue and that they may need to improve their customer service. I was only trying to help, but neither business really seemed to care.

I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish, but I now feel that it is not worth it to try to help a business. As consumers, I guess we should just suffer in silence, take our business elsewhere and leave these businesses always wondering why they are losing customers...because they just dont' listen.