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retiredteacher

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  1. from the cherokee paper today:

    Hopewell Baptist Church 'Back to Bethlehem' shepherd Chris Allen of Cartersville and one of his camels watch the children and teachers from Christian and private schools from metro Atlanta tour the living nativity Tuesday. This is the third year the church on Ridge Road in Canton pastored by the Rev. Norman Hunt has recreated the entire city at the time of Jesus' birth. The free event is 7 to 9 p.m. nightly through Sunday. For information, call (770) 345-5723.

  2. My aunt sends them to me on occasion and my mother and I did crochet some several years ago. We used cotton yarn in order to bleach them and they did fine. They were a bit heavier and denser than the knitted ones but I don't know what kind of yarn my aunt used so that may have been the difference.

  3. CONSUMMATE CONSUMER: Web sites let cable customers vent about service issues

    Don Oldenburg - Washington Post

    Saturday, November 26, 2005

     

    Find yourself muttering the "I'm mad and not going to take it anymore" consumer mantra more often lately? Since misery loves company, check out this bizarre episode from the Customer Service Encounters of the Worst Kind folder.

     

    When LaChania Govan couldn't get her cable TV's digital recorder working, the 25-year-old working mother complained to Comcast, her cable company. More than 40 times over four weeks, she phoned Comcast's customer-service department asking for help.

     

    "Calling Comcast became my second job," says the Elgin, Ill., consumer. "I had to ensure the cordless phone was fully charged and the kids were content --- and I sat and called, I cooked and called, I cleaned and called, and just called."

     

    Govan says she was disconnected repeatedly, transferred to the Spanish-speaking customer queue (not her language), put on hold, transferred to technicians who didn't have a clue, "and so on and so on."

     

    Eventually she reached a "savior," that gem of a service rep everyone hopes to reach. The rep sent a technician to replace Govan's cable box at no charge and credited Govan with a month of service.

     

    Case closed, right? If only.

     

    When Govan's next monthly Comcast bill arrived in the mail, it was addressed to "[Expletive] Dog."

     

    Govan says her initial reaction was "Come on, you have to be kidding me!" Then, she felt "shocked and appalled," she says.

     

    The Chicago Tribune scooped the story in mid-August, and follow-ups have appeared in the Trib, the Associated Press, MSNBC and elsewhere.

     

    Govan's case has become something of a cause celebre bringing to a head the rage consumers increasingly feel toward inept and uncaring customer service --- and now vice versa.

     

    "The demonization of customers is not an uncommon or rare event, but getting caught demonizing the customer as this company did is really rare," says Scott Broetzmann, president of Customer Care Measurement & Consulting, which recently released its annual Customer Rage Survey.

     

    Customer service personnel commonly "ventilate" about customers they deal with all day, he says, but seldom to the customer's face.

     

    When one of his clients held sensitivity training for its customer-service employees, asking them to draw pictures of their customers, most of the drawings were "hideous, grotesque," he says. There's even a Web site called Customerssuck.com (slogan: "The customer is never right!") where "frontline retail types" tell their horror stories.

     

    "It's a high-stress job," says Broetzmann, not making excuses, just stating the fact.

     

    Govan, you should know, is a customer-service rep herself. She works for a credit card company and has been in the business for six years. That training helped keep her from flying off the hook through the incident. When you hear what she thinks customer service ought to be about, you may wonder why Comcast doesn't hire her. Customer service "means to me being friendly, helpful and respectful," Govan says. "I know how it feels to be a customer service rep and (to be) a consumer on the other end. You do not have to settle for less, and you do not have to be mistreated."

     

    To Comcast's credit, the supervisor to whom Govan first told the story was aghast, offered her two months of free service and promised to investigate. When the initial story ran in the Trib, a Comcast executive left an apology on Govan's answering machine. In a later conversation with Govan, he apologized again and offered six months' free service to make amends, which Govan has refused. Comcast, she says, "has to accept the fact that they have humiliated me, not just by the bill" but by the fact that people associate her with this story. "It affects everyone around me and my children."

     

    Comcast reportedly fired two customer-service employees connected to the incident and changed rules to allow only supervisors to change customer names on billings.

     

    "This goes beyond losing your temper and saying something you wish you kept to yourself," says Cheryl Reed, spokeswoman for Consumers for Cable Choice, an Indianapolis alliance of consumers, advocacy groups and other organizations founded in June to promote fair prices, choices and better service in the cable TV marketplace.

     

    Inspired by Govan's story, CCC last month launched MyCableNightmare.com as a consumer grievance forum encouraging cable customers to voice their frustrations.

     

    "We're not anti-cable, we're anti-bad cable," says Reed, adding that Govan's story and those on the site are indicative of an industry problem --- no competition in cable, video and broadband services is why cable's prices are skyrocketing and customer service is hitting rock bottom. "Consumers need a better deal, and competition by its very nature will give them a better deal."

     

    But one disclosure is needed: When CCC got started last summer, it received a $75,000 start-up grant from Verizon Communications, a telephone company that has a vested interest in promoting changes in regulations to open the cable marketplace to competition.

     

    "We are quite open that we have accepted industry funding," says Reed, adding that 38 member groups and organizations also supply support. "We don't care who provides the competition that will give consumers a better product and better price ... but we're passionate about having competition."

     

    For more about Consumers for Cable Choice Inc., visit www.Consumers4Choice.org or go to its cable-customer complaint site at www.My CableNightmare.com

  4. My personal favorite, and it's an old one, is from I Do, I Do.

     

    Together Forever

     

    ( Together forever, forever together . . .

    together as long as you live . . . )

     

    A man and a woman, are meant for each other,

    are meant for each other, as husband and wife;

    From this moment forward, I promise to love thee,

    I promise to love thee, the rest of my life.

     

    Together forever, forever together,

    for this is the promise you give;

    Together forever, forever together,

    through all of the sorrow and happiness,

    together as long as you live!

     

    To honour and cherish, forsaking all others,

    forsaking all others, I offer my heart;

    For richer, for poorer, to love and to comfort,

    to love and to comfort, 'till death do us part!

     

    Together forever, forever together,

    for this is the promise you give;

    Together forever, forever together,

    through all of the sorrow and happiness,

    together as long as you live!

     

    Together forever, forever together . . .

    ( Together forever, forever together . . . )

     

    ~ from the 1966 Broadway musical "I Do! I Do!"

    Music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones

     

     

     

    Here's a link to listen to it:

    http://kokomo.ca/pop_standards/together_forever_lyrics.htm

  5. a. An alteration of the form of a word by the addition of an affix, as in English dogs from dog, or by changing the form of a base, as in English spoke from speak, that indicates grammatical features such as number, person, mood, or tense.

    b. An affix indicating such a grammatical feature, as the -s in the English third person singular verb form speaks.

     

    What are the words that he/she has to choose from?

  6. Cableman, I've thought about you and yours many times since your daughter's disappearance. You have my prayers as does your child that she will find her way back to her family. Welcome back to your PCOM family! We've missed you.

  7. Both of my children came along after my cats. My husband gave me a lilac-point siamese as a wedding present which was a big concession for a dog lover! Neither of my boys ever showed any interest in the litter box. My husband took care of the box while I was pregnant because of the possibility of toxoplasmosis. We're all healthy in spite of the cats!

     

    My kids are 30 and 24 and love their cats still. One had to be put to sleep in March at age 18 and a 17 year old lives with my oldest son now. Unfortunately, Thai, the lilac, died years ago and I still miss him. If your animals are not members of the family you can't understand what these pcommers are saying.

     

    If the pic comes through, it is of my now 30 year old at 1 with my other baby.

    post-1388-1129949981_thumb.jpg

  8. Both of my children came along after my cats. My husband gave me a lilac-point siamese as a wedding present which was a big concession for a dog lover! Neither of my boys ever showed any interest in the litter box. My husband took care of the box while I was pregnant because of the possibility of toxoplasmosis. We're all healthy in spite of the cats!

     

    My kids are 30 and 24 and love their cats still. One had to be put to sleep in March at age 18 and a 17 year old lives with my oldest son now. Unfortunately, Thai, the lilac, died years ago and I still miss him. If your animals are not members of the family you can't understand what these pcommers are saying.

     

    edited to make a 2nd try with the picture.

    post-1388-1129949624_thumb.jpg

  9. Here's the classic Bacardi rum cake recipe:

    BACARDI RUM CAKE

     

    1 c. chopped walnuts or pecans

    1 pkg. yellow cake mix

    1 (3 3/4 oz.) pkg. instant vanilla pudding

    4 eggs

    1/2 c. cold water

    1/2 c. Wesson oil

    1/2 c. Bacardi dark rum

     

    GLAZE:

     

    1/4 lb. butter

    1/4 c. water

    1 c. granulated sugar

    1/2 c. dark rum

     

    Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 10" tube or 12 cup bundt pan. Sprinkle nuts over bottom of pan. Mix the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, 1/2 cup cold water, oil and 1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum together. Pour batter over nuts and bake the cake for 1 hour. Cool. Invert on serving plate. Prick top and drizzle with glaze. Allow cake to absorb glaze. Repeat until the glaze is used up. To make the glaze, melt butter in saucepan, stir in water and sugar. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in rum.

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