Get to the Point

Gift cards with costly strings attached

Posted on December 6, 2007 by Alice Coyle
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Gift cards are all the rage during the holiday season, particularly for those hard-to-buy-for people on your shopping list.   

But buyer beware.  

Those $50 American Express gift cards will really cost you $55 when you add on the extra charge to buyers.  Call me crazy but I think you should pay face value for the gift card, minus any mark up. 

And the scam isn’t limited to the gift card displays in your local supermarkets.  Big banks offering their clients “rewards” for using their ATM cards for credit purchases are also in on it.  I found this out recently when I decided to redeem my reward points on line. 

It took me quite a while to amass the fifty-million points needed for a $10 gift card to Dunkin’ Donuts, but I figured what the heck, I might as well get some of my holiday shopping done with this”found money.”  I decided to go for a $50 gift card to Macy’s but discovered through the fine print that it would come with a $5 redemption fee charged to my Mastercard, which is linked to my checking account. 

I found a way around the scam, but it would require more rewards points.  The $10 Macy’s gift cards don’t have a redemption fee attached, but I’d need to get out and spend more money and “earn” more reward points to turn them in for five $10 cards, and beat the system.  

Confused?  So am I!

Ultimately, I went for a $50 and a $10 gift card both for Macy’s, and paid the ridiculous $5 redemption fee.  By the time the cards arrive in the mail — more fine print revealed it takes 3 to 4 weeks — maybe I’ll have forgotten that I paid a 10 percent fee on my $60 reward.

Still cliquing after all these years

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Alice Coyle
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So I did it.  I shelled out the $40 per person to attend my 20th high school reunion Thanksgiving weekend. 

Sparsely attended is the best way to describe the event, which was held in a function facility about 15 minutes from my parents’ suburban Philadelphia home. 

Spouses of the Abington High School Class of 1987 members were as rare as the pigs in blankets and mini quiche being butlered around the cavernous ballroom.  There was a DJ spinning  — you guessed it — a variety of 80s tunes, but no one was dancing. 

The old high school cliques were still cliquing, forming small groups surrounding the small bar in the room, and when the hors d’oeuevres buffet opened for business, no one really budged from their appointed positions closest to the cocktails.

I had classes with some of those folks but wasn’t really close to any of them outside of school.  My dearest and oldest friend, Amie talked me into going to the reunion.  And while she was what I would call shy and reserved in high school, she worked the room better than anyone Friday night, whizzing around with old photos we found piled on one of the tables and showing classmates pictures of themselves during their glory days on the playing fields or grooving on the high school gym floor at one of our school dances.

My husband mixed and mingled well too, chatting with a classmate who I didn’t recall, and one of the only other people there who brought their spouse.   He and his wife live in Chelmsford, Mass. which gave us some common things to discuss as we’re now living in the same Commonwealth.

Among the things I noticed; the women in my class have aged better than the men, many of whom were very gray and others surprisingly bald.   And there were a few people who clearly  have had some ”work done” and I found them truly unrecognizable.    I was glad to hear so many classmates tell me I looked “exactly the same” as I did 20 years ago.  I know they’re exaggerating or out-in-out lying, but it made me feel good. 

I was disappointed to see so few of the people I knew best during our high school years at the reunion.   And I was surprised by some of the very nice conversations I had with people who never spoke to me in high school.

The highlight of the event was getting two big bear hugs from Larry Waugh, who played football and was well known and liked in high school.  He exudes charisma and charm even 20 years later, and while I didn’t really know him very well back in the mid-1980s, I felt like I wish I had and certainly wanted to last week.  We chatted briefly and I felt a sincerity, a genuineness from him that was lacking in my reunion with so many others that night.

High school seems, and really was a lifetime ago, but as much as things have changed for us in our lives, the people we knew then haven’t changed much at all. 

Reunited and the turkey tastes so good

Posted on November 14, 2007 by Alice Coyle
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Thanksgiving. 

Most of us hear the word and think…well…turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce.  Football and food comas also come to mind, but usually after that second serving of mashed potatoes and gravy.

History lovers think of Plymouth and pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a harvest, a few hundred years back.

Horrible holiday traffic - visions of bumper-to-bumper traffic for most of the 350 miles over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house outside Philadelphia -  comes into view for those hitting the roads to visit family for Thanksgiving.

Reunion is another word often associated with Thanksgiving, because so many of them are held over the long holiday weekend.  Event organizers know how many of us endure the above mentioned horrible holiday traffic to return to our home town where we grew up and went to high school.  

Next week, I’ll be one of those holiday travelers enduring the horrible traffic to enjoy turkey, stuffing and gravy with my family.  And then, after awaking from my food coma the next day, I’ll be attending my 20th high school reunion. 

I wasn’t going to go, but a friend from home talked me into it and after attending my husband’s 25th high school reunion last summer, I’m invoking my marital rights (in good times and in bad…) to drag him to mine. 

I really enjoyed his reunion.  After all, I didn’t know anybody and I was much younger than all of those folks.  I’m not sure how much I’ll enjoy my own.  I certainly haven’t kept in touch with many people and I must admit in looking at the list of invitees on Classmates.com, I didn’t even recognize some of the names.  

Still, I recognize it - somewhat unwillingly - as a milestone and an opportunity that won’t come around again…for at least five years.  Who knows how many more gray hairs I’ll have or how many pounds I may pack on by then?

So this year I’m taking the traditional Thanksgiving route.  A holiday homecoming with all the fixin’s - family, friends,  classmates and of course turkey. 

Time to stop messing with the clocks

Posted on November 8, 2007 by Alice Coyle
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We gained an hour of sleep last week. That’s what everyone says when the topic of setting the clocks back one hour each fall comes up.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really feel any better rested. I don’t feel like I gained anything other than a pound or two thanks to the influx of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kats in the house thanks to some zealous trick-or-treating last week by my son, Frankenstein.

I do know that my 8 year old, who is usually up by 6 a.m. — reading or chatting to himself in his room and bringing my slumber to an abrupt end, is now up at 5 a.m., because his internal clock has not been moved back like the living room clock, and the one on the kitchen wall, and those on the microwave and the stove, and the three digital clock radios in the bedrooms.

I finally got around to changing my car’s digital clock this week. But I very nearly decided to hold off. It’ll be right again in less than six months I figure, so really, what’s the hurry? I haven’t yet changed the clock in my office, but I’ve already made the mental adjustment…I know that it’s not really 5 o’clock, it’s only 4 and not time to blow this taco stand just yet.

Over the past couple of years, daylight savings time has been extended into November, confusing our VCRs and PCs, who thought they were so smart and ahead of the game. We also sprung forward earlier this year; I think it was March, rather than April. But when the weather is still cold and raw with wet snowflakes swirling in March, who wants an extra hour of daylight to view the gloom?

I think it’s time to stop messing with the clocks. In the words of that guy hawking that nifty rotisserie oven on the TV infomercial, let’s just “set it and forget it!”

Together weather

Posted on November 5, 2007 by Alice Coyle
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Did you weather Saturday’s big wet, windy and wild nor’easter? I must admit to being a weather junkie.   When the meterologists on the TV news start getting revved up about something on the Doppler radar or in the long-range forecast, I feel my heartbeat begin to quicken.  

There’s something about a prediction for a major coastal storm,  perhaps another “perfect storm,”  or a hurricane, tropical depression or the next big blizzard of the century - that fills me more with giddy excitment than nervous dread.  

The disappointing part is that the weather people are so often wrong and the ferocious storm they were calling for Monday ends up as light drizzle by Friday, or misses us altogether after heading out to sea.  

Last week, though, the opposite happened.  On Monday the storm track for Noel indicated the Category 1 hurricane would curve far enough east of the New England coastline to spare us any ill effects save some wind and ocean swells. 

Some wind?!  How about 50-60 mph gusts and sustained winds of 35 mph? The storm hit our new house in Plymouth - which is situated high on a hill overlooking Kingston Bay - hard.  Luckily our birch tree in the front bent, but did not break and other than some small branches down around the yard, we had no serious damage. 

Still, at the height of the storm in the middle of the afternoon, the winds were howling and it was unnerving.  The power losses following big gusts of wind, though brief were inconvenient keeping our digital clocks blinking and preventing my son from making it all the way through the Transformers movie. 

So we hunkered down and played Go Fish.   When the Direct TV receiver went out on the set downstairs, we all huddled under a fleece blanket and watched college football games and the weather channel upstairs in my room.  The storm outside brought us all together indoors, a scenario that rarely happens, particularly when all of our electronic devices are functioning properly.

Say cheese! Say what?

Posted on October 24, 2007 by Alice Coyle
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Remember trick or treating as a kid? 
The costumes. 
The candy.
The cheese. 
Yes, I said cheese. 
It’s not bad enough that certain senior citizens on your block were more inclined to give you bags of pennies, apples (minus the useful razorblades), or those little red boxes of raisins, rather than a Reese’s peanut butter cup.  Or that the dentist who lived a few streets over filled the goody bags with travel size toothpaste or dental floss. 
Now, thanks to Cabot Creamery hopping on the Halloween bandwagon, costumed kids could wind up with slices of extra sharp or Monterey jack rather than Milky Ways in their treat sacks this year. 
In a press release, the Vermont-based Cabot Cooperative is selling cheese as a healthy Halloween snack alternative that cuts down on the sugar shock our kids get by “gobbling candy by the fistful.”  Never mind the artery-clogging fat and cholesterol that comes from chomping on cheddar, feta and Gorgonzola. 
For Pete’s sake! It’s Halloween.  It’s a hallowed time of tricks and treats.  For one night each year you get to dress up in costume and go hit your neighbors up for free candy —Twix, Twizzlers, Snickers and miniature boxes of Milk Duds. 
Yes, pretzels are healthier; so are microwave popcorn packets and granola bars.  But I wonder how many eight year olds consider smoked gouda a gouda idea?  If you asked 100 kids if they’d swap their Mars bar for some Mozzarella, or their Oh Henry for Havarti this Halloween, how many would say “Can I get some Triscuits with that?”
Here’s an idea — serve the cheese with a nice Chardonnay, and give the kids some candy for cryin’ out loud.