Monday, February 20, 2012

Alter-egos

I am a lore-master elf, traveling with my son and husband throughout Middle Earth on a variety of quests. Right now I've set off to collect some yeast.

I also am a hobbit who hasn't made it past her minstrel training yet.

Interestingly, there's quite a bit of myself in these LOTRO characters.

My avocation, as well as profession for 25 years, has been that of writer and editor. And I've always dreamt of being an accomplished musician, though my skills in that area are rusty and my talent limited.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Life's hard lessons


My son and I went to buy Valentines for his classmates yesterday. He spent about 20 minutes, narrowing his choices to two Star Wars varieties -- shiny image-changing ones or paper cards with strawberry lollipops. He chose the latter.

He couldn't wait to get home and address them to his classmates. But when he opened the box, we quickly realized we had been duped!

The box clearly showed four different Valentine cards: Yoda, Darth Vader, Darth Maul and R2D2/C3PO. A picture of an individual lollipop showed its "actual" size. But inside we found no cards, only cellophane bags with Darth Vader on the front and the lollipop inside.

My son was highly disappointed. "Where are the cards?" "Where's Yoda?" and "Why would they do that?" He asked the last question several times. "It's called deceptive advertising," I responded, acknowledging his and my outrage.



With some gentle questions, I tried to assess whether his disappointment in the product would overcome his joy at giving Valentines to his friends. In the end, he labled the bags and readied his Valentines for school.

This morning, though, he was still questioning the matter. I explained the concept of ethics and how some companies and people have good ethics and others don't. He still can't get over "Why they would do that."