moosejaw. love the madness

It all started when my sister asked for a specific bike carrier for Christmas. I googled the model, and found the best price on moosejaw.com. I'd never bought anything from this site before, and assumed it was just like any other sports/gear/equipment/clothing site out there. Engh, wrong. It's so much more. My first clue was the automated receipt that was sent to my email account. It was truly entertaining.

Here's part of it:

Your order has been placed. Way to go. You've won the best email receipt we've sent out all day. We recommend either printing this receipt and framing it in your foyer or using it as a screen saver. It would probably also be nice for you to forward it around to a couple friends and maybe even an enemy or two. 

If you're bored, check us out on Facebook or Twitter. Our CFO said he doesn't understand why anyone would use Twitter. He also thinks that a narwhal is a made-up animal. Please don't tell anyone about it. 

(Omitted stuff about tracking the package.) 

No chance you're still reading this but if you are, we're posting pictures of folks using the products on the product pages at Moosejaw.com. If you fall in the folks category please email a photo of your gear in action to pictureman@moosejaw.com and we'll add your picture to Moosejaw.com and add 100 Moosejaw Reward points to your account. If you have Moosejaw in your picture we'll double the points. Oh, we only give points on one photo per product and you need to buy the product from us. A customer tried getting a million points when he sent us his wedding album so we had to write this.

So entertaining. Now that I'm on their list, I get occasional emails from them, all of which are just as, but often more, entertaining than this. I actually get excited when I see their name in the sender column of my inbox. Here are a few more of my favorites:

Subject: Moosejaw's New Year's Eve Frenching Service

Everyone knows that celebrating New Year's Eve is only about one thing: Frenching. When the Romans invented the modern calendar, it was because the lunar calendar didn't have any important occasions to use as an excuse to lock lips with other people.


In modern times, if you don't kiss a hottie on New Year's, you pretty much don't even get to be part of that year. That's why, this year, Moosejaw has set up a service to increase the Frenching rate of our customers.


The Frenching Service is super simple. If you have someone you want to French when the ball drops, but you're afraid to ask them, just email seveninheaven@moosejaw.com and we’ll do our best to hook it up for you.


Here are the things we'll need from you:

• The person's first name you want to French, and their phone number.
• Where you plan to have everything go down.
• 5 characteristics that make you want to French that person.
• 3 things that make you totally Frenchable.

We're only offering this to the first 100 people. Sorry.

Love the Madness,

Moosejaw

**They actually did this too. If you want to see a video, click here.

Subject: Our biggest Ski and Snowboard Sale. Also, I got no response from my love song.

There are some great deals on Ski and Snow apparel going on at Moosejaw right now. Even if you don't ski or snowboard, I recommend getting a new jacket or pants, and putting some cool lift tickets on it to impress everyone down at the local deli.

I sent that girl I'm in love with a love song last week, and I still haven't heard back from her. Email for sure must not be working. Can you please let me know if you got this email. Emailsam@moosejaw.com and I'll throw 100 points your way. If you actually listen to the love song I wrote I'll make it 200.

Or completely ignore me and go here to check out the sale.

Love the Madness,
Sam
Moosejaw

Subject: Free $10 Coupon for Answering Some Questions

We needed a quick story to go along with this survey, and everyone asked if I had one already written. I panicked and said yes, but now I don’t have anything to send them. I was going to just do a list of new slang terms we could start using for pants, but it ended up being the worst thing ever. Instead, please just pretend I gave you a quick rundown on how to throw together a last minute magic show to impress the neighborhood association with.

Scroll down for some tiny boring details about the $10 coupon thing or click here to take the survey.

Love the Madness,
Moosejaw

If you're bored, you can also spend time perusing their website for many more fun facts including; "a diagram showing the best way to butter toast", "dating girl" (an "ask amy" type feature), or "in case you're bored". Along with the free entertainment, they have great prices on great gear, so from now on, this will be my first stop for any item that they might carry. Well done moosejaw, well done.

where i'm at

good work

I had a great two days at work this past weekend. As a child life specialist, the general goal of my job is to minimize the stress children and families experience during hospitalization (or visits to the hospital), and this can be done in many different ways. Since I'm a concrete person, I tend to view what I do in two general categories: 

1. preparation/distraction for a specific procedure (surgery, ED stuff, IVs, stitches, sedation, etc)

2. more open-ended support (inpatient stuff, medical play, normalization activities, etc)

Again, since I'm a concrete (or impatient) person, I typically prefer the procedural support since I have a specific goal that can be attained in a fairly short time frame. This is why the Pedi ED is my favorite area. Currently I'm working in a pediatric burn hospital, so I do a lot of both, but working on the weekends typically means it's quieter and there's a lot more down time. This past weekend was perfect- not too busy, but with a few kids who were off precautions and up for hanging out. I spent a lot of both days with a 20mth old and her family, and loved it. With this family I managed to utilize a huge amount of what I learned throughout grad school- medical play, sibling support, OR prep, parental support, etc, etc. It was so satisfying to be able to do all of what I was trained to do, and to see (and hear) what a difference it made. 

As I was leaving the parking garage on Sunday, I noticed this tiny snowman (which might be hard to see without enlarging) someone made on the corner of the wall. Since I was already stopped (and no one was behind me), I had to roll my window down and take a picture. It was a perfect end to a great weekend!

welcome to my life, 2011

I've never been a huge new year's eve party fan, so when asked if i would work on new year's day, i was happy to do so. Instead of paying an obscene amount to go out in boston or be the designated driver at a friend's party, i spent the evening at my parents' house 40 minutes outside of boston. While i was happy to spend time with my family, my main motivation was getting some dog snuggles from my dog-nephew Rupert, before he and my sister flew back to california this morning. I'm now seriously considering considering getting a dog (and no, no typo there).

Today i remembered being a kid and running around the block on new year's day with old fashioned noisemakers. I'm not sure where my mom got them, but my brother and i always looked forward to it. So while today did not consist of making a ruckus in my old neighborhood, i did realize what i have to look forward to in the new year:
2011 will be the year one of my longest and best-est friends gets married. It's quite possible i am just as excited about this as she is. Being part of the wedding party means i will also (hopefully) have the motivation to take off what i put on during grad school, along with some extra just for kicks. I will get a "real" job, hopefully full time, which means i'll no longer have to pay my own health insurance (just in time too, since the healthcare reform (as much as i like it) means i'm now paying a crapload more to offset everyone else). I will move somewhere else and will be happy with it. I will spend time with my family and friends, and play with new babies yet to be born. I will take trips: to miami, to vermont, to hong kong again, and china (beijing, xi'an and shanghai) for the first real time. I will try to be better at writing and calling people, but probably won't. I will keep up with swimming and will do a mile in under 32 minutes. I will shoot for a triathlon. And i will (maybe) get a dog.

what i always want to buy every time i see it...

giddy up

I picked up an extra shift at work on sunday, which was great since it meant I got to work with my pal sara.  It was super slow though, so after checking in on all the patients and doing some busy work, she showed me the tunnel to mgh and we grabbed some coffee. I liked the tunnel. There's something fun about being able to go from one building to another without going outside at all. Plus, it was great to see a mural in a pedi area that was not ocean themed. Giddy up!

i win!

Starting around the age of 10, I spent a chunk of each summer at my cousin's house outside chicago. Each visit was spent swimming, making gum wrapper chains (which I still have and which measures somewhere around 75 feet), babysitting for an older cousin's kids, and taking trips to the lake house in michigan. It was great and something I looked forward to for months. The 17 year cicadas came during the summer I was 12. This resulted in an obnoxious constant buzzing noise, and a ground littered with dead cicada bodies. You literally could not take a step without stepping on several dead bugs. It was disgusting. My cousin and I spent that summer sweeping the driveway and wearing shoes anytime we went outside. When I returned home to massachusetts, a state thankfully without cicadas, I appreciated my ability to go outside barefoot.

A few weeks later, I received a beautifully wrapped jewelry box from my aunt in chicago. Since it was soon after my birthday, I assumed she'd forgotten to give this present to me while I was in chicago. I opened the box out on the patio, but instead of containing a necklace or bracelet, the box was filled with cicada corpses. I dropped the box, spilling the dead bugs all over the patio, and later had to pick them back up with a pair of scissors. 

Years later (at least 10 years later), I came across a dried up cicada under the rear window in my car. I have no clue how or when it got there, but I knew exactly what to do with it, namely wrap it up in a pretty box and mail it to my aunt at Christmas with this note: 

Dear Aunt Julie,

I thought of you when I saw this.

Love, 

Stephanie

Being the jokester she is, she got a kick out of this, and starting hatching a plan. For my next birthday, I opened my package to find that she'd painted the cicada gold, painted its eyes red, and hot glued it to a pin to make it wearable. I didn't retaliate, and a few years ago (after another coming of the 17 year cicada) she brought me a big box filled with dead ones. It sat in my garage for a while, but knowing that I'd see her at thanksgiving, I got to work. This is what I came up with:

I found an old frame, hot glued 12 cicada corpses around it, spray painted the whole thing black, dabbed their eyes red, varnished it, and added a photo of a dead cicada like bug I came across while hiking near hong kong (which I desperately wanted to bring home for her, but realized wouldn't have worked). I wrapped it all up pretty, gathered the family, and had her open it. She was very nervous (even jumped back when the flash from my sister's camera startled her!), but had a good laugh in the end. I cringe to think of how she'll beat this...