64 posts tagged “personal stories”
To give my wife and baby a break from a screaming, wiggling toddler, I often taken little man out with me. We go to the playground, the grocery store, and now that the weather is frigid, the mall play center. Often we just walk around the block or play in the backyard. He has no qualms about playing in the dark which is good because night hits us at 5:00 these days.
One time I was walking with him and he was holding my hand. I thought about how fast he's growing and how I should savor these moments, because someday he won't want me holding his hand. Until then . .
And of course I love to have our big baby girl with us, but she has a special relationship with Mom that I just can't replicate (if you know what I'm getting at.) So baby girl excursions are family events.
"X-mas" to me means eXtreme Christmas and yesterday was the first day of the X-mas season. This year the season began with with my singlemindedness, my wife's practical decorating, my boy's wide eyed enthusiasm, my baby girl's "I'm just 8 months old leave me out of this" look, and my parents' practiced humoring of me. Let the season of miracles reign.
At my house, the X-mas season truly begins with the unboxing of the artificial tree. Last year, the tree was prelit and light strings kept dying like asian beetles in our effectively plantless house. Rather than throw away a perfectly good artificial tree, I performed a post X-mas miracle and removed all 600 dead lights, clip by ubiqitous clip. 4 hours later, we had a perfectly good unlit tree. Now, instead of a boring perfectly lit tree with white lights, we have kid lovin' tree with irregularly arranged colored lights; another X-mas miracle.
The first gift placed under the tree was a set of fake vegetables my wife and I had bought at Creative Kids Stuff. The store wrapped the gift for only a dollar, so we didn't have to hide this one from little man. Time is meaningless to a near 3 year old, and he almost opened the gift within a milisecond of us handing it to him. The first gift was thus placed under the tree with much goading on our part and excitement on his part. Of course, our 8 month old is also gunning for that gift, not for its mysterious contents, but instead for its very rippable paper. To protect the innocent, we surrounded the gift with an assortment of decorative tins collected over several X-mas seasons; another X-mas miracle.
My wife queued up some sesonal music while we decorated. Then the snow began to fall. Snow, in Iowa, in November; another X-mas miracle. The X-mas season just isn't the X-mas season without snow, which is why southerners celebrate just plain ol' ordinary Christmas.
The start of the X-mas season is important because it means I can finally go to stores and actuall look around and take my fingers out of my ears. Christmas creep, as some call it, spoils the X-mas season like someone telling you the secret of "The Crying Game". Now I can soak it in. I can also start showing goodwill toward man rather than just neutral will. And then there are the cookies.
Huzaa to X-mas!
I have developed a personal philosophy against keeping things that are no longer useful to me. Practicing what I preach, I have used various means to get rid of old stuff. Here us a run down of the pros and cons of each method:
Recycling: Personally dropping your waste off at a reputable recycling center is the only method of ensuring my old junk doesn't end up in some landfill (here or in China). In my county, most waste can be recycled for free, but my local waste company charges by the pound for electronic waste. Electronic waste is a huge source of clutter and also deceptively heavy. Two old Power Macs, an HP laser printer, giant old scanner, busted TIVO, and some old mac keyboards and uni-button mice weight 156 pounds and cost us $86 to recycle. Plus I had to drive an hour to get to the recycling hub, which added another $5 in gas. I never felt so violated by helping save the planet.
Chucking Stuff in the Garbage: This is the disposal of last resort. I wish recycling were easier (and cheaper). We pay for monthly trash pickup, and normally my family's single 13 gallon trashbag is dwarged by the giant plastic trashcan on wheels.
Leaving things on the curb: My town has a once a year dump day and will take almost anything you leave by the curb. Dump day weekend is marked by a parade of old trucks and vans that circle the neighborhoods looking for choice trash. My wife and I made bets on how long it woud take for someone to haul off a dresser and it was absconded while we were still talking. You can leave things on the curb anytime; I recommend arranging trash for easy picking and placing a "free" sign on it to remove any doubt of disownership. Cost to us: nothing.
Goodwill: Useful but relatively worthless electronics can find a good home through donation. Some people actually watch video tapes on analog televisions and listen to CDs on 2 speaker sound systems. Donations are tax deductible so we made a little money on that deal.
Garage Sale: My wife an I had a garage sale after our marriage to get rid of all of the duplicate items. We got rid of a lot of stuff in one day, but it was a lot of work and when it was over, we still had a lot of stuff to get rid of. In fact, we are still trying to get rid of it all 3 years later. Be garage sale smart: put the big items closest to the street, advertise you high value items like DVDs and games, and be willing to accept any price, no matter how low. You can make some good money if you run a sale right.
Craigslist: What has happened to Craislist? It seems to have been infected by scammers and consumer ignorant sellers and buyers. I don't want to put money into an escrow account in England or trade my old laptop for Honda Civic parts. I was a little creeped out by the guy who met me in his pajamas and gave me a $100 bill for 50 of my DVDs. I recommend treating Craigslist like a garage sale in gang territory: be discrete and sell it cheap.
Ebay: I hate ebay and PayPal. They make you pay and are not your pal. But my mother-in-law has an ebay business and sold some action figures for me. She knew what she was doing and sold them for more than I expected. However, she really didn't care for answering all of the buyers' questions and the tedious packaging and mailing each figure. I can't blame her. Ebay is perhaps the best way to get market price for a single item but requires the most work of any method listed here.
Consignment stores: This is something my wife and I have discussed but haven't tried. The idea is great: selling and buying used stuff for it's actual market value. Maybe after people are fed up with the hassles of Ebay and Craigslist, consignment stores will really take off.
To summarize: 1. Sell an item as soon as you no longer need (before it can depreciate any further). 2. If you can't sell it, give it away. 3. If you can't give it away, recycle it. 4. If you can't recycle it, trash it. 5. Ponder why you have so much junk in the first place.
I like my linux based Ubuntu operating system, but I can't stand the hardware that runs it. Linux can do a lot, but it can't fix busted stuff.
My work laptop, on the other hand, is a fantastic piece of hardware but it runs Windows XP, one of my least favorite operating systems. I also feel a little uneasy strapping my work laptop to my exercises bike to watch videos on Hulu. I still plan on doing this, but it would be nice if all of my important settings and files weren't involved.
Then my wife had a brilliant idea, can't I just use my work laptop and run linux off a USB drive? One download , cd image burn, and install on a USB drive later, and the impossible becomes possible. I'm running an entire operating system on a drive the size of my thumb. My one complaint is the slow speed of the flash drive. Had I known that there were much faster drives available, I might have spent more than $25 for an 8Gb drive.
There are some bonuses beyond repurposing my hardware and keeping work away from personal stuff. I can use the flash drive in any computer with a USB port. If my computer goes FUBAR, I can boot up with the flash drive. My personal info and settings can all be stored in my pocket. Best of all, I feel like a hax0r.
Huzaa for pendrive linux!
Apparently, a lack of physical activity over a lengthy period has deleterious effects on the body. My once fit 155lb half-marathon running body has morphed into an out-of-shape big bellied shape you might have seen in my photos. At least I have a built in baby seat. Tired of panting after walking up a flight of stairs, I have begun the journey of a thousand miles . . . on a recumbent exercise bike.
Always frugal, I dropped my gym membership last year and bought an exercise bike. We have reaped the savings in terms of money, but not cardiovascular fitness. Somehow the bike was covered in clutter and I was busy with other things, some important and others not so much. Well, the bike will languish no more.
I set it up again last week. The inherent flaw of this bike (a NordicTrack EasyRider 400) is its ginormous TV blocking display. Although a Consumer Reports best buy, this one flaw nearly ruins the entire purpose of the bike: combining excerise with TV. Who can stand sitting in their basement looking at a cheap blue LCD display for 45 minutes? A TV needs to be about 5 feet off the ground to clear the top of the display, but then neck straining comes into play.
Even if I were able to suitably mount my TV over the bike's display, what would I watch? Our main TV has a DVR attached, but the basement just has dumb old cable. I'm definitely not going to tailor my work-out schedule around TV showings. Plus, who get's excited about working out to commercials? Never one to put finesse over need, I strapped a laptop to my recumbant bike and started watching TV on the internet.
Success. In one week I have worked out every day for 30-45 minutes and managed to watch all of the new episodes of "The Office" and the outstanding "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog". In the future I hope to reduce my resting hear rate, increase my endurance, and watch all of season 1 and 2 of "Lost". Sure, checking my heart rate is a pain, but no pain no gain, right?
Huzaa to strapping notebook computers to exercise bikes!
2 years ago, I took a set of grainy pictures on my smart phone to document my day. This time my waist is 4 inches bigger, I have a sweet blackberry which can take better pictures, I drive a half hour to my new job as in-house counsel, and I spend less time working at night. Yet, as you can see, my typical day hasn't changed much.
So far unwilling to trade up our little piece of heaven, my wife and I are upgrading instead. We've almost exhausted our interior work, but their is plenty of money to spend on the outside. Prime candidate was our deck.
We knew our deck was in bade shape. It had rot, mold, fungus, nails popping up out of it, posts that were two small and spans that were two big. The whole crappy thing was wrapped in a splinter laden lattice because the balusters were too far apart. But we really got the motivation to fix it when we read the ask the builder section of This Old House magazine. An inquisitive reader had sent a picture of their deck and asked what product they should use to seal it. The answer, to paraphrase, was "don't seal it, tear it down!". The pictured deck looked twice as good as ours, so we took This Old House's advice.
Little did we know that we would have the world's fasted deck construction ever in the history of mankind.
Monday: The old deck comes down. Holes are dug.
Tuesday: The posts go in, the frame goes up.
Wednesday: The decking goes down and the railing goes up. The deck passes final inspection.
Total time from start to finish was three days. I couldn't buy the lumber in three days. Now we can enjoy our completely safe and up-to-code deck. If you live in central Iowa and need some quality construction, call the number on the trailer :)
Huzaa to new decks!
My wife and I are parents and making meals is really hard. Little man and baby sister are both terrible in the kitchen. So striding into our lodge's restaurant for breakfast or eating pie at my in-law's cabin is a vacation in and of itself. The swimming, boating, and fishing are just proverbial icing on the literal cake.
These are all shots from my Blackberry. The one of little man with the Spiderman fishing rod was from my Blackberry in a sandwich bag (to protect it from water, of course).
The following two were taken by our Canon Elph:
Huzaa to getting away from it all!
My big brother is an Army Major, in IRAQ. He has been in the armed forces since college; this is what he does. He sacrifices periods of his life to accomplish something greater. It is a life that is important to him. In this mission, his expertise will help Americans and Iraqis. Huzaa to you big bro'!
This is a picture he sent after a meeting with the ambassador to Iraq. My big bro' is the one with the red circle around his head. He doesn't smile like that for family photos, let me assure you. He married last July and by the time he returns, he and his wife will have spent more time apart than together. He definetly isn't smiling about that. Maybe he's happy because the local temperature hasn't hit hellish yet.
My bro' is not the only person I know who will be in Iraq this year. A friend of mine from high school is going back in as a civilian contractor. He will make more money than my brother, but he is leaving behind a wife AND kids.
When you know someone in Iraq, questions about the purpose of the war are irrelevant . All that really matters is that they are safe and make it back home O.K. 'Nuff said.
Stay safe guys.
Baby sister had her first doctor's appointment. We knew she was big. Although she is 2 months old, we have been dressing her in the 6-9 month outfits. Our apologies to those who gave us 0-6 month outfits. Those clothes are just too small for our girl.
The official measurements are in, with a comparison to other 2 month old girls.
Height: 24.5 inches - off the charts, I assume she is the biggest 2 month old girl in the world.
Weight: 14.07lbs - off the charts, I assume she is the heaviest 2 month old girl in the world.
Head Circumference: 40cm (why it's in metric, I don't know) - 95% percentile, so 5% of the little baby girls out there have freakishly larger heads than baby sister.
So now baby sister is unofficially known as giganto-baby. In fact, she is so big that her waist is only 2 inches smaller than little man's waist, and he is almost 2 and 1/2 years old. Guess who will be wearing boy pants for a while!
Some might fear an enourmous baby, but I am so proud. She is a healthy breast feeding champion with a possible basketball scholarship if people are still into women's basketball 18 years form now. At the very least, my baby can probably beat-up your baby.
You go girl!
