Tonight we went to the annual Tiefel New Year's Eve Party. It was fun as usual, even though we were only there for an hour and a half (Jared's family was in town so we just made an appearance at the party and then went back home to celebrate the New Year with them). While we were I learned an interesting fact.
Apparently, back in 1892, the U.S. convinced Samoa to switch to the east side of the international date line in order to align their days with the U.S. and nearby American Samoa, a trading partner. In that year, they celebrated July 4th two days in a row to make the switch. Samoa was the last place on earth to see the sun set. Now, New Zealand and Australia are major trading partners and this causes problems as those countries are on the other side of the date line, meaning that even though they are really close together, when it's sunday in Samoa, it's already monday in New Zealand. In order to remedy this problem, on Thursday at midnight, they skipped right to Saturday the 31st. They are now the first place on earth to see the sunrise.
What I learned: Samoa skipped a day to move to the west side of the international date line.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/12/30/samoa-skips-friday-in-leap-across-international-date-line/
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 30, 2011
Internet
We have Time Warner Cable for our internet provider. We have never had any problems whatsoever with them. However, we are paying about $58 a month for the internet. After getting half a dozen offers in the mail saying that you can get internet for $19.99 a month through AT&T, I decided to call yesterday. Right now we get 10mbps with Time Warner for $58 a month. AT&T could offer us 6 mbps for $29.99 with a $36 activation fee, and after one year the cost went up to $48 a month. I then called Time Warner to see what deal they would give me to stay. They said that if they offered me $29.99 a month, I'd get around 750 kbpm, which I don't know if you can check your email in less than 20 minutes with that speed! So basically, they could offer me nothing to stay with them, which I was quite surprised at seeing as I have been with them for 10 years. But tough economic times call for cutbacks, and I unfortunately don't have the luxury of being loyal at the cost of $30 more a month. So I called AT&T back and set up an installation. I figured that after a year, if they don't keep the price the same after I call and complain, then I can shop again.
Then today, I got a call from Time Warner Cable's corporate office. They wanted to know why I was switching and I told them that I could not afford more than $30 a month for internet. They then offered to continue giving me the 10mbps that I am currently getting, and they would reduce my monthly payment to $29.99 a month! The other thing is that a) there is no activation fee, which I would have had to pay to AT&T and b) after one year, the price only goes up $5 a month (instead of AT&Ts $18). So I decided to stay with Time Warner and cancel the AT&T install. And now I'm going to save $30 a month.
What I learned: It is a huge headache to be frugal. Also, Time Warner will offer you what you want to stay, but not when you call them to cancel. You have to wait for the corporate office to call you because they have the authority to offer you things that the regular customer service people can't. So if you call them to cancel/complain, wait a day or two after you've canceled and they will call you!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Approved!
Today we got our official medicaid cards in the mail along with letters saying that our coverage was backdated to September 1st. I guess it's normal procedure when you apply for medicaid that they backdate it three months from when you applied. This is awesome news because we have a bill from Avery's ER visit in Montana (which is from the beginning of September) that was not covered at all by our insurance because we hadn't reached our ridiculous deductible yet. Now, medicaid will cover it as secondary insurance and we most likely won't have to pay anything! This also means that Avery's last two doctors visits (one for an ear infection: $226; one for the allergist: over $500) will also be covered now. I am so excited. I guess the only way for Americans to get health insurance that actually covers things is to get government insurance. Gasp! Oh yeah, and you have to be poor, too :)
What I learned: Avery and I qualified for medicaid, backdated to September.
What I learned: Avery and I qualified for medicaid, backdated to September.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
ER Visit
This morning, Avery woke up with a bad cough and he was wheezing when he breathed. He seemed fine otherwise all day. Later in the evening, his breathing was getting pretty laborious and I counted that he was breathing 80 times per minute. According to Web MD, if your child is breathing more than 50-60 times a minute than you should immediately take your child to the ER. Well, I thought this seemed a bit hasty since Avery was still playing and acting normal, other than the breathing. So I called the 24-hour nurse hotline at my doctor's office and per the nurse, I indeed needed to take Avery to the ER. So mom drove me to Children's Hospital and Jared left work and met us there. There were about 4 other kids in the waiting room who were all breathing just like Avery. After two different doctors looked at him and after a chest xray, they determined that he did not have pneumonia, but a raging chest cold that was causing him to have slight wheezing in his upper respiratory tract. This is good because it means the wheezing is not asthma related. They said it was most likely a virus but since one of his ears looked like it was about to be infected, they decided to put him on antibiotics anyway. He also received a breathing treatment (a nebulizer with albuterol in it) which significantly slowed his breathing and cleared his passages enough that it stopped the wheezing. Altogether, we were only there about 2.5 hours, so it wasn't that bad. But we didn't get home until 1:00am, which means that Avery didn't go to bed until then. So now we have to deal with his sleep schedule being severely off again. Gah!
As a sidenote, I was thinking about where Avery could have gotten sick since we haven't left the house in days except to go to church and none of my family is sick. Then I remembered that I brought Avery to the church nursery during the Christmas Eve service on Saturday because he was being too talkative during the sermon. The last time I brought him to the nursery to play, he got fifth disease. So I don't think I will ever play with him in the nursery again!
What I learned: Avery has a bad virus and luckily he does not (as of yet) have asthma. Also, the church nursery apparently is a breeding ground for disease, even when you go there when no other kids are there!
As a sidenote, I was thinking about where Avery could have gotten sick since we haven't left the house in days except to go to church and none of my family is sick. Then I remembered that I brought Avery to the church nursery during the Christmas Eve service on Saturday because he was being too talkative during the sermon. The last time I brought him to the nursery to play, he got fifth disease. So I don't think I will ever play with him in the nursery again!
What I learned: Avery has a bad virus and luckily he does not (as of yet) have asthma. Also, the church nursery apparently is a breeding ground for disease, even when you go there when no other kids are there!
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Presidents' Life Span
I was reading in Time today that the average life span of the first eight Presidents was 79.8 years. This is amazing considering that the average life span at that time was under age 40 for men. The article also states that despite the belief that being President lowers life expectancy due to increased stress, 2 out of 3 presidents have outlived their contemporaries. I am really curious to know why this is as it seems completely rational to me that being President, no matter what the economy is like, or whether or not we are at war, etc, is one of the most stressful jobs you can ever have. Maybe it's because most presidents only have it for 4 years (obviously some have it for 8). After those years, it seems that most presidents make a career out of writing an autobiography, or doing the lecture circuit or simply "retiring." So maybe the real reason is because while they might have a super stressful job for four years, much of their later years is spent in a more relaxed manner than most. Who knows.
What I learned: The first eight U.S. Presidents averaged 79.8 years old, almost double the life expectancy at the time.
What I learned: The first eight U.S. Presidents averaged 79.8 years old, almost double the life expectancy at the time.
Monday, December 26, 2011
London Season
Ok ok, I know I use a lot of my posts to talk about new games I've played but I think it is a completely valid thing to count as something I learned. Sorry to all of you who read this blog and don't like gaming!
Today we went to the Sonnenberg's to play games all day. And when I say all day, I mean it (we got there at 8:50am and left at 10:30pm). While I played 7 games today, there was only one new one that I learned.
After arriving at the house, I inquired where my cousin Wendy was and I was told she was in the bedroom, working on finishing up her board game so that we could all play it. I was surprised that I had not once heard that she was making her own game. I was intrigued. Later in the day, the board game was apparently ready and six of us sat down to learn London Season. It is a game that takes place in June 1814 and revolves around the theme of ladies trying to win husbands. Each player is a lady who has a set fortune and rank and has "stats" relating to how beautiful, virtuous and accomplished she is. Throughout the game, you try to raise your standing by gaining beauty, virtue and accomplishments. You attend dances to charm men, go to church to earn virtue, and even attend the races at Ascot to raise your income. The game is wonderfully themed (as any Jane Austen fan would attest) and very well thought out.
This was the first time the game had ever been played so it took almost 4 hours from the time we started reading the instructions (which we did out loud so we could all see what did and didn't make sense or what wasn't clear to benefit Wendy so she could edit the rules) to the time we all (except for Blake, teehee) had a husband. For being the first time the game had ever been played, there were no glitches and nothing that didn't make sense. It was a really good game and I am proud of my cousin for making something so awesome. I can't wait for it to get published so I can buy it. She needs to get in a lot of test plays however before it gets close to that point, so I'm hoping I can play it again this week while they are still here (they live in Des Moines). Great job on the game Wendy!
What I learned: How to play London Season; also, my cousin is super talented and awesome.
Today we went to the Sonnenberg's to play games all day. And when I say all day, I mean it (we got there at 8:50am and left at 10:30pm). While I played 7 games today, there was only one new one that I learned.
After arriving at the house, I inquired where my cousin Wendy was and I was told she was in the bedroom, working on finishing up her board game so that we could all play it. I was surprised that I had not once heard that she was making her own game. I was intrigued. Later in the day, the board game was apparently ready and six of us sat down to learn London Season. It is a game that takes place in June 1814 and revolves around the theme of ladies trying to win husbands. Each player is a lady who has a set fortune and rank and has "stats" relating to how beautiful, virtuous and accomplished she is. Throughout the game, you try to raise your standing by gaining beauty, virtue and accomplishments. You attend dances to charm men, go to church to earn virtue, and even attend the races at Ascot to raise your income. The game is wonderfully themed (as any Jane Austen fan would attest) and very well thought out.
This was the first time the game had ever been played so it took almost 4 hours from the time we started reading the instructions (which we did out loud so we could all see what did and didn't make sense or what wasn't clear to benefit Wendy so she could edit the rules) to the time we all (except for Blake, teehee) had a husband. For being the first time the game had ever been played, there were no glitches and nothing that didn't make sense. It was a really good game and I am proud of my cousin for making something so awesome. I can't wait for it to get published so I can buy it. She needs to get in a lot of test plays however before it gets close to that point, so I'm hoping I can play it again this week while they are still here (they live in Des Moines). Great job on the game Wendy!
What I learned: How to play London Season; also, my cousin is super talented and awesome.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Chinese Christmas
Merry Christmas! Today was a great day filled with lots of presents and delicious food. Avery had a wonderful time with all of his toys that his grandparents and aunts and uncles got him (Mom and Dad did not get him any toys, anticipating the amount he would get from others).
The last present and probably the most surprising gift we opened was a gift from my Dad and Neal. Last week, they took our server home to update/upgrade it as it was older and slower than we would like and they said they could piece together some things to make it better. Fast forward to this afternoon and looking at this last present, it was shaped like a computer tower, so we thought, oh, it's the computer tower they fixed for us. Awesome! So Jared and I opened the box and found a computer tower inside. Upon taking it out of the box however, we noticed that it was covered in black duct tape and that while it was heavy and not empty, it clearly did not have computer bits inside of it. So we took off all the tape and opened up the case to find a wrapped present inside the tower. The present was a laptop! Apparently their neighbors had two identical laptops, neither of which worked. They told Neal and Ken if they could get them to work properly, they could keep one. So they kept one and loaded software on it for us and even put TV shows and other programs on it that they knew we wanted. It was such a surprise!
One of the things that Neal included on it was the Mandarin Rosetta Stone. He knows that Jared (and I) want Avery to learn Mandarin and that we need to learn some ourselves in order to accomplish this. So we loaded it up and I started doing the first lesson to see what it was like. I put the settings to pinyin because let's face it, there's no way I'm going to learn to speak some of it AND learn the symbols, at least not unless we move to China. So the words are at least recognizable and somewhat pronounceable but the inflection of each syllable is what is hardest for me. I also found that I easily recognized the words by sight after learning them but could barely differentiate when just listening to the words. This will be problematic as I will need to learn how to say the words in order to say them to Avery. Who cares if I can recognize the words in pinyin?! (<--insert interrobang here). I have a long way to go, that's for sure. We got Avery the Little Pim videos from the library for him to learn, but he's still a little too young for it. We figured it's better to at least start hearing it now though!
What I learned today: Mandarin is going to be the most difficult thing I will ever try to learn. I also learned the words for water (shui), tea (cha) and juice (guozhi) among others. ***Sidenote: All of those words have symbols over a lot of the letters but I don't know how to do that here so you get the English bastardization of the pinyin :)
The last present and probably the most surprising gift we opened was a gift from my Dad and Neal. Last week, they took our server home to update/upgrade it as it was older and slower than we would like and they said they could piece together some things to make it better. Fast forward to this afternoon and looking at this last present, it was shaped like a computer tower, so we thought, oh, it's the computer tower they fixed for us. Awesome! So Jared and I opened the box and found a computer tower inside. Upon taking it out of the box however, we noticed that it was covered in black duct tape and that while it was heavy and not empty, it clearly did not have computer bits inside of it. So we took off all the tape and opened up the case to find a wrapped present inside the tower. The present was a laptop! Apparently their neighbors had two identical laptops, neither of which worked. They told Neal and Ken if they could get them to work properly, they could keep one. So they kept one and loaded software on it for us and even put TV shows and other programs on it that they knew we wanted. It was such a surprise!
One of the things that Neal included on it was the Mandarin Rosetta Stone. He knows that Jared (and I) want Avery to learn Mandarin and that we need to learn some ourselves in order to accomplish this. So we loaded it up and I started doing the first lesson to see what it was like. I put the settings to pinyin because let's face it, there's no way I'm going to learn to speak some of it AND learn the symbols, at least not unless we move to China. So the words are at least recognizable and somewhat pronounceable but the inflection of each syllable is what is hardest for me. I also found that I easily recognized the words by sight after learning them but could barely differentiate when just listening to the words. This will be problematic as I will need to learn how to say the words in order to say them to Avery. Who cares if I can recognize the words in pinyin?! (<--insert interrobang here). I have a long way to go, that's for sure. We got Avery the Little Pim videos from the library for him to learn, but he's still a little too young for it. We figured it's better to at least start hearing it now though!
What I learned today: Mandarin is going to be the most difficult thing I will ever try to learn. I also learned the words for water (shui), tea (cha) and juice (guozhi) among others. ***Sidenote: All of those words have symbols over a lot of the letters but I don't know how to do that here so you get the English bastardization of the pinyin :)
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