My So Called Life

Zenni Optical – Round 2

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Just about a year ago, I bought a couple of pairs of glasses online from Zenni Optical. They were so cheap, and the experience was so good, it was literally unbelievable. I do mean literally, because I have told so many people about getting glasses from this place, and they don’t believe me. It really does seem inconceivable that I can get a pair of glasses for less than $25 (including shipping) that would cost > $300 at a store.

Well, all I can do is put the information out there.

I just ordered another 2 pairs of glasses from Zenni. Last year I tried out a pair of plastic frames, and they served me well. Unfortunately, Oliver slapped them off my face, and they broke on the floor. I don’t blame Zenni for that. They weren’t “cheap” frames, they were just slapped off my face and onto the ground with a lot of force. The style I chose had little brackets or clasps at the corners, which were thinner than the rest of the frame, and one of those broke.

Since they were so inexpensive, I had ordered an extra pair last time as a backup. Those got me through until I could place an order for another two pairs. This time, I was even more adventurous in my selections. I dub this the “zenni-effect”: the glasses are so cheap, why not try something crazy? Get a frame you would never have thought of before. This is something you could never afford to do when the frames were $400 and you could only afford one pair. If you’re paying that kind of money for frames, they better be a pretty good, solid, risk-free pair!

The only complaint I had about my first order was that the lenses seemed particularly hard to clean. On my previous, store-bought lenses, I could just clean smudges off with my shirt tail. These glasses required a cloth at least, and even still they never quite seemed to get clean.

I did some research online, and found out that the anti-glare coating that I paid extra to add (recommended, especially if you work on computers all day) works as a smudge magnet. So I thought perhaps I might risk my eyes and go without the anti-glare coating this time. However, Zenni offered an additional smudge-resistant coating for $10.

Both of my new pairs have the new coating, and so far they seem to be perfect! Just as good as my old, expensive ones. So my one caveat is that, if you are getting the anti-glare coating, go ahead and spring for the anti-smudge coating as well. Best $10 I ever spent.

So anyway, unless you hate money, order glasses from Zenni Optical. I get nothing out of this, other than the satisfaction of saving my readers money. It’s just too good of a deal to keep under my hat!

Youtube How-to

/ Shane / Leave a comment

A while back we were having some issues with our washing machine. I wasn’t sure if it was worth repairing, or if we needed to replace the whole thing. I was kind of stuck: I didn’t want to pay a technician to come in and look at it, if we were ultimately going to get rid of it anyway. So I turned to my old friend, Mr. Internet.

If you go to youtube and look for information on how to fix something, you’ll be amazed at the amount of detailed information people have put out there, in video form! I found a video that showed me exactly how to take my washer apart and repair the suspected problem.

Now it turns out I didn’t need to fix my washer, but I could have! And now I have a new go-to place to find examples for fix-it projects. I wanted to find the exact repair video I watched, but I couldn’t because there are just so many. And very high quality, with good production budget too! Anything from how to fix your refrigerator, replacing your spark plugs, or this fantastic video, which will show you how to repair a broken leg:

Thank you, Internet, for this high quality information! I will follow this video exactly next time I need to set a broken bone!

Putting the Salvage in Salvation Army

/ Shane / 3 Comments

You know, I had this post all set to go last week, with a glowing review about the awesomeness of getting rid of stuff with the Salvation Army. But then it turns out, Salvation Army was not, in fact, awesome. Exactly the opposite. But the story still has a happy ending, so keep heart! All’s well that ends well!

Over the past year, we have been working hard to simplify our life. To that end, we have been collecting everything in our house that is not nailed down and tossing it into a designated closet and/or our guest bedroom to get rid of. Ideally we would unload this stuff at the family rummage sale, but we found out last year that we could only fit a fraction of what we had in our car. Well, we’ve collected a lot more stuff since then! Since our giant closet was filled all the way to the back at about chest high, and there’s no way we could get it all to Wisconsin anyway, we just decided we needed to unload it immediately.

But as I said, it was way more than we can fit in our car, so what do we do with it? Enter the Salvation Army: they pick up your stuff! We simply scheduled a date for them to come with their truck and pick everything up.

In preparation, we got everything all together, sorted it, boxed it up, and carried it all up into the living room. It was a massive mountain of stuff! We had > 20 boxes of books, toys, clothes, etc. as well as a computer and monitor, stereo and giant speakers, a couple of small pieces of furniture – all kinds of stuff. Seeing the entire pile there was pretty impressive, and I really felt like, “Wow, we are really getting rid of all of this stuff!”

It felt great. Always a bad sign.

The pickup window they gave us was from 8 – 4. Couldn’t narrow it down, no possible way. Okay, fine, Sara is home on that day anyway. However, I was starting to have a bad feeling about this. By the time 3 p.m. rolled around, I felt sufficiently justified in calling and checking up a little bit.

“It’s not 4 yet.”
“Well, I know, but I just wanted to confirm we were on the schedule for today.”
“If they told you you’re on the schedule, then you’re on the schedule.”
“Well, I know, but…”
“You just need to wait.”
“Yeah, but can you…”
“Is there anything else?”

Guess what? They never showed. And by the time I called back at 4:30 everyone was gone for the day. I guess I should have read the Salvation Army Chicago Pick Up Service on Yelp first. It turns out, they never show up. For anybody. Luckily for us, we hadn’t taken a day off of work, and we weren’t in that big of hurry to get rid of our junk (other than it was taking up a large chunk of our living room, and keeping little hands off it was a little difficult!). From what I could gather, they just schedule their pickups for the day, and when the truck is full they go home. No phone call, no reschedule, nothing. Sorry!

So, we had a decision to make: do we call the next day to reschedule, knowing that most of the time they simply just don’t show up with no care for your schedule? No, we do not.

Instead we found a Goodwill close to my work where we could drop off our own donations. Such a good decision! It took me three trips with my car absolutely stuffed to the gills to get it all there, but it wasn’t very far out of my way anyway. I wish we had decided to do this from the beginning, because we would have been finished that week, instead of spending days waiting in vain for the Salvation Army. The people of Goodwill were, in direct contrast, friendly and helpful, without attitude.

So we ultimately got rid of all of our stuff, and I must say, it was inspirational. You’d think that getting rid of all of that stuff would satisfy the itch to weed out the junk, but it’s kind of the opposite: I’m eyeing everything up thinking, “Do we really need this?” Almost as soon as it was out the door, we started a new pile in the closet.

Looks like we’re going to have to make this a regular occurrence!

Remember the Poems

/ Shane / Leave a comment

A little explanation for you non-family types: in my family, it is customary to write poems for Christmas. Typically we had a name exchange, and you tried to write a poem about the person whose name you drew (especially if you had some good dirt or friendly ribbing for the person in question). Not everybody wrote a poem every year, but this year we didn’t have a name exchange, so I was worried people might be without the proper motivation to write poems. Therefore, I wrote this poem:

Remember the Poems by Shane Halbach

This year we won’t participate in a family name exchange,
And so this year’s Christmas party is feeling kind of strange.

Personally, I can do without my annual gift card,
And coming up with stuff to ask for does get kind of hard.
And the name you drew is always one who didn’t write a list (Rachael),
Or asks for something you can’t find, and maybe doesn’t exist.

No, the name exchange I can live without, but there is one other thing,
Usually about this time, the poem exchange is really in full swing.
The poems, the poems, what about the poems? We can’t forget about them!
A tradition like no other family, and proud of it I am.

The poems together tell a tale and document the year,
And without the family name exchange, we risk losing that I fear.
What if nobody thought to write down all of this insanity?
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Not in this family.

I’d hate to think that we’d forget to talk about the time,
That Laurie was watching Oliver, and he fell off the slide.
Or when Josh said he was engaged? It turns out he was hacked.
And who sent Rachael formula, just to see how she’d react?

Remember at the reunion when Steve and Char and Jay,
Had their tents destroyed by storms and almost blew away?
Are you sleeping Brother John, Grandma’s 85th,
Bernie’s tire falling off isn’t just a myth.

We need these poems or else there’s just too many things we’d miss.
Though some of you might be feeling now that ignorance is bliss.
It’s good to have a time of year when you can hear a poem,
And find out what we say about you when you’re not at home.

You might not know that Mike Debroux spent hours just to see,
If he could prove that Lady Gaga really was a she,
No, it’s up to us to spread the word, in case it isn’t known,
That when it comes to butter, Len prefers to bring his own.

Or take Cecilia, one might think she doth protest too much,
Since after holding protest signs, her arm’s too sore to touch.
Roger got a new job, but he must not work enough,
He’s trying to take his work home with him, but Grandma’s hygiene’s up to snuff.

And mom makes Ron use napkins more than 30 years old,
And I think that this decision was really rather bold,
Since they’re from when she married dad (it said so in the heading)
Of course Steve might not know she’s remarried, since he missed her wedding.

There’s Colleen’s lost luggage getting left out in the rain,
And cleaning Grandma’s coffee mugs leads to great financial gain.
Emily’s love of new recipes is known to Facebook viewers,
And Scott prefers his Cardinals over rooting for the Brewers.

But have you heard the one about Judy mowing in high heels?
Or Nancy almost running over Ryan’s runaway wheels?
The city of Janesville might be interested to hear what trees were chopped,
Since Lois isn’t even sure she owns the trees she dropped!

I can tell you Pat sneaks vegetables hidden into dessert,
But I need to hear a poem for Kris, I couldn’t find any dirt!
And Cecilia and Arleen aren’t even here, their virtue to defend!
Surely, someone could have written a poem ‘bout both of them!

There’s so much more that could be said, and anyone could say it,
Even without a name exchange, a poem we’d all okay it.
Between us there’s enough abuse to fill up tomes and tomes.
So please people, I ask you now: remember the poems!

Surprising things about 2011

/ Shane / 1 Comment

There are quite a few things that happened this year that if you told me a year ago were going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed you:

  • In 2011, we only bought 1 gallon of ice cream from the store. Even as I say it now, it seems crazy.
  • We made it the whole year with only one car.
  • We got rid of our tv. Technically we still have a tv, since we have a 13 incher with a broken VCR attached, but we gave away our “regular sized” tv. Aside from that being considered kind of crazy by the population at large, we specifically used to watch a *lot* of tv, once upon a time.
  • Sara ran a 5k, and if that wasn’t enough, followed it up with a 10k. A year ago this time, she wasn’t even seriously running yet, much less planning to run races.
  • We own ~24 acres of land. Even though we’d thought about buying some property for a long time, we weren’t sure if 3 acres was going to be too big for us. And here we are with > 23! Still seems kind of crazy.
  • In 2011, Sara drank only 1 can of pop (in February, in case you were wondering). It’s not that she was such a huge pop drinker, but for anyone in this day and age to only have 1 can of pop in a whole year is pretty impressive.
  • I learned to knit! This was a secret hobby because I was knitting a few Christmas presents (just washcloths, nothing fancy), but the thought definitely never crossed my mind a year ago. I’m not sure were it will go from here, but I would say I definitely enjoy it. And in case you are wondering, I have it on good authority that knitting is for men, and crocheting is for women.

It’s amazing how different your life can seem in just a year!