My So Called Life

A day in the life of being married to me

/ Shane / Leave a comment

One of the kids needed a blanket picked up from the floor in the backseat of the car. Sara and I both reached back to get it at the same time, me with my right hand, her with her left. Our elbows bumped, so we both pulled our arms back to allow the other person to reach back. Seeing that the other person was not going to reach back, we both reached back again, bumping elbows a second time. We both pulled back, this time determined to wait and allow the other person to reach back. Eventually, I gave in first and reached back. This time we did not bump arms.

Me: “You know what we just did? Collision detection with random backoff. Like ethernet!”
Sara: “…”
Me: “If you knew what I was talking about, you’d totally agree.”

I’m telling you, they should use that like a story problem in textbooks. It’s the perfect example! Next time you use the Internet, think of my elbows.

Another Christmas, come and gone

/ Shane / 8 Comments

Last year, Evie participated in a (semi) amateur Christmas play at the family Christmas party. This year she was very excited to be in a “real” Christmas play. She was hoping to be an angel, and she got her wish!

The angels had a relatively small role with one line to speak, but Evie practiced and practiced her part. She did very well, and had a great time! She already has plans on what parts she wants to play next year.

Christmas here was very nice, and relatively relaxing. Santa left me a replacement wedding ring, and gave Evie a present or two, including the only thing she asked him for: a long sleeve dress (easy enough!). He also gave Ollie a new water bottle that he is very excited about (he doesn’t have to share with his sister anymore). I think Evie’s favorite present is a set of paper dolls from Florence. I never in a million years would have guessed how much she likes them. She’s pretty much talks about them non-stop and wants to show them to everybody.

Santa left a few other gifts including a set of “tiffin” stacking lunch pails that were pretty exciting:

The best part of Christmas is that it just keeps going! After the main event, we still have a week long celebration of vacation, food, and more presents. We’ve already stayed up late a couple of nights snacking and playing board games. Sara and I are particularly looking forward to the new microwave shelf for the kitchen.


 Merry Christmas!

You will know we are elderly by our phones

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Sara and I have suspected that we could save a lot of money on our cell phones for a long time. Basically, we just had Verizon since time began, and we never really looked around or anything. We are also pretty minimal cell phone users as these things go (super old phones, don’t use a ton of minutes, no texting, no web, no nothing), so we sort of figured we might be getting ripped off. At the very least, we knew we could get a small discount through our jobs, so at the very least we could be saving 10% – 15% or so, but we thought maybe we could do better with a pre-paid phone or a smaller carrier, like Cricket. But we were lazy, so we never got around to doing anything about it.

However, the other day, Sara was going through her consumer reports and found that they had rated actual cell phone companies, and the top of the list was a company we had never heard of before, Consumer Cellular. We decided to check them out, and they turned out to be phenomenal. So we officially made the switch, and we are no longer Verizon customers.

Consumer Cellular is saving us about THIRTY DOLLARS PER MONTH. That’s $360 a year we will save, by basically just paying for what we actually use on the phone. In fact, that price includes a texting plan, which we never had before, so we actually have more functionality. And another thing about Consumer Cellular: you can change your plan retroactively for the month. So, if at the end of the month you find that you used more minutes than your plan allows, you don’t pay ridiculous per-minute charges on the extra minutes, you just adjust your plan to the next one up. More amazingly, if you find you didn’t use all your minutes, you can adjust your plan down to a lower plan and pay the lower rate. When have you ever heard such a thing from a cell phone company??

There is one funny thing about the company…it’s for old people! (This is why Sara and I fit right in.) You never really realize how advertising pictures are exclusively young people, until you get a brochure full of pictures of old people. This should have been the first sign. Then there’s the fact that they offer a “large button” phone, and the fact that their FAQ page specifically talks about how to use the phone on a cruise ship. There’s a checkbox for the AARP discount when you order. Even as you’re reading through the text on the webpage, you feel like it is meant for old people.

Shane: “Wow, this really is for old people. Everything is just spelled out so clearly, so there can be no confusion.”
Sara: “Yeah, but why is that for old people? Shouldn’t everything be like that?”

The fact is, it should be, but it’s not. Most cell phone plans are byzantine at best, with times when calls are free and times when they aren’t. Roaming. Overage charges. Contracts. Service fees. Early termination fees. Can you imagine a company that’s actually laying everything on the table, just trying to make an honest buck instead of trying to trick you somehow?

There are a few downsides, but they don’t really matter to us personally. So one would have to decide if this place is right for them or not. First off, they have a very limited phone selection. The free phones that Sara and I got are probably a step backwards from the very old phones that we used to have (except that this one is smaller, lighter, and the battery lasts longer than my old phone, so I guess it’s not all bad). So if you’re into the latest smart phone, they’re probably not for you. (They do have a few other choices, including smart phones, but nothing like what you’d get with a Verizon. I also understand you can use any AT&T phone on their network, and I’ve heard of at least one person using an iPhone.) They don’t have an unlimited data plan, which doesn’t matter to us, because we don’t have smart phones. There is no free nights and weekends or mobile to mobile minutes. However, the plans are cheap enough and we don’t use so many minutes, that we can still pay a lot less even paying for these extra minutes (I guess there’s a reason even the big companies offer them for free). Consumer Cellular is on the AT&T network, which might be a plus or a minus, depending on how you look at it (and how much you like the AT&T network).

So, Consumer Cellular. Check it out. We kept our old phone number, and the transition was hassle free. If you’re going to sign up, let me know: I can get us each a $10 credit as a referral fee!

A Very Red-Neck Christmas

/ Shane / 4 Comments

In which we try to answer the age old question: does Santa’s neck mach his suit?

After purchasing our land, we apparently weren’t quite ready to return to the Big City, so we decided to stop and see Santa. At the Bass Pro Shop.

Now, you might be thinking that the Bass Pro Shop is a strange place to go see Santa. However, there were a few major advantages:

  1. Conveniently located off the highway (important when we usually have to go pretty far out of our way, a.k.a. the suburbs, to see him)
  2. Much smaller lines than we have experienced at various malls
  3. They give you a free picture (because they’re trying to draw you into their shop, making money on you in other ways than directly on Santa)
  4. Commercial Santas are WAY better than crazy-Frank dressing up in his homemade Santa suit (in other words, a big upgrade from what we saw last year)
  5. They had some awesome decorations

The combination of #4 and #5 really improves the quality of the pictures. Santa was very authentic. And even though you can’t see the animatronic elves in the picture, I never had an actual reindeer in the background before (you really can’t tell it is stuffed in the picture!).

The downside was that there were no less than three different types of shooting games for the kids to play while they were waiting for Santa. If you’re a hunter, I’m sure you’re bristling at me indicating that this is a problem. Let me remind you that shooting guns means something a little different in our neighborhood, and I’m not really ready to have that conversation with my 4 year old.

I definitely felt like we stood out like a family of sore thumbs there.

Sara: “Are these people in costume?”
Me: “Huh?”
Sara: “Do you think they wear this stuff every day, or did they put it on to come here?”

Methinks it was time for the City Mice to go back where they came from.

I would definitely go back there next year. Quick, hassle free, and the whole place is sort of amazing, even when you take Santa out of it. There’s a two story waterfall! Mounted wolves attacking a mounted moose! Camouflage pick-up trucks fake ramping off of fake rocks! Several tanks of live, large fish swimming around! I’m not sure that the kids found Santa to be more interesting than the rest of the place. I certainly didn’t.

The Clothespin Game

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I don’t know how the clothespin game originated, but it was certainly going on long before my childhood. It’s pretty simple: clip a clothespin onto someone without them realizing it. You’re probably thinking that doesn’t sound like much fun, but you are so, so wrong.

First off, it’s a game of skill. It’s trickier than you think to hook one on someone without them noticing. There’s the actual delicate placing of the clothespin, but there’s also the approach. You’d be amazed at how suspicious people get when you’re following them around, or lurking behind them for no reason. And it only gets harder when they know there’s a clothespin out there somewhere, looking for victims. There’s also the selection of the location to pin the clothespin. You could go for the obvious places, like a shirt-tale that is hanging out. Your success rate is going to be higher, but they’re probably going to find it as soon as they sit down. On the other hand, you could go for something a little tougher, like a fold in the shirt that is sticking out higher up, but then you’re running the risk of pinching the shirt or pulling something tight, which might get you caught.

It’s a game that takes minutes to learn, but years to master.

When I was a kid, we pretty much played this game nonstop. There was always a clothespin in the mix somewhere. Nothing is funnier than sending your mom off to her big meeting, or your sister off to school for her big report, with a clothespin on her back. The problem was, we had a whole bag of clothespins hanging on the back of the door to the stairs. So there could really be any number of clothespins active at any one time. I remember laughing hysterically (and pseudo-silently) as mom took her coat off in church with no less than seven clothespins on her back! And there is no joy greater than having your brother gleefully point out the clothespin he just stuck on somebody, when you know that you just added a third clothespin onto his back.

This game is, of course, where we get that old chestnut of wisdom: if you don’t see the clothespin on anybody’s back, it’s probably on yours.

Of course I had no choice but to teach this to my children. At first Evie was comically bad at it, but lately she has gotten pretty good. It takes a lot of patience, and she is still learning that. But she’s gotten me a few times recently without me knowing it. Oliver must have seen us playing, because two times I have caught him trying to put one on me (he doesn’t even know how to work the thing!). So I’m pretty sure he’ll be playing before too long.

So next time you see a clothespin on someone in public, just smile and play along. Don’t tell them! And if you get home from our house and find a little “gift” on your back, feel free to try to “return” it next time you’re here!