A Day in My Life

It’s been well over a month since I last posted. As with everyone, a lot has happened in the last month, especially factoring in the holidays. So here’s a quick little wrap up from when I last wrote:

For Thanksgiving this year, we went up to my parents house in good ‘ol St. Francis. This was Bethany’s holiday to work so we ended up eating in the evening rather than the usual afternoon dinner. In the afternoon, I changed the oil and switched out the tires on her car to snow tires. (I later did the same procedure on my car the following Saturday.) We had a nice dinner before we had to head out for Bethany to get to work on time.

Also at about this time, I made a basic website for one of the guys that works for my dad. He runs a towing company with his brother based out of Coon Rapids. I just created a one page site for them to start getting some online exposure. You can check it out their site at AandJTowingLLC.com. The site went live in mid-December.

Over the past year, I have been reading and learning a lot about photography. You could call it a budding new hobby of mine. What was really holding me back from really getting into taking pictures was my old camera. It was very limiting what I was able to do. That all changed in the beginning of December when I got a new dSLR camera, a Nikon D90 to be specific.

After reading a million reviews from a ton of different places, I determined that this was the best camera for the money. Rather than getting the kit lens that they have it paired with, I opted to get the AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens with the plan to get the 55-200mm VR soon for the expanded zoom.

I read that this lens has better optics than the 18-105mm kit lens. It was also less expensive which helped to make my decision a little bit easier. I am now picture crazy. There are a ton of different settings on this camera than were on any camera I had previously used. It is so much fun to play with and will take me quite a while to become proficient with it. However, right out of the box, the camera can take pictures my old point-and-shoot could only dream of taking.

That brings us to Christmas. This year we made the trip up to Bethany’s parents house with Copland in tow. All of her siblings were able to be there this year which made it that much more fun. We were planning on heading up there on Christmas Eve, however, with the ensuing snow storm, we were able to both get off work and leave a day early and miss the storm. Copland did pretty well on the trip, both in the car and at their house. There were 15 people total in the house so it was a busy place. While we missed the bad weather driving up, it was incredibly cold while we were there. The snow didn’t pile up too much on the farm because the 30-40 mph wind blew it right away. As you could imagine, there were some pretty massive drifts around the house. We stayed there until the Sunday after Christmas. You can see picture from this trip here.

Following our visit to South Dakota, we went straight to my parents house in St. Francis. I was no less busy at my parents house than it had been at Bethany’s. Tyler had come home along with my family from the east coast and everyone was hanging out at the house when we arrived. While there weren’t any babies there, the volume seemed to be higher with all the jokes and stories being told. On Monday, we had a big game day where we played board games and watched the sorry Vikings lose. While we had never had a game day before, everyone had a great time with it and it was a great hit. We hung out with my family in St. Francis until about noon on Wednesday. You can see picture from this trip here.

Bethany had to work this New Years eve so Tyler and I ended up going over to Bethany Fast’s and Sarah Joy’s house for their party. They have a pretty fun old house with a bunch of odd storage and crawl spaces. There, we played a rousing game of boys vs. girls Trivial Pursuit. Even though the guys finished up the pie first, the girls ended up winning due to our poor rolling at the end. We had fun seeing old band people and talking about the good ‘ol times in the BWS. You can see my pictures from the party here.

Well, that about brings us up to today. I’ll work on a year round up like I did last year and hopefully get it posted in the next week. Until then, Happy New Year to you all and may 2010 be a blessed year for you!

For my first installment on the ever important and timely topic of health care reform, I wanted to give you all some of the facts on the bills that have currently past congressional committees. Rather than write out the details of each of the plans in paragraph form, I have found a handy table created by the Wall Street Journal that does it way better job than I could. You can view this table by simply clicking on the image below.

This table is a great resource and will hopefully help you compare and contrast each of the pending bills. While this isn’t an exhaustive table of all of the elements of the bill, it does highlight the most discussed and contentious issues of each of the bills. I hope you will use it as as reference to come back to when considering reform and as the legislation moves through congress.

I also wanted to quickly address the process for those who may not follow legislation. As I mentioned earlier, these bills have all only passed congressional committees. There are currently two bills that have passed senate committees and three bill that have passed committees in the house. The two committees in the senate who oversee health care and have passed bills are the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Senator Max Baucus and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chaired by Senator Tom Harkin. The committees in the house that have passed health reform legislation are the House Ways and Means Committee chaired by Rep. Charles Rangel, the House Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman and the House Education and Labor Committee chaired by Rep. George Miller. Now that these bills have all passed in their respective committees, they are now brought to the full House or Senate and combined into one bill in each chamber. Once the committee bills are combined, they are then debated and amended by their respective chamber, the full House or the full Senate, and voted upon. To pass the House, a bill must receive 218 votes which is a simply majority. In the Senate, however, a bill must receive 60 votes to pass. There are currently 60 democratic senators which is considered a super-majority as a bill can pass with only members of one party voting in favor. (To arrive at 60, there technically are only 58 democratic senators and two independent senators who caucus with with democrats. Also, this is the regular legislative process and doesn’t include the process under budget reconciliation rules.)

Once the bills pass both chambers of Congress, they are then brought to a conference committee made up of members of both the House and the Senate. At this point, the two bills that were passed are different and the conference committee works to meld these bills into one bill which is sent back to each chamber. When the bill arrives back in each chamber in it’s final form, it is then voted on again by each chamber and passed on the same number of votes as referenced above. Once the bill passes both chambers of congress, you guessed it, it will finally go to President Obama to sign. Needless to say, the legislation that has currently passed each committee is subject to a lot of changes in the coming weeks and months.

Your reward for making it this far in my post is a fun video you may have seen in grade school. Yes, here is the famous School House Rock video on the legislative process. Enjoy:

(If you are viewing this in Facebook, click the “View Original Post” link below to read the full post and view the video.)

Unless you have been living in a hole recently, you have heard plenty about, and are probably sick of, the health care debate. Talk about health care is everywhere you look. Every news source, whether online or on TV, regularly talks about the current state of health care and what is currently being debated to deal with the problems. I am like you and have been completely overloaded with all the coverage of the debate. It is hard to keep track of everything that is going on in the debate.

In order to bring some more structure and clarity, I am diving into the debate. Over time, I am going to try to sum up each the bills currently working their way through congress and list out the key provisions of each. Then, I will give my thoughts on each of the plans and will eventually list out what I would like to see in a final bill. Being that I am just a guy in the Twin Cities, I don’t expect any of my thoughts to sway anyone in power or close to the real debate in Washington. I only hope that my ramblings will help you straighten out the bills as they move through congress and give you another perspective on the whole debate. For easy reference to all my posts on this topic, I have created a “Special Topics” section on the right side of my blog. You can quickly reference my posts on this topic by clicking on Health Care. Please leave me your comments on any of my posts. Hopefully I can spark some good discussion on the issue.

If you are viewing my posts on Facebook, click on the “View Original Post” link at the bottom of the post to go back to my blog. It will be easier to leave your comments on my blog rather than Facebook in order to keep everyone’s ideas together.

Enjoy!

You know, for all the heat Saturday Night Live has taken over the years when it comes to discussing hot button issues, I think they have hit the nail right on the head with this one. There are people who say that we are moving closer and closer to socialism. That’s not very true. We shouldn’t be taking about how the President is bringing communism to the US. We aren’t becoming like Russia or China. None of these comparisons make much sense. As they say on SNL, just look at his record:

Yes, you read the title of this post correctly, Stand Up Economist. When you hear the word economist, comedian is not the next word that usually comes to your mind. In rare cases, these two words do deserve to be in the same sentence. Austan Goolsbee, who is currently a member of the Council of Economic Advisors to the President and on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, may just be one of those rare economists who fit this bill. Why don’t you take listen to this video and let me know what you think:

If you are viewing my post on Facebook, click the “View Original Post” link at the bottom of the note to see the full post-with video-from my website.

September is one of those transition months that we hit each year. It is the month where students transition from the summer break back to school. It is when the weather in Minnesota starts to change from warm and sunny to cool and windy. It is also the month when the biggest transition of all is made – from no football to many weekly games! Now that the end of the month is here, all three of these transitions are well under way.

This year, just like last, I am partaking in three separate fantasy football leagues. This year, however, I moved from playing in my work league to joining another league put on by another friend from Bethel. After the first three weeks of the season, my overall record is 4-5. It’s not too bad of a start. I’m at least competitive in each of my leagues. With bye weeks starting this week, now is when the season really starts to get interesting.

The other large transition that Bethany and I have been working through is the addition of our little puppy, Copland. We have had him for just about a month now which puts him at just over 12 weeks old. And let me tell you, that guy has grown a lot in the last couple of weeks! When we first got him, I was able to pick him up with one hand and flip him around at will. Now, he is big enough to fight being thrown around. He is getting to be a tank. That little guy really likes to eat. We have also started him in puppy kindergarten. So far, we’ve gone to two weeks of the six week class. His favorite part of the class is when he gets to go off of his leash and run around with all the other puppies. For him, it is more like run around and tackle all the little puppies. That might change in the next week because he might get bumped up to being with the bigger dogs – currently he’s with the little puppies. Then we’ll see how he does taking on a Great Dane! Otherwise, Copland is doing pretty well so far with his sitting and staying. He can’t stay for a very long time yet, but he’s getting there. He is also learning to climb the stairs. This is quite a process when your legs are only 5 inches long. But, he’s able to manage it:

I also just posted a bunch of Copland pictures that’s I’ve been neglecting to post for a while now. You can check them out on my pictures page or just click here.

Third, I finally finished up the revamp of Gerdinauto.com! The upgrade was quite significant and it looks MUCH better than I had ever hoped to make it when I began. Last weekend was the wrap up weekend for the site. I spent a good amount of time finishing up various pages, cleaning up many links, and transitioning the old site out and putting the new one up in its place. Check it out and tell me what you think. Over time, I plan to update some of the various pictures and add some new features, but functionally, it is good to go.

Lastly, I have been working on becoming a Crown Money Map Coach. This desire had been culminating for a few months now. Last summer, Bethany and I were in a Crown small group with a number of people from church. We were able to get all our finances agreed upon and used it as a great launch into marriage. Throughout the year, I’ve been listening to the daily podcast they produce and learned about this coaching service. This really interested me. So I ordered the books, signed up for the class, and away I go. Once I have completed everything in the next couple weeks, I will be certified and a part of Crown’s coaching network, which will allow me to be able to help others who are having any number of financial problems. I am really excited to complete the training and get started.

I’ll leave you with one more Copland picture. Aren’t they cute?

I am writing to you on Labor Day 2009. Despite summer winding down for the year, the weather has been terrific recently. Today it has been sunny and in the mid-seventies, and it looks to be more of the same nice weather coming up this week. These last few days have really felt summery, which has been fantastic. But alas, we find ourselves quickly approaching fall. Put away your white clothes and get ready for the weather to start changing.

A few weeks ago, Bethany’s sister Erika, her husband Eric, and their little daughter Liv came up for a few days. We all went to Spicer, MN for the weekend to meet up with the rest of the Bethany’s family at a small resort. Well, it was advertised as a resort at least. It wasn’t all that much to look at. The small house had three tiny bedrooms with one tiny bathroom and a tiny kitchen, and needed some new furniture and a good cleaning. It was fine for the weekend, though. We spent a lot of time outdoors and on the lake. The kids especially spent a lot of time on the water. They went between the paddle boats, canoe, and kayaks all afternoon. It was pretty comical how much switching they did between the three boats. It seemed like they didn’t spend more than five minutes at a time on a single boat. We were there from Friday evening to just after lunch on Sunday.

Before we left for Spicer on Friday, Eric had an interview for a neurologist position at a clinic in Golden Valley. He said it went really well which it pretty exciting. Bethany and I think it would be really fun to have them move back to Minnesota. After visiting an old friend in the area, they came back to our house for the night. Eric had to leave the next day as he had another interview for a job in Boston. Erika and Liv stayed with us until Thursday. It was great fun having them with us for a few days. Liv has really started to make a lot of fun noises recently. While they were here, I took a short video of Liv in her fun noise making stage. Take a listen and just try not to smile. There’s no way you can do it.

Isn’t that just about the cutest thing you have ever seen? Erika and cute little Liv stayed with us until Thursday. We had a great time with the both of them.

As I mentioned before, we decided to get a dog recently. More specifically, we decided to get a little basset hound puppy. Well, last Thursday, that day arrived. I took a half-day on Thursday so that we could head down to pick up our new little puppy. We got down to Sleepy Eye, MN around 2:00 and met our new little friend. Copland was laying outside by the stairs when we arrived, just taking a nap. We were able to meet his parents and his other little dog friends. He sure had a lot of animal friends there on the farm. After about a half hour, we took him away from all the friends he had known for the first eight weeks of his life and took him in the long car ride back to Oakdale. He didn’t really like the car ride at first. However, after about 15 minutes, he didn’t really care anymore as he had fallen asleep. That does seem to be his favorite activity. Take a look at this good looking guy:

Who knew that I would one day own a dog?

This is his favorite position to be in.

That little guy has a fun future in front of him and we have a lot of excitement to look forward to as well!