Those Martins

[flv:http://disk.wordflood.net/public/Esther/2007/01-IntheHospital.flv 320 240]

Vital Statistics

Born: February 15th, 8:24pm

Weight: 6 pounds, 4 ounces

Length: 18 and 1/2 inches

Location: Oregon, Wisconsin

My Name

Mom and Dad couldn’t decide whether to name me Esther Grace or Esther Kaylee. Then I cried all night (instead of sleeping like the doctors said I would). Mom and Dad decided that I wasn’t acting very graceful and decided to name me Kaylee.

My Pictures

Dad has been taking some pictures of me. You can see them at our photo site.

Christine and I got up early to attend the 9:30am service at Blackhawk. We had coffee / chai / Coke with Katherine and Scott at Caribou Coffee. We came home and both took a long nap. Ate a late lunch and headed over to Kevin and Amanda’s place for the second annual Life Group Super Bowl Bash. Great fun was had by all. We came home and were asleep before 11pm.

I was supposed to have breakfast with Scott this morning. Didn’t happen. He was called into work this morning to help revise a report. Fortunately, I found this out before I drove all the way to Madison. He e-mailed me, but I’ve been experiencing some delays with my e-mail. I hope I haven’t missed anything else important. At any rate, I ate breakfast at home this morning and caught up on Heroes.

After breakfast, I decided to do something ambitious. First, I scanned in all of my 2006 tax documents and statements. Next, I started entering all of the information into TurboTax. It turns out that I underpaid my Federal taxes by about $800. That’s sorta kinda okay though because I overpaid my Wisconsin taxes by about $1600. Once everything is said and done, I should have a net refund of around $800. That will take a while though. Last year, it took Wisconsin more than two months to mail my refund check. It also turns out that tax refunds are considered taxable income. (Something about having taken it as a deduction on your Federal taxes.) So, Washington will want part of that $1600 back next year.

Also, this turns out to be the month of bills. I’ve already spent $450 on new tires for the Camry. Now I get to spend another $600 on auto-insurance and $55 on license plate renewal. So, the tax refund money has already been spent. Yay.

After Christine got home, we ate lunch together and watched The Bourne Identity. Then I took a nap, in preparation for my big evening.

I went out for dinner with Kevin, Lenny, Scott, and Steve. We ate at Quaker Steak & Lube, then played pool at the Blue Chalk Club. Great fun was had by all.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007: I don’t really remember anything about Wednesday, so I can’t tell you what happened.

Thursday, February 1, 2007: I’d been noticing that the Camry’s tires had increasingly little tread left. On Thursday, I decided to fix that. I dropped the car off at Tires Plus, conveniently located just three miles away from the office. Teri (a friend from Life Group as well as Pittsburgh) was able to pick me up and take me to the office, after I dropped off the car.

Of course, once I got into the office things got more interesting. Thursday was February 1. Which means my customer wanted to be able to run financial reports for January. But their reports weren’t showing any data for January. In the midst of helping them fix their reports, their Production server decided to hang. So I got to spend some time reading about how to do integrity checks on the server and then (once the server was rebooted), I got to run the integrity checks. It all checked out, but between one thing and another, I didn’t actually get to work my todo list until 2pm.

Once Teri and I were both done working on Thursday, she dropped me back off at Tires Plus. A mere $450 later, I was driving home car with 4 brand-new, 70,000 mile warranty tires.

When I got home, I noticed (again) that my desk was completely covered with papers. Rather than ignoring it (again), I decided to finally clean it up and organize everything. I spent about an hour and a half sorting through the paperwork and organizing. It was almost 2 months worth of credit card statements, receipts, and tax statements. I made a good start on getting everything filed and scanned. (I scan all of my tax paperwork and save it to Strongspace so I can have an offsite backup in case anything happens to the paper files.)

Oh, yeah. We also got a hazardous weather warning from NOAA:

THE COLDEST AIR OF THE SEASON WILL PUSH INTO THE REGION FRIDAY NIGHT AND SATURDAY…AND LINGER INTO WEDNESDAY. THE FRIGID AIR WILL COMBINE WITH WESTERLY WINDS TO PRODUCE WIND CHILL READINGS OF 10 TO 20 DEGREES BELOW ZERO DURING THE DAY…AND BETWEEN 20 TO 30 BELOW ZERO AT NIGHT.

Lovely.

Friday, February 2, 2007: On Friday morning, I actually made it to the office before 9am. Mainly because I had a 9am conference call I needed to be on. Thankfully, no minor emergencies cropped up during the day and I was able to get mostly caught up on my work. I was also able to leave on-time and got home with enough time to take a nap and start washing dishes before Christine came home. I made her a batch of buttermilk pancakes for dinner and ate a bowl of Malt-o-Meal myself.

Another busy day. Christine had an early morning doctor’s appointment, so I was up early as well. I looked out the window and noticed that we’d gotten another inch of snow overnight. So, like any good husband, I went outside and spent an hour shoveling snow off of the driveway and walkway so Christine could leave. (I also scraped all of the snow and ice off of her car.) Then I went inside to eat my own breakfast and get ready for work.

Overall, the day at work was good. I ran into some more unexpected issues didn’t leave until almost 7pm. Once I did leave, I met Christine and Erin (a friend from our Life Group) for dinner at Joey’s Seafood and Grill. We had a coupon that we wanted to use before it expired. I enjoyed a dinner of steak, jambalaya, and rice & beans. It was quite good and the prices weren’t too bad. We stayed at the restaurant and talked, until 9pm. Then we went home and went to bed.

In case you wonder why you don’t see me or Christine online much — days like today are the reason why.

Today started early and didn’t let up until late. I had to be up and out the door early for an 8:30am All Epic Staff Meeting. That finished mercifully early around 10:10am and I was able to get into the office around 10:45am. I spent the day working on upgrade issues and several development projects. In the afternoon, I headed over to the Verona campus for a 3:00pm class on screening technical applicants. Over the next several months, I’ll be helping H.R. to screen applicants, through telephone interviews. After the training, I headed back to my Madison office to do some more work on my development projects.

At 6:10pm, I left the office and headed to Wendy’s for a chicken sandwich and a cup of chili. Before I left Wendy’s I picked up Christine’s standard meal (cheeseburger, ketchup only; baked potato with sour cream and chives) and headed over to Blackhawk. Blackhawk’s Senior Adult Fellowship partnered with the Worship Arts Community to put on the first ever “Blackhawk Hymn Sing”. We sang some of our old favorites:

• Come Thou Fount

• O God, Our Help in Ages Past

• What a Friend We Have in Jesus

• Hallelujah! What a Saviour

• Wonderful Grace of Jesus

• How Great Thou Art

• Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah

• Be Thou My Vision

• Amazing Grace

I’ve come to realize that the more I learn about theology, the more meaning the old hymns have. Today was busy, but the hymn sing was a perfect end to the night.

Sunday was a good day. I was able to help my brother publish his website. I was able to make some long overdue fixes to this blog and to my sister’s blog. I was able to talk to an old friend. Christine and I went to church and Life Group. While at Life Group, we talked about how to apply the love of 1st Corinthians 13 to life in a community (like a job, or a family, or a Life Group, or …).

Some not-so-good things: the temperature was only in the mid-teens all day. Due to a combination of my nap, our lunch, and shoveling the driveway, we were 20 minutes late to church and only barely arrived in time for the message. I didn’t get to file recent paperwork (which is really stacking up) or hang pictures around the house.

Looking ahead to next weekend: Saturday morning breakfast with another good friend, followed by a visit to the Wisconsin Memorial Union Art Gallery for an exhibit on Soviet Propoganda Posters. From the website:

This exhibition presents a glimpse of propaganda art created in the Soviet Union to express and disseminate Communist ideology. The images, which date from 1917-1977, include work by leading artists, such as Dmitrii Moor, Irakhlii Toizde, and Viktor Ivanov, who used visually stimulating techniques in order to convey the goals of the Soviet regime to the masses. The posters in the exhibition are reproductions printed in 1977 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution. They present a visual synopsis of the central events of Soviet history, from revolution, war, and industrialization to the Cold War, détente and the idealistic depiction of a united and egalitarian society.

Who wouldn’t be interested in that?

I’m sitting in my living room, watching the snow swirl down outside my window. It was clear and sunny most of the day, which was a blessing. I helped my friends, Tim and Maddy, move from their apartment into a townhouse. Although we still have four inches of snow on the ground, the ground was clear of ice. I spent three and a half hours with him, his friends, and his in-laws. We managed to move the vast majority of their belongings in one trip.

Now I’m at home, enjoying a quiet relaxing evening. We’d originally thought about having guests over, but everyone else seems to either be sick or otherwise engaged. We’ll manage, I’m sure.

I’m sitting in the Minneapolis airport, waiting for a connecting flight to Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas. I’m spending four days in Houston helping my customer (Kelsey-Seybold Clinics) Go-Live on Epic’s software. Hopefully it will be a boring week for everyone involved. Early Friday morning, I fly back to Madison.

I brought my camera with me, if I get a chance I’ll take some pictures and post them later.

UPDATE: I’m here now. Our plan touched down at 11:00pm and I got to the hotel at 12:30am. Our flight out of Minneapolis was delayed about an hour and a half, so we got in about an hour and a half late. Right now, I’m trying not to think about the fact that I only get four and a half hours of sleep before I get up to help with the Go-Live. I’m really praying that tomorrow goes well.

Christine and I decided it was high time that we saw more of Wisconsin than just Madison and Milwaukee. Fall is here and we wanted to experience the great outdoors before doing so became a test of endurance. We drove up to Devil’s Lake State Park hoping to see the leaves in full variegated color. Unfortunately, we were about 2 weeks too early for that. Fortunately, it didn’t matter. We had a great time anyway.

[fa:p:a=devils-lake-outing,id=263434499,j=r,s=t,l=p]We left the house around 1:30pm and headed out.

[fa:p:a=devils-lake-outing,id=263435082,j=l,s=t,l=p]First, we had to stop and fill up the tank.

[fa:p:a=devils-lake-outing,id=263436054,j=r,s=t,l=p]Using directions given to me by a co-worker, we decided to take the scenic route. We drove north on Route 12, then headed north-west on Route 188. Along the way, we passed some corn fields and more corn fields. Wisconsin may be known as the Dairy State, but I see far more corn around here than I do dairy cows. A short drive around the area will show you why ethanol is such a big deal in this state.

[fa:p:a=devils-lake-outing,id=263439161,j=l,s=t,l=p] We spent about an hour and a half waiting for the Merrimac Ferry. [fa:p:a=devils-lake-outing,id=263440002,j=r,s=t,l=p]It was okay though — we got to enjoy ice-cream while we waited. The Merrimac Ferry crosses the Lake Wisconsin (Indian for “dark waters”) and is the only free ferry in Wisconsin. It can carry 15 cars at a time, but it’s not a long trip or an oppressive wait.

[fa:p:a=devils-lake-outing,p=2,id=263449548,j=l,s=t,l=p] [fa:p:a=devils-lake-outing,p=2,id=263452298,j=r,s=t,l=p] Once we got to Devil’s Lake State Park, we spent a fair amount of time driving around the park, looking for a good trail to hike. Finally, we decided on the Parfrey Glenn waterfall route. The last half of the walk was quite spectacular and there was indeed a waterfall.

After we walked the trail, it was time to head home. We had a great tiem and we really enjoyed the opportunity to enjoy God’s creation and each other’s company. We’re already thinking about a return trip, once the baby arrives and Christine can do more walking.

View all of the pictures from this trip.

On August 15, we sat down with our Realtor, our mortgage banker, and a title representative to sign a thick stack of paperwork. On August 17, they sat down with the representatives of the estate of Cleo Ringhand and signed another thick stack of paperwork. With that, Christine and I officially became home owners. Along with that, we gained a heft mortgage and property tax bill. Ah… the American dream. (We now have the privilege of contributing towards the $5,238 that the Oregon school district spends per student.)

Before we bought the house, we had a home inspector go through it. He confirmed what we already knew: the house was older (probably built in the 60’s or early 70’s), but was structurally sound. There were four big areas of concern: the furnace was around 20 years old and near the end of its usable life. (It started out as an oil burner before being converted to natural gas.) The air conditioner was about the same age and was also near the end of its usable life. The roof is 20+ years old and doesn’t have long to go. Finally, the electrical outlets in the house were all ungrounded, two prong outlets.

Aside from those big ticket items, everything else in the house is in good shape. There’s still a lot of work we can do — the decor just screams “Grandma house” — but it will serve perfectly well even if we don’t change anything else. Still, those big ticket items were going to be expensive. So we did what any good American would do — we got someone else to pay for it. When we wrote the purchasing contract, we stipulated that the seller would put enough money in escrow for us to pay for half of the needed upgrades. They agreed and did.

We moved in on Saturday, August 26th. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over a month in our new home. On the other hand, we finally have most of our stuff unpacked and arranged so we must have been in the house for a while!

I posted some pictures that we took of the move-in. We’re still planning on shooting a video walk-through of our new property, we just haven’t had time to actually do it yet.

We’re back from our vacation. Our flight from Norfolk was delayed about half an hour. That was okay, though. Our flight from Philadelphia was delayed over an hour and a half. We landed in Chicago around 10:55pm CDT. We collected our luggage and waited until 11:25pm for our hotel to pick us up. Once we got back to the hotel, we were able to pick up our car and start the drive back to Madison. We started down 90 West around 11:50pm and arrived back in Madison around 2am this morning.

It was a good vacation. We were able to visit Nauticus the MacArthur Memorial, Colonial Williamsburg and Virginia Beach. More importantly, we were able to visit with many friends and family.

We took a decent number of photos and some videos. We may post it later, but no promises.

Everybody goes dancing, dancing USA.

Well, at least we do. DDR (Dance Dance Revolution). We’re using the StepMania software for our Mac. We bought two Red Octane pads to use with it. So, we can go dancing whenever we want now.

Want to watch?

[flv:http://disk.wordflood.net/public/vodcast/03-DDR.flv 320 240]

Our church is building a new building. It’s a decision that was made over a long period of time, after a lot of prayer and soul searching. As a result of their decision, they launched the “Imagine…” campaign. (Imagine Who…, Imagine How…). I think the new building will be a huge asset for the church body.

Two weeks ago, Blackhawk broke ground on the new church site. We were there and we took our video camera. Enjoy.

(There are also some professional photographs of the event available.)

[flv:http://disk.wordflood.net/public/vodcast/02-Blackhawk%20Groundbreaking.flv 320 240]

I’ve written a few posts over on Minor thoughts, that you may find interesting: Creation, Evolution, and God’s Temple ; First Madison Vote ; and Getting Comfortable With Debt.

Minor Thoughts, in case you weren’t aware, is where I post anything I write that isn’t directly related to Christine and me.

David Friedman has written a short guide to understanding accounting. After a quick read, I didn’t. The problem isn’t with his write-up, though. The problem is with accounting itself. I’ll keep re-reading it until I get it.

While I’m on the subject of buying a house, I’ll pass along a question I’ve been mulling over. Three months ago, I read a post at The Bored Investor where talked about paying down his mortgage. He talked about something I’ve considered: is it better to pay extra on the mortgage each month or is it better to save that extra money and pay the mortgage off in a big lump sum? The primary benefit of the former is that I’d pay less interest overall. The primary benefit of the latter is that I’d leave my money available for emergencies and other unexpected expenses.

Like I said, I read this three months ago. I still don’t have an answer, but if I ever do make up my mind, I’ll let you know.

While reading around the Internet this morning, I stumbled on a blogpost that offers 7 simple steps to grow your fortune. All of the steps on that list are good ideas. My wife and I already do most of them. While reading through the comments on the post, however, I found this statement:

One of the best pieces of advice I give my friends and family isn’t on your list - and that’s to buy a house.

An apartment is a money pit - you spend anywhere from $500-$1000/month for a place to live. What many people in their 20s don’t realize is that they may already be paying just as much as a house mortgage - or more.

The benefits are huge - you have your own place, you improve your credit, and you build equity. While you can’t cash out the equity in your house as easily as you would a savings account, many homes continue to appreciate in value - making you even more money.

Five or ten years from now when you move on to another home, you sell your house and all those months of paying mortgage aren’t lost - you use those as a down payment on an even better home.

It’s good advice and it’s advice that I’ve heard more than once. Unfortunately, it’s a little unrealistic for us for several reasons. To begin, let’s take a quick review of our finances:

• We currently have a little over $76,000 in student loan debt.

• Our student loan payments consume a little under 16% of my net income.

• Our current rent payments consume a little over 24% of my net income.

• In our current apartment, we are only responsible for our electric bill. That’s another 2% of my net income.

As you can see, 26% of my net income is tied up in housing expenses and 16% is tied up in debt. (I should mention that student loan debt is the only debt we currently have. Our car is paid off and we’ve paid off the other short term debt we had.) A grand total of 42% of my net income is currently tied up in either housing or long-term debt.

Now, let’s review the housing market in southern Wisconsin:

• The average 3-bedroom house in our area sells for $190,000 to $240,000.

• Property taxes for a house this size would be somewhere around $300 a month.

• The best case scenario for a monthly mortgage payment involves buying a $190,000 house with a $40,000 down payment. Assuming that’s the case, our monthly mortgage payments (on a 30-year mortgage) would be around $800 a month. If, for any reason, the down payment were smaller or the home were more expensive our mortgage payments could be as expensive as $1,200 a month.

Even in the best case scenario, we would need to spend at least 38% of my net income on housing. The actual amount would be even higher considering that we would need to pay for our own heat, water, trash removal, other utilities, and property taxes if we owned our own home.

As attractive as owning our own home would be, it would cost us almost twice as much as renting would. We’ve concentrated on cutting the fat out of our budget for the last 2 months. And while we do have a small budget surplus for incidental expenses, it’s simply not large enough to allow us to increase our required monthly expenses 12% or more. Until we’ve saved enough money for a large down-payment, home ownership simply isn’t affordable in Dane County.

I very much enjoyed Jonah Goldberg’s talk last night at the UW. He touched on a lot of topics during the talk, but kept things moving light and quick by constantly throwing in jokes and quips (“I apologize for drinking so much water up here, it’s just that I smoked all that pot before I came in.”). The talk took place in Grainger Hall, Room 1100. It was a fairly typical, medium-sized lecture hall, about half full.

I admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the rest of the audience, Jonah being conservative and Madison being, well, not. Everyone was very attentive however and seemed to enjoy the evening as much as I did. The Badger Herald published a write-up this morning: Goldberg slams liberal media bias. The write-up is generally very good. I do have a slight issue with some of the content at the end:

In relation to his criticisms on natural disasters, Goldberg said the number of hurricanes has not increased in recent years and the data “flatly does not support it.”

But Brian Shactman, chairman of College Democrats, said the numbers of Hurricane Katrina speak for themselves, and pictures do not lie. Shactman also said everyone saw the faulty relief response by the government, and added it is the “typical Republican response to blame the liberal media.”

Shactman said the increase in the number of hurricanes each year and the warming of ocean water temperatures necessitates a deeper look into the possible effects of global warming.

This part of the article is somewhat misleading. The reporter allows Shactman to say that “the numbers speak for themselves”, “pictures do not lie”, and there has been an “increase in the number of hurricanes each year”. Jonah spent about 10 minutes of his speech refuting these very points. He pointed out that coastal areas are far more built up now than they were 50 years ago. Ergo, coastal hurricanes cause far more damage than they did 50 years ago. The strength of the hurricanes is the same, but today they’re blowing over “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” instead of shanties and moonshine factories. The numbers may not lie, but they’re certainly misleading.

Secondly, Jonah specifically addressed the question of an increase in hurricanes. He pointed out that hurricane intensity is on a 30-year cycle. Right now, we are in the high side of the cycle. Later on, we will move to the low side of the cycle. Again, the number of hurricanes may be increasing, but it would be misleading to imply that global warming is the only cause. (This is a great example of confirmation bias, which is another topic that Jonah covered extensively in his talk.)

I would hate to imply that the Badger Herald (or just Joanna Pliner) is biased, but I do find it interesting that they allowed the chairman of the College Democrats to get in some emotionally loaded statements while printing only that Goldberg said the data “flatly does not support it”. The end result is to portray Goldberg as a man who is unable to see the blatantly obvious and who has no response to Democratic logic. Had I written the article, I would have printed Shactman’s statements but also printed Goldberg’s response to those statements. Alas, I am merely a blogger and cannot hope to compete with objective reporters.

UPDATE: Several Madison bloggers were in attendance last night: Uncle Jimbo, Bob Thelan / The Freedom Fighter and both members of Letters in Bottles. Apparently Ann Althouse was also in attendence, although she didn’t blog about it. I’ve really got to get my blog back up and running so I can actually hang out with the bloggers. It would be somewhat awkward to say “Hi, I’m a blogger too! Well, no, I don’t actually have a blog at the moment…”.

UPDATE, the second: Jonah mentioned Groundhog Day as one of his favorite movies. He also mentioned that he’d written a column, last year, about the movie. This morning, National Review was kind enough to post A Movie for All Time.