Noonan!
A-Rod is a dick. He may just have cursed the Yankees' season with that Little League "Ha!" last night. But then again, he was just making up for his stupid not letting the ball roll foul play the day before that essentially cost them the game. Great player, it's just sometimes (like the swipe the ball play against the Red Sox in the playoffs), you wonder where his head is at.
My Favorite Businesses
Free Money Finance has a little post about his favorite companies that I thought I would propogate here.
Costco - One of his favorites too. If it were closer to us, we'd probably be there all the time, if only to get Ellie her meal's worth of samples. Good prices on quality stuff.
Microcenter - For all my geeky needs. They are geeky enough to have solder, but rational enough to have cheap HDTVs.
Starbucks - I cannot help myself. They are an evil empire, but deliciously evil.
Google - My life is stored online because of Google.
Chipotle - No, I do not care about the nutritional value, or lack thereof, of my burrito.
Other places I like: Whole Foods, Pentagon Federal Credit Union (refinancing through them now, it's been a very good experience), farmers markets, Five Guys Burgers, Cenan's Bakery, Norm's Beer and Wine. I like supporting our local businesses.
Who do you like doing business with?
What’s the word I’m looking for?
Ellie crashed last night just before dinner. Normally, we don't like her going to bed without eating, but we've all caught a little cold, so we figured she could probably use the sleep. Evan also fell asleep early, around 8pm. So there we were, with two kids asleep at 8pm, trying to remember what we did at night before we had kids. Something starting with 'S,' that you do in bed.... Oh yeah, SLEEP!
Can I Sleep Now?
Talk about your busy weekends. I'm no pro, but my liver got quite the workout. Saturday, we went up to Baltimore for the Orioles game, and Evan's godmother's birthday. Evan's godfather Bill had some good beers, so I had to partake. We left the game at 9:15 since Evan was getting fussy, and surprisingly, the Orioles were scoring a lot of runs, meaning the fans were pretty loud. We didn't get home until after 11pm, and yet Ellie was not wanting to go to sleep. On Sunday, we braved (or stupided, if I could verbify an adjective) the crowds of "Rolling Thunder" to head downtown, since our friend Mary Beth was doing a speech for the Quilt of Tears group. Getting down there on the Metro wasn't too bad, but we were pretty well isolated and couldn't get back to a Metro station except by walking all the way down to the Smithsonian station. Not going to do that again, though it was interesting to see all the people down at the Vietnam Memorial. We dropped the kids off at Mary Beth's and headed out to the Jewish wedding that night. More free booze, this time the hard stuff. For the first time, a Manhattan tasted good to me. The wedding was fun, but the reception took a long time, and poor Mary Beth was subjected to an Evan crying fit before we got back.
Finally on Monday was our big sometimes annual Memorial Day BBQ. This year we had a whole bunch of families with kids from the neighborhood over, which was surprisingly fun. Lisa made some good beer selections at Costco, and we had some good sangria as well. The sprinkler was on, and summer is officially here. I just hope my liver survives it.
Disneyworld Day 5: Epcot
Our last day at Disneyworld brought us to Epcot. We had only briefly visited Epcot earlier in the week, so we were looking forward to seeing some new stuff. We got there really early and Lisa and I headed immediately over to Test Track for some adult ride time. There was no line, but since we had the kids we had to take turns riding single. Pretty fun ride, and we were glad to have gotten to try it. Ellie didn't like the noise though, so we went to get some breakfast while Lisa rode. Coincidentally, right next to the restaurant was Soarin, and Lisa and I got Fast Passes to ride that later on.
Eventually we met up with Colin and the grandparents and headed over to the Seas featuring Nemo.
I think this picture was actually taken later in the day, but it fits in with the Nemo theme. Ellie actually wore her bathing suit, as you will see shortly, and had lots of fun getting wet.
After our ride on Soarin, which actually had a somewhat long wait even with a FastPass, we headed over to Les Chefs de France for lunch. Lisa snitched on me to the waiter, who was actually nice and didn't speak rapid-fire French that I couldn't understand. I think he was secretly pleased when I ordered the escargots though.
After lunch, we took in some of the sights of the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival. They had some interesting topiaries, and some activities for the kids as well. Ellie made a clothespin caterpillar, and they also had a ladybug release.
The ladybugs were in a box where they had been sleeping until we let them out to crawl on my hands. Ellie liked looking, but not feeling them.
Told you she wore her bathing suit. She also didn't want to change afterward, in case you couldn't tell.
They also had a cool little railroad, complete with a village and teeny tiny little crops. That killed a good 30-45 minutes for the kids.
Ellie wasn't too interested in meeting this guy, she hasn't seen the Lion King yet. But then we told her he was a meerkat, and she went nuts. She likes watching the occasional episode of Meerkat Manor and has been known to take in a YouTube meerkat video or two.
Quite possibly the best topiary ever.
As it turns out, Epcot has a lot of nice slow boat ride-type rides that the kids enjoyed. There was one we took in "Mexico" featuring Donald Duck as one of the Three Caballeros. There's Living with the Land, with the look at the Disney experimental greenhouses. And Ellie's favorite was Journey Into Imagination With Figment. She loved that little dragon guy.
We finally got the cousins to sit for a decent picture together. Unfortunately, the older kids didn't quite support Evan as well as we had hoped.
We stopped off at a fun playground on the way over to our last dinner. Evan did his best Spiderman impression. Not bad for 5 months old.
Our dinner was a buffet-style gathering with a whole lot of other people. Most were there for family reunions or special occasions. The cool part was that we got to hang and dance with Minnie and Goofy, and we got front row seats to the fireworks show afterward.
I guess we should have warned Minnie that Evan puts everything in his mouth. Luckily her nose was not a choking hazard.
I left the table for a minute to go get some more food, and left Ellie and Lisa dancing around with Goofy and Minnie. By the time I got back to the table, Goofy had grabbed Ellie and was leading her along in a Conga line! Luckily I was quick with the camera. It was one of the few times that she wasn't shy around the characters.
A fine memento of our last night at Disneyworld. We can't wait to do it again!
Online Banking Getting More Interesting
Salem Five Direct is offering 5% (or more) on their checking accounts, with no minimum balance, and they refund all ATM fees. They also have a $25 bonus for signing up for direct deposit.
The only catch is that it's all online, so you'd have to keep a local branch account to make deposits, then transfer to them online, which is what we can do with HSBC right now. A bit of a pain, but considering that we don't get too many checks as it is, it's not bad. I had been considering opening an account with Presidential Bank, as they are local to us but have a high-yield checking account, but they have a $1000 minimum balance requirement. I'm also interested to see what HSBC is planning as far as their own high-yield checking account. I'm pretty sure that an interest-earning checking account is in our future.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
My review
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really suck when it comes to reading non-fiction. It always, regardless of how interesting the topic is, takes me longer to read a non-fiction book than an equally long work of fiction. All that aside, 1491 is a good read. It will challenge what you thought you knew about America before Columbus, and it might just change the way you look at the environment and the rest of your life. It's not a guilt trip, it doesn't make you feel bad for being the descendent of the Europeans who wiped out the natives with disease and war, but it opens your eyes to the wonder of the people who lived here first.
Next up is another non-fiction book (uh oh) that hits a hot topic for me at the moment, The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias.
I Made It Back
The ride home actually seemed a little bit easier, although it was a lot tougher on my butt. Definitely no bike riding for a while. The rain held off, for the most part, and the roads were just fine to ride on. But again, I'd need more bike training before doing this regularly. It hurts.
I Made It
I managed to ride my bike to work today, on the actual day, unlike last year when it was pouring rain and I wimped out. There's still a chance of rain this afternoon, so we'll see how that goes. It was a good day to ride, nice and cool, and I left early enough that there weren't a huge amount of cars on the road.
Last night, I made butter. After reading about it on Z Recommends, we asked Ellie if she might want to try it sometime. She didn't believe us that butter was made from milk/cream. So naturally, we had to show her. She didn't want to shake the container, so I ended up doing it all. Evan helped a little, but then fell asleep on my lap to the rhythmic shaking. After shaking for a while (10 minutes maybe? I wasn't keeping track), we had whipped cream. After shaking it really hard for another minute or so, the cream had separated out into butter and buttermilk, and we drained the buttermilk a couple of times, and then we were done. The butter from scratch was delicious on our Zingerman's bread (Mother's Day gift for Lisa). And Ellie was... mildly amazed.
How Does Your Net Worth Compare?
After consolidating all of my financial information at Yodlee, I was able to get a good idea of what my net worth was (I do have a couple of other accounts to finish setting up, but they have only minor amounts in them). Then, via Free Money Finance, I found this article from CNN Money about net worth killers. On the first page of the article is a net worth comparison calculator, so you can see how you stack up against your age group and income level. Here's a direct link to the calculator. Thanks to our house, I am 150 times over the median for my age group. But since I just moved into a higher income level, I am slightly behind the median there. I am still $80k ahead of the median for the lower income level which I just left in December.
Lisa and I have been talking a lot about this stuff lately, so I feel like there is still a lot we have left to do to get our financial house in order. Lisa is even rereading "The Wealthy Barber," and I am listening to Jane Bryant Quinn's Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People and have Andrew Tobias' The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need on hold at the library.
So see how you stack up, and check out the article's tips if you don't stack up. I particularly recommend item #5: Always getting what you want.
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