RSS FeedAn expensive week
Why is it when something expensive happens, something else expensive usually likes to follow right behind? Or, in the case of this past week, expensive comes in threes.
I don’t know how many of my loyal readers know that my son had eye surgery when he was really young and wore for a few years. He had a lazy eye that seemed to get better over time. After some time wearing the glasses, his eyes got better and he no longer had to wear glasses.
Fast forward to last week. Paxton’s eyes have been going back to their old ways. He had an eye appointment and it was determined that he once again needs glasses. New frames and lenses to the tune of $450. Ouch.
Next it’s time for Chris to go for an MRI on her shoulder. She has been in considerable pain recently and one of the doctors she’s seen recently thinks that she may need surgery. Another doctor thinks that she has a tear that may just need some time to heal. Hopefully the MRI will show that she doesn’t need surgery.
When it came time to pay for the MRI, the gal behind the counter said, with a straight face, $450. Ouch again! I have no idea why our insurance didn’t cover more of this. I’m going to have to resubmit the claim and see if they’ll reimburse us for some of that. Brutal.
As if that wasn’t enough, let’s talk about the enjoyment of home ownership. A couple years back we replaced our air conditioning units. Talk about sticker shock. Well, when you purchase brand new units, you would assume that you will go at least a few years without requiring repairs, right? Right? Wrong! Shortly after having them installed we ended up having to have one of them replaced. That was on their dime, so I didn’t care too much. However, when we had the company out last week to figure out why our upstairs unit was blowing nothing but warm air, he gave us two options: replace the compressor (no charge} or, replace the unit ($700). The $700 being the cost of renting the crane and what-not, but damn, that’s a lot of coin. So after some debate, we went ahead and opted for the free route. I’m fairly certain this will come back to bite me in about 4 years, but really, who knows where any of us will be in 4 years.
And finally, the garage door. Our garage door opener has been acting up lately. On Friday we made an appointment to have the opener replaced on Monday. The new opener plus installation was going to cost us $250. Thanks to being home sick, I was able to see when the installer pointed out that not only was the opener itself dead, but one of the springs had also snapped. Go ahead and add an additional $260.
So there ya go. The joys of home ownership and medical bills. There is NEVER a good time for unexpected expenses. But why does it always seem to happen at what feels like the worst possible time?
Mel Fisher & National Treasure
Last week I borrowed the movie National Treasure, but I didn’t get a chance to watch it until yesterday. After watching the movie (which is really good, BTW) I had some extra time to kill so I decided to watch all the bonus features. They had the usual deleted/extended scenes plus some on-the-set documentaries and such, but the coolest part had to do with modern day treasure hunters. Most notably, Mel Fisher. If you have never heard of Mel Fisher, here’s a quick snippet from his web site:
Mel Fisher, a dreamer, a visionary, a legend and most importantly, the World’s Greatest Treasure Hunter! Mel Fisher did what many have not - he realized his dream during his lifetime. Everyday he insisted, “Today’s the Day”! His mantra continues to inspire the search for the rest of the treasure from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha and the Santa Margarita, the Spanish galleons that sank during a hurricane on September 6, 1622, near Key West, Florida.
Mel Fisher suffered many personal losses to keep his dream alive during his 16 year search and endured over 100 court battles which ended in victory in the US Supreme Court. The riches Mel Fisher, his team and investors had worked so hard for all those years were finally theirs. The $450 million dollar treasure cache or “Atocha Mother Lode” would be found on that momentous day, July 20, 1985. Over 40 tons of silver and gold were located including over 100,000 Spanish silver coins known as “Pieces of Eight”, gold coins, Columbian emeralds, silver and gold artifacts and over 1000 silver bars.
Many years ago I went on vacation with my grandparents. We drove in a motor home from Los Angeles to Key West Florida and back. While in Key West I had the privilege to meet Mel Fisher and somewhere I have a photo of Mel, my grandpa and myself with a gold chain that must be 20 feet long wrapped around all our necks. It was definitely one of the highlights of the vacation.
While we were at the Mel’s museum my grandpa purchased one of the silver coins from the Atocha which he wore around his neck for many, many years. When he passed away a few years back he passed the necklace on to me. It is, without a doubt, one of my most prized possessions.
If you are ever in Key West, be sure to check out the Mel Fisher Museum. The treasure on display is absolutely amazing. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to share that experience with my grandparents all those years ago, and I hope one day I’ll get to share it with my kids or even my grandkids.
A Musical Christmas
This year Christmas seemed to be at least a week long. Traveling to California to celebrate Christmas with family was a bit of a last minute idea, but turned out to be a great one. We don’t get out there very much these days, so I’m glad we decided to make that happen. My sister is such an awesome host. She always gives us her bedroom and she sleeps on the coach while we are in town. Thanks, Nic!
This Christmas ended up being very musical in nature. We got our Son a candy-apple red Ibanez guitar and amplifier. The rest of the family all bought him gifts to go along with the guitar, like a guitar stand, strap, tuner and an instructional DVD/book. He’s quite stoked. I really hope he takes an interest in playing it.
For my Daughter, we got her a Casio keyboard. It has a TON of features on it. Lot’s of background tunes that you can play along with. We still need to pick her up an instructional DVD/book, though. I’m pretty sure that she’s going to take to the piano like a fish to water. We shall see.
I hope you all had a great Christmas!
Cheers!
Enjoying more family and some sillyness
Last night was to be our last night in California before heading back home to celebrate Christmas at our place. We, of course, had dinner at Captain Kidd’s again. That makes 3 meals at Kidd’s in about 25 hours. Did I mention I like that place?
At dinner we met up with my cousin, her boyfriend and her son. I haven’t seen them in quite some time. It’s either been 5 or 8 years. We aren’t sure exactly which. Since her son is currently 10, he’s grown QUITE a lot since we last saw him. Amazing how time flies. It was nice to hang out with them, even if it was only for an hour or two.
Let me share some photos with you from the weekend:
This was my sister wearing a luchador sweatshirt. It zips all the way up the front over your face. It has mesh for eye holes so you can still see. It’s painted like a luchador mask. She works on the docks so she said it would keep her face nice and warm. Sadly, we weren’t able to talk her in to buying it. A shame.
We passed this lady as we returned home this morning. I could not pass up taking a shot of her wearing sweats and a leopard print jacket. Apparently she doesn’t own a single mirror.
And finally, my personal favorite…
While at lunch yesterday, we saw a lady who had an ass gasket (the piece of paper you put down on the toilet seat to keep the germs off your bum) tucked in to the back of her pants. I walked over, snapped the photo and returned to our table.
We had a great time in California hanging out with family. I hope we can do it again soon.
Family Dinner at Captain Kidd’s
If you know me even a little bit, you probably know that my family owns a fish market / restaurant in Redondo Beach, California named Captain Kidd’s and, despite the fact that I worked there for over 11 years, it is still my favorite place in the world to eat. Every time we head to California to see family, our first stop is always Captain Kidd’s.
We left Vegas about 2pm and arrived at Kidd’s around 6:30. My grandma was already there, and my sister showed up a few minutes later with her three kids. My mom and dad would show up a while later. We are in California pretty rarely, so it’s always nice to meet up at the restaurant with the family for dinner.
Dinner was awesome, as usual. My wife had a Pacific lobster and I had shark, scallops and shrimp. Oh, that’s after I had a bowl of clam chowder. Yum, it was so good.
After dinner we exchanged Christmas gifts and took a bunch of pictures. After a couple hours at the restaurant the kids were all getting pretty restless. We headed back to my sister’s place. With the 200 mile distance between us, my kids don’t get a lot of chances to play with their cousins, so it’s nice that they get to spend an evening playing games with them.
Tomorrow we’ll head back to Captain Kidd’s for lunch. The rest of the day is sorta up in the air right now. As for dinner plans, I’ll see what I can do about getting us back to Kidd’s one more time.
Family get together
Last night we had an early Christmas celebration with my mother-in-law and both brother-in-laws and their families. One of the B-i-Ls is going out of town for the holidays so this was going to be our last chance to see them before Christmas.
As soon as they got here, Rock Band was in full effect. It is such a great party game. The funny part was that before anybody had tried it, they all kept saying that they weren’t going to sing. But, as soon as one person did it, everybody else wanted their turn at it. Who cares how bad you sing? Just get up there and belt it out. Have fun. And that’s what we did.
I was pretty stoked because after everybody tried the drums, most people decided to stick to guitar or vocals. That meant I got to stay and play drums on almost every song. Damn, Metallica’s Enter Sandman drives me nuts. There is one section on it that just confounds me. Even on the easy level. Though, I did move up and play on Medium for a bunch of the songs.
Only the B-i-L that is going out of town and his wife opened gifts. Mainly because we forced them to. They are basically newlyweds, so we thought it would be a lot of fun to give them a book I found called “Position of the Day“. It has diagrams for all sorts of interesting sexual positions to try during the year. One is called the “YouTube” and the picture shows both people holding video cameras. If they try that one out, I would rather not receive a link to the results. I shot video of them opening the gift. You can see it here.
Good times.
How to talk to your kids about pregnancy
Recently on CNN.com I read this article about Jamie Lynn Spears (little sister to Britney Spears) announcing that she’s pregnant. While I could care less about her being pregnant, but they were talking about how parents are going to explain to their children who may watch Jamie’s show Zoey 101 on Nickelodeon. Since I have two teenagers at home, this is definitely a topic I wanted to follow up on.
I consider myself very lucky that I have two fantastic children who are respectful of others, don’t get in to trouble at school and have zero interest in drinking or drugs. Seriously, with that stuff out of the way, anything else that comes up with the kids is pretty small potatoes. Sure, I can’t get my son to clean his room to save my life. But if it’s a choice between a clean room and having to worry that they are out doing drugs or shoplifting, I’ll take the messy room.
Last night while we were out shopping, I brought up this subject with my wife. I explained everything I had read on CNN.com and how some of the parents who had responded to the article had said that they would use this news as a way to talk to their kids about making smart choices and waiting until they are older to experiment with having sex.
This morning, after my wife dropped off the kids at school, she came in to the room while I was getting ready for work and tells me that she spoke with the kids this morning on the way to school. I asked how it went. She says the following:
I asked them if they knew who Jaime Lynn Spears was. Our son said, “Yeah, she’s pregnant.” I said that I know I have good kids who make smart choices and I am very proud of them. I realize that you are teenagers and that you may be starting to have questions about sex. So, if you do have any questions, ask your Father.
She sold me up the river. Damn her!
OK, actually, she told me that they all three got a big laugh out of it.
Not only am I lucky to have two great kids, I have an amazing wife who knows how to talk to our kids about sensitive topics without turning them in to embarrassing situations. Be setting a light-hearted tone she opens the door for the kids to ask questions in a non-threatening environment.