Retreated

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This past weekend, Rebecca, Catherine and I traveled down to Cape Cod to attend [our church](http://www.danestchurch.org/)’s retreat at the [Craigville Conference Center](http://craigville.org/). We had a great time hanging out with and getting to know the folks from our church. The three of us had a nice little private apartment in the bottom of a large four story cottage that housed a number of other families from the church. We had some workshops on the spiritual disciplines, ate all of our meals together, and had plenty of free time for playing games and chatting. The weather wasn’t the nicest, but we still enjoyed it.

Group Photo

You can see the photos from the retreat in our gallery.

The Basement: Officially Official

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This morning, the Danvers building inspector stopped by and gave us the seal (or signature, rather) of approval!

building permit

The assessor stopped by shortly thereafter, which means that our tax bill will be going up (not so good) but also that our house will officially be more valuable (good for when we sell it).

So now we can officially move in! Hopefully we’ll work on that this Saturday. Other than that, there are a few minor things to touch up, like adding some handles to the doors and putting a top piece on the half wall, but that won’t stop us from moving things in!

We’ve come a long way since we started working on the basement. To show just how far, here’s a pic from before:

building permit

And here’s after:

building permit

See more before pics and after pics.

First Winter Preparation…

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Have you heard that the Old Farmers Almanac is predicting a particularly cold winter this year? OFA forecasts are prepared two years in advance, which leaves a lot of room for error. In our neck of the woods, however, winter can usually be counted on to be cold.

With the cost of heating the way it is, we’re already planning for the chilly weather. I finished up a little project this weekend to help keep Catherine toasty at night: flannel sheets! Flannel sheets are always a little nicer to climb into on frosty winter nights.

I’ve mentioned before that I like to find a second hand source for the things I need/want whenever possible. This project was no different, so I paid a visit to a new store in my grocery plaza- Savers. I’ve heard tell of Savers from friends in other parts of the country, but this is the first one around here. It is sort of a nicer, more organized Thrift Shop.

I quickly came across what I needed, a queen sized flannel sheet for the low, low price of $3.99. I snatched it up and ran it through the wash. Then, using this tutorial, and some too-wide (but all I had) elastic, I set to work. I was able to get on crib sized fitted sheet and an average sized pillowcase out of the one sheet. Had I planned better and wasn’t so set on reusing the manufacturer’s hems I might have been able to get a second sheet. Next time around I think I could make due with just a full sized sheet to start out with.

sheets

All told, the cutting and sewing probably took me 2 hours. The sheets fit her little bed perfectly and I can’t wait for her to snuggle in this winter.

Modern Archaeology

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I was bushwacking and cutting some brush on the far side of our driveway today. As I kicked around some branches on the ground I dislodged an historic artifact. Brushing off the dirt with my shirt I discovered it to be a Motorola i1000plus cellular phone; circa 2001.

phone
open phone

It’s huge, doesn’t turn on, has moisture in the screen and has become Catherine’s favorite plaything. She’s been calling all her friends on it for the past several hours!

cPhone

The Curious Incident with the Tree in the Night-Time

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Peter and I both woke up around 7:15 this morning. He went downstairs for something and I went to the bathroom and back to bed. A minute or two later I heard the baby gate swing closed and moments after that Peter came into our room and said, “You need to go look outside!”

Still groggy from waking up, and a little bothered that I wasn’t still in bed, I stumbled out to the front door, stepped outside and saw this:

tree vs. car

We knew that a big storm had blown through, but had no idea it was causing this kind of damage! Peter and I quickly assessed the cars and much to our surprise there seemed to be no damage at all! What a blessing and a miracle! I’d imagine that had the cars been smashed, the following activities would not have been as much fun as they were!

surveying

Surveying the tree

trimming

Trimming the branches

help

Accepting help from a neighbor with a chainsaw

unharmed!

Thanking the Lord for two undamaged cars!

By 8:15 the tree had been totally cleared from the yard by Peter, neighbor, Catherine and myself. Not bad for an hours worth of work! All the pics from our adventure can be found in their gallery album here.

Let There Be Light!

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View looking from the laundry area into the living room
Into the living room

And there was light! And, more importantly, electricity. Yes, our electrician came back today to do his finish electrical work in the basement. He has a few small things to finish up tomorrow, but for the most part everything electrical is finished. We’ve got six recessed lights in the living room, wrap lights in the laundry area and storage room, and working receptacles and switches all over the place. He also took care of a few non-basement items upstairs, like installing a new light in the ceiling above the kitchen sink, installing a larger GFCI receptacle in the bathroom, and fixing/updating a receptacle in the kitchen that wasn’t grounded properly (!).

Having electricity and working lights downstairs really goes a long way to making the basement look almost finished. The bright lighting also helps to point out all of the little imperfections in our painting and drywalling, most of which we’ll probably let slide, but some of which we’ll want to fix. More importantly, it will make it much easier to get our work finished, since we won’t have to rely solely on the one portable work light we had been using.

Earlier this week, I worked on getting the French doors painted. We have a bit of clean-up work to do on that, removing the remaining bits of plastic sheet covering the glass, and scraping off the paint that managed to get through and around the plastic. I also got things all cleaned up and rearranged the storage room so that the electrician could have access to the electrical panel. And I did a bit of touch up gooping and painting on a few other areas around the basement.

What’s left? We still need to do a bit more touch-up gooping and painting, lay down the flooring, install the baseboard moulding around the living room and laundry area, install the casing around the French doors and the door to outside, raise the cabinets over the washer/dryer, install a door in front of the washer/dryer, install latches and handles on the French doors, and get the final electrical and building inspections. After that, we can move in! We still have a way to go, but it feels so close!

Here are some photos I took tonight, showing what it looks like with most of the painting done and the lights on!

An Announcement

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Peter and I are happy to announce that, come the end of February, our little Catherine will be a big sister!

Catherine Prepares

We haven’t really told her yet (9 months is a long time to wait when you’re 2!) but I did discover her reading my most recent library book. She must have a gut feeling and want to be prepared!

Why I didn’t buy an iPhone

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I want an iPhone. Really, I do. I love the idea of having this spiffy little device with a gorgeous screen and the ability to get online from just about anywhere. I’d love to have my phone, cameara, multimedia player, organizer, and applications all running on the same slim device. I’ve seen the iPhone, played around with it, heard lots of love stories. There’s also the fact that just about every web developer seems to have one. It’s only $199, so why not take the plunge?

Let’s take a look at what would be involved in my potential acquisition of an iPhone.

First, I’d need to purchase the iPhone. The price is $199 with a two-year contract through AT&T. Then, I’d need to sign up for a service plan. The cheapest individual AT&T plan that works with the iPhone is $69.99 plus tax and fees. That’s $69.99 out of our monthly budget for at least the next two years, which works out to $1679.76 over the two year span. So for $1878.76 over two years, I’d have my very own iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, our budget is pretty tight, and we simply don’t have the extra funds to spend on the added monthly fees. So there’s a fairly clear reason not to buy an iPhone.

Now, let’s think about workarounds. Rebecca and I already have cell phones, with a Sprint plan that costs $59.99/month and allows us to share minutes between our phones. So couldn’t we cancel our plan and use that money toward the iPhone and AT&T service plan? Sure, but there are a few problems. First, our contract with Sprint is still in effect, so we would need to cancel that and pay the $200 early termination fee. Signing up for the $69.99 individual plan above would leave Rebecca without a cell phone, so we’d need to sign her up for her own cell phone. If you have tons of unpaid bills, get help and check out www.moneyfall and learn more online. The cheapest plan I could find for the amount of minutes she normally uses is an AT&T GoPhone prepaid plan for $39.99. So we would both end up with phones for about $50 more per month, which is $20 less than we’d spend if I went straight for the iPhone. But still, $50 is not a small amount in our monthly budget, so this isn’t all that appealing. Plus, we’d be adding the $200 early termination fee onto the purchase price of the iPhone for a total of $399 spent up front.

There are other factors as well. We’ve been Sprint customers since 2000, so we have a fair amount of brand loyalty. Their service is excellent everywhere that we need it, call quality is crystal clear, and the plan we have is a good deal. I’ve not heard good things about AT&T’s service or call quality in this area. Also, the above-mentioned plan from AT&T doesn’t include any text messaging, which I’d almost certainly want to use, so that would be an extra $5-$20 per month depending on the amount of messages I wanted to send. And of course, there is the fact that Rebecca would also love to have an iPhone, and in order to have a shared plan for two iPhones, the cost for the plan jumps to a minimum of $129.99, which would put us back at the same price as if we had kept both of our Sprint phones and our Sprint plan active. Not to mention buying a second iPhone for another $199 (that’s $600 for two iPhones and one early termination fee). Finally, there’s the fact that even though it would be really cool to use the Internet from anywhere, it’s not something that I really *need* to have.

In reality, it all comes down to the extra monthly service charges. If it was just the early termination fee and the purchase price I had to deal with, I’d be willing to consider it. It’s not hard to come up with that kind of money in the short term. But consistently paying an additional $50-$70 per month for the lifetime of the account for something I don’t really need just isn’t worth it. Perhaps if I was able to claim it as a business expense and write off the monthly fee, or if my company was subsidizing the extra cost, I’d go for it. Or if I got an enormous raise and forgot about all of the other things my family needs to have or would like to do. But for now, the iPhone is out of the picture.

Which is why I bought an iPod Touch. More on that later, but for now, here are some photos.

Update, 06/09/2009

With yesterday’s introduction of the iPhone 3G S at $199, Apple also knocked the price of the iPhone 3G down to $99. While this is definitely cheaper, I still am unable to bring myself to buy an iPhone because:

  • It’s only available on AT&T
  • The required data plans are still priced out of our range

However, I am very excited about the iPhone 3.0 software update, which will also work on my iPod Touch, and which I will certainly be willing to pay $9.95 for.