We had a lot of fun with our girls this weekend. On Saturday, we setup Esther’s pool and let her splash in it for the first time this year. She had fun, even though the water was still cold.
Esther had fun watching the pool fill up, once Papa told her that it was “just like the bathtub”.
Papa had to help Esther climb up the slide. It was very slippery, since someone put soap on it last year.
As you can see from Esther’s expression, it was a cold splash at the bottom!
Tonight, after cooking steak on the grill, we took the girls outside for some s’mores. Esther had fun helping Momma with the marshmallows. She also knows all about grill safety: she loudly told Katya “Hot, Katya! Hot! Go around and around and around!” This was while I was still holding Katya.
Katya watched the proceedings from her camp chair. She jumped up and down it. She thinks she’s pretty big stuff now that she can climb into the chair by herself and stand up in it.
Papa carefully put her chair in the grass so she’d have a soft landing when she dumped it. (Which she did twice. But she emerged completely unscathed each time.)
Of course, she can barely see over the back of the chair when she pulls herself up. But that doesn’t bother her one bit. If she needs to, she’ll pull down on the chair back, so she can see over.
I just had two nice, young college age boys stop by my house. They were in the area representing a window installation company. Their company is trying to drum up business by setting up appointments for their “consultants” to tell me how their energy efficient windows will save me money on my energy bills.
That’s a sales pitch that only works for those who don’t think about it. I have thought about it, so I made them think about it.
I asked a simple question: “what’s the payoff time? how long would it take for the new windows to pay for themselves?”
Well, they tried to duck the question. “That’d be a great question for our consultants…”
I interrupted: “Do you have a ballpark estimate?”
“No.”
“Tell your consultants to send you out with a ballpark next time and I might be willing to talk.” I didn’t let them leave me a flyer either.
I’ve done the math on this before. My gas / electric bill is $170 a month. Installing new windows throughout the entire house will cost us between $2500 and $7000, depending on the make, model, and installer. It’s a simple problem of division. Assuming their windows were miracle windows and eliminated my entire energy bill (hah!), it would take between 15 and 41 years for my new windows to pay for themselves.
There are many good reasons to install new windows. Energy efficiency is not one of them. Not even close.
Well, 19 days after breaking my lawnmower, I finally have it back in working condition.
I took it to Stoughton Lumber on Thursday, May 21 and dropped it off. Today we received an invoice for $93.85, letting us know it was ready for pickup. I stopped by on my way home work and picked it up.
As soon as I got home, I mowed a test strip of the lawn. The engine sounds perfect, far better than it did before I broke the carburetor. And a good thing too: our grass is very tall and overdue for a mowing.
And, now, for something completely different. It’s time for another financial breakdown.
Now that we have two children, we’ve been considering buying a minivan. There are a couple of excellent reasons to do so. We’ve taken a couple of overnight driving trips. Once you include two pack’n’play’s, clothes for the entire family, at least one stroller, and a bag of toys you’ve pretty much run out of trunk space. Then there’s the matter of spare diapers, wet wipes, baby food, baby formula, etc. Simply put, young children require a lot of trunk space.
There’s also the matter of visitors. Once you put two car seats in the back seat, the Camry is pretty much full. Going anywhere with visitors means driving two cars. A minivan would let us fit a lot more people into our car and would save us from doing caravans around Dane County.
But can we afford to buy a van? Ah, now that’s a badger of a different color. Let’s break down the decision. (For purposes of comparison, I’m assuming that we swap the Camry for a Honda Odyssey.)
(more…)
Have I been working too much lately? Well, let’s run the numbers.
| Period |
Hours a Week |
| 2005 |
41 |
| 2006 |
43 |
| 2007 |
42 |
| 2008 |
42 |
| 2009 |
46 |
And, now, let’s zoom into the 2009 numbers a bit.
| Period |
Hours a Week |
| January, 2009 |
43 |
| February, 2009 |
47 |
| March, 2009 |
49 |
| April, 2009 |
51 |
| May, 2009 |
52 |
In addition to that, I’ve put in hours on 5 of the last 7 weekends — including 3 of the last 4. I don’t much care for the direction that the trend line has been moving in. I’m going to work harder on working harder so that I can work less.
