this year was the 10-year anniversary of the shootings at columbine. the week of the anniversary, colorado public radio did a big series of interviews with people related to the tragedy; one of the interviews was with dave cullen, whose book columbine was released for the anniversary. i decided to check it out from the library, and after a month and a half on the wait list for it finally picked up my copy last week: it's good. dave cullen is a journalist who began covering the story the morning of the shootings, and uses the book to do an in depth exploration of the day of the shootings, dylan and eric's motivations and experiences leading up to april 20, and the fallout for the media, the sheriff's department, and for the families and survivors after the fact. it's intense, for sure, but well worth it - one of the quotes on the back of the book equates it with capote's in cold blood, and i'd say that's pretty spot on. one thing i thought was interesting was that he addressed a lot of the myths surrounding the shootings. most of what i remember hearing about columbine was cassie bernall saying yes, the trench coat mafia, and that the killers went bowling (i was a self-absorbed 16 year old living in illinois at the time, forgive me), but apparently most of what the country heard are half-truths that he unpacks over the course of the book. anyway, you should definitely check it out, and be prepared with at least one or two kleenexes nearby.
a book i haven't read yet but have on hold at ye olde library is shaunti feldhahn's for women only. yesterday afternoon, kelly and i were discussing the simple dollar's incredibly sweet tribute to how great his wife is, and she mentioned how some of the things tsd appreciates about his wife are opposite of how she tries to treat her husband. (ie, tsd likes his wife to correct his little mistakes, while kelly tries to overlook mistakes and appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into them.) she recommended the for women only book, which is a relationship book written by a christian author that uses stats and interviews with men as the basis for her suggestions. the part kelly and i were discussing reminded me of the love and respect method that i remember hearing about in grad school - basically, the premise is that women want love and men want respect. anyway, i thought it sounded super interesting, so i'm going to read it. kelly did caution that it's helpful reading it in part with your husband, because every guy is different and the things that may be enlightening regarding some guys is completely inapplicable to yours.
and, if you're in the mood for chick lit, i highly recommend melissa nathan. despite the fact that i love chick flicks, i've always looked down on chick lit - maybe because so much of it is dominated by pink covers starring sassy girls wearing high heels and going out for drinks with strange men. (or at least, that's been my impression ... i honestly don't think i've read any chick lit pre-melissa nathan.) a friend who is very smart and academic and was an english major in college recommended melissa nathan, though, so i figured she couldn't be that awful. plus she gave me two of the books in time for a week i spent completely alone in the office, so i had plenty of time to ease into the idea of reading chick lit. not going to lie, i kind of love melissa nathan and her books. they're fun and funny and non-smutty, and they make for a great lighthearted read.
take responsibility, people!
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labels:
personal finance
so ever since the big wall street bailouts began last year, i feel like every group of people has figured out a way to band together and put a collective hand out to the government for their own bailout. first it was the big american car companies (well, chrysler and gm at least), who flew to washington on private jets to say, "we're broke, so sorry, but bailing us out is totally the most patriotic thing you could do." now it's people with student loans wanting a total loan forgiveness program.
i say this as unoffensively as possible ... but whatever happened to personal responsibility?
as i was looking at cars, i spent a fair amount of time on consumer reports trying to figure out what good car makes and models are, and they have a really handy chart that tracks ten years of reliability ratings for every make and model out there. they have a system of dots that range from red to black, with white in the middle - red is excellent, black is poor, white is neutral. anyway, as i was scanning the chart, i realized that the brands like toyota and honda have almost universally red dots next to their cars, with a few whites scattered here and there over the past ten years. subaru, similar - they had some black 5+ years ago, but now it's all red. even ford was mostly white with some red and black here and there. chrysler and gm brands? black. maybe a few whites here and there, but nothing at all in the red range. sorry, but the reason why you're bankrupt is perhaps that you don't make a good product. (i know plenty of people love their chrysler or gm made vehicles, and i don't fault you for that at all.) no, america's not straight capitalist, but we are primarily a capitalist country, and the list time i checked, that meant that consumers are supposed to go get the best product they can for their money, regardless of where it comes from. i love america, but if japanese cars are far and away a better product, i'll be buying japanese cars until american car companies bring their standards up and stop relying on people to buy their cars out of a misplaced sense of patriotism. (plus, japanese car companies employ plenty of americans in factories and dealerships, so i am still supporting american workers.)
with student loans, i'm sorry, but i feel similarly: you got the student loans, you need to pay them off. if you're in financial hardship, the companies are usually willing to work with you and put the loan into deferment until you're able to pay. be responsible on the front side - if you know your life's dream is to be a kindergarten teacher, don't go to a school that you'll have to take out $100,000 worth of loans to graduate from. there are always other options, even if they aren't as glamorous. part of being an adult is learning to sacrifice and make good choices. don't lease the new car, the flat panel tv, and the $150 jeans if doing so means that your budget is then too tight to fit in both groceries and a student loan payment. the article quotes an author midway through, "If students are given carte blanche on borrowing now, how will they learn to budget, save and borrow within their means when it comes to a mortgage? 'That's the whole reason of going to school," she says, "not to avoid debt, but to get a job that enables you to pay it off.'"
i know i'm in a pretty great situation right now, being a fiscally responsible adult who loves to budget with a supportive, equally fiscally responsible husband, both of us working, no health problems, and no kids. but i love knowing that i have a solid 6-month emergency fund that i worked hard to put together, i love the feeling of sending a $1500 payment off to citibank to pay down the principle on my student loans, i love examining our spending and finding ways to cut back, i love planning ahead and figuring out how long it'll be til i'm debt free. i even love paying my taxes, but i really think there are far better ways for my tax dollars to be used than to take the necessity of personal responsibility away from college educated people. or car companies run by very well paid, college educated people.
i say this as unoffensively as possible ... but whatever happened to personal responsibility?
as i was looking at cars, i spent a fair amount of time on consumer reports trying to figure out what good car makes and models are, and they have a really handy chart that tracks ten years of reliability ratings for every make and model out there. they have a system of dots that range from red to black, with white in the middle - red is excellent, black is poor, white is neutral. anyway, as i was scanning the chart, i realized that the brands like toyota and honda have almost universally red dots next to their cars, with a few whites scattered here and there over the past ten years. subaru, similar - they had some black 5+ years ago, but now it's all red. even ford was mostly white with some red and black here and there. chrysler and gm brands? black. maybe a few whites here and there, but nothing at all in the red range. sorry, but the reason why you're bankrupt is perhaps that you don't make a good product. (i know plenty of people love their chrysler or gm made vehicles, and i don't fault you for that at all.) no, america's not straight capitalist, but we are primarily a capitalist country, and the list time i checked, that meant that consumers are supposed to go get the best product they can for their money, regardless of where it comes from. i love america, but if japanese cars are far and away a better product, i'll be buying japanese cars until american car companies bring their standards up and stop relying on people to buy their cars out of a misplaced sense of patriotism. (plus, japanese car companies employ plenty of americans in factories and dealerships, so i am still supporting american workers.)
with student loans, i'm sorry, but i feel similarly: you got the student loans, you need to pay them off. if you're in financial hardship, the companies are usually willing to work with you and put the loan into deferment until you're able to pay. be responsible on the front side - if you know your life's dream is to be a kindergarten teacher, don't go to a school that you'll have to take out $100,000 worth of loans to graduate from. there are always other options, even if they aren't as glamorous. part of being an adult is learning to sacrifice and make good choices. don't lease the new car, the flat panel tv, and the $150 jeans if doing so means that your budget is then too tight to fit in both groceries and a student loan payment. the article quotes an author midway through, "If students are given carte blanche on borrowing now, how will they learn to budget, save and borrow within their means when it comes to a mortgage? 'That's the whole reason of going to school," she says, "not to avoid debt, but to get a job that enables you to pay it off.'"
i know i'm in a pretty great situation right now, being a fiscally responsible adult who loves to budget with a supportive, equally fiscally responsible husband, both of us working, no health problems, and no kids. but i love knowing that i have a solid 6-month emergency fund that i worked hard to put together, i love the feeling of sending a $1500 payment off to citibank to pay down the principle on my student loans, i love examining our spending and finding ways to cut back, i love planning ahead and figuring out how long it'll be til i'm debt free. i even love paying my taxes, but i really think there are far better ways for my tax dollars to be used than to take the necessity of personal responsibility away from college educated people. or car companies run by very well paid, college educated people.
i am an addict.
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i think i have an addiction to mt. dew. seriously. i rarely drink the stuff (mainly because we don't keep soda in the house, so that we don't drink it - same reason we don't keep chips or candy around), but when it's available, i have to drink it. i know that it makes me jittery and unable to sleep if i have it too late in the day, yet i want it anyway because i like the taste of it so much. plus, if we have it around and i don't drink it, scott gets to enjoy all of its lime green glory, and that's just not fair.
haha, scott just got home from swimming, i came upstairs to say hi, he asked how i am and i said, "jittery." he immediately said, "aww, because you had mt. dew, huh." he did it to me, though - he knows my love for the dew, yet he brought home a 2 liter anyway.
haha, scott just got home from swimming, i came upstairs to say hi, he asked how i am and i said, "jittery." he immediately said, "aww, because you had mt. dew, huh." he did it to me, though - he knows my love for the dew, yet he brought home a 2 liter anyway.
putting off cleaning
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labels:
car,
date night,
house,
landscaping
walden it is! in thinking of names for the forester, i had been circling around trying to find something naturey, or foresty ... i was trying to think of famous forests and thought of the schwarzenwald (black forest) in germany, but felt it too multisyllabic, thought of the word wald (pronounced "vald" auf deutsch) which means "forest" but it was too foreign, thought of thoreau and walden pond in passing through the walt whitman thing, but nothing was sticking. then my dad (i assume the steve is you, dad? i don't think i know any other steves who would read my blog and comment) left the comment: "For a name, how about Walden? Brings to mind Thoreau, Walden Pond, and quiet contemplation. A forest can also be quiet and contemplative. Hmm, isn't "wald" the German word for forest?" yes! perfect! thank you for bringing it all together for me. so, walden it is, wally for short.
other highlights of the weekend ... on friday night we watched "fireproof"! it was actually really good - it certainly had a fair amount of cheesiness, but i thought the story it told made up for that. if nothing else, it did a great job portraying real marriage and how necessary faith is for true reconciliation and growth. scott liked it too, and afterward thanked me for making him watch it. (we watched "the wrestler" a few weeks ago, which i just found very depressing and lacking hope, so scott told me i could pick whatever movie i liked next time around - i said "fireproof", and scott groaned.) i can't guarantee you'll like "fireproof", but if nothing else, i think it gives a good perspective and food for thought. (christianity today has a good review of it here.)
yesterday was some errands in the morning, followed by a lot of yardwork - doing little bits and pieces at a time, it's easy to forget in the meantime quite how much work there is to do ... but there's a lot. especially since i think we'll just have to pull out all of the river rock in the front, pull up the 40 year old weedbarrier, get the area cleaned out, and just start over. we're still debating mulch vs. washing out and reusing the existing rock. i like the look of mulch, but we already have the rock, and if you use wood mulch, you have to remulch every year, which gets pricey. we'll see. i decided yesterday that while the landscape designer gave us a 5-year plan, it'll probably be more like a 10 year plan. also, i decided that we can never move since we will have things here exactly as we like them ... and i'm never doing this much work on a house again. if we have more than 2 kids, they'll just have to share rooms. sorry, future children.
last night, we headed up to boulder to meet scott's good college friend loren and his wife jess for dinner and hanging out. they're full time missionaries with campus crusade in central asia, in ft. collins for the summer to help with some training; it was really fun getting to catch up with them and hear all about life and ministry over there. then this morning was the ground breaking for our church's new building, so the service beforehand was a lot of vision for the church and new people at mission hills sharing what god's been doing in their lives. it was really neat, and very encouraging. we stuck around for the lunch/hang out time after the ground breaking, which ended up being really fun - a lot of our friends were out of town or just left early, so we ended up getting to catch up with several couples that we know but don't see often. it was a good time!
i really need to go work on getting the house cleaned up a little bit ... scott's dad's flying in thursday night for them to start their roadtrip out to omaha (for the college world series) on friday, and i don't think he'd appreciate the current mildewy state of our bathtub. also, our entryway somehow invariably becomes a magnet for stuff, so we probably have 10 pair of shoes scattered around there, plus a few bags, some books, paper towels, and tools from putting in our new wireless doorbell. yikes.
other highlights of the weekend ... on friday night we watched "fireproof"! it was actually really good - it certainly had a fair amount of cheesiness, but i thought the story it told made up for that. if nothing else, it did a great job portraying real marriage and how necessary faith is for true reconciliation and growth. scott liked it too, and afterward thanked me for making him watch it. (we watched "the wrestler" a few weeks ago, which i just found very depressing and lacking hope, so scott told me i could pick whatever movie i liked next time around - i said "fireproof", and scott groaned.) i can't guarantee you'll like "fireproof", but if nothing else, i think it gives a good perspective and food for thought. (christianity today has a good review of it here.)
yesterday was some errands in the morning, followed by a lot of yardwork - doing little bits and pieces at a time, it's easy to forget in the meantime quite how much work there is to do ... but there's a lot. especially since i think we'll just have to pull out all of the river rock in the front, pull up the 40 year old weedbarrier, get the area cleaned out, and just start over. we're still debating mulch vs. washing out and reusing the existing rock. i like the look of mulch, but we already have the rock, and if you use wood mulch, you have to remulch every year, which gets pricey. we'll see. i decided yesterday that while the landscape designer gave us a 5-year plan, it'll probably be more like a 10 year plan. also, i decided that we can never move since we will have things here exactly as we like them ... and i'm never doing this much work on a house again. if we have more than 2 kids, they'll just have to share rooms. sorry, future children.
last night, we headed up to boulder to meet scott's good college friend loren and his wife jess for dinner and hanging out. they're full time missionaries with campus crusade in central asia, in ft. collins for the summer to help with some training; it was really fun getting to catch up with them and hear all about life and ministry over there. then this morning was the ground breaking for our church's new building, so the service beforehand was a lot of vision for the church and new people at mission hills sharing what god's been doing in their lives. it was really neat, and very encouraging. we stuck around for the lunch/hang out time after the ground breaking, which ended up being really fun - a lot of our friends were out of town or just left early, so we ended up getting to catch up with several couples that we know but don't see often. it was a good time!
i really need to go work on getting the house cleaned up a little bit ... scott's dad's flying in thursday night for them to start their roadtrip out to omaha (for the college world series) on friday, and i don't think he'd appreciate the current mildewy state of our bathtub. also, our entryway somehow invariably becomes a magnet for stuff, so we probably have 10 pair of shoes scattered around there, plus a few bags, some books, paper towels, and tools from putting in our new wireless doorbell. yikes.
toodles, erma!
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labels:
car
i am now the proud owner of a 2008 white subaru forester! c. springs called yesterday around 1 to say that they were only able to get one forester at auction, and it was white, but despite the numerous calls they'd received about their foresters since dropping the price, i was first on the list and thus got first shot at the car if i wanted it. (so glad i called tuesday morning!) i got off of work early, we left the house just before 5, made it to the dealership around 6, took a quick test drive, spent literally 20 minutes signing paperwork, and were on our way back home by 7! it honestly felt mildly anticlimactic to be done so quickly after two weeks of "should we or shouldn't we" followed with "yes!" then "no ..." because cars would get sold or dealers wouldn't negotiate. 
(plus, white was nowhere near my top pick for a color, since i've driven white vehicles ever since i was 16 and was just so ready for a nice silver or gray or light blue - but hey, it's a forester. no complaints allowed.)
i love my car, though. it drives so smoothly, no hiccups or rattles, all of the windows work, and it accelerates really nicely. it has about 4500 miles left on the bumper to bumper warranty, so we're going to take it in this weekend and get it checked out to make sure everything looks good. and then i'm going to go to best buy and get an auxiliary cable so that i can listen to my ipod in the car - fancy!! oh, and they said that out of the 40 foresters that were at auction, this is the only one that sold under $14k, thus it's the only one they bought. it made us feel extra good about buying, though, knowing that we got the best deal possible. (they did keep the purchase price of $13,994.)
last night after we got home, i had the forester parked in the driveway and asked scott whether i should drive erma or the forester to work today. he gave me a *look* and said, "we just bought you a forester, why would you not drive it?" which is a solid point (and i did), but i feel like it's this cherished toy that i want to keep in the packaging for a few days and just look at and not mess up just yet.
incidentally, i also need to find a name for the forester. i had been toying with the name whit or whitaker (forester = forest whitaker = whitaker = whit), but whenever i think of the name "whit", i think of walt whitman, and when i think of walt whitman, i think of crazy stories about his homosexual exploits. so i'm not so sure about that one. we'll see what i come up with.
(plus, white was nowhere near my top pick for a color, since i've driven white vehicles ever since i was 16 and was just so ready for a nice silver or gray or light blue - but hey, it's a forester. no complaints allowed.)i love my car, though. it drives so smoothly, no hiccups or rattles, all of the windows work, and it accelerates really nicely. it has about 4500 miles left on the bumper to bumper warranty, so we're going to take it in this weekend and get it checked out to make sure everything looks good. and then i'm going to go to best buy and get an auxiliary cable so that i can listen to my ipod in the car - fancy!! oh, and they said that out of the 40 foresters that were at auction, this is the only one that sold under $14k, thus it's the only one they bought. it made us feel extra good about buying, though, knowing that we got the best deal possible. (they did keep the purchase price of $13,994.)
last night after we got home, i had the forester parked in the driveway and asked scott whether i should drive erma or the forester to work today. he gave me a *look* and said, "we just bought you a forester, why would you not drive it?" which is a solid point (and i did), but i feel like it's this cherished toy that i want to keep in the packaging for a few days and just look at and not mess up just yet.
incidentally, i also need to find a name for the forester. i had been toying with the name whit or whitaker (forester = forest whitaker = whitaker = whit), but whenever i think of the name "whit", i think of walt whitman, and when i think of walt whitman, i think of crazy stories about his homosexual exploits. so i'm not so sure about that one. we'll see what i come up with.
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