Happy Halloween!

Things I enjoy about Halloween:

1) Taking my daughter trick-or-treating and appreciating every second of it. I realize there are only a few years in her life she will want to trick-or-treat with her father.

2) Pumpkin spice latte's at Starbucks

3) Burt's Pumpkin Farm (although we missed our visit this year).

4) Charlotte's annual Halloween party

Things I don't enjoy about Halloween:

1) The Company potluck Halloween lunch. I am against any activity at work that calls for me to bring food for others to eat, or that requires me to eat food that others have made. I have gotten very good at making a stealth exit from the building while everyone else is stirring around trying to heat up their food.

2) Adults dressing up in costumes - especially at work. I have trouble having a serious conversation with the portly, 50-ish manager of our claims department when she is dressed up as 1973-era Cher.

3) The redneck group in our neighborhood that pulls along a wagon of beer and wine while they take their children trick-or-treating.

4) Handing out halloween candy. Thankfully Staci takes this chore while I take Charlotte trick-or-treating. There are 2 things that make me feel creepy and inappropriate - giving candy to strange children and paying high school cheerleaders to wash my car in the Wendy's parking lot.

Opening Day!

To celebrate the long-awaited start of baseball season, this video is for my friend and fellow pfsp-er Dan(and the only Milwaukee Brewer fan I know):

Frozen Daze

As the picture indicates, things are pretty routine around here. However my friend Dan, who I have been going to Refreshers with for 11 years, is off on another trip to Antarctica. I look forward to reading about his adventures.

W and Reading

I am not the biggest fan of George W, but I thought this was an interesting article that a friend emailed to me today.

I probably read 20-25 books a year. Quite a few are about baseball, but I try to mix in various historical and self-help books. On his radio show, Dave Ramsey often throws out the factoid that "the average millionaire reads 12 non-fiction books per year." I believe he got that from The Millionaire Next Door, one of my all time favorite books. Some books I start and I never finish (the Bill Clinton biography - I did not like how it ended with him leaving office).

Happy New Year!

A belated Happy New Year! Since almost being crushed to death in a crowd at Underground Atlanta on New Year's eve 1989 (hey Kurt!), I have never been a big fan of the actual New Year's "Holiday". In fact I spent most of New Year's eve and New Years day last week watching Lost season 4 on DVD.

What I like to do as the year changes is reassess my life goals and determine what actions I need to take in the next 12 months. I consider this a little bit different from resolutions. My standard life goals are as follows (in no particular order):

* Become more fluent
* Become a better father
* Become a better husband
* Continue to develop spiritually
* Increase my income 20%

The specific goals I set for the next year pretty much all relate to the above 5 life goals. For example, for fluency, I am already planning on attending a Refresher in last May. I called Dan last week and reminded him he is coming with me. I also have smaller goals that relate to that, such as working on my PFSP practice CD's at set times (usually before work meetings and on my way to Small Group).

Merry Christmas

I look forward to a Christmas Eve of drinking reduced fat eggnog and coconut rum while being Santa's helper. To celebrate the season, enjoy this video of Mandy Miller performing at Buckhead Church last Easter:

Deltalina

Good packing tips from Deltalina.

Airline Fees

AirTran's CFO Arne Haak recently made the following statement in regards to the airline's new $15 first checked bag fee:

“Really what is happening is an unbundling of the services. … That’s how customers respond. Our customers will spend three hours on the Internet figuring out how to save $8 when they buy an airplane ticket. Then they’re going to come to the airport and spend $20 to buy a soda, a bag of chips, a candy bar and a magazine that they could have bought for half the price.”

As much as I pride myself on being cheap, I often do exactly as Haak describes. I will undergo extensive research to not spend a dime more on airfare, hotels and cars than I have too, but I don't think I can spend 15 minutes waiting in a airport terminal without "having" to buy some sort of overpriced item (and not think twice about it).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Carnival Victory

Our family vacation fund generally consists of whatever extra money we come across that we did not include in our monthly budget. Loose change, rebate checks, fat wallet cash, small group babysitting reimbursement, etc. Like Dave Ramsey says, the best vacation is one where the bill does not follow you home.

Last week during lunch I headed to the credit union with my latest contribution - a plastic box full of change. I poured it into the machine and the total came to $182. That gave us enough in our vacation account to book 3 tickets on the Carnival Victory in March. Leaving out of one of my favorite cities - San Juan - we will spend the next week stopping in St. Thomas, Dominica, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua and St. Kitts before heading back to San Juan.

This will be the 4th cruise that Staci, Charlotte and I have gone on. We love cruises as there is always something for everyone to do. I also get a lot of good transfer opportunities as you are always meeting other people. One of my favorite cruise memories was on our last cruise.

One morning Charlotte and I went down to eat breakfast by ourselves wearing our Seattle Mariner Ichiro jerseys. We were seated with 2 older snowbird retired couples. Commenting on our jerseys led to a discussion about baseball. Both couples were big baseball fans and they started telling me all of these wonderful stories about baseball in New York in the 50's. I could have listened to their baseball stories all day, but after my omelet was finished, we had to excuse ourselves and take a very patient Charlotte to the Carvinal kid's club.