Kyle Dickerson – Page 90 – If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Family Vacation 2012 - Part 3

September 23, 2012 9:37 am

From Colorado Springs we headed southwest to Mesa Verde National Park.

My family went there when I was 9-ish and I have vague memories of that trip (mainly of Mom being scared as the kids climbed the ladders up from Balcony House [I understand why now]).

We stayed at Far View Lodge which is inside the park. Being inside the park is nice because the closest lodging outside the park is 15-30 minutes away from the park entrance and just driving from the park entrance to where Far View Lodge is takes another 20-30 minutes (and ~15-20 minutes from there to where points of interest are). So by staying at the lodge you can save a lot of travel time.

We rented a kiva room which is an upgraded room with air conditioning (but that's the only real difference). We weren't sure whether we'd need air conditioning or not at the beginning of September, but it was nice to have during Heather's afternoon nap times.

We got there late in the evening on Tuesday, September 4. After we got checked in to our room we had dinner at the Metate Room which is the nicer dinner restaurant. The place to eat all other meals (and cheaper) is the Far View Terrace Cafe (it's also open for dinner, but closed before we arrived). The food is a little pricey for what you get, but then, you are basically in the middle of nowhere so you don't have a lot of options.

If you wanted to save some money and plan ahead you could easily bring cereal and sandwich stuff (the rooms have mini-fridges).

But enough of the accommodations--on to the attractions:

It was the somewhat off-season when we were there which means you can get multiple tours on the same day. Tour tickets can be purchased only at a few places (and not in advance). One of the locations is the Visitor's Center which happens to be across the street from the Far View Lodge, so walking over when they open at 8am is a great way to make sure you get the tour times you want before they fill up.

We went on tours of two of the cliff dwellings, Cliff Palace in the morning and Balcony House in the afternoon. We had specifically bought a child-carrier backpack off of Craigslist in which to carry Heather for these adventures and it worked out great.

Cliff Palace

Compared to Balcony House getting to and from Cliff Palace is easy. You walk down from the mesa along staircases that have been built and then come back up some into the dwelling. This dwelling faces west, so we did the tour in the morning while it was in the shade.

The tour of Cliff Palace overlapped with Heather's normal nap time. She got a bit fussy, but I was able to bounce her and rock her and eventually she fell asleep on my back.

After the Cliff Palace tour we ate lunch and then went back to the room to get Heather a real nap. Then it was time for our next tour.

Balcony House

Balcony House is harder to get to and from than Cliff Palace. You start by taking stairs down from the top of the mesa and then you have to climb a ladder to get up into the dwelling. Once inside you have to squeeze through some fairly narrow passages. And to get out you have to climb up a few ladders and walk along a very narrow ledge. This dwelling faces east, so we did it in the afternoon when it was in the shade.

IMGP8913as — Jess and Heather waiting under the covering next to the parking lot waiting for the tour.

IMGP8928as — The ladder to get up into Balcony House.

Going through the narrow passages I had to take the backpack off. For one of them I was able to carry it in front of me and maneuver it through. But for the other passage we took Heather out and I carried her in my arms while Jess shoved the backpack through in front of her. Our hands were a little full, so we don't have any pictures of that process and the pictures I took of the passages themselves aren't particularly illustrative. So here's a picture of Jess and Heather in Balcony House:

Below is the ladder system to get back up to the parking lot. Surprisingly, it was essentially what I had remembered from when I was a kid. The ladder rungs are fairly round and very smooth which makes them feel rather slippery. Then you walk up a narrow path with a short chain rail/fence and then up another ladder.

Oh, I forgot to mention that below you at this point is essentially a several hundred foot drop to the canyon floor. So I understand why Mom was nervous about this when we were kids. I was glad to have Heather 5-point harnessed into a backpack.

We also drove around to see some of the sites on the mesa top. They let you see some of the developments that led to the cliff dwellings; but the cliff dwellings are the real attraction.

Stars

Since Mesa Verde is mostly in the middle of nowhere I thought it'd be a fun place to try taking some pictures of stars. I was able to take some shots which actually mostly turned out alright before a ranger came and yelled at me. Despite there being no rules (as far as I could tell) about being out and about at night he was apparently suspicious of my intentions outside at night with a camera on a tripod pointed at the sky (and basically told me to go away).

The picture below would be really cool if the exposure hadn't been too long. All the blurriness is from the motion of the Earth rotating (notice the horizon is nice and sharp). The lights on the horizon (as far as I could determine) are from a small town about 50 miles away. So that gives you an idea about what light pollution does when trying to look at the sky.

We stayed at Mesa Verde for two nights and then it was time to head home.

Family Vacation 2012 - Part 2

September 22, 2012 6:13 pm

We stayed in Colorado Springs from Thursday, August 30 through Tuesday, September 4.

Jess' brother, Christopher (seen above, in, what I'm told, is a representative pose) and his wife had a new baby, Hannah. So we, and the rest of Jess' family (except Cameron who's serving a mission in the Philippines) came to visit for the baby blessing.

While we were there we went to the Garden of the Gods which is, essentially, a nature preserve. None of my pictures of the scenery there came out looking very interesting, but here's a picture of us that Jess' dad took.

A lot of time was spent hanging out in the back yard with games including croquet and cornhole.

IMGP8705as — Colton and Chance playing cornhole.

IMGP8840as — Miles pulling out a wicket.

We took Heather to a pool for the first time. She seemed to enjoy it so long as the interaction was on her terms. (I was sitting right next to her off camera; the picture was taken by Jess' dad.)

After the blessing on Sunday I got some pictures while people were still dressed up nice. I'm still learning how to effectively use my external flash, so many of the pictures using flash aren't great, but I'm getting better. The picture of Colton came out quite well.

IMGP8813cs — Christopher, Jenny, Miles, and Hannah.

One night involved a game of Risk which actually almost went all the way through to conclusion, but ended early once the remaining players conceded. As usual, I'm told, Christopher won.

Another evening involved a rather heated game of Scattergories. With arguments about what causes an answer to be disqualified.

Here are some more random pictures:

Heather getting acquainted with Papa (Jess' dad).

Chance's wife Rachael:

Chance and Rachael's kids, Maddox and Vivian:

On Tuesday we packed up again and headed on to Mesa Verde National Park in the southwest corner of Colorado.

Family Vacation 2012 - Part 1

10:02 am

This year's Dickerson Family Vacation was a road trip to Colorado to see Jess' family. Along the way we stopped in Utah and on the way back we visited Mesa Verde National Park, Four Corners, and Grand Canyon National Park.

We loaded up the car and left Livermore on Saturday morning, August 25. Loading up the car was interesting. I had to draw on my extensive Tetris skills in order to get everything to fit. But our little Civic has a surprising amount of space in it if you're careful in how you pack it.

We didn't know how Heather was going to deal with long stretches in the car so we planned on fairly short distances for each day. The goal for Saturday was to get at least to Winnemucca, NV (about 6 hours of driving) and any further if possible.

Heather did pretty well in the car. But due to exhaustion on our part (I had a 24-hour ShipIt! Day [or Hackathon] at work Thursday-Friday and Friday night was late with preparations) we only just made it to Winnemucca before giving up for the day (at about 4 pm).

On Sunday we drove to Lehi, UT and stopped to visit our friends BJ and Tianna. Here's Jess with Tianna and the kids:

We stayed with them Sunday night and on Monday continued on down to Provo to visit Erin's family.

We hung around their house and watched Will play a soccer game:

In Provo we stayed at the Springhill Suites by Marriott which were actually quite nice. The building is either new or newly renovated; either way, it's probably the nicest not-trying-to-be-fancy hotel in Provo. The rooms have a modern design with plenty of power outlets which is nice when you have a slew of gadgets to charge.

On Wednesday we packed up the car once again and headed on towards Colorado. After exactly one tank of gas we arrived in Glenwood Springs, CO which was our destination for the night.

Thursday we got up and going in order to make it to Idaho Springs and meet up with my old roommate Brady. He and his wife live in Colorado and were traveling along I-70 in the opposite direction on their way to Utah and then the Grand Canyon and it happened to work out for us to meet up along our ways for lunch.

We hit some heavy storms as we went under the Continental Divide. It had started to drizzle as we entered the Eisenhower Tunnel and when we came out the other side it was raining sheets and there was lightning on the mountains. We don't get thunderstorms in Livermore, so that was fun.

Despite the weather we made it to Idaho Springs and ate at Beau Jo's Pizza with Brady and Rachael which was quite good.

After lunch in Idaho Springs we finished our out-bound driving and arrived in Colorado Springs where Jess' brother, Christopher, and his family live.

Family Finance

September 21, 2012 3:28 pm

In my reading and podcast listening I've come across lots of information about family finance. Sadly, one of the most common factors cited in divorce cases is arguments about money. APM's Marketplace radio show often discusses how couples / families handle their finances and there are lots of ways to do it. Presumably, or hopefully, the end goal of any arrangement is to minimize arguments about money.

A lot of discussions revolve around merging finances when both partners earn an income. I think some of these methods are bad arrangements that fail at the main goal of minimize disagreements. For example: each person keeps their own money, but contributes into a joint account for joint expenses. This just seems like a obvious way to set up a power struggle within the relationship when one person makes a meaningful amount more than the other. That person has more disposable income than the other. And in some respects that's "fair," but it makes the marriage seem more like a roommate agreement.

We only have a single income. Some arrangements for single incomes are equally terrible to the above dual-income arrangement. I've seen some suggestions where the income earner pays the bills and then gives the non-earner an allowance. This seems terribly patronizing and unequal. Both this and the above method cling to the idea that the money belongs to the earner which, in turn, sets up the scenario where the money is more important than the relationship.

We really like the solution we came up with when we got married, which would work just as well for dual-income families:

Mindset

First is the mindset. I go to work and the paycheck has my name on it; but it's not my money. It's our money. It belongs to the family and will be used for the family's needs and wants first. (I think this is a major stumbling block for a lot of people.) By letting go of the ownership of the money you let go of the potential of feeling personally attacked when the money is spent on something about which you don't care.

Second is the actual handling of the money. The paycheck itself is handled via direct deposit as follows:

Retirement Savings

My job offers 401K matching (up to a certain amount) so the first thing is to put enough money into retirement savings to fully utilize the free money being offered in the match.

Savings

Next we slice off as much as we want to put into general savings. This is where we're accumulating a down-payment for a house. And this acts as an emergency fund for unexpected large expenses. Doing this first has a nice advantage which I'll discuss below in "Everything Else."

Personal Luxury

We each have personal checking accounts and we each get a little money each paycheck which is ours and ours alone. This is the best part of our arrangement. "Luxury" within the context of our personal versus joint expenses is kind of a fluid concept and open to interpretation. But it's working well.

For example, when I came home the other day Jess was telling me about the candles she ordered from Yankee Candle. Since she was buying them with her luxury money I didn't end up thinking "You spent how much money on candles?!" Likewise, when I wanted to buy an external flash for our camera, I just bought it with my luxury funds. No need to have a discussion with Jess about whether this was a good use of our money or whether we should do something else with it instead.

If our monthly expenses are running a little high, but one of us really wants to eat take-out then we can do that using luxury money. If there's a luxury we both want, we can split the cost out of luxury funds.

I really like that when one of us gets excited about buying something, the other can be excited too instead of doing an internal calculation about what it's going to cost.

Being able to spend a little money without worry or guilt is really freeing. It takes away much of the stress that builds in the tension between general frugality and occasionally just wanting a treat. We can be frugal with our general spending, but still buy things we want every so often.

The amount of money we give ourselves in this form changes over time. But it's nice to have the discussion about what amount should be luxury spending only occasionally instead of rehashing it over every purchase.

Everything Else

At this point, everything left over goes into our general fund. This is the account we use for regular spending: groceries, rent, utilities, gas, car maintenance, student loans, etc. I like this part too. Since savings has already been taken care of, whatever is in this account can be spent. If we want to save more money, we take it off the top and adjust our monthly spending to match the change to this account.

All together this means there is no "budget." I hate the idea of a budget. It's tiring, stressful, and time-consuming. Instead, we just watch the status of the general fund and try to keep a consistent "burn rate."

This approach works best once you've accumulated a cushion that allows you to absorb fluctuations (things were a bit more structured when we first got married and had absolutely no money and more bills). Fluctuations in spending are natural and one of the reasons I hate the idea of a budget. If, this week, we need to buy flour and sugar and there's a sale on cereal (so we stock up) and we also need more chicken then it's going to be a much higher bill than surrounding weeks. The burn-rate approach with a cushion handles this great--breaking a budget can cause stress and frustration even when you know it will balance out in the long run.

I think it does a really good job of truly minimizing potential arguments about money. There will still need to be discussions about how money is spent at a macro level (how much do we put in each bucket) and when making large purchases out of the savings account (house, car, appliances, etc.); but on a day-to-day level there really is no reason to disagree.

Patriotism versus Nationalism

September 11, 2012 1:51 pm

This topic has been on my ever-growing list of blog ideas for a while and given the date and the election season it seems like a good time to write this post.

I think a core difference between patriotism and nationalism is whether or not you view the world as a zero-sum game. I've grown concerned over the nationalistic push that seems to be growing in the United State partly because of the view that the United States can only succeed at the expense of other nations (and at a personal level, individuals can only succeed at the expense of other individuals).

The zero-sum viewpoint isn't useless and it comes from a very primal instinct. When resources are scarce then a zero-sum model is fairly accurate. But, comparatively and for most intents and purposes, we, in the United States specifically (and, generally speaking, the world at large), don't live in a world with scarce resources. The zero-sum model is not accurate and we need to get past this simplistic method of thinking.

But let's go back to the beginning.

Patriotism and nationalism both, simply speaking, are a love of or pride in one's country. Some sources list the two as synonyms. But I'd like to make a distinction between the two. Perhaps by saying "nationalism" I've made a poor word choice and maybe "jingoism" more accurately captures my distinction. But, for the purposes of this post, I'm going to define nationalism as "a love of or pride in one's country, blind to faults, intolerant of criticism, and believing the success of other countries diminishes your own."

I will define patriotism as "a love of or pride in one's country, recognizing faults and accepting of criticism, hoping for improvement, and believing countries can simultaneously thrive."

(We can freely replace "country" with whatever group you want (ethnicity, religion, political leaning, etc.) and I think the distinction between the two remains valuable.)

The trouble with nationalism is that anyone espousing it insists that they're preaching patriotism.

I believe patriotism is a good thing. Though I've been heavily critical of many things our government has done I even consider myself patriotic. I hope for and want a better future for our country.

However, nationalism is dangerous. It leads to foolish policies and violent rhetoric.

It leads to wasting time and energy renaming food because you felt slighted by another group (e.g. changing "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries").

It leads to placing cross-hairs over your political opponents in your campaign paraphernalia and saying things like "Don't Retreat, instead-RELOAD!"

It leads to isolated cases of angry people killing innocent people (and here).

And, if not controlled, it eventually leads to war and genocide. After all, when the world is zero-sum and you "know" your country is the best, the only rational thing to do is to eliminate detractors and competitors.

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From my earlier post about a book by a conservative pundit we get the following paragraph:

Liberals are uncomfortable with the topic of patriotism because their core philosophical impulses are to make America a different country than it is. This is not an evil impulse, and it can certainly manifest itself in patriotic ways. More importantly, it can manifest itself in humane and decent ways. But at the most basic level love is about acceptance. If you are constantly trying to change the person you claim to love into someone he or she is not, there comes a point when it's reasonable to ask whether you really, truly, deeply love the person for who he or she is. Barack Obama campaigned promising to "fundamentally transform" America. We would not think a husband who promises to "fundamentally transform" his wife has a healthy love for her. -- Jonah Goldberg

If, in Goldberg's metaphor, the wife had cancer would it be wrong for the husband to want to "fundamentally transform" her by removing the cancer? What if she were clinically depressed? What if she were an alcoholic? What if she were abusive? According to Goldberg, wanting to improve faults means you don't love a person and therefore wanting to improve a country is not patriotic.

This is nationalism, not patriotism. Patriotism should always encourage improvement not acceptance of faults. But let's try to be lenient here. Let's suppose we want to change from A to B. It may or may not be an improvement, we're not sure; we have to try it to find out. Demanding your spouse should make this arbitrary change is a bit off from most definitions of love. But a nation isn't an individual. It is a conglomeration of ideas. Some will be good ideas and some will be bad ideas. Does suggesting we change from A to B in hope of improvement actually mean we're not patriotic?

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I think we need to constantly be evaluating our nation and deciding for ourselves whether it is in need of improvement. When we feel something can be improved we should try to enact that change. This is patriotism.

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Reading through my post I realized that the negative examples I've highlighted tend to be affiliated with the Republican party. I feel confident both major political parties participate in this behavior, but it appears many of the most egregious (or at least most easily found) cases are affiliated with the conservative side. Perhaps they should reconsider some of their rhetoric if they want to present a less extreme position.