Perhaps it has something to do with the amount of dead material I cut out of the trellis last Fall, or maybe it's something else entirely, but the wisteria filled in really well this Spring. This is what it's looked like for the last couple of weeks (and probably will for another week or two):
And it smells nice too! Just watch out for the bees and wasps....
We decided it was time to make Mom & Dad's travel calamities work for us. So they came to visit in the middle of a major drought. It hadn't rained any appreciable amount in 14 months. But, it started raining the day after they arrived and has been continuing to rain fairly regularly since then.
Heather was enamored of Grandpa.
We tried going up to the Redwood Valley Railroad again. It seemed like Heather was going to be okay with it, but the moment Jess tried to lift Heather into the car Heather lost it. With every shred of vocabulary she could muster she demanded that she didn't want to ride the train and that Jess get off the train. I wasn't allowed on the train either. So Grandma and Grandpa took a train ride while the rest of us tried to calm Heather down.
We also visited Duarte's Garage which seemed like the kind of thing Mom & Dad do (it's an old garage along the original Lincoln Highway that runs through Livermore). They have restored, old-timey fire engines and various related relics.
If you look closely you can see the sparks being generated by the hand-crank starter. The spark plugs are at the top of the metal brackets on the right-hand side of the contraption.
We also went to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose.
Before they left we took a few pictures of them with Heather, this somewhat candid shot (taken in between "real pictures") ended up turning out best:
Come back and visit again anytime!
We stayed home for Christmas this year and didn't have anyone coming to visit either. This is the first year for us when we didn't either visit someone or have someone visit so it felt a little off. For me at least, it's always tough to feel like it's Christmas in California since the weather is usually warm (mid 60's, low 70's this year). On Christmas Eve this year I heard the ice-cream truck driving around the neighborhood; it just doesn't work for me.
At least going to visit or having visitors creates some excitement, but without even that it just never really felt like the proper season. I mentioned to Jess on at least one occasion that I needed to figure out something to do that would make it feel like Christmas. I never really did, unfortunately.
We watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and several other Christmas specials, but up until the week of I was still going to work every day, the sun was shining, and many of the trees still have leaves on them. Due to poor air quality it's been illegal to burn wood for most of the month (including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) so that didn't help either. I'll have to figure something out for next year. We've kicked around the idea of every other year having Christmas at a "cabin" in the mountains so we'd get some snow and cold weather. We'll see if we still like that idea next year.
Anyways, enough lamenting about that.
On Monday Heather and I did some painting. This was my creation (I'm planning on keeping my day job):
On Christmas Eve we went over to the house of some friends who had invited over a few families who also didn't have any family to visit with for Christmas. We drank Dickerson Family Wassail and ate Dickerson Family Little Weenies so that helped make it feel like Christmas. Of course, we also ate Triscuits and Wheat Thins with cheese. After a couple of hours of hanging out we all headed home.
Christmas morning was calm and sunshiny. Santa had arrived.
I think Heather knew something different was happening—she was pretty amped up (but then, she's often all amped up in the morning anyway...). We, of course, took obligatory pre-presents pictures:
Heather was just as adorable as could possibly be. So here are a bunch of pictures of her looking adorable:
The trolley and affiliated characters are from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, a modern, animated spin-off of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Netflix has the first 20 episodes and Heather loves it.
Jess and I were also around, but we know everyone would rather look at pictures of Heather than us. But just for proof, here's Jess with her Eye-Fi card:
The Eye-Fi card will magically transfer her pictures from her camera to the computer so she can just sit down at the computer to work on them without taking the memory card out of the camera.
Since the desktop computer is only on when we're using it (saving a bunch of electricity) I set it up to transfer to the Raspberry Pi and then wrote some scripts for Jess so she can just click a link on the desktop and it will transfer all her pictures to the computer, organize them by year/month/day and then automatically convert any videos to mp4 files (which take up much less space with no noticeable loss in quality). Being married to a geek has its perks.
And yes, I was also present. Here I am showcasing this year's "Most Unexpected Gift," a "Zombie Shelter" sign my parents found in New Orleans:
My birthday started out with decorations in the front of the house (by Kyle) and this picture/work of art (colored by Heather).
Kyle brought home some balloons for me (yay for birthday surprises!) and Heather FELL IN LOVE. She played with those balloons for days, long after the helium had gone out of them.
When it came time to open up presents, Heather had to help. Naturally.
One of my gifts was an easy peasy point-and-shoot camera. (And it's pretty purple.) So you'll be seeing many more pictures of Heather! Huzzay!
A couple days later, we had friends over for cake. Kyle made a yummy cake with cream cheese frosting. So delicious.
I love that birthdays mean fun and friends! Yippee!
We switched to Ting just about one year ago and it's time to do some number crunching to see how it's working out for us.
Ting is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which means they run a cell-phone service, but don't own any of the physical hardware. In Ting's case, it all runs on Sprint's network, but Ting is the company you sign up with and pay and is in charge of all your customer needs.
Their approach is different in that they focus on treating you like a human being and not finding new ways to gouge money out of you. It's quite refreshing. Their customer service is top notch and in that regard I've been very pleased. I don't lament calling them on the rare occasion that I need to.
They allow you to add as many phones to your account as you want, and all phones on your account pool minutes/texts/data so you get a better unit price as the quantity increases (additionally, you pay a $6 fee per line per month to keep it active on the account).
This is the kind of mobile phone plan I've been waiting for. It fits our needs much better than any other plan I've seen.
We had been on a T-Mobile family plan for about $70 per month with way more minutes than we needed and no texting or data allowance. It was stupidly expensive. When that contract ended we switched to T-Mobile prepaid, which was better (we bought minutes 1000 at a time that lasted about a year, but texting was still stupidly expensive and no data--and we had to buy minutes for each phone separately).
Ting charges you by the bucket for minutes/texts/data. Use no data this month, pay nothing for data this month. No limits, no caps, no overage charges. No trickery. I love the billing policy.
So how's it working out for us?
(All the information I report is total between Jess and I since Ting treats it all as one big pool for billing purposes.)
Usage and Costs over the last year per month:
| Minutes | Minutes Cost | Texts | Texts Cost | Data (MB) | Data Cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Min | 21 | $3.00 | 50 | $3.00 | 0 | $0 |
| Max | 319 | $9.00 | 171 | $5.00 | 145 | $13.00 |
| Ave | 86 | $3.82 | 104.7 | $3.82 | 84.4 | $5.18 |
Our unit costs look like this (excluding line fee, taxes, regulatory fees):
| Per Minute | Per Text | Per MB | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Min | $0.028 | $0.029 | $0.000 |
| Max | $0.143 | $0.064 | $0.120 |
| Ave | $0.044 | $0.036 | $0.061 |
Our average total cost per month was $25.31 (includes $6 per line fee and all taxes and regulatory fees). Our most expensive month was $32.21 while the cheapest month was $19.15.
The Ting approach means you don't get any subsidy when you buy your phone, but there are also no contracts. We bought very entry-level Android phones (Kyocera Rise) for $152.27 each after sign-up discount. And if you do buy a more expensive phone, you'll most likely still save money over the life of a 2-year contract.
I will probably buy a nicer phone at some point, but I didn't want to spend a bunch of money on a phone until I knew if I actually wanted a smartphone and if I actually liked Ting.
Ting is currently only 1 of 2 companies I will unhesitatingly recommend people try to do business with if it makes sense for their needs.
As I mentioned, they do run on the Sprint network which some people have issues with. However, Sprint is in the process of a massive overhaul of their network. The long-term goal of their "Network Vision" plan looks really good and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it plays out. It should provide better coverage and signal quality for the entire country (it appears to me that they're essentially betting the farm on this overhaul and so far it's looking good).
Update 10/22:
If you're interested in signing up with Ting, use our referral code and you'll get a $25 credit and we'll get a $25 credit. Everyone wins! Here's the link: https://z9g8hk18l.ting.com/