Baby's First Ultrasound

Coming in early March to a crib near you.

Vote for my friend's video [UPDATE]

Update: I got a note from Andy today:

Dear Friends!!!

We just found out we are one of five winners in the Apartments.com roommate of the year video contest! Because of YOU! That means we won best video in the "Purr-fect Pet" category and are guaranteed $500. We're rich!!!

It also means we are still in the running for the grand prize FREE RENT FOR A YEAR but that's all up the judges now...we won't know until around October if we win it all.

Thank you so much for voting!

The original post is below:

Our friend Andy Martinez is a very talented filmmaker that Kerri and I have been privileged to know since high school. He and his lovely girlfriend Jen have entered a video in the Apartments.com Roommate of the Year contest, so please go vote for it. You have to register once to vote (I have yet to receive ANY emails, so no worries) and you should vote once every day through August 2nd. If Andy wins he has promised to make us all wealthy beyond our wildest dreams, so help him out. For us.

Willfully ignorant vs. aggressively skeptical

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnkb/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

...screaming is often a tool used to balance out the lazy ignorance of someone parroting opposition to an idea that they don't understand.

If you want to challenge the conventional wisdom of health care reform, please do! It'll make the final outcome better. But if you choose to do that, it's essential that you know more about it than everyone else, not less. Certainly not zero. Be skeptical, but be informed.

- Seth Godin

What a rip-off!

A conversation held between 4 four-year-olds and myself during lunch this last week:

Child 1: "My dad bought me some expensive train tracks."
Child 2: "My light-up shoes are expensive."
Child 3: "My new game was expensive."
Ms. Kerri: "What does expensive mean?"
Child 3: "It means it costs a lot of money."
Child 4: "No. It means it's a rip-off. Like Safeway, have you ever shopped there? That place is a rip-off."

Why can't we have health care reform?

The Iraq war will cost the United States $2,400,000,000,000.00 overall, complete with multi billion dollar, no-bid contracts. It has also helped to nearly quadruple oil prices, adding to the mounting costs of living here at home.

But try to spend a quarter of that trying to provide a health insurance option for all, and the shit hits the fan! Carpet bomb a country that had nothing to do with September 11th? Sure! Provide a competitor to unscrupulous, monopolistic insurance companies? Absolutely not!

In the United States, over 60% of declared bankruptcies are caused by medical problems. Of those, nearly 80% had health insurance. If that doesn't convince you that there is a serious problem with the way that the Health Insurance industry is behaving, then I don't know what will.

The plan that has been laid out will not require you to switch providers. Companies may find it less expensive to switch to another plan, or pay a fine and drop insurance benefits altogether, but this plan does not change that. Employers can do that right now. It does not encourage old people to commit suicide, doesn't encourage abortion, and doesn't create a single-payer Canadian-style system. It is simply a competitive insurance plan for those who cannot afford the rates of insurance companies which look for every opportunity to deny claims anyway.

The insurance industry is trying to scare you into thinking that the plan presented will cause problems. It is my opinion that the only people against this plan are those who either don't understand it or have a partisan bent.

Our generation has a chance to change the country for the better - at a fraction of the cost of our illegal war in Iraq. It is by no means perfect - the costs are high and it won't be as solvent as the President says. But it's a huge step forward in increasing the quality of life for all Americans and stop the strangle-hold that this huge industry has on our republic.

Fight like Susan

Kerri and I both religiously read Fat Cyclist, although for different reasons. Kerri enjoys his hilarious take on professional cycling and current events. I also enjoy the articles on cycling itself, as Fatty (also known as Elden) writes about his cycling and getting-in-shape experiences. He also writes about his wife Susan, battling breast cancer since 2007 after a previous bout in 2004. Susan and Fatty have spearheaded fund raising efforts that have generated over a half million dollars to fight cancer.

But we read some sad news this morning. Last night, Fatty's wife Susan passed away after an excruciatingly long battle with breast cancer. From the blog:

Susan’s part in the battle is over, but she didn’t lose. She led the charge. She showed the rest of us how to fight: with determination, focus, creativity, and outrageous endurance.

Now it’s up to the rest of us to Fight Like Susan.

So, go fight like Susan.