Stupid wet floor…but the pictures are nice.

Today we had our first real pregnancy scare. I think we did pretty well. We kept our heads about us and knew that things were probably totally okay, but did all the proper “checking” nonetheless. And a fair amount of praying.

Thursday night Sonja slipped on a wet floor (well, the floor was dry, but she didn’t know that the carpet was wet that she walked across before walking on the tiled floor). She slipped and fell to her knees, catching herself on her hands – whew, that was close. Well, Friday morning she started to notice she hadn’t really felt the baby move much. It was just at our last doctor visit that we learned she should feel the baby move at least about 10 times in an hour (if she pays attention). Well now she was paying attention.

After not feeling Little L (the name we’ve been calling Baby – Levi or Lizzy (Elizabeth)) move for a while, we started to get nervous. So, Sonja called her doctor’s office and made an appointment – earliest available was 12:30. Then the nurse called back a few minutes later and said she should come in now…as in right now…as in leave work right now and come in.

Well, I won’t keep you in suspense – everything checked out beautifully – in fact that’s the word the doctor used – beautiful…as in beautifully healthy. After looking at the brain waves (how do they do that?) and the muscle movements and other such things that docs look at to know if a baby is healthy or not, she confirmed that everything was connect right and functioning normally and Little L looked totally healthy. But, just to be safe, they still sent Sonja to the hospital for 4 hours of monitoring.

our baby move and play around. And we gotThis is where I enter the story, after leaving work a couple hours after getting there and three buses later, I finally made it to the hospital just in time to catch the last part of the ultrasound show where we got to watch Little L suck his/her foot and play with the umbilical cord (no Grandma Stafford, we still didn’t find out what we’re having). It was a lot of fun just watching some great pictures (no, Little L is not blowing bubbles - it's a cross section of the umbilical cord). Then we were sent back upstairs for the rest of the 4 hours of monitoring where we got to listen to Little L’s heartbeat for most of the time. Sonja was having minor contractions (according to their machine – she couldn’t really feel them) but they figured it was likely due to some anxiety from the morning worries and maybe some mild dehydration. We figure maybe there was some work stress involved to (another – rather humorous and frustrating – story for another time). They made her drink a bunch of water and did give her a shot for the contractions (but again it was just a precautionary thing) and nothing further was prescribed other than a night of relaxing and a follow-up visit with her doctor on Monday.

But, all we heard all day were things like “the baby sure is active” and “everything looks really healthy” – music to our ears. That, and the 140-and-some-odd heartbeats per second from our Little L.

All you have to do is ask.

So…we’ve been couch shopping for a while – not aggressively, but wanting to find something soon. Like good Dave Ramsey-ites, we have a “Couch” envelope and have been saving up for it. But, it was also the first envelope we dipped into if we were running short. So, it kind of peaked out at about $500 and I was getting anxious to get a couch picked out so we could really aggressively start saving. Sonja was going to go shopping with her Mom to find a few options (to narrow it down – I was getting overwhelmed by all the choices) and then I would go with her to pick the final one out of a few choices. But, Tuesday night we happened to go out on a whim and hit a few stores. At our third store, we found one we liked enough to want to get there on the spot.

It was originally $849 on sale for $699. One of the things taught in Financial Peace University is how to get good deals. And one of the “secrets” is to just ask. But, this can be difficult sometimes (especially for Sonja and I – neither of us are aggressive “give me a deal” kind of people). But, we decided we would at least try. So, I said something like this: “How long will the sale last?...[end of the week]...We came out looking tonight not sure what we would find, but we only brought $500 in cash with us…would you even be willing to go that low?” He hemmed and hahhed for a bit – explaining that it was already on sale and that was a good price…but that he would go check the cost price. Well…that kind of surprised us. He came back and told us he could give it to us for $600…including tax! About $150 off the sale price!

We were both pretty tired and happy with the deal, but I think if we had tried to be a little more aggressive and push back a bit, he would have gone lower. But, like I said, we’re not that aggressive and we were tired. It was nice to find a way to ask that fit with our comfort level and personalities. We also weren’t sly or deceptive – we really did only have $500 in cash (actually there ended up being $519 in the envelope – but we didn’t know that). It takes two weeks to get the couch and we can just pay the balance then. (not that FPU or Dave Ramsey teaches to be sly or deceptive – but it is a temptation when trying to get deals like this)

Couch: $600 after tax
Financial Peace University: $90
Saving up and paying cash for items and saving money by just asking: Priceless

*the picture is not the actual couch - I think it's the same model, but a different color and...well, we bought a couch and not a love seat

Is it really that hard?

Disclaimer: I have never worked at Subway, so perhaps I am mistaken about the complexity of applying condiments to a sub.

Is it really that hard to get an assortment of condiments evenly spread across a measly foot of bread (or in some cases, a half foot)? Or to have some standards of consistency when applying mayonnaise or mustard? It's like an adventure every time I go into one - even the same one - "what's going to happen this time?!"

Sorry...just had to get that out. Thanks for listening.

One Man's Junk...

One of the things I've heard atheists and/or naturalists mention as an argument for evolution is the amount of "junk" DNA we have. Junk DNA is seemingly unneeded DNA that we have which proponents of evolution claim is "left over" from our long history of evolving. They say that if we were designed then an intelligent Designer wouldn't have put unneeded bits of DNA in us. I even heard Christopher Hitchens say it last week when I went and saw him speak here in Seattle.

Well, it turns out that that "junk" DNA might not be so useless after all...

Class Over

We wrapped up our FPU class last night. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed doing the class. By this last class, our numbers were definitely fewer than at the start, but I still feel like we finished strong. In the last class they have you add up the total amount of debt your class paid off in the 13 weeks – as well as the total amount saved in the 13 weeks. With only about 50 people there last night (it was a very nice and sunny day), the total debt paid off was about $75,000 (plus another $247,000 – we figured someone sold a house). And the total saved was about $58,000. Wow!