FYI -- There are updated photos on Jessica's page.
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Family
Disney is currently celebrating a "Year of a Million Dreams" at the Disney parks. I recently found out that they're holding a "Dream Job" contest (sponsored by Careerbuilder.com). The winners will get to go to Disneyland to experience one of the following jobs: Jungle Cruise Skipper, Parade Performer, Pirate, Princess-in-waiting, Haunted Mansion butler/maid.
By the time I learned of the contest, there wasn't much time before submissions were due. Entering the contest required submitting a short video (45 seconds). I liked the idea of the jungle cruise, so I thought of a couple jokes, found a hat, and made a quick video.
Long story short, I'm one of 20 finalists for the jungle cruise job. I'm including my video below, but if you have a moment, I'd appreciate it if you'd vote for my video in the contest.
Here's the the page where you can vote for my video (click "This one gets my Vote!"):
Here's the the contest page, so you can see all the videos you'd like.
Seemed like something kind of fun. If you do vote, I thank you.
Some background and an update:
I may have mentioned this before, but I think it's interesting. The FAA requires that children over 2 years old sit in their own seat on an airplane, but leaves it optional for younger children, who are otherwise allowed to sit on an adult's lap. Interestingly, the FAA flatly states that having these smaller children in their own seat (preferably in a carrier) is safer than being on a lap, but they've opted not to require it. Why? Because if they require that infants have their own seat, then many families may opt to travel by car rather than pay the added expense of another airline ticket. And traveling on the streets and highways is statistically more dangerous than traveling on an airplane, even sitting on someone's lap.
Here's the update: Until recently, many airlines have offered a reduced fare (usually half-price) for families buying a seat for their infant of less than 2 years of age. Apparently this is changing. Airlines are dropping this discount, and according to the story, the motivation is market forces, plain and simple. For a time, many airplane seats were empty, but lately capacity has been reduced and demand has increased, so flights are more often full or close to it. When chances were that the seat would otherwise be empty, airlines were happy to get 50% fare for it, but now that the seat would likely otherwise be occupied by a full-fare passenger, half-fare isn't such a good deal for the airline.
Here's a brief commentary on the story which includes a brief survey of airline policies via their websites.
One more wrinkle: online versus in person booking. Many airlines offer their cheapest fare online, even offering a discount over the same flight booked on the phone with a person. Those that do still offer an infant fare reduction typically don't let you book that online; you have to call in.
This weekend I booked tickets with Frontier for the three of us (Dana, Jessica, and myself) to visit Colorado in late March. I searched for the flights we wanted online, then called in to make the reservation so I could get the infant reduction (a big deal for me; I pretty much always prefer an online transaction to placing an order over the telephone).
I got two tickets at full price and one at (roughly) half-price. Great. Except that I was getting the 'in-person' booking fare, not the online booking fare. I didn't do the math until I'd hung up the phone, but it turns out it would have been cheaper to buy 3 full-fare tickets online than it was to buy 2 full-fare and 1 half-fare ticket on the phone. Live and learn. (The third commenter here found a similar scenario with Southwest.)
Well, it's November, or, as I like to call it, National Time-to-Take-a-Few-Minutes-and-Write-Something-for-the-Blog Month.
I think prolonged absences just happen sometimes. In my last post, I mentioned the arrival of our wonderful baby girl, Jessica. I've added a link (in the photos list to the left) to a photo gallery featuring the little one, including some pics from Halloween. Don't be scared.
The addition on the house is finishing up much like I think we all predicted it would: incredibly slowly. Once the contractor has all but the last 10% of his payment, and the only things on the punch list are little 10-minute jobs, it suddenly becomes hard for anyone to make it a priority to get out here and take care of the rest. I don't really blame them, I guess. Except for the sense of task completion, there's little incentive to prioritize getting to Westchester to fix a valve if you're a plumber (for example) with a slate more substantial projects backed up waiting for your attention. Still, no one has completely forgotten about us.
Today we had what was to be our final inspection from the city. The inspector found one correction: our seismic shutoff valve on the gas line was on the gas company's side of the meter, and it's supposed to be on the customer's side. I can't tell you exactly why that matters, but I'm sure it does. Whoever installed this one obviously didn't do it to code. Even though this wasn't touched during our current project, it has to be fixed before the city will issue the Certificate of Occupancy. The plumber was able to come by near the end of the day and install a new seismic valve, which he explained is "state of the art". Looks good to me, but I'm hardly a connoisseur.
At any rate, today is Day 173 of the project. So little has happened lately that it hardly seems fair to keep the count going, but then again I figure until the punch list is empty and the inspections all done, the project isn't technically finished.
By the way, there are little things we don't like about the bathroom. Nothing major, and no one's fault, just some decisions we might make differently if we ever do this again. If you're remodeling a bathroom, we'd be happy to let you know what we liked and didn't like.
Here's a picture of the completed exterior. The photo timeline is updated to this point: the slowdown near the end is evident in the frequency of available photos.
Hopefully I'll get back to a post-per-week or so. There's plenty going on to chat about, and lots of web links to interesting stuff. My only excuse is lots of work and a new baby. If that doesn't let me off the hook in your book, I can only ask for a second chance.
I have once again been absent from the blog for a period of a few weeks. I do apologize, but this time I can say it's not because I got lazy about it. I have a good excuse this time. The best. At the end of August my wife gave birth to our beautiful daughter Jessica.
The birth experience was amazing. Dana was really amazing. The time since then has been, um, well, amazing. Everything's different, nothing's changed. We are, as you might guess, usually sleep deprived, though some nights are better than others. We're overwhelmed with the responsibility, but so captivated by our little girl.
Here's a pic. I'll post an update about the addition to the house soon.
