Category: General

In High School, one of my teachers spent more than one class period trying to convince us that there is no such thing as a free lunch.  Someone, somewhere is paying for that lunch.  I don't think the class had anything to do with politics either.

I found a good example of this recently in an advertisement from Chase.

Good things do come in small packages!

Get $125 on us.

$125 is yours when you open a qualifying Chase checking account!

So... who is paying for this $125 "free lunch?"  Well, certainly not Chase!  Here are some excerpts from the the details in the small print:

The Chase checking accounts eligible for this bolus have monthly Service Fees that start at $10-15 and can be different by market.

To receive the bonus: 1) open a new qualifying Chase checking account, which is subject to approval; AND 2) deposit $100 or more within 60 days of account opening.

If your checking account is closed within six months, we will deduct the bonus amount at closing.  Also, if your account is closed within 90 days, an Account Closing Fee of $25 will apply.

So the very minimum amount this checking account will cost you will be $60, which drops this bonus down to $65.  More likely, the monthly fees will be $15 per month, so that means the bonus is really $30.  If you close your account before 6 months have passed, you'll lose the $125 in addition to any monthly fees you have already paid.  Closing the account before 90 days have passed REALLY sticks it to you.

Then, when you call to close the account, you're sure to get the hard sell.  They don't want that $10-15 per month going away.

I'm sure that some people might come out $65 ahead in this deal, but for each of those people, there will likely be ten that end up spending more than $125 in fees.

Ridiculous.

Because you are paying a bank for the privilege of using your money.  It would be similar to me lending you money, paying you for the privilege, and paying you the interest during the life of the loan.

Today is the so-called "Black Friday."  According to what I heard on the radio earlier in the week, they were estimating that more than 200 MILLION people in the United States would be out shopping today.  That's nearly two-thirds the population of the country!

There were people camped out at Best Buy in Orem since the 19th.  Those people spent a WEEK camping out to save a hundred bucks on a television.  Even if they saved two hundred dollars, that works out to just over $1 per hour.  Worth it?  Apparently it is to them.

Then there's the "Door Buster" phenomenon where people risk life and limb to be one of the first people through the door so they can have one of the very few extra-special-super-on-sale items that are in very limited quantity.  Is it worth saving fifty dollars if you end up spending a hundred dollars on medical bills?

No thank you.  I'd rather not get those great deals.

Black Friday is starting earlier and earlier now.  Some places are opening at 10pm on Thanksgiving Day to start the Black Friday madness.  I can assure you that the people that made the decision to open late on Thanksgiving aren't the same people that have to staff the stores on Thanksgiving Day.

No thank you.  I'll be sleeping in.  Just like I do EVERY Black Friday.

I really like Thanksgiving. I love that I get a couple of days off of work to spend at home. I love that I get to spend that time with the people that I love the most. I love the traditions that have grown in my family over the years. And yes, as a foodie, I love the food!

Our Thanksgiving Day traditions:

• Breakfast of link sausage, scrambled eggs, blueberry muffins, and orange juice.
• A Thanksgiving turkey, of course. This year, I'm going to SMOKE the turkey!
• The rest of the Thanksgiving meal will include homemade gravy, homemade rolls of some sort, amazing mashed potatoes with lots of butter butter and cream, and stuffing--we have grown very attached to a sourdough and Cremini mushroom stuffing with fresh thyme and rosemary.
• Mints and nuts in little craft turkeys made from miniature flower pots.
• Discussing what we're thankful for as we eat our delicious meal.
• Even if we have Thanksgiving dinner with someone else, we still cook our own dinner so that we get all of the foods we love and so that we have lots of leftovers.
• Putting up Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving.
• The start of the Christmas music season!

The turkey is in the brine!

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon hot water
• 1 pound kosher salt
• 2 quarts vegetable broth
• 1 pound honey
• 1 7-pound bag of ice

So now the turkey is going to sleep in the brine overnight and tomorrow, I'm going to dry it out in the refrigerator--the extra refrigerator, because now we have two!  Then it's going on the smoker for 3 or so hours.

It's going to be seriously delicious!  More about the meal tomorrow!

Older Son has applied to BYU and BYU-Idaho, and as part of the application process, needed to discuss his willingness to abide by the Church Educational System Honor Code with his ecclesiastical leaders. It's standard procedure.

Last week, Older Son met with our Stake President. In the course of the interview, he asked Older Son to tell him a little about himself. Older Son mentioned that he plays violin and has done so for about ten years.

That's when Stake President pulled out his planner and mentioned that he was looking for a musical number for the Stake Priesthood Meeting on December 11 and he invited Older Son to provide that musical number. When asked who could accompany him, of course he said, "my Dad can."

Eek! I don't think that's standard procedure!

Looks like I'm going to need to be sitting in front of a piano for a few hours between now and then!

The other night, I was driving to Central Elementary School to pick up Younger Son who was volunteering at the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center. Something on the radio triggered a memory...

Older Son went to Manila Elementary School for Kindergarten. He and I had worked together on a little Lego Mindstorms robot and he wanted to bring it to school for Show & Tell. I can still picture the configuration of the desks in the classroom as we showed off how this robot could move around the room.

As I sat at a red light having this memory, I had a small panic attack. Older Son is now a Senior in High School. Instead of me helping him build Legos, he's helping me move refrigerators. He is applying for college admissions and scholarships. We're soon going to be worrying about Senior pictures and graduation.

And then he's going to be gone. Next Thanksgiving, he could very well be coming home from college for a visit. The following Thanksgiving, he will likely be serving an LDS mission.

I sat there, waiting for the light to change, fighting back tears, knowing how much I'm going to miss him--the same tears that I'm fighting back as I write this.

I'm not ready.

But he is ready. And ready or not, it's going to happen.

Despite the fact that I'm going to miss him, I'm so excited for the growth that he is going to experience in the next few years of his life. I take comfort in the fact that he and I have a really good relationship and I'm sure that I'll be one that he shares this growth and experience with.

Five-year-olds.

Yes, that's the "older class" that I'll be teaching at church.  I get a class full of five- and six-year olds.

I seriously haven't tried to relate to a five-year-old in about 10 years.

If I don't write anything else about this for a while, it's because my mom always told me that if I don't have anything nice to say...

But five-year-olds?

REALLY?

*heavy sigh*

The cold I had earlier was getting better...

...until it started getting worse. So yesterday, I went in to see a doctor. Turns out that this cold has turned into a pretty nasty sinus infection.

So now I have antibiotic and some really good knock-you-out cough medicine. I've been sleeping better, so I'm hoping that this stupid sickness will soon be a thing of the past.

Sorry if you tried to get to misterme.com (or dutchovenchef.com or laylabean.com or missgiggles.com or ooh-shemo.com) last night.  My host had a glitch.  I couldn't fix it.  First and second level tech support at my host couldn't fix it.  Fortunately, the third level knew how to fix the problem.

I was looking for a replacement laptop battery online, and found the following information about one of them:

Use laptop battery needing attention some matters:

• Carefulness read narrate book of battery, use commendatory battery.
• Research the electric appliance and the laptop batteries contact elements is whether clean, when necessity is clean with the wet cloth mop, after dry loads according to the correct polar direction
• New laptop battery pack must be fully charged before use.
• Li-ion and NiMH laptop battery can not interchangeable.
• Don't make new and old or different model battery put off.
• Don't try to make laptop battery rebirth use hot up, charge, or other way.
• Don't let battery short circuit.
• Don't hot up laptop battery or loss it in water.
• Don't strip battery.
• Electro-adapter should cut switch after use.
• Should take of laptop battery from adapter when battery long time no use .
• If you don't use your laptop for a period of time, you must fully discharge then recharge the laptop battery.
• Battery should stock in cool place, and dry.

Yes, I believe that there was something lost in translation there.

For some reason, it reminded me of an old Saturday Night Live mock commercial:

Happy Fun Ball!