Finally finally finally

Today I received my offer to join the 176th Generalist class of A-100. Starting March 10 I begin my foreign service career!

Eating out of the pantry

Back when we thought I would start working in January we started to load up the freezer with dinners and leftovers to make weeknight mealtimes easier. Then it didn't happen. Then we realized we didn't have any more plastic containers. Or room in the freezer for anything. We also realized that our budget had sort of relied on a second paycheck starting in February, so there was some rejiggering to do there.

All of that combined to produce the "pantry challenge". I am 100% confident we can live off our pantry for at least one week, excepting a few weekly necessities. I have allotted $20 as part of the challenge to load up on milk, eggs and fruit. Depending on what kind of dent we make, the challenge might run 2 weeks. I'll post how it goes.

Tonight we're serving up leftovers from our housewarming party last night. Pumpkin and spinach ziti, or Spanish rice? It's fun to have options.

Wordless Wednesday

National Building Museum

Most parents around here who have been have raved about this museum. It's one of the few in the DC area you have to pay to go to ... but then there was a Certifikid coupon ... and cue up our family outing.

We didn't realize that the parking meters near the museum would be 2h limit even on a Saturday, and we hadn't brought quarters. The museum shop will give you quarters but only $2, which will last one hour. It turned out the meter we parked at was broken, only discovered after feeding several quarters into it, and a parking enforcement guy happened by just as this was going on and told us what we could do (call a number on the meter, give them the code for the meter and get a confirmation code back - then we could park free for 2 hours ... or rather, park for the cost of the quarters we'd already put in)

But I digress.

I do now see why the reviews by single adults are not as enthusiastic as the heaps of praise given by parents. There are a few interesting exhibits about building stuff. We poked into the current exhibit about Los Angeles and some of the architecture and infrastructure projects over the last 60 or so years. The rest of the time we played.

There's a room with various types and sizes of building blocks. Some are small enough to put together on the very large light up from below table (pretty cool). The chairs are made of the same sturdy foam and have some of the shapes of the pieces.

 Then there were the much larger, almost child size pieces wherein Alex built herself a little house to hide in. Around the room are showcases of various types of building blocks on the market in various parts of the world over the last century or so.

The Building Zone is only for children ages 6 and under, so this will be our last and only year. Tickets to this room are included in admission but you get a specific time you can go and only get  45 minutes to be there. The kids loved it. There's a mini house decked out with a kitchen, living room area etc. There's a slew of costumes of various professions (it took a bit to get Zoltan out of the fireman jacket), a train table, a car carpet, various forms of building objects like Magna-tiles, soft foam blocks, plenty of enormous Legos - the kids and Terry built a house here too.

There's a reading nook with (almost) all books about building and construction.

 In short, 45 minutes is barely enough time but I like that they restrict the numbers so all kids can easily get to all activities. When we got home, both kids napped for 2 hours. Verdict? Yeah, we'll go back for sure. 

Fishies!

Alex has been asking for a fish for a little while, and I know Terry has missed having a pet around the house. A few weeks ago we got the aquarium and set it up, worked to get the water to the right pH and such. Then things got busy, we went to the cabin, etc. We finally got around to welcoming five new fishies into our lives. Being guppies, one female was pregnant when we brought them home and delivered within the first week. It will be exciting to see how many babies survive into adulthood - the cycle of life acting out in our own home!

Edited to add: a few weeks into this new experience, illness has struck. One adult and all the remaining babies have fallen to Ick. Yes, that is really the name of the disease. We're hoping to keep the rest alive.

A place for everything, and everything in its place

Once we got through Tummy Bug 2014, there was the one last basement chore I'd been wanting to complete: the organization of the play room.  There are still a few stragglers - the dresser that needs to move to its new home in the study/guest room, the toy workbench we've been trying to sell on craigslist (Anyone want one? We can't sell a thing on that site to save our lives.). But as of today, every item either has a reasonable home, or has been thrown away or packed away for future rotation. I'm proud of the results.

couldn't resist one pic from the epic tummy bug

 

Wordless Wednesday

Jammin' on the jam

Somehow, this summer I neglected to mention that we canned a full 17 pints of peach jam. We'd gotten a big box of seconds and didn't have much time to deal with them, so rather than trying to can slices, or make a pie, or whatever, we jammed it all.  Then we thought about how we'd have to give a lot away (they make great Christmas gifts!)

Then we started eating it. Particularly, Zoltan started eating it. It is the "j" of his pb -n- j. It's the flavor and sweetener in his yogurt. He puts it on his pancakes.

In four months we have gone through seven jars and today I opened the eighth.

Oh, IBM/Computershare :-(

Somewhere in my youth, or childhood ....  my parents bought me one bright shiny share of IBM stock. It came as a nifty actual piece of paper that they put into a frame and propped up on a shelf in my bedroom.  As I was a child or even a baby (who knows when they bought this share? Maybe it celebrated my birth) I was listed as a minor and my dad as the custodian on the account.

For all these years, I have continued to own this stock. It's split, I've been doing dividend reinvestment all this time so eventually I have bought a share or two, and the value has increased of course. All this means I now have 3-and-a-fraction "book" shares in addition to the one bright shiny paper share. Somewhere along the line, a company called Computershare started managing the stock.

For various reasons, now is the time for me to deal with this stock. And wow what an ordeal it is!!

The first step in doing anything at all is to transfer the shares into my name alone. I asked if it would be simpler if my dad just sold the shares, but because I am now in fact no longer a minor it doesn't matter that he is written as the custodian. So for the purposes of getting rid of these shares it doesn't matter that his name is on it, but to get his name off it will cost be a bunch of money and time. Sounds about right?!?

First I learned I would need to fill out a form and acquire a "medallion guarantee" certifying that my signature is the actual signature of me, the person who will become the account holder. A notary stamp is NOT sufficient, which is written in all caps and bold and made very very clear. Unfortunately, these things are available only through financial institutions. Of course, I use credit unions and primarily online institutions. No local brick and mortar. And because banks are agreeing to pay up if I'm not really me, of course they only provide these things to their own customers. In comes the Fedex charge to send the form to my financial institution (but hey, at least they do it! Not every place does.)

Then, and much more frustratingly, I discovered I need that paper stock certificate that was last seen in the childhood home my mother sold ten years ago. There is absolutely, 100% no way to do anything with this stock until I hold in my hand the paper share. I can pay about 10% of the value of the stock I have to acquire a new one from IBM (to then turn around and send it back to them with the magical "medallion guarantee" and another form or two). I asked the oh-so-helpful customer service lady whether, if I bought stock today, I would receive paper shares. She said no. She agreed that if I bought and then sold a share in the last however many years, this requirement of a paper share would of course not be necessary. I asked why I am being penalized just because we bought the share several decades ago. She wasn't amused.

Yes, the value of the stock is greater than what I will be shelling out in order to be able to have the option of selling it. However, it has cost me plenty of time and annoyance (and soon also cash) to deal with this. Trust me, not I nor anyone whose investment choices I have any control over will ever buy IBM stock, or any stock through Computershare as I cannot tell what requirements are coming directly from IBM and which are made up by Computershare.

* Note: I've edited the name of the not-IBM company. It's Computershare, not Compushare.

Maybe we aren't supposed to leave the cabin?

So our last two trips back to Maryland from cabin have both occurred during snowstorms that basically shut down the DC area. Maybe we are actually supposed to just stay there forever?

Other highlights of the MLK, Jr. weekend cabin trip:

Ricketts Glen. It is such a beautiful area and Terry just told me the story of Ricketts, who was a logger who clearcut most of the area but recognized the special wonderfulness of the place and set it aside to preserve/conserve. We all bundled up and took a short hike to some falls. Terry got some wonderful photos like yesterday's Wordless Wednesday. And some goofy ones, seen below ("Daddy, take my picture!")

Zoltan's tummy bug. Not exactly a "highlight" but an important event. Especially important as we just realized last week that he had not puked since being a baby with spitup - which is only sort of the same thing. In four years the child has never had a tummy bug. Alex has puked once since she was two. We've been lucky here. But because I noticed it, something had to happen. Let the record show that we only replaced the defunct washing machine on our very last trip to the cabin. What a blessing that was! Four episodes within a few hours all in the late-to-middle of the night and only one made it into a vessel intended to receive the "offering". We did two loads of laundry and had two more we had to bring home in segregated plastic bags. Between Zoltan actually calling for me and my imaginations I slept all of four hours Monday night. Which leads to what I did in that sleep deprived state ...

Snowstorm 2014. I wavered a lot about whether we should just spend another day at the cabin (see the title of this entry). In the end, however, with Zoltan being puke-free for six hours and holding down water for sure, and crackers for maybe, we decided to try to get home. The kicker to this story is that we had driven both cars up, because we were taking up our new futon (that I never got to sleep on as it went downstairs, and I slept upstairs on the couch, see the item immediately above). I am not a great snowstorm driver. I am a bit hazy on exactly when we left the house and we did stop at Rite Aid for Pedialyte and the gas station for gas before really "beginning" the journey. I believe the door to door was right around 6.5 hours ... usual is around 5 hours. We spent too much highway time going 45 mph or below and it wasn't always my fault.

All in all though, we still love the cabin. Just maybe not so much in the winter.