Good news, bad news

The good news
Our 1996 Plymouth Voyager is reaching the point where it needs work. If I had the skills to fix it's periodic problems, it would still be a fine vehicle. Since I don't, it's gonna' nickel and dime us for more than it's worth.

So my father-in-law watches used car adds for deals. It's just something he does. And he found a 1999 Plymouth Grand Voyager for only $1800. It seemed to be well taken care of, so geez . . . if we get just 3 more years out of it, that's $50 a month for a vehicle. We delayed leaving on vacation a few hours so that we could pick this vehicle up. Previous owner said it's a good thing we did since he had 3 more interested parties scheduled to come look at it that day.

Score!

The bad news
13 hours later we're cruising down I680 about a half hour from arriving at Becky's Aunt & Uncles place in Omaha when a deer bounded in front of us. We must have caught the thing mid leap. It collapsed the front of our van and we sent it flying head over heels about 10 feet in the air into the field off the highway.

The van ain't goin' nowhere no more.

The good news
Other than the poor deer, no one got hurt. Becky's aunt & uncle have gone beyond any expectations. Came to pick us up and are letting us hang out here until we straighten out our plans. Becky was smart enough to transfer the insurance coverage to the new vehicle before we hit the road, so calling in the claim went real smoothly.

American Family has treated us very well in the past, so we have reason to hope they will again. Just waiting on them to find out where our vehicle was towed and when an adjuster can look at it.

A place

Our original plan was to spend the summer in Wisconsin Rapids. We'd get summer jobs, save money on rent, keep our stuff in the portable storage pod and in August we'd move to GB. The more we thought about it, the less sense it made. Other than that "save money on rent part." There ends up being very little time for a job and if we got one it would mean skipping out on going to Utah for sure. Plus there's the stress of sharing a home. As much as we love Becky's family . . . well there's still stress about things we used to control and now don't.

So we spent this past Wednesday and Friday in Green Bay looking for a place to live. We found a nice 3 bedroom, 2 bath duplex on Green Bay's east side. The kids will go to Edison Middle School and Preble High. The kitchen is small and all three boys will be sharing a room, but overall the place is bigger than we had dared hope. The bedroom are easily big enough for three and it has a huge family room. It's within walking distance of church and East Town Mall. Clean, quiet leafy subdivision. We met our neighbor and one of her sons. They seem nice. Our landlady seems real nice too. And, small world, her husband's brother is an IT manager at Acuity.

We're kind of excited about the place.

Monday we're leaving for a vacation out to Utah and back. We'll visit Becky's uncle, grandmother and sister on the way out and/or back. We should be back around July 7th or 8th, then plan to move into the place in Green Bay the next weekend, July 16th-17th.

Pony

My niece's husband, Tony, came from Wyoming to Wisconsin to interview for a job (which he got) at the Rhinelander Wal-Mart. While here, he is also staying at Becky's parents' place. Somehow, Tabby got it in her head that "Pony" was coming to stay with us. Wishful thinking maybe? I mean, she can get the "T" sound just fine . . . but ever since arriving, she hasn't called Tony anything but Pony.

Hitting the Bikes

Becky is concerned about my weight. Not because I'm fat, but because my parents, my Dad especially, have health issues that she's afraid I'll inherit. I mean, I'm not thin either, I weigh a little more than I should. So she wants me to exercise and had a relatively long, emotion frought discussion about it this morning.

I know I should exercise. I just don't worry about my health like Becky does. Worrying just isn't part of my nature, I guess. I've gone through active periods where I exercise regularly and I'm not really sure what motivates me to do so during those times . . . but it's just not here now.

But Becky seems to need me to exercise, so here I go.

Hitting the books

I got some academic advising from UWGB yesterday. After being passed from person to person on the phone, I ended up speaking with Greg Davis, whom I recognized from my years at UWGB oh so long ago. He was one of my favorite professors there, in fact. Good lecturer, obviously enjoyed what he was doing, approachable. Apparently he's in charge of helping people like me figure out what classes they're supposed to be taking.

So we talked about me taking courses to prepare for the actuarial exams. The Society of Actuaries modified the exams a few years back. When I took the exams in, like 1997, I remember taking a calculus based exam that was straight out of my calc III course and a statistics based exam that seemed to cover both material from my math probability course and a lot of material I'd never seen. Stuff I'd expect to have learned in the math stats class I never took. I remember looking at the calc exam thinking, "Man, if I had eight hours and my text book, I'd ace this." But I didn't. I had 2 hours and a crappy calculator. So I scored a 3 (10 being a perfect score, around 7 considered passing). Well I guess the calc test is gone. The probability test just covers probability. What most people now think of as "exam 2" covers financial models. Dr. Davis assures me that taking math probability should be sufficient to prepare for "exam 1".

The theory of probability course, however, is still pretty calculus heavy. I mean, it's a 300-level course with calc III as a pre-req. And my math is still pretty rusty. So I'm going to be hitting the math books to prepare for classes in the fall. Get back into the swing of things, you know? Do a couple hours of math per day to review material I'll have to be able to use in the probability course. This morning, I did most of the review chapter at the beginning of my calculus textbook. Just linear and quadratic equations on a Cartesian plane, i.e. graphing lines, circles, parabolas, etc. It was fun. This afternoon I'll spend an hour with my linear algebra text. Once I get a feel for how quickly it's coming back, I'll adjust the schedule to make sure I'm ready for the fall.

Happy Anniversary

A long time ago I was talking with a group of coworkers about getting a television. Not a new television . . . a television, period. For various reasons, Becky and I didn't have one yet and had agreed not to get one until our son was going into Kindergarten. So he was about ready to enter Kindergarten, and Becky was getting cold feet. Another coworker, the eternal bachelor, walked up on the conversation while we were talking about me wanting a television, but us putting it off because Becky had changed her mind about it. That led to all sorts of tangents about what being married means you give up and Bachelor Guy says, "Dude, you have got to come with me . . . the women on my team are trying to convince me how much it benefits guys to get hitched and you totally make my point."

It was funny. In part because, of course, Bachelor Guy is right in his own way . . . but in the complexities of things, he just entirely missed the point. It's hard to explain why being married is a good thing. It is, though. It just feels right, like I wouldn't want it any other way.

18 years ago, on June 12th, I married a wonderful, beautiful woman. I still can't believe I lucky I am. And I wouldn't trade her away for anything. Not even a television.

Settling In

Becky's mother is a wonderful woman. She has done so much for us and it so very, very kind of her to open her home to us for the summer.

She is the type of person who sees value, or the potential value in so many things. She goes to a fabric store and sees projects that she would love to do. She goes to garage sales and sees items she can decorate with. Heck, she goes to the beach and sees items that would look perfect in the yard or a certain room. So she has stuff. A lot of stuff.

Becky is also a wonderful woman. I mean, that's why I married her, right? But she is just the opposite about stuff. She is brutal about keeping only what we need. We often joke that if I sit still long enough in front of the computer I'll get tossed out. Or over the last few weeks as we razed our belongings, we had to bolt the kids to the floor.

You see where this is going?

My mother-in-law just went out west for a couple of weeks and left her daughter with all her stuff. Becky is gnawing her fingers off to keep from just totally cleaning house.

Downtime

Packed up the storage unit yesterday, packing up the computer in about 15 mins, thoroughly cleaning the house.

Tomorrow when school gets out we'll be driving off to Wisconsin Rapids.

How High?

Becky: "Is Tabby downstairs getting lunch herself?"

Jack: "I think she might be."

Becky: "Oh, I thought you were with her."

Jack: "I told her I wasn't going to eat yet."

Becky: ". . . "

Jack: "Did you tell her to come get me to make her lunch?"

Becky: "No, I just assumed . . . you know . . . "

Jack: "That Tabby said jump so I would?"

Becky: "Well, yeah."

Coverage

Insurance companies can drop people or refuse to cover people or charge higher premiums for all sorts of reasons that those people may perceive as arbitrary. The classic example is that males under the age of about 25 are charged higher premiums for auto insurance. I've talked to a lot of people who think that is entirely unfair. Most of them males under the age of 25. They swear that they're not getting in any accidents and they know, they absolutely know, that girls get in more accidents than boys do. So what gives?

"Fair" actually has very little to do with it. And your anecdotal experience is totally irrelevant. Even if it's true that girls get in more accidents than boys . . . I mean, I don't know whether or not it is . . . but even if it is true, all the insurance company cares about is that boys cost them more money than girls. For whatever reason. Maybe boys drive faster, which in turn means the "few" accidents they get into are more severe. And funerals, or extended hospital stays, are significantly more expensive than fender benders. The "why" is something insurance companies look at and can tailor specific plans' rates around related factors like number of speeding tickets. However, the general principal is that when they set rates, it has less to do with you specifically than it does with risk factors associated with your subset of the population.

We're human beings, though. Knowing what insurance companies are doing doesn't necessarily change how we feel about it. I understand that. When Acuity began using credit profiling to influence premiums, that didn't really feel fair. It felt like they were denying insurance to the population that would need it the most in a crisis. The company leadership explained it to employees very well. Explained that there were some very careful studies done to verify that there is no correlation between credit score and socio economic status. They weren't discriminating against the poor. Credit score varies virtually identically regardless of if you're rich or poor. It's just that low credit score correlated significantly with higher insurance risk. They don't really know why and other than making sure they aren't breaking any discrimination laws, they don't care.

The one that still gets me in that irrational, "hey not fair!" part of my brain is denying home coverage to people with certain types of dogs. Not just the stereotypical "bad" dogs, like Pit Bulls or Rottweilers, either. Acuity would flat out turn down coverage if you had a Siberian Husky or German Shephard. Even with no "incident" to prompt a risk assessment. The dogs I would want if we could get one were on the list. My parents couldn't get coverage with Acuity.

But "fair" actually has very little to do with it, right? It's just the risk levels the company leadership sets as acceptable and the rest is math.

So anyway. My brother-in-law, Mike, knows someone whose insurance policy was recently dropped by Acuity. I guess that individual empathizes with my employment being "dropped" by Acuity. He, in turn, knows a recruiter in Milwaukee that sometimes looks for mainframe programmers. He passed her name on to Mike who passed it on to me and I'll be contacting her today.