Month: December 2010

The Decision

OK, so my decision isn’t as captivating and probably won’t cause as much drama as Lebron’s did earlier in the year, but I thought I’d share it anyways!

A few weeks ago I noted that our health care options came out and that none of them looked all that appealing, with our costs going up in a big way.

There were three options available to us for next year:

High Deductible Plan / HSA Compatible
Annual Premium: $2,400
Deductible (out of pocket before coverage kicks in): $3,750
Then They Cover: 80%
We Still Pay: 20%
Max Out of Pocket: $10,000

Exclusive Provider Option
Annual Premium: $6,000
Deductible: $0
Then They Cover: 90%
We Still Pay: 10%
Max Out Of Pocket: $1,500 per person max $3,750 total

Read moreThe Decision

Learning A Lesson The Hard Way: Garage Doors and Ice

Thankfully for me, this didn’t actually occur to me, though I did have a similar experience.

Turns out her home, like many others in the midwest part of the USA, was beset by rain, then snow as well as falling temperatures.  This left a lot of water near her garage door, which froze as the temperatures fell.

mb-201012openerThis morning, when she went to open the garage door by hitting the button, as so many of us do, things didn’t go according to plan.

The garage door had gotten stuck to the ground, but the opener didn’t know that and kept pulling the door.  Something has to give.

Turns out in this case it wasn’t the ice!

Read moreLearning A Lesson The Hard Way: Garage Doors and Ice

The Outdoor LED Lights Look Great!

Since we moved into our house, we enjoy putting lights outside on various trees and bushes in the front of the house, as well as the deck railing in back.

This year, we completed the transition to LED lighting for the entire outdoor set of lights!  I’m happy to say that we like it a lot.  As an added bonus, our next door neighbors do their garage, trees and bushes in the same style of lighting so we inadvertently created a ‘double dose’ of lighting.

It was a ‘long’ road to get here, relatively speaking.

In 2008, we had no plans to get up and do any shopping on Black Friday.  However, for reasons I can’t remember, we were both up around 5am.  I decided to go look at the sale ads and found that the KMart ad contained a great sale on LED lights.  We agreed that since we were up we’d go there, as well as to a couple of other places.

KMart had multi-colored LED lights, for which we bought seven sets or so at a good price.

Read moreThe Outdoor LED Lights Look Great!