Another birthday has come and gone. This past Friday, I turned the ripe-old age of 28. Still few more years to cling onto my 20s. Traci and I had a party to celebrate my birthday and to celebrate the holidays. It was great to have everyone over... I'm guessing we had upwards of 30 people this year. It was a good turnout, Traci did a great job with the food spread. We spent over $300 at Costco on this years party supplies, but I think it was worth it!

27 was a good year for me. Here's a quick recap:

• Started taking guitar lessons to get back into playing my guitar
• Got engaged
• Took a 2 week pre-honeymoon vacation to Italy/London
• Spent 1 week in rural Alaska (Nome, Unalakleet)
• Got married
• Spent Several days at Disney's Grand Californian Resort
• Finished off a project at work (almost 2 years)
• Conceived a child (due week of June 14th)
• Turned 28, one year closer to 29

What will next year hold?

Ultrasound pictures from this past Wednesday. 13 weeks in and everything is looking good!

 

A Gripe about gift cards

When did gift cards become an obligation to spend the alotted money at the venue of issuance? There was a time that a gift card/certificate was as good as cash. Then the rules stated that you needed to at least purchase something then you could get the remainder back as cash back.

Now if someone gives you a gift card, you have the spend the whole amount at the store. No cash back, what gives?

What's even worse is that some gift cards actually expire! How is it that you can buy the right to buy something issued in the form of a gift card, and without actually buying something, they can tell you the card/certificate expired?

Personally I feel the act of expiring a gift card is criminal.

I found an article on this subject that is interesting. In some form or another, we may actually be protected from shops pulling the rug out from under us by state and maybe even federal law.

Sometimes you don't know who to complain to

I have a gripe about this 20mph "at all times" speed zone outside of Sunset High School. Two years ago the state of Oregon passed a law that mandated lower speed limits in school zones "for safety". The magic to this law was that any road that was 30mph or less in a school zone would be re-zoned as 20MPH at all times.

In my neck of the woods there is a fairly busy stretch of road that people use all the time. Prior to this law the speed limit was 35MPH, which was reasonable for the area. It slowed down from the 40MPH speed zone just West of it. Once this law came into play. The city/county/state or whoever changed the speed limit to 30MPH so that this stretch of road would fall into this new 20MPH at all times category.

Now, not only does it congest traffic, but it's also a clever speedtrap for the city of Beaverton's photo radar van. I may not have my facts straight, but I think the city of Beaverton was already sued for shortening the length of a yellow light at a Photo-radar intersection. These tactics are downright sneaky, and I don't believe they are for the protection of these high school students.

City of Beaverton Red Light Radar

Second OB appointment

Traci and I had our second OB appointment yesterday. It went well, all the previous tests came back negative, which is good! The real excitement for us was hearing the baby's whoosh, whoosh, whoosh heartbeat for the first time. It is somewhat surreal to think that a tiny life is developing inside my wife. At 12 weeks the mom really isn't showing. WebMD has some good information on fetal development.