Bread and Christmas

Oh Christmas breads. I love thee. Stollen. Panettone. Babka. Marzipan filling. Without you Christmas would be much less tasty. Other things I love about Christmas: vin fiert (Romanian for "hot wine" - or "Mulled Wine" as we would call it in America). Wood fires. Random community holiday events. Random church holiday events. Santa. The excitement of seeing Christmas through the eyes of my three-year old and five-year old boys. But European-style Christmas breads. For me personally you can't really enjoy the holidays unless you have a couple wonderful Christmas breads.

Rachel's 2013 Convoy of Hope

I am very proud of Rachel. Six months ago she was asked to participate on the 20-person planning committee as the asst treasurer for the Convoy of Hope's Tacoma event. Off and on for six months she's been meeting and planning with a local team of volunteers after work hours. Well today the Convoy of Hope event seems to have been a nearly complete success. 1000 volunteers and 7000 people took over Mt Tahoma high school in S Tacoma. Participants received free groceries, school supplies, lunch, shoes, family pictures, haircuts, music events, medical and dental check-ups, kids fun area... Probably a lot more too. I happened to stop by and was in sheer amazement at the scope of this event. There were police managing traffic. It was a big deal. It is clear the community need was very great and much appreciated. I'm proud of Rachel and her scrappy team for helping to plan and execute such an enormous community event. I love you, Rachel!

Iced Coffee

My (Rob's) current favorite drink of choice is iced coffee, followed closely by drip coffee. Both with cream. Sugar is optional. There are a lot of friends and acquaintances who assume because I work for SBUX that I must drink 20 free caramel white chocolate mochas every day. I admit I did something like this at first. That phase lasted for a month or two, then graduated to simply coffee.

I think this is the sort of casual anecdote that is best served on Twitter or Facebook. But I suppose I was feeling a bit verbose.

ER Visit: Cash vs Insurance (or "An Illustration of US Healthcare Cost Madness")

Following up from a prior blog post (Greyson's head wound ER visit). The following illustration shows the difficult, almost roulette-like choices you have to make during a stressful health crisis. Choices without data, without information, without prices.

If you find yourself at the Emergency Room and you are deciding whether or not to hand over your insurance card, or whether to spin the wheel and hope paying in cash costs less, consider the following metrics:

• Issue: Toddler gets a cut in his forehead. To make it sound worse, let's call it a 2-inch head laceration.
• Treatment: 2 minute application of super-glue to laceration + otter pop.
• Total full price: Mary Bridge Children's Hospital in Tacoma, WA charged $1,988 for the "facility" charge plus $142 for the "ER visit" plus $315 for something called "Superficial wound fac professional fee" for a grand total of $2,445.
• Payment Decision: You know, or you think, or you hope that you're correct that you read somewhere long ago that nobody pays full price. Door # 1: Do you use your high-deductible ($5K deductible) Blue Cross health insurance knowing that they won't pay anything, but also knowing (or hoping) that you would likely (hopefully) benefit from their implicit "hospital/insurance company negotiated hand-shake discount"? Door # 2: Do you spin the roulette wheel and just say to the doctor treating your child and the administrator with the guffawed look on her face that "I'm not giving you my insurance card. Just bill me after the service is performed and hope that I pay up."

So what do you do? First of all, you should not have gone to the ER in the first place. That was your first mistake. Never go to the ER ever ever ever. But since you are already here, you do the logical thing and hand over your insurance card. You go down the insurance path. So how did it all turn out? See below:

• Total Patient Cost with Insurance: $2,445 full price - $871 "Blue Cross Members Discount" = $1,574. Ouch! Should have told your toddler to stop whining and walk it off.
• Total Patient Cost without Insurance: $2,445 full price * 60% (aka, 40% Mary Bridge's standard "we take pity on uninsured freeloading bastards of society" cash discount) = $1,467. For a savings of $107 versus Option 1. Congratulations! Despite paying almost $1,500 for a simple cut wound, you can take a trifle of solace in your assiduity and risk-taking which saved you $107. Of course, you would not know that you saved $107 because you never opened up Door # 1 because transparent pricing was never available to you. So you still probably feel like you were taken advantage of.

I think the key takeaway here is that in the bizarro world of healthcare costs, you really have no idea what you are getting into. You can be as smart as a whip. You can pre-plan and call your insurance company to see what your benefits include. You can do everything humanly possible, but you cannot tear the veil of secrecy between the healthcare provider, insurance company and patient.

If we had price transparency in healthcare the way we have nutritional value labels on cereal, we could probably reduce our healthcare consumption in half.

One Hundred and Sixty One

What is the largest fathomable number in the universe? According to Jude it's 161. As in, "Dad how fast can a dragster go? Can it go 161 miles per hour?" Or "Aww, we're never going to get there. It's like 161 miles away." Or "I want 161 bouncy houses."

For the littler Greyson, the biggest possible number is 61. As in, "Mom I see 61 cows," and "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle 61 bells all the way!"

Recollections For My Dad: A Modern Renaissance Man

Happy Father’s Day 2013 to my dad. I am so proud of him. He lives in Texas and I live in Washington so we don’t see each other more than 1 or 2 times a year. We really miss each other. If I could live in the same city as my dad then I would be perfectly content. We would do all sorts of crazy things and he would teach his grandsons life skills that someone growing up in the 60s learned. He is a Renaissance Man of many many skills and qualities. He is literally (not figuratively) a CEO, a pastor, a writer, a scholar, a carpenter, a world traveler, an ambassador, and a deeply devoted husband of 30+ years and father to 10 children. I sometimes say that I grew up in a “Cosby Family” situation where the parents and the kids all love each other deeply. No major drama, just the manifestation of the idealistic Rockwellian American Family.

Below are some recollections of my dad from my childhood. This is not comprehensive. It’s a living list and I hope to update it from time to time:

• I remember my dad’s 30th birthday. It was at Camp Tillicum. Now that I am something like 35 or 36 (I literally can’t remember), the fact that I remember my dad’s 30th birthday is pretty impressive. He was just a little kid back then!
• I remember as kids going to parks with my dad.
• He was a professional trumpet player for a bit. He would tell me fun stories of his glory days in his 20s when he could hit a triple E. He would recall a song played at Azusa Pacific University with a choir. The choir began “And the trumpets all sound! …” and dad responded with some fun high notes. I can sing the tune in my head courtesy of his story.
• I remember as kids my dad putting out the tarp and camping under the stars in the Redwood forest.
• I remember going deep sea fishing a few times off the California coast.
• I remember as kids when our house caught on fire in Oregon City. I was 4 years old. When my mom and my sisters returned to see the house in an enormous fireball. I ran across the street, towards the inferno. The firemen and police assumed I was running to the house to sacrifice myself to save a toy or some such nonsense. I remember thinking how dumb their perception of me was. I was simply running across the street because that’s where dad was standing.
• I remember as a kid driving home one day when my dad was so beside himself with frustration at my sister Jennifer’s pre-teen dramatics. He warned her, “you stop or I’ll stop this car and lick you!” When Jen kept it up he stopped the car and literally licked her. Not in the figurative “hitting” sense. Literally licked her cheek. Kelleigh was stunned. Jen was sooo grossed out that she stopped her histrionics and the rest of the car ride home was light and jovial. Problem solved! I’ll never forget that.
• I remember in high school when my dad and I performed Christmas carols in front of the church for Christmas Eve service. Just a trumpet and a sax.
• I remember in junior high my dad stepped up and coached my little league team because no one else was going to do it.
• I remember my dad sending me post cards and letters every day when he took a 30-day trip to Nigeria. I think I was 9 or 10 years old. They were my connection to my dad when he was 5000 miles away. To this day those are some of the very very few personal mementos I’ve kept for 20+ years.
• I remember my dad co-writing a manual for how to start a church from scratch. “The Phone’s For You.” Probably wouldn’t fly in today’s cell phone and privacy-conscious society, but cutting edge in its time. And I remember he didn’t get any credit for it, but his family knew and was very impressed.
• I remember my dad, as a pastor and itinerant pastor, giving the same “Ordinary People” message dozens upon dozens of times. And each time he sang “God uses ordinary people just like you and me…” And each time his ethos and credibility totally worked on the audience.
• I remember buying him an Eddie Bauer watch for father’s day one year. And there’s a funny story about that on my blog.
• I remember how adventurous he was, despite having no money in our early days, he and my mom always took us camping and on road trips. Grand Canyon, Glacier, Florida, Idaho… My dad could drive almost 24 hours straight just to avoid staying at a motel. And then in his 40s and 50s he discovered Priceline and suddenly he consistently stopped his cross country trips at 4pm each day just so he could enjoy an evening swim at a cheap hotel. Enjoying life, one evening at a time!
• I remember my dad being incredibly, incredibly entrepreneurial. He was a pastor, a teacher, a trumpet player, I think he was a bus driver (or maybe that was Grandpa?), he started a carpet business, he started churches (lots of them! How many, dad?), he started an international adoption agency, he sold sound systems to churches, he bought and repaired and sold dozens of houses. I’m sure I’m forgetting many interesting other ventures.
• In my estimation my dad has always been indefatigable. He never runs out of energy. Sometimes to his kids annoyance: “Why can’t we just sit here and watch TV?” Dad: “No, get off your lazy butts and let’s go on the lake!”
• My dad, who to his own admission was an extremely average student with self-described poor literary skills, later developed into an extraordinary writer. He recently wrote about my sister Angela’s adoption in “A Stormy Night in Bucharest.” Available on his company’s website: http://ifservices.org/about-us-2/
• Speaking of his years managing an international adoption agency, I am amazed and impressed by his harrowing tales of travel to Eastern Europe, Asia and Central America. As a leader in the adoption and non-profit industries, his many hundreds of international trips have often led to some boarder and immigration confusion as to whether or not he was a diplomat or spy.
• I remember getting food poisoning with dad in Guangzhou, China in 1999 at either the hole-in-the-wall kitchen where we ate poisonous snake and dog for lunch, or at the beautiful dinner buffet at the White Swan Hotel that evening. Either way… what a night. No fun for anyone. But a great story thereafter.
• I remember back in around 1985 when my dad – about 32 years old … younger than I am today – and the rest of the family is packed into our nasty 1983 Chevrolet station wagon. We called it the tuna boat. And for some reason it was during the one year when the paint was stripped off and it was covered in ugly grey primer paint. Not sure the story here, but suffice to say we were very poor and it was the 80s. So here we are in “classy” Southern California. A big family in a beater tuna boat with Oregon license plates. I was in the little tiny seat in the back that faces the opposite direction (like the Brian Regan skit minute 1:40). Some teenager on a BMX hits our car with his fist. My dad yells out “You Jerk!” And the ballsy teenager peddles back to the car and yells at my dad something like, “Take your family back to Oregon,” and my dad grabs his arm and says something like, “If you don’t go away right now I’ll break your arm.” And boy do I remember the look of fear in that young man’s eyes. I was proud of my dad and that perpetuated the “my dad can beat up your dad” childhood banter.
• Dad is an “extroverted introvert.” He is a pastor, a church leader, a board member, a speaker, he is comfortable talking in front of thousands of people, he is a social networker, he loves to bring people together and nurture relationships. And yet he loves to relax and recharge in the evenings to prepare him for another day of being a World Changer.

There is so much more about my dad than could possibly be captured here. He loves his family and would do anything for them. If he were Walter Bishop he would create a machine to travel to a parallel universe if it meant showing them that he loved them.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Tacoma ER Alternatives

This article is primarily geared internally to my family in order to have a public repository of urgent care information. This situation came up when a month ago we innocently took Greyson to the ER to get stiches for his head. Earlier he had belly flopped off the toilet and onto the corner shower tile. We responsibly called our pediatrician first and explained, “Greyson is bleeding pretty bad, yo! My gut tells me this needs stiches.” Our pediatrician, for better or worse, responded with the perfunctory “go straight to the ER, do not pass go, I am a mindless robot” line that is so frustratingly contributing to the problem of bloated high-cost US healthcare. Had the pediatrician responded with just an ounce more curiosity, wisdom or social consciousness, he/she may have offered other options. “Is the cut a superficial cut or is it life threatening? Oh it’s superficial? Oh then you should come on in. Or go to urgent care. Or go to the local free clinic. Or go to the fire station. Or go to Home Depot and buy superglue. Turn it into a fun human body DIY project for the whole family! Just don’t go to the ER.”

But in following the doctor’s perfunctory hackneyed prognosis, we unwittingly gave away over $1000.00. That is the difference in cost between an urgent care or clinic, versus the $1500 owed to the for-profit local Children’s hospital.

So for the sake of keeping a good internet-accessible record that is available via any smart phone on the way to a local Tacoma urgent care facility, below are the good local cheap Premera In-Network options for virtually any non-life threatening emergency. All of these (possible exception of MultiCare Express) can handle stitches, sprains, nasty wheezing, high fevers, burns,pretty much anything that doesn't require a jackhammer, scalpal or life support, etc:

MultiCare Gig Harbor Urgent Care Center
4545 Pt. Fosdick Dr N.W.
253-530-8011
Monday through Friday 8am to 8pm
Saturday, Sunday 8am - 4pm
Holidays 8am to 5pm

Mary Bridge Pediatric Urgent Care - Gig Harbor
4545 Pt. Fosdick Dr N.W. Suite 145
253-530-8011
Monday through Friday 2pm to 8pm
Saturday, Sunday and Holidays* 10am to 4pm

MultiCare West Tacoma (formerly Westgate) Urgent Care Center
2209 North Pearl Street, Suite 100
253-792-6900
Monday through Friday 9am to 9pm
Saturday, Sunday, Holidays* 9am to 5pm

MultiCare University Place Urgent Care Center
4210 Bridgeport Way W.
253-459-7177
Monday through Friday 9am to 9pm
Saturday, Sunday, Holidays* 9am to 5pm

US Health Works Medical Group
2624 South 38th St, Tacoma, WA 98409
253-475-5908
Monday – Friday 7:00am - 7:00pm
Saturday 9:00am - 5:00pm

MultiCare Express (In Rite Aid)
7041 Pacific Ave (East side), Tacoma, WA
253-474-2120
Monday - Friday 9am to 8pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am to 6pm

Mary Bridge Pediatric Urgent Care - Olympia
3504 12th Avenue NE
Olympia, WA 98506
360-252-3801
Thursday & Friday: 5pm – 9pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12pm – 8pm

Strategic Offsite

On Monday, Rachel and I started what is sure to be an ongoing event: a strategic offsite. For those not in the business world, this is simply a buzzword that refers to a period of time during business hours that is half-related to business matters, and half-related to gloriously wasting time.

A typical strategic offsite will look something like this:
30 minutes: Icebreaker activity
30 minutes: Introduction to the day
1.5 hours: Strategic visioning
1 solid hour: Lunch
1 hour: More strategic visioning
30 minutes: Wrap-up
2 hours: Fun team-building activity such as golf, scavenger hunt, or bowling
1+ hours: Happy Hour. Call your spouse to tell them you'll be home late

For Rachel and me, we started our day at the fabulous new "Art House Cafe" in Tacoma's Stadium District. Great new place, it reminds me of the clean, crisp, hipster cafes you typically find in more international cities. The staff graciously didn't mind at our open laptops where we studiously identified the balances of our various investment and debts, and created paths towards paying down frustrating student loans. We took our strategic visioning to "7 Seas Brewery" in Gig Harbor, where sat in the corner of the beer garden - ale in one hand, keyboard in the other - creating and manipulating spreadsheets to help us meet our financial and family goals. Vacations were planned, summer camps were reserved. It was productive indeed!

And our fun team-building time waster? Iron Man 3. Which was, in retrospect, ironically the least fun part of the day. I think if I had it to do over again I would have gone to the park and played frisbee with Rachel. I tend to have more fun talking with Rachel than sitting side by side watching a brain-numbing action romp.

We're looking forward to another Strategic Offsite. Maybe we'll make these quarterly. Sometime in August I will hopefully post again on this subject.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Over 20 years ago my siblings and I pooled our money and bought our dad a nice $60 Fathers Day watch from Eddie Bauer. The World Traveler watch that featured a map of the world with day/night overlay so he always knew, instantly, whether it was day time or night time in Moscow and Mumbai.

But as with many electronic devices, eventually - 2 or 3 years later - the watch capitulated and died. But fear not! Eddie Bauer's lifetime satisfaction guarantee is as ubiquitous as its flying goose logo. To test EB, my dad returned the watch with receipt to the store from which it was purchased. The store honored their guarantee and he left with a brand new watch. Not the same, but one of equivalent quality and masculinity.

Fast forward another couple of years. The watch, firmly fasted to my dad's wrist 24/7, once again yields to the pressure of time. My dad no longer has the box or receipt, but goes back to the same location and exchanges for a new watch of similar quality.

Fast forward another 3-4 years. Once again my dad's timepiece runs out of steam. This time they live 1000 miles away, have no receipt or case. Just a watch with an EB logo. He calls customer service to explain, and they happily mail him a $100 credit good for a new equivalent watch.

Fast forward another 5-6 years. My dad, perfectly content with his 4th watch, sadly watches it kick the bucket. Not deterred in the slightest, he excitedly calls the customer service line to explain the situation. True to its lifetime guarantee creed, Eddie Bauer mails my dad another $100 credit.

Fast forward another 4-5 years (if you're counting, that takes us to today). Like clockwork, my dad's 5th EB branded watch ticks its last tock. Perhaps he was a bit apologetic, perhaps giddy at the prospect of getting a new watch, or perhaps apprehensive at asking for another watch, I don't know (I could probably ask him). One thing I do know is that he is never angry. Not even at a watch brand that keeps on breaking. He is a gentle lovable giant among men. And he wasn't angry. He just called up again. Maybe everyone there knows him by now, or maybe he's just another customer. But at the end of the conversation they agree to send him a $120 credit to buy a new watch, an apology for the inconvenience, and their thanks at being a loyal Eddie Bauer customer.

And today my dad now has his 6th watch in 20 years. A $60 investment. And depending on how you measure ROI, up to an approx. 600% return. Not bad!

Dad's Personal Day

What a lovely day so far. Park with the boys, skipping rocks into Commencement Bay, visiting the new LeMay Car Museum, and as the boys are asleep I'm preparing BBQ ribs, BBQ baked beans, and potato salad. On top of it all is perhaps the most lovely and warmest sunny day of 2013. Possibly even reached 60 degrees today.

Jude and Grey at Foss Park in Tacoma - what a great view everyone in Tacoma has. The beautiful bay and Puget Sound in the distance behind the giant random globe.

My first time letting the boys just throw rocks. Who knew little boys could spend an hour simply throwing rocks. Right after this picture was taken, I pulled the boys away to take them to the next activity. But Greyson didn't want anything to do with it. He wanted to stay and throw rocks.

BBQ ribs in progress - yum!

Favorite Poem

I read an article this evening that triggered an old warm and familiar memory, that of my favorite poem. My favorite poem happens to come not from a typical hero of literary renown, but rather from the pages of Tolkein's Rings trilogy. Its context and universalism resonated with me when i first read at age 13, and continues to this day. In Tolkein's novel, Bilbo says goodbye to Frodo, whom he believes he will never see again in this lifetime. Bilbo sits beside the fire of his warm comfy room, reminiscing on the vastness and the color of his life. Then he paints an allusion of the world as it will be after he departs.



I sit beside the fire and think...

by J. R. R. Tolkien

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

Audiobooks

I (Rob) drive about 80 miles each day... maybe 75 miles a day, from Tacoma to Seattle and back. Now mind you, it was sort of a strange quirk that caused this situation to be our reality. We moved from Seattle to Tacoma because Tacoma is where Rachel's company was located. Then her company moved to Seattle! So now we both commute 80 miles a day from Tacoma to Seattle and back. What does one do for 2 hours a day? For a couple of years, I listened to music and NPR. What do you do when music and NPR get utterly untenable? Somewhere along the way I thought, "this is a good opportunity to 'read' some of those classic books I should have read but never got around to reading." To make a long story short, below is a running list of the unabridged audiobooks that I have listened to since around mid-2011.

Below are all unabridged... meaning, yes, I really did listen to 22 hours of Moby Dick and 26 hours of Midnights Children. In no particular order:

• Moby Dick, Herman Melville
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
• Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie
• Epicenter, Joel Rosenberg
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
• The Girl who Played with Fire, Stieg Larsson
• The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Larsson
• Good to Great, Jim Collins
• I Hate People, Littman & Hershon
• Pirate Latitudes, Michael Crichton
• Watership Down, Richard Adams
• Man from Beijing, Henning Mankell
• Bringing up Boys, James Dobson
• The Pale King, David Foster Wallace 
• Love & Logic /  For Early Childhood, Fay & Fay
• Moneyball, Michael Lewis
• Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
• The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
• Angelmaker, Nick Harkaway
• Beowulf, Unknown
•  

I may (but honestly not likely) in the future provide a brief summary on each of these books and novels. However, in the meantime if anyone has any questions on whether I found a particular book enjoyable or enlightening, feel free to send me a note. I'll respond within 24 hours. Each book had its strength and its weakness. Some were half good and half boring. Others had potential but fizzled out.

Budgetology

Jan 1st was the start of our strict new family budget. Our objective: to pay off our student loans. Our strategy: $125 weekly food budget, $50 "fun" money and $200 all other / miscellaneous. Until now, we spent money pretty frivolously: Indian food one night, sushi the next night, new pair of shoes the next day, etc. Individually these things don't seem so harmful, but in aggregate they add up. Now on week 4 of our budget, we are on track to save maybe $500 / month if not more. We are thankful to my sister, Kelleigh, for getting us excited about budgeting and for her advice along the way. We're not entirely sure how to start budgeting for big things we will need eventually (new tv, printer, vacation, car) but in the meantime we press ahead with our immediate goal of paying off our student loans by 2014.