HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDREW!!

It's Andrew's birthday today. He is once again as old as I am. Happy Birthday, Andrew! I am so glad that you were accidentally conceived and birthed exactly six months after I was. I am also so glad that your mom stopped taking that medication while she was pregnant that probably would have made you a little different. Your parents were very inspired, and because of you I will never say that six boys are too many!!

It is amazing to be married to a best friend. It is like having the best roommate ever!!

Andrew, I love you even when you are stressed out and beard-y. How could I not, when you love me in all of my sweat pants no-makeup glory?

It has been a joy growing up with you. I look forward to growing old with you (although if I had my way, we'd turn into vampires).

Our Venn Diagram

Taxes and Weather

Around April 15th I think a lot about taxes. From November through April I think a lot about the weather. There are, therefore, a few weeks overlap between these two time periods which lead me to think about both weather and taxes.

Everyone hates paying taxes. In March, everyone in New England, after a long and miserably cold and wet winter, hates living in New England.

California has high taxes. It has a progressive state income tax. It also has great weather. Alaska has low taxes. It has no income tax. It also has awful weather. Do you think that in order to be incentivized to live in a miserable place like Alaska, people need to face lower taxes? Conversely, do you think that the government in California can charge higher tax rates because it takes a lot to deter people from soaking in the rays of Cali?

I did.

I decided to put together some data to see if there was a relationship between state and local tax rates and weather. For state and local tax rates I used data from the tax foundation at CNNMoney. For weather I looked at the average temperature for each state. I plotted the two against each other and found:



I was wrong

There seems to be no correlation between the two. Each dot represents a state and the red line is the trend line.

My results are hardly conclusive. Both variables aren’t very accurate. For taxes, it would be interesting to see average income tax, average sales tax and average property tax separately. For weather, I don’t think average temperature is the best measurement. It would be interesting to find some sort of "good weather index", one that takes into account rain fall, snow fall, temperature volatility, etc. If you find either of these, send it my way.

I suppose the reason there is no trend might be because there are different preferences in both taxes and weather. Some people prefer higher taxes and more public services; some people prefer lower taxes and fewer public services. Some people’s ideal world has snow year round, others (like me) would prefer month after month of highs in the 70s and 80s.

If you are looking for a mediocre 6th grade science fair project, feel free to plagiarize my idea and results.

this is not a joni mitchell or counting crows tribute

I’ve been sick the past couple of days. It is miserable, especially since the weather is so nice out. Actually, I think it is the nice weather that is at the root of my illness. I always get sick in the spring. Last year it was during my spring break. This year, I am so lucky I don’t have a spring break! It would surely have been ruined by my sickness.

Speaking of things that make you sick, Andrew and I watched this documentary the other night with some friends.

It was intense. I think it upset me more than anyone because I don’t have the self righteousness of being vegan or vegetarian to stand on. Sure, I love dolphins and mammals of the sea. I would never eat one and I would never hurt one. But cows, pigs, chickens, lamb, and pretty much any mammal or bird of the earth that isn’t a rodent? Yes, please! And if it’s cooked Korean style, I’ll have thirds!!

I grew up a vegetarian. When I was pretty young, my mom decided that the meat industry was evil and horrible and that we shouldn’t support it. During my most formidable years I only ate vegetation. It wasn’t just an ideology imposed on me by parents. I believed in being a vegetarian. I believed in living a life that didn’t depend on other living things being tortured and dying.

For some reason, living abroad in a country where people routinely starve made me lose most of my ideology. So, I ate animals and didn’t care. I didn’t recycle and didn’t care. I didn’t pray and didn’t care. I came home to Andrew a meat eater, and Andrew came home to me caring about poverty. It was a strange turn of events, so we decided to get married.

Living in Cambridge, among the most idealistic people in the country, has helped me realize I should care. So we recycle, we go to church, we buy homeless people at Burger King a double Whopper. That’s right, we still eat meat. Part of the reason is b/c of Andrew. Part of the reason is because I’m lazy. Part of the reason is because I still am skeptical of idealism and the impact of an individual.

Then we watched The Cove. It was my idea, because I love dolphins and I also kind of like making myself feel depressed. As we watched it, I realized that not only do we kill mammals of the sea with little regard to their lives, we commit atrocious acts in the name of “living” all of the time. The very existence of humanity rests on the complete destruction of ALL living things, not just things with a heartbeat. We are huge bulldozers that destroy the paradise that God created for us. We attribute our existence, and the existence of the world to God, but we have done such a very terrible job of taking care of the earth, of living peacefully with the most incredible manifestation of God’s existence. Our lives depend somewhat on destruction. But we take it to a new level, we enjoy destroying, conquering. Dolphins are just a PG 13 version of what we do to each other and every other living thing on the planet.

I am no longer ok with being a creature of destruction. I’m just not sure it’s possible to change.

Home Improvement!

There is nothing like home improvement projects to test the health of your marriage. We sanded and painted a bunch of stuff over the past month or so.

The Desk:


Gwen sanding by hand the crevasses in the desk.


Sanding the desk. This picture would be really creepy if the harmless sander were a chainsaw. Keep in mind this New England in February, it's freaking cold out there.



I wish I had taken some pictures of the stuff before we started the project. This is as close as a before picture to a desk as possible. At least you can see the color difference.

After! After long conversations and debates over what color we should repaint the desk we picked these two colors on sort of a whim while in Home Depot. I'd also like to point out that the curtains in the background are also homemade -- Gwen sewed them a few months ago.

This is an old black $10 Ikea coffee table that had a huge scratch in it that we decided to repaint. After repainting it we realized it didn't turn out so good so we found a new coffee table on craigs list a few blocks away that "needed to be refinished". We jumped on the opportunity and bought a new, real wood coffee table, sanded it and repainted it. I think it turned out great

We ended up keeping the old coffee table too. We just couldn't let go.

Next we built four shelves. I also painted the picture frame. There are two shelves in the living room and two in the kitchen.

neckbeard

my march 1st resolution:

stop staying up until 2am reading random ridiculous urban-fantasy or just fantasy books!! then i can get to work at a decent hour and i won't have to make up the time on weekends or by skipping lunch. grr!! sometimes my lack of self control when it comes to books is only destructive.

what is your march 1st resolution?