Monthly Archives: May 2011

Yesterday I said there wouldn’t be an Open Letters Thursday. However, I said nothing about an Open Letters Friday. So before I regale you with my thoughts on the deep subject of travel insurance, I’d like to start with a few short open letters.

Dear Justin Bieber wannabe kid bagging groceries at Kroger,

I realize that the swinging of your hair and the impressing of girls is high on your list of excruciatingly important priorities, but next time, could you please pay a little more attention to the work at hand that you are being paid to do instead of flirting with the pretty cashier. A single plastic  grocery bag is not meant to be stuffed to the brim with every single item in my shopping cart. It does not and should not fit. Furthermore, I do not appreciate spending a crap ton of money on groceries only to have you smash my strawberries and bag the cosmetic items so poorly that the hand soap squirts out all over leaving a soapy mess on the produce. You should spend a little less time talking and flaunting your ignorance and a lot more time paying attention.

Sincerely,

Lara

Dear Mother Nature,

Are you quite finished being a witch and brutalizing everyone?

Sincerely,

Lara

Well, that’s that. Onto the travel insurance!

Insurance. A touchy subject. By now most of us not living beneath a rock have realized the importance of health, renters, auto, home-owners, and life insurance. You have it, you pay it, and you hope you don’t need it. But what about travel insurance? I’m always a little iffy on this one. Usually if it’s a small trip like a weekend getaway, a short cheap vacation with the family, or if we’re going somewhere within the U.S. or just taking a flight and booking a hotel somewhere, I don’t worry about it. Depending on the plan and what you feel you need coverage for, travel insurance can be hundreds of dollars. Is it really worth even more of your hard-earned and often unavailable cash to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of insurance for a thousand dollar trip? For me, the answer is usually no. But when it comes to any kind of international travel or an expensive trip, I waver back and forth but ultimately settle into feeling obligated to purchase insurance. I feel totally guilty until I do it, racked with the anxiety that if I don’t buy it and if I don’t make sure that I’m as prepared as possible, something will go horribly wrong and I’ll absolutely regret not forking over the extra two hundred dollars.

While I’ve never actually had to file a claim or rely on my travel insurance, the peace of mind it brings me is typically worth the cost of the plan. Is travel insurance just a big money-making scheme designed by some bigwig company to weasel more money out of us in exchange for a feeling of relief and security, and are we just a bunch of suckers to fall for it? Maybe. Arguably yes. But how would you feel if you truly needed it and didn’t have it? That’s the toss up. It’s a risk, and it’s a gamble. Do you waste a couple hundred bucks on something you most likely won’t need instead of using that money on lavish fruity cocktails or an adventurous volcano exploration trip, or do you lose it all when you fail to make the investment and your luggage gets shredded from being dragged behind a donkey in Istanbul and you miss your connecting flight due to a freak airline strike or inclement weather?

As a child traveling with my parents, I obviously never purchased travel insurance. I’m not actually sure if my parents did either. I assume they did, but I honestly don’t know. We took several major overseas trips, but since I, thankfully, wasn’t responsible for any planning details at the tender age of 11, I have no idea if we traveled insured or not. I do remember purchasing travel insurance for my two-week Shakespeare intensive study abroad program in college. I didn’t use it, but for the money that was being shelled out for me to participate in this fantastic opportunity, I didn’t want to miss out and I thought it was important. I do not regret purchasing it. When my friends and I treated ourselves to a week-long Caribbean cruise as a college graduation present to ourselves, I don’t know if I purchased insurance or not. I know it crossed my mind many times as it was a big purchase with an international itinerary, but I can’t remember what I decided. I wouldn’t be surprised if I did buy into it, but I’m nearly positive my friends did not.

Yesterday Ted and I purchased a travel insurance plan for our honeymoon. I feel really good about this decision. Our itinerary isn’t particularly exotic, but it does involve several major modes of transportation, multiple cities, detailed and timely schedules, a few wonderful adventures, some unreliable weather, and (the most important deciding factor here), A LOT of money that I worked really, really hard to save. Accidents happen. Luggage gets lost. Flights get delayed. People get sick. Jobs get terminated. Things go wrong. Inclement weather rears its ugly head. That could happen on any trip. It’s a risk we all take when making plans so many months in advance. But I like the peace of mind knowing that if something out of our control happens that we wouldn’t be out thousands of dollars that we’ll never see again, in addition to a screwed up vacation. Travel insurance doesn’t guarantee that this stuff won’t happen to us and I know it wouldn’t solve all our problems if it did happen to us, but at least I know that I found a great plan and an affordable plan that we are happy with, and I feel good knowing that for less than $200, should something go wrong, that we’re not going to have to just cut our losses and sort this out alone.

What do you think about travel insurance? Is it worth it to you? Have you ever used it? Would you? Under what circumstances did you bite the bullet and buy in?

Have a safe and blessed Memorial Day weekend!

Per Ted’s request I’ll be attempting to implement a weekly Epic Fail Friday post on our blog. I say “our” blog because it pertains to our life together, but knowing full well that I’m the only one writing here. Ted is still avoiding swooping in for a guest post like the plague. Clearly you people aren’t pestering him enough. Get on that please.

I’m still partial to my Open Letters Thursday as I relish the opportunity to sock it to the big dummies out there and tell it like it is in a non-confrontational manner (I hate confrontation. I’d rather brew feverishly in solitude), but sometimes just remembering that I have something specific to post on a specific day of the week is quite the task. So I’ll do my best to remember both Open Letters Thursday and Epic Fail Friday, but don’t hold me to it! For example, today is Thursday and I have no intention of blogging an Open Letters post today. Instead, to further the confusion, I’ll be posting Epic Fail Friday on Thursday. See how this works? Excellent. Let’s proceed.

Today I have two Epic Fails. You lucky ducks you!

Epic Fail #1:  Looking for an easily-accessible utensil to stir my disease-inducing artificial sweetener into my peach iced tea with at dinner one night last week, I reached for the nearest fork. I ignored Ted’s cross-eyed glance and plunged said fork deep into my tea glass and began to stir. Suddenly, just as the fork was fully submerged, it came to mind that that fork was the very fork Ted was using just moments prior to fish saucy, potent bits of pickled herring out of the jar with. SO disgusting. In case you were curious, pickled herring does not compliment peach tea. Epic fail.

Epic Fail #2: Ted was buying a small pack of OTC allergy meds at Kroger on Sunday after our seven-mile forest bike ride had gotten the better of his nose and itchy eyes. If you remember from this post that I wrote way back yonder (yes, yonder) in March, Kroger has this totally absurd policy of wasting plastic to print up a plastic sticker to reward you for not using a plastic bag. Clearly I love this for all obvious reasons and I particularly enjoy ragging on the extreme stupidity of it all. Well, the young gentleman at the pharmacy counter stuck a big old honking “Less plastic? Fantastic! Thanks! You saved a plastic bag!” sticker on Ted’s tiny little box of allergy meds. Then he wrapped the box (with the sticker on it!) IN a plastic bag and handed it to Ted. When Ted received the bundle, rightfully befuddled by the presence of both the stupid sticker and the plastic bag, he handed it back to the cashier. The naive young man, clearly a few crayons short of a box, took it back and said only, “Oh. You didn’t want a plastic bag?”

“Oh. You didn’t want a plastic bag?” Not, “Oh man, I’m so sorry. My mind was on autopilot hahaha,” but, “Oh. You didn’t want a plastic bag?” How could he have missed such beautiful irony? Epic fail.

If you have a great epic fail that’s still tickling your irony bone, please be sure to leave it in the comments. We could all use a good chuckle. After all, I was up late last night demoniacally constructing a make-shirt tornado shelter complete with bicycle helmets, candles, lighters, flashlights, touch lights, extra batteries, weather radio, water bottles, body pillows, and more in our basement. All that working myself up can be exhausting. So, share the wealth and don’t hold back on those epic fails.

Last night we booked some of the last pieces of the honeymoon puzzle!

Source

We carefully researched, selected, scheduled, then dropped a truly exorbitant amount of money on our airfare and hotel. To celebrate this monumental occasion, the staggering and painful decline in our honeymoon savings account (seriously, who comes up with these outrageous prices and why are they allowed to get away with it?), and the great relief and freedom of finally having nearly everything that we’ll need securely booked, we took ourselves out for a free (thank you rewards coupons!) dish of cold, creamy ice cream from our favorite local ice cream parlor of awesomeness, Graeter’s, which we savored on a bench outside in the perfect, warm afternoon breeze. It was a great day for ice cream, as evidenced by the appearance of at least 3/4 of the population of Cincinnati in our little parlor, an incredibly welcome change from the swirling storm clouds of doom that have been threatening the Midwest lately.

The plans for this vacation are all coming together and it feels so good to be done with most of the planning! Only a couple more things to book, a few purchases to be made, and a handful of other rudimentary and obligatory preparations to be taken care of and then it should be smooth sailing ahead. Though, as we all well know, smooth sailing is entirely out of our hands and the best laid plans often turn into unexpected adventures. And boy, am I ready for some good hearty adventure! – but preferably the kind that involves awesome sights, surprising detours for the marvelous nature, and great fun rather than, say, the delay of flights, accidents, foul weather or troubling mishaps.

More details to come at a later date. This weekend we’re anticipating the arrival of my sister and her family for a Memorial Day long-weekend visit. We’re so excited to have visitors coming to see us in Cincinnati! We’ll venture down to Kentucky to the derby race grounds, stables and museums. We’ll visit with some retired race horses, tour a bit of the Kentucky countryside, get some tasty eats at the Taste of Cincinnati festival, enjoy the company, cookout, and relax. It should be a grand weekend and I’m hoping this is the last of the nasty weather.

Hope your mid-week is sunny and safe.

Who rejoices when her husband suggests jumping in the truck to drive 25 miles each way to a Bass Pro Shop at 9 p.m. on a Monday night?

The person with a Bass Pro Shop gift-card who does not ever again want to be caught without an emergency weather radio while huddled under a couch cushion and snuggled up against a sturdy road case in the cold, dark basement the next time the tornado sirens go off, the wind picks up, and the power craps out leaving her home alone with shoddy cell service and no access to a Doppler radar.

That’s who.

Well played Cincinnati.

One new emergency weather radio with 7 channels of NOAA and S.A.M.E technology and a pack of D batteries = immediately acquired.

P.S. – I did, however, find an excellent use for all those beautiful mason jar candles leftover from our wedding. They make fantastic emergency lighting for our home. On the surprising upside, we also were able to enjoy a romantic hot meal by candlelight together even without power since earlier that day I’d randomly decided to cook our dinner in the slow cooker and it was still hot when Ted finally got home to save me from my exhausting fear and misery.

We supposedly have two more days of this tornado crap coming our way. I am not in the least excited for this, but at least this time we’ll know just how doomed we are instead of being forced to succumb to the unwanted element of surprise. Weather radio, I love you.

If this weekend was any indication of how the rest of this summer is going to be, then bring it on!

After finishing up his road cases yesterday afternoon, Ted mowed the backyard (which looks SO nice, by the way) and then we cooked out, grilling fresh green beans and roasted garlic mozzarella sausages on the grill and topping it off with a fresh baby seedless watermelon. Our first cookout and first watermelon of the year in our first place together! It was glorious. Grilled food is always fantastic and our dinner and evening was no exception.

We ended the night watching the pilot episode of Big Bang Theory and this season’s finale of the show. If you haven’t been watching Big Bang Theory, you’ve really been missing out.

This morning we went to church and then Ted mowed the rest of the lawn – it’s a two day job for him because the grass is so tall that he needs to go over it twice. It’s great to no longer have the most embarrassing lawn on the block – our neighbors are all retired, have plenty of time on their hands, and are supremely proud owners of their favorite expensive toy – the riding lawn mower. Every single one of our neighbors mows at least once a week. We have the time to mow our lawn maybe twice a month, if we’re lucky. They must be humiliated. But now it’s so soft and green and nice looking! Our yard reminds me of The secret Garden. Perfect for bonfires, lawn games, cartwheeling, and bird/bunny/chipmunk/squirrel/coyote watching, it is one of the things we love the most about this house. I can’t wait until the fireflies come out and fill our yard in the evenings!

In the afternoon we loaded the bikes into the truck and drove to the Bass Island bike trail that stretches the 50+ miles from Columbus to Cincinnati and along the path of the Little Miami River. The trail used to be a railroad but when it was no longer needed they took out the tracks and turned it into a paved, two-lane path for joggers, walkers, bikers and roller bladers. The path itself is absolutely great – very scenic with beautiful views of rolling meadows, the river, and lined with tons of lush trees with equal parts of sun and shade throughout and plenty of bikers and pedestrians enjoying their time in the great outdoors. We had a great time and biked a little over seven miles. The weather was in the low 80s and we had a nice cool breeze the whole way. We also saw our first snake in Ohio – a long black and gray fellow slithering across the paved trail. One day, perhaps in the autumn when the weather is getting cool and the leaves are all changing colors, we’d love to bike the whole trail – from Cincinnati to Columbus – then stay in a hotel in Columbus for the evening and bike back the next day. We’d have to work to build up our stamina though!

After our bike ride we stopped at Eastgate Adventures for a few laps around the go kart track, a quick game of mini golf, and two rounds of air hockey. Since we were in the area we tried out a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant we’ve been wanting to try for months now to fill our hungry bellies and dodge an afternoon rain shower, and it was really good! The place had authentic tortilla chips, totally authentic Mexican cheese, and fantastic steak fajitas. It is in my top 2 list of Mexican restaurants in Cincinnati! Leftovers for tomorrow? I think so! Tonight we’re taking it easy – throwing in a DVD and relaxing before it’s back to the daily grind tomorrow. By the way, here are Ted’s road cases. He does such an excellent job! Can you believe he made these from scratch? Every piece of laminate and foam cut, every latch, every handle, every wheel, every pop rivet, every hole drilled. Count me proud. He custom creates all kind of cases for cables, tools, and lighting and audio equipment. Below is the logo he’s having designed and produced to put on all his cases so we can hopefully drum up more business! What a dream it would be to own our own successful company that we could subsist on as our only source of income except for freelance gigs. We’d make a great team! With Ted’s lighting and set designs, equipment rentals and construction, production, budgeting and managing experience and my acting, directing, teaching, education, and artistic management experience, we’d be unstoppable. Anyone want to fund us as a start-up company?

Dear Gas:

Hey, thanks! From where I’m sitting $3.79/gallon sure beats the $4.16/gallon I paid two weeks ago. :-) Keep up the good work.

Sincerely, Lara.

Dear Construction Season:

Bllllluuuuuggghhhh!!!!!!

Sincerely, Lara.

Dear Nordstrom Rack:

Please go out of business. Or at least start carrying more hideous merchandise. You are too tempting to me although you top my self-prescribed list of places I am not allowed to enter until we A) make more money and B) live in a less expensive house to rent. Although I beg of you to offer a bit of adorable and affordable honeymoon gear for the husband and I, I also wish you would not exist. It’s a complicated world we live in.

Sincerely, Lara.

Dear Anderson Township Public Swimming Pool:

Where the hell are you!?

Sincerely, Lara.

Dear Mama Spider:

Today I noticed that you are missing from the little spot where you and your nest reside on the inner hinge of our storm door. I’ve grown accustomed to your presence and to looking up at least four times a day to see if you are still there every single time I enter and exit. And you have been for at least two weeks….until today. Where did you go? This may sound quite contradictory considering I have an intense fear of your species, but I’ve grown rather fond of you and your little nook because at least I know exactly where you are. Please come back so I can continue to live in peace knowing exactly where you are and exactly where you are not (read: my bed).

Sincerely, Lara.

Dear Printers:

What. Gives. Do you not like us anymore? We’ve lost two of you in the past two weeks. Sure the office is hotter than blazes because we’re too cheap to turn on the a.c., but is crapping out on us the only way to work this through? We regularly maintenance you with fresh ink, we give you a safe home, we don’t overwork you, and when you do malfunction I’ve learned to harness my anger and not beat you senseless until you work again. I thought we had an agreement – and just because we had five of you doesn’t mean you all weren’t very special to us in your own way. In conclusion, please stop dropping like flies because printerless is a very inconvenient thing to be.

Sincerely, Lara.

P.S. You may be wondering why on earth a two-person family needs five printers. An excellent question. I had a printer and Ted had a printer and then we got married and we had two printers – it’s all very Brady Bunch of us. That’s pretty normal, right? Well, Ted also does a lot of high quality photo printing for theatre-related jobs, so while he was in grad school at MSU, in came the large-format photo printer for his company TOR Ventures. And when BoarsHead Theatre closed and the city was going to tear down the building, a perfectly functional ink jet desk printer and an extra large-scale plotter for printing light plots were left orphaned. Enter printers 4 and 5. Would you turn down a free plotter? No, I didn’t think so. So, we still have the plotter and the photo printer and my printer/copier/scanner, but I’d say the loss of two printers in two weeks is a little mysterious.

Anyway, Happy Friday! Today is living proof that it doesn’t rain in Cincinnati all the time. Just most of the time. Today is a lovely, hot, sunny day. In fact, I have a batch of peach tea brewing on the front porch right now. With any luck it will be tasty and spider-free when I go to retrieve it, just how I like it.