id theft protection

I've had it on my unofficial to-do list to get ID Theft Protection for over a year now, and I finally did it. Two things promoted it this week:

Over Christmas it was reported that laptops had been stolen from the Davidson County Election Commission containing voter data of over 337,000 Nashville residents including Social Security numbers.
My brother-in-law got a call from his bank while we were driving to Minneapolis last week because of "suspicious activity", which did indeed end up being a whole laundry list of fraudulent charges indicating that his credit card info had been stolen.

So I went on over to Zander Insurance and signed up for Identify Theft Protection. Zander was certain to underscore that it was not ID Theft Insurance, but Protection, as what their program provides is a recovery service in the event that you are the victim of identity theft.

It's really no surprise that our personal information is more susceptible to theft than ever, as demonstrated by the Davidson County Election Commission - actually just received my letter in the mail today indicating that I should go ahead and assume that my information had been stolen. And knowing my luck, if my credit card information was somehow stolen, I know that if I called up VISA, they would give me the run-around for weeks as they try to prove that I'm the incompetent dead-beat who actually ran up all fraudulent charges.

I don't have time for that, nor the patience... hence Identity Theft Protection.

paid off the computer

We have a goal to be debt free including all consumer debt, school loans, and 20% of our house within the 1001 day period. We knocked a lot out within our first couple years of marriage, but the last 8 months have been slow going with various other expenses eating away at the monthly paycheck.

Anyways, I had to get a new computer last summer and (somewhat) foolishly opened a credit account for that. I'm happy to say I paid off the last penny of it today, which makes us completely consumer debt free!

On to school and the house....

worship team

About the same time we joined the church, Steph and I met with our worship leader at Grace in order to join the worship team. One thing we love so much about our church is that the worship music is so laid back, and very honest and intimate - not anything like the big over-productions that so many churches are known for.

This made it very inviting for me to get involved on the team, and for the past three weeks I've been a part of the music on Sunday mornings, playing piano. It's been great and I've really enjoyed it. Surprisingly, given this is Nashville, our church is short on piano players, so it's nice to be needed to some extent! Steph sang on the team last Sunday as well and that was fun.

So, step 1 in getting involved with our new church is underway...

thanksgiving recipes

It's my personal tradition to cook a new sweet potato recipe every Thanksgiving... this year's was definitely a winner. It included mashed sweet potatoes and a healthy concoction of butter, sugar, and cream. I then topped it off with a brown sugar / crushed pecan crust and baked it in the oven.

I've also been searching for good cornbread recipe (one that wasn't so boringly dry). Thanksgiving was a good time for that as well, and I was quite pleased with my results. Made some cornbread muffins and found that a combination of 2/3 flour and 1/3 corn meal actually made them much less dry. That in addition to some whole kernels of corn made for some very traditional muffins that went over quite well.


2 Recipes of 10 Complete

kitchen painted

There are four rooms in our house that we absolutely want to paint (at the very least, prior to selling it). Of most importance to us is the living room and kitchen, and we're happy to report that the kitchen is painted. Grape Vine was the color we chose (after much deliberation) - it's a nice Tuscany green color that works well with our color scheme of dark woods and earthy tones. Now we need to find something that works for the living room, which has proven to be much more difficult.

grace community church

Within the last month Steph and I both became members of our church, Grace Community Church. That was a long time coming, and part of the hold-up was reconciling myself to the fact that I would need to get baptized (according to Baptist tradition)... so I eventually did, and wrote a post about the whole experience on my personal blog.

jack

This post is a good two months overdue, but we finished watching all of the 24 seasons (to date). Here's a recap...

Favorite Season
Day 3

Favorite Character
Tony Almeida

Least Favorite Character
Sherry Palmer (yeah, typical)

Best "I'm Gonna Jack Bauer All Up In Your Face" Moment
As bad as Day 6 was, what with a bad storyline, a poor President and way too much drama, I have to say that the episode where Jack apprehended Abu Fayed (9-10PM) was pretty memorable. Check out this video to relive this fine moment of acute strangulation.