I smell burning!

Two days ago, around 1:30pm, I'm sitting at my desk at work and Eric gets off the phone and says, "There's a huge fire downtown and we're going to go up to the roof and look at it if you want to go up there."

HECK YES I wanted to go up there.

So I go up there to find our boss, and all of our art department on the roof with the camera as well as a couple people from a law firm that we share a building with. Excitement abounded. Here are a couple of pictures of what we saw:

Is that a thunderstorm? NO!


Yellow smoke, the healthy kind...


Turns out, it was an old refrigerated storage warehouse and you can click that link to find out more!!

"..."

"Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours."
C. S. Lewis

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."
C.S. Lewis

"In short, Jesus moved the emphasis from God's holiness (exclusive) to God's mercy (inclusive). Instead of the message 'no undesirables allowed' he proclaimed, 'In God's kingdom there are no undesirables.'"
Philip Yancey

"Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed and legalism."
Philip Yancey

"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."
C. S. Lewis

"I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"What one has to do usually can be done."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards."
Benjamin Franklin

insurance...assurance

Beware, this post contains numerical dollar amounts.

Kevin is currently getting over pneumonia right now, which has been a bit scary for me, but he's on the upward swing, so scariness, no more! Anyway, he hadn't ever needed to use his work insurance until this, so he had to get all this temporary paperwork online, which was a pain, and he ended up having to pay in full for his prescriptions until the verification from the insurance company came through. It was RIDICULOUSLY expensive. He got reimbursed, but it made me start thinking about my own insurance.

When I first started working at MBNA in college, I had the best insurance EVER. It was Blue Cross Blue Shield, and I had a $0 copay for normal doctors AND specialists, and 100% dental and vision insurance all for about $60 a month premium. Not too shabby.

Now that I work at my ad agency, we have AETNA and I have no vision or dental coverage because we're too small, and a $40 medical/specialist copay, but my company pays all the premiums....AWESOME! Anyway, I can check all my claims online now, and it shows what the doctors visits, any lab work, and prescription costs would have been, and what you actually had to pay. I got interested in looking at this after the pneumonia incident this past week, did a few calculations, and this is what I came up with.

(I don't know if it's inappropriate to actually talk about amounts of money involving myself on the interweb, but I want to illustrate something)

I looked at all of my claims (dr.'s visits, lab work, x-rays, prescriptions) online between August 2005 when I got this new insurance until June 2007. Here is the break down of what it actually cost - if I didn't have insurance and just had to pay for everything out of pocket - and what I actually had to pay out of pocket.

Actual Cost: $5262.75
What I Paid: $299.46

That is CRAZY. I absolutely cannot imagine what I would have done if I didn't have insurance. I remember being in college and friends not going to the doctor, even for serious things because they didn't have insurance. Jro stepped on a piece of glass once and Alex had to do makeshift surgery on her because she couldn't go to the doctor. (she has since been insured) I don't know.....this whole healthcare system is interesting. I'm going to be paying more attention to this issue. Starting.......now.

bosque luxury

Thanks to Elissa for telling me about this. This is an article in the Dallas Modern Luxury June 2007 issue. Mara did an interview with them about Bosque Brown. She's so cute and humble that she didn't even know it was out yet and had forgotten about the interview! I know it's small, so click on the image to read the article. I'm locally kind-of famous! See: second to last sentence.


What what!

i like

spunk!

I'm housesitting for Greg & Diane this week, and I just loooove their sweet dog, Spunky. She's a shelty, and right now they've got her hair cut short for the summer and she's so dang cute!!!!

Here's a few pictures:

Short-haired Spunky on the cool tile floor:


Short-haired Spunky seeking acknowledgment and appreciation:


Short-haired Spunky knows.....she always knows:

dear rury,

Ever since I got my "good violin," (as I like to call it) the summer before my senior year of high school, I've gone to Rury's Violin Shop in Oakcliff for any and all repairs I've needed. That's actually the shop where my vioin teacher at the time found my violin. I guess she knew Jay Rury through all her violining excursions, so it's been nice to be able to go through the original seller for any repairs.

Anybuns, the violin shop was in Oak Cliff, and those of you not familiar with Dallas should know that there are parts of Oak Cliff that you don't want to go alone or at night or without having taken self defense classes. Anyway, the shop was this really awesome, old hole in the wall shop and you walk in and it smells like wood and varnish and there are instruments and instrument parts everywhere. I loved it.

When I was in the Sweeney Todd orchestra at the Meyerson last year (read a review here) I happened to get to a rehearsal early and be looking around backstage near all the Dallas Symphony lockers and happened upon a flyer stating that Rury's shop had moved to Richardson.

...


Not nearly as cool. Even though I'm sure that the craftsmanship is still just as above par as always, the feeling is just totally different. So what if you've relocated to an area where the chance of your shop filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of instruments and equipment getting robbed have decreased by 75%! It doesn't LOOK as cool.

Here are some pictures of the old shop. I'm not going to put pictures of the new shop up because I don't find it as pleasing to behold.









*le sigh*