Daddy...my tummy hurts! Acute Appendicitis

Another unusual CT Scan today (for me anyway). A 10 year old boy came in with his father complaining of RLQ pain (right lower quadrant). This can be a sign of problems with the appendix and normal Emergency Room protocol demands a CT Scan of the Abdomen&Pelvis with Oral and IV contrast.

I've attached the axial (cross-sectional) image of his pelvis. The little worm or snail looking thing (as my wife calls it) in the upper left corner is his highly enlarged appendix.

Little man was transferred out of our facility to a more appropriate children's facility where I'm sure he had it removed by morning.

My ER Physician that evening was also a surgeon and he stated that in all his years in surgery, he'd never seen an appendix look like that one.

Oh Droid Incredible...How I Love Thee.

I must admit, I was one of those dad's you see with an old flip phone just a few short months ago. I had my LG flip and I was VERY comforable with it. It took terrific pictures and video (in my mind) and was light yet durable.

Amid all the buzz that was the iPhone, I started to get curious. Being a fervent Verizon customer, I found that even if I wanted an iPhone...it was out of reach. I'd have to wait until it would be released from the Apple/AT&T contract and show up on Verizon's doorstep.

Then I made one of my frequent visits to my local Walmart Neighborhood Marketplace. When I say frequent, I mean just about daily. My six girls gulp down nearly two gallons of milk daily.

During my visit to the store, an employee was fiddling with his smart phone. A light conversation ensued and he gave me the rundown on why the Android was better than an iPhone. Since my cell phone provider didn't carry the iPhone, I gave in and switched to the Droid Incredible. I mean, I had 30 days to change my mind, right?

I can honestly say my life has changed for the better since acquiring the Incredible. The things it puts at my fingertips are such time savers. Here's a few of my fav's:

CraigsNotifica - if ever I need to buy something of value, I can post the search on this little app and set it to check CL every 5 minutes. This ensures that I'll be notified immediately upon its posting and be one of the first people to respond to the ad. I've saved TONS of money with this little app.

ShopSavvy - I'm browsing a store and see something I like. With SS, I can barcode scan the item and it will check the internet for the best price including both online stores and local stores (thanks to GPS). Another money saver.

Mint - A free online personal software system. If you keep track of your spending at all, this program is king. Having an Android app just makes it all the easier to use.

These are just a few of about 40 apps I have on my Droid Incredible. I can't say enough about how well it works, rarely crashes and picks up signal just about everywhere (and I work in Radiology, behind lead walls).

I still see guys out there with flip phones. I'm not saying I don't understand why you still have it, cause I do. I'm saying...you don't know what you're missing!

SMARTPHONE ACCESSORIES
Protect your phone with these essentials:

• Heavy Duty Phone Case — keeps your phone protected from drops.
• Car Phone Mount — great for hands-free navigation and calls.

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Christmas Around The Fire Pit

We're pretty lucky here in Arizona. Our winter weather never REALLY gets that bad. We may complain when the nights dip ALL the way down to 45 degrees but we know how lucky we are.

One of the best additions we've made to our house is the stamped concrete bbq pit. It has two benches about three feet long to sit on. A large circular fire pit which easily stops the wind from blowing out a fledgling kindling fire.

We decorated it with lit candy canes and homemade "glowballs". Add some comfy chairs and a nice, toasty fire and it doesn't get much better on a chilly December evening.

OUTDOOR FIRE PIT ESSENTIALS
Cozy up outdoors with these fire pit favorites:

• Fire Pit Cooking Grate — great for roasting treats over the fire.
• Outdoor Patio Chairs — comfy seating for chilly evenings outside.

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The Dad-blog-dom...or lack thereof.

I just checked with my friend google for a blog related to dads. Blog posts that were updated regularly and offered relate-able content that average dads can use in their day to day lives. Like how to fix stuff when it breaks, how to grow food for the family, fix cars and install wall niches. Stuff that, as dads, we come across every week in our lives and wonder "How am I going to do that?"

By the time I got to the second result, I noticed the last two entries were 2011 and 2009. Not much activity out there! I went through link after link to dad blogs listed in the top ten results on my google search. If it was updated regularly, most of the time there were enough curse words in the posts that I wouldn't let MY kid read it. If I had a dad blog, I would want it clean enough that my kids could read it.

So here I am. Let's see if I can add something worthwhile to the anals of Dad-dom. Wait, that didn't sound right...

Grow Corn Grow!

The joy we get from watching our first REAL attempt at a garden is growing every week. Our transplanted tomatoes and peppers are growing nicely and producing regularly. The corn, seen in the middle of my picture, sure seems to be taking its sweet time though.

I'm not sure about the whole "cross pollinating" theory but we planted two rows of corn and hopefully they can pollinate each other. The stalks sure look handsome as they climb toward the sun and the vibrant green color is encouraging.

I've routinely tossed in some diatomaceous earth to stave off the little critters (only because they were nibbling away at the leaves.) Sure, they might be healthy for a garden but I just don't feel like sharing yet.

Our peas are growing slowly but steady and I've rigged up a little rope trellace for them to climb. I read that they need to get up off the ground and spread out so I intertwined them between zigzags of rope stretching back and forth across the width of the garden.

The cabbage, by far, is the biggest producer and I'm not sure what all we will do with it. Salads and quiches are about all I've heard about using them for so suggestions are gladly accepted.

CORN GROWING SUPPLIES
Grow your own corn with these basics:

• Non-Hybrid Corn Seeds — great for a healthy corn harvest.
• Soaker Garden Hose — efficient watering for thirsty crops like corn.

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Ways to increase your earning potential

August 26, 2007

I figured out how to make extra money by accident one day. I was browsing my local Target store, killing time waiting to pick my kids up from school. I noticed all the clearanced items that had been marked down for quicker sales.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed the little red clearance tag showed the percentage off that the item had been marked. A "30" in the upper right corner meant the item had been marked 30 percent off of the retail price. Then I stumbled upon an item that had a 75. Sure enough, it had been retailed at $100 and now was on sale for $25.

Most people probably would have thought about how great of a bargain that would be to purchase for personal use. I immediately began running the mental numbers on how much profit margin could be made by reselling this item to the general public.

Having been on ebay for a few years and selling my extra junk on craigslist, I knew a handful of outlets for reselling items. I made some notes about which items where clearanced and went home to research the items. By using PriceGrabber and Froogle I could determine which items had the most potential for selling at a large profit.

I returned to Target and bought only the items with the most potential. I listed them all on ebay (minimal fees) and craigslist (free.) I sold almost everything for a profit withing two weeks and returned the items that did not sell to Target for a complete refund.

This experiment has gone on for two years now and I can tell you it works like a charm. You can even use this strategy to bargain hunt other retail outlets that mark down their products. Just make sure you keep your receipt to return your items in case they don't sell.

Originally posted on Helium here.

RESELLING ESSENTIALS
If you're flipping clearance finds for profit, these help:

• Digital Shipping Scale — essential for accurate postage costs.
• Poly Mailers Bulk Pack — handy for shipping items you resell.

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Planning a trip to Disneyland Park, CA

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for Helium in August of 2007.

Since determining what you want to do so closely correlates with how much money you can spend, we start each trip by planning a budget. You could also reverse-engineer the trip and start with a list of what you want to do while on vacation. Add up all the costs and determine the figure from there. We enjoy the challenge of squeezing as much fun out of every dollar so we typically aim for a total budget of $2000 and accomplish everything we want within that budget.

For a family of six (Papa, Momma and four daughters), we find it is an enjoyable challenge to stay within the $2000 limit. We include room & board, food, memorabilia, and travel expenses. Now that we've completed our fifth trip to Disneyland, we have a great handle on how to achieve our vacation goals.

On our last road trip (we prefer to drive from Phoenix to Anaheim), we started to joke about how much research we've done on creating the perfect Disney trip. So much research that we wondered if an eBook on the subject would help us fund our next trip. Fundraising is one of our subcategories when it comes to budgeting and every little fundraiser helps make the trip that much more enjoyable. More on that later.

So let's get into the subject of budgeting for the trip.

The basic necessities of a Disney trip fall into the following main categories:

1. Lodging
2. Food (after arriving at your destination)
3. Travel (gas, tolls, food on the road, etc)
4. Entertainment (shows, events, etc)
5. Memorabilia (stuff you keep)
6. Park Tickets
7. Miscellaneous (rainjackets for river ride etc)

Lodging

I'll start with lodging. We are big fans of timeshares. We own a week in Sedona and bank it every year to use in Anaheim. "Banking" simply means we tell our timeshare (Sunterra) that we do not want to use our timeshare in Sedona for the current year. In turn, they allow others to use our week and we, in turn, can use a week that belongs to someone else at another location. We subscribe to RCI International which is a company that handles the vacation exchanges of timeshares worldwide. We typically bank our week in Sedona and call RCI as early in the year as possible to book our vacation request. We ask for a timeshare closest to the Disneyland Park for a week that we specify. We like October for both temperature and Halloween.

Our timeshare, before we paid it off, cost us $79 per month for five years. We pay about $350 a year in maintenance fees. The property is owned by us and deedable to our children upon our death.

At that point, our girls can continue using the timeshare week indefinitely while only being responsible for the annual maintenance fee. We are so happy with the timeshare concept that we are currently looking for a second timeshare. This time around we're looking into Marriott rather than a second Sunterra property. More on that as it develops. Oh, and we pay $150 to RCI to make the vacation exchange. So once they call us and say they have a resort we like, we pay $150 to complete the deal. I'll blog about the different places we've stayed and let you know which ones we recommend and which ones we will avoid like the plague.

Travel

Lodging being taken care of, we have to estimate the cost of getting to the lodging. We use MapQuest or Google Maps to determine the route. We've also used the Google SMS text feature to get directions on one trip when we lost our printout. That tells us the mileage and hours of travel. From those figures, we can calculate gasoline usage and the amount of stops for food and restroom breaks. Typically for us, the trip is around six hours and about 320 miles. In our Oldsmobile Silhouette, that is roughly one full tank of gas (one way) and three meal breaks with an extra bathroom stop here and there.

We typically get our gas from a frugal location (CostCo, Diamond Shamrock, etc) or for larger trips we use 80/20 cards (link). 80/20 cards are offers whereby you purchase a certain amount of gift cards and get reimbursed 20%. DealPass will sell a $100 gas card and refund you $20 at the beginning of the month following your purchase. We've packed food onboard for earlier trips to save money but we find that getting out and stretching at a local restaurant (and walking around a bit) does a lot more good than eating in the car and staying cooped up. Taco Bell and A&W are regular stops for us on our trip across the I-10. This also helps curb the tendency for the girls to leave their trash in the van for future parental cleanings :-)

We've settled on a mixture of road-ready snacks (beef jerky, chips, water, Gatorade, etc) to pacify us between stops. With all luggage strapped to the top of the van, an iced down cooler fits easily behind the back seat. Fruit also helps with sugar cravings and gives the mandible a good workout (apples etc). A good pre-trip grocery run costs us around $50 at our local Wal-Mart Neighborhood Marketplace.

Park Tickets

We always get Hopper passes to double our fun. Hopper passes allow us to visit both the Disneyland.

Park and California Adventure. Usually we buy them from AAA at their discounted rate but we always watch out for better deals. This past year we found a link on one of our favorite deal sites FatWallet that discussed discounted tickets during the Gay Days celebration. Using a link provided, we scored hugely discounted Hopper passes that were valid for almost two months. Gay Days, turns out, happens every year during the same week. So we'll be watching out for those again but be warned, they sell out fast. If you have any unused tickets at the end of your trip, make sure you sell them either on eBay, CraigsList, or Amazon.

Food

This section refers to all food consumed once we arrive at the destination. Our annual trip wouldn't be complete without a dinner (booked in advance because they only seat people with reservations) at the Blue Bayou. Enjoying a delicious Monte Cristo sandwich while watching and listening to the sounds of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride are so relaxing. A truly unique experience.

We've used coupons from Restaurant.com to enjoy local food outside the park at a 60% discount. Plug in zip code 92801 for Anaheim listings. Target's $1.50 hotdogs usually come into play at least one day while we gather miscellaneous items for the park (batteries, film, rain jackets, etc). Our AAA affiliation usually nets us some deals at the ESPN Zone in Downtown Disney. I can't say enough about how terrific that place is for the whole family. Continental breakfasts are usually provided at hour resorts / hotels. Fruit and protein bars are easily stowed on our pack mule (double stroller). With breakfast eaten at the resort and dinner outside the park once we're out, that usually only leaves lunch in the park. A few days we'll eat Disney food but usually stick to our snacks we bring.

THEME PARK TRAVEL ESSENTIALS
Planning a Disneyland trip? These make it easier:

• Portable Phone Charger — keeps your phone charged for photos all day.
• Theme Park Backpack — great for snacks, ponchos, and park essentials.

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