Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Well, we finally picked a health insurance plan. My company offered a few different options, and it was a headache to try and figure out the difference between HMOs and PPOs, and decide which we wanted. Fortunately if we don't like what we picked, we can switch in December. So let's hurry up and get sick so we can figure out if we like our insurance! Hehehe. Or we could just do a "routine" check up just for fun. Whichever. All I know is that it's very nice to have insurance again, but not have to foot the whole bill ourselves in order to have it. I never liked the feeling of "betting against yourself." [she gets that from Grandpa Madsen. -wayne]

We also decided which grocery store we would frequent. We did grocery shopping Monday night at one store, and then walked through a second with receipt in hand, price comparing every item. We were sad that Safeway just didn't beat SaveMart like we were hoping -- at least not for the things we generally buy in a week. Maybe we can still make occassional trips to Safeway, because they admittedly have much better bread options [and we love tasty bread]. It would also be nice to find a farmer's market, because supposedly that is the place to buy produce here, but we aren't quite sure how to begin with that one.

One important thing we've learned this week is that managers fix things if you ask them to. Before choosing the apartment we did, I read all sorts of reviews people wrote online. The biggest complaint people had of the place is that "the managers never fixed things." We had limited options, so we took a risk by coming here anyway. But since we've been here, we have learned that most likely managers didn't fix things for those people because they simply never got around to asking for it. We noticed a light going out in the parking lot, so we mentioned it a manager in passing and the next day they fixed it. The light had been like that since we got here, we just took a few weeks to bother mentioning it. Moral of the story, don't complain about things if you haven't bother to do your part. Oh, and another story this week to go along with that moral: I realized our TV warranty was about to expire when we sorted through documents in our filing cabinet, so we decided to try asking if they would replace the remote for us (nothing else is "wrong" with the TV, so why not ask for something at least). I lost the remote after I moved from the first apartment I lived at in Michigan, so we've had no remote for the past three and a half years. Lo and behold, we call and ask if they might send us a replacement, and they fedex us a remote the next day. Who knew? Apparently we just had to ask! [all these wasted years without a remote ;) -wayne]

Work is coming along. I've fixed a few bugs in the company's software so far, which I'm quite sure took me much longer than my coworkers would have taken. But I'm starting to figure things out a little better, which is nice. Wayne's facing challenging questions at school about what art he is interested in, questions that are beginning to change the way he understands everything. So while he's still figuring things out there, at least he's understanding what the important questions are to ask. He'll have all of grad school to make a dent on the answers, right? I figure that's the whole point of grad school. To show you just how much you don't know, but to equip you to be able to try and answer some of the questions.

We've had fun the rest of the week as well. We learned a new game with some friends of ours Sunday night: Pirate's Cove. It's a fun game, and makes me want to try another game by the same people: Ticket to Ride. Wayne went to play soccer with some guys in the ward Thursday; he had fun there as well. And Friday we went to a ward activity down in Santa Cruz. It was nice to have an activity on the beach and roast some hot dogs and meet a few new people, but it wasn't a particularly well attended activity. Perhaps because it was a 30-45 minute drive away. Perhaps because gasoline is not particularly cheap (though getting cheaper, yay). For whatever reason, but the point is we didn't get there early enough to have sunlight to fly our kite. Oh well.

And Saturday we went up to San Francisco to visit the SFMoMA [to see the Matthew Barney exhibit before it closed]. What a fun day. It was expensive, of course, but fun. Parking actually cost more than admission to the museum, amazingly enough. I was amazed, anyway. But we found our way around the city, picked up some art supplies for Wayne, and window shopped at a fun game/toy store, and just enjoyed walking around and seeing what people were doing. We walked past these guys playing music on the sidewalk, and I enjoyed their sign: "if you take a picture, you pay a dollar." They were set up right next to a line of tourists waiting to ride the trolley. The museum itself had some interesting pieces, though not as large as other museums we've been to (it doesn't even compare to the MoMA in NYC). We enjoyed seeing a Robert Irwin piece though [a first for me! his work and james turrell's just have to be experienced; no reproduction can ever do it justice]. I think that was the highlight for me. Seeing how well he used the light and shadows in the room itself was just amazing. Wayne made an interesting observation while we were there -- when you go in an art museum, you're looking at history. Even in the "modern" section. Even the pieces done by artists who are still alive. If those artists were to do those pieces right now, they would be different. They would mean something different. Interesting.