Monday, February 25, 2008

My first skiing adventure

Nothing makes you feel like a man more than having a seven year old girl fly by you going down a hill. That was my most recent new experience with my wife though. Can you believe that a person who has lived in WI, MN, and IL his WHOLE life has NEVER been downhill skiing? Sure I've gone CC skiing but never downhill...ever.

A few years ago in December I told myself that was going to be the year I made it downhill skiing. I even talked to some friends about it. Within a week...literally...I was in a cast up to my elbow that was on and off for the next 9 months. I never even made it skiing a bohemouth of a Ukrainian had his way with me on the basketball court. So much for skiing! So you can understand my skepticism when Meghan told me I would be going downhill skiing to celebrate our first married Valentines Day.

We found a nice local ski hill that wasn't even 30 minutes away and decided to head out on Friday after work (so it would be a little cheaper...skiing isn't exactly a super cheap hobby). We arrived at the hill and I was instantly intimidated. "There is NO way I am going down that" I told Meghan, while looking up at the "bunny hill". She points to the tiny trainer hill and says I know we are going there! haha Sure enough next thing I know there is a seven year old girl flying down this tiny hill past me.

After a few runs down this menacing hill, we hopped on the chair lift to the smaller of the green hills for my first run at real skiing. I have NEVER gone at speeds like this in my life I swear I was going 55 mph and at a reckless pace as well!! Not only did I not go slowly, but I veered toward the steepest part of the hill. I made it though...all the way to the bottom...until I came to the crushing realization that I couldn't stop! Sure enough there was the same seven year old girl in front of me..."Who's fastest now?" I screamed as mowed her down at the bottom of the hill! Okay I didn't take her down...I did however have my first wipeout of the night. I considered it to be a noble act...even a life saving act on my part really!! Though Meghan saw it much differently and came up a moment later laughing histarically at me.

Overall I have to say that skiing was a pretty fun time. I ended up taking a few of the blue hills and realized just how intimidating skiing can be, but also how fun it can be. Heck, I think I only wiped out 3 times all day (not including my wipeout in front of the chair lift...yeah I am one of THOSE guys) so I consider that a pretty good outing. I even figured out how to stop going pretty fast speeds. Meg was SO proud of her man and how he concurred the big hills of Southern Wisconsin!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

We are now a TWO car family...again

Back in October, we made the decision to go down to one car in our lives. There were two main reasons, ONE is that my Grand Prix was starting to approach 100K and we wanted to get some money back out of that car, and TWO we needed to get rid of some high interest debt in our lives. Selling the car worked and we are really on the right track now. After sacrificing and living with only one car for about 4+ months we realized it was time to get back to two again. The last few weeks, we've been doing some research on different cars in the mid-size sedan marketplace and narrowed our list down a little based on what we liked and didn't like. We had out list narrowed down to an Accord, Camry, Malibu (only if we could find a good deal on a used 08 though), Grand Prix, Sonata, Impala (maybe), Milan (maybe), or a Mazda6. We liked all of those and a few others but price was going to be a very important factor for us...the new improved Rasmussen's are bound and determined to make smart financial decisions and live well within our means.

We ended up buying a 2006 HYUNDAI SONATA. Its funny cause I (we) never would have imagined I (we) would be in a Sonata, but Hyundai's have come a LOOONG way since their early days. The 2006 and newer models are getting GREAT reviews from consumers and from editors at various car publications. We went out to look at cars yesterday and drove an Accord and an Altima, and looked a few others. We kept going back to this beautiful Hyundai at the dealership though. We loved how it looked so we asked to take it for a ride. Wow it was SMOOTH and had great acceleration!! We loved it! So, you ask, what do we like about this car?

Here are our top highlights
  1. Stylish looks...yeah that matters :-)
  2. Great gas mileage, we read review of people who get over 30 mpg with the car
  3. Sweet price, well within our budget :-) :-)
  4. Low miles and in great shape
  5. It fits in our garage! Sounds like such a minor thing but we BARELY fit the Grand Prix and Monte Carlo in the garage...the Sonata fits just right.
Overall we left the dealership pretty excited. The new car gives us new flexibility in life and will allow for us to have a little independence from time to time if we want it! We found a car for well under the target price we were looking at and we are both very happy with it! Hopefully we'll be saying the same thing in 5 years!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Will the USA Really Elect a Black President or a Female President

Forget about bipartisanship. I want to discuss two topics today.

1. What I want to know is will White America vote in a black present, or are we (I use that term very loosely) still rooted in racism? I read an interesting article today (click title above) which outlines that White America who claim to not be racist may still subconsciously be racist. I refuse to post/discuss about politics on the actual article because all that people post on there is hateful banter with liberals criticizing conservatives and vice versa. I want to see how this goes, how many people actually read our blog, so please, let's hear your opinion. Please, no hateful speech pertaining to either party.

2. Can America vote in a feminist female president? Will the white male be able to put that vote down on the ballot to elect a female present to run the USA? Same rules apply as #1.

By the way, even if you do not have an account, you can still post a comment, either anonymous or you can identify yourself.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Some addictions are bad...others can earn money!

Meghan and I have a confession. We have an addiction and it just won't end. It started out so innocently and now its become full blown...we might need help! ;-)

We are addicted to selling stuff on eBay. We started because we had boxes of stuff to get rid of and didn't want to do another rummage sale (even though we made like $500 at the last one we did). In the past, we used Craigslist to sell a lot of our bigger items and made some pretty nice cash with that money. After a while, most of the stuff we had left was small or just not the kind of thing that sells well on that site. While trying to figure out what we could do with it all, I suggested we get rid of the stuff on eBay. I had sold a few things in the past with limited success but I figured how hard can it be...I am a marketer I should be able to do well on a site like this. We listed a few things and wow we made some money...that felt nice. Next thing we knew we were scouring each others closets looking for things we didn't like on the other person!! I suggest NOT doing this!!

Eventually we knew we would run out of things to sell around the house, so it was either become nudists and sell everything, stop selling, or find a product we could start selling. We chose the latter. We are now full blown eBay sellers that are closing in on a perfect 100 feedback score. We found a pretty affordable product that can be sold with not too much investment (in case things don't work out in the long run) that is fun and easy to ship and sell. We love working on it together and while it probably won't be something that will generate enough income for someone to stop working, it provides a nice extra boost for us. Anyone else out there selling on eBay? Let me hear your story!

You can check out our listings below!

My items on eBay