Personal

How a typo ruined my day

Most days you wake up and you think it’s just going to be an ordinary day. And once in a while, it just takes a left turn. Yesterday was one of those days.

I’d made an appointment with our excellent mechanic to bring in Melanie’s minivan for an oil change and state inspection sticker. About mid-morning I got a call from them, which I had expected was a notice that the work was done and they were delivering the car to my house. (Did I mention how excellent they are? Abington Sunoco. Tell them I sent you.)

Instead, the mechanic was telling me that when they went to do the inspection, the state computers came back that my registration wasn’t valid. That can’t be right, I thought. I renewed the registration this past February. It should be good until 2011. The mechanic suggested I call my insurance agent—which turned out to be excellent advice—and my agent (who is also excellent; Ahmed Insurance; tell them I sent you too) looked up my registration on the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, i.e. the DMV, computer system, which told him that my license plates had been returned on May 14 and the registration canceled!

A quick check with the mechanic confirmed that, yes, both license plates were still on the car. So what was going on? The working theory was—and still is—that some clerk at the DMV mistyped someone else’s plate number and canceled mine instead of someone else’s. All I could do was to take my plates and a verification from my insurance agent to the closest DMV office and try to hash it out. The problem is that the car was 30 minutes away in one direction in Abington and my agent was over an hour away in the other direction in Salem! But because I have such an excellent agent and mechanic, it turned out to be less of a problem. My mechanic drove the plates and registration to my office in Braintree; did I mention how excellent he is? And the agent found a local independent agent near my office to whom he could send my information so he could fill out and sign my form.

So once I had my plates in hand, I sought out the local insurance agent. This guy is not so excellent. For one thing, he charged me $20 to sign this form. I later confirmed with my agent that this was somewhat sleazy since it’s generally accepted that agents will do this sort of thing for each others’ customers as a courtesy. It took all of 5 minutes to complete the form, if that. Then this guy tried to advise me to leave my old plates in my car and go in to the DMV and just register my car from scratch, which would have cost me at least another $40. Talking to my own agent after he told, “You can do whatever you want, but my advice is to take the plates and have them fix their mistake.” In the end I followed his advice and I’m glad I did.

In the meantime, I drove to the Braintree DMV office and got in line to wait. And wait. And wait. I waited over an hour. When I finally got to the window, I put on my nicest, happiest customer face. I was pleasant and self-deprecatory and understanding and turned my puppy dog eyes to the woman. Where the baseline level of hostility at the DMV is usually around 6 out of 10, I think I managed to bring it down to about 3. She confirmed that the plates had been canceled in the Reading office, miles and miles away from my home and someplace I’ve never been, and that the system claimed that the plates had been turned in, which was obviously not true. So she quickly reinstated the plates. That’s it! No rigamarole and no additional fee. After that, I drove to Abington to drop off the plates and registration so they could finish the inspection, then back to work to try to salvage what was left of the day, and then home to pick up my sister-in-law, and then to the mechanic to pick up the car (by this time it was too late for them to drop the car off; I don’t blame them), and then home.

In the end, I was out $20 and a half-day of lost work. But I acknowledge it could have been a lot worse. If the police had pulled us over and discovered the canceled registration, they would have towed it on the spot and fined us. If it were Melanie and the kids, they could have been left standing by the road. And the fact that the cancelation happened in the same month as the inspection sticker expired was also a small miracle. If the inspection hadn’t been required now, we could have driven around for months and months on an expired registration.

As much of a hassle as this was, I am grateful that it wasn’t much, much worse. But it just goes to show how one innocuous typo in the wrong place can ruin the day of someone you never know about somewhere else.

Photo credit: Flickr.com user M.V. Jantzen. Used under a Creative Commons license.

How I knew the priest who ministered to Ted Bundy & his victims

Monsignor William Kerr has died. Among other things, he was famous for having administered the last rites to one of serial killer Ted Bundy’s victims and then became a spiritual counselor for Bundy on death row.

I met Monsignor Kerr in 1994, I believe, when he was president of La Roche College, outside Pittsburgh. I was a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville and I’d been preparing for the Total Consecration to Mary according to St. Louis de Montfort with some of my friends. One of them was my roommate, Kevin Gillen, now Fr. Gabriel Gillen, OP, who knew the monsignor. Kevin arranged for Msgr. Kerr to lead us in the final consecration following Mass at La Roche. I don’t remember too much about the day, but I do remember Msgr. Kerr was kind and gracious to us.

Kevin told us the story Msgr. Kerr told him about that awful night in Gainesville Tallahassee, Florida, in 1978. He said Kerr got the call from the police in the middle of the night to rush out to the sorority house. When he arrived he was told that all but one of the girls in the house were dead or near death, killed by a serial killer who was later to be known to the world as Ted Bundy. After giving those last rites to the dying college girl, then-Fr. Kerr was asked by the police on the scene to talk to the girl who survived unscathed. They wanted to know how she survived the brutal attacks, because Bundy had stopped right inside the door to her room, dropped his weapon, and left without touching her. But the girl would talk to no one but a priest.

When Fr. Kerr approached the near-catatonic girl, she told him that her mother had made her promise before going off to college for the first time that she would pray the Rosary every night before bed for protection; even if she fell asleep praying the Rosary, which she had that night so that when Bundy came into her room with murder on his mind, the beads were still clutched in her hands.

Later, Bundy would tell Monsignor that when he entered the girl’s room, he just couldn’t go on, he dropped his weapon, and he fled. Such is the power of our Mother’s protective mantle.

Rest in peace, Msgr. Kerr, and thank you for your small part in my faith journey and for your witness.

Going blind and cheap eyeglasses

Time and age eventually claim us all. No, I’m not writing a morbid posting about growing old and entering my mid-life crisis. Instead, I’m here to tell you that I have succumbed to reality and am now a wearer of eyeglasses.

You have top understand that I have long been proud of my superior eyesight. When I was entering Navy ROTC back in the flower of my youth, I had to undergo a battery of medical tests and the optometrist who tested my eyesight gave me the happy news told me that I had 20/16 vision, which means I could see farther than the average mortal, which is especially helpful for someone who wanted to be a fighter pilot. My hero Chuck Yeager reputedly had 20/10 vision! And I clung to that diagnosis for years and decades despite the mounting evidence that it no longer held true.

It was especially evident while driving. I’d be squinting at highway signs and street signs trying to read them long after Melanie had already read them out loud. And at night it was even worse! Yet, I put off going to the doctor and getting a prescription, mainly because of the expense. Between the doctor’s visit and the glasses themselves, we were looking at half a thousand dollars, or so I estimated.

What changed matters was that at work we got a new eye-care benefit this year. Since Melanie already wears glasses and I needed them, it sounded like a decent investment. So we pay a few bucks a week and we get a couple hundred dollar allowance every 2 years for glasses as well as regular vision exams. So I found a local optometrist and made an appointment, went in and had it confirmed that I’m pretty well nearly blind. Even better, not only am I near-sighted, but I’m also going to need bifocals eventually for reading. Swell.

The next step was to pick out frames. I took one look at the wall of available frames and told the doctor that I’d come back with my wife. I couldn’t figure out which ones looked okay, although it was quite easy to tell which ones were out of the question. I am neither a hipster nor gay.

After I got the glasses, I was surprised at how hard it was to adjust. I thought it would be like a veil lifted from my eyes and I could suddenly see again like I had when I was young. Instead, I had vertigo and a weird sensation of being really tall. Even now when I go into some stores and look down the aisles I get a little dizzy. And the change was not dramatic. When I concentrate I can tell that I can read something that’s far away that I could not before. I guess it’s not super-vision.

Now, of course, everyone knows how expensive prescription eyeglasses are. But they don’t have to be. Knowing that I would need glasses soon, I’ve been collecting links to articles about how to get eyeglasses online on the cheap and for a decent quality too.

 
• “Save Bundles of Cash by Buying Eyeglasses Online” - Lifehacker
 
• “Adventures in $40 Eyeglasses” - 43 Folders
 
• Glassy Eyes (A site dedicated to bargain eyeglasses online)
 
• “How To Get an Unbelievable, Amazing, Fantastic, Thrilling Deal on New Glasses” - Slate

The key is making sure you have enough information about your prescription to place your online order. In my case, I asked my optometrist to write it down, although you have to be sure get one piece of data they don’t usually include, which is pupillary distance, i.e. the distance between the centers of your pupils. I paid attention to what the doctor wrote down on the order form for my glasses.

With that you can go to a bunch of different vendors. One of the highly regarded places is Zenni Optical. They have frames and lenses as low as $8 and many, many very nice sets for $19.

I’m thinking of getting sunglasses too and this will be a good experiment. I’ve priced out a pair for less than $30, including shipping. For that price, I can get multiple sets for each car and to keep in the house. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

A year with Sophia

We call her Sophia, Sophie, Phia, or Fee-Fee, but by any name she’s my little girl. It’s hard to believe she’s been with us a whole year, yet it’s also hard to imagine there was a time she wasn’t part of our lives. I think other parents will understand.

One year ago today, Melanie gave birth to Sophia Therese after a whole day of unproductive labor. I still remember the phone call from Melanie, as I was driving to work in rush hour traffic, to turn around and come home because her water broke. And then we rushed to the hospital where we waited. And waited. And Melanie blogged.

Yet here we are a year later, with a beautiful little girl who smiles and laughs and makes her first words and signs other words and crawls and pulls herself up and just adores her big sister.

She must have known today was her big day because she woke up an hour early so as not to miss a minute of it. I love you, Sophia, and happy birthday.

It’s a boy!

We’re going to be having a boy in July and his name is Benedict Joseph Bettinelli.

After a few fits and starts—including Melanie misremembering last week’s appointment as an ultrasound appointment—we finally got the news we’ve been awaiting so we could put a name to our child. We knew within a minute of starting the process. “Oh my,” said the ultrasound technician. Oh my, indeed. There was no doubt.

The boy is named after his maternal grandfather, whose middle name is Benedict. (He doesn’t favor his first name as much.) The fact that the current Pontiff is also Benedict and Joseph doesn’t hurt. We are dyed-in-the-wool Papists after all.

So now we wait until mid-July for my boy—my boy—to arrive.

Isabella, the slide, and her wagon

Melanie was nursing Sophia down to sleep today and kept hearing a rumbling noise outside where Isabella was playing. It sounded like her little wagon running over pavement, except there is no pavement out there. When she finally got up to investigate, this is what she saw.

Isabella, the wagon, and the slide from Domenico Bettinelli on Vimeo.

I guess as long as she doesn’t try to ride it herself or put her sister in it. It’s okay. Where she got the idea I’ll never know, but she was persistent about it, dragging up the stairs over and over.

A Typical Evening

I thought it would be fun to share a snippet of time in our house, a typical evening when we’re getting the kids ready for bed and we’re having one of our typically wide-ranging, funny conversations. I’m sure other couples have similar examples. I think it’s a hilarious video, but I also have the context in which to judge it. Perhaps my family and friends will enjoy it too.

A typical evening from Domenico Bettinelli on Vimeo.

Tax-free trash: an update

When we moved to Holbrook last November, I wrote about how I considered the town’s solution to the expensive problem of trash disposal to be quite fair. At the time, homeowners paid what was essentially a consumption tax on the trash. You could throw out as much trash as you needed, as long as it was all contained in special bags that cost $3 each. In addition, recycling was included, but you had to separate paper from plastics and put them in paper bags and tie up cardboard with strings. It was kind of a pain.

Then at the end of the year, the town changed the deal. They lowered the price of the bags slightly and instituted a per-household fee because they weren’t raising enough money to pay for the cost of trash disposal. (The town had passed an ordinance a couple of years ago that trash disposal had to pay for itself, not rely on other taxes.) So the bags went down from $3 per bag to $2.10 per bag, but we now have a $240 annual fee. Based on our household’s consumption, that would raise our cost for trash disposal by $150 per year. Not a devastating amount, but I could find other uses for that $12 per month. Still, I wasn’t so motivated that I was actively seeking alternatives.

But the alternative came to me. Last Saturday I found a flyer stuck to our door advertising a local independent trash hauler. They would supply two 96-gallon bins, one for trash and one for recycling. The recycling is single-stream, which means no more sorting and bundling. Everything goes into the bin. They pick up every other week, trash and recycling on different days, and pick-up is not affected by holidays, except when it falls on the actual holiday itself. (This year it’s just July 4 that’s affected.) And the best part? I would pay a little less than I did under the old town-run system before they raised the prices. Plus I get a lot more convenience.

... [P]roving in the process once again that in most areas of society private enterprise can provide a superior product/service at a competitive price over government’s efforts.

Of course, I called on Tuesday and signed up right away, proving in the process once again that in most areas of society private enterprise can provide a superior product/service at a competitive price over government’s efforts, which usually have little incentive for cost-cutting and inefficiency. After all, when government needs more money it just raises taxes. Except in this case, there is an escape hatch for the taxpayers.

I do recognize that the reason they can’t cover costs is that people like me opt out of the system, thus placing the structural costs upon fewer shoulders. But what they don’t recognize is that they provide no incentive to keep us from leaving the system. They provide an inferior service at a higher cost because they make me subsidize a bunch of people who get abatements as well as the inefficiencies inherent in any government bureaucracy.

The best part is that the town just signed an agreement with a company that wants to set up a regional trash transfer station with a rail-link in town and part of the agreement is free trash and recycling pickup for all residents, plus a huge annual payment-in-lieu-of-taxes to the town’s coffers. So if all goes well, in 2 years, I switch to the no-cost-to-me service and save the $300 I’m spending on private trash disposal. Until then, I’m looking forward to a good relationship with the private company and not having to worry about special trash bags and sorting my recycling.

Photo credit: Flickr user feministjulie via a Creative Commons license.

Wings of gold

The pin you see in that photo is a unique specimen. At first glance it looks like the pin a Naval Aviator wears on his uniform, but that shooting star gives us pause. This is, in fact, the official uniform pin of a US Navy officer who also happens to be an astronaut.

I’ve had this pin for about 25 years. I bought at an Army-Navy store in Stoughton, Mass. (long gone now) around my senior year in high school. At the time I was certain that I wanted to be an astronaut and would attain that goal by first becoming a Naval Aviator. So I bought the pin and affixed to a cap that I wore everywhere, as an aspirational sign to myself and everyone else.

My dream took me as far as joining Navy ROTC my freshman year in college at Boston University. I would eventually drop out after that one year because I was too immature for the responsibility of college and do the work I was supposed to do. But at one point in the year, I ran into one of the officers running the NROTC unit. He was a Marine colonel and an actual Naval Aviator and I looked up to him like a puppy dog looks to his master. When he called me aside one day, I thought he wanted to give me a pep talk or congratulate me on my military bearing.

Instead he told me that since I hadn’t earned the wings I was wearing on my cap—and since wearing insignia wings on a cap was forbidden anyway—I needed to remove them and never do it again. I pleaded ignorance—only partially true since I suspected they were authentic wings—and obeyed. He was given pause upon closer inspection, however, at the shooting star, which he didn’t recognize. I proudly explained the significance and told him of my dream. He humored me and repeated his admonition.

And so for the last 25 years, the wings have sat in a succession of desk drawers and closet-bound boxes, waiting for what I know not. Maybe for the day I can pull them out and show my sons or daughters or grandchildren about how I once wanted to be an astronaut and how they should follow their dreams even if there’s the possibility of failure. Because a fear of failure is sometimes worse than the failure itself.

Meanwhile, the wings go back in a drawer until the next time I bring them out and think about how different my life would have been. And realize that I wouldn’t trade my life now for the thrill of spaceflight or flying high-performance jets.

Not news I wanted hear from the doctor

It’s been quite a roller coaster day for us here. No, it has nothing to do with the inauguration (although I’m waiting for so-called pro-life Obama supporters to explain his moves on that front), but something much closer to home.

Melanie had gone in to see an endocrinologist recently because of something her ob-gyn had seen in her recent tests. (For those of you just catching up, she’s about 14 weeks pregnant.) She got the call back today that she has “nodules” on her thyroid gland and they’re going to have to do a biopsy by sticking a big needle through her neck. The doctor assured her that in 95% of cases, the nodules are completely benign.

What can I not stop thinking about?

Five percent.

Normally, I’d go with the doctor on this one, chalk up the five percent to him being very conservative, and subtract a few points. But then there’s the other thing I can’t stop thinking about.

Two years ago next month. That’s when Melanie had a miscarriage and then was given a preliminary diagnosis of uterine cancer. It was a difficult time for all of us, dealing with fear and uncertainty and loss. It was certainly a Lent to remember.

So now, I’m wondering if we’re about to enter another such Way of the Cross. Last year was a tough year with lots of stress: We had a baby, my job moved, we had to find and buy a house, we had to move ourselves. Is this going to be another year of the same?

I will trust in the Lord, but there’s a little knot deep in my chest that won’t unwind itself. So I wait and I pray. And I do the best I can.

After all the doctor is 95 percent certain it’s nothing. 95 percent. 95 percent.

Shedding the apartment dweller’s reflex

Melanie and I were talking today about the mental adjustment we’re going through in our new house. I’m having a hard time grasping that we’re not going to be moving from this house for some time, hopefully. Yet, we’ve both been apartment dwellers for so long it’s hard to settle in. In my case, I’ve lived in six different places in the last seven years. I’ve practically been a nomad.

When we got the new desk yesterday, we spent a little time trying to figure out where to store it. I’d had the unconscious reflex that we need to keep it in case we had a use for it in “the next place” we live. Likewise, Melanie’s been holding on to the area rug that had been in the girls’ room in the old apartment. Since we have wall-to-wall carpet we have no use for it, so she finally listed it on Freecycle.

We really are going to stay here for a long time, God willing, and so we can get rid of anything that doesn’t fit our needs in this place. I know we’ll get mentally adjusted at some point soon. Still takes getting used to.

New Ikea pantry for better storage

During our trip to Ikea to buy my new desk, we came up with several ideas for improving our home. Our new house is a one-level ranch with no basement and a crawlspace attic. In addition, the kitchen is essentially galley-style with a limited amount of storage space, especially compared to our previous two apartments. Thus storage space is at a premium. Our current solution has been to turn the utility room off the kitchen into a combined laundry/pantry/craft room. So we have the washer and dryer, a chest freezer, Melanie’s craft table, and a series of shelves in there.

We have one shelf unit serving as the pantry for storing canned and boxed goods as well as storage containers and some small appliances. (You can see it in the photo below.) It’s not ideal because it’s easy for small items to get lost in the back and cans and boxes are always falling off as you root around for what you want. So when I saw the Akurum pantry cabinet at Ikea, I wondered if it would work. The cabinet itself is 15” wide x 24” deep x 80” high (or 88” depending on the model). The existing shelf, on the other hand, is 34” wide and 18” deep and the ceiling is 84” high. So I’m thinking we could fit two of these side by side in what is probably about the same amount of space.

And looking at the cabinet, with the sliding shelves and open cabinet above, I think each one has about as much storage as the present shelving has and would allow everything to be better organized. I think in a few weeks we’re going to take a serious look at installing these cabinets.

In with the new desk, out with the old

I got my new desk yesterday, which I’d been planning to get ever since we moved. We went to our local Ikea and got swept up in the crowds. (The place is like the UN. I swear I heard languages from every continent, although I didn’t hear an Aussie accent.)

The desk I picked out is the Galant model, straight top (not corner) with T-legs instead of A-frame. I also bought the Summera CPU holder and the Signum cable management trays. I’m just so sick of seeing that cable mess back there.

The new desk is wonderful. I love the spaciousness. Now Isabella can sit next to me and watch the photo slideshow on the other computer without constantly bumping my elbow. And it looks so clean and functional. To top it off, I’ve unloaded the old desk on Craigslist. Excellent.

Now after walking through Ikea, I’ve got some other home improvement ideas as well. I’ll highlight those in another post. For the now, check out the before and after photos below.

Merry Christmas!

Seven Fishes and Christmas thoughts

On Christmas Eve, it is traditional in Italy to eat seafood, and especially seven kinds of fish. The exact menu varies, but a best-selling graphic novel called Feast of the Seven Fishes, details one variation and the accompanying blog gives more. Last year, we had a variation on this feast. We had lobster, shrimp, stuffed crab, and stuffed clams. We want to do it again this year, but we just need to find three more fishes to serve. Any suggestions?

Unfortunately, we still also have to buy a tree and decorate the house. We were supposed to get a tree this weekend, but—as you can see from the photos on the right—Mother Nature had other plans and instead I spent the time shoveling the foot-and-a-half of snow that fell on us. Of course, it didn’t deter Melanie from making a dash to Burger King for a pregnancy-related craving. Now before you scold me for a failure of chivalry, she wanted to go because she was getting cabin fever. You fight with the pregnant woman.

Anyway, the plan is get a tree by Christmas Eve (not sure how) and then decorate like mad and then keep the decorations up through Epiphany. Which works this year only because we’ve had to cancel our yearly custom of traveling to visit Melanie’s family in Texas after Christmas. Now that Isabella’s old enough for the airlines to require us to buy her a ticket, airfare for the 3 of us is $1,500. We just can’t afford that right now. Fares around the beginning of February are only about $1,000, which is still a lot and probably just out of reach too, but maybe we’ll have a Christmas miracle. In addition to Melanie getting to see her brothers (who have yet to meet their younger niece, Sophia) and parents, and the girls getting to see their uncles and grandparents, it’s also a nice respite from winter, of which this old New England boy gets more and more sick with each passing year.

But those are sad thoughts for another time. We still have Christmas, which will be the first in our new home and the first with Sophia and the first with Melanie’s sister Theresa. And we’ll spend Christmas day with my family at my brother’s house. It doesn’t get much better than that.