Protect yourself

Fellow Minnesotans (and some of other states) - protect your assets!

John is one that I would call a little over anxious regarding security, especially along the lines of identity theft. Now, who would want to steal our credit? The credit with student loans and a mortgage? Well, who knows. However, since we are residents of the state of Minnesota, we can put a temporary (or permanent, if we never make a major purchase again) freeze on our credit line. Since we are well settled, we don't need to worry about our credit being frozen, and we can lift the freeze for 3-30 days at our discretion. The best part... Minnesota only charges $5 per bureau per person. That means that $30 and 30 mins worth of work will settle John's peace of mind for a good long while. Interested in doing it yourself? Here's the links:

http://www.experian.com/consumer/security_freeze.html
https://www.econsumer.equifax.com/consumer/sitepage.ehtml?forward=cs_cpo_howto#thirteen
http://www.transunion.com/corporate/personal/fraudIdentityTheft/preventing/securityFreeze.page

She's a Super Freak

I am a learning freak.

I know that you all know that, but I just needed to put it out there at the top of this entry. There have been two key events that occurred this week that have changed my perspective on the world.

On Thursday night, John and I went to a lecture on National Geographic’s Genographic project. It is headed up by an over-achieving, but brilliant man whose task is to identify the key mutations in our DNA, tying the mutations to population shifts over the last 60,000 years. It’s a little anthropology, a little geography, and a little population genetics. He collects the DNA via cheek swabs (who remembers looking at your cheek cells under a microscope?). In males, he looks the Y chromosome, in females the mitochondrial DNA (the “furnace” of every cell with old, minimally changing DNA). The collection efforts have been focusing on aboriginal tribes that are still maintained to this day, in order to identify the key markers. Enough markers have been found that pretty much anyone can have their cheek swabbed, and be told where their ancestors traveled in order to get you here. It isn’t a “you’re mostly German” test – you can get that from doing your traditional genealogy studying. This is, “your ancestors came out of Africa about 30,000 years ago, hung a right at the middle east, crossed over to the Americas about 18,000 years ago, and have been in Virginia since 10,000 years ago.” NUTS. All that info from your DNA. Blows my mind. If it blows yours too, check it out at: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic

Last night, we sat down and watched An Inconvenient Truth – the documentary/environmental lecture by Al Gore. Wow. Those of you that haven’t seen it MUST. He has emphasized the fact that yes, we do make an impact on this world, every single one of us. And we’re getting to a point where the facts can’t be ignored. I know that all of us this year have been noticing the a-typical weather in our own neighborhoods. We in the Twin Cities have only gotten about 9” of snow this winter; we usually have 27” by now. Every one of us needs to make a change in our own practices to decrease CO2 emmisions. Please check out http://www.climatecrisis.net/, determine your Carbon Impact and make some changes. The safety of the world we live on depends on you. If we don’t watch out, we’ll have a mass extension of most of those genetic markers the first group is finding.

Thanks for learning with me.

Working it off

Welcome to 2007 everyone!

Before I get too far... I want to let you know the newest house project - our new front door. You can't really tell from the pics, but it is a gorgeous burgundy! :-) Oh, and don't forget to notice the new roof and gutters! Yea!














Just as happens every year, it seems that the one just passed has slipped away too quickly. As you all well know, the theme for 2006 was "housework." It is still unwritten as to what the theme for 2007 will be, but I'm sure it will be a great year.

2007 was welcomed with a bang last night at the Horton household. Friends and family were here to eat, drink, and play board games. Fireball Island was an instant hit, as was Twister, Taboo, and Apples to Apples. The party didn't end until about an hour into the new year, and luckily very few of us needed to drive home (most were in easy walking distance). Here's some pics of the highlights:






PS. We got snow! It had been raining for about 24 hours, and then just as the party was approaching, the temp dropped below freezing and we have about 1-2 inches of the white stuff. Hurray! Too bad it's supposed to get up to the 40s again this week. Good for the heating bill, bad for morale.