BilikFamily.com

I know that we just passed Thanksgiving. We certainly do have a lot to be thankful for, but we've also had some recent sources of frustration. It may be therapeutic to write a little bit. Don't worry, though. There's plenty of good news mixed in.

Escrow - It seems that a recent law allows (or requires) mortgage companies to have the tax escrow account have a minimum of two months of payment. In other words after biannual payment is made towards local taxes, your account should no longer be near zero but near 1/6th of your annual taxes. From an escrow FAQ:

What is an acceptable minimum balance?

The minimum balance, or "cushion", is the amount of money that a Lender may require a borrower to keep in an escrow account. The cushion covers unexpected or increased disbursements, or disbursements made before the borrower's payment is available in the account. Based on Federal Law, Lenders may require a cushion of up to 1/6th (or 2/12th) of the total annual escrow disbursement amount, unless state law or loan documents are more restrictive.

The confusion gets compounded by the fact the my local tax bill is a scheduled asymmetrically. One payment occurs in June and the other in November (not December). Lastly my mortgage company seems to be trying to be ready in case taxes go up next November. So with all this confusion, my mortgage company sent a letter this past week asking for either $2k up front or to up our monthly payment for ~$200 for the next year. Now is not the best time of year to be writing a single large check so we've opted to go for the monthly plan. The downside is that this will cancel the mortgage prepayment we had been following.

Video - I've been playing a bit with our camera's ability to shoot video. It's actually pretty reasonable at it for most home use. The camera has a rather large internal RAM buffer so that it can shoot 70 or 180 seconds worth of video at a pop, depending on resolution. This is usually sufficient for capturing a majority of things you might care about around the house. What's been a struggle is finding a standard video mode the computers can handle. I had been excited to read about MPEG4. It delivers pretty high quality at with excellent data compression. It's a standard format not tied to a particular vendor. It seemed that MPEG4 could be what JPEGs and GIFs are to still images and MP3 and AAC are to audio. Alas, Microsoft dropped support for MPEG4 in their recent versions of Windows Media Player. Perhaps they felt that it was too competitive with their proprietary WMP format. It appears that the only mainstream Windows MPEG4 decoder is the one freely available if you download QuickTime from Apple. Apple seems to be a bit obnoxious about Quicktime in their PC version. By default Quicktime sets up some things in the PC's Startup sequence which some users find annoying - myself included. If anyone knows a smaller MPEG4 player or a better cross platform video format, let me know.

Van trip - Last Saturday we waited until the boys' nap time and packed them up into the van to head north to visit our friends, the Nix's, in Belmont, NH -- about an hour and fifteen minutes away. Timothy cried until we hit the Belmont town line. Daniel didn't start dozing until we hit their street. Michael started to sleep but then Abby woke him up. Thanks Abby! Amazingly the boys were still well behaved that afternoon and evening. Of course they had no problem falling asleep on the drive home and they napped well the following day. The amazing thing to Michelle is that when she's driving them home from the YMCA around 10:30AM, she can barely go 2 miles without them dozing off. I guess waiting until noon last Saturday got them "over the hump" and prevented them from napping.

Snow - As I write this, Michelle says we have a dusting of snow on the ground. Luckily it's really not supposed to amount to anything. I'm not ready yet to get into the snowblowing mode.

Holiday dinner - Tonight my company is going to have its annual holiday dinner. This year it appears we're going to go in a bit of style which is nice guesture to improve morale in spite of the recent economy. Our dinner is at the Bedford Village Inn. From where we now live, it couldn't be simpler to get to. Turn right out of our street and keep going for 17 miles. Bam! You're there. The insides look gorgeous and the foods we've chosen for the evening should make for a nice night out.

Holiday preparations - Michelle seems to take to the Christmas season. It really helps that Abby is such a lover of crafts. Our house is already decorated. The Christmas trees are already up. Michelle has already picked up a lot of gifts. We've lit several fires in the fireplace and watched a number holiday movies with more to come over the next few weeks. So far the boys have left the trees alone, although they couldn't resist the candy canes that were on the trees. Once our prints come back from Photographix, we should be able to mail out our Christmas cards. We got our first Christmas card yesterday from the Tarpeys. Thanks, Lyss!

The main thing I'm looking forward to down the road is sledding in our back yard. Last year the best sledding occurred when Chris and Katie visited for Timothy's Baptism. That same snow storm which really screwed up their flight arrival made for awesome sledding the next day. Chris, Claire, and I went into the back yard and were really moving! Hey Chris, if you both want to tempt the fates again this year, you're more than welcome to visit after Christmas. Bring your Gameboy in case you get camped at the airport. Supposedly there are some even better hills to sled on nearby in Wilton.

Abby - Somewhere when I wasn't paying attention, Abby started reading. Michelle has been homeschooling her with daily worksheets, projects, etc. The other night when I was working on pictures she came up to me and read me a simple little story. At the time I was overcome with "Whoa! When did that happen?!" Abby can easily get overlooked as a middle child, but I predict an interesting future for her. She's very patient and methodical when she's working - whether on a craft, on the computer, on the Gameboy/Gamecube. She could easily be a scientist or engineer or perhaps a musician when she grows up. It's funny how she can be so impatient when she's bored, but give her something to do and she'll keep herself occupied for an hour.

Well, the sun is coming up and the kids are all awake now. I've got to go. Take care and welcome to Advent.