2011 Schedule

Posted on by

In case you haven’t heard the news, I did get awarded an 11pm line for Feb 2011-Jan 2012. I am happy. Even better, although I didn’t get Christmas Eve off like I’d hoped (long-shot there!), I did get several other good days off, including:

  • Valentine’s Day
  • The weekend before Jenny’s birthday
  • Easter weekend
  • Independence Day
  • My birthday
  • Thanksgiving day (have to work Thursday night)
  • New Year’s Eve 2011

Since we won’t have any babies on the way next year, I am free to use vacation days to get some other days off if desired, such as Mother’s or Father’s Day, New Year’s Eve 2010, or random days for races. Pretty much the only day I couldn’t get using vacation days is Christmas, but that’s OK. Overall, a very nice result.

Vacation bid starts next week.

Calories

Posted on by

All the running I’m doing and the various forms of exercise that Jenny is doing at the gym got me thinking about calories. Despite the hundreds of different (and often contradictory) diets out there, I still haven’t found any reason to doubt the basic calorie equation: Calories Eaten – Calories Burned = Change in Weight. Burn more than you eat to lose weight. Eat more than you burn to gain weight. Not easy, but at least it’s simple.

MayoClinic.com provides a nice calorie calculator that can tell you roughly how many calories you burn per day based on your gender, age, weight, and activity level.

I burn 2600 calories per day on average. I don’t count calories, but I try to eat fairly healthy meals most of the time. Jenny and I have both cut back on our sugar, largely in the form of sugary soda and dessert. We mainly accomplish this by keeping them out of the house. If I see them, I will consume them. (Jenny horrified me this week by bringing home not one, but two bags of delicious Oreos for Brenden’s party. I told her to hide them from me. I wasn’t kidding.) With less sugar and more running, I’ve lost about five pounds over the last few months. Although I’m not focusing on weight loss, losing a bit of belly fat is a nice side benefit.

RunnersWorld.com says that going one mile burns about 100 calories, whether walking or running. That fact makes it easy to convert foods and drinks into miles. For example, consider the following common foods and drinks that I enjoy (or would, if I tried them):

Drinks

  • 12oz Coke: 140 calories = 1.4 miles
  • 1 cup whole milk: 175 calories = 1.8 miles
  • 12oz Sam Adams Boston Lager: 180 calories = 1.8 miles
  • 5oz glass of white wine: 125 calories = 1.3 miles

Foods

  • Large bagel: 283 calories = 2.8 miles
  • Large banana: 121 calories = 1.2 miles
  • 8oz steak: 406 calories = 4.1 miles
  • Large Oreo Cheesequake Dairy Queen Blizzard: 1140 calories = 11.4 miles
  • Chipotle burrito, my style: 920 calories = 9.2 miles
  • Lasagna at Romano’s Macaroni Grill: 760 calories = 7.6 miles

Obviously, I don’t run 9 miles after returning from Chipotle full of a tasty burrito. Two reasons: 1) I would puke, which is extremely wasteful, and 2) I can’t run that far yet. My point is to illustrate the difficulty of burning off extra calories when you eat more than you burn, as most Americans do. Let’s say I’m currently maintaining a steady weight. If I decide to start drinking a Coke every day but don’t want it to affect my weight, I need to walk or run an extra 1.4 miles to offset it.

Jenny’s trainer at Life Time Fitness gave her a very important tip, one that I didn’t expect to hear from a gym employee who presumably wants her members to think the gym is indispensable:

If you want to lose weight, exercise alone isn’t enough.

If you do the math, it’s easy to see why. A pound of fat contains about 3500 calories. To lose a pound a week, you must create a daily deficit of 500 calories per day. Unless you plan to burn 500 calories in the gym seven days a week (five miles on a treadmill, an hour-long cardio class, etc.), you won’t notice much weight loss, if any. If seven hours a week in the gym isn’t practical (it’s not for me), cutting out a habit of drinking three Cokes a day (or just one Sonic Route-44 Coke) is like running over four miles in terms of calories. Obviously, if you can both eat better and exercise more, that’s ideal, but if you must choose, improving your diet is easier and more effective.

How Much Do I Really Pay in Taxes?

Posted on by

It seems that many people love to complain about taxes, both how much we pay in taxes and how the government uses our tax dollars. I’ll save the government’s handling of tax revenue for another day.

I’ve been thinking lately about tax rates. What is the fairest system for collecting taxes? On one hand, the simplicity of a flat income tax or a flat consumption tax appeals to me. On the other hand, I also see value in a system like ours in which the wealthier you are, the greater your tax rate is, at least in principle.

This recent article in the Dallas Morning News confirmed a few suspicions I’ve had. I invite you to read it and then come back.

If you don’t feel like reading it, the article discusses the huge amount of tax revenue that the government loses every year through common tax breaks such as mortgage interest. Most of these tax breaks go to middle- and upper-class people who can afford to own a home, invest money, and contribute large amounts to charity. In general, the more money you make, the more you can claim in deductions on your more expensive house and other items. Eliminating all of these breaks would make a huge dent in the budget deficit.

Intrigued, I ran some numbers on our family’s finances. We’re just regular, middle-class people with two living tax credits kids and a reasonably-priced home. We’re in the 25 percent tax bracket. However, we take many legitimate deductions every year, including mortgage interest, property taxes, student loan interest, and a variety of charitable donations. For 2009, we also claimed some capital losses (bad stock picks – oops) and a home energy improvement credit. These deductions and credits saved us thousands of dollars last year. How much?

Our effective income tax rate was only 11.3 percent. That sounds a whole lot better than 25 percent, doesn’t it?

But does it? Sure, it’s great to keep the difference in my pocket. And yes, some would argue that even 11.3 percent is too high. However, I understand and appreciate the government’s contributions to my life and the life of every American, and I think it’s only fair that we pay for them. All my deductions contribute to the massive budget deficit.

I don’t have a comprehensive plan for tax reform, nor do I have any intention of reducing my deductions to help solve the budget crisis. I just wanted to point out that our actual tax burden might not be quite as heavy as we might think.

ER Adventure

Posted on by

Brenden had a rough night Saturday night, waking up repeatedly, crying for no apparent reason, asking Jenny to hold him but squirming around when she did. Finally, she decided he might have an ear infection or some other problem and took him to the doctor. Since it was Sunday morning, his pediatrician’s office was closed, so they made their first visit to CareNow, an urgent care center. The folks there decided that yes, he probably had an ear infection, but the more serious problem was that Brenden was having trouble breathing. Along with a chest x-ray, they administered a couple of breathing treatments and a steroid shot. They helped, but his oxygen levels wouldn’t stay high enough, so they suspected an asthma attack and referred us to the emergency room. We chose Cook Children’s in Fort Worth.

I figured an emergency room visit for one of our boys was inevitable, but I figured it would happen after Brenden broke an arm, not for a breathing problem. Since B seemed fairly happy despite his difficulty, I definitely preferred this reason for our first visit. CareNow called ahead, and we were taken back within five minutes. Toddlers who can’t breathe make healthcare people nervous.

If you have kids and need to put them in a hospital, I recommend a children’s one. A trusted source told me that regular hospitals are afraid of children, especially young ones. Cook was full of nice people who understood that kids need love, patience, and entertainment, people who understand that toddlers squirm a lot and pull off their blood oxygen monitors. They provided stickers, children’s books, and a variety of movies in the exam room. Since we spent nearly five hours in that room, those were welcome distractions. We watched part of Finding Nemo and most of Cars.

Brenden handled the whole experience pretty well. The hardest part was keeping him fairly still so that the monitor would stay on his big toe. He got one more breathing treatment and a dose of liquid prednisone. By evening, his blood oxygen levels were pretty good, and he had returned to his happy, active self. The ER doctor diagnosed him not with asthma, because his lungs didn’t sound asthmatic, but with bronchiolitis, a viral infection of the bronchial tubes. He prescribed an inhaler and a round of prednisone and finally let us go home.

My sister and I both grew up with asthma, so breathing difficulties don’t scare me as much as they scare most people. When I heard that CareNow suspected asthma, my heart sunk. Since asthma runs in my family, I fear that my sons will develop it, too. I was diagnosed at age 3. Either of them could still develop it, but I was happy to hear the final verdict that this particular incident resulted from a short-term infection rather than a lifelong condition.

Adding Comments

Posted on by

A couple of my loyal readers have reported some trouble with the new comment system. Here are the basics:

1) To read posted comments or add your own, click the Comments link at the end of the post.
2) To post a new comment, type your comment, name, and email address. It’s the same info you entered before, just arranged differently. (Don’t worry about the IntenseDebate and WordPress.com login buttons. You don’t need them, but I can’t figure out how to hide them.)
3) Click Submit Comment.

I love getting comments from you and hope these instructions make your commenting easier. If you want to climb my Top Commentators ladder in the sidebar, enter the same name each time.

Write me if you run into any further trouble.