What's been going on

We had to ship our laptop in so we haven't had internet, I'm at my mother-in-law's house right now working on something so I thought I'd put in a post.

Lot's has been happening. Yesterday Odin potty-trained himself! I was asleep (accidentally) and Odin didn't have a diaper on because he was going to take a bath. He started to squat over a bucket and was saying "PEE" which he's done before so Alyssa told him that if he has to pee he needs to use the potty so he ran into the bathroom and did it perfectly! He hasn't had a wet diaper since! (Except during the night.)

Odin also got some presents. Zaideh (my dad) gave him a starter set of Thomas the Tank Engine, which is great because he's obsessed with Thomas lately (he calls him "Ta-tam!"). Brandon and Ethan gave him a huge 100 piece set of plastic food that he plays with. Now we're at Grandpa Paula's and he got to open lots of cool clothes, a really soft bear, and great book, and there's still more to go!

All of our electronics have been going out at the same time. It's been really nice because it brought us closer together, but it's a strange story.

The laptop has a broken headphone jack. The only reason this is broken is because Alyssa has unplugged and plugged-in headphones 30-40 times a day for the last year and a half and it's just worn down. The other problems are that Odin tore a few keys off, and the screen is a little mis-aligned because it's been in and out of backpacks for college for the same year-and-a-half. So we took it to the mac store, only wanting to get the headphone jack fixed and they sent it to Apple. Apple said it would be $830 to fix. We told them that was ridiculous because we spent $200 for the protection plan. They said that it was labeled "accidental damage" so we weren't covered because it looked like it had been dropped. (I can understand that, it does look like it was dropped, but it wasn't.) So I talked to a tier2 technician and told him why it looked dropped but wasn't. He told me that it doesn't really matter, Apple's policy is that they would either fix all of it or none of it. If you have 7 things wrong with your computer and 6 of them are covered by the insurance but the 7th one isn't, they still will charge you for all 7 or they'd fix nothing. I told them we might as well buy a new laptop so just send it back. I had asked how much it would be to just fix the headphone jack (the only thing we cared about) and that was still $750, the most expensive part, so that was a flop.

Then our Xbox360 broke. I called the store we bought it from and said we had bought the insurance and they said just bring it in with the original receipt and they'd replace it right there in the store. I didn't have the receipt, so he told be to come in before 5pm and they could call corporate to verify. I brought the thing in but the guy told me I needed the cables that go with it. I told him that nobody told me I needed the cables, and that he had plenty in the store so use some of those, but he refused. So I went all the way back home and got them, and when I come back, the new guy I'm talking to this time said I didn't need the cables so I had just wasted a trip. Additionally, I got back at 4:15 and he said corporate wasn't open until 5pm, it was until 4pm. I told him to call anyway and, luckily, there was someone in the office. More bad news; we weren't covered anymore. The guy that sold us the insurance said it was for 2 years but it was really only for 1 year so we weren't covered anymore. I asked him what to do and he said they could buy it from me and I could use the credit to get a new one. I told him I don't have money for a new one, I want this one fixed. Besides, they'd have to buy it from me "defective" so this $600 machine would only be worth $40. Yeah, I went home angry.

Then we get home and find out that the iPod with all our songs on it that we haven't recovered yet decided to stop working. And this after not being able to get into our house because the doorknob stopped working, so we had to wait in the cold for the maintenance guy to come.

Luckily, we got the iPod to work again after calling Microsoft who said they'd fix the Xbox360 for free. So it all eventually worked out. Unfortunately, the laptop is still being shipped home broken. Oh well....

Anyway, I'd say more but I've been on the computer for a bit and we're going to teach Odin some Christmas songs, so I'll get to it later.

Happy Christmahanukwanzakah!

Developments

It's amazing to me, every day, how smart Odin is. He can figure stuff out that I've never shown him. Today I told him to wait for me to get my pants on before going outside and he found them and brought them to me. I'd never told him what pants are unless I was putting them on him, but he made the connection. His pronunciation is getting better as well, he can add consonants to the ends of his words (finally) and he's working on complicated sounds like "f" and "th" and he can say "sh" for fish. He's also really got the hang of people's names. He knows who he's talking to on the phone (another thing he loves to do lately) and he'll call out their name. He's finally started calling Dad "Zaideh" and I can't wait to see if he'll call Mom "Nana" when we go up there.

Speaking of which, we're going to be making a trip to Portland this Thursday evening or Friday morning and staying until Sunday evening. For those of you up there who want to visit, we'd love to see you. We'll also be at Jeff's Hanukkah party so I'm sure we'll see some of you.

Last Thursday night we spent the night at Dad's place to see how Odin would do away from home for the trip to Portland. We had a few adjustment problems, but he got used to it later in the night. Yesterday we met Dad at Barnes and Noble and Odin got some new books. One of them has an erasable marker so he can learn how to draw shapes and letters.

Alyssa and I just barely survived this term, but we made it through and passed all our classes (except one). Alyssa had this ridiculous assignment where she had to copy the score of Gnarly Buttons by John Adams into the computer, which is a horribly long and meticulous undertaking. She spent 2-4 hours a night on it for the last 2 weeks and 8 hours a night the last 2 days. And she still didn't finish it. Some final for a class with only two people and the second one didn't even finish his mid-term. Luckily the instructor still passed her.

I squeaked by in all my classes except Latin. It says I didn't pass it online but when I add up the points I got I should have passed. Either way, I saw the teacher before end of term and she said that she can see my progress and that even if I don't pass I can still take 102 and just keep going.

We're enjoying the feeling of having nothing to do. There's no requirement on us to stop what we're doing and attend to something else. No need to manage our time or make sure we're done with something. We can binge all we want on a particular hobby without having to think about all the work we're not doing.

That's all for now, more later.