Mister & Mrs. Tang

...is what Doug and I go by in the WAMAS group, a group for saltwater aquarium enthusiasts in the DC Area.

Doug started up a saltwater aquarium about a year ago. Saltwater aquariums take a lot of work and unfortunately Doug has not been able to do a lot of the upkeep because he is not living at home right now. For the last few months, I have been taking care of the tank and am proud to say that I haven't killed anything... that PBJ coral was on it's way out already.

Anyways, the tank is pretty dang awesome and I realized that I haven't actually put any pictures of it on my blog. So, here are some pictures of our tank. It's not just Doug's anymore. I now feel a little bit more ownership now that I'm the one taking care of it.

I hadn't looked through the pictures that we took all the way from the beginning. It's pretty crazy how far our tank has come!

This is the tank when we first got it and put in live rock.

A couple months later with our first corals.

This is basically what the tank looks like today.

This is Mele Mele, our yellow tang. He is Doug's inspiration for starting a saltwater tank.

This is one of our two tiger-banded sea stars. They only come out at night, but they're pretty cool.

This is Manie, the Mandarin. It's hard to take a picture of him because he flutters 

around like a hummingbird. This is one of the hardest fish to keep and we haven't killed it yet!

This is a picture of one of our two frogspawn corals.

FYI Dental Insurance

I blogged a while ago about worries that I had with dental costs here. I've now completed "My Treatment Plan" which included 2 crowns and 3 fillings. Yuck!

I had already paid $800 for my treatment and my plan covers 80% of the stuff I was getting done, so according to some calculations I did it looked like I might actually get a little money back. Last week, I received a $1,300 bill from my dentist. Yeah, I was surprised too.

I started by calling my dentist who let me know that the claim for one of my crowns had been denied. Denied? Um, how can your insurance deny something that they say that they cover?

I learned a bit more about the insurance process today while I was on the phone and I can now answer that question. So if you go or will ever go to the dentist, this might be some helpful information. I know it all seems very basic, but I really did think that my insurance would cover the procedures that it listed on my policy. Silly me!

Each time a dentist submits a claim they need to attach x-rays and such showing why they needed to do 'X' treatment. The insurance company then has their consultants look over this information and decide whether or not the procedure was indeed "necessary" before they will cover it. If the consultant deems it UNnecessary, then the patient (me in this case) will need to pay the full cost of the treatment.

This all sounds VERY reasonable and I understand why they need to go through this process because dental insurance companies don't want to pad the pockets of dentists that are doing unnecessary procedures. When I talked to my insurance company on the phone, they told me that it was good practice to have any procedure over $250 pre-approved with them before actually getting it done. Once again, excellent information, but 4 months too late.

Now what do I do? Well, the insurance company told me that I need to have my dentist office file an appeal explaining why my treatment was indeed necessary. You can file up to two appeals. If the appeal is granted then the insurance will cover it. If not... well I guess I will have a big unexpected bill coming up.

So hopefully this will be a positive learning experience and my claim will be covered. What can you learn from this and why am I sharing? Make sure that you get any procedure pre-approved EVEN if your policy says that it is covered.

Lesson learned.

Squircle

The town that I live in was planned by a bunch of nincompoops who really like stop signs and wasting time. In the very center of town, we have what the townspeople “affectionately” call the squircle. The squircle is a big intersection thingy that functions like a round-a-bout, but its a... square. This last week, Doug’s grandma was dropping off the girls at the house and was unable to get to our place because of this confusing squircle. I remember the first few times we drove through it to come watch the house being built and I had no clue where we were going. I’m just now starting to understand how it works and we’ve lived in our house now for well over a year and I drive through it every day.

Anyways, this squircle has really been annoying me lately. I’m taking a slightly different route to school in the morning that takes me the annoying way through the squircle. I took a screen shot of the squircle in Google Maps and showed the route that I have been taking. Taking this route involves going through 3 stop signs in under a minute and you only end up about 100 feet front where you started.


I know this is a lame post, but I using up all of my brain power to set up my classroom. Unfortunately I lost the motivation today to actually get any real work done, so now I'm blogging.

Word Verification

I was feeling daring and took word verification off of my blog a couple months ago because I thought it was a pain. For those of you that forget what word verification is it that little thing that has you type in the weird letters to verify if you're human and not a computer when you leave comments. I haven't gotten any "comment spam", but I don't have much traffic either.

You should do it too... well unless you like verifying that you're human.

Five Below

For Activity Day Girls this last week I planned some fun with water balloons. I ended up going to FOUR different stores to try to find water balloons with NO LUCK. I started to get a little panicked because the activity was on Tuesday and it was Monday and I was running out of time.

I posted on my Facebook status update that I was looking for water balloons and was informed by Doug's Aunt Rachel that she just saw some at Five Below. I had never been to a Five Below so I Googled for locations and found one a few miles away from the school. I dropped by on Tuesday and the water balloons were in one of the front bins on display!

While I was in the store, I decided to walk around a little and check out what else they had in the store. BIG MISTAKE... they had a section with books! I spent some money, but I picked up twelve great books (some of them hardbound!) for under $40. Eleven of them are for my classroom and one of them is for Doug. I found this really neat book called Spies and Espionage: a Directory. I hope he likes it! He loved the movie Breach and we were just randomly talking about spies this weekend.

All of these books for under $40!

These non-fiction books have great pictures and good info for curious kids.

Kids love books with disgusting or amazing things in them.

Doesn't this look like a cool book?

If you are near a Five Below... stop by and pick up a non-fiction book for your child's elementary school teacher as a Back to School present. I guarantee you that she/he doesn't have enough non-fiction books!

"What a Little A-Hole!"

We went by my parents' house while Doug's siblings were visiting this last weekend. Allie was looking for a craft to do while we were in the process of making Katie addicted to Guitar Hero. Allie made this cute little race car out of a foam kit that my mom had sitting around. It came complete with a little pennant that they could put their name and a lucky number on. She did it with a little bit of help on my part, but it turned out great!

While we were at the zoo the next day, Allie accidentally left her little craft on the table. When we came back, Darwin had ripped her little pennant to shreds, but luckily left the car alone. I was having a bit of a flashback to when Darwin chewed my shoes, so I really could relate with Allie. She was really sad, but then she decided that she would "give" the pennant to Darwin since he was having so much fun with it.

We were kind of upset at Darwin until he started walking away with his tail sticking up and there was the A from Allie's name stuck to his butt.

Doug exclaimed, "What a little A hole!" :)

Double Yolked Egg!

I was making breakfast for the girls and Doug this weekend before we went to the zoo. I made the girls some YUMMY french toast and finally coerced Doug to have some "Toad in the Hole." Toad in the Hole is a family favorite at my house. I've heard it called Eggs in a Basket by other people, but my family calls it Toad in the Hole. Toad in the hole is an egg fried in a hole of a piece of sliced bread.

Anyways, as the title says, I cracked an egg with TWO yolks! This is the first time that I've cracked a doubled yolked egg or even seen one. Doug and even Katie had both seen double yolked eggs. I was so excited I ran to take a picture!



I was curious about the double yolked eggs so I looked it up on Google and found this site. Here is a short excerpt from the site:

Double Yolkers appear when ovulation occurs too rapidly, or when one yolk somehow gets "lost" and is joined by the next yolk. Double yolkers may be by a pullet whose productive cycle is not yet well synchronized. They're occasionally laid by a heavy-breed hen, often as an inherited trait.

About 1 in 1000 eggs has a double yolk so it isn't all that rare. In some countries, markets sell cartons of double yolked eggs.

Throughout history and in different cultures, finding a double yolk has been considered to mean anything from an impending wedding to a financial windfall to a death in the family.

So would a double yolked egg produce twins? Probably not:

... the presence of the two yolks would generally lead to an unsuccessful hatch. The nutritional value of the egg white, which is an important food supply for the embryo is insufficient for the two embyros.

I hope this means that I'm going to become instantly rich...

My Cat Sleeps Kinda Funny...

Darwin likes to follow me around the house and usually falls asleep wherever I happen to sit for a while. These are a few random shots of Darwin around the house. I don't know where he picked up sleeping on his back, but I think I may have figured it out while walking around the zoo on Saturday...