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Does a Gay Marriage Cost more than a straight marriage?

The costs of a wedding will depend on what state you live in. For gay couples this is even more important as only a few states allow gay marriage. These states are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland,

Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington D.C.

Recent political events have reduced some of these costs by revoking Proposition 8 and returning gay marriage to California. Additionally, by removing the Defense of Marriage Act federal benefits are now available to all married couples gay or straight.

The biggest difference in the cost of the essential part of the marriage (the license) and any travel costs for those who do not live in states that allow gay marriage. The most expensive is Maryland which costs $85. Most marriage licenses seem to cost about $50 such as California’s $68, and Delaware’s $50. However in Connecticut and Iowa the license is only $30.

If you do not live in a state that allows gay marriage, there may be options including domestic partnerships. These states are Oregon, Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois, and Hawaii. Be careful considering these states however, as many domestic partnership benefits do not apply when traveling out of state. These are also not eligible for over 1000 federal benefits of marriage. In fact, domestic partnerships can act differently from zip code to zip code. Carefully read any agreement, as some do not provide any legal rights or protections but are simply a written commitment of a couple.

Also some states may recognize same sex marriages performed in other states though they do not allow the marriage to take place there. If you live in one of these states it may be worth the travel costs to go to a nearby state that allows gay marriage.

According to market watch, average spending on a ceremony is $25,000 however it varies depending on personal preferences and resources. Costs can depend on what season you get married in, real simple reports venue costs being reduced up to 20% if a wedding is in the winter, and not on a Saturday (the most common day for a wedding). Brides and grooms can consider renting their outfit to reduce costs. You can also consider cheaper alternatives such as having a family member doing the catering, or decorating your cake yourself. Party favors can be made by family members who like crafts.

Can EverQuest Next Compete with World of Warcraft?

News

Legions of MMORPGs have graced the internet to do battle against Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, yet no challenger has bested

everquestnext_human (Photo credit: NewGameNetwork)

Blizzard’s massively multiplayer online juggernaut. Huge marketing campaigns and years of development by the makers of games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Rift have left players less than satisfied, with an initial big burst of player excitement and eventual failure.

Every software developer that creates an MMO that tries to take a slice of Blizzard’s pie invariably ends up as a “free to play” model. The latest MMORPG slated to try and take a shot at fighting Blizzard’s dominance is EverQuest Next. The developers are looking to lure players to EverQuest from a variety of other games such as EVE Online and Warcraft, but the design of the game seems to straddle a few different genres.

As with other game releases, the developers at Sony Online Entertainment have tried to suggest that their game will be “new” and “different.” It’s not difficult to understand why skepticism is high. Every game that has seen release in the past few years has had developers boast the same and has crashed and burned just a month or so after the release.

Players of EverQuest Next will find a game focus that includes some familiar fantasy elements of an MMO game (like elves), but developers have sought to step away from the traditional, linear questing experience and offer some world-building opportunities for players (much like EVE Online). One of the interesting features expected of the game is the ability for players to impact permanent change upon the landscape.

For example, during wartime a player might decide to build a wall somewhere, and he or she can accomplish this and actually have that wall erected as a permanent feature in the game world. Similarly, when players fight one another or monsters, a spell or explosion that creates a hole in the world will remain permanently. One of the developers likened this feature to the idea of putting Minecraft into an MMORPG.

Although absolutely everything in the world can’t be destroyed (certain structures will be permanent), this opportunity to build, create, and destroy represents a jump forward from the same opportunities players have had in games like EVE Online. World of Warcraft has occasionally offered players the opportunity to change the landscape, but not on a regular basis. Such changes have generally been implemented after a reset with all the realms taken offline, after which players would log in and see the changes.

However, the lack of appreciable impact on the environment hasn’t stopped players from flocking to World of Warcraft for nearly a decade, and EverQuest Next will need to bring an amazing player experience to lure away current players as well as retain them. The ebb and flow of Warcraft’s player base often coincides with the new release of another MMORPG, but after a month or so the new game’s servers are ghost towns. It won’t take long to see whether EverQuest Next can compete with World of Warcraft.

Garage & Yard Sale Manual

After months of research and planning I recently had a successful garage. Here’s my how-to yard sale manual.

Step 1: Preparation. You can never be too prepared. I detail advertising, setup, planning and more.

Step 1.5: Marketing. Here is the text of the ads I placed.

Step 2: Management. Pricing, haggling, staffing, and other “Day Of” issues.

Step 3: Wrap-up. It’s done. What now?

Finally, we’ve got a Page of Tips. This is sure to grow over time.

Repair Plans, Appliances, and Rancid Meat…Oh, My!

Finance, Life

: Image via Wikipedia

We recently had our annual barbecue. (For the purists, I am Minnesotan. Barbecue means “cooked over fire”.) Due to massive scheduling conflicts, it was a bit smaller than normal; only about 20 people came. At least 10 other people RSVP-ed that they were going to make it, but didn’t. Grr.

Naturally, we had food for everyone said they would be there and enough for half of the people who didn’t say anything, since Minnesotans don’t RSVP well. That translates to a lot of leftovers. No problem. After all, leftover ribs are hardly a punishment.

Sunday morning, we woke up to find that our refrigerator was happier at room temperature than the standard “cold”. We didn’t know it at the time, but the defrost unit was borked, so the cold air couldn’t circulate from the freezer to the refrigerator. Bye-bye leftovers. Hello, Mr. Repairman. We needed an excuse to clean out the fridge, anyway, but not at the price of my beautifully seared meat! (Sadness strikes.)

Monday evening, the repairman came out, worked for 2 hours and left a functional refrigerator and a $240 invoice in his wake. Thankfully, we are on the appliance repair plan through the gas company. We pay $26.40 per month to cover repairs to our range, water heater, furnace, drier, sewer main, and refrigerator. The first four items are standard, the final two are options that cost extra.

We originally got on the plan for the sewer main. We had a tree whose roots grew into the main and clogged it every year. A backed-up sewer main is a crappy way to wake up. Getting that snaked to the street cost $200 per year. At the time, without the refrigerator, the plan cost about $12 per month. One $200 call-out more than paid for the plan for the year. That was easy math. Now, our 20 year old refrigerator has been repaired twice in the last year, giving us $500 worth of repairs for $316.80. I would like to take this time to thank all of the people with reliable appliances for subsidizing my repairs.

My furnace, drier, and range are all reasonably new and shouldn’t need repairs any time soon, but the refrigerator and sewer main have paid for the plan themselves, several times over.

Should you get a similar plan? If your covered appliances are more than 4-5 years old, I would consider it. If they are more than 10 years old, I wouldn’t hesitate at all. Repairing quality appliances is cheaper than replacing them, especially when the repair cost is paid monthly and subsidized.

Do you use a service plan?

Don’t Be A Dick

Life

White chocolate is marketed by confectioners a... — Image via Wikipedia

Integrity is what you do when nobody is looking.

Do you cheat at solitaire, steal from an untended garage sale, or keep something a store forgets to charge you for? If so, integrity may not be your strongest trait.

Similarly, if you let the actions of others dictate your behavior, you may be integrity impaired.

If you get cut off in traffic, do suddenly feel justified in cutting off the next guy?

If you have a dollar stolen from your desk, does that make it okay to take a candy bar from the honor-system candy box?

If the last guy left the water cooler empty, are you going to refuse to refill it the next time you are the one to drink the last drop?

If you’re answering yes to these questions, it may be time to examine your moral code. Doing the right thing means doing the right thing all of the time. You can’t be an honorable person if you resort to dishonorable behavior whenever you dislike what someone else does, especially if your actions are hurting an entirely uninvolved 3rd party.

You know the proper behavior. You know what the ethical choice is. The fact that someone else made an unethical choice doesn’t give you a license to be a dick.

If it’s your turn to clean the community refrigerator, do it and do it well, even if the last guy did a poor job.

If the last mom driving the car pool showed up late, don’t deliberately forget her kid.

If someone forgot to pay at a group lunch and you covered it, that doesn’t mean you can skip out on the bill next time.

Even if everything else is taken from you, no one can ever steal your ethics, your integrity, or your honor. Those things are up to you to destroy, and they nearly impossible to replace.

In all cases, in all things, do the right thing. You won’t be sorry.

Resurrected from the archives.

Crying is for Winners

Finance

Have you ever seen a kid come off a wrestling mat, crying his eyes out because he lost?

Wrestling Sideways - Really (Photo credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton)

Often, that kid will get told to be tough and stop crying.

That’s wrong.

I’m not opposed to teaching kids not to cry under most circumstances, but just after an intense competition, I love it. It’s the best possible sign that the kids was pouring his soul into winning. It means he was trying with everything he had.

It means he is–or will be–a winner.

When a kid, particularly a boy in a tough sport, is crying, you know he’s going to try harder and do better next time.

For all of the “tough guy” ability it takes to succeed as a wrestler, I’ve never seen another wrestler teasing the crier. They’ve all been there. Wrestling is a team sport, but you win or lose a match on your own. When you step out in front of hundreds of people and spend 3 to 6 minutes giving every ounce of everything you have to give, only to find it’s not good enough, you’ll often find you don’t have the final reserve necessary to control your emotions.

This is different than a kid crying because he lost a game, just because he lost. Some kids feel entitled to win anything they do, regardless of the effort they put it. That’s also wrong.

Crying at a loss is okay after putting in maximum effort and full energy, not because the dice went the wrong way.

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