I Figured Out a Formula in Excel!

I know this isn't exciting to anyone but me, but I'm trying to create an excel spreadsheet that can calculate (simplified) taxes for a variety of different taxpayers.  I REALLY don't know how to use Excel, but I figured out how to write a formula to calculate tax due from the 2015 tax rate schedule once taxable income is known.  The formula is: =(A4*0.1)+(MAX(A4-13150,0)*0.05)+(MAX(A4-50200,0)*0.1)+(MAX(A4-129600,0)*0.003)+(MAX(A4-209850,0)*0.05)+(MAX(A4-411500,0)*0.02)+(MAX(A4-439000,0)*0.046), where A4=taxable income.  It's a little victory for me.  By the way, if anyone who is reading this knows anything about excel, I could probably use a tutorial.

Sunday Roasts

We had some old old friends of Lisa's visit from London yesterday, and so we took them to a pub for a Sunday Roast.  We've been here for about five weeks, and we've had a Sunday meal at a pub four times, already.  We've eaten at the Trout, the Perch, and twice now at the Jericho Tavern.  It's extremely fun.  There are variations, of course, but the basic Sunday Roast menu is either lamb, pork, beef, chicken or "nut roast," served with a Yorkshire pudding, gravy, and some vegetables.  On Sunday, we were at the Jericho Tavern, which is our favorite so far.  They had an old Trivial Pursuit game, and so Adam and Meyer matched their wits and knowledge of eighties trivia. 

So much dew!

Every morning when I wake up, the ground is completely soaked.  I almost never hear any rain in the night.  It just seems like the dew here is a completely different thing than dew in the US.  How can there be so much more dew?  It almost makes me think that I fundamentally misunderstand the nature of dew.  Oh, here's a picture of our garden.  Those are apple tress in the back.  It would be really nice to hang out in, except for all the dew.

First day of school

First day of school at Gosford Hill School.  Meyer says, "Dad, I just can't fake a smile.  I've tried."  Adam obviously has no trouble faking.

Meyer at hospital

Adam and Meyer start school on Monday, so I guess it's time to actually start this blog. I was planning to start last weekend, but then we spent a few days in the hospital, and I got delayed starting. 

The purpose of this blog is to communicate with family and friends about our lives in Oxford, so here's the story about the hospital.  On Friday, Meyer started complaining in a more forceful way about seeing double.  Apparently, it had started on Wednesday, but he wasn't really sure of it until Friday afternoon, when he was seeing two completely distinct images of everything, growing farther apart the farther they were from him, and worse on the right side than the left.  I was planning to wait until Monday to figure out how to get him to see a doctor, but Lisa spoke to her sister Leslie (the nurse) and she was pretty confident that the potential worst-case scenarios justified a trip to the emergency room.  Our neighbor (and friend from University of Chicago days) Sarah rushed over in her pyjamas to drive us to the emergency room of the John Radcliffe hospital, which by weird coincidence has both a world-renowned children's hospital and a well-respected eye hospital. 

We arrived at about 9:00 PM, and after some confusion about whether we qualify for the National Health Service (we don't), we watched all of Shrek in the pediatric waiting room.  We then saw a (junior) doctor who said it was probably nothing, and was ready to discharge us, a (slightly more senior) doctor who was slightly more alarmed, and then a (more senior doctor) who (after talking to "her boss" on the phone) decided she wanted to keep us overnight "for observation."  After a relatively unsatisfying conversation about how we don't qualify for NHS, and so would prefer to go home unless observation is "absolutely necessary," we spent the night on a small children's ward, which was actually really nice.  Meyer and I spent a while talking about the mural on the wall of the ward (why would an ice cream truck have a ketchup dispenser?) and read our books.  Meyer had a new graphic book about Wittgenstein, which he was reading despite the double vision.  At midnight or so, right before we went to bed, I gave him a page from my calendar so he could frenetically write down some thoughts he was having.

The next day, his Wittgenstein notes made slightly less sense than they had the night before.  We spent a leisurely morning eating some pastry at the surprisingly good cafe and waiting to see the pediatric consulting doctor.  When we did, she scheduled a CT Scan, and sent us over to the eye doctor to look at Meyer's eyes.  Meyer did a great job putting up with a really junior doctor kind of messing up putting a needle in his arm to inject contrast (which ended up being unnecessary).  We had cake in the afternoon, and got out of there by late afternoon, after hearing that the CT Scan turned up nothing unusual at all.  We were back on Monday for more meetings with eye doctors and pediatricians, and came away with a pair of glasses to correct the double vision (but only when Meyer looks directly ahead of him).  Given that they're the unisex all-sizes pair lying around, they look weirdly good.

Today (over a week later), the double vision appears to be largely gone.  No real explanation, but we'll take it if it stays this way.  School tomorrow!