March 24, 2009
I loved MoneyDummy‘s crochet project where she magicked old sheets into bathroom rugs. Make that projects, plural. It’s not just because it’s so creative, but also because it transforms something formerly grubby or less than desirable in its original form and gives it new life.
I was about to try to be that ambitious, but realized I probably should wait until I have new sheets to replace the old ones before I had three new bathrugs and zero sheets. Pff, practicality!
Instead, as part of the great closet clean-out that’s dragged on for weeks, months (!) I was giving up old tops that just had a bit of sentimental value or I just couldn’t Goodwill or discard entirely. And the great thing about fussing and cleaning on the telephone with your BFF, other than the moral support and feeling like it was good ole high school days again, is that she often comes up with great ideas. Can’t toss old shirts? Take ’em to her ma!
Why?
Because her ma is a flippin’ crafty genius, and turned it into this handsome devil of a quilt:
That corner’s folded down to show you the lovely no-pill fleece backing. The blue-purple squares that are kind of shiny is a suede (washable!) sort of material, and that almost Hawaiian purple print used to be my scrubs from my animal hospital days. Unfortunately, the flash doesn’t do justice to the redder floral bits.
Isn’t that cool? Someday, I will learn to do this for myself. Someday!
March 2, 2009
At the worst of times, I prefer to be proactive more than reactive. Yes, it’s a control thing. It’s also an attitude and optimism thing. Or maybe just an attitude & control thing. Whatever, instead of just fruitlessly moping and hoping, I’m running a little mini-series of things under my control.
This week, I’ll be publishing daily lists as a reminder that there’s always something productive to do rather than sinking into depression. I refuse to let worry and fear dictate my agenda, career and life. The weighty concerns of the economy, at macro and micro scales, are not being dismissed, just given their due measure of consideration and no more than that.
Some of these I’ve actually managed to complete already, so I already have a sense of accomplishment! Nothing like loading the die in your favor. š
Organizing Money and Life:
~
Reviewing my system for money management
~ Converting my one solitary paper bond
~ Roll over an old Rollover IRA from WAMU to Vanguard, eliminating a $25 annual fee
~ Opting out of creepy search/indexing sites. Thanks to Little Miss Moneybags for the heads-up about some of these sites. I hate the fact that there are kids ten+ years younger than me, with my not terribly common name, posting on Facebook and MySpace so that if you Googled my name, you’d get the impression that I’m a 19 year old lacking in all common grammar and syntax capabilities. The idea that my name, age, address, phone number, and family members‘ names can be searched and paid for? Oh no. No way, buddy.
On a similar note, Frugal Zeitgeist’s Faceoff covers many reasons why I neither Facebook nor MySpace. I do use LinkedIn because it’s primarily professional, but am cautious about what I post there as well. Friends think I’m paranoid when I won’t let them tag my photos, or share my personal info online, but there’s a good reason for it. You’ve all heard of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? Well, it’s the same concept: so many of us have widespread networks that it’s inconceivable that all my personal-life photos would remain personal, and out of my professional world.
Perhaps I work with a larger population of creepy people than most, but I’ve had coworkers who would window stalk me whenever I stepped out for lunch, and eavesdrop on every conversation. One dude would literally run from one office to the next at the sound of laughter, determined to find the source of conversation and join in even when it was private. If people are comfortable doing that in person, how much more convenient would cyber-stalking be? The notion that someone can easily access information about me, whether I know them or not, for personal amusement or gain, is far outside my realm of comfort. I also know someone who sits around and Googles names to see what information they can find. I’d rather keep available information to an absolute minimum.
With the job search, I’ve considered a professional Twitter, but I doubt it. The benefits have to far outweigh the cost and risk of having more personal information floating out there on the web.
February 26, 2009
As I whined on Twitter, thus shall I whine here about the conversion of my paper bonds to electronic bonds:
1. Treasury Direct’s log-in process is not unlike physically accessing a sealed vault, complete with codes on access cards, little remembered clues to the password you can no longer remember, and a virtual keyboard that doesn’t obscure a single thing.
2. I am just as much of a dolt. My idea of a password hint? A string of words that rely on free association and a particularly on-point pop-culture memory. *shaking head* Honestly. I can hardly remember my name or the name of my company these days. The worst part was that as I reset the password, the last word I couldn’t work out finally made sense. Dangit!
3. The conversion involves opening a Treasury Direct account. That took three weeks. I couldn’t log in without my Access Code/Master Key card, after all.
4. Skip 17 months in which I completely forget about the card, the bond, the account and the password. [This step is optional, for the not completely dumb.]
5. Open a linked conversion account. Don’t register yourself as an owner of a something-or-other twice. Upon registering twice, don’t try to delete your original registration, it won’t stand for that kind of behavior. Delete the second one. (Can you tell the difference? I couldn’t.)
6. Register your bond by entering the serial number and issue date. This also shouldn’t be as difficult as my brain made it out to be. If you have many bonds, do it all at once, up to 50.
7. Create a manifest. There’s a button that allows the site to do this for you, actually.
8. Print and sign the manifest, keeping a copy for yourself, drop in mail with your unsigned paper bond.
9. The conversion should take three weeks. They will not notify you in any way of the completed transaction but are probably still more trustworthy than those Cash4Gold guys who also ask you to drop your valuables in an envelope and post it to them. After all, their website is a virtual Fort Knox. Ok, that doesn’t prove anything at all, but it’s worth reiterating.
January 5, 2009
A friend just dropped off about 8 pounds of baby bok choy. He volunteers at a charity and occasionally, food donations from farms, grocery stores or whatnot overwhelm their storage, cooking and distribution capacity. This weekend, for example, a farm dropped off two pallets of vegetables. Pallets, not crates, or boxes, pallets stacked with boxes crammed full of leafy green vegetables.
It’s wonderful that those they’re helping will be treated to fresh vegetables, but that’s way too much for them in one go, so they sent the volunteers home with a case, each. I’m going to be eating baby bok choy, fresh, delicious, crunchy, baby bok choy for a WEEK. This is awesome for I love love love bok choy. In fact, my aunt’s family will be, too – there’s no way we can eat up that entire sack of veggies by ourselves.
And while I’m eating that lovely veggie, in soups and various other forms, I’ll be:
Doing laundry.
Emptying out and consolidating the contents of my under-the-desk plastic containers.
Reorganizing the contents of my under-the-bed clothing container and the lift-top bench I have.
Taking an even more critical look at my bookshelf.
Making a decision about my hair. (to cut, or not to cut? How short? What’s perfect interview length?)
Submitting any cover letters and applications necessary.
Tackling the why didn’t I get a bonus when everyone else did? question.
Taking my business clothes to the tailor for some tweaks and nips, in search of a more perfect fit!
December 24, 2008
Even if I’m awake at 6, 8 or 10, my brain doesn’t seem to really be IN until around 11. No wonder I’m routine-centric, I’d waste half the day waking up before getting ’round to anything useful, otherwise.
It’s the 11th day of Christmas!
I only have 11 of the 12 steps in my post about pending resignation and layoffs written.
And that’s all the elevenses I’ve got. It’s Christmas Eve and, ensconced in a quilt from my best friend’s mum, heater at my feet, I’m trying to transfer all my files from a Mac to the new PC with Vista in the most tedious manner possible. Not that the goal was to find the most tedious manner possible, it’s just that all the methods of saving data (to external hard drive, to memory stick) tha are most efficient are not compatible between the Mac and my Vaio. Sooo I’m burning CDs. Uh-huh. I’m burning CDs on the Mac, unloading the files to the Vaio, clearing the disk, repeat.
I’d complain but I don’t want to. It’s forcing me to learn my way around Vista, the new programs, and shortcut keys, and awful as it sounds, that’s how I learn best. Involuntarily and out of necessity. And, I’m discovering what’s on all my unlabeled CDs. Only in one case was that sorta exciting — found some old music from my college years! š
Possibly the best part about this is that it’ll allow me to discard more clutter, set up the new computer, clean up the work compy of anything personal, and motivates me to copy over my language CDs to the computer and discard those boxes and CDs too! Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese, here I come!
I must admit, though, while I’m not an Apple Addict, the Mac is So Much Simpler when it comes to this basic organization of files. It really is. But that’s why I bought the PC (other than the much more affordable price tag), I’d hate to become so attached to one platform that I forgot how to use the other.
December 19, 2008
Forever and a half ago, FB (who is no longer broke) of Fabulously Broke in the City, discussed storage and organizing extensively. One of the problems she and several of her readers, including me, encountered was a way to neatly store electronic debris such as cables, boxes, etc. Unfortunately, I can’t find the original post I’m thinking of. This is a substitute post/link from FB.
I, for one, can’t bear to throw away boxes that my gadgets came in, as though I’m ever going to gently place the item back in its original packaging. It’s been ten years since I had my first electronic doodad (a pager, remember those?) and I can’t recall a single time the item has been boxed up. In my packratty mind, there’s always the standard “but what if you move?” protest. What? Like I’m going to repack my cell phone if I decide to move to a new apartment? My iPod, perhaps? No.
Nevertheless, I keep the boxes. One might feasibly blame it on Apple for designing such sturdy, attractive boxes that a packrat cannot resist; one might blame it on an evil mind that thinks it’d be perfect to wrap a completely non-iPhone gift in the box for someone. Whatever. We’ve established that I’m crazy and have to keep all electronics-related paraphernelia. Given that fetish, I’ve finally arrived at a nearly-great solution.
I’ll admit it doesn’t meet the standard of being easy to see at a glance like you could if they were say, in Ziplocs and hanging on a sales rack. Not that you would do that anyway. You would have to access the storage unit to see what’s in there, but I still like it.
I don’t have cables that need storing right now, but the aforementioned Apple-branded boxes and packages are currently my problem, and I’d like your thoughts on the solution:
October 30, 2008
On days when I can’t shake a massive headache, like every day this week, or when aches and pains of any other sort are plaguing me, wee little steps are enough.
The following companies will no longer be sending me paper statements:
Wamu/J.P. Morgan Chase (2)
Citibank (6, plus the 5 linked credit card accounts)
AT&T
Emigrant Direct (4)
ING Direct (4)
I was thwarted again by American Express – they want some number that I gave them at the time of opening my account — 7 years ago. I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about so that’ll require a phone call.
Happily, my Vanguard accounts were switched to paperless some time ago, saving me $10/year on my Roth IRA. I need to rollover my really old Rollover IRA from Wamu, it once cost $15/year, but now it’s shot up to $25.
That corner’s folded down to show you the lovely no-pill fleece backing. The blue-purple squares that are kind of shiny is a suede (washable!) sort of material, and that almost Hawaiian purple print used to be my scrubs from my animal hospital days. Unfortunately, the flash doesn’t do justice to the redder floral bits.
