July 23, 2012
Annual Pilgrimage: San Diego!
The Experience.
This was the quietest year since I first started attending. Not in terms of the actual Con but in terms of personal experience. I needed to be quiet and low-intensity, so I was. And that was weird. But it was the right note, I think.
I balanced my floor time with panel time, none of the television/media panels though because I avoid those and spent most of my money directly on creators and artists.
Jeph Jacques’s Tumbler post noted precisely one of the things I have been noticing (er, not the light crowds on the floor though) in the recent years. I am not a fan of the ever-increasing emphasis on Hollywood, television, and big media companies that dominate to such a massive degree that it destabilizes the Con ecosystem.
When you have so very many people spending more than 12-24 hours at a stretch waiting in lines for something they may not even get into and sacrificing Con time to do it, there’s something wrong with the system. I actively choose not to attend those panels even if I do think hearing the latest on Bones, the Big Bang Theory, the Hobbit, Dr. Who or any of those other shows would be neat. For me, it’s not worth the loss of time, energy and opportunity cost. For some, it’s part of the fun, or it’s worth it. I’m too rickety for that but I’m also not at Con for that particular experience.
I am a bit disappointed that my own energies were at such an ebb that I didn’t get the chance to meet up with many personal friends or acquaintances. The list of people I wanted to see and hang out with is far too long to list. But I’m not going to dwell on it: next year, Con, or trip – I’ll make that happen.
Favorite new people to meet.
@justjenn was at her booth – I missed her the few times I buzzed her booth last year. This year I lucked out the first pass. I got to tell her that I love her recipes. We got to sample her delicious cookies.
The cookies had to be photographed before we could eat them. Because how neat! & Sarcasmo gift tags. I know somebodies who will enjoy them. 😉
Nate Powell of Top Shelf Comix and independent comic creator. Super nice dude and seriously hardworking. I had to buy all his books that he had at the show to support him. Devoured two of them on the flight back – and they were good.
Some Neat Things.
I thought of fellow blogger-friend Moom when I saw this.
Artist and Illustrator Nidhi Chanani had adorable prints and greeting cards. She also has an Etsy shop. (Pardon the shine, that was due to my insistence on immediately photo-ing, not her art.)
The financial breakdown.
Hotel: The Sheraton Mission Valley was quoted at $185/night. Happily, PiC and I were joined by budget-minded SDCC-lovin’ roommates at the last minute and we were all happy to split the bill.
Our room was fine but the bathroom was downright disgusting. It was obviously not cleaned since the last guests: there were hairs in the sink and the tub and bits and pieces of what looked like gunk and chunks of dried blood? I was not looking too closely. The toilet wouldn’t stop running, overflowing and flooding the bathroom, despite our best efforts to fix it ourselves. This is normally a very simple fix. We had to call for maintenance to deal with it more than once before it stopped.
Our roomie @theroseinbloom kicked butt getting on Twitter about the state of the room. I was surprised how quickly the hotel actually got right in touch to deal. She even got them to offer a comped night and comped breakfasts for the rest of our stay. (Grossly, the cleaning never happened.)
Final cost: $625 for party of four, lodgings / $15 tips at breakfast / $5 housekeeping tip = (our cost) $332.50
Savings: $205, comped room / $13 x 3 x 4, value of buffet breakfasts over remainder of stay = $156 = (our cost) $180.50
Car Rental: Using Carrentals.com on ebates.com, I compared rates and Enterprise was, not surprisingly, one of the more painfully expensive companies. But, after a really crap experience I’ve yet to blog with another company, I’d decided some few months ago that it wasn’t worth saving twenty dollars just to go through that sort of hassle again.
Renting with Enterprise has always been a fast in the door and out in a car process. Only this time, we were out so quickly, it took me until we hit the freeway to realize the car reeked of smoke. It was nauseating. But we simply didn’t have time to turn back and trade the car back.
With a sore throat, the next night, I called in a complaint – I didn’t want to take the risk of not establishing the timeline of the smoke occurring before our pickup of the car and be saddled with any associated charges. We aren’t smokers and we don’t smoke in rentals! Also, it made me feel ill and my throat hurt.
At the return, I mentioned the issue again. I gently made it clear that it was not due to our abuse of the car. I was offered an upgrade for our next rental but that’s not generally useful for us, so I thanked her but asked for a discount instead. She removed a day’s charge from the bill on the spot.
Final cost: $44
Savings: $31
Purchases: This year was pretty me-oriented. We’d had unusual travel plans this year, so we had to travel much more lightly than usual and I had to buy less than years past. About half the books and merchandise I bought were for myself, and the other half were gifts. Typically I only buy gifts but I didn’t mind having something for myself!
Final Cost: ~ $200
Savings: $46, either “bulk” discounts from any single creator or the occasional discount shop.
Go figure it took fairly shoddy service to keep our costs low, but whatever works. We’re willing to speak up over less than decent products or competent services.
All in all, a lovely Con. Friends had pretty great experiences too, from what I can tell, more lively than mine as they were up to it and I’m glad for them.
June 21, 2012
Every time SingleMa tweets travel deals, or StackingPennies finds another awesome trip package, my heart leaps and sinks.
We just had a lovely time in March, aside from catching a horrible bug that lasted nearly three weeks, and already I’m ready for another getaway.
Why?
This is in large part a reaction to the ramped up stresses of other areas of my life. I had high expectations for work-life balance out of the promotion and just when I was digging into the new responsibilities, the position, and the support, a professional hipcheck sent that into a complete tailspin. Thanks.
Not ready to get into all that right now, but the upshot is my brain keeps thinking about places not here. The extra stress has my teeth literally on edge and my body so reactive with nonstop pain that I’m going with it, mentally. Travel is the lie I tell myself for sanity’s sake.
Where to?
At first, I was yearning after an introduction to Barcelona and Paris even though my Spanish is now atrocious and French is non-existent.
Then, Fab Fru-Gal’s jaunt to Italy reignited my love for the country and all the delectable foods.
Katherine’s travels to Tokyo Part 1 and Part 2 and Kyoto booted Japan back into the top Want to Go There Someday List.
When?
Any and all these places would be fantastic but scheduling has become more rather complicated these days. I think we’re going international, at least 3000 miles away, next year for about 4-7 days for a wedding.
A comic convention is still on the table, despite the fact that I may or may not be able to get tickets for SDCC next year (!!) We are still absolutely committed to continuing my tradition of going to a convention because no one wants to see my heart break completely.
Add to those bigger bits the usual routine travels to see the family and vacation budgeting of time and money gets tricky. And call me sentimental but leaving Doggle for too long starts to make me sad too. It helps when we are seeing people with dogs but I much prefer to have our very own pup staring us in the face morning and night. I’m getting a wee bit of an inkling of what it’s like to have a child.
And so, I simply dream.
Where would you go, if you could just GO footloose and fancy-free?
April 13, 2012
TeacHer Finance’s attempts to find her frugal again had me laughing over my similar attempts to find my own sanity, financial and otherwise.
I was just chastising myself the other night for craving some really lovely luggage as shared by Feather Factor here. That was after wanting to book a pricey Michelin star restaurant for a surprise for PiC. That plan was junked, btw, because it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation and he’d gone and bought himself concert tickets. Then there were sales. Lots of sales. Ignore. Never mind the new dog bed. Rental cars, hotel rooms, more travel for other obligations.
Clearly my brain’d gone, just back from a trip (pictures to come) where the cost of living was astronomical, I think my impulse control on spending and being sensible had just gone kaput. As usual, this mouse was fed a cookie and, and, and ….!
Anyway, I talked myself off that particular tower when I remembered what kind of traveler I really am: prone to dropping/tripping over/leaning on/pushing over things, going into dirty dusty outdoorsy or urban places, business traveling or back-to-home traveling, not glamorous destination vacationy traveling. That’s not the sort of person who has gorgeous luggage! That’s the sort of person who stuffs up a duffel and a pack and rolls on out the door having forgotten two essential things. (Five, this last trip.)
Aspirationally I’d love to be that fabulously coiffed, trimmed traveler with the good shined up luggage, I mentally shop like Sarah (Paranoid Asteroid) but at the end of the day, we both know that, unless someone else is doing up my hair and scrubbing out the stains in my cargos that I just dumped PiC’s coffee all over, as you do before a five hour road trip, I’m not going anywhere as anyone’s pretty little lady.
Nor will I be any kind of a power careerist simply because I’m dressed to the nines. If I am. I’m doing well just to be not-terribly-mismatched during the work week but as that in itself is a chore, I often find myself reverting to trying to buy a sense of style and fashion through the insights of the petite fashion bloggers.
Admittedly, I might succumb to a sale this weekend for a staple piece or two but the best part of valor may really be to shut off the valve of spending entirely and not even try this halfhearted resistance. We all know it barely works on me.
Besides, I have bigger things to save for, like Comic-Con!
February 16, 2012
I didn’t ever finish up my recap of our Thailand trip (reasons: due to life) but I wanted to take a minute to revisit some of that trip.
While we truly enjoyed the company of our friends, the beauty of the country and the environment and the breather from stress, we also took away some serious food for thought.
I felt a strange homesickness even though that wasn’t actually my homeland. The landscape engendered in me this striking familiarity: green-blue waters, shallowly built boats propelled by pungent gas motors, overcrowded harbor and ports overshadowed by buildings elbowing other and balconies leaning into each other, families pulling in and out of the beaches of a morning and an evening with the day’s catch.
While the day-long snorkeling journey we took around the islands in the boats was visually stunning for my friends it was just emotionally stunning for me – I felt as though I was reliving my parents’ escape from their war-torn home and every face I looked at hepost his huge potentiality of Story behind it. It was a strange duality. Over thirty years ago, this trip was risking death and now? It was just a pleasure seeking cruise. It was incredibly hard to reconcile.
On Ko Phi Phi especially, one of the overwhelming feelings that PiC and I shared with each other was something that this post by Jennifer Derrick in Money Lessons Learned from Traveling Well covers in a few different ways: we were uncomfortable with our (comparative/relative) wealth.
Wealth, particularly Americans traveling with wealth, marks you out as different and as a target. Not a target for thieves or robbers which is just a traveler’s usual caution, only that, traveling Americans with money seemingly tend not to know how to behave with that money, more often than not and it was nowhere more viscerally obvious than on this, the most tourist of places. While we were traveling on a very strict budget, we were strikingly aware that every single person on that island was dependent on tourist spending for income and for some reason, that make us terribly uncomfortable in a strange way.
I had never felt like this before, not quite laid bare like this before, having always traveled internationally either on business or to see family and PiC had only ever experienced a shadow of this once before in Mexico when his family had an incident.
Jennifer notes that “People will try to take advantage of you” in bargaining and “When you have money, the gap between rich and poor seems (or should seem) much bigger all of a sudden. You realize that you have so much more than many other people.”
Both true, but that doesn’t get at the soul of the feeling that there’s something deeper, that it feels like there is something brittle in the choice to be where there’s nothing left but a tourist trade to sustain a region.
We didn’t feel that same sensation in Phuket or in Chiang Mai – and perhaps it had worn off because we were in the city or were more tired or perhaps because there was more depth to those areas. It was a lovely trip and we met some absolutely lovely people, especially our hoteliers in Chiang Mai who were really more like an aunt and uncle who let us stay over in delightful bungalows with their menagerie of animals and other guests and served homecooked meals.
Since that trip, I haven’t had much time to think over those feelings but we did agree that it was disconcerting. We really aren’t looking for decadence and luxury when we travel, and even less so when we’re in regions that have such widespread poverty but for the tourist trade, and a striking disparity between classes and wealth. Neither of us are comfortable trying to play upper echelon traveler, we’re much happier blending in with the everyday crowd. It’s the experience of learning a new culture, language, history, and people that we look for in a trip, all of which can be accomplished on a low-key budget.
Related Links:
Embarking on a journey: Choose your own adventure
Discovery: Rediscovering romance in Thailand
Travel: Thailand, Leg the First
Travel: Thailand, Leg the Second
December 19, 2011
I’m still working on this deceptively short but ridiculously time-consuming list of things to do to save money for the household. And I’ve added several items. Lists make life seem more manageable. Until you have lists of lists, at which point the system starts to break down.
1. Benefits seemed easy but it’s spawned more paperwork for life insurance purposes. I say thee, tomorrow. I shall complete the last bits tomorrow. Or at least make the next sets of phone calls to finish the last bits tomorrow.
2. Auto and property insurance research was utterly demoralizing. ie: took hours and was still nigh-on impossible to nail down a good comparison.
3. The mortgage stuff we’re getting a start on but we’re not at the point of dealing with the actual refi.
4. I’ve been madly dashing around at work trying to get everything to the right point for the upcoming new year and battling madly but quietly for my next step.
So ….
Check! I have finally wrapped five gifts purchased earlier in the year. But we’re still down at least five gifts. Yeeks!
Check! PiC blew our gift budget on ME. It wasn’t the classic (stupid) car commercial but it was a big gift I wasn’t expecting.
_____ And has been mum on the subject of his family’s gifts so they really may be getting socks. [see, blew our budget]
_____ We’re traveling a little for the holidays and then hosting a full house for a few days so we’re double whammy on the stress of preparations.
_____ I still haven’t planned anything for our anniversary. He wanted to do something special for our 1-year engagement anniversary.
_____ And I’m working on Holiday Gifts for the Office.
Check! Mission: Find Non-denominational Seasonal Cards was accomplished, though! I triumphed in the face of great mobs and traffic. *shudder* I had forgotten the state of any mall and parking lot in the end of December, since all the shopping’s been online lately.
That’s not terrible, eh? How’s everyone else doing out there?
July 11, 2011
A woodcut arrived in the mail today. No kidding, an actual piece of art, that is also a wedding invitation was delivered by the USPS, Lord love ’em.
It never fails to amaze me how much better people are at this wedding thing than I, with the use of natural materials, and embossing, and engraving and you know, scheduling. That stuff.
This isn’t about the psychology of how to really mess with other prospective or future bride’s minds via fancitude. I’m bemused by that part, and quite impressed, to be perfectly frank. I have no intentions of ever attempting to play in that pool because I’d immediately drown forthwith. (I keep stopping to pet the woodcut every few sentences. It’s that cool.) I think the only thing more pettable would be flocking. But maybe that’s just tacky? I don’t know …. Right. Digressing again.
This is an invitation to a destination wedding for which I would have to travel a fair distance.** On an island. A pretty island, where we have other friends as well. Oh and food, yummy food all around the island! And we like this couple quite well. So there are draws to going for a few days, not just for the wedding, to make the scary ticket prices worthwhile.
But obviously, since my thoughts trend in that direction, I’m not actually very close with either of them, though we have known them for a longish time and know them through PiC, and PiC’s not so close with them either.
At least, we’re not the kind of close where we saw the announcement or the invite and were online booking our tickets immediately because we wouldn’t miss it for the world. Not the kind of close where you would be surprised not to be invited. Conversely, we weren’t shocked to be invited either. In fact, I can’t say what level of close we are. We like them. We get along well with them. We enjoy their company. It’d be great to see them and raise a glass to their union. Is that what it takes to rate an invite?
I get that people often have the freedom to invite more people to a destination wedding because you know many of them won’t be able to make it. Although for something like this where you’re not *that* far away, you might not choose to go that route that if you’re hoping to control head count. I’m guessing that’s not so much a concern for them.
My ruminations on the matter range thusly:
Do you invite all and sundry you would enjoy the company of and wouldn’t mind/can afford to pay for at such a shindig knowing that those you care about will come, the rest are bonuses?
Do you invite only those you most care about, and do they understand an invite is a selective thing and therefore indication of belovedness?
Or does the 80% rule pretty much always apply however you slice the invitations? (Expect that 80% of your list will probably RSVP yes or show up.)
For this invitation:
We would expect to pay at least $1100 for airfare depending on the flight dates, we have been offered accommodations by another prospective guest but I don’t know what those dates span (our dates would be cheapest Thursday through Monday it seems). If we had to go for a shorter trip, airfare would be a couple hundred more, or we’d have to pay for a hotel room for the additional day(s). Either way, we would have to pay for food and drink for five days. That doesn’t include any other transportation in between, or other outings or activities.
Guesstimate Budget: Could run up to $2000 for 4-5 days.
I could possibly get creative with buying some miles to get at least one ticket nearly covered, possibly. Bring that down to around $1500 max. But I’m not sure how to fit this into our schedule, even, just a couple months away from our wedding if we have one. And I honestly don’t know how important we are to them. Feels like we should know this sort of thing but …. we don’t. Thoughts thoughts thoughts.
Open to the audience:
If you were in my sandals, would you be Kauai/Bahamas/Tahiti/tropical island bound?
If you were on the other side of the list, how did or would you curate your list?
** NOTE: I completely goofed calling this a destination wedding! This is a wedding that we would all have to travel for but the couple actually live there now. They moved back to this island a little while ago and I managed to forget this because they lived here for so long. Derp! I was also thinking of it in the sense of a destination wedding because so many of their friends over here were invited.
June 20, 2011
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| Borrowed from a free Owly comic, one of the most expressive non-verbal books I’ve ever had the pleasure of “reading.” |
My oldest friend, measured by years we’ve known each other, not by her age, was feted recently. She’s expecting her first baby and we both traveled fair distances to meet each other for this event. I can’t remember the last time we were able to spend time together.
That’s always been the story of our friendship, actually.
We met as children of primary school age, then separated by district lines until that same bureaucracy funneled us back into the same schools. Through high school we remained good friends, despite sharing few classes. We had little in common other than a drip of superficially similar background but we fit like two bits of puzzle without jostling, always kindred spirits, always loyal, no matter how long since last contact. It’s the kind of relationship that doesn’t needa crisis or a reason to prove that it exists.
In the years following, her faith and our lives have taken dramatically different directions and yet neither of us have felt any distance grow between us. No moss has overgrown our friendship; no differences diminish the value of our connection.
And so, with the coming of her baby ever-imminent, PiC and I headed down south so I could spend this joyful time with her. Now typically, I’m a bit of a groaner when it comes to these things. I hate them, to be honest, having been to so many bloodless affairs. Wedding and baby showers can tend to become gift grabs when all and sundry are invited, fancied up for the look of the thing, and frankly, I tired of it long ago.
But this shower was a labor of love by her other closest friend who hosts beautifully and thoughtfully. The guest list was a small, curated mix of close family, family friends, and dear friends, and the mum-to-be was able to spend good quality time with most of the attendees such that everyone who traveled was able to share some wisdom and laughter. The food was delicious – always important – and plentiful, and the guests all seemed relaxed and comfortable.
She and I saw the guests off and stayed well after to help clean up, spend time with the hostess and her family, and we later packed her gifts for her travel back. Despite being quite far along, she was doing the dishes while I cleared the table, dried the dishes, and watched the kids. Clearly, my friend is not a brat and we’re still a good team. We later spent a good half day together catching up and running other errands.
I spent $100 on the shower, for gifts on and off-registry, lunch, and gas (because she generously offered to be the driver during our post-shower bonding time), not counting travel costs to SoCal. We noticed that it’s a funny thing with babies that people can’t resist buying all kinds of things so you go off-registry so easily. Guilty.
But, look, I’m not going to get to see my niece or nephew related by long-time friendship much so I have to start the nerding-by-osmosis early and often: books and bonds! My favorite gift to the baby was a black and white Owly book. Mama-to-be says black and white is supposed to stimulate the baby’s brain. Favorite gift for me was Mama-to-be assuring me that yes, if I *had* gotten her child superhero underpants, the baby would have worn them. (Guess what I’m going to buy next?)
I also brought back a few offers to help with wedding planning from old friends I hadn’t seen in ages which was really generous and a possible line on other wedding related stuff. It was one of my best trips back down south in a really long time.
