September 8, 2012
For a whole $25, PiC and I splurged on a new dinner experience nearby – trying a restaurant that no one we knew had tried before. We’re not hugely adventurous in that way. We love trying new foods and new places, but PiC relies on recommendations and reviewed places, the risk of a disappointing meal is just too high for us in our old age. 😉 I thought it might be worth it just to see whether we had a worthwhile contender for our business and I didn’t personally regret the price even though I might not feel like it was worth going back any time soon.
PiC did a real comparison, ordering the bibimbap, not the stone pot. It was basically all the classic ingredients, and good. A little odd that the rice was on the side but that didn’t take away from the meal.
The Classic Bibimbap: served here with the rice on the side instead of in the bowl.
Instead of my usual soft tofu soup, I was charmed by the idea of a restaurant serving oxtail soup, so I had to give it a try. I’d recently experimented with cooking a family recipe and that went pretty well, but I still need to develop that sure hand for the flavoring “to taste.” I probably should have gone with the tofu soup. The oxtail soup broth was bland and disappointing, as though it hadn’t been steeping to bring out the flavor of the oxtail bones. It did have all kinds of things in it but it didn’t make up for the fact that the soup was pretty much hot water that I flavored with the salt and pepper.
Oxtail Soup: Just add salt and pepper
Some days I choose Korean cuisine entirely for this:
The Side Dishes: Possibly my favorite. There’s a seaweed salad, potato salad, kimchee (an acquired taste that I haven’t quite got down yet), soybeans, coleslaw, and a lot of other delicious tidbits.
The problem with that is when they disappoint, like this place did. The seaweed salad and other normally tart pickled selections, were simply not. They were limply tangy, like they were trying as hard as possible not to be offensive which made no sense to me because the population around here seems to appreciate fairly authentic (which would read: flavorful) cuisine. After all, the very popular usual restaurant serves very pickled side dishes and they do an incredibly brisk business – I’m going to say there’s a correlation between their flavors and their success. I want my tart things to be mouthpuckering! Otherwise I’d just stay home and make my own darn pickled stuff.
Overall: they’re very average. Taste isn’t better than our usual nor are the prices better. I suppose it’s good to know we’re weren’t missing out on a gem either in the flavor or price arena?
No, I would really have liked to have a second option on those nights when our favorite is jampacked. But they’re super nice there and bring you tea and stuff while you wait. They do everything right. Which is why they’re the favorite.
September 5, 2012
If I never again have to share a communal restroom with
people who think taking phone calls, or even conference calls, while using the toilet is ok;
people who have trouble hygienically using toilets and then clearing up the evidence afterwards;
people who think that the bathroom – in or out of the toilet stalls – are the best places to hold gossip sessions;
I would consider myself a lucky lucky person.
If I never have to listen to pompous asshattery being repeated outside my physical vicinity but yet loudly enough to be heard, in Groundhog Day-esque fashion, on every matter under the sun including politics, religion, sex lives, how one really should fix that particular problem no really this is the undisputed way, oh I’m so very meta I was just being meta at you and you didn’t even know it, and personal discussions with family, friends and significant others, I might think I’d died and gone to my reward.
A graphic shared with me on the pain of the responsible, stuck working with the uncommunicative and the unproductive:
If I never ever had to go to another Team Meeting again ……
— A variety of people on why they changed careers or what kills them about their jobs.
These are the verses to the tune of People are Hell, I think.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the commonality, and frequency of, the restroom related complaints since I have expressed at least one or two of them myself. I was tempted to add one or two myself but refrained lest any of my esteemed colleagues ever recognize themselves here. Heaven forfend.
They made me laugh a bit, not quite schadenfreude since the complaints aren’t unfamiliar in the slightest, but I suppose it’s the reason The Office is funny, right? Bit of horror, bit of comedy, bit of drama.
I read a recent study, which I can’t find now to link to, on open plan offices and how they’re not quite the ideal workplace layout once envisioned. People work with headphones to shut out their neighbors more often than not and they’re actually more stressful for people in general because you can’t control the ambient noise if people are randomly striking up conversations. The lack of privacy means that generally people will hesitate to discuss more delicate issues around their work areas and will have to find a private space to do so.
So many businesses, including most of my recent employers, have invested in just this sort of open plan arrangement while reserving the private spaces only for those at the very top and I don’t see them backing away from it as the human/intellectual-potential cost isn’t enough for them to make any real physical or policy adjustments.
For my part, I’ve always worked in busy, bustling environments and became very accustomed to ignoring people, so completely zoning out and creating my mental bubble without help is no hardship, at least until the conversational frequencies hit Shrill or Panic. If it does either one of those things, chances are good I should be tuning back in anyway.
Oddly enough, if I’m working at home, hobbying or real working, I don’t actually like the television or radio to be on – that is more likely to be distracting than real live people. For all that I mock the dog for leaving the room when videos are playing, I guess we’re more alike than not.
Do you like working where you work or do you wish for a totally different environment?
August 20, 2012
In one of those scenarios bound to make me even more neurotic about benefits come Open Enrollment, we recently discovered by word of mouth that PiC’s company covers an initial sum of transit benefits before employees have to pay out of pocket for their transit costs.
I’ve been paying over $100/month, pretax into my own company’s program this entire time – we could have halved or cleared that cost to the household entirely.
Once we heard that, he applied for the new card and I cancelled my contributions shortly afterward. An equivalent amount, rounded up, has now been routed directly to savings to salve my bruised financial blogging pride.
For the record – I found the Open Enrollment booklet for last year’s term tonight and pored through it twice. There was absolutely zero mention of this additional tidbit in the benefit.
Perhaps the employee had to log into his or her account to find it? I really wish he’d asked his colleague how he or she knew about it so I could do some more investigation and see if there’s anything else we’re missing. Nosy as I am, I would have asked.
August 15, 2012
There’s a spot our friend shared with us “in” Half Moon Bay, though we’ve been assured by other friends that it’s not actually IN Half Moon Bay really, called Barbara’s Fish Trap, which serves some pretty fantastic fish and chips.
The view from ashore: Chilly.
Sign: Slightly misleading. (I’d just like to point out, Super Captain Sarcasmo-style, that we are just as astonished as the sign that pets are allowed but we are happy to bring one.)
- More than enough fried and fried: Fish and chips, calamari.
Not greasy, lightly battered, and a hefty serving size. Not pictured: non-dairy clam chowder. Not recalling why the non-dairy was important, just that the chowder was delicious.
Mussels with So Much Garlic, and Butter Sauce. Everything that is right.
It was on some trip or another that I discovered that mussels served as an appetizer or as an entree like so, is FANTASTIC. I may have had to grow up to figure this out but homigosh am I glad this has happened. BLISS.
********
An AMAZING DIY Oyster on the Half Shell. Amazingly hard to crack open.
In one of my rarer moments of adventure, I requested an excursion. An oystering excursion. PiC obliged, despite his usual personal oyster consumption limit of about 4. Of course I bought fifty. Minor miracle we survived that day.
*Note: I bought fifty because it worked out to $1/each that way. Of course.
And Doggle came away smelling of oysters for a week. Long story.
August 13, 2012
Night after night, my brain chased multitudes of thought clouds up and down the night sky. For years, 17? More? I spent hours not falling asleep at night until nearly dawn.
Savvy Working Gal, as a fellow insomniac, requested I share how I conquered insomnia.
It wasn’t until last year that I finally got effective help, but it’s more fair to say that I have insomnia management or coping mechanisms and I will have to keep in practice, just as I would treat my other chronic health issues, because when I don’t, I stay up til dawn again.
As you can see in the graphic above, the whirligig of my brain may seem very specific, but I think the overall trend is rather common:
Wakefulness. I have strong insomniac tendencies.
Personally, I mentally fuss over things that are important in my life and it’s hard for me to let them go. And because I’m awake, I start doing things that compound that wakefulness.
My personal oddities: The wakefulness that accompanies that worry theoretically shouldn’t overwhelm the tiredness that I have rightfully earned at the end of the day, not when I typically work upwards of 12 hours a day and get very little sleep the night prior. And the pain that I live with should and does fatigue me so I should sleep like the dead. I do also live with physical/medical issues that complicate my insomnia (the insomnia came first) so certainly these techniques can and have been modified to suit someone with chronic medical issues. I won’t dwell on those modifications in this post as I don’t expect they’re terribly relevant.
How to make sleep a regular part of your life again
A training period.
During a rather trying period of a few to several weeks, we were asked to:
1. set an exact bedtime,
2. eliminate all in bed activities extraneous to sleep except (ahem) involving your partner, (no reading, no eating, no watching tv, no laptops, no kids, no music, no animals playing, nothing at all but getting in bed to sleep)
3. only go to bed when you mean to sleep.
4. I am pretty sure people were asked to cut out caffeine after ~4pm as well but as I rarely drink any, I’ve forgotten that part!
Now, if you were sleepless: tossing, turning, thinking (see graphic above), you were instructed to leave your bed and sit quietly elsewhere to reset. Return when you’re ready to try sleeping again. But no television was allowed. No media with bright lights that would just stimulate your brain.
The key here was to retrain your body and your mind to understand that the bed was a sleeping haven. Both. A haven and for sleep. You may have spotted what else this means: you don’t get to flop on the bed at other times to hang out!
Stress: Making time and space.
All that time you’d normally be worrying over legitimate things laying awake in bed? Your brain still craves that and you have to give it that release.
You now set aside a set period of time in the day. During your commute. On the toilet. Take a chunk of time somewhere in your day, 10-30 minutes, whatever you’re comfortable with, and make that your time to actively mull over the things you need to think about. Actively worry, in fact. Get it done in the light of day and it gives your brain an outlet and a set schedule in which to say, Not now, brain, it’s late. Tomorrow, at 4 pm, we’ll worry about that.
And exercise.
Whether it’s stretching, meditative yoga, walking, running, classes at the local athletic club or gym, whatever suits your abilities, the act of engaging in a new physical activity isn’t just healthy, it improves your ability to sleep well.
I’ve added a walk to my weekly routine starting with 2 and now up to 5 times a week, approximately a mile long. Though I can’t always power walk it, I do my best to make it as brisk as possible, no matter how Eeyore my day has left me. It’s just been a matter of changing my commute routine to the once -less preferred routine. Now I don’t “miss” the bus at all, I just skip it entirely! Even if I’m not invigorated, my circulation is improved and my ability to sleep is definitely improved.
Those were the things we were asked to do during the transition/training period.
It wasn’t easy juggling everything in at once, and I found it a little easier to do the Bedtime Brain-Time Space Clearing thing first in combination with Stress Later, and then add exercise in the next few weeks.
It still wasn’t great at that point. And we moved on to the next things….
Learning how to Breathe Properly
Apparently, deep belly breathing is hugely relaxing and oh-so-difficult. At least, it was for me and a lot of others in the room with me. I don’t know if I should attempt to describe it for fear of leading you all astray!
But in essence, it’s the kind of breathing you see babies do, where their bellies are moving up and down, not their chests. To do the same, you push your stomach out when you take air into your lungs to pull it deep down into your belly instead of letting it pit-stop in your chest. At least, that’s how I visualize and feel like I’m doing it. And after about 20 really focused deep belly breaths, my body does a hybrid full body breath naturally instead of totally wimping out and chest breathing again.
Sometimes, when I get incredibly tense at night, PiC reminds me to deep belly breathe and by the time I get it down, I’m so tired I can nearly relax.
Meditation/Relaxation CDs
If you don’t mind listening to things at night, letting a meditation CD run you through the paces can really make you sleepy. I wouldn’t say they’re boring, but even if they were, who cares, if it does the job, right? 😉
It was one of the first things that actually put me down like a baby. By which I mean, lulled me to nearly sleep and then I woke up with a start, freaked out about who I was and where I was. But that latter part is relatively normal for me. Nevertheless – lulled me to nearly sleep at 10 pm. This is the important part.
We did these CD routines once a week together just to learn how to relax without thinking for 8 weeks. And were instructed to listen to them at least once a week if not every night during the training period as sleep aids (the only time you were allowed to sleep to them as you were not meant to sleep if trying to meditate/relax).
Other Recommendations
Taking warm baths (temperature is your call) an hour or so before bed: this gets your body prepped for sleep.
Actually learning and practicing Meditation. Not a religious/spiritual thing unless you want to pursue that, just as a relaxation technique. It teaches you the ability to make your mind and body to Let Go, the precursor to sleep.
Things that were really important in coping for me
Support: You wouldn’t think I’d need support in this but the battle of sleep vs not-sleeping means that we need better communication, coordination and understanding of each other’s needs and priorities. PiC and I don’t have the same schedules, needs or habits, especially when mine are artificially imposed habits, but because sleep is critical in coping with my medical issues, having a partner who is on board with my sleep needs is just as critical.
I need to get a minimum amount of sleep and it has to be good sleep.
A new mattress: We had a nearly 20-year old mattress and I could make out the impression of every coil on my back. Combined with my other needs, it was time.
This was a multi-month process to get the sleep consistent from night to night, and a fair amount of time and money spent, and I still relapse on occasion. But not too frequently.
There have been many more sleep-filled nights than not since I started, and that’s quite a thing. I hope that some of this is helpful!
:: Do please share your stories and what you’ve tried or are trying if you’ve been a fellow citizen of the night.
August 6, 2012
Subtle shifts have been happening in our lives over this past year and a half, underneath all the big stuff, and I’ve had a hell of a time processing the whole of it.
The part about us….
PiC and I spent a long time circling the table, not outright talking about the money issues in detail. We didn’t make time, between the overworking, the travel, the other life stuff, but it seems we’ve still ended up on the same page, or at least in the same chapter.
We want the same things philosophically: financial stability, the ability to care for ourselves and our family (whatever that family is), the freedom to live our lives with some choice and reasonable amenities.
We want the same things materially in the near future: a home where the Doggle can roam (he gets everything), a chance to improve my health so that we can make decisions about life a little less under duress, more time for him to dedicate to his hobbies.
And that’s good. The details aren’t always exactly aligned but that’s part of the process. And you know, partnerships.
The part about money …
There comes a time when Bag Lady Syndrome fades a little. It doesn’t go away entirely. But it fades. I look at our retirement accounts, and I see that they’re not piddling. I look across all our accounts and see that they’re not astounding but they’re a variety of vehicles and growing incrementally despite the fact that I know we are spending money every month, and not necessarily on things I always approve of.
Guess what? We can spend on necessities, save, support my dad, spend on non-necessities and it’s not the end of the world. Heaven forfend, we haven’t combined finances yet either. Shut the front door. We’re not hiding anything from each other, the small things are small things, the big things don’t happen in the dark, and we haven’t crashed our cash flow or our savings. Bit of a shocker, to be honest.
It’s like we just ran an experiment on ourselves. We can live in an universe where my heart doesn’t stop if I don’t know where every single penny goes, and he doesn’t spend like a Spender chafing under the restrictions of Revanche, CFO. Certainly it could use some fine-tuning but that’ll happen as it does.
I don’t know if it comes to a greater surprise to anyone than me that this is possible. Among other surprises: He still tracks all of his expenses. I don’t anymore, I know when I spend cash and I note it somewhere but make it a point to nearly never do that, and just keep an eye on my CC statements.
I still don’t track our combined Net Worths yet. That’s a Mount Midoriyama for another day.
The part about self care….
Everything under the subject of my health has been a slog this year. I would say a challenge but I rise up to challenges. This has been more of a death march.
I’m happy that I’m able to function, but that’s a loose use of the word function. There are indicators that even for me, even with my typical ability to power through pain, enough is enough.
We passed “enough” several weeks ago.
I worked with my doctor on a variety of treatments. It’s hugely time consuming (opportunity cost) and sometimes expensive, but if I’m going to make it through this period until I resolve the bigger underlying problems, I absolutely have to do it.
If I hadn’t made some of the choices I did earlier on with my career starting with leaving my first industry to go white collar, moving into the roles that I have, cultivating the position and support, setting up and training my team, etc., I suspect that I wouldn’t have the choice of taking that time out or spend my money without anyone balking or questioning me. So I’m grateful not to worry as much about my job security as other people would have to. This is a combination of work, luck, skill, and privilege (On privilege: Oil and Garlic and Cloud) The daily stress is bad enough without adding that particular type of stressor to the mix.
My FSA account has been getting worked over and when we got married I added more money to it. I’m certain it will be drained by the treatments before the year’s end.
This is new – taking care of myself and spending real time and money to do it. I’ve been living with this pain since long before I’ve taken care of my family. For the first time, not that I don’t still have responsibilities and people depending on me, but for the first time, my health is finally a real priority for me and not just an obstacle to get past.
I suspect it was because I never wanted it to define my life, to limit my life or to be the focus, particularly because I dealt with ignorant doctors for umpteen years who dismissed the problem as “all in your head” and refused to diagnose it, leaving me with no answers and no possible solutions. But by ignoring it, that’s still exactly what the health issues became. Now, it’s time to really deal with it as best I can.
It’s no coincidence that this is a priority now. Without the Iron Fist Grip on the finances loosening, survival would have remained the top priority, not thriving.
Nicole and Maggie and feMOMhist both talked about this.
The part about having and doing nice things ….
Lots of my old habits still hold: I still don’t go out to eat, especially alone, making do w/freezer or pantry. I only buy strictly utilitarian clothes. I buy books if I have Amazon credits. I occupy free time by working on projects that make me happy instead of going out (and spending). These aren’t deprivations – these are habits I keep because they make me happy or not unhappy. But I can spend a little now, and so I will.
The happiness value of PiC buying things on sale from his favorite shops or my shipping a package of Cheer Ye Up goodies to a friend cost about the same. They also don’t happen every day or week, so they add up slowly.
We will eat out at our local ethnic restaurants together when we’re too tired or pressed for time to cook. The food’s good and meals will come under $25 for two. That’s a nice thing we can do for ourselves.
One or the other of us can buy a semi-big ticket item once in a while as well. He was of the belief that it was never a problem if it was a need (trumping cash flow) while I believed it was always a problem regardless of the need (cash flow trumps). We’re in agreement now: it’s ok for it to be a sometimes thing.
Packing at the last minute for work travel earlier this year, I realized something seemingly trivial but rather embarrassing. I didn’t have any decent handbag in good condition that could double as a lightweight travel bag.
It’s just not something I think about – I use whatever comes to hand, lightweight totes or old purses, on personal travel because I don’t need nice stuff. It’s going to get tossed around in a car, a plane, a train, or wherever else I’m going. Nice stuff is for the aspirational me. Or so I had decided, dismissively.
But, in business as in most formal settings, one shouldn’t show up unkempt if you’re meant to be taken seriously. Well, unless you’re the eccentric genius or much-lauded brilliant whosifer in which case you could have half a head of hair the wrong way on and it wouldn’t much matter. That is not me.
So when I showed up to that conference, with fraying bag handles on a decades-old bag that I didn’t notice until I got there? It was like showing up to a formal interview with a hole in my shirt. Igh! That bag was tucked right under the table with a silent promise to take care of it when I got home.
I don’t call consumer goods “investments”, but having a good set of clean, crisp clothing and a set of decent accessories to go with it is, I will ‘fess up, worth something. I’d come around on the clothing thing a while ago, but had a blind spot when it came to the accessories, particularly the handbag thing. It’s one of those things that is invisible until you bring an eyesore. (As it turns out, I should have learned my lesson about three years ago.)
I returned, hangdog on the matter, and grumpy that I had to find something *just right*. Only complicated the search by insisting it had to cost under $80.
PiC endured my online shopping plaints for a week, helped searched for bags, then told me to shut up and raise my price point. No, he was nicer about it. But even I was sick of the whole thing by then. It took nearly a month but I ended up spending – I wasn’t going to say but, this is still a finance blog – $400. I bought gift cards at a discount first but it was still a hefty whack.
I would probably have had an mini-aneurysm over that out of context except:
I haven’t purchased a purse in 4 years.
I won’t buy another one for probably at least another 5-7 years.
It’s a very sturdy, lightweight bag from Nordstrom so, should there be any quality issues I won’t have any issues returning it.
The most important point, though, is that I didn’t need to stress about this relatively high-ticket purchase – it came out of my cash flow and didn’t impact anything.
Even though it wasn’t planned for, it was within my means because I’ve not been spending much of my disposable income. So once I committed, and determined that it would suit the purpose, it was fine.
The part where I realize ….
We are in wealth nurturing mode. At some point, even I stopped needing to stay in survival gear. For twelve years, I drove in multiple gears: saving, maintaining survival gear, and investing, all simultaneously for various parts of the family. It comes as a surprise that maintaining frugality is, for the moment, a practiced preference and habit, not a need.
We can afford to invest in my health, speculate a little about our future, and think about trying new things rather than just doubling down if we’re willing to stretch ourselves in different directions.
It’s time to start evaluating those options, those roads I didn’t even peer down once upon a midnight sky, because the only road I ever set my feet down was the one I was sure would keep my family under a roof with food on the table. It’s time to marshal the resources and start dreaming. For the first time, maybe.
August 2, 2012
Avis likes to bill itself as the car company that is “in the business of treating people like people” but after this last straw I would suggest that, as an absolute value, that means very much the same as “crap.”
PiC recently rented from them on a trip and I am appalled at the cavalier way Avis handled the situation.
He had prebooked the rental: prescheduled the pick-up and drop-off times, and prepaid as well.*
He happened to arrive to the rental agency earlier than expected and asked the logical questions:
1. Can I pick up the car early?
2. Will I have to return it early (because he had prescheduled events and needed it the full time)?
3. Will there be any extra charges if I take it early and do not return it early?
To make it more clear, he added: If there will be any extra charges, I can wait the extra hour.
The girl at the front desk said: Yes, No and No. Most certainly no problems with that. I would have insisted on getting that noted in writing but I’m a suspicious sort of character.
He came back at the preappointed time only to be held hostage for half again the cost of the rental for the additional time he had the car. Say again: he had the car a mere hour and some extra, and they charged him half the cost of the weekend.
Abso-screeching-lutely not.
He had a conversation with another CSR at that point and that fine fellow had the nerve to say that yes, indeed, he had been given the wrong information at check-in, BUT it was his responsibility to know better and to follow the contract instead.
Are. You. Kidding? You ask questions because a live human being should be intelligent enough to know how to handle “unusual circumstances”! Like when they can or cannot make exceptions for a prepaid contracted customer!
And you, with something-teen years of experience, you can sit there and say that it’s the customer’s fault that he was given bad information when he asked a question that he should reasonably be able to provided an answer. And if your staff are ignorant or incompetent, then you should be taking this as a sign to remedy that problem post-haste, not turning around and pushing blame on the customer. And to compound the issue by insisting that the customer who was poorly served with bad information, the customer who was perfectly willing not to take the car until it was the scheduled time specifically to avoid incurring that cost, insisting that he is at fault and needs to pay?
No, dear.
1. Dispute charge with credit card company.
2. Scathing blog post.
3. Slightly less scathing letter to Corporate to share the glorious service experience they have provided.
4. Wait to see whether we black list Avis. Your move, Avis.
*Never again.
