July 30, 2018
Our travel cost breakdown
1. Food and lodgings, $100
2. Gas, $114
3. Trolley: $40
4. Gifts and stuff for us, $125
5. Badges, $572
6. Dogsitting, $250
7. Stupid tax, $10
Total: $1,261
1. We lodged with friends and they never let us pay for that. This year we weren’t able to pay for a meal out because of our timing but I have a thank you gift in mind if I can find it.
4. $125 of this was gifts, $50 was $100 worth of gift cards to the Out of Stock Clothing store. We’ll stack these with a $10 off coupon they may eventually send to us and probably use it to buy gifts.
5. Four days plus Preview for two adults. JB attends free up to age 12.
6. A dear friend dogsat for us because of some logistical complications. She protested that this was way too much but she treated Seamus and Sera to a doggy spa like experience for several days when I was most worried about Seamus post-op so I don’t agree with her. We did agree to disagree and that she could consider this a deposit for caring for them again in the future.
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July 26, 2018
Small win: I continue clearing away the jungle that is our yard. I filled a 96-gallon green waste bin all by myself!
*flexing muscles* Just kidding, I destroyed my forearms filling that bin in a day and I have many many regrets.
What were your small wins this week?
***
The goodness of Mr. Rogers. Where did this kindness go? (A friend blew my mind, recently, suggesting that Lin-Manuel Miranda is our generation’s Mr. Rogers.)
Why Tanja really retired early.
How 75 Bay Area Places Got Their Names
The wolf population in Wisconsin could be stabilizing. This should happen naturally without human intervention so once again, I don’t understand the need for trophy hunting. Hunting for food, yes. Trophies? Not even a little.
I’d never heard of spite buildings before but … This makes sense.
I knew very little about Wilt Chamberlain aside from the occasional pop culture reference but this look back at his history made me nod with approval: For example, Wilt’s rookie season in 1960, he threatened to retire. (In exchange for more money, he didn’t.) And after the Philadelphia Warriors were moved to San Francisco in 1962, Wilt again threatened to retire. (In exchange for more money, he didn’t.) Eventually, in 1965, the Warriors’ new owner, Franklin Mieuli, wanted so badly to cut ties that he traded Wilt back to Philadelphia, where a new ownership group had purchased the franchise in Syracuse, moved it to Philly, and dressed it up with a new moniker, the 76ers. Wilt threatened to retire, and because of a man named Ike Richman, in exchange for more money, he didn’t.
A last interview with Anthony Bourdain.
Melon collie
I can’t decide whether the original tweet or Myke’s reaction made me laugh more.
July 25, 2018
Short of breaking a window, our house is pretty secure.
I know this because I pulled the door shut behind me, locking it, and then realized that what I had in my hand was a wad of tissues, not my keys. !$(#*$&)#!
It was one of those crappy confluences: I had 30 minutes to go pick up JB before daycare closed. PiC had JUST managed to get to the gym for a rare 30 minute session, and now I was sitting outside the house asking the dogs to unlock the door for me.
Really.
Rather than ask PiC to leave the gym, first, I desperately tried to teach Sera to be a velociraptor. “Just jump up and hit the lock, Sera, you can do it!” She was so confused. Both dogs were both so confused, they started barking at me. Long story short: It did not work at all.
The front door was securely locked. All the doors and windows are double paned and securely locked, we don’t leave anything open anymore, and there are extra bars along each window and door’s slide path to block them from being opened even if someone managed to pick the lock. Unless I was willing to break an expensive-to-replace-and-install-window (HECK NO), those were not feasible entry points. (more…)
July 23, 2018
Oops, I missed writing up the April report! I think about our investing all the time but somehow forgot to report since last July. It’s been a bit busy here. 🙂
Observations
- I predicted that we’d see about $2600 in dividend income in 2017. We netted $2,445.95.
- Knowing that at some point, we’re due for a recession, and with stock prices being so high, I’m focusing on buying consumer defensive stocks – necessities, not luxuries.
- I’m trying to decide how I feel about buying Amazon stock. I don’t own any right now, and I’m very not cool with how Bezos treats his employees – the way he pays his employees is awful. At the same time, it’s the one company that provides a significant number of the services and products I need so I use them quite a bit as a consumer and that bothers me. Similarly, when the racist incident happened at Starbucks, I was really annoyed that we hold stock in a company that responded so badly at first, but I came around to realizing that it doesn’t make sense to dump stocks, or refuse to buy stocks, entirely on how a company conducts itself on single episodes. It’s a tough needle to thread sometimes and I’m still figuring out how to make this work.
- First quarter dividends (Jan-March): $346
- Second quarter dividends (April-June): $770
- Total net dividends year to date: $1,293.07
- New purchases: 100 shares of CLX, and 100 shares of KMB
- I sold GE at the start of the year at $17.59 a share and that felt silly because I mistimed it for tax loss harvesting for 2017 but it should work well enough for 2018.
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July 20, 2018
Baking muffins has been a really nice way for JB and me to spend some time in the kitchen together with a minimum of stress and loss of fingers.
I’ve been on the hunt for the recipe for the allspice muffins I baked in Home Ec in middle school, and still haven’t found it, but this is an acceptable substitute.
The first time I baked these as minis, they were a disaster. Overbaked and too dry – yechhhh.
The second time, I added the fruit and baked it for less time since the mini muffins are much smaller, and voila! Delightful! I have no idea how much more you can play with the ingredients but let’s just assume that you can take a few steps further if you’re feeling adventurous but it didn’t seem to work wonderfully with a strawberry watermelon combination when I experimented the first time.
I try to make a double batch each time so we can freeze at least half for a future week when I’m not up to baking.
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July 19, 2018
Small win: I transferred cash being held for large expenses throughout the year, and my small pile of accumulated rental property profits, over to Ally’s online savings earning 1.75% APY. Those accounts need to stay cash and liquid since they’re all going to pay bills this year, but at least the money can earn its keep in the meantime.
Still making slow progress with the weeding – I’m making it a point to get out there at least a few times during the week, and we’ve cleared a small patch that’s safe for Sera to do her zoom-zooms.
What were your small wins this week?
***
The isolation of special needs parents.
Positive masculinity! Men choosing to take their wives’ names.
I would love the limited edition Totoro watch.
I’d never heard of America’s most prolific female serial killer.
Side hustlin’ friends: Declare all your income.
The Original American Dogs Are Gone: The closest living relative of the precolonial canines isn’t even a dog. It’s a contagious cancer.
I really really enjoy this brooch warfare
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July 18, 2018
Not quite peer pressure
We don’t do a LOT of socializing and play dates, but we accept 2-3 birthday invitations a year from JB’s classmates. In some, the whole class is invited for a big bash at some place that caters to kids, which is probably at least a few hundred dollars, and for some, it’s just a family affair with a small group of classmates but still far fancier than any birthday party that we’ve had for ourselves in the past ten years.
That includes when we fed 18 people at a taco party for PiC!
Either way, they’ve got JB thinking about all the kids that ze wants to invite to zir party. Um … what party? We weren’t planning on doing any real parties for a while, our house still isn’t in any shape for that kind of entertaining. The indoors is simply too small to have more than 7 adults and 2 kids at one time, comfortably.
One day, the yard might be perhaps, but zir birthday is also not in September in those few weeks of the year that may be reliably counted on for warm weather and thus suitable for an outdoor / backyard fun thing. If it were, we’d reserve a BBQ at the local parks and let the kids run wild for not too much money there. But it’s not. I’m pondering what kind of compromise would make sense for a fun birthday that doesn’t cost $300 and a quarter of my brain. It’s not around the corner but if I don’t think now, nothing will happen by the time zir birthday arrives. I know me.
I’m always in favor of tacos again but then again, when am I not in favor of tacos?
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