About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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August 9, 2017
Our travel cost breakdown
Food and lodgings, $125*
Gas, $143
Parking, trolley: $20
Car rental, $317
Books, $100
Badges, $240**
Total: $1,022
* We lodged with friends this year, and they never let us pay for that, so we paid for take out one night.
** This was for two days and two adults. SDCC has a great child badge policy – children are free up to age 11.
This year, the weather was so much better than last year when it was well over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit!
The lottery systems this year
Badges: success for us by the skin of our teeth. A good friend wasn’t able to get enough days to make it worth coming out so this was only sort of a win.
Hotels: not necessary this year.
Parking passes: one of the 7 of us got into the lottery! (It was me.) I bought passes for all four days but on consideration, passed that along to my friend because we decided to try the trolley this year. And also because he missed the lottery. Now that JuggerBaby is mobile, it was a really big place we could save, assuming we survived the experience. Every parent of a toddler knows that they go boneless, right? This kid has been practicing that since infancy. It’s awful.
Anyway, the passes were $191.80, versus the $20 we paid for two adults, so it’s a big price tag. That convenience can’t be overstated some days, if you’ve been trudging along for 8 hours logging mile after mile on the exhibit floor! But we were already paying for a rental car to reduce wear and tear on our two cars that are incidentally due for service, so we survived without it this year.
On making it happen.
I found myself dreading the week, rather than anticipating it. This is the second year I’ve felt this way, this time it had everything to do with all the work we had to complete before and after, with the reno. Too much stress!
It was also a bit weird because many of our friends couldn’t come this year, so it was an awfully quiet year but I’m so glad we went. That’s the most relaxed and at home I’ve felt all year, eating with and catching up with Mama S.
On food.
We thought we’d try our hand at cooking with Mama S this year, but it wasn’t a good time for it. We feasted, still: my annual pancit and lumpia, the original baked pasta and garlic bread.
We packed our PB&Js for lunch this year, avoiding the fancy deli meat and veggie sandwiches we used to be weighted down by, and snacks, as always, to avoid the atrocious and overpriced convention center food. I always think it might be better this year, but it never is.
On having fun.
This was a funny old year. Half of our now-usual crew were in attendance, and we picked up a handful of first timer friends to escort around the exhibit hall. We have a Marco! Polo! system by text – we clump together when we find a good booth, we expand and filter out to explore, then text our location to re-cluster the group. There isn’t planning or rhyme or reason, it just works organically.
This year’s exhibit hall was chock full of cute things and fantastic displays. I was hard pressed not to go on a buying spree – only the knowledge that I didn’t want to pack another 60 pounds of detritus saved me.
There was an astonishing Tamatoa cosplayer, a life size Lockjaw promoting the Inhumans show, fabulous (as always) new Lego creations.
We discovered awesome artists, we visited awesome favorites, we laughed til we cried at JuggerBaby.
Empowered by the fantastic superhero costume my unspeakably awesome friends had commissioned, ze spent the whole first day “flying” in spurts through the crowded exhibit hall. No sooner did one of us catch up to the slippery scamp, ze would throw zir “wings” out and race off again shouting “uncle, look at meeeeeeeee!”
Uncle was charmed, of course, and threw over all his plans to run along behind my stampeding bull toddler all day.
I tell zir often that ze’s lucky to be cute but cute won’t last forever.
The second day, ze kept chanting “where is Spider-Man?” No one knows where that came from – we haven’t introduced Spidey to zir lexicon yet! All day, where is Spider-Man?
Uncle spotted a particularly good one and shouted back to me, whereupon I turned and pointed to our right, look, JuggerBaby! Spider-Man is right there!
Spidey heard us and went into a web slinging crouch for zir. As Spideys do.
JuggerBaby, face frozen in a rictus of horror, scaled my leg trying jump right back into the womb. “NO NO NO!”
Poor confused Spidey. He crouched further down to make himself shorter, inoffensive, non-threatening. He did a stupid little jig to look like a clown. Finally he cowered, hiding his head a little, apologetically, because JuggerBaby was having NONE OF IT.
Sputtering, I tried to reassure zir that it was ok and Spider-Man wasn’t going to hurt zir but my sincerity may have been muffled by the choked back laughter.
For the next twenty minutes, ze declared vehemently: I don’t want Spider-Man.
Never meet your heroes, y’all.
On family time.
This is the only place I feel at home away from home. At peace. I forget sometimes that this is the home away from home to retreat to, then I arrive in July and find myself breathing serenely again.
Mama S is the mother of my heart. She’s the best. Period.
This isn’t to malign my irreplaceable mother who physically raised me, just filling my heart with people who are still here so it’s not so lonely. It’s a strange feeling to grow up with tons of family and then be separated from all of them whether by distance or by feud. I’m related to terrible people so I have chosen to distance myself from them and fill that space with good people.
That means being welcomed with open arms, seeing your pictures mingling with the family pictures, sitting around comfortably chatting about old times or random events that have meaning. That means knowing Grandma’s got your back when the toddler is trying to pull a fast one.
Books books and more books!
Highly recommended books are great.
For the adults:
For the whole family:
- Skottie Young and Eric Shanower’s Oz Omnibus Hardcover
- Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy is highly recommended, I might pick that up even though JuggerBaby’s not ready for it yet. For investigative purposes, you know.
For the kids:
Little Golden Books does Star Wars books! And DC books! I did not know this. JuggerBaby loves:
:: What would you have your eye on if you made this pilgrimage?
August 7, 2017
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs.
We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Some side income comes from Swagbucks, selling clothes on Poshmark which is hit or miss, and tracking activity through Achievement (my introduction to it).
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
*** (more…)
August 2, 2017
Right around August 1st, my Spidey sense starts tingling.
It’s Lammas, the first harvest.
For those of us who don’t live by the agricultural calendar, the beginning of the end of summer. Our leaves don’t turn until late September, so the change is just a scent in the air. The heat starts to taper off, with a few days of heat spikes to remind us of summer’s punch, a memory for next year.
Labor Day approacheth! Mingled anticipation and dread! I wouldn’t mind the slide into fall, but for 12 years, saying good-bye to summer was immediately followed by the start of a new school year.
Despite having been out of school well over a decade, a little knot the size of a peach pit still forms in my stomach, leavened only with my love for back to school sales. My peach pit bounces around to the time of “new packs of college ruled paper! New colorful paper folders for a penny!”
Back in the day, my summers weren’t any great shakes, just great long stretches of being out of school. Most were spent at work with Mom, being tutored or running the cash register at their business. One unusual summer, there was summer school which was both incredibly scary and great fun. On the one hand, I hated having to meet new people for a short class. On the other hand, in our science class, we learned to make ice cream with just salt, milk, and ice. Who doesn’t get excited over practical science? #nerd
That enrichment was short-lived, though. We didn’t have money for real summer camp and our school district couldn’t afford real summer programs.
My working-summer theme continued into high school, the more fool me. I worked minimum wage jobs to save for extracurriculars. I was so proud to pay for all my own expenses in senior year. In hindsight, it’s a shame I didn’t ever take advantage of that summer time to be frivolous because there weren’t many of those worry-free summers left for me. As a fully fledged working adult, summer sneaks right on past.
Summers during college were full of overtime. It was also the only time I got a bit of sleep since my reward for working 60+ hours a week was not taking classes for that one quarter of the year.
Summer now? We hardly notice when it starts, except when my teacher friends start attending graduations and then we have Comic Con each year.
I don’t want our summers, and years, to slip through our fingers unnoticed. Most of the time we do well enough staying present in the moment but it’s too easy to take it all for granted as we’re preoccupied with work, school, and growing up.
In a few very short years, JuggerBaby will start school. We’ll have to start making arrangements for JuggerBaby when school is out. Maybe one of my shorter term goals needs to be setting myself up for having half days in the summers so ze and I can enjoy the summer time together. My work is more flexible than PiC’s in that way but who knows, maybe he can arrange something like that too.
It’s never too soon to start brainstorming for that future.
Do we aim to take summers off and do long road trips? That could be hard with an aging Seamus. Right now, he’s usually game for a couple of trips. I can’t tell where JB’s patience levels would be with long stretches in the car.
Do we put zir in day camp and tutoring for half the summer? That’s definitely expensive and time consuming (tuition, commuting), but if there are good educational and fun programs, it could be worth it.
Do I tutor zir in languages and spend our free time playing at the park? (Mother, exercise your patience.)
These are all possibilities.
I’m curious what PiC will want our summers to look like as we go on. I’m guessing it’ll include more home improvement projects than either of us are fully committed to, though.
:: What were your childhood summers like? What do you do now to enjoy summer? Do you love the onset of fall or summer best?
July 31, 2017
[Part 7] This whole post is going to be so much money. About so much money, I mean. Lots and lots of money. Stimulating the economy beyond anything I’d ever imagined would happen in this lifetime.
Hiring out work
The contractor’s labor, and the subcontractors’ labor, is a set price for the most part. I’m saying up front that we’re paying a premium for the general contractor whom we’ll call Bob and I didn’t negotiate a penny of that. Those of you who know me won’t even open your mouths to ask if I was “too embarrassed” to ask for a discount like some people thought.
It was deliberate. I’m a star performer at work, and I know how to treat them. You pay good money to get exceptional results. You do not nickel and dime someone who is going to play a huge role in quality control, and attend to your every need. That’s the best way to demotivate them.
Every week, my decision and refusal to negotiate his rate proves that Bob is worth every penny. He’s honest, hardworking, prompt to reply to any and all questions (stupid or not), shows up whenever and wherever we ask, on top of keeping the project on schedule. By the way, he wrote up a highly detailed schedule for us to work by. All of that makes him a total gem and a complete anomaly as a General Contractor, from the anecdotes of all the horrified friends and family hearing we were on a tight timeline.
But that’s not all!
- He advises us on the best places to source our materials and helps us find discounts without compromising on quality.
- He’s cultivated relationships in the contracting world: he chatted up the project reviewer which resulted in the job being classified as an update, instead of a renovation, and saved us $2700 in permitting costs. I would not have known to ask for that concession!
- When we decided to save money on one of the “work in every room” aspects of the project (lighting) delaying it for later, he discounted his own rate by $350 to do the full job now. We didn’t ask, he offered.
- When he made the wrong call on one of the walls, costing us an additional $500 in work, he made up for it by footing the bill for expensive aesthetic work that I wouldn’t have wanted to pay for, but PiC would have wanted.
- He’s offered us lots of reclaimed and leftover supplies from previous jobs that the owners just wanted dumped. So far, that’s worth a smidge north of $1000.
- The quality of his work is top notch so we passed rough inspection with flying colors.
By the end of this job, I anticipate that he will save us at least half the cost of his fees by doing stuff like this for us. Then there’s simply no price I can put on the sanity that he preserves by doing his actual services: coordinating all the work, hiring and managing the subcontractors, picking up all the materials that we purchase and checking them for damage, making all the returns.
The power of a warranty
Pretty much everything in this place is old enough to be replaced but we have to pick our battles. The roof is old, the wiring is old, the plumbing is old, the water heater is older, the furnace probably has a beard.
However, our realtor bought us a warranty that will cover all appliances, minor roof leaks, the water heater failing. She’s not so sure how well it covers plumbing because her experience has been that they’re finicky on which bits of pipes they’ll cover. Neither of us are willing to play the odds on whether or not the old wiring will catch fire, either, so we’re attacking those items now.
We’ll cross our fingers that the roof isn’t damaged and the water heater keeps truckin’ – but if it does, the warranty is more straightforward on those.
Negotiating costs
There are two places where we can really run up the bills, according to Bob.
The first is our selection of the finished materials like cabinets, flooring, fixtures, and so on. You can choose a $200 toilet, or an $800 toilet. A $20 showerhead, or an $800 shower fixture. Oh yes, you can spend $2000 on a door! (We did not.)
There’s not a lot of negotiation to be done but there are some bits you can do, aside from asking yourself if you REALLY need that super awesome rain bath showerhead.
- Ask for large volume discounts. Home Depot’s Pro shop gives a high volume discount on any orders that are over $1500 in addition to whatever other sales and discounts you can get.
- Ask for small discounts. Our contractor gets a small discount if you use his pro account. We do!
- Bob also advised us that you can often request a 10% discount at Home Depot just because if you go to the assistant store manager, or escalating to the store manager.
- Ask for discounts just because! I online chatted with the good folks at Build.com to ask if they could beat the pricing I had in my cart and they did.
The second place is scope creep, AKA those AWOs that pop up on our progress invoices: Add Work Orders.
Those come up when you’re taking down walls to studs, thank crepes that you did and howl a few choice curses at the moon for what you found: more dry rot. If you didn’t find it, you would have fallen through the floor in about 8 months. Or your new windows would have fallen out when the dry rotted framing inside turned into a pile of splinters. Or when you realize that there’s black mold creeping across the back walls that the seller’s piles of belongings covered up. These weren’t in your original contract and that’s how the Bobs of the contracting world really make their money.
I’m so grateful that Bob was upfront about this little detail – we restructured our entire plan in the first week based on that advice and the saving is clear.
Spending choices: charge it up!
I could have chased down discounted gift cards to pay for supplies, saving 5-7%. For this project, though, I wanted the price protection from my credit card.
American Express will make it right if a store won’t honor their return policy. If something breaks or goes missing, I have protection for 90 days. We are buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. I do not need to expend any personal energy fighting with any single merchant, and paying with the credit card is my insurance against that.
:: Would you (have you) have made any decisions differently? Do you have regrets on hiring someone cut-rate or did you have a great success story in getting a deal?
July 26, 2017
My brokerage was TradeKing which was acquired by Ally this year. I’ve been very happy with TradeKing’s low fees and service so I’m hoping that Ally does that and better. There’s one thing I already like the look of. For investors with at least a $100,000 daily balance or execute at least 30 trades per quarter, you can be part of Ally Invest SELECT.
The one tiny perk that I care about is lower fees: $3.95 per equity trade and $0.50 per options contract.
Other perks that I don’t personally care about right now:
Priority routing to our Ally Invest reps. No additional cost when you place a phone trade. We’ll waive the first six months’ advisory fees for any new Ally Invest Advisors account you open, including custodial and joint accounts or IRAs. No fees on requests for 1099s, paper statements, or trade confirmations. We’ll refund transfer fees on deposits of $5,000 or more to your Ally Invest Securities account.
I’d trade a few of those benefits for free trades, really.
Observations this quarter
- Dividends income this past quarter (April through June): $941.20. If nothing changes, we’ll see about $2600 in dividend income this year.
- I love COST and Costco loves me! For a second year in a row, they’ve paid out a special dividend at $7 per share. Delicious dividends, that can go on to buy more dividend bearing stocks.
- For two days, I had a triple dividend from KO but it turns out that was just a dirty trick.
- I was surprised to realize that I’ve been buying more stocks in the “Cyclical Consumer Goods & Services” sector than anything else. Probably not a good idea to be concentrated in retail if I’m worried about a recession.
Year to Date Dividends: $1,365.20, Fees: $9.90, Net: $1,355.30
Income Replacement
For perspective, I like to think of the dividends investing project in terms of how much of our income it can replace, or how much of our fixed expenses it can cover.
At a whopping $1355.30, this year’s dividends can pay 39% of one new mortgage payment. Our old mortgage payment would have been paid in full!
Since I started 6 years ago, I’ve made a grand total of $2,810.00.
:: How did your portfolio do this quarter? Would you try to replace income this way, or do you have another preference?
July 24, 2017
Maybe this would be more seasonally appropriate for Thanksgiving but it’s true now, and it’s never a bad time to remember the good things.
Driving home from another four hour trip to the home supplies store, that teleprompter style list of all the work still ahead of me started scrolling.
1:56 pm.
Seamus needed dinner, a walk, his medications.
My work was piled up, the work that I had done little more about than shake a cranky stick at it in stolen minutes between bathroom vanity specs and researching and investigating flooring samples.
My stomach rumbles. Oh yeah. Also that.
Today’s purchases need to be recorded in the now 236 row spreadsheet where every single expenditure, delivery, pick-up, and delay was logged.
Drawing a deep breath to dispel the almost inevitable surge of rage-impatience, I let it out, surprised.
Nothing. I felt nothing.
Not an empty nothing but the nothing of calm and peace.
That was as weird as a new sore tooth – or the absence of pain. That’s when it dawned on me. I wasn’t irritated or grumpy or angry at the loss of half a day and interruption to my beloved routine. I was grateful.
I am grateful that all my hard choices and sacrifices to prove myself in a traditional work place up to now meant that I could have my days interrupted like this, that my career wouldn’t suffer from a temporary dislocation in my work routine. That my reputation was solid enough and my work relationships were strong enough up and down the hierarchy that if an email wasn’t answered in four minutes, no one was going to micromanage me over it.
That freedom was paid for in hard coin. Years of almost thankless toil in various corporate and non corporate jobs. Years of taking risks, pressing for well deserved promotions, negotiating for raises, knowing that women are punished for asking, then pushing forward to new ventures without being quite sure of the future.
Now? The payoff. I don’t have to apologize or atone for taking the time to make my life work because I’ll still make sure the work gets done. The striving, even when it wasn’t crystal clear what the striving would be in aid of, was worth it.
It’s imperfect – of course. This isn’t easy, or fun, by any means working on the timeline we have ahead. But it’s considerably easier than if I were still doing shift work, or working for the unreasonable manager who played favorites like Russian roulette, or that manager who thought it was my professional duty to read his mind and be his best friend, confidante, and free babysitter. Until I’ve got Jean Grey’s powers and not Dark Phoenix, that will never be my job! Actually, even with Jean Grey’s powers, I decline that job.
I am grateful.
I’m grateful that I can take care of my family, that I have a family to love and care for. That I can take care of our needs under stressful circumstances. That I can do what I need to do, when I need to do it. That PiC and I are in this together and haven’t killed each other over the neverending details and decisions. That we can and have found ways to afford doing all this work without having to move in and expose our toddler to an unsafe living environment.
That our checks written in the first 3 weeks after closing have all been safely cashed without even a little bouncing: $45,000.
!!!
Labor and materials are $$$$$.
Our contractor wisely reassured me that my spending projections were correct – it will look something like an inverted pyramid. The worst of the scope creep and the labor costs are going to be in the early phases of the work. That’s when you discover terrible things lurking in your walls and foundation and roof. Once you pass the midway point, the weekly costs become less and less, until you’re just paying minimal costs at the very end to finish up.
He was also wise enough to tell me not to expect the site to look anything like a house until after the fifth or sixth week of work. At week 2.5 I felt some flutterings of we paid that much for this shell of a house?!
This too, shall pass.
:: How do you keep yourself grounded during times of stress? Does it help to remind yourself of the long term things you can be grateful for?
July 18, 2017
I had the pleasure of reading Selina Siak Chin Yoke’s first book in this series several months ago: The Women Who Breathed Two Worlds.
She invited me to read her second book in anticipation of the book’s release today. It was wonderful to be able to squeeze that in some of my rare good moments, and arrange a review and giveaway.
She was gracious enough to give us a bit of an interview, and a giveaway. We’re all winners, here!
Her first novel, The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds, followed the the life of Chye Hoon, an incredible woman who built a business to support her family, embracing her heritage, and trying to pass that on to her own children.
This second novel picks up after Chye Hoon passes, and evoked an entirely different set of feelings as we followed a woman from the next generation, Mei Foong, through the political and cultural changes wrought by the Japanese occupation.
Selina grew up listening to family stories and ancient legends, like I did, speaking four languages, double my childhood repertoire. She always knew that some day she would write but it wasn’t until after she’d spent time as a physicist, banker and trader in London that Selina received the message loud and clear to get on with it. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2009. As she beat the cancer, she realized it was time to start writing.
I’m so glad she didn’t wait. Her first novel was nothing but an inspiration. Well, an inspiration and a touch intimidating – I’m not sure if I can do my family’s legends justice as she did hers.
Raised in Ipoh, Petaling Jaya (near Kuala Lumpur), Malaysia, Selina later went to school in Kent, England. I had some personal questions to ask her:
Q: Who was your childhood family storyteller?
A: My maternal grandmother, to whom I dedicated When the Future Comes Too Soon. She lived in another town; each time she visited I would pester her for stories. She told me a huge amount and I forgot most of the details – I have an awful memory. Fortunately, I wrote some of it down. On my last visit to my parents’ house, my mother found sheets of handwritten notes that I had made while talking to my grandmother. She told me an astonishing amount! I really wish she were alive – I think she would enjoy my books.
Q: Which stories stuck the most with you, and why, did any of them resonate enough to guide your life choices?
A: My great grandmother’s life story – that of an uneducated woman who started a business and raised children with her earnings – was fascinating because it was so unusual. She was also such a larger-than-life character: people remember being terrified of her even after seventy years! Her story did not guide my life choices, but the protagonist in my first novel is drawn from what I heard about her.
Q: What was your and your family’s relationship with money as you were growing up, a young adult, a fully fledged adult?
A: My attitudes to money and business were, in many ways, formed when I was a child. The Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia is known for its entrepreneurialism. I grew up hearing business being discussed, and I was taught the importance of both earning money and saving it. I was given a piggy bank at the age of three! But I also understood that risks presented opportunities. Many people start business in Malaysia and also invest in stocks. Because our immigrant ancestors began afresh with very little, we celebrate those who have made successes of their lives through hard work and risk-taking.
Q: I said in my first review of The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds that this was the story I have always wanted to write but wasn’t sure how. I’ve saved several unfinished drafts. My grandmother was the woman who raised ten children, supported her village through the war, and met her grandchildren from America only a few times late in life. But her life story that I grew up hearing is part of my soul and the undisputed source of my grit. She and I lived thousands of miles apart but we had similar tempers, similar determination, and similar love of useful containers.
Was there any person in particular that, in writing the Malayan series, you felt that kind of connection to?
A: I have felt a connection to all the strong women in my family. Fortunately, there have been many and they’ve provided me with role models on which I’ve been able to base wonderful stories!
Q: In this second book, you move the lens from one strong woman boldly facing the changes in the world over to a woman of the next generation, learning her strength as she faces a changing world but, it seems she doesn’t quite grasp it until perhaps the very end. I felt so much sadness at the close of When The Future Comes Too Soon. Perhaps I would have felt them even before having children of my own, because I’d come to understand the love my mother bore for her children and how she suffered with that love. Truth be told, that sadness was the biggest reason I needed more time to write this review – I had to sit with it for some time!
Often, authors say that may have intended to take their characters one direction and find them headed in another. Did you have that sense with Mei Foong at all, or was her character consistent in your mind and the story?
A: I’m always touched when I hear how much readers are moved by the stories I’ve written. It’s absolutely true that sometimes, my characters have insisted on doing things I’d never envisaged for them! I anchor my stories on milestone events, and then I write outlines for every chapter. When a character just goes against the grain of my outline no matter what I do, I have no choice but change it. With Mei Foong, this did not happen; she stayed more or less consistent.
While you can read Book 2 without having read Book 1, I do highly recommend you try both.
Now for a chance to read it yourself – please enter to win a copy of Selina’s latest book!
WAYS TO ENTER – Please leave a comment for each item.
1. Add the book to your Want to Read shelf on GoodReads.
2. Please leave a comment sharing who your childhood storyteller was, or who you most admired in your family when growing up. Make sure that you include your name and email address with your comment so we can reach the winner.
3. Bonus! Please share this with your friends who are interested in awesome books and have them include your name with their comment as an extra entry.
Who knows, if we have enough entrants, we’ll see if we can’t negotiate a second winner. 😉
The Fine Print: The winner will be picked by a random number generator on Thursday July 27th. Entries are accepted until Wednesday July 26th, 11:59 pm PST. Open to US readers only this time, sorry international friends!