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 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.
August 1, 2012
The moments that rejuvenate our souls are far too limited.
Time for discovery, rest, memory creation and enjoyment is restricted. For us, only the weekends and only those few weekends when we’re not traveling for work, for other people, for something else, or full up with chores and every other necessary fact of life, are “free”.
I knew I’d gone stale but it wasn’t until we came back from Comic Con and I felt the tiniest trickle of creative energy coming back, my brain energized and stimulated from steeping in the sheer power of so many creators, artists, writers and thinkers despite my overwhelming fatigue that it felt like any little bit would make a difference.
The problem was clear, but the solution wasn’t so much, especially when even the effort to do fun things felt like too much.
Still, it didn’t seem like the worst idea to venture across our thresholds to taste a bit of the world. While I meditate on my next big steps, getting out and living real life makes a difference.
We were horrified to see this machine eating up the walls of our long time grocery store … it turns out they’re making way for a bigger and better version of it.
The lack of good affordable sushi in my life here has felt like sensory deprivation. There’s a place in Southern California that I used to frequent with a good friend where we’d fill up on some of the freshest fish for about $20. Fish for the frugal soul, I tell you!
This was the first reasonably priced, good quality combination fish sashimi plate we’ve found in the area. Score!
There’s something so soul-warming about an amazing bowl of ramen. I could say nearly the same thing about a mediocre bowl of ramen, really. Ramen is such a childhood staple, it nearly doesn’t matter how good it is.
Measuring about 12 inches across, the Super Shoyu Ramen bowl would loom over your shoulder if it weren’t in a bowl. Full of yummy noodley goodness, I’d still go with a mini super shoyu next time for sanity’s sake. This took two of us to finish.
It starts to feel more possible to find one’s center with a full belly and sun-warmed toes.
July 30, 2012
A sensible, interesting, sciencey-businessy, working-mom blogger I admire, Cloud of Wandering Scientist, was gracious enough to take the time to write a guest post. I couldn’t precisely remember what I asked her to focus on, but it must have been along the lines of what I’d ask anyone I like: Tell me more. Tell me more about your journey. *props head up on hands* How did you get here and how and why did you make the decisions you did? I am interested to hear.
One of the many things I enjoy reading in Cloud’s writings are her reasons. Her opinions are great too, whether or not I agree with them is irrelevant, but I enjoy hearing how people think. I love this post. I think you will too. (She’ll also be swinging by after work to answer comments.)
I write a lot about being a mother in the workforce on my blog, usually from the viewpoint of “Hey! This does not suck anywhere near as much as those people tell you it does!” Revanche saw one of the posts awhile back, and asked me if I’d do a guest post on the topic. I said yes, and then promptly got buried in various work and family needs, and it is now at least a month later than I told Revanche I might be able to deliver a post.
And that, right there, is one of my lessons for being a happy mother in the workforce: there isn’t a lot of time left after work and family claim their shares, so be careful what other commitments you make. You can’t always predict when work and/or family are going to need more than their usual amount of attention.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I start giving out advice, I should tell you a little about myself, so that you can decide whether or not you think anything I say is at all relevant to you and your life. I am 40 years old, married, with two daughters, aged 5 and 2.5. I also have a PhD in a field that combines biology and physical sciences. I did things the boring way, going to graduate school straight after I finished college. After I finished graduate school, I went to work in the biotechnology industry, and have mostly stayed there. My work has always been a combination of science and computers, and over the years has also involved an increasing amount of management. In my current position, I lead a group of 4 other fulltime employees and a revolving cast of ~10 contractors. I also manage all of our projects. We are responsible for the scientific databases and associated software at a medium-sized biotech company. In short, I have the sort of “demanding career” that you so often hear is incompatible with motherhood- and to make matters worse, I’m ambitious, and intend to go higher still in my career, albeit not necessarily right at this instant.
I was working as a contractor when my first child was born, and was able cut my hours to 35 per week for several months (with an accompanying cut in pay). But that job was evolving away from the work that I find most interesting, so I gave up my reduced hours and found a job at a biotech company, where I worked 40-45 hours per week. That company underwent downsizing about a year and a half ago, and I was laid off. After a few months of unemployment, I landed in the job I have now, where I still work 40-45 hours week. In many ways, this job is a step up from the previous one- I make more money and have more responsibility and power. And the previous job was a step up from the contractor position, since it gave me my first opportunity to directly run a group rather than just projects. More importantly to me, though, each job has continued to expand my knowledge and skills, which I believe will set me up for more career growth in the future.
So, now, on to the advice. I think the best thing to do is to tell you what I think I did right, where I think I got lucky, and what mindsets I think help me stay happy despite the fact that there are clearly aspects of my life that are made unnecessarily hard by our culture.
Things I Think I Did Right
Figured out how to be super productive in a 40ish hour work week before I had kids. This is huge. I get as much done in my 40-45 hour work week as a lot of people do in 50-55 hours. And the fact that I had a reputation for this before I had kids has probably contributed to the fact that no one thinks I’m scaling back now that the kids are here. I have an old post on my blog about when I discovered my work limit and figured out that I didn’t need to work crazy long hours. Married a man who is a true partner. Oh, we still squabble about chores occasionally, but that happens from a base assumption of equality, and that we’re both equally responsible for chores and parenting.
We bought a smaller, more centrally located house rather than a larger house in the outer suburbs, which cuts down the time we spend commuting.
Worked hard and developed a reputation for being a valuable employee before I got pregnant- this made it easier to negotiate the maternity leave I wanted (I took three months off, and worked 3 days a week for the fourth month) and other accommodations (I work a slightly shifted schedule).
Points on which I Got Lucky
My husband and I work in the same part of town, which makes it easier to share drop off and pick up duties. Unless I change jobs, this will change in about a year, since my company is moving, and I can already see that it will complicate logistics, at least until my youngest child is out of day care.
My parents are retired, and my mother is willing to fly over and provide back up child care when someone gets sick.
My chosen career works well with the pattern of putting in a little extra time after the kids are in bed
Mindsets for Happiness
I compare my current situation to real alternatives, not idealized impossibilities.
I don’t allow the media-fueled “mommy wars” to drag me into feeling guilty. I spend plenty of time with my kids, and I put plenty of effort into my career.
But wait! you say. You’ve heard that you can’t “have it all.” You’ve heard that combining career and motherhood is exhausting. You’ve heard that having kids will stall out your career.
Well, to all of that I say “maybe”. And to beware of people who are sloppy in assigning cause. Do I “have it all”? I don’t know, it depends on your definition of “it all.” I have what I want, for the most part. Am I tired sometimes? Hell, yes. I’m tired A LOT of the time. But when I look at why I’m tired, it is because my 2 year old likes to come join us in bed at 2 a.m. and my 5 year old has been waking up before 6 a.m. these days. It is because right now, both of my kids are in a phase where they want mommy all of the time. I don’t see how quitting my job would fix either of those things- in fact, it would make the second one more likely to drive me to distraction. I also wouldn’t trade my daughters for more sleep, so I figure this is an instance where I put up with something slightly suboptimal in my life because the beauty of the larger picture makes up for this little flaw. Has my career stalled out? Hell, no. I am not on some meteoric ride to the top- but I wouldn’t be on such a ride without kids, either. The fact of the matter is that the step from middle management (where I am now) to upper management (where I plan to be someday) takes time, regardless of what else is going on in your life. There are only so many positions at the top. Don’t be fooled by looking at high profile examples like Yahoo and Facebook into thinking that there are a bunch of bright young things running corporations these days. Even at start ups, experience counts, and the only way to get experience is to put in the time. This can look and feel like a slow down in your career progression, but I am not convinced that it really is.
So, if you’re in your 20s or 30s, looking ahead to your future, and worrying about combining parenthood with careers, my number one piece of advice is to stop worrying. Do what you want to do right now. If you care about having a career, chase your career. If you later have kids and decide you want to stay home with them, or drop back to part time, or whatever- you can do it then. Since you will have been living the life you wanted up until that point, you’ll have no regrets, right? If you later have kids and decide you want to keep working, you’ll be set up to do that. Having a strong career makes that easier, because you are better set up to negotiate for the accommodations you want and because having money means that you can “buy time.”
Trust yourself. You’re smart, and you’ll have a partner who views you as a true equal (because why would you marry someone who doesn’t?) so you’ll be able to figure out solutions to the logistical issues that will inevitably come up. Don’t believe the people who tell you that all working mothers are stressed out and miserable, and that it is “impossible” to do X, Y, or Z with kids. I’m really happy, and so are a lot of my friends. I’ve watched people combine a lot of different things with motherhood: demanding careers, serious hobbies, amazing international travel… With a little luck, some thoughtful choices, and the right mindset, you can have as much of “it all” as you are likely to want. The key is to figure out what you really want, and not let our cultural insecurity about motherhood scare you away from even trying.
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.
July 17, 2012
By the by, rather belatedly, I should note that if you haven’t noticed, we’ve been under construction hereabouts.
The wonderful @cthulhuchick has helped me move this blog from its old home at Blogger and the old URL at www.agaishanlife.blogspot.com to self-hosted WordPress and a brandspankin’ new URL: www.agaishanlife.com.
If I’m on your blogroll, I would greatly appreciate it if you’d be so kind as to update it. The transition wasn’t totally seamless, of course, and some people noticed a few oddities on the morning of, for which I apologize but by and large it was incredibly smooth for a transition that could have been rough’n’tumble.
If you notice anything else that is strange and remains unfixed, do feel free to drop a line here and let me know!
July 16, 2012
Glory be – the water company has finally launched a (gasp) website!!
We can view or pay our bills online by check or credit card, in real-time (!) though they may charge a fee for the privilege of paying the bill. They’re seriously considering charging for the privilege of AutoPay!
They’ve taken so long to implement these electronic services that they have managed to get on the carousel right when the rest of the world is starting to take a step backward to a time where using credit cards may cost money.
I was most displeased to read this article in the Wall Street Journal where, as a result of this settlement, merchants are now allowed to charge customers who use credit cards more as an offset to the interchange fees imposed by Visa and Mastercard. (Discover and American Express charge as well but weren’t part of the suit.)
Whether they will actually charge more remains to be seen – smaller merchants represented say they won’t lead the price increases, likely because they don’t want to anger their customers but I know some merchants already do offer tiered pricing with discounts for their cash customers and that’s probably the model that will continue.
That’s a huge pain, I hate carrying cash but if cards will cost more than I’m simply going to change how I pay for things.
In other news, we’ve closed one of PiC’s accounts with a credit union where they were charging him $8 a month for paperless statements. Unbelievable temerity. It saves paper, time and cost, and yet they’re charging serious money per month. Thank you and we’ll be taking our business elsewhere.
July 9, 2012
I’ve been, in the back of my mind, in this weird mental contortionist sort of way, staring at certain big areas of our required expenses to cut down drastically.
The cable, phone and internet package was finally pruned back. We’ve chucked Comcast’s outrageous packaging of 151 channels of which 115 are crap or can’t be understood linguistically, anthropologically or by any stretch of the rational mind, just so that we can watch a few of the shows we enjoy having on in the background.
Thanks again to patient stalking of Fatwallet, I’d found an AT&T dryloop deal for $20/month for high speed internet alone. A neighbor was kind enough to confirm that the service was decent and didn’t need a single frill or frippery like phone or anything else to work properly.
So that was progress.
The next best thing was to tackle the mortgage because rates are really low and if I wanted the biggest bang for our time, that right there would do it.
Not so much.
Of course I did some basic research into rates on offer. I was astounded at the lack of attractive refinance options.
I know it’s not 2004 anymore, but I expected to put down a 20% down payment which would bring the loan down a substantial amount and figured we could get:
1. A reputable lender
2. A rate under 3%
3. Zero points
4. A lower monthly payment
I may have been delusional. Bankrate’s possible offers were pretty bad. Mostly the loans were:
1. With odd lenders
2. Between high 2% to mid 3%
3. Either zero points up through 3.5 points
4. Up to $400 more per month
5. Up to $15,000 in closing costs
Then I ran the numbers on INGDirect. And Lo! The sun had come through the clouds.
1. Easy Orange – 5 Year Fixed
2. Rate: 2.625%
3. Zero points
4. $600 less monthly
5. Approximately $2,000 in closing costs
6. Option to renew in 5 years with same closing costs and same rate
I had all the initial information up front and it sounded good. It warned me about a Final Payment “larger than the rest”, amount unspecified, but that didn’t seem unusual. Like most loans, I expected that a last payment would be at least a few times larger than the rest.
Bear in mind that I was cramming this into one of our endless days and nights. Goes something like “drag out of bed, work a really long day, try to eat at least one meal, rely on PiC to take care of Doggle morning and night because I will pass out if I do one more thing that’s not strictly necessary to sustain life, fall into a coma.”
I completed the mortgage application over dinner one night.
The detail I missed, the big glaring flaw I overlooked, was that it was a 5 or 10 year fixed rate mortgage based on paying over 30 years principle and interest. Says right there on the page.
So as it turns out, the “Final Payment” was a Balloon Payment. They just chose to use different language and I didn’t twig to the obvious.
With the payments artificially strung out across the supposed 30 years, by the time we reached the end of five years, we’d effectively have made zero progress. It was completely counterproductive.
Yes, I absolutely assumed it was down to the lowered interest rate that we were getting everything we wanted: lower rate, lower payments, and paying off the whole kit and caboodle in a shorter time frame. Yes, I was insane with fatigue to have failed to see how the real math was going to play out.
Lament: Could they not have just used the phrase Balloon Payment like normal people?
What this all means now
Option 1: Take the loan but pay up to the same monthly amt we’ve been paying. Doesn’t reduce our monthly costs which was my real goal but gets us the lower rate. Very little progress and eats up a good portion of our cash but we’re doing something. And at the end of the five years, I’ll still need to refinance because who’s going to have another some hundreds of thousands to pay that off? I’m good but I’m not that good.
Option 2: Don’t take the loan and start brainstorming again. (No action)
Option 3: Don’t take the loan and just use my Auto-Payoff tactic of throwing large chunks of money at the debt, but that also doesn’t really get at my real goal either.
My short term goal is to reduce our total monthly cash flow; the long term goal is to pay off the mortgage. Going the Auto-Payoff route only deals with the long term and doesn’t do anything for the short-term. And may actually destabilize our short and medium term positions.
Honestly I’m rather undecided what to do just yet – other than to call and clarify a point or two about the loan.
