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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October 3, 2010
This entire month has been so busy as to be unreal, so it stands to reason that I’m having trouble believing the net worth is real.
Every single weekend was booked: hosting friends, driving back to LA, traveling to Oregon, hosting half a dozen houseguests for days. Every weekday was booked: I started an intensive pain care program, had a birthday, and worked every weekday.
The numbers aren’t fudged, but I have felt a poor steward of my money for not quite knowing where every penny is or has gone. The last notation on my cashflow Excel sheet is September 15th, for heaven’s sake; it doesn’t make sense that it’s gone up without close shepherding. In any case, a fraction was thanks to automated savings and contributions, the rest is due to the vagaries of the market and interest payments. Next month, the phrase “keeping bills as low as possible” will be an honest factor in that. We’ve been feeding about ten extra mouths this month, I’d just be lying.
To kill that feeling of unsteadiness, I paid all my bills a few days ago, took a deep breath and I’m doing some therapeutic cleaning today to clear my head and make a fresh start. Let’s take on October!
September 27, 2010
As requested by Stacking Pennies when I first mentioned flying Allegiant, my opinion now that I’ve flown my entire round trip: You get what you pay for, but only if you pay very little.
Pay more than $30 each way and you will probably be livid at what you overpaid for.
The MD-80s are creaky, ancient jobs that more often than not spill water on people towards the back (polled frequent fliers: this is true in their experience); the engines are so loud that you might suffer temporary hearing loss if you’re seated too close to them; they charge for everything like the right to choose your seat, even the “standard” free beverage so don’t expect a free glass of water, you cannot check in beforehand, if you miss your flight you have to wait a week for the next one or buy a new ticket on another airline.
It’s as barebones as you can imagine. More. I don’t know if you’re charged to use the lavatory but I’ve started to expect so.
So yes, if you snagged one of those magic $10 tickets, you should put up with all of that without complaint but if you ended up paying nearly standard fare before opting for any amenities, I can only imagine you’d be a tad grumpy. *hand raised* Other than that, we saved the cost of a rental, though marginally offset by the cost of public transit going to and from the Oakland airport on this end, and maybe a few dollars more than that for a standard fare into a more metro city.
Still, it got us into the destination with a minimum of fuss for our hosts and given the fact that they put us up in, while not decadent, very well fed fashion, I’m glad it was very easy for them to pick and drop us off. So there’s that.
{————Carnivals————}
My thanks …..
to Well Heeled for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and including my post on the costs of PiC’s Marathon entry win.
September 21, 2010
It wasn’t
meant to be a vacation. I had, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to go on this trip with PiC out of a sense that I should go with him, because he really wanted me to come along. He would have been fine with or without me, really, but it was a nice idea and so it was penned into the planner as another chore of sorts to be gotten over with. And the beginnings were not, one would say, auspicious.
Behold the paper towels that did not hold back the flood overhead five minutes into my flight after a mind-numbing two hour delay and numerous other WTHeckeries that punctuated our transit out of California
After a nice settling in, the rest of the weekend was incredible. Restful, full of good food, good sleep, nice people, exploring, and good laughs.
It’s an incredibly runner friendly town we visited, and I felt like we were in the country though we honestly weren’t. We didn’t manage to hike because it rained most of the time, but we still managed a lovely 3 mile walk around a park and visited with the world’s wriggliest puppy, had hot chocolate and coffee at the Wandering Goat Coffee House, drinks at the local posh restaurant where they acknowledged their local foragers (apologies for the photo quality but it was just so cute):
By the by, my French 75 cocktail? Knocked me on my tail! I’m not much of a drinker to begin with, but 1/2 way through on an empty stomach, I realized, oh, I’m going to be that girl tonight. I like to pretend that I wasn’t, but I probably was.
While this wasn’t an inexpensive trip, it wasn’t too pricey either. We ate in most meals, with the exception of one lunch and one very nice dinner for four. PiC and I footed the bill for that dinner because we didn’t bring a hosting gift, and our host friends cooked simple but alarmingly* good food the rest of our visit.
My biggest disappointment was forgetting to take food pictures – everything was so fresh and delicious we immediately devoured it, every time.
Mini-Photo Gallery
The deer that earned me the moniker “Elmira”: Just because I dashed out the door yelling “I’m gonna pet the deer!” nearly before getting clothes on … And no, the deer didn’t wait around for me to pet them.
Gone walkies …. over a river
My first wild-blackberrying on the side of a road
Late bloomers
September 20, 2010
I’m not one for trite phrases, mouthed because they feel good in the air, but pop hollow in the heart. If you haven’t got something real to say, I’m ok with sitting around in silence. As evidenced by my friend’s husband and I sitting here companionably, tap tap tapping away on our computers. This weekend, we spent a lot of time talking about life and work situations and I got to thinking about the few times that people have repeated catchphrases that, in my mind, were incredibly empowering for being all of less than ten words.
“Don’t let nobody steal your joy today.” – my favorite bus driver
No matter how horrible the environment I was about to walk into was, there was always a moment of Zen when I disembarked the bus with those words at my back. Years ago, I was having an incredibly, unbelievably stressful time and each morning, it was nauseatingly hard to convince myself to keep walking into the mess that work had become. Hearing those words reminded me that no matter how put upon, no matter how targeted, victimized, or on the verge of quitting the higher-ups wanted me to feel, I could choose to keep control over my own feelings and my own joy.
There was still good in the world, I was still strong, and I would still find it. Thanks, bus driver.
“Make your next move your best move.” – @thefitlounge
Moving to a new city, being on my own (except with PiC) for the first time in my life, leaving my family and worrying about them from afar, and starting a new challenging job all at once nearly six months ago, well ….. mornings were never my best time of day. Mornings became a trial of “what have I done,” “don’t make me go to work,” and “I don’t wanna.” Until I popped onto Twitter for a few minutes to get my bleary eyes tracking and saw East Coasties and their morning greetings.
Single Ma’s Good MornTings! Ruth’s #wmata updates, getting ready in the morning updates, they helped get my brain to turn on and start ticking, but BK and her morning exhortation was the turning point. That put a smile on my face, a boot in my pants and got me going because I suddenly felt like I could DO this thing. I look for that tweet every morning. Thanks, BK.
September 16, 2010
This time we’re flying, thank goodness. Not that our relationship didn’t weather the last two drives to Southern California, it’s just that PiC insists on doing the majority or all of the driving and that wipes him out spectacularly.
This is our first time trying a mega-discount airline (Allegiant Air) and I’ve got to say, I’m a little hesitant about this. The “administrative fees” tacked onto the ticket had me seeing red when he first booked the tickets, so with that and the one flight per day frequency, I can’t say the deal was good enough to stoke my enthusiasm. While I’m usually a no-frills traveler, this feels closer to riding the rails without any siding on the car. We’re giving it a shot, a review will follow after the weekend if I’m so motivated by joy or rage.
Arrival at Oakland Airport doesn’t do much for the wary, adventuring spirit either. Between the 1960s decor of Terminal 1, the nearly barren dining landscape and dim lighting reflecting off the extra shiny metal strips that sporadically covered an otherwise exposed ceiling strung with festive … wiring… well, I’m just glad that I’m here with PiC, a working laptop, phone and plenty of electricity to charge up both pieces of tech. Especially since PiC’s left to go wander about. Perhaps he’ll discover something strange and wonderful and bring it back for me to pet.
(Maybe the free wifi will let me load Twitter so I can chitter chatter with my friendsy strangers online instead of the strangers I’m stuck at the gate with during this two hour minimum delay?)
We’re visiting some friends this weekend, and we’ve got something lined up almost every weekend from here through the end of the year, whether I know what it is yet or not. I asked PiC if we could simply have one month when we didn’t travel and he just laughed at me. *sigh* Not this year.
At least we’ll have racked up 4 free roundtrip flights on Southwest after Chicago between flying and credit card rewards. That’s gotta count for something.
September 14, 2010
Oh so very randomly, except for the bit where he entered on purpose, PiC won a giveaway for a free entry to the Chicago Marathon. I’m told that registration runs a bit over $100, and it’s one of the races he’s always wanted to run, so I was willing to support his desire to go. In spirit. To complicate matters, though, because our friends have moved out of the Chicago area, he wouldn’t have anyone to stay with so he wanted to make a weekend of it with me. Oh, the nerve of him, wanting to spend quality time together! 😉
Financially, I was hesitant. We have very different saving and spending styles, so if the Travel Fund doesn’t support it, I’m usually less in favor of taking a trip. He, on the other hand, regularly saves a big chunk every month sight unseen and says that’s good enough – the rest is for spending.
Leave it to a giveaway prize to reveal our money philosophies, yet again!
My compromise was this: Given the potential cost of a marathon weekend out of town, I’d be willing to consider going if we could keep it under a certain amount. In the meantime, however, I would check hotel points and other airline points/miles/reward options to see if we could creatively fund the trip. Between a Southwest reward flight and Hilton points, I was seeing the budget drop to less than $400 for transportation. Clearly, I was Olly-olly Optimism.
Alas, Southwest’s Standard rewards were already all booked out, leaving me with only the Freedom reward. For those who aren’t familiar, that’d call for using two 1-way tickets to equal an unrestricted free 1-way flight. Not exactly worth it in this situation.
A sale came up and PiC jumped on it during the work day, but I’d rather he didn’t yet tell me how much we blew my second estimate out of the water (I’m guessing airfare was about $900 for both tickets, *cringe*); meanwhile I’ve finally put my hard-earned Hilton points to good use and booked two nights for free at a downtown Hilton hotel. I’ve been using the Hilton Platinum American Express for six years, charging only post office, cell phone and restaurant bills for a 5x point return to earn enough points for two nights in a decent hotel. Call that dedication to the financial cause! 🙂
It’s a bit stressful doing all this last minute planning for a trip in early October, and all the while wondering if he’s going to be physically prepared for the race because I can’t carry a full grown man to the airport on my back if it comes to that.
We set up the reservations so that I could back out up to the week before without any real financial repercussion and he wouldn’t lose the hotel room as it’s booked in both our names. Well worth the 10 minute phone call to the Hilton reservations line!
Speaking of giveaways, here’s hoping my luck is as good as PiC’s but costs us less money in the following!
September 11, 2010
Ok – though I’d promised Week of the Geek, I ran out of time because some candidate interviews crept up on me. My boss has been incredibly busy and so I was scrambling to rearrange the whole interviewing schedule on the fly while trying to hide the fact so the candidate didn’t think I and we were complete idiots. We’re not, we’re decent people, honest, but it’s been chaotic because 80% of the company is undergoing a systems change in a week. (*gulp*)
It turns out that it didn’t matter so very much. While I usually choose not to talk about my work here on the blog, I felt like so much of what I learned this week during the interview process was worth a mention.
Do you remember when “they”say: be nice to the secretary? That’s all very well and good, but I would like to extend that to a General Corollary: be polite to everyone. In my company, the semi-crazy looking dude in a weird t-shirt is the CEO. Some days. Other days, he’s pretty spiffy. But Upper Management does not feel compelled to wear their titles so no matter who you meet, no matter how dressed up or dressed down they are, if you don’t know their names and who they are, it’s not safe to assume they’re a nobody and treat them accordingly.
LISTEN. And Do Your Research.
Candidate No-Way never did either.
We’re a small enough company that my name is not repeated so a quick check of the company website would have given any candidate a good idea of who I was. CNW both ignored my self-introduction as a member of the interviewing panel and didn’t have any idea what I did in the company. Had CNW bothered to do any background research or listened to my explanation of the structure that she requested, CNW would have realized that her prospective position would be partially managed by … me.
Never mind that, though, I enjoy observing people’s behavior when they think I’m either monolingual, a teenage kid with no role, or an assistant. CNW was pushy, aggressive and ran right over me in conversation when given the opportunity.
I manage a large group that would be two tiers below this one, and there’s no way I’d recommend a candidate who’d treat me in that aggressive manner without knowing who I am during an interview; how do you suppose she’d treat my staff?
That was just my first impression.
My ruminations later covered our actual interview over lunch and her multiple gaffes there, again very much variations on the above themes:
A) Despite having interviewed with the hiring manager and her prospective boss, she couldn’t remember his name;
B) Despite having interviewed with my boss, and her boss’s boss, she couldn’t remember either of their names;
C) Despite having been told more than once who reported to whom, she asked me if the BiggestBoss reported to her prospective boss;
D) She mistook my boss for the office manager after spending an hour with him.
E) She took the lunch interview far too casually, acting like we were just friends on a lunch date
I have the feeling, after she dropped mentions of job offers in the East Bay and the considerations of San Diego that she didn’t actually want this job much anyway. After all, she couldn’t be bothered to do much preparation so I’m sure it won’t break her heart that we’re extending an offer to the other candidate instead.
But if you actually care about landing a decent job with a company you think “is incredibly cool with a great mission,” I cannot recommend any of the above techniques.
Hat-tip to Alison Green at Ask A Manager for articulating so much good hiring advice that CNW’s smooth attempts to hide her poor candidacy through constant, dominant conversation was obviously a snow job even to this less-experienced interviewer. She does boot camps!
