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
If you’re not in the mood for something super savory, or don’t have time to cook up a full meal, I’ve put together a quick and easy recipe that only takes about twenty minutes from concept to sitting down at the table. No photos this time because the pasta never makes it to the table in time for a photo shoot!
Pick your pasta: I love mezze penne and I love al dente: 7-9 minutes. 1/2 c sweet peas: 3 minutes or less in the microwave. I use frozen peas with pearl onions. The steam in a bag type is a total cheat, but they still taste quite good. 1/2 tomato, diced 2 handfuls of finely shredded cheese per bowl. Olive oil
After cooking the pasta, toss with some olive oil, the peas, and half the tomatoes. While the pasta’s still hot, start adding the shredded cheese so that it gets webby, but add with a light hand. I’m normally the kind to pile on cheese like there’s no tomorrow but this dish is best with just enough cheese to bind the pasta lightly. Top with the remaining diced tomatoes and serve.
I’m pretty sure this pasta would be great with asparagus as well, but I almost always have peas on hand and asparagus has been selling for $3/lb these days.
Next time, I’ll finely dice mozzarella with fresh basil to top the pasta as a caprese salad garnish.
Con was pretty fab and so were the geek-celeb sightings. The regular celeb sightings weren’t nearly so interesting; I didn’t even recognize Michael Cera, Brandon Routh or the other Scott Pilgrim stars. That might be more of a commentary on my social awareness than anything to do with them, though. 😉
One of my favorite things about Con is the opportunity to see and support some of my favorite artists and performers like Felicia Day and The Guild. If you’ve never seen The Guild before, you really ought to. Even PiC who is by no means geeky (yeah, how did that happen?) enjoys watching the web series Felicia Day created and wrote. I love the series because it’s so delightfully geeky, the characters are hilariously flawed and frankly, Felicia Day is just adorable.
You should definitely watch the music videos they’ve created in addition to the episodes.
Katamari Accounting: I think it’s time to roll as many accounts into one as possible.
1. The Retirement Funds are now spawning a 4th account due to the rollover I initiated a couple days ago. Let’s make that one Roth and one “massive” IRA.
2. The e-fund is spread across CDs, and savings accounts in two different banks. I’d like to have two big honkin’ CDs: One is already a $15K 5-year term CD, the other might well encompass the rest of the cash as well as the soon-to-mature Prosperish Loan.
3. Pin Money, Moving and School just can’t make up their minds what they really want to be so they should just become Parental Medical Funds.
Financial Planning: Once I reorganize my finances, I need to help a friend structure some investments from an inheritance. We’re talking multiples of what I have personally, but not so much more I couldn’t create a cohesive plan.
Progress: It’s been a niggling thing in the back of my head that I haven’t been paying my fair share OR saving. This month’s increase, even after I paid a great deal of credit card bills off, is both surprising and puzzling. I’ve now redirected a small chunk of the direct deposit, previously all toward the expense account, to actual savings starting this month. Which brings me to ….
Urges and Splurges: In the spirit of absolute honesty, seeing my number go up when I don’t have a specific account that looks like it’s going begging makes me want want want. But ……..
Spending: As usual, binging and purging. By which I mean, I don’t get nice new clothes, underthings, hair ties, new phone, new anything that’s not strictly necessary so that I can spend several thousand dollars on my parents. They have both woefully neglected their dental care and I had no idea how bad it was until recently. I knew my dad needed dentures soon but just found out that many of his teeth are bad and so are Mom’s. I estimate that the costs will start around $10,000 for basic care.
Freelancing: If I want any extras in my life, I’m gonna have to work for it! Time to go hunting for more work.
Reality Check: Beyond that, in less than five years, I’m sure that Mom will need more assistance than Dad can provide. Heck, in two years, she could require a full scale assisted living situation and I don’t have anything near enough saved for that. Looking above, a whole $107K looks like a really tidy start until you realize that I may soon have to spend $60K/year on assisted living for my parent(s). Then I’m nowhere near ready for the future.
I’m sitting here wondering if this feeling of paddling like hell to Keep Up is just a phase or if this is Life. And I’m pretty sure it’s just Life. It’s just easy to forget the important things, sometimes, and sometimes they’re all crowding out everything else.
UP: Had a great time reconnecting with family and friends during Comic Con. Missed the opportunity to meet up with fellow SD bloggers because we were so busy. Next year, I’m going to take a bit more time off so it’s a little more relaxed. I think I stayed within budget, roughly.
DOWN: For the past weeks, we’ve been worrying for our dear friends’ baby who has a very serious diagnosis. It was touch and go whether the baby could breathe without assistance and every single “normal” step of taking care of a baby is slow, painful and requires expert medical aid.
UP: Though stressful & at the last minute, I finally got my paperwork out to roll over some last remaining retirement dollars from a previous employer into a new account at Vanguard. It’s a bit of a pain – the amount is just a bit less than $3000, and they were giving me guff about rolling over into a previously employer-sponsored plan so maybe I’ll roll the now-three employer sponsored plans into a single IRA.
DOWN: We launched a major change at work this week and while it went much more smoothly than expected, it still bred a TON of extra work. Thusly, I won’t have time to do my monthly snapshot for today. And I’ll be working all weekend, I think.
UP: I decided that I wanted the free match at work, FWIW and got the paperwork in. Also added a DD peeling off a few hundred dollars into savings, anticipating stabilization of my spending. Or forcing a stabilization of spending.
There’s more but I gotta git! I wish you all a very lovely Saturday and let’s catch up!
That’s the rather steep fee I’ve been paying since the summer of 2009 (last year). The reason I took that pricing was because I got sick of dealing with price quotes during a pretty stressful layoff anticipation and it was so much easier to just extend my existing policy as a rollover plan.
Now that I’ve got an employer sponsored policy again, I’m wondering if it’s worth carrying both policies for a combined near $500K in coverage. I don’t want to become reliant on being employed to be insured – that’s why I was scrambling last year for an independent policy. But is it worth carrying this much more expensive policy for yet another 3 months at $150 for the privilege of being lazy?
I’m barely mentally unpacked from San Diego Comic Con, and I’m looking up another itinerary to go back down to SoCal. I haven’t been *home* since May but this is another quick round trip. Possibly even a same day trip.
In a couple months, we’ll be memorializing the passing of my dear friend’s beloved father. We lost him exactly midway between my birthday and his – we were four days apart and he always joked that I was four days older than him. Growing up, I hated my birthdays because they were always strangely lonely, now I don’t know how to feel about it.
Every year that passes and takes with it another loved one makes every memory and tradition that much more poignant.
I’m considering using my Southwest award tickets for this trip. Between the recent vacation spending, the purchase of tickets for next year’s vacation, the upcoming dental expenses for both my parents, it behooves me to stop bleeding cash.
I’m not jumping into any fires. I might have moved in but I haven’t completely lost my mind. We’re not sharing money at this point, but we’re sharing some expenses and combining our money philosophies to create something we can both be happy with.
Most importantly – you wouldn’t realize this because you don’t know him so it’s only fair to point it out – he wouldn’t ask me to take on any more, and especially not his mortgage in truth.
He was joking about that and I understood that. I only parsed out what I could shoulder to illustrate how he needs to be prepared if he were to quit his job. And he may well be, but he wouldn’t foolishly up and walk out either.
CaitlinO pointed out that if I’m not splitting all the bills down the middle, he’s subsidizing my lifestyle/savings/family responsibilities. True. And I’m not thrilled with that but the truth is, what I bring to the table is a lot of financial knowledge and a willingness to dig in to any financial situation and improve it. He points out time and again that what I bring to the table is every bit as valuable as the mortgage he pays because I’ll take care of our long term financial health.
I love that my blog friends are so smart, y’all see some part of the truth of what I was sharing:
Frugal Zeitgeist is absolutely right: “the best thing you could possibly do for both of you is be his work cheerleader and number one fan while working together to figure out a backup plan that doesn’t involve bankrupting you. With your good sense as a guide, it sounds like between the two of you, you’ll find a way.”
That’s exactly what I was doing. Using myself as an example, I was sharing with him the economic breakdown of what we’d need to be able to do in a dire situation.
SingleMa understood exactly the spirit of my comment: “It wasn’t a commitment I chose to take on but our relationship is and this is part of the game.”
That made me smile. 🙂 I hope everything works out with your SO’s situation.
Thank you, SingleMa, for seeing the spirit of my post.
Sense made me laugh: also, does he have an e-fund of his own to fall back on? that might make the situation easier to handle, knowing that you’re combining your Forces. You know, ‘Power of The E-Funds Unite!’ and you could get shiny rings and place them together whenever you needed to draw on your new improved dual powers. 🙂
I love this. We totally need Power Fund Rings. He doesn’t have what I consider a good e-fund for his obligations but this situation has enlightened him more to the need. Slowly but surely, I’m turning a spender into less of a spender?
Crystalpointed out the very thing I don’t want to face, what could happen if I didn’t share with him my accountanty brain: Life works out most of the time, but I hope PiC doesn’t quit until he finds something better. Toxic sucks, but so will the fights that start when you start feeling used…or at least, that’s what happened to us.
Funny About Money: If he’s that unhappy with the job, I hope he’s looking elsewhere. It’s a lot easier to get a job when you’ve got a job.
If he’s not at risk of being fired, it might be good for him to consider what my tax lawyer once said when I wanted nothing more than to get away from the Great Desert University: “A sh*tty job is better than no job.”
Not at risk, no, but there’s absolutely every reason for him to find a better place before he becomes so unhappy there IS a risk.
