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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June 22, 2010
Yesterday’s experiment wasn’t the best pub transit experience ever. While I remember some stress-fraught days waiting for an employer-affiliated bus to show up, they were 90% on time coming and going, and with minor exceptions, the train was pretty solid as well.
Running late seems to be par for the course for Muni, Metro and their cousins. Option A sounded pretty solid on paper. In fact, there’s no good way to figure out which of the 4 possible stops on an intersection a given bus pulls into as a first time rider. In fact, there were multiple possible stops on one of the 4 ways, so I ran around like a nutjob trying to figure out where to be. Of course I missed my first shot out and was late for my first day in the new place. Not a huge deal, but mildly frustrating. The butt burner was the fact that people requested stops EVERY block. Add on another ten minutes to a joltingly long ride.
Going home was no picnic, either. I realized that my two-stops per hour train route was really difficult to match with the bus routes/schedule. Coming into work using BART per Option B will call for matching yet another set of schedules to the BART/Muni pairing: that of the free shuttle. There’s a very conveniently located free shuttle that’ll take you to the nearby BART stations so I could avoid paying for parking since it goes the opposite direction of my current carpool. The problem is that there is one schedule, period. That shuttle would dictate which BART and then which Muni I could take afterward, no compromises.
*sigh*
And as it turns out, taking on the commute like this isn’t just time, of course it costs a lot extra as well. My costs are doubling, sometimes more than that, depending on whether I have to drive and pay for parking that day. All told, the cost of going to work now ranges from $8.50 to $12 per day!
While I’d factored about $100 into the transportation budget, that pretty much blows it out of the water. At this rate, between starting up investing again and this chunk, I’ve used up any slack in the budget found when cutting back on spending. It almost might be worth paying the equivalent cost in parking and saving myself the run/wait/run/wait aspect of the commute.
June 21, 2010
Somehow I’d almost forgotten that starting today, my office will no longer be a convenient, single train ride location. It’s not that I’d forgotten about the move, just the consequences of it such as having a new address, new business cards, and horror of horrors: having to navigate a new public transit route.
There are two options: taking the old route plus a bus (adding another 20-30 minutes)
or
taking a new route via BART and subway (almost the same total travel time).
I’m trying the first option first today since I still have Caltrain passes to use up and should only pay an extra $2 for the bus (and $3 today since I’m driving myself to the station). Sometime during the week I’ll start testing the BART routes. BART plus subway is projected to cost $4.50 each way and I might be able to take a free shuttle to and from the station depending on their and my hours of operation.
Much as I’m tempted to gripe about the doubled commute time, it’s still shorter than my former commute of an hour and twenty minutes. I do wish that San Francisco had better public transit, though, the systems are all really pricey, don’t really seem to work together all that well and the fare and schedule information aren’t clear at all. 511.org was not all it’s been touted to be.
Here’s hoping there’ll be at least one bank and one library branch within a really short walking distance.
The great thing is I happen to be moving practically next door to the temporary workplace of one of my high school friends. We might even get to see each other!
June 20, 2010
Weekend “Best Of” List
Best line: “I need to jump at least one curb.” (driving a 2-person surrey holding 3 people)
Best laugh: Watching as my friend decided to “rodeo” the wooden horse mounted on a spring, and sl-l-l-ooowwwwwww-ly tilt and fall off the side. She was parallel to the ground, hanging on for dear life, until she lost her grip and *thumped* gently down that last inch.
Best food: Lunch at a completely empty sushi restaurant. Delicious food, great portions and 100% service from the only person working ($75).
or wait, maybe it was my asparagus risotto with Creole shrimp with roasted potatoes and onions next to a green salad! That was pretty darn good and only $15 for three meals.
Best pain: Sore bums after hitting the race slides built for kids half our size. Best 5 out of 7 for the privilege of paying for groceries.
Best view: Staring off the coast toward Sausalito and the GG Bridge to watch two intrepid swimmers making their way out to sea.
Best adventure: Renting a surrey for an hour ($20), offroading said surrey, crashing downhill at unsafe speeds. Taking the surrey off the proscribed paths to the Academy of Sciences, discovering free Ben and Jerry’s, chatting with strangers, petted three dogs, having our picture taken by the B&J employee because we were “cute,” and getting free flash drives for taking pictures with their cows. Oh, and getting my pants stuck to the surrey while sitting on the front basket bars.
Best new food discovery: Cinderella’s Bakery has authentic Russian food served by what I’m convinced are authentic Russian People. They were excellent and so was the food ($32).
Best laugh at other people (not my friends): Wildlife volunteers at a preserve were treed by a baby skunk.
Best realization: I think I’m ready to settle down a bit. Not stop traveling and become a total hermit, but settle down and accept this as my home for now. And that means I. Want. A. DOG. (Most particularly mine, but if she can’t tolerate this weather, I won’t do it to her.) Visiting the humane society reminded me of how much I miss having animals in my life and even if I can’t have one dog to bring home now, I’d like to start volunteering.
Also, the idea of marriage (and maybe even a teeny-tiny wedding of some sort) doesn’t send me into dry heaves or a panic attack. Huh.
It wasn’t the cheapest weekend but mostly for my friends. I fail at beating these friends to the check most times because they’re bigger than me and paying any meal checks has become a contact sport. I did manage to pay for most of the groceries, only just, but they got me back by sending a $100 SpaFinder gift certificate. *eyeroll* What the heck, people? I’m hosting you! Let me do my thing! But I made them delicious breakfasts and one dinner, that’ll show them! Right? Right?
There were some excellent photos but not on my camera. Must finagle.
June 18, 2010
Sometimes I see through an opening, but I don’t fit through it. #ow
Sometimes I do math really really wrong and get the right answer. #hm
Sometimes I do math really really right and get the wrong answer. #hmmm
Sometimes I forget what I’m going to say when I find the person I need to say it to. #eh?
Sometimes I would just quit and go home if it weren’t for Ctrl-Z. #sigh
Sometimes I forget to get off the train. (The one that started it all.) #!!!
Happy Friday!
June 15, 2010
If it’s true that my brother may actually leave the house, there are a lot of decisions to be made. So many that my brain resolutely walls off that side of reality because it knows it can’t face up to the facts yet. Blogging it is my way of thwarting my own brain.
I need to find new housing for my parents, and determine if my dog can live with me. Poor pup’s old and her knees are possibly as bad as mine are! Not to mention that the entire weather system is totally different from home – I worry it would affect her as seriously as it’s done me.
My furniture and other belongings left at the house have to be moved with them or to me. Insurances will have to change, movers have to be called, tons of *stuff* has to be recycled or disposed of.
An outline’s all I can handle right now. That and starting to figure out how much to save and how to earn even more income so I can afford to make it happen. Maybe I’ll vision board it like FB’s recommending for travel. Heck, why not?
June 14, 2010
If I could carry a tune, I’d be singing the praises of this, the Corningware Simply Lite 3-quart dish and cover.
I alluded to my medical/physical condition in this post, but didn’t elaborate because I don’t want this to become a whine-fest. It might be helpful to know that fatigue, joint pain, muscle pain are all major players and are all chronic, now they’ve figured into my life for over a dozen years.
It’s become pretty severe. I can’t hold up a pot half filled with water with one hand, lift two five pound roasting birds out of the oven. Heck, some days, opening the beknighted refrigerator doors causes pain to spike into my shoulder. My cake and cupcake bake-a-thons are definitely a thing of the past. And this from the girl who once prided herself on doing anything her big brother could do, physically.
The biggest immediate effect it has on my financial life is aside from popping way more pain meds than I’m happy about, now that I’m cooking and cleaning every day, in other words, really running my own household, I need everything to be as light, durable and low maintenance as possible. It’s amazing how easily I forget my limits and cook too long, wash too many dishes during the course of cooking or clean-up and cause excruciating, emanating pain that doesn’t subside for hours. Days, even.
I refuse to let this prevent me from making my lasagna!
The hunt was on for the durable cookware, piece by piece, without breaking the bank or straining my joints. On that odd shopping trip to Target where I didn’t find much of anything else, we discovered Corningware’s Simply Lite line. Every other dish was already too heavy for me to handle, empty. By darn if the casserole dish in the size I wanted didn’t feel like holding a stack of paper plates. Perfect!
Unfortunately, Target wanted $27.99 for it. I couldn’t bring myself to shell out that much cash, so I thought: Macy’s sales+ coupons + gift card? Except a quick iPhone search listed the sale price as $36.95. Even worse. The lightbulb finally clicked on and I realized that if it was available on Amazon, I might find a better price, use my Swagbucks earned Amazon GCs, AND get the goods delivered within a couple days. Win, win, win, and WIN. The last win being getting what I want.
I’m sharing the link in case anyone might want to experience the wonder for themselves.
June 11, 2010
When do you think about your shiny resume and sparkling accomplishments? About as often as you dust your high school or college diploma, right? Which is to say: never, unless you need it?
If you’re nodding right now, consider yourself my special guest audience: Your resume needs constant weeding and tending, watering and attention just like your savings.
The time to save, and the time to update your resume, is before you need it.
I’m three months into the new job and it’s been a blur of activity, new concepts, crazy challenges, and learning to speak a whole different set of jargon. It’s going to take another three months to start to feel settled in and leave behind the trauma, trials and travails. In that time, however, it’s entirely possible that I will have forgotten important details about my work life because they’ve become old hat or because my memory’s crap and painful memories are best forgotten. Six months after that, my accomplishments become even more hazy and so very “yeah .. I did … something.”
Of course I think that I won’t forget the really significant things but how long do you suppose your memory will hold out? Heck, I kick butt at my job but get so caught up that I forget what day it is all the time.
I’m no fool. I’m writing down my job summary on the resume now, and keeping a spreadsheet of accomplishment by the month to boot. Those will also serve as my talking points when I sit down for a six-month review and present my case for a raise. In twelve months, I’ll have the data ready to rinse and repeat.
In however many months after that, when I’m ready to move on, the routinely updated resume won’t be more than a few months behind my actual work and won’t reek of last job staleness. And if it comes to a downturn or a layoff or any other depressing means of termination? I won’t be writing my resume in the trough of depression – that never makes for a good sell.
Like an emergency fund, a stellar resume cannot be built overnight – you’ve got to put the time and effort in earning the nuggets of glory to populate your list of accomplishments and you’ve also got to record them. Neglect one or the other, and your final withdrawal will seem pretty paltry at the close of any job.