April 19, 2010
It never rains, but it pours?
On the heels of one issue comes another: Mom’s in the hospital with pneumonia.
Dad tells me not to worry too much. What’s too much? Because it’s entirely possible I’m already there.
family
Farewell to the best boy in the world
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
Read MoreCaltrain’s so much better than BART
It just seems better.
Days gone by, I liked BART just fine because it does the job but in comparison to Caltrain it’s kind of grubby and a kick in the wallet.
Caltrain’s cheaper for my purposes because they offer a variety of ticket options. Daily or round trips are most costly; the 8-trip and monthly passes bring the daily round trip cost down by 75 cents or $2, respectively. BART has no such options. BART offers a piddling discount off the total price when you buy “high-value” tickets which are just cash-value tickets. The cost of the trips remain the same.
I’ve paid $5 for a one-day round trip ticket, or $17 for an 8-trip pass, that gets me to walking distance of my destination on Caltrain. I would pay $3.25 each way on BART and have to take a bus at both ends for about $2 each trip.
Sadly, while I still haven’t decided about driving into the city for the longer commute in a few months, my only transit option will soon be BART because Caltrain doesn’t go my way.
April 18, 2010
Oh to be young and innocent again
I miss having (the illusion of) a functional family.
My sibling brought home a puppy because he thought he could emotionally manipulate me into letting him keep it when I got back. You know, the sibling with the other dog we have to feed half the time because he can’t afford to. After a few days of romping, the dog gets sick and surprise, she has parvo! I think we know what that means by now.
After two days of sick puppy, he tries to get my dad to call me to help him. And then he calls me himself because my dad won’t do it.
His own dog isn’t vaccinated against parvo! And my dog is old enough that though she’s always been vaccinated, she could be susceptible if it’s truly virulent. There’s no way of knowing. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. He’s an idiot. Now that poor sick puppy has been all over my house shedding parvovirus and he wants me to tell him what to do. And she’s in *really* bad shape.
To recap: he brings home a puppy he is incapable to caring for, like a child, and runs to me to fix it after he’s screwed up.
I just wanted to scream.
I did rip his head off. He and his little friends decided to bring her home, so it’s their responsibility. It broke my heart to say it, but I made it clear that if they can’t (he can’t) afford to take proper care of her knowing that there’s no guarantee she’ll recover, then the only humane thing to do is to put her down because she’s just going to keep getting worse. I think one of them is willing to take financial responsibility whether or not she’s really able to afford it so I hope for the best for the pup.
This won’t be the last time this happens. Obviously the threat of my coming home isn’t enough and I can’t keep dealing with this idiocy cropping up because I’m not there, so I’ve got to start making plans to bring my dog up here with me, and finding a good small place for my parents to live. It’s not going to be easy, it will be expensive, but it has to be done.
April 17, 2010
Super Saturday
My first batch of homemade mango salsa, isn’t it pretty? I should have taken a picture of it when I jarred it up in the old salsa jar. That was gorgeous.
I find myself thinking about Versus Matches this morning. As in, “who would win between” or “which is better”? Also about my feels-broken shoulder (it’s not) and how that’s gonna derail some of my super Saturday plans.
Cookery
Extra marinate the BBQ pork [Done!] and cook it this afternoon (+4 hours of marinate time, 1 hr to cook)
Make chicken stock (30 mins prep, 4-6 hours of simmering)
Defrost and bake chicken thighs for next week’s dinners
Prepare ingredients for hot pot dinner (not sure it’s worth the clean-up after, not with this shoulder)
Cleanery
2 loads of laundry
Workery
Freelance gig (3 hours)
Off the cuff writing (1+ hour)
Budgetary
Bekins coughed up a refund check, to be deposited.
UI still owes me a check for the remaining weeks of March, resend claim form. [Done!]
Throwdown Topics, cast your votes (or add your own)!
Roma tomatoes /// Hothouse tomatoes?
100% whole wheat /// Double Fiber bread?
Reavers /// Two By Two, Hands of Blue?
Bank-run Bill Pay /// Account aggregator bill pay /// Service provider Bill Pay?
Headphones /// Ear buds?
Paying less & ironing /// Paying more for no-iron?
Firefox /// Chrome /// Opera?
The mango salsa recipe:
1 ripe mango, diced
2 ripe tomatoes, diced (I use Roma)
1/4 finely diced red onions (use a rougher chop if your onions aren’t lethally spicy)
1/4 diced cucumber
4 cloves garlic, finely diced
Juice of 3 limes; I’m convinced limes aren’t meant to give up their juice
dash of salt
The first batch was handmixed/tossed because I didn’t want to crush everything, but the ingredients are pretty sturdy. Mixing with a spoon is just fine!
It seems to last at least a week in the fridge, I made a second batch and it’s lasting longer and still tastes fresh.
April 16, 2010
Personal finance wrecks gaming
It only took, oh, 15 years and 7 months to get myself back into gaming. Not only could I not justify the cost of a new game system, I then couldn’t bring myself to spend money on games.
Thanks to generous early adopter friends, I have an awesome new-to-me Nintendo DS, and San Diego mom gave me games for Christmas. But it turns out that my latest pasttime, being a PF blogger, has ruined me for gaming.
Y’see, the game I’m playing is Ninjatown which is a hilariously cute game based on Shawnimals. It’s a simple tower defense game: you versus a bunch of baddies. The Goal: don’t let them cross the bridge/eat the bridge/otherwise touch the bridge. Defense is accomplished by spending Ninja Cookies to buy and build Ninja Huts which each contain two defenders of varying strengths and skills who deploy to fight the invading hordes.
Personal finance makes me fail on three levels….
Spending
You start every level with a set number of cookies. You have to spend them to build your defenses. As you play through the level, each enemy is worth another 5 or so cookies, and as you earn them you should be spending them to build more, upgrade more, and generally make your defenses more awesome. My first dozen rounds I kept dying because I wanted to save my cookies, not spend them!
No Saving
You can’t save your cookies from level to level, either! They all have to be spent within that level to win because it mocks you mercilessly if you lose. And you get graded, on top of the mockery, so not only do you get scored on how many cookies you earned, you’re judged by how well you used those cookies but not how many cookies you saved! What kind of lesson is that to be teaching kids these days???
Depreciation/resale
You can actually sell your huts and towers if you want to …… at a loss. Which is, in this economy, totally true to life, but it also means that I refuse to sell anything, ever. Even if I placed it poorly, even if my shoulder spazzed out and put it completely in the wrong place and it’s totally ruined my strategy, I refuse to sell it at a loss. Because in real life, I’m a buy and hold investor. If I bought real estate as an investment, I would expect to be in it for the long term and get a renter in there to defray costs, etc. Selling at a loss would be my last resort. In a ten minute game, you don’t have time to buy and hold or reach the last resort.
Clearly I have trouble with suspending disbelief to immerse myself in video games, but at least that means I bring one important skill to the table: TENACITY. I don’t care how many times I get the “You seem to be having trouble defending this area [snerk], would you like to play in Easy Mode [snicker]?”
NO. I will not wuss out and play Easy Mode. I’m defending Ninjatown in Regular Mode because there IS no Easy Mode in real life!
April 15, 2010
Payroll: The twice-monthly system
As a supervisor one of the responsibilities I’ve got on my plate is approving the staff timesheets. When I was a non-exempt (hourly) employee, I was always on a biweekly system which meant you were paid the week following the pay period closing date. If your work week ended on Friday the ninth, that’s when your pay period ended. Your timesheets were due the next day, and you were paid the following week.
My employees are turning in timesheets in the middle of their pay period. For example, they submit on the 8th for days 1st-15th. As hourly workers, how does that make sense? If they’re out sick or have to take some time off unexpectedly during the latter half of that pay period and the timesheets are already signed, approved and submitted for processing, then you can’t very well charge their sick or vacation time appropriately, can you?
As far as I can recall, California labor law is extremely strict about accurate reporting and timesheets so I’m a little surprised that this is the payroll method used.
Does anyone have experience with the twice monthly method? Am I missing something here?
April 14, 2010
Benefits Enrollment
Oh, the excitement of having benefits again!! I’m already a forms + applications geek, but it’s been 9 long months since I had the privilege of drawing a paycheck from whence benefits sprang.
Health
There are about 15 different plans administered by 4 different health care providers. I took the path of least resistance and re-upped with Kaiser for now because I’ve heard good things (via Carrie Actually) and it was the cheapest premium with the most coverage. I’ve never had a problem staying in-network and I hope the healthcare providers in this area are good enough that trend continues.
Dental
I’ll go with the ubiquitous provider here, and this coverage is 100%. I’ll only have a minimal deductible, and the usual $1500 annual benefits max.
Vision
Surprisingly, they’ve got vision covered. I haven’t had a chance to evaluate the plan closely but my vision needs tend to be simple. Thanks to a long-term treatment, I have to have an eye exam every year which I should get anyway. Also, covered 100%.
Life Insurance
The usual 2x salary benefit is covered, and I opted for an additional $200k which will cost me $9/month. I can now cancel my outside coverage that costs quite a bit more per month ($50).
Short term/Long Term Disability
Covered 100%.
Flexible Spending Account
I opted in. Of course!
Commuter Benefits
Also opting in though I’ve never used it before. You can use it for both parking and transit. Even though I have the car, I’m going to take public transit when I can. Wageworks is sassing me, though, so it’ll probably take until next month to become effective.
My monthly cost should be around $250 – mostly pretax. A pretty amazing deal, considering the economy.