Archive for Apr 2007

Thu Apr 26 22:51:06 2007

I don't know what came over me, but I'm on facebook. Yes, between Blogger, flickr, facebook, and del.icio.us, I surely must be getting all Web 2.0 by now. I'm not sure how much I'm enjoying all this, though.

Blogger's sort of a semi-professional thing -- I'd never used commercial blogging software and wanted to see what it was all about. Tried WordPress, but decided Blogger worked better for what I wanted to do. Theoretically now, if anyone asks at work, I can admit to being all down with the bloggin' and not fear offending anyone with this here trash heap.

Flickr? Still quite excellent. My favoritest toy. I loves it. (And I'm getting better at photo taking, too).

Del.icio.us? Loves it almost as much. If I could figure out how to have two seperate del.icio.us-es (one for work and one for me) without exploding my brain, I would love it more.

Facebook? Eh. Facebook ... feels like a party I went to where I spent more time trying to have a good time than I actually did. I suspect it's going to be Orkut all over again.

Besides, I am too damned old for Facebook.




Mon Apr 23 23:41:37 2007

I don't know what happened to me at work today, but I was suddenly overtaken with a longing to be on the Blackpool Promenade with The Husband. Just walking along hand-in-hand with the sun beating down on us and our lips sticky with cream cake and kisses.

It was an actual physical yearning. My whole body said to get up and go. Right now. Just go. The patrons can look after themselves.

Which they can't, actually. So I closed my mind to hot summer sun and cream cakes and kisses and taught someone how to use Infotrac Onefile, instead.

Weird, just writing this knots me up with longing all over again. I can almost feel the sun on my head and taste the sugar on my lips.




Sun Apr 15 12:07:59 2007

According to the Husband, we have money in such quantities that, were he to lose his job tomorrow, we could live as we have been for a year with me as the sole wage earner. Obviously, we wouldn't be maintaining our accustomed lifestyle if he lost his job so the money could be stretched further .. blah .. blah ... blah ... we will still be doing better than a whole lot of people and we won't have to raid our retirement accounts.

That's the big thing, for me. Not touching our retirement money. I don't know what Social Security with be worth when we're 67 or what the economy will be like then, but I do know I'd rather be cash strapped now while we still have earning potential.

Anyway, I've joined the "Use What You Have" Flickr pool and I've been tossing all the catalogs in the recycling bin as they come in so, at least, I know where our money isn't going. It's not like quilting expenditures are that high, anyway, but it is one of the expenditures easiest cut. I have enough quilting stuff to keep me happy for months to come, anyway. Also, my quilting room is our guest room and, if I make stuff, than I don't have to figure out where to store materials when the summer guests start arriving.

Damn guests and their need to sleep on a bed.




Wed Apr 11 21:55:28 2007

Been skimming the household management/money saver books we have at work, because it seems our household funds might need to be managed better. However, these books annoy the shit out of me. I'm not a mom (stay at home or otherwise). Nor am I a hip singleton chix0r . I don't need to know how to balance my desire for money with my fierce love of clubbing or my maternal desire to make homemade fingerpaints. I am a child-free married woman who works full time while still assuming much of her traditional gender role. Advice I have received from these books which would be useful if I were someone else include:

Cut the Starbucks and the fast food to save tons of ca$h! I don't drink coffee. Ever. I don't do fast food. Fast food isn't nearly fast enough and I am more likely to get it down my front while driving than I would a banana or granola bar. Also, a banana or granola bar can be left in my car for whenever I have the hungries.

Pack your lunch! Really? Is this, perhaps, why I have a bento and haul it back and forth to work five days a week? Mind you, packing lunch is probably only cost effective if you eschew a lot of the convenience foods or buy them in bulk.

Use the library for all your media needs rather than renting or going to Borders! I work at a library and have always taken total advantage of my staff privs to get my little hands on everything I desire.

Eat out less! If, as the (unattributed¹) statistic claims, the average American family dines out about three times a week, then we are well below average. I'm not home for supper two nights a week, but we nearly always put food on the table four other nights. That's one night a week we might eat out. One.

Clip coupons and shop only on sale! I clip the bloody coupons when they're possibly useful, but frequently they aren't as they are for preposterous amounts (buy 10 and get a dollar off? wtf?) or products I don't use (unfoods/suspicious brands/weird flavors). The same goes for "sales."

Drop those memberships and subscriptions you don't use! Umm ... the only magazine I get is Cook's Illustrated and it is a gift that, I'm pretty sure, The Husband renewed for the next bazillion years. I don't belong to a gym -- I walk around the neighborhood when I need be exercizen -- and I dropped Weight Watchers Online in January (saving about $250/year), because I under-utilized it.

I think the most amusingly useless piece of advice I was given was to save the mesh bags onions come in and use them as pot scrubbers, rather than wasting money on real pot scrubbers.

No. No. And No. This is not the advice I need for household management or basic money saving. I need, I guess, something like So You've Got a Great Job Now, But It Looks Like Your Husband's Is Going Pear-Shaped And You're Wondering How to Save Some Extra Money, But In Ways That Won't Show Your Husband How Terrified You Are of Becoming The Breadwinner. If you find a book like that, tell me.

¹ I presume this statistic originated with the Bureau of Labor Statistics? According to the National Restaurant Assocation, "while restaurants continue to grow in popularity, the average American consumes 76 percent of meals at home." This means we eat 262 meals per year at restaurants? (3 meals a day times 7 days times 52 weeks is 1092 meals and 76% of 1092 is 830). Surely, that's more than three times a week? Do we not count breakfast? Am I doing the wrong math?




Mon Apr 02 00:17:10 2007

I know, I know, I hardly update this thing nowadays. I've been spending a lot of time with Flickr, you see, and have even joined up with groups like "Mr. Bento Porn" and "Placemats." Yes, there is a group for people who make placemats. Deal with it.

Indeed, I am so likin' teh Flickr that I am tempted to pony up money to go pro. At $24.95 it is significantly cheaper than a year of Weight Watchers ever was and, face it, way more fun. Unlimited sets ... unlimited uploads ... mmmm ...

I don't know that I'll be updating this here blog much at all for a while. Work is long and leaves me too tired to compose the posts I want to write. Work is long and leaves me fewer opportunities to give The Husband the attention he ought to get. Work is long and leaves me little time to do all the crap I used to slip in between my part time jobs. Work is, basically, long.

Fun, yes. Fulfilling, definitely. But still, long.




last updated: Sat 17 Nov 2007 08:19:03 AM EST