Okay, not really. Just toned down a bit. Maybe more than I would like.
I'll get back to that later.
In the last post I mentioned being worried about my husband's job. Really worried. But now all seems back to normal, or at least, as normal as it has been for the past few months. The middle management of the old company went to a meeting with the new company, and we all sort of thought that these managers would be told that most of them would no longer be needed. But instead they went to this meeting and mostly heard "welcome to the family" type stuff. The week after that my husband went to a meeting of the new company, which was run by the managers of the old company, and he didn't meet anyone from the new company that wasn't already working for the old one. So he signed the papers and such, and then went back to work as usual the next day.
We're still being told that nothing will change until 2012. We believe that, as there is only a few weeks left of 2011.
There is now a rumour that major changes are coming in March or April. We will see.
Anyway, while I was getting out cookbooks wondering what I could make with beans and rice and such as that, everything seems to be back to normal, and we have mostly returned to our previous spending habits.
While I was in the stage of really worrying about money, I asked to be less involved in gift exchanges than I was last year. This seemed to upset my mom a bit, but everyone else seemed okay with it.
In fact, my friends went so far as to say that we shouldn't exchange gifts at all, which was not what I was trying to do. I wanted to limit the gifts to small things, hopefully small things that I had bought earlier. Or maybe I would knit them all hats, or make them soap or baked goods. The person I thought would be most in favor of the soap or baked goods plan wasn't there for the discussion. The person who is most into the whole Christmas exchange thing wasn't there either. That left a couple who only wants to exchange cards, a guy who said he was going to be out of town the weekend we normally exchange gifts, and a girl who says she'd rather do the cards this year just because she's running out of ideas of what to get people.
So the gift exchange that I usually enjoy the most has become a card exchange, which wasn't what I meant to do at all. I hope that the other guy speaks up and says that he's already got something for me, so I would at least exchange gifts with one of them.
I've said that I would not do the charity thing this year. And I probably won't, even if the money situation is better. I'm just not that into it.
And that leaves my family, and my mom doesn't seem as upset as she did. We usually draw names and get one person something that's about thirty dollars. And then we also bring a five dollar gift for something that is usually called the Chinese gift exchange. (That's when someone opens a gift, and then maybe someone else "steals" it, and then the first person opens another gift.) The "stealing" bit is a lot of fun, but there are only six of us. My brother and I think that instead of drawing names for the thirty dollar gifts, we should each bring two of the five dollar gifts for the "stealing" bit. So that would save us all about twenty-five dollars and be more fun anyway. My brother thinks that we are all adults, and we don't really need the thirty dollars gifts, cause if those are things we really want we've probably already got them.
I think that he's right.
Anyway, when Black Friday came, I didn't have as much money as I would have liked to spend, but I didn't think that I had as much to buy either. I was only spending twenty or so on my family, and almost none on my friends, and none on the charity.
Still, for the past few years, I've been going to Walmart early on Black Friday to buy jeans (two or three three for myself), a small appliance (for myself), and several DVDs (some for the charity, some for friends and family, and some for myself). Except for the DVDs, there usually isn't that much on my Christmas list that is worth getting out at four or five in the morning for. But I've long had the tradition of buying stuff I needed for myself, like underwear and a crock pot.
Except for the toys, I wonder if anyone is actually buying the Black Friday stuff for other people. I mean, who gives away giant TVs for Christmas? And, if your family has enough money to give away giant TVs, is saving a hundred dollars or so worth standing in that really long line, possibly all night?
I do not have enough money for a giant TV, and on Black Friday I always wait at least an hour for the really crazy people to get done shopping. But if I ever did have the money for a giant TV and cared enough about it to wait in that long line to get it, the giant TV is going in my living room, and it's going to stay in my living room. I'm certainly not buying three or four TVs to give to friends and family.
Anyway, this year, I went to Walmart at five or so in the morning and found a mostly empty parking lot. I didn't need a small appliance, I couldn't find the jeans I wanted, so that only left looking through the DVDs.
I wish I'd had the money. I hadn't seen anything that interesting in the ad, but once I got there I found complete seasons of Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, Fringe, and The Big Bang Theory. If I had bought everything I wanted, that would have been about two hundred dollars, and that's before buying extras for friends. I didn't have two hundred dollars. I ended up spending about twenty, and I haven't yet decided if I will keep them or give them away.
Next I stood in line at Half Price Books, not quite an hour early, so that I could get a five dollar gift card and have a chance at getting $100. I didn't get the $100, but with the $5 and a coupon I got one of the Chinese exchange gifts.
Next, I bought calendars with coupons in them, a few dollar DVDs at Best Buy, and then headed to another Walmart. I found the jeans there and bought two. Again I looked at the DVDs, but didn't buy more. I had a bit of money left, but I just couldn't decide how to spend it. Which season of Supernatural is the best? Season two maybe? Is that better than any seasons of Stargate Atlantis? Or Fringe? I just couldn't choose.
I think that might be it for the Christmas shopping, except for one or two more Chinese exchange gifts, a gift card, some candy and other food, and maybe some yarn if I knit a few more things. I think I'm done.
This year is probably going to be dull.
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Gardening and other stuff
Note to self, yesterday was annoying, in spite of finding plenty of on sale chocolate still at Target.
Well, a while back I had a cough and was a bit sick for a little while, but nothing major. Still, the cough has not quite gone away, and it is starting to cause me some problems. So yesterday I had planned to dig a big hole in the ground in the front yard, cause I'm thinking that anything major done in the front yard is best done on the weekends, and hopefully finished on the same weekend, as this would prevent any complaints to the office from being noticed until after the work was done. But I got up yesterday and realized that I just wasn't up to it. So I drove off to run a few errands instead.
I have just this week found my missing debit card. Or rather, my husband just found it and gave it to me. The way I remember it is this: I noticed that the envelope had come in the mail, and perhaps I had even seen the card itself when the envelope was opened, but I never actually had the card in my possession, and I certainly never had it in my wallet or went out and bought anything with it. My husband would then complain whenever I would ask him to get money out of the ATM for me, as I should be able to do it myself, as he had given me a card. And I'm sure that he meant to give me a card, and I think maybe he even said something like the card came in the mail and it's on the desk, but he did not ever actually put the card in my hands, and I didn't have the card. So after months of this, he goes to the bank and says something like please give my wife a new card, and they say something like we can't give you a card for your wife (even though it is the same joint account that he already has a card for) your wife will have to come in and get it herself. And somehow this doesn't get done right away, as I would think that we would both have to go to the bank at the same time to do this, as it would speed things along if one of us had a card so that they didn't spend a lot of time looking for the information and so forth. And then before we went to do that he found the card stuck some odd place in the desk where I would never have looked for it or anything else.
So now that I had my debit card, I went to get clearance Easter candy and some sand and other things that I needed for the garden, and as long as I was at the Home Depot and have money I might as well buy a few more stepping stones. And I think that I should just do that whenever I happen to be out and have money, buy a few more stepping stones or a few more cinder blocks or whatever I feel up to dealing with at the time.
It is annoying that in the garden a.) I seem to be running out of usable space while at the same time b.) there still seems to be way too much grass to deal with. The cheapest way to totally cover up the grass is cement, which is a hassle. Stone or blocks are easier and usually look better to begin with, but then later grass grows through and or they look uneven. To prevent grass growing through and to make the ground nice and level, you are supposed to spread sand under and then put more sand on top so that it settles into the gaps between. But that makes it more expensive, and more work, and if you really want it to look nice you buy this really super expensive special sand that blocks water, which wouldn't be a good thing at all in a garden and around trees and such. So once in a great while I'll deal with the cement (when it's not right under a tree or someplace that needs water), but most of the time I'll probably be using blocks, and the cheapest blocks are the ones that are 4 x 8 inches, and not very attractive.
Anyway, I'm running out of space, sort of. There are raised beds that are not permanent, and in fact some still have plastic under them, which will not do at all. Of the permanent beds I have dug, one is 3 x 12 feet and currently has tomatoes, peppers, and squash (not yet producing anything). And it will also have cucumbers, but right now I'm having a problem with the trellis failing over and I've removed it until I can figure out how to prevent that. On one side of that bed is the asparagus. I'm always kicking myself for putting the asparagus there, right in the middle of the yard, as the asparagus plants are not that attractive and tend to fall over a bit, and I think that I need a fence around it. This year I lengthened the bed, because I found purple asparagus at Walmart. On one half of the new asparagus area all eight plants have emerged, but on the other half I only see three, and those three are very small and struggling. I had even worried that the whole package was dead, but then seeing three emerge I hoped it would all be okay. I haven't given up yet, and I'm thinking that the other side just didn't get a long enough soak before I planted them, so maybe a lot of water would help. Anyway, I haven't yet given up on the purple asparagus, I'm just saying that half of the new area is disappointing and might have to be finished next year, and might even have to be finished with regular green asparagus.
Anyway, with the new asparagus, the asparagus bed is now four feet wide and twelve feet long. On the other side of the asparagus bed is an herb bed. Last year it had some herbs and a lot of cucumbers, but the trellis there was old and part of it rusted and fell apart. After having to remove the trellis, there didn't seem to be any reason for the cucumbers to be there, so I added more herbs and one of the artichokes. Oregano has taken over much of that bed, and I'm hoping that it and the thyme will cover all the spaces between the piquin peppers and the artichoke and the other herbs. And just past the herb I have dug a space for a Navaho thornless blackberry. I have to dig a bit more for it to make that area twelve feet long to match the asparagus and the bed on the other side of the asparagus, but I plan to do that soon enough.
On the other side of the herb bed is the most recent permanent bed, and I guess that I will call this the short bed, as it is only about four feet by nine or ten feet. And while I suppose I could dig more and make this one a bit longer to match the others, I'm not planning to, as I want a wider walking space on that side, so that one doesn't have to make turns and noticeably walk around things getting from the front gate to the back gate. And then there's going to be room for a bed between that walking space and the fence, which this year will probably be a temporary bed with pumpkins. The short bed has popcorn, soybeans, spaghetti squash, another artichoke, a few peppers, and a few herbs, so nothing producing yet.
And that's about it for the vegetables. You might have noticed all the vegetables that I didn't mention, like lettuce, spinach, and other salad greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, radishes, beets, carrots, potatoes, regular corn, green beans, peas, melons, etc.... I don't seem to have room for those at the moment. I know that most people who garden have a little of all those things in half of the space I mentioned, but they probably don't have a quarter of that space taken up by asparagus, another quarter taken up by herbs, they tend to grow regular corn instead of popcorn, and they grow peas and some other kind of beans rather than soybeans, and they don't have near as many pepper plants as I do. So it isn't entirely a problem of space, just that I've done different things with it than most people.
I know I've made it sound like my backyard is about 15 or 20 x 12. It isn't, it's bigger than that, though off the top of my head I'm not sure how big it is. There are paths between the beds that are about two feet wide, and there's a bit of space closer to the house and there's space under trees and such. There are six more beds (four of them still need serious work), but these are smaller (three are 4 x4, two are about 3x5, and one is about 4x4) and mostly have flowers in them. There is room for one more 4x4, which will probably have herbs in it, and that's nearly all the room I have left that isn't either reserved for a fruit tree, or too close to the house or else in too much shade to be useful. And these areas either have grass growing in them now or else will have soon if I don't do something about it, and all the areas in between other areas also either have grass or need something to prevent grass. And in these areas I need to either a.) do a lot of work and/or b. ) spend money on cement or pebbles or blocks or sand or something.
So at the same time, my yard seems too big to deal with and too small to have the plants I want. When I am digging and weeding and buying blocks it seems too big, and when I'm planting and harvesting it seems too small.
It is cold today. Not really cold, but it feels cold, and it is cold for May (only a high of sixty something degrees) and it is cloudy and dark but not yet really raining, and it is windy. I turned on the heater in the car this morning, and I still feel cold most places other than the house because I'd put away most of my sweaters and can't easily get to the stuff I wish I had put on. Other than being cold it's been a pretty good day, as I found some pumpkin seeds I'd been looking for, had a nice lunch, and watched the Adjustment Bureau.
Well, a while back I had a cough and was a bit sick for a little while, but nothing major. Still, the cough has not quite gone away, and it is starting to cause me some problems. So yesterday I had planned to dig a big hole in the ground in the front yard, cause I'm thinking that anything major done in the front yard is best done on the weekends, and hopefully finished on the same weekend, as this would prevent any complaints to the office from being noticed until after the work was done. But I got up yesterday and realized that I just wasn't up to it. So I drove off to run a few errands instead.
I have just this week found my missing debit card. Or rather, my husband just found it and gave it to me. The way I remember it is this: I noticed that the envelope had come in the mail, and perhaps I had even seen the card itself when the envelope was opened, but I never actually had the card in my possession, and I certainly never had it in my wallet or went out and bought anything with it. My husband would then complain whenever I would ask him to get money out of the ATM for me, as I should be able to do it myself, as he had given me a card. And I'm sure that he meant to give me a card, and I think maybe he even said something like the card came in the mail and it's on the desk, but he did not ever actually put the card in my hands, and I didn't have the card. So after months of this, he goes to the bank and says something like please give my wife a new card, and they say something like we can't give you a card for your wife (even though it is the same joint account that he already has a card for) your wife will have to come in and get it herself. And somehow this doesn't get done right away, as I would think that we would both have to go to the bank at the same time to do this, as it would speed things along if one of us had a card so that they didn't spend a lot of time looking for the information and so forth. And then before we went to do that he found the card stuck some odd place in the desk where I would never have looked for it or anything else.
So now that I had my debit card, I went to get clearance Easter candy and some sand and other things that I needed for the garden, and as long as I was at the Home Depot and have money I might as well buy a few more stepping stones. And I think that I should just do that whenever I happen to be out and have money, buy a few more stepping stones or a few more cinder blocks or whatever I feel up to dealing with at the time.
It is annoying that in the garden a.) I seem to be running out of usable space while at the same time b.) there still seems to be way too much grass to deal with. The cheapest way to totally cover up the grass is cement, which is a hassle. Stone or blocks are easier and usually look better to begin with, but then later grass grows through and or they look uneven. To prevent grass growing through and to make the ground nice and level, you are supposed to spread sand under and then put more sand on top so that it settles into the gaps between. But that makes it more expensive, and more work, and if you really want it to look nice you buy this really super expensive special sand that blocks water, which wouldn't be a good thing at all in a garden and around trees and such. So once in a great while I'll deal with the cement (when it's not right under a tree or someplace that needs water), but most of the time I'll probably be using blocks, and the cheapest blocks are the ones that are 4 x 8 inches, and not very attractive.
Anyway, I'm running out of space, sort of. There are raised beds that are not permanent, and in fact some still have plastic under them, which will not do at all. Of the permanent beds I have dug, one is 3 x 12 feet and currently has tomatoes, peppers, and squash (not yet producing anything). And it will also have cucumbers, but right now I'm having a problem with the trellis failing over and I've removed it until I can figure out how to prevent that. On one side of that bed is the asparagus. I'm always kicking myself for putting the asparagus there, right in the middle of the yard, as the asparagus plants are not that attractive and tend to fall over a bit, and I think that I need a fence around it. This year I lengthened the bed, because I found purple asparagus at Walmart. On one half of the new asparagus area all eight plants have emerged, but on the other half I only see three, and those three are very small and struggling. I had even worried that the whole package was dead, but then seeing three emerge I hoped it would all be okay. I haven't given up yet, and I'm thinking that the other side just didn't get a long enough soak before I planted them, so maybe a lot of water would help. Anyway, I haven't yet given up on the purple asparagus, I'm just saying that half of the new area is disappointing and might have to be finished next year, and might even have to be finished with regular green asparagus.
Anyway, with the new asparagus, the asparagus bed is now four feet wide and twelve feet long. On the other side of the asparagus bed is an herb bed. Last year it had some herbs and a lot of cucumbers, but the trellis there was old and part of it rusted and fell apart. After having to remove the trellis, there didn't seem to be any reason for the cucumbers to be there, so I added more herbs and one of the artichokes. Oregano has taken over much of that bed, and I'm hoping that it and the thyme will cover all the spaces between the piquin peppers and the artichoke and the other herbs. And just past the herb I have dug a space for a Navaho thornless blackberry. I have to dig a bit more for it to make that area twelve feet long to match the asparagus and the bed on the other side of the asparagus, but I plan to do that soon enough.
On the other side of the herb bed is the most recent permanent bed, and I guess that I will call this the short bed, as it is only about four feet by nine or ten feet. And while I suppose I could dig more and make this one a bit longer to match the others, I'm not planning to, as I want a wider walking space on that side, so that one doesn't have to make turns and noticeably walk around things getting from the front gate to the back gate. And then there's going to be room for a bed between that walking space and the fence, which this year will probably be a temporary bed with pumpkins. The short bed has popcorn, soybeans, spaghetti squash, another artichoke, a few peppers, and a few herbs, so nothing producing yet.
And that's about it for the vegetables. You might have noticed all the vegetables that I didn't mention, like lettuce, spinach, and other salad greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, radishes, beets, carrots, potatoes, regular corn, green beans, peas, melons, etc.... I don't seem to have room for those at the moment. I know that most people who garden have a little of all those things in half of the space I mentioned, but they probably don't have a quarter of that space taken up by asparagus, another quarter taken up by herbs, they tend to grow regular corn instead of popcorn, and they grow peas and some other kind of beans rather than soybeans, and they don't have near as many pepper plants as I do. So it isn't entirely a problem of space, just that I've done different things with it than most people.
I know I've made it sound like my backyard is about 15 or 20 x 12. It isn't, it's bigger than that, though off the top of my head I'm not sure how big it is. There are paths between the beds that are about two feet wide, and there's a bit of space closer to the house and there's space under trees and such. There are six more beds (four of them still need serious work), but these are smaller (three are 4 x4, two are about 3x5, and one is about 4x4) and mostly have flowers in them. There is room for one more 4x4, which will probably have herbs in it, and that's nearly all the room I have left that isn't either reserved for a fruit tree, or too close to the house or else in too much shade to be useful. And these areas either have grass growing in them now or else will have soon if I don't do something about it, and all the areas in between other areas also either have grass or need something to prevent grass. And in these areas I need to either a.) do a lot of work and/or b. ) spend money on cement or pebbles or blocks or sand or something.
So at the same time, my yard seems too big to deal with and too small to have the plants I want. When I am digging and weeding and buying blocks it seems too big, and when I'm planting and harvesting it seems too small.
It is cold today. Not really cold, but it feels cold, and it is cold for May (only a high of sixty something degrees) and it is cloudy and dark but not yet really raining, and it is windy. I turned on the heater in the car this morning, and I still feel cold most places other than the house because I'd put away most of my sweaters and can't easily get to the stuff I wish I had put on. Other than being cold it's been a pretty good day, as I found some pumpkin seeds I'd been looking for, had a nice lunch, and watched the Adjustment Bureau.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Don't go to All-Con this weekend
Unless, you have already bought the $40+ ticket, or you were planning to buy the three-day ticket, or you don't mind paying the $40+ for just one or two days. Apparently, this year you can't buy a one-day ticket.
Attempts to find out about one-day ticket prices were at first ignored. Some people persisted, and were finally told that there would be no one-day tickets, and that if you just wanted to come for the one day you would still have to pay $40+ for the whole weekend.
The last people to inquire about one-day tickets reminded All-Con that some of the people wanting one-day tickets could only get one day off from work or other responsibilities, and if one-day tickets were not offered people would stay home rather than purchase $40+ tickets, an amount unfair and charging for events that they mostly would not be attending.
These people were told that "the higher demand put upon us by the people who support us the least (one day)that was the basis for the decision to do away with the discounted tickets."
I'm not sure how to interpret that.
For one thing, I've never thought of the one-day ticket as a discount. You go for one day, you pay for one day, and that's fair enough. That isn't a discount. You go for three days, and if you pay for a weekend pass ahead of time, the three-day pass is usually less than the prices of the individual three days added together. So buying the three-day pass is the discount. Like, maybe a Friday ticket is $10, a Saturday ticket is $20, and a Sunday ticket is $20, but a weekend pass is $40, making either Friday free after paying for Saturday and Sunday, or Sunday half-price after paying for Friday and Saturday.
I'm not sure about this "higher demand" part either. If it's just that they sell more one-day tickets, maybe they should be nicer to people buying one-day tickets instead of acting like they are some sort of burden. If a bunch of people were buying $20 tickets, and you do away with the $20 tickets, that's a lot of twenty dollar bills that will be spent somewhere else. And I can't quite picture what extra work the one-day customer is causing for the convention, unless maybe the customer actually had a good time and decided to come back the next day and pay for another ticket, and the cashier had to do the same job twice for that customer instead of just once for the customer buying a three-day pass.
If read another way, it just sounds like the one-day customer is just somehow more trouble to have at the convention. Like, people who just come for one day to get an autograph and buy a couple of things somehow make trouble for the convention and require more security than the people who stay out partying and such for three days.
Anyway, not much of it makes any sense. Several of us have just decided not to go. A few people are going cause they already bought tickets, but probably wouldn't have bought tickets if they had realized their friends were going to be treated like this. And then of course they will not get good word of mouth advertising, cause people this year either won't go or will go and get really mad cause either they were overcharged or they didn't get to meet with friends who had planned to buy one-day tickets. Bad experience this year means less people next year.
It's sad. I only went the one year, for the one day. I thought it was a good convention, and I missed some things that I would have liked on Friday, and I wished that I'd bought the three day ticket instead. I was planning to go the next year, but life happened, and I didn't go the next year, and so forth. I could have gone this year, probably just Saturday, but I currently have a limit of about $20 for such things, and so I am not going, and my $20 will be spent at another convention later that doesn't sound as interesting.
If All-Con hadn't made this stupid decision, they might have sold some one-day tickets to people who liked the convention enough to make plans to come back. But people who make stupid decisions are usually quite attached to them and usually keep them. So I don't expect that our complaints will do any good.
Next year, when the club is voting to move things around to accommodate All-Con, I'll vote that we not move anything, and that we might not want to bother with it at all.
Attempts to find out about one-day ticket prices were at first ignored. Some people persisted, and were finally told that there would be no one-day tickets, and that if you just wanted to come for the one day you would still have to pay $40+ for the whole weekend.
The last people to inquire about one-day tickets reminded All-Con that some of the people wanting one-day tickets could only get one day off from work or other responsibilities, and if one-day tickets were not offered people would stay home rather than purchase $40+ tickets, an amount unfair and charging for events that they mostly would not be attending.
These people were told that "the higher demand put upon us by the people who support us the least (one day)that was the basis for the decision to do away with the discounted tickets."
I'm not sure how to interpret that.
For one thing, I've never thought of the one-day ticket as a discount. You go for one day, you pay for one day, and that's fair enough. That isn't a discount. You go for three days, and if you pay for a weekend pass ahead of time, the three-day pass is usually less than the prices of the individual three days added together. So buying the three-day pass is the discount. Like, maybe a Friday ticket is $10, a Saturday ticket is $20, and a Sunday ticket is $20, but a weekend pass is $40, making either Friday free after paying for Saturday and Sunday, or Sunday half-price after paying for Friday and Saturday.
I'm not sure about this "higher demand" part either. If it's just that they sell more one-day tickets, maybe they should be nicer to people buying one-day tickets instead of acting like they are some sort of burden. If a bunch of people were buying $20 tickets, and you do away with the $20 tickets, that's a lot of twenty dollar bills that will be spent somewhere else. And I can't quite picture what extra work the one-day customer is causing for the convention, unless maybe the customer actually had a good time and decided to come back the next day and pay for another ticket, and the cashier had to do the same job twice for that customer instead of just once for the customer buying a three-day pass.
If read another way, it just sounds like the one-day customer is just somehow more trouble to have at the convention. Like, people who just come for one day to get an autograph and buy a couple of things somehow make trouble for the convention and require more security than the people who stay out partying and such for three days.
Anyway, not much of it makes any sense. Several of us have just decided not to go. A few people are going cause they already bought tickets, but probably wouldn't have bought tickets if they had realized their friends were going to be treated like this. And then of course they will not get good word of mouth advertising, cause people this year either won't go or will go and get really mad cause either they were overcharged or they didn't get to meet with friends who had planned to buy one-day tickets. Bad experience this year means less people next year.
It's sad. I only went the one year, for the one day. I thought it was a good convention, and I missed some things that I would have liked on Friday, and I wished that I'd bought the three day ticket instead. I was planning to go the next year, but life happened, and I didn't go the next year, and so forth. I could have gone this year, probably just Saturday, but I currently have a limit of about $20 for such things, and so I am not going, and my $20 will be spent at another convention later that doesn't sound as interesting.
If All-Con hadn't made this stupid decision, they might have sold some one-day tickets to people who liked the convention enough to make plans to come back. But people who make stupid decisions are usually quite attached to them and usually keep them. So I don't expect that our complaints will do any good.
Next year, when the club is voting to move things around to accommodate All-Con, I'll vote that we not move anything, and that we might not want to bother with it at all.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Christmas is two weeks away
Okay, so if you've seen a calender recently, you know that Christmas isn't really two weeks away. It just suddenly seems that way to me.
My family has decided to cut back a bit on Christmas, so that we mainly buy one nice thing for one person, after we draw names out of a hat. And then we also buy a smaller gift, but we don't know who will get the smaller gift. So the spending limit with tax and everything ends up being just a bit under forty dollars per person, and should only require the one shopping trip. And all that is just fine, and I have most of a month to get that done.
It's the rest of it that I'm unsure about, and a lot of it I need to get done in the next two weeks.
Okay, so there's a group of friends who usually try to do things together two or three times a month. Due to not having a job and the price of gas and some other things, I rarely make it more than once a month now. Once in a great while, the pilot has us over for dinner. And, usually on the third Saturday of December, we exchange gifts. And this is in addition to the official gift exchange at the club, which is also on the that same Saturday.
It probably started when I opened my big mouth and asked the pilot if he was having one of his dinners in November, after I was looking at something and noticed that he'd had a dinner at that time last year. Now, I was not meaning to invite myself over for dinner, just that I was trying to schedule a few things, and I wanted to know if there was a dinner in November that I needed to to keep a certain date open for and not go out of town that week and such. So what he said was that he had meant to have a dinner in November, but this year it just wasn't going to work out, and he wondered if we wouldn't keeping open a Saturday in December for that instead. So now dinner with my friends is scheduled for the second Saturday in December at the pilot's house. So I asked if we should exchange gifts then instead of on the third Saturday like we usually did. At the time I did not have a preference, I just wanted to know.
At that point someone mentioned something about exchanging cards instead of gifts, cause some of us are short on cash, and most of us really don't want to spend that much time in the mall anyway. We had discussed doing this last year too, but we didn't really discuss it early enough for me, and I was already knitting things for two of them. And I didn't want to just exchange cards after I was already either buying or knitting things for some of them. And then I wasn't sure if I should just give the gifts I already had planned and give the others just cards. That didn't seem fair at all. So we ended up having the regular gift exchange and decided to talk about just exchanging cards the next year.
And really, I don't exchange cards. This comes from a time when I really had no money, and I watched other people spend more on the cards than I had in my whole Christmas budget. So with me you either get a gift, or you don't get anything. Even when I didn't have money I gave candy or small fruit baskets or candles or some homemade thing rather than exchanging cards. This means that I have a small list of people, and that there are a lot of people giving me cards when I don't give them anything, but I just can't spend time or effort or money on cards.
Okay, so G brought up the whole gift or card discussion, and everyone else jumped in, and for the most part people said cards were better. The exception being Miss Allergies, cause she picked out what she wanted from me last year, and so I put a certain scarf aside for her. R and J want to exchange cards, K also voted for cards, and the pilot said something about making cards, and G is in favor of either cards or baked goods.
I like baked goods.
Okay, so having heard that we would be mostly exchanging either cards or baked goods with most of these people on the third Saturday (except for Miss Allergies' gift which is already done), I mostly put the idea out of my mind. While I probably won't do cards, I had plenty of time to do small gifts or figure out baked goods or whatever else I might do.
The pilot is now saying that he has cards, but he also found a few gifts....
Okay, so I've been wanting to make him a certain scarf, and I will try again this year, though it might not work out. Also I've heard that K is now leaning towards gift exchange. That's fine, though at the moment I'm not sure what I would get him, as I gave him the handmade scarf last year and a different scarf another year, and even if I had the time he doesn't need yet another scarf. So far as I know, R and J still want to exchange cards, so I will get them something small or baked goods, and I will get something for G that would either be baked goods or something like that.
And then after looking at the schedule, there is something going on with R and J on the third Saturday, which makes me think that we'll end up exchanging gifts or cards or whatever on the second Saturday.
And this means that for the most part, I have only two weeks to do the Christmas stuff, whatever that will be.
For the official gift exchange, I still have until the third Saturday, or I can even decide not to participate. And for my family I still have until Christmas Eve.
Except that last year there was also this extended family Christmas party, and while I haven't heard that it is planned again this year, I was thinking that I should make a couple more scarves, just in case. And also I would like to make another scarf for this charity thing, which would also be due on the third Saturday.
While it slowly dawns on me that I have a lot to do in the next two or three weeks, my husband mentions going out of town. I hadn't really planned on it. In fact, I hadn't really thought about it at all. He's going to the middle of nowhere a bit north of here for two or three days, then has a day off on which he will have to move to another place also a bit north of here for another three or four days. If I had planned on it, I would have had knitting and such ready to go, but I hadn't planned on it. Middle of nowhere and all of that, and I didn't think that there was anything for us to do there. Only he found some Christmas light display between the two places, and he was thinking that we could go see it.
Now that I've looked it up, I don't think that they allow visitors on that day. It was nice of him to think of it, but probably I should not go. The house is a mess and all of that, plus that would leave all this leftover turkey to rot in the frig.
I don't want the turkey to rot. I want to make stuff with it and eat it.
There are plenty of Christmas light displays here, but for whatever reason, he never seems that interested in going to see them.
Okay, so I have a very messy house to clean, and a lot of knitting to do, and then probably more shopping and practice baking to do. Going out of town is probably not the best idea.
I wish that I had planned better.
My family has decided to cut back a bit on Christmas, so that we mainly buy one nice thing for one person, after we draw names out of a hat. And then we also buy a smaller gift, but we don't know who will get the smaller gift. So the spending limit with tax and everything ends up being just a bit under forty dollars per person, and should only require the one shopping trip. And all that is just fine, and I have most of a month to get that done.
It's the rest of it that I'm unsure about, and a lot of it I need to get done in the next two weeks.
Okay, so there's a group of friends who usually try to do things together two or three times a month. Due to not having a job and the price of gas and some other things, I rarely make it more than once a month now. Once in a great while, the pilot has us over for dinner. And, usually on the third Saturday of December, we exchange gifts. And this is in addition to the official gift exchange at the club, which is also on the that same Saturday.
It probably started when I opened my big mouth and asked the pilot if he was having one of his dinners in November, after I was looking at something and noticed that he'd had a dinner at that time last year. Now, I was not meaning to invite myself over for dinner, just that I was trying to schedule a few things, and I wanted to know if there was a dinner in November that I needed to to keep a certain date open for and not go out of town that week and such. So what he said was that he had meant to have a dinner in November, but this year it just wasn't going to work out, and he wondered if we wouldn't keeping open a Saturday in December for that instead. So now dinner with my friends is scheduled for the second Saturday in December at the pilot's house. So I asked if we should exchange gifts then instead of on the third Saturday like we usually did. At the time I did not have a preference, I just wanted to know.
At that point someone mentioned something about exchanging cards instead of gifts, cause some of us are short on cash, and most of us really don't want to spend that much time in the mall anyway. We had discussed doing this last year too, but we didn't really discuss it early enough for me, and I was already knitting things for two of them. And I didn't want to just exchange cards after I was already either buying or knitting things for some of them. And then I wasn't sure if I should just give the gifts I already had planned and give the others just cards. That didn't seem fair at all. So we ended up having the regular gift exchange and decided to talk about just exchanging cards the next year.
And really, I don't exchange cards. This comes from a time when I really had no money, and I watched other people spend more on the cards than I had in my whole Christmas budget. So with me you either get a gift, or you don't get anything. Even when I didn't have money I gave candy or small fruit baskets or candles or some homemade thing rather than exchanging cards. This means that I have a small list of people, and that there are a lot of people giving me cards when I don't give them anything, but I just can't spend time or effort or money on cards.
Okay, so G brought up the whole gift or card discussion, and everyone else jumped in, and for the most part people said cards were better. The exception being Miss Allergies, cause she picked out what she wanted from me last year, and so I put a certain scarf aside for her. R and J want to exchange cards, K also voted for cards, and the pilot said something about making cards, and G is in favor of either cards or baked goods.
I like baked goods.
Okay, so having heard that we would be mostly exchanging either cards or baked goods with most of these people on the third Saturday (except for Miss Allergies' gift which is already done), I mostly put the idea out of my mind. While I probably won't do cards, I had plenty of time to do small gifts or figure out baked goods or whatever else I might do.
The pilot is now saying that he has cards, but he also found a few gifts....
Okay, so I've been wanting to make him a certain scarf, and I will try again this year, though it might not work out. Also I've heard that K is now leaning towards gift exchange. That's fine, though at the moment I'm not sure what I would get him, as I gave him the handmade scarf last year and a different scarf another year, and even if I had the time he doesn't need yet another scarf. So far as I know, R and J still want to exchange cards, so I will get them something small or baked goods, and I will get something for G that would either be baked goods or something like that.
And then after looking at the schedule, there is something going on with R and J on the third Saturday, which makes me think that we'll end up exchanging gifts or cards or whatever on the second Saturday.
And this means that for the most part, I have only two weeks to do the Christmas stuff, whatever that will be.
For the official gift exchange, I still have until the third Saturday, or I can even decide not to participate. And for my family I still have until Christmas Eve.
Except that last year there was also this extended family Christmas party, and while I haven't heard that it is planned again this year, I was thinking that I should make a couple more scarves, just in case. And also I would like to make another scarf for this charity thing, which would also be due on the third Saturday.
While it slowly dawns on me that I have a lot to do in the next two or three weeks, my husband mentions going out of town. I hadn't really planned on it. In fact, I hadn't really thought about it at all. He's going to the middle of nowhere a bit north of here for two or three days, then has a day off on which he will have to move to another place also a bit north of here for another three or four days. If I had planned on it, I would have had knitting and such ready to go, but I hadn't planned on it. Middle of nowhere and all of that, and I didn't think that there was anything for us to do there. Only he found some Christmas light display between the two places, and he was thinking that we could go see it.
Now that I've looked it up, I don't think that they allow visitors on that day. It was nice of him to think of it, but probably I should not go. The house is a mess and all of that, plus that would leave all this leftover turkey to rot in the frig.
I don't want the turkey to rot. I want to make stuff with it and eat it.
There are plenty of Christmas light displays here, but for whatever reason, he never seems that interested in going to see them.
Okay, so I have a very messy house to clean, and a lot of knitting to do, and then probably more shopping and practice baking to do. Going out of town is probably not the best idea.
I wish that I had planned better.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Monday Morons--What kind of paint is this?
Okay, if you've been reading, the kitchen wall that was half removed years ago to deal with a plumbing problem and never replaced was reported again about a month ago, was supposed to be repaired last Monday, no one came until Tuesday, a four hour break was taken to go do repairs at someone else's house, repairs at my place were not finished Tuesday and not resumed until after three on Wednesday, and then it still wasn't painted and so someone came to do that on Thursday.
Okay, so the paint he used was white. I think the can said pure white. But I'm pretty sure that the old paint was not pure white. It doesn't exactly match.
Besides the old paint not exactly matching the new paint, I have been here a while, and there are places that need touch-up paint. Or maybe it is just time to paint again.
Where I live, when you leave you have to paint the place either white or off-white, so that the place is all nice and new looking for the new person. If the new person doesn't like white, they can paint it again, as long as when they leave they paint it white again. If you use expensive paint, it probably doesn't matter what color you paint over, but usually it is easier to paint white over white than white over a darker color.
Anyway, I'm guessing that the people in the small apartments probably aren't planning to stay long, and they probably keep the white. The people in the houses stay longer, or at least probably plan to stay longer, and I'm guessing that more of them paint over the white with different colors or add wallpaper and such.
I just kept the white both times. I like white.
Okay, but trying to match a white or off-white paint is hard to do, unless maybe someone was nice and left you a bit of the paint in the can, or left you a note saying which white paint you used. If I remember correctly, I left almost a gallon of some sort of off-white paint for the apartment's new renters. It wasn't going to do me any good anyway, since the paint I used in the apartment was a few shades darker than what was used in the new place.
No one left me any paint at the new place, or the name of the paint, or anything. But I didn't think that getting the name of the paint would be a problem, since this place was not painted by the person leaving, but by the maintenance guys. I just thought that whenever I needed to know, I'd just ask the guys what paint they used when they had to paint a place themselves.
Well, I don't seem to have made myself understood. I don't think that the old paint was pure white, and the guy won't tell me the name of the old paint.
I've thought of four possible reasons that I am not being told specifically what kind of paint was used on my house six years ago.
Okay, so the paint he used was white. I think the can said pure white. But I'm pretty sure that the old paint was not pure white. It doesn't exactly match.
Besides the old paint not exactly matching the new paint, I have been here a while, and there are places that need touch-up paint. Or maybe it is just time to paint again.
Where I live, when you leave you have to paint the place either white or off-white, so that the place is all nice and new looking for the new person. If the new person doesn't like white, they can paint it again, as long as when they leave they paint it white again. If you use expensive paint, it probably doesn't matter what color you paint over, but usually it is easier to paint white over white than white over a darker color.
Anyway, I'm guessing that the people in the small apartments probably aren't planning to stay long, and they probably keep the white. The people in the houses stay longer, or at least probably plan to stay longer, and I'm guessing that more of them paint over the white with different colors or add wallpaper and such.
I just kept the white both times. I like white.
Okay, but trying to match a white or off-white paint is hard to do, unless maybe someone was nice and left you a bit of the paint in the can, or left you a note saying which white paint you used. If I remember correctly, I left almost a gallon of some sort of off-white paint for the apartment's new renters. It wasn't going to do me any good anyway, since the paint I used in the apartment was a few shades darker than what was used in the new place.
No one left me any paint at the new place, or the name of the paint, or anything. But I didn't think that getting the name of the paint would be a problem, since this place was not painted by the person leaving, but by the maintenance guys. I just thought that whenever I needed to know, I'd just ask the guys what paint they used when they had to paint a place themselves.
Well, I don't seem to have made myself understood. I don't think that the old paint was pure white, and the guy won't tell me the name of the old paint.
I've thought of four possible reasons that I am not being told specifically what kind of paint was used on my house six years ago.
Possibility #1--They are deliberately being annoying.
Possibility #2--I suppose that they might have used a different color back then, and then there was some financial gain for switching to a different color or a different brand, and they just don't remember the name of the paint they used before. I don't think this is really what happened, just wanted to show that I was smart enough to figure out that it might have happened. And even if there were some financial reason for switching paints, you would think that they'd still have records of what the old paint was and when they switched paints and such.
Possibility #3--They had to switch paints because the old paint either isn't made anymore, or isn't sold at the local store. Again, they should have records of this and should be able to tell me about it.
Possibility #4--They are just stupid. They use different color paints whenever they have to paint something. The paint is selected on a whim. They have a little bit of paint left over from several projects, and it goes to waste, because the next time they need paint they buy yet a different color.
I am thinking that if it isn't just the first explanation then it is the fourth one, cause the other two make sense, and they should have no trouble telling someone an explanation if it made sense like that. They are annoying and/or just stupid.
Okay, so now that I've had that problem with the paint from the people who supposedly work for me, I have more fun at Home Depot.
I'm thinking that the guys just went to Home Depot and bought whatever paint was cheapest. I seem to recall doing that myself (though I might have gone to Lowe's instead). If you just want white or off-white, and you aren't trying to match something, there are a few that don't cost too much that come in 5 gallon buckets. So probably, if I find the cheapest 5 gallon bucket, the lightest color that isn't pure white is probably the one that they used.
So I see at the end there's 5 gallon buckets for about fifty dollars, and they say something like professional grade. And I think that one of those would be it, if they were the same kind of paint sold six years ago. But I can't find any paint chips or a color chart or anything for them. I see that they come in at least three colors--white, aspen white, and antique white.
Aspen white sounds nice, but I don't want to buy any without at least a paint chip (and I would prefer an actual sample of paint to take home and try before buying five gallons of the stuff). I ask someone for help, but they don't have either samples or paint chips or a color chart or anything. And I can't get help from anyone else who knows anything about the paint. I can complain to this girl's boss, but that doesn't help me with the paint. She keeps saying that the paint is mostly used by professionals, so that they don't have samples and paint chips.
I don't see how being professional equals not needing to know what color paint is in the bucket.
Are the professionals psychic or something? Is there some secret handshake you have to know before being shown what color paint is in the container?
Another girl comes and wants to color match the paint for me. The first girl had wanted to do that too, but I didn't want to. Having the color matched doesn't tell me what color is in the 5 gallon container. It is a different kind of paint from a different company that can be color matched. But somehow I'm talking to this second girl, and she's doing the color match thing and telling me it will be eight dollars for a quart. I'm agreeing to it (I don't know why), but then she says the paint is ten dollars a quart, not eight.
Okay, I went thinking that I was going to spend two dollars on a paint sample for something that I could later buy in a gallon can and a five gallon bucket. Then it goes up to eight dollars for a quart, and then it turns out that the paint is ten dollars for a quart. And that still doesn't tell me what color paint is in the 5 gallon bucket for fifty dollars, so if I use a lot of the color matched paint instead of whatever is in the 5 gallon bucket, I will be spending thirty dollars a gallon. That's about three times what I had planned to spend.
At that point I leave and decide to go to Lowe's the next day.
I find some paint in five gallon buckets for sixty dollars, and there is at least a color chart for that. There are no samples, but by now I'm ready to give up and start with a new color paint if necessary to avoid spending thirty dollars a gallon on color matching.
I end up spending fourteen dollars on a gallon of plain white paint. Maybe it will match, and maybe it won't. If it doesn't, well, it's probably time to repaint anyway, and I will repaint it something that doesn't need color matching. I'm testing a bit of it right now. In an hour it will either dry too light or a shade darker and be exactly what I want, but I think I'm okay with it either way. I'm ready to just start painting and be done with it.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Adventures in Eyewear
Okay, so I should get my eyes checked and my teeth checked and all of that at least once a year. About the only medical thing that I manage to get done once a year is the check-up at Planned Parenthood, or else they would not give me my birth-control pills, and I am not a happy camper without my hormones.
And it isn't that I don't know better. I had annual eye exams for years, which usually resulted in getting new glasses. So I've gone from a ten-year-old whose eyes could use a little help, to a forty-something blind bat. And I've gone through a lot of glasses, though the last few years I don't have as many pair as you would think, as I have often skipped that annual exam.
My husband did not grow up having to wear glasses, and very rarely had an eye exam. It just isn't on his list of things to do. And his list of things to do is mostly stuff like going to Disneyland and buying toys. It doesn't occur to him that things like going to the eye doctor and the dentist should come first.
So, most of the time that I have been married, the eye exams and such have not been every year, or even every other year, unless I have had a job to pay for them myself. As now, most of the time I have either not had a job at all, or it has been some silly part-time thing that doesn't pay much (or doesn't pay on a regular basis), and sometimes I have been his assistant (which may or may not be a paying job). So over the last twenty years or so, there should have been twenty eye exams and dental check-ups, but I'm guessing there have only been maybe six each, and I've paid for half of them myself when I had my own regular job.
So when I don't have my own regular job, the exams come either when a). one of us is having a serious problem, or b). we have just had a serious fight during which I bring up the fact that I can't see very well due to the fact that I'm wearing glasses that are four years old while he's bugging me about going to Disneyland.
Okay, this time it wasn't Disneyland, but you get the idea. And the serious fight was two weeks ago.
Anyway, he isn't getting any younger himself, and he needs to have an eye exam too, which he probably hasn't had in like twenty-five years.
So he had off this week and we made appointments for later to see a dentist, and while we were at Walmart asking about an eye exam they had time to squeeze both of us in Monday. So we got the eye exams over with and both got prescriptions for bifocals.
I've never worn bifocals before, and I'm worried that I won't like them and that they will distract me too much while I'm driving.
Okay, so I usually get the one pair if the new pair isn't that different from the old pair. Or, if the new pair is very different and/or there is a sale, I might get two new pair so that I'll have a spare. Having a spare (or an old pair that isn't that different) is really important if you are as blind as I am. Usually, the spare is nowhere to be found when I need them, but still, I have to have them.
So, I'm giving in and getting a prescription for bifocals, but I'm not really sure that I actually want to wear the bifocals. So this gets me to thinking that I might want to have separate glasses for distance and for reading. Or I might want one pair for distance and one pair of bifocals. Or I might want three pairs, one for distance, one for reading, and one of bifocals.
Then there is the really silly thought of getting one pair for distance, one pair for reading, a pair of bifocals and a spare of the bifocals.
I'm looking on the Internet for sales. There were some good ones that we just missed. Whatever. There will be other sales.
Anyway, we are at the Walmart and we get our prescriptions, and my husband's thought is to get this over with as soon as possible. That is not my plan. Even when you have regular eye exams and get a different pair of glasses every year, you have to put some thought into them, as you will be stuck with them for a whole year. And the way things have been, it's more like I'll be stuck with them for about four years. So I am not buying the first thing that I see, unless I'm just really in love with them and they are on sale.
So, there's a sale at Walmart for single-vision, scratch-resistant glasses for $38. Of course, there's a limited number of frames at that price, usually not so new and fashionable. But, as it usually takes me a while (if ever) to like new fashions, this is usually not a problem for me. Still, I look at the ones pointed out as the $38 options, and I don't like any of them. They are all plastic frames, and mostly right now I like wire. After asking again, a few wire frames are pointed out. They are okay. I'm not in love with any of them, but they are okay.
My husband finds a pair that he's okay with, and we ask how much more they are for bifocals. Like a hundred and thirty-five dollars for the lenses, plus the frames. And that's for the regular bifocals, cause the no-line lenses are nearly twice that much.
Now, I know that someone must be having a sale and that we should go look somewhere else, but my husband wants to get it over with and pays $145 for the first pair he looks at. I look again and find some wire frames that are okay, but not worth $145 (much less twice that for no-line lenses), and I get them for the distance pair that I will use to drive with if I decide that the bifocals are too distracting. They are a little bigger than my last pair, and the frames are almost pink. We are told that they will be ready in nine or tens days, but Thursday we get a call that mine are ready, and by the time we go to pick them up on Friday they have his ready too.
They don't feel right. And I can't tell the girl how they feel wrong for her to adjust them properly. And always when I get a new prescription, the floor looks farther away than it did. They will take a while to get used to. I am already wearing shoes that make me almost two inches taller, so now with the glasses I feel six inches taller.
My husband, whose new glasses have almost no distance prescription in them, is having trouble getting used to them and frequently takes them off. But I'm sure that he will appreciate them later when he's trying to read something.
Right, so I'm off to look at more glasses.
Since I have never worn bifocals before, I am thinking that I need some really big glasses to fit in both the distance and the reading parts of the lenses. I used to wear really big glasses when I was a teenager, but that was the eighties, and I don't really want to wear those same frames now. So I'm out looking for big glasses that don't look like what I wore in eighth grade. And I know that there are a couple of places that have no-lines on sale, so I go and look at Optical Clinic and Eyemasters.
Some eyeglass sales you get what you think that you're getting, and others are more like bait-and-switch. I guess most are somewhere in between, where you can buy almost what you want at the sale price, but wouldn't you like to add a thing or two?
So I'm at the Optical Clinic, and I look at the limited selection of the sale items, and I find a couple that I think might work. I'm not in love with them, but I like them much better than anything that was going to cost twice as much at Walmart. I turn around to ask my husband which one he likes better, only he isn't there, he's on the other side of the store reading a magazine. I'm supposed to be a grown-up who is able to pick out her own glasses. Well, I know that, but I would have liked a second opinion. Anyway, we leave the store without him seeing me try anything on, and I figure that I'll probably be back next week.
Then we have some errands to run, and at the end of them we go to the mall and look at Eyemasters. They have a sale, two pair of no-lines for $150, if you like anything in the limited selection of frames, which I do. I think that there is also a sale for one pair for $99, and I ask about it, and they say it is supposed to be over now, but if it is still in the computer we can do that. But, again, there is a limited selection of frames, but somehow this is a totally different selection of frames, and these are just the opposite of what I am looking for. These are mostly little rectangular plastic frames that look like what the computer girl on Criminal Minds wears. I hate them, and they won't do at all for the large lenses that I imagine I'll need for the bifocals.
So I'm back to looking at the $69 frames, thinking that this is a really good deal, but do I really need two pair of bifocals in addition to the distance pair I'm wearing? So I ask my husband if he wants another pair, cause sometimes with the sale you can get two different prescriptions. But he says something like he doesn't even want the pair he already has, why would he want another one? So that's fine. I pick out the really big pair and a small one that I like better. And I ask if two are $150, how much would one be? Cause I know that it isn't going to be anything as simple as $75. So she takes my prescription and goes to the back of the store and gets a calculator and comes back with a figure of $142. So for eight extra dollars I'll get two pair? I'll take the two that are on sale.
Then she tells me that the $142 pair is a sale price for polycarbonate lenses. Normally, it would be twice that much. But I'm not into sports, and I really don't care anything about getting polycarbonate lenses, just so long as they are scratch resistant.
Scratch resistant coating has been around for so long, I forget that some places still charge extra for it. There was not an extra charge for the $38 pair I just bought at Walmart. Okay, I'm thinking an extra twenty dollars or so, but it turns out to be an extra fifty dollars. Each.
Okay.
So I'm looking at my husband, and he really has no opinion, cause I'm supposed to be a grown-up who can pick out her own glasses.
Well, I can pick out my own glasses, I'm just having a little trouble deciding about the money. He would know more about that than I do. And I've gone from thinking that I'm going to get what I want for either $79 or $99 to thinking that I'm going to get two pair for $150, and now I have to decide between getting two for $250 or one with extras I don't care about for $142. And he didn't see the glasses at the other store and he can't give me an opinion on those, if he has an opinion anyway.
Okay, as much as I think that I want that other pair, I can't see spending an extra hundred and eight dollars for them, and I can't see buying glasses without the scratch resistant coating. So I pick the $142 polycarbonate lenses in the big frames.
Okay, now she mentions an extra thirty dollars for some protection plan in case I have to have them replaced in the next year. I have only one other time bought the protection plan, and I wished that I had not, because I also paid for some other stuff that when I needed I couldn't have because the store had either moved or gone out of business. But this Eyemasters has been here a long time, and I don't picture that happening again. Besides, if like the glasses and something happens to them, it will cost almost three hundred dollars to have them replaced if I don't get the protection plan.
So I'm looking at my husband, and again he has no opinion. And yes I know that I am supposed to be a grown-up who can pick out her own glasses, but sometimes I would like some input. If he is thinking that we might have trouble paying for the dentist later and he would really appreciate it if I went back to the other store and got something for nearly a hundred dollars less, then I would like to hear about it. But he doesn't say anything. Earlier he said that I could have anything that I wanted except the five hundred dollar designer stuff, unless that was what I really wanted, in which case I could have them anyway.
Okay, so we are at Eyemasters, thinking of paying $172 for one pair of no-line bifocals, when we originally came in looking at two pair for $150. And then I remember that this is one of those hour places, and we might have this whole business done with by the time we were done eating dinner. So we agree to the amount and make plans to eat at Chipotle's and come back.
Unfortunately, after consulting with someone in the lab, the lenses (that are the special polycarbonate things that I didn't especially want anyway) will have to be special ordered, and we will have to come back on the 26th.
Whatever.
We pay for the glasses. The girl gives me the receipt and goes over it again, what I've bought, what a good deal I'm getting with the polycarbonate lenses that have UV protection.
Crap. UV protection. I forgot about that. I don't like it. I knew that there was something I didn't like about the polycarbonate lenses (in addition to them being more expensive and having to wait two weeks). They have a greenish tint to them. Not that everything looks green, but if you have your picture taken you get this green reflection on your glasses. I'm sure it is good for my health, but I don't like it.
Well, I'm not a model, and I'm probably not getting my picture taken anytime soon anyway.
We go eat at Chipotle's and then go and watch three hours of stuff recorded on the SyFy Channel. I'm not giving the glasses anymore thought until the 26th.
And it isn't that I don't know better. I had annual eye exams for years, which usually resulted in getting new glasses. So I've gone from a ten-year-old whose eyes could use a little help, to a forty-something blind bat. And I've gone through a lot of glasses, though the last few years I don't have as many pair as you would think, as I have often skipped that annual exam.
My husband did not grow up having to wear glasses, and very rarely had an eye exam. It just isn't on his list of things to do. And his list of things to do is mostly stuff like going to Disneyland and buying toys. It doesn't occur to him that things like going to the eye doctor and the dentist should come first.
So, most of the time that I have been married, the eye exams and such have not been every year, or even every other year, unless I have had a job to pay for them myself. As now, most of the time I have either not had a job at all, or it has been some silly part-time thing that doesn't pay much (or doesn't pay on a regular basis), and sometimes I have been his assistant (which may or may not be a paying job). So over the last twenty years or so, there should have been twenty eye exams and dental check-ups, but I'm guessing there have only been maybe six each, and I've paid for half of them myself when I had my own regular job.
So when I don't have my own regular job, the exams come either when a). one of us is having a serious problem, or b). we have just had a serious fight during which I bring up the fact that I can't see very well due to the fact that I'm wearing glasses that are four years old while he's bugging me about going to Disneyland.
Okay, this time it wasn't Disneyland, but you get the idea. And the serious fight was two weeks ago.
Anyway, he isn't getting any younger himself, and he needs to have an eye exam too, which he probably hasn't had in like twenty-five years.
So he had off this week and we made appointments for later to see a dentist, and while we were at Walmart asking about an eye exam they had time to squeeze both of us in Monday. So we got the eye exams over with and both got prescriptions for bifocals.
I've never worn bifocals before, and I'm worried that I won't like them and that they will distract me too much while I'm driving.
Okay, so I usually get the one pair if the new pair isn't that different from the old pair. Or, if the new pair is very different and/or there is a sale, I might get two new pair so that I'll have a spare. Having a spare (or an old pair that isn't that different) is really important if you are as blind as I am. Usually, the spare is nowhere to be found when I need them, but still, I have to have them.
So, I'm giving in and getting a prescription for bifocals, but I'm not really sure that I actually want to wear the bifocals. So this gets me to thinking that I might want to have separate glasses for distance and for reading. Or I might want one pair for distance and one pair of bifocals. Or I might want three pairs, one for distance, one for reading, and one of bifocals.
Then there is the really silly thought of getting one pair for distance, one pair for reading, a pair of bifocals and a spare of the bifocals.
I'm looking on the Internet for sales. There were some good ones that we just missed. Whatever. There will be other sales.
Anyway, we are at the Walmart and we get our prescriptions, and my husband's thought is to get this over with as soon as possible. That is not my plan. Even when you have regular eye exams and get a different pair of glasses every year, you have to put some thought into them, as you will be stuck with them for a whole year. And the way things have been, it's more like I'll be stuck with them for about four years. So I am not buying the first thing that I see, unless I'm just really in love with them and they are on sale.
So, there's a sale at Walmart for single-vision, scratch-resistant glasses for $38. Of course, there's a limited number of frames at that price, usually not so new and fashionable. But, as it usually takes me a while (if ever) to like new fashions, this is usually not a problem for me. Still, I look at the ones pointed out as the $38 options, and I don't like any of them. They are all plastic frames, and mostly right now I like wire. After asking again, a few wire frames are pointed out. They are okay. I'm not in love with any of them, but they are okay.
My husband finds a pair that he's okay with, and we ask how much more they are for bifocals. Like a hundred and thirty-five dollars for the lenses, plus the frames. And that's for the regular bifocals, cause the no-line lenses are nearly twice that much.
Now, I know that someone must be having a sale and that we should go look somewhere else, but my husband wants to get it over with and pays $145 for the first pair he looks at. I look again and find some wire frames that are okay, but not worth $145 (much less twice that for no-line lenses), and I get them for the distance pair that I will use to drive with if I decide that the bifocals are too distracting. They are a little bigger than my last pair, and the frames are almost pink. We are told that they will be ready in nine or tens days, but Thursday we get a call that mine are ready, and by the time we go to pick them up on Friday they have his ready too.
They don't feel right. And I can't tell the girl how they feel wrong for her to adjust them properly. And always when I get a new prescription, the floor looks farther away than it did. They will take a while to get used to. I am already wearing shoes that make me almost two inches taller, so now with the glasses I feel six inches taller.
My husband, whose new glasses have almost no distance prescription in them, is having trouble getting used to them and frequently takes them off. But I'm sure that he will appreciate them later when he's trying to read something.
Right, so I'm off to look at more glasses.
Since I have never worn bifocals before, I am thinking that I need some really big glasses to fit in both the distance and the reading parts of the lenses. I used to wear really big glasses when I was a teenager, but that was the eighties, and I don't really want to wear those same frames now. So I'm out looking for big glasses that don't look like what I wore in eighth grade. And I know that there are a couple of places that have no-lines on sale, so I go and look at Optical Clinic and Eyemasters.
Some eyeglass sales you get what you think that you're getting, and others are more like bait-and-switch. I guess most are somewhere in between, where you can buy almost what you want at the sale price, but wouldn't you like to add a thing or two?
So I'm at the Optical Clinic, and I look at the limited selection of the sale items, and I find a couple that I think might work. I'm not in love with them, but I like them much better than anything that was going to cost twice as much at Walmart. I turn around to ask my husband which one he likes better, only he isn't there, he's on the other side of the store reading a magazine. I'm supposed to be a grown-up who is able to pick out her own glasses. Well, I know that, but I would have liked a second opinion. Anyway, we leave the store without him seeing me try anything on, and I figure that I'll probably be back next week.
Then we have some errands to run, and at the end of them we go to the mall and look at Eyemasters. They have a sale, two pair of no-lines for $150, if you like anything in the limited selection of frames, which I do. I think that there is also a sale for one pair for $99, and I ask about it, and they say it is supposed to be over now, but if it is still in the computer we can do that. But, again, there is a limited selection of frames, but somehow this is a totally different selection of frames, and these are just the opposite of what I am looking for. These are mostly little rectangular plastic frames that look like what the computer girl on Criminal Minds wears. I hate them, and they won't do at all for the large lenses that I imagine I'll need for the bifocals.
So I'm back to looking at the $69 frames, thinking that this is a really good deal, but do I really need two pair of bifocals in addition to the distance pair I'm wearing? So I ask my husband if he wants another pair, cause sometimes with the sale you can get two different prescriptions. But he says something like he doesn't even want the pair he already has, why would he want another one? So that's fine. I pick out the really big pair and a small one that I like better. And I ask if two are $150, how much would one be? Cause I know that it isn't going to be anything as simple as $75. So she takes my prescription and goes to the back of the store and gets a calculator and comes back with a figure of $142. So for eight extra dollars I'll get two pair? I'll take the two that are on sale.
Then she tells me that the $142 pair is a sale price for polycarbonate lenses. Normally, it would be twice that much. But I'm not into sports, and I really don't care anything about getting polycarbonate lenses, just so long as they are scratch resistant.
Scratch resistant coating has been around for so long, I forget that some places still charge extra for it. There was not an extra charge for the $38 pair I just bought at Walmart. Okay, I'm thinking an extra twenty dollars or so, but it turns out to be an extra fifty dollars. Each.
Okay.
So I'm looking at my husband, and he really has no opinion, cause I'm supposed to be a grown-up who can pick out her own glasses.
Well, I can pick out my own glasses, I'm just having a little trouble deciding about the money. He would know more about that than I do. And I've gone from thinking that I'm going to get what I want for either $79 or $99 to thinking that I'm going to get two pair for $150, and now I have to decide between getting two for $250 or one with extras I don't care about for $142. And he didn't see the glasses at the other store and he can't give me an opinion on those, if he has an opinion anyway.
Okay, as much as I think that I want that other pair, I can't see spending an extra hundred and eight dollars for them, and I can't see buying glasses without the scratch resistant coating. So I pick the $142 polycarbonate lenses in the big frames.
Okay, now she mentions an extra thirty dollars for some protection plan in case I have to have them replaced in the next year. I have only one other time bought the protection plan, and I wished that I had not, because I also paid for some other stuff that when I needed I couldn't have because the store had either moved or gone out of business. But this Eyemasters has been here a long time, and I don't picture that happening again. Besides, if like the glasses and something happens to them, it will cost almost three hundred dollars to have them replaced if I don't get the protection plan.
So I'm looking at my husband, and again he has no opinion. And yes I know that I am supposed to be a grown-up who can pick out her own glasses, but sometimes I would like some input. If he is thinking that we might have trouble paying for the dentist later and he would really appreciate it if I went back to the other store and got something for nearly a hundred dollars less, then I would like to hear about it. But he doesn't say anything. Earlier he said that I could have anything that I wanted except the five hundred dollar designer stuff, unless that was what I really wanted, in which case I could have them anyway.
Okay, so we are at Eyemasters, thinking of paying $172 for one pair of no-line bifocals, when we originally came in looking at two pair for $150. And then I remember that this is one of those hour places, and we might have this whole business done with by the time we were done eating dinner. So we agree to the amount and make plans to eat at Chipotle's and come back.
Unfortunately, after consulting with someone in the lab, the lenses (that are the special polycarbonate things that I didn't especially want anyway) will have to be special ordered, and we will have to come back on the 26th.
Whatever.
We pay for the glasses. The girl gives me the receipt and goes over it again, what I've bought, what a good deal I'm getting with the polycarbonate lenses that have UV protection.
Crap. UV protection. I forgot about that. I don't like it. I knew that there was something I didn't like about the polycarbonate lenses (in addition to them being more expensive and having to wait two weeks). They have a greenish tint to them. Not that everything looks green, but if you have your picture taken you get this green reflection on your glasses. I'm sure it is good for my health, but I don't like it.
Well, I'm not a model, and I'm probably not getting my picture taken anytime soon anyway.
We go eat at Chipotle's and then go and watch three hours of stuff recorded on the SyFy Channel. I'm not giving the glasses anymore thought until the 26th.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Monday Morons--Company Shirts
So my husband and his coworkers have mostly been working extra hours for less pay--when they are actually working. The new plan that was supposed to help everyone make a little more money and have steady work has not actually resulted in steady work. So while there have been a few good paychecks, we are now about to be back on unemployment for a bit. Last week he worked four days, this week he isn't scheduled to work at all, and next week he's scheduled to work one day (in Oklahoma, which will actually take up three days of his time--the day before to drive there, the day he actually works, and the day after to drive home). We don't know yet if he will work the week after next.
So, while the employees have more work and less money, you would think that maybe the company would do something to make life a little more pleasant. Like maybe they wouldn't be so strict with the dress code. Like it's bad enough getting laid off for weeks at a time and then when you do work you work extra hours for less pay, and on a bad day the pay ends up being close to minimum wage (even less than that when you figure in the hours of drive time that you are not paid for), but it really sucks that you have to dress up and wear a tie and such. Can't you maybe just wear a polo shirt instead?
Sure.
So someone at the office got the brilliant idea that the employees should be able to just wear polo shirts instead of dress shirts and ties. Only, it can't be any polo shirt, it has to be a certain color. And it can't just be a polo shirt of a certain color, it has to have the company logo on it. Not a shirt with a company logo pin stuck on it, but a shirt that has the logo embroidered on it. So, to get that polo shirt that is the certain color with the embroidered logo on it, you have to order it from the company for twenty-five dollars plus tax and shipping.
So, in addition to being laid off for days and weeks at a time, and when you do work you get paid less for working extra hours, now the company is trying to get some of your paycheck back by selling polo shirts.
Isn't that nice?
What do you think they should do with their twenty-five dollar embroidered shirts?
So, while the employees have more work and less money, you would think that maybe the company would do something to make life a little more pleasant. Like maybe they wouldn't be so strict with the dress code. Like it's bad enough getting laid off for weeks at a time and then when you do work you work extra hours for less pay, and on a bad day the pay ends up being close to minimum wage (even less than that when you figure in the hours of drive time that you are not paid for), but it really sucks that you have to dress up and wear a tie and such. Can't you maybe just wear a polo shirt instead?
Sure.
So someone at the office got the brilliant idea that the employees should be able to just wear polo shirts instead of dress shirts and ties. Only, it can't be any polo shirt, it has to be a certain color. And it can't just be a polo shirt of a certain color, it has to have the company logo on it. Not a shirt with a company logo pin stuck on it, but a shirt that has the logo embroidered on it. So, to get that polo shirt that is the certain color with the embroidered logo on it, you have to order it from the company for twenty-five dollars plus tax and shipping.
So, in addition to being laid off for days and weeks at a time, and when you do work you get paid less for working extra hours, now the company is trying to get some of your paycheck back by selling polo shirts.
Isn't that nice?
What do you think they should do with their twenty-five dollar embroidered shirts?
Monday, April 26, 2010
Trying to eat what is good for me
Someone I know is going to try going on a diet. He's ordered two weeks of frozen dinners, and if he eats nothing but these dinners and some snacks that are included, he'll lose weight. I wonder how long this is going to last.
About a week ago I had the place to myself and tried to do the dollar a day thing for a bit. I usually am able to do this and have both yogurt and a small cola every day. This time a few prices went up, and I had to skip the yogurt. Not that I've been eating the yogurt for a while now anyway.
But I must start eating right, and I would like to stop spending so much money, and I would like to lose weight. The one time I did lose weight (safely), I ate a lot of spaghetti with a lot of veggies. And I ate yogurt. And I ate popcorn and drank V-8.
I've been reading a blog by someone who is trying to eat on a dollar a day for a year. She's a vegetarian. Her plan is to buy a lot of basic stuff and then after she has the rice and flour and such she would spend a certain amount every week or two on fruits and vegetables. Since she's a vegetarian (and almost vegan), she doesn't have much else to buy that needs to be bought fresh and kept refrigerated. Sometimes she might add some tofu and soymilk. Everything else is kept in the pantry and possibly bought in bulk.
I am not a vegetarian. Last week I tried writing down what I thought that I should be eating (plus a few sort of splurges that I tend to eat when I am not feeling great). I didn't write down the cost of veggies, cause those prices tend to change with the seasons, so I'd never really know what that would cost until the week of purchase. Still, there is almost always something I like on sale, so I didn't think that should add too much.
I was disappointed that after I added everything up I didn't have much that could be kept in the pantry except for spaghetti, and that what I wrote down added up to more than sixty a month. That is with the new low price store that just opened. I'm surprised how much I take for granted that they didn't have. They have a great price on milk, but they don't have 1%, so if I buy the milk there I will have to mix skim and 2%. And they have a great price on eggs, but I didn't see anything like Eggbeaters. They had sodas, but no diet cola. No sugar free pudding mix. Other things were good deals, but not really great deals. My plan for one-stop shopping isn't going to work here.
Okay, so with the what I think I'm supposed to eat plan (which is not vegetarian but has one vegetarian meal everyday), I'm spending sixty dollars a month plus veggies (the thing that I'm supposed to eat the most of), and I forgot to add popcorn and V-8 (another thing that they don't seem to have at the new store), and this is before I go to the added expense of buying any special diet stuff or substituting stuff like Eggbeaters for eggs.
I think that I'm going to try this on Monday, for about a week (except that I'm going to see about getting free breakfast at Subway on Tuesday). We've already had junk food this week, and I don't think that we need more. But we'll see how it goes.
About a week ago I had the place to myself and tried to do the dollar a day thing for a bit. I usually am able to do this and have both yogurt and a small cola every day. This time a few prices went up, and I had to skip the yogurt. Not that I've been eating the yogurt for a while now anyway.
But I must start eating right, and I would like to stop spending so much money, and I would like to lose weight. The one time I did lose weight (safely), I ate a lot of spaghetti with a lot of veggies. And I ate yogurt. And I ate popcorn and drank V-8.
I've been reading a blog by someone who is trying to eat on a dollar a day for a year. She's a vegetarian. Her plan is to buy a lot of basic stuff and then after she has the rice and flour and such she would spend a certain amount every week or two on fruits and vegetables. Since she's a vegetarian (and almost vegan), she doesn't have much else to buy that needs to be bought fresh and kept refrigerated. Sometimes she might add some tofu and soymilk. Everything else is kept in the pantry and possibly bought in bulk.
I am not a vegetarian. Last week I tried writing down what I thought that I should be eating (plus a few sort of splurges that I tend to eat when I am not feeling great). I didn't write down the cost of veggies, cause those prices tend to change with the seasons, so I'd never really know what that would cost until the week of purchase. Still, there is almost always something I like on sale, so I didn't think that should add too much.
I was disappointed that after I added everything up I didn't have much that could be kept in the pantry except for spaghetti, and that what I wrote down added up to more than sixty a month. That is with the new low price store that just opened. I'm surprised how much I take for granted that they didn't have. They have a great price on milk, but they don't have 1%, so if I buy the milk there I will have to mix skim and 2%. And they have a great price on eggs, but I didn't see anything like Eggbeaters. They had sodas, but no diet cola. No sugar free pudding mix. Other things were good deals, but not really great deals. My plan for one-stop shopping isn't going to work here.
Okay, so with the what I think I'm supposed to eat plan (which is not vegetarian but has one vegetarian meal everyday), I'm spending sixty dollars a month plus veggies (the thing that I'm supposed to eat the most of), and I forgot to add popcorn and V-8 (another thing that they don't seem to have at the new store), and this is before I go to the added expense of buying any special diet stuff or substituting stuff like Eggbeaters for eggs.
I think that I'm going to try this on Monday, for about a week (except that I'm going to see about getting free breakfast at Subway on Tuesday). We've already had junk food this week, and I don't think that we need more. But we'll see how it goes.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
New Job?
Not for me. For him. He's actually going to talk to someone about a new job today. I just don't get why.
Things are not going well at the job, and everyone is complaining and everyone is saying how that they need to quit and find something different. That is what everyone is saying. I'm not sure if anyone actually means to find something different, or how much effort they are putting into finding a new job if that is what they want to do.
Anyway, my husband is looking, just in case, and occasionally filling out applications and such. So last week someone called to talk to him about a new job. Fine. They are going to talk more about it today.
I guess what surprised me was that they are still talking about it. The actual job that needs to be filled doesn't pay very well. Compared to what he made this year (and this was not a good year), it would be a significant decrease in pay.
I doubt that I would take this job. Not that I would be offered this job, as this is my husband's speciality, not mine. (Not that I have a speciality.) But if I were offered a job with similar pay and similar hours at someplace near this location, I wouldn't take it. Now, things are bad, so soon I will have to consider things like this (though I will not be considering driving to the other side of Dallas to do them). With this amount of pay, I would not be able to take care of myself if I were by myself. Usually, if a job pays enough that I want it, my husband needs twice that much before he's interested.
So it was really a surprise that he kept talking to this guy after he found out what the pay was. He can't pay the bills on that. It has been many, many years since the two of us were trying to live on this amount of money, and back then we weren't paying for two cars, and we were putting a lot of stuff on credit cards, and currently we do not have any credit cards to use while we wait for the pay to increase.
That seems to be why my husband is interested in this job, because the guy said that there would be more money after thirty days, and possibly he would then get moved to a different position.
I guess that I've heard that one before, and I just don't take such things seriously. That's just a carrot that they wave in front of people so that people will work this job when it isn't enough money. There's a raise after three months. This job isn't much, but we'll be needing a supervisor soon, and right now we don't have anyone who can do the job, so you might get it. So someone will take the job that doesn't pay enough and then keep it for a few months because they can't get their old job back, and then the boss tells this same story to someone else to replace the other person when he figures out that the raise is a quarter and that either there isn't a supervisor job or that everyone else has also been almost promised that same job.
So that seems to be it, that my husband doesn't care anything about this job, he's just been told that it will lead to this other job. I just don't believe that there really is this other job, or that my husband would be getting this other job soon. And my husband's idea of a raise and this employer's idea of a raise probably aren't even close.
I'm trying to stay out of it. Maybe this is really something good and my bad vibes will spoil everything.
Things are not going well at the job, and everyone is complaining and everyone is saying how that they need to quit and find something different. That is what everyone is saying. I'm not sure if anyone actually means to find something different, or how much effort they are putting into finding a new job if that is what they want to do.
Anyway, my husband is looking, just in case, and occasionally filling out applications and such. So last week someone called to talk to him about a new job. Fine. They are going to talk more about it today.
I guess what surprised me was that they are still talking about it. The actual job that needs to be filled doesn't pay very well. Compared to what he made this year (and this was not a good year), it would be a significant decrease in pay.
I doubt that I would take this job. Not that I would be offered this job, as this is my husband's speciality, not mine. (Not that I have a speciality.) But if I were offered a job with similar pay and similar hours at someplace near this location, I wouldn't take it. Now, things are bad, so soon I will have to consider things like this (though I will not be considering driving to the other side of Dallas to do them). With this amount of pay, I would not be able to take care of myself if I were by myself. Usually, if a job pays enough that I want it, my husband needs twice that much before he's interested.
So it was really a surprise that he kept talking to this guy after he found out what the pay was. He can't pay the bills on that. It has been many, many years since the two of us were trying to live on this amount of money, and back then we weren't paying for two cars, and we were putting a lot of stuff on credit cards, and currently we do not have any credit cards to use while we wait for the pay to increase.
That seems to be why my husband is interested in this job, because the guy said that there would be more money after thirty days, and possibly he would then get moved to a different position.
I guess that I've heard that one before, and I just don't take such things seriously. That's just a carrot that they wave in front of people so that people will work this job when it isn't enough money. There's a raise after three months. This job isn't much, but we'll be needing a supervisor soon, and right now we don't have anyone who can do the job, so you might get it. So someone will take the job that doesn't pay enough and then keep it for a few months because they can't get their old job back, and then the boss tells this same story to someone else to replace the other person when he figures out that the raise is a quarter and that either there isn't a supervisor job or that everyone else has also been almost promised that same job.
So that seems to be it, that my husband doesn't care anything about this job, he's just been told that it will lead to this other job. I just don't believe that there really is this other job, or that my husband would be getting this other job soon. And my husband's idea of a raise and this employer's idea of a raise probably aren't even close.
I'm trying to stay out of it. Maybe this is really something good and my bad vibes will spoil everything.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Last week's dollar a day thing
Okay, so Monday's total was $0.79, Tuesday I got sick and had a total of $2.11, Wednesday's total was $0.62 (because my mom bought me a sandwich), and Thursday's total was $0.63. Plus I twice ate popcorn for breakfast, which I have yet to figure out what that cost, and I had a bunch of crackers, which again I'm not sure how much that cost but I think it was twenty-five cents.
I did not make the rest of the quinoa, only the third of a pound that I have already listed (which I got on sale so only cost $0.34 for what I ate the two days). Friday and Saturday I ate spaghetti instead. I know that whole grains are supposed to be better for me, but I really like spaghetti.
On Friday, my brother gave me half of his hamburger for dinner. On Saturday I drank most of the remaining orange drink, and I had spaghetti twice.
Friday
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.04 orange breakfast drink
free half of hamburger
total
.46 (plus popcorn)
Saturday
.16 egg
.04 orange breakfast drink
.14 diet cola
.17 pasta
.17 pasta
free asparagus
.06 more orange drink
total
.74
Now, I can't really figure in the little bit of oil or the sprinkles of Parmesan cheese or the salt, so I'm just not going to count them. If I count twenty-five cents for the crackers and another twenty five cents for the popcorn, the total is $5.85, or just a bit under the six dollar goal. But if the popcorn turns out to be fifty cents, then the total would be $6.10, and I've gone just a bit over.
In either case it doesn't matter, as my husband came home sooner than expected, and we went to Burger King. Now, I had already eaten my spaghetti, so I didn't need to eat anything myself, but I did go with him (and steal some of his french fries) and I ordered a very small Coke, which was a dollar, so that puts me at either just under or just over seven dollars for the six days, and ten dollars for the whole week.
You'll notice that my husband was only home for two meals this week, and we ate out at both of them.
So while I don't really think that I could live on a dollar a day for more than a couple of weeks, I can do a lot with that amount of money, and I can really do a lot with about twice that amount of money. But I can't do anything social (except when other people buy me stuff, or when it is just bringing homemade foods), and I can't do it at all if we don't actually stay home and eat what is in the frig.
In the past experiments I have had homemade yogurt, which I did not make this time, partially because I didn't think there was enough money left to do it, partially because some of the things cost more now than they did last time I did the experiment, and partially because the area of the kitchen where I would make the yogurt is currently a big mess and I can't deal with it right now. Anyway, I've been bad and haven't been eating my yogurt anyway, so I didn't see that it was totally necessary to have that as part of the experiment this time. But if I were doing it for real, for a long period of time, the yogurt would have to be in.
I had no dairy to speak of this time. I had planned to eat six eggs this week, but with the upset stomach once I thought ramen noodles would be better, and two other times I ate popcorn instead. Not the best of choices. And except for the sprinkles of Parmesan I didn't have any milk or anything made from milk. As a woman, I am supposed to have three servings a day, and I think what I ate might count as half a serving a day. The price of milk has gone up, so I think a cup of milk would have cost at least nineteen cents, and the homemade yogurt would have cost at least twenty-five cents. If you have those three times a day, that takes up most of a dollar.
I did not spend the whole week wishing I could eat a lot of meat (maybe this has something to do with being given a sandwich on Wednesday and half of a hamburger on Friday), but I was surprised how bad I wanted a pickle. (There's a song about wanting a pickle, but we won't get into that.) And olives. I want olives. Things like pickles and olives would add up, and I didn't have any this week, except for those on my sandwich and half hamburger. That would get annoying, to either give up little things like that or else have to make them part of the budget and have to count every little pickle and olive and pepper and such.
And of course, there's very little stuff like chocolate. I bought some clearance Easter chocolate, but I didn't eat any of it, it is saved for next week. I almost went the whole week without any, except that I took some asparagus to my mom and she gave me half an ounce or so.
There would hardly be any snacks, except for popcorn, unless it was something that came out of the garden.
I'm sure that I am going to go someplace for lunch. But later I will eat something at home and eat pickles and olives, and later this week I expect to bake something, probably cookies. I have had no cookies for more than a week. That's a long time for me to go without cookies.
I did not make the rest of the quinoa, only the third of a pound that I have already listed (which I got on sale so only cost $0.34 for what I ate the two days). Friday and Saturday I ate spaghetti instead. I know that whole grains are supposed to be better for me, but I really like spaghetti.
On Friday, my brother gave me half of his hamburger for dinner. On Saturday I drank most of the remaining orange drink, and I had spaghetti twice.
Friday
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.04 orange breakfast drink
free half of hamburger
total
.46 (plus popcorn)
Saturday
.16 egg
.04 orange breakfast drink
.14 diet cola
.17 pasta
.17 pasta
free asparagus
.06 more orange drink
total
.74
Now, I can't really figure in the little bit of oil or the sprinkles of Parmesan cheese or the salt, so I'm just not going to count them. If I count twenty-five cents for the crackers and another twenty five cents for the popcorn, the total is $5.85, or just a bit under the six dollar goal. But if the popcorn turns out to be fifty cents, then the total would be $6.10, and I've gone just a bit over.
In either case it doesn't matter, as my husband came home sooner than expected, and we went to Burger King. Now, I had already eaten my spaghetti, so I didn't need to eat anything myself, but I did go with him (and steal some of his french fries) and I ordered a very small Coke, which was a dollar, so that puts me at either just under or just over seven dollars for the six days, and ten dollars for the whole week.
You'll notice that my husband was only home for two meals this week, and we ate out at both of them.
So while I don't really think that I could live on a dollar a day for more than a couple of weeks, I can do a lot with that amount of money, and I can really do a lot with about twice that amount of money. But I can't do anything social (except when other people buy me stuff, or when it is just bringing homemade foods), and I can't do it at all if we don't actually stay home and eat what is in the frig.
In the past experiments I have had homemade yogurt, which I did not make this time, partially because I didn't think there was enough money left to do it, partially because some of the things cost more now than they did last time I did the experiment, and partially because the area of the kitchen where I would make the yogurt is currently a big mess and I can't deal with it right now. Anyway, I've been bad and haven't been eating my yogurt anyway, so I didn't see that it was totally necessary to have that as part of the experiment this time. But if I were doing it for real, for a long period of time, the yogurt would have to be in.
I had no dairy to speak of this time. I had planned to eat six eggs this week, but with the upset stomach once I thought ramen noodles would be better, and two other times I ate popcorn instead. Not the best of choices. And except for the sprinkles of Parmesan I didn't have any milk or anything made from milk. As a woman, I am supposed to have three servings a day, and I think what I ate might count as half a serving a day. The price of milk has gone up, so I think a cup of milk would have cost at least nineteen cents, and the homemade yogurt would have cost at least twenty-five cents. If you have those three times a day, that takes up most of a dollar.
I did not spend the whole week wishing I could eat a lot of meat (maybe this has something to do with being given a sandwich on Wednesday and half of a hamburger on Friday), but I was surprised how bad I wanted a pickle. (There's a song about wanting a pickle, but we won't get into that.) And olives. I want olives. Things like pickles and olives would add up, and I didn't have any this week, except for those on my sandwich and half hamburger. That would get annoying, to either give up little things like that or else have to make them part of the budget and have to count every little pickle and olive and pepper and such.
And of course, there's very little stuff like chocolate. I bought some clearance Easter chocolate, but I didn't eat any of it, it is saved for next week. I almost went the whole week without any, except that I took some asparagus to my mom and she gave me half an ounce or so.
There would hardly be any snacks, except for popcorn, unless it was something that came out of the garden.
I'm sure that I am going to go someplace for lunch. But later I will eat something at home and eat pickles and olives, and later this week I expect to bake something, probably cookies. I have had no cookies for more than a week. That's a long time for me to go without cookies.
Friday, April 09, 2010
The week so far
Okay, Monday I got a lot of work done. Tuesday I felt a bit sick and really didn't do anything except run a couple of errands. Wednesday I got a bit of work done, but not as much as Monday, and then Mom called and said she wanted to buy me a sandwich. Thursday, about all I did was paint some boards, which is some work, but mostly is a lot of time waiting for stuff to dry. Still, at the end of the day I am quite worn out, so the painting is more physical work than I am aware of while I'm doing it.
Tuesday, I went to mail the tax returns. I almost put the thing in the mailbox without a stamp (the census forms did not need stamps). We had stamps in the house, but they turned out to be old, and I couldn't find any that were forty-four cents. So I had to go to the post office. The machines were taken out of the post office, because they were getting old and they didn't have replacement parts for them. So I had to stand in line a little bit to buy one stamp from a real person.
I had to pay sixty-four cents. Apparently the envelope provided for the tax returns counts as an over-sized envelope. So not only do we have to buy a stamp (when you think you wouldn't have to since the envelope is going to the federal government), then you get charged twenty cents extra cause the federal government selected a large envelope. But I guess that it was good that I had to talk to a real person, or else I would have bought a regular stamp and maybe had the thing returned to me for insufficient postage.
On Wednesday my mom called and asked if I wanted to got eat something with her. She had a buy one get one free sandwich coupon, so I could have a free sandwich. Sure, why not. And it actually was a pleasant meeting, and she did not try to guilt me into doing anything or discuss anything that I told her was off limits.
My husband has not called recently. He sent me an email saying that the phone didn't work. (Odd that there was no phone but at some point there was a computer.) Anyway, if you are reading this, someone called about camera equipment and craigslist. I wasn't really paying attention, and I'll have to listen to the message again.
Here's my latest attempt at the dollar a day thing.
I was going to start Sunday, but I didn't, cause we went to McDonald's. I suppose I could say that someone bought me stuff at McDonald's and not count it, but I don't think it is in the spirit of the thing if it's my husband doing the buying, as it is the same money that I would be spending if I were buying something myself. The rest of Sunday I ate leftovers. So the dollar a day thing was shortened at least to six days, which would then start on Monday instead of Sunday.
Monday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.79
Tuesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.15 ramen noodles
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
1.00 chocolate milk
.50 half a package of mac and cheese
(?) popcorn (I will have to look this up later)
total
2.11 (plus popcorn)
Wednesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
free sandwich and coke from Mom
total
.62
Thursday
.04 orange breakfast drink
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.63 (plus popcorn)
Plus I have eaten a bunch of crackers, which I'm not sure how much they cost, but I'm guessing about twenty-five cents. But you can see that at this rate I'll go a bit over six dollars, unless my mom gets me another free sandwich or something. And this is for feeling a bit sick and spending an extra two dollars, instead of getting what I really wanted that day--pecan sandies, ice cream, and Chinese takeout.
Tuesday, I went to mail the tax returns. I almost put the thing in the mailbox without a stamp (the census forms did not need stamps). We had stamps in the house, but they turned out to be old, and I couldn't find any that were forty-four cents. So I had to go to the post office. The machines were taken out of the post office, because they were getting old and they didn't have replacement parts for them. So I had to stand in line a little bit to buy one stamp from a real person.
I had to pay sixty-four cents. Apparently the envelope provided for the tax returns counts as an over-sized envelope. So not only do we have to buy a stamp (when you think you wouldn't have to since the envelope is going to the federal government), then you get charged twenty cents extra cause the federal government selected a large envelope. But I guess that it was good that I had to talk to a real person, or else I would have bought a regular stamp and maybe had the thing returned to me for insufficient postage.
On Wednesday my mom called and asked if I wanted to got eat something with her. She had a buy one get one free sandwich coupon, so I could have a free sandwich. Sure, why not. And it actually was a pleasant meeting, and she did not try to guilt me into doing anything or discuss anything that I told her was off limits.
My husband has not called recently. He sent me an email saying that the phone didn't work. (Odd that there was no phone but at some point there was a computer.) Anyway, if you are reading this, someone called about camera equipment and craigslist. I wasn't really paying attention, and I'll have to listen to the message again.
Here's my latest attempt at the dollar a day thing.
I was going to start Sunday, but I didn't, cause we went to McDonald's. I suppose I could say that someone bought me stuff at McDonald's and not count it, but I don't think it is in the spirit of the thing if it's my husband doing the buying, as it is the same money that I would be spending if I were buying something myself. The rest of Sunday I ate leftovers. So the dollar a day thing was shortened at least to six days, which would then start on Monday instead of Sunday.
Monday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.79
Tuesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.15 ramen noodles
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
1.00 chocolate milk
.50 half a package of mac and cheese
(?) popcorn (I will have to look this up later)
total
2.11 (plus popcorn)
Wednesday
.04 orange breakfast drink
.16 egg
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
free sandwich and coke from Mom
total
.62
Thursday
.04 orange breakfast drink
(?) popcorn
.14 diet cola
.28 black bean soup
.17 quinoa
free asparagus
total
.63 (plus popcorn)
Plus I have eaten a bunch of crackers, which I'm not sure how much they cost, but I'm guessing about twenty-five cents. But you can see that at this rate I'll go a bit over six dollars, unless my mom gets me another free sandwich or something. And this is for feeling a bit sick and spending an extra two dollars, instead of getting what I really wanted that day--pecan sandies, ice cream, and Chinese takeout.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Substitutions
Tuesday, I just didn't feel well. Not quite actually sick, but just not feeling right. At times I would think that it wasn't going to be so bad, and I might as well get up and do something. And then I would get a twinge and think, no, that's not a good idea. I'm going to get worse. I'm really going to be sick and I might as well get used to the idea and do something so that it won't be so bad.
I thought about what would make me feel better. Eating a whole lot of cookies makes me feel better, but that isn't really good for me. But I was thinking that I could make a whole lot of cookies out of this cake mix I got on clearance (not this year, and not even last year, and I still have lots of it left) and all I would have to do was add a half stick of margarine and two eggs. That would cost about fifty-five cents. Then I could eat cookies. I could probably eat cookies instead of eggs for breakfast. Maybe I could even eat cookies for dinner. I could eat cookies and still do this dollar a day thing.
But the dollar a day thing isn't important. I was going to drink less soda this week, have less sugar, and here I was thinking that eating cookies for breakfast might be the thing to do.
Probably not a good idea.
I gave up and went to the dollar store for some over the counter meds, and while I was there I bought mac and cheese and a pint of chocolate milk. So I have so far spent an extra two dollars that I had not planned to spend. And I think that I will just have to say that I've gone over six dollars and leave it at that.
I keep thinking of something I saw, maybe with John Hirsch, maybe in Taxi (though I really can't remember and I never did watch much of Taxi). Anyway, there is this man at a restaurant that he probably can't afford. And he keeps trying to make it work out that he can eat there. He keeps asking the waiter what comes with what and can he make substitutions. And then he ends up saying something really silly, like can he substitute another meatloaf for the sprig of parsley.
So I keep thinking that maybe I can substitute something and still only use six dollars for the six days. But I should give up on that. The chocolate milk and the mac and cheese did make me feel a bit better, and without most of the added sugar of eating a whole bunch of cookies. Spending less than a certain amount of money isn't really the important thing this week. Not being sick is important. Getting some work done is important. Maybe not ingesting a lot of sugar is important.
It may not always be that way. I think that if I don't want to do eat what I have planned to eat, I don't have to. There are other things in the house to eat, and if I really wanted to, I could spend ten dollars or so and go buy Chinese food, or a pizza, or ice cream, or something at a bakery. I could do something like that to make myself feel better.
If I really only had four hundred dollars to spend on food for the year, and I spent a dollar a day, and then I didn't feel well and went out and spent ten dollars, I could do that, once. I could do that a second time and a third time. The fourth time I wouldn't quite have ten dollars left, and I would maybe look around on the ground for someone's dropped change. The fifth time I would just be out of luck, unless I happened to find a ten dollar bill that someone dropped.
Anyway, I felt good again yesterday, but this morning, not so much. We will have to see.
I thought about what would make me feel better. Eating a whole lot of cookies makes me feel better, but that isn't really good for me. But I was thinking that I could make a whole lot of cookies out of this cake mix I got on clearance (not this year, and not even last year, and I still have lots of it left) and all I would have to do was add a half stick of margarine and two eggs. That would cost about fifty-five cents. Then I could eat cookies. I could probably eat cookies instead of eggs for breakfast. Maybe I could even eat cookies for dinner. I could eat cookies and still do this dollar a day thing.
But the dollar a day thing isn't important. I was going to drink less soda this week, have less sugar, and here I was thinking that eating cookies for breakfast might be the thing to do.
Probably not a good idea.
I gave up and went to the dollar store for some over the counter meds, and while I was there I bought mac and cheese and a pint of chocolate milk. So I have so far spent an extra two dollars that I had not planned to spend. And I think that I will just have to say that I've gone over six dollars and leave it at that.
I keep thinking of something I saw, maybe with John Hirsch, maybe in Taxi (though I really can't remember and I never did watch much of Taxi). Anyway, there is this man at a restaurant that he probably can't afford. And he keeps trying to make it work out that he can eat there. He keeps asking the waiter what comes with what and can he make substitutions. And then he ends up saying something really silly, like can he substitute another meatloaf for the sprig of parsley.
So I keep thinking that maybe I can substitute something and still only use six dollars for the six days. But I should give up on that. The chocolate milk and the mac and cheese did make me feel a bit better, and without most of the added sugar of eating a whole bunch of cookies. Spending less than a certain amount of money isn't really the important thing this week. Not being sick is important. Getting some work done is important. Maybe not ingesting a lot of sugar is important.
It may not always be that way. I think that if I don't want to do eat what I have planned to eat, I don't have to. There are other things in the house to eat, and if I really wanted to, I could spend ten dollars or so and go buy Chinese food, or a pizza, or ice cream, or something at a bakery. I could do something like that to make myself feel better.
If I really only had four hundred dollars to spend on food for the year, and I spent a dollar a day, and then I didn't feel well and went out and spent ten dollars, I could do that, once. I could do that a second time and a third time. The fourth time I wouldn't quite have ten dollars left, and I would maybe look around on the ground for someone's dropped change. The fifth time I would just be out of luck, unless I happened to find a ten dollar bill that someone dropped.
Anyway, I felt good again yesterday, but this morning, not so much. We will have to see.
Monday, April 05, 2010
A dollar a day week
I found another blog about trying to spend only a dollar a day for food. Only this one is a bit more ambitious. She's trying to do this for a whole year.
Well, most of a year. She cheats once in a while. And, since it is for the whole year she isn't totally cancelling her social life either. If someone wants to make or buy her dinner, she will let them.
So I was going to do the dollar a day thing with her this week. I have the house to myself for a bit, and I should like to save some money, so this is a good time to do it.
Okay, yesterday before my husband left we went to McDonald's. I had breakfast off of the dollar menu, but still, that adds up to three dollars and tax. So yesterday doesn't count. I ate leftovers the rest of the day.
Okay, so I'll do six days instead of seven.
First thing I always do is make black bean soup. I went to the store and spent $5.13, $1.49 was for two rather sad looking onions. Onions, even at my cheap produce place, have gone up to $1.29 a pound. While I usually make twelve cups of the soup for less than three dollars, this time it cost $3.38.
Still, it isn't too bad. About a week ago I found some quinoa on sale for a dollar a pound. It is usually more like three or four a pound, so I bought ten pounds. I keep wondering if I should have bought more, but I had an image of greedy little me emptying the shelves, spending a lot of money, and then having something happen resulting in either me not cooking or the grain getting spoiled some other way, so I decided that ten pounds was enough. I don't usually eat the stuff on a regular basis. Maybe I'll get tired of it before the ten pounds are gone.
Where was I? Oh, yes, I've measured out about a pound of the quinoa, which cost me $1.03. And I bought a dozen jumbo eggs, after being surprised that the large eggs weren't on sale for Easter. The eggs were $1.89 a dozen, and I plan to eat half of them. And I plan to eat half of the soup. And I plan to eat asparagus with the quinoa. And I spent $1.10 on my special diet cola, and then thirty cents on some diet breakfast drink I got on sale quite a while ago but forgot to make.
So that's $1.69 for the soup, $1.03 for the quinoa, $0.95 for the eggs, and $1.40 for the drinks. And I'm getting the asparagus out of my garden for free, so that's $5.07. I don't know how to figure in a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese or herbs, but I should think that it would be less than the $0.93 I have left. I'll probably add something to this, like popcorn. And I'll make a note if I decide to eat more of the soup or an extra egg or something.
And, like the new blogger, I reserve the right to quit if I should win the lottery, become ill, or find some other good reason. And if someone should invite me to lunch, I will probably accept.
Well, most of a year. She cheats once in a while. And, since it is for the whole year she isn't totally cancelling her social life either. If someone wants to make or buy her dinner, she will let them.
So I was going to do the dollar a day thing with her this week. I have the house to myself for a bit, and I should like to save some money, so this is a good time to do it.
Okay, yesterday before my husband left we went to McDonald's. I had breakfast off of the dollar menu, but still, that adds up to three dollars and tax. So yesterday doesn't count. I ate leftovers the rest of the day.
Okay, so I'll do six days instead of seven.
First thing I always do is make black bean soup. I went to the store and spent $5.13, $1.49 was for two rather sad looking onions. Onions, even at my cheap produce place, have gone up to $1.29 a pound. While I usually make twelve cups of the soup for less than three dollars, this time it cost $3.38.
Still, it isn't too bad. About a week ago I found some quinoa on sale for a dollar a pound. It is usually more like three or four a pound, so I bought ten pounds. I keep wondering if I should have bought more, but I had an image of greedy little me emptying the shelves, spending a lot of money, and then having something happen resulting in either me not cooking or the grain getting spoiled some other way, so I decided that ten pounds was enough. I don't usually eat the stuff on a regular basis. Maybe I'll get tired of it before the ten pounds are gone.
Where was I? Oh, yes, I've measured out about a pound of the quinoa, which cost me $1.03. And I bought a dozen jumbo eggs, after being surprised that the large eggs weren't on sale for Easter. The eggs were $1.89 a dozen, and I plan to eat half of them. And I plan to eat half of the soup. And I plan to eat asparagus with the quinoa. And I spent $1.10 on my special diet cola, and then thirty cents on some diet breakfast drink I got on sale quite a while ago but forgot to make.
So that's $1.69 for the soup, $1.03 for the quinoa, $0.95 for the eggs, and $1.40 for the drinks. And I'm getting the asparagus out of my garden for free, so that's $5.07. I don't know how to figure in a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese or herbs, but I should think that it would be less than the $0.93 I have left. I'll probably add something to this, like popcorn. And I'll make a note if I decide to eat more of the soup or an extra egg or something.
And, like the new blogger, I reserve the right to quit if I should win the lottery, become ill, or find some other good reason. And if someone should invite me to lunch, I will probably accept.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Inflation, and sad looking plants
I'm not sure how long I have been gardening (or at least attempting to make a garden), but it started sometime in the early nineties.
I was thinking how much more my gardening supplies cost.
Plants like tomatoes and peppers used to come in a same 4-pack. At places like Walmart, these 4-packs cost something like 2/1.00, 2/.88, or on rare occasions even 3/1.00. A packet of seeds from a company like Burpee would cost a bit more than a dollar. I stopped buying tomato and pepper seeds. For a dollar I could get about eight plants and not have to try to grow my own leggy seedlings on the windowsill.
For other plants that were best grown from seed, I found cheaper packets. I found places that sold seeds for a nickel, and several more places that sold seeds for a dime or a quarter. I bought a lot of seeds, just never for tomatoes or peppers, and rarely from a big name company, unless that was the only way to get a particular strain of something.
At some point I bought some small tomato cages, two for a dollar. Then I bought some larger ones for a dollar. Then I made some larger ones myself.
I can't find 4-pack plants anymore. For a while there were 6-packs for a dollar, but now they are closer to two dollars. Then there were the 2-inch pots, first 4/1.00, then 3/1.00, and now 2/1.00 when I can find them. 4-inch pots are usually twice as much if not more, but they are supposed to be bigger plants. This year I am finding a lot of 4-inch pots that just have 2-inch size plants in them.
The tomato cages that used to cost fifty cents or a dollar now cost three or four dollars. That just seems like too much to me. Most of the places that had the nickel seeds aren't around anymore. Places that sold seeds for a dime last year are selling them for a quarter this year. The big name seeds that used to be about a dollar are now closer to two dollars.
Some things seem about the same. The small hand tools that used to cost a dollar are still to be found at the dollar store.
Hard work has gone up, sort of. I think when I started my first garden, I was making about minimum wage, which I think was around 3.80 an hour. Now minimum wage is 7.15. But I am older, and the ground here is clay, while the ground at the old house was mostly sand, so everything is more work, and I have less strength to do it.
Of course, at the moment I have no job, minimum wage or otherwise, so one way of looking at it is that as long as I'm doing the work by myself, it is free.
Except for the cost of aspirin and muscle rub.
Yesterday, I went shopping for plants. I made a trip to Fort Worth and spent about twenty dollars. I didn't buy as much as I planned.
I used to buy from different places for different reasons. One place tended to have less expensive plants, another might have more variety of plants, and still another place seemed to have bigger healthier plants. So I would go to the first place and buy a lot of stuff, go to the third place and spend a bit more to get a few plants that were bigger, and then go to the second place and pay a bit extra to get a few more plants that I couldn't find at the other two places.
Okay, the place with the less expensive plants still seems to have the best prices, if they have what I want. But, like everyone else, they seem to have no cheap 4-packs, and less of the 2-inch pots than they used to. Still, they have the best prices on herbs, so I bought about ten. Last year I bought everything, thinking that I would plant a big herb garden and never need to buy most of them ever again. Except that most of the herb garden drowned last year, so this year I'm trying to be a bit more cautious. Still, the plants I bought were worth the trip.
There were two places that I used to go for the variety. One of them is still quite good, but it is quite a drive, and I usually end up spending too much money there, and sometimes I buy too much and end up not having enough space for the plants and seeds that I get there. In the future I need to stay away from this place until after I have a bed dug and ready to plant.
Another place that I used to get unusual seeds from seems to be getting rid of those displays. And it isn't that I bought a lot of those seeds, it was just nice to know that they were there and that I could buy them someday.
And the place that I used to buy the bigger plants seemed to not have such impressive plants this year. They seemed to have a lot of 2-inch size plants in the 4-inch size containers. And half the place looked like it was dying. Maybe those are plants from last year and they are going to be replaced soon, but mark them down or something. Some of these sad little plants still had four dollar price tags. Who wants to buy a dying plant for four dollars?
So that leaves my local independent. I don't usually buy a lot from her, cause her plants usually aren't special in any way, not the cheapest, not the biggest, and usually not the rare varieties (though she was the first I saw with the Stevia plant). She does have two things going for her. She is the closest place I can buy from, and she takes the time to mark all of the plants. The 2-inch and 4-inch containers often arrive without the little plastic name tags (they are just on the trays, and not on the individual containers that you take home), but she takes the time to write the names on popsicle sticks so that you know you've bought a cherry tomato instead of an early girl. If you buy a plant without a marker, that's probably because the truck just made a delivery and she hasn't had time to write them out yet.
I think that she'll be getting more of my business this year. With everyone else raising their prices, hers seem to be closer to the mid-range, and if I'm not getting the cheapest plants or the biggest plants I might as well go to the closest place and get plants that are properly marked.
I was thinking how much more my gardening supplies cost.
Plants like tomatoes and peppers used to come in a same 4-pack. At places like Walmart, these 4-packs cost something like 2/1.00, 2/.88, or on rare occasions even 3/1.00. A packet of seeds from a company like Burpee would cost a bit more than a dollar. I stopped buying tomato and pepper seeds. For a dollar I could get about eight plants and not have to try to grow my own leggy seedlings on the windowsill.
For other plants that were best grown from seed, I found cheaper packets. I found places that sold seeds for a nickel, and several more places that sold seeds for a dime or a quarter. I bought a lot of seeds, just never for tomatoes or peppers, and rarely from a big name company, unless that was the only way to get a particular strain of something.
At some point I bought some small tomato cages, two for a dollar. Then I bought some larger ones for a dollar. Then I made some larger ones myself.
I can't find 4-pack plants anymore. For a while there were 6-packs for a dollar, but now they are closer to two dollars. Then there were the 2-inch pots, first 4/1.00, then 3/1.00, and now 2/1.00 when I can find them. 4-inch pots are usually twice as much if not more, but they are supposed to be bigger plants. This year I am finding a lot of 4-inch pots that just have 2-inch size plants in them.
The tomato cages that used to cost fifty cents or a dollar now cost three or four dollars. That just seems like too much to me. Most of the places that had the nickel seeds aren't around anymore. Places that sold seeds for a dime last year are selling them for a quarter this year. The big name seeds that used to be about a dollar are now closer to two dollars.
Some things seem about the same. The small hand tools that used to cost a dollar are still to be found at the dollar store.
Hard work has gone up, sort of. I think when I started my first garden, I was making about minimum wage, which I think was around 3.80 an hour. Now minimum wage is 7.15. But I am older, and the ground here is clay, while the ground at the old house was mostly sand, so everything is more work, and I have less strength to do it.
Of course, at the moment I have no job, minimum wage or otherwise, so one way of looking at it is that as long as I'm doing the work by myself, it is free.
Except for the cost of aspirin and muscle rub.
Yesterday, I went shopping for plants. I made a trip to Fort Worth and spent about twenty dollars. I didn't buy as much as I planned.
I used to buy from different places for different reasons. One place tended to have less expensive plants, another might have more variety of plants, and still another place seemed to have bigger healthier plants. So I would go to the first place and buy a lot of stuff, go to the third place and spend a bit more to get a few plants that were bigger, and then go to the second place and pay a bit extra to get a few more plants that I couldn't find at the other two places.
Okay, the place with the less expensive plants still seems to have the best prices, if they have what I want. But, like everyone else, they seem to have no cheap 4-packs, and less of the 2-inch pots than they used to. Still, they have the best prices on herbs, so I bought about ten. Last year I bought everything, thinking that I would plant a big herb garden and never need to buy most of them ever again. Except that most of the herb garden drowned last year, so this year I'm trying to be a bit more cautious. Still, the plants I bought were worth the trip.
There were two places that I used to go for the variety. One of them is still quite good, but it is quite a drive, and I usually end up spending too much money there, and sometimes I buy too much and end up not having enough space for the plants and seeds that I get there. In the future I need to stay away from this place until after I have a bed dug and ready to plant.
Another place that I used to get unusual seeds from seems to be getting rid of those displays. And it isn't that I bought a lot of those seeds, it was just nice to know that they were there and that I could buy them someday.
And the place that I used to buy the bigger plants seemed to not have such impressive plants this year. They seemed to have a lot of 2-inch size plants in the 4-inch size containers. And half the place looked like it was dying. Maybe those are plants from last year and they are going to be replaced soon, but mark them down or something. Some of these sad little plants still had four dollar price tags. Who wants to buy a dying plant for four dollars?
So that leaves my local independent. I don't usually buy a lot from her, cause her plants usually aren't special in any way, not the cheapest, not the biggest, and usually not the rare varieties (though she was the first I saw with the Stevia plant). She does have two things going for her. She is the closest place I can buy from, and she takes the time to mark all of the plants. The 2-inch and 4-inch containers often arrive without the little plastic name tags (they are just on the trays, and not on the individual containers that you take home), but she takes the time to write the names on popsicle sticks so that you know you've bought a cherry tomato instead of an early girl. If you buy a plant without a marker, that's probably because the truck just made a delivery and she hasn't had time to write them out yet.
I think that she'll be getting more of my business this year. With everyone else raising their prices, hers seem to be closer to the mid-range, and if I'm not getting the cheapest plants or the biggest plants I might as well go to the closest place and get plants that are properly marked.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Taking the day off
I have been hard at work in the garden, partially just because I wanted to get started planting things, and partially because of some other stuff that I won't get into just yet. And, as I had the place to myself for most of the week, I did actually get a lot done, as I was getting up with the sun and going to work (for fifteen minutes intervals) through most of the daylight hours. So, on three of those days, in between breaks, I got about five or six hours work done. So, maybe twenty hours or so for the week, not counting that I had started on it the previous week, or tried to start working the week before that, or that little bit that I managed to get done before the great snow of 2010.
Anyway, I have been transplanting things and picking up trash and emptying pots and filling pots and moving dirt from one end of the yard to the other, washing rocks, putting down a few stepping stones, etc.... I go to bed tired and wake up hungry and between moving this and that have watched most of Stargate SG1 season 8.
And it is not finished. Still, I do see a lot of progress. I think to myself, this part over here actually looks nice. If the weather would cooperate (and my would health hold up, and my husband would stay out of town, and I could find a magic ATM that dispenses money without deleting anything from my account), I could make this whole place look nice and have flowers and yummy vegetables and everything.
Of course, most of that won't happen. But the weather might be okay for several days next week, and I plan to keep working on it.
I have made such progress that one of my nicer neighbors came and almost hugged me.
The yard still needs to be weedwacked, which is something I just cannot seem to get the hang of, so my husband will have to do it.
Anyway, I had planned to do more of the same today, but it was just too windy. See, I blame the fact that I did not get more done earlier on the rain that came (dirt I can deal with, though slowly, but mud is entirely different), and today I used the wind as an excuse to spend most of the morning shopping.
I got an early start on the shopping. First there was breakfast at a 24-hour taco place at around seven this morning, then I looked around Lowe's, and then I went to Walmart to buy day lilies. I guess that I waited too late to buy those day lilies, but then I thought I'd go to a different Walmart. I found Pardon Me and New Toy. New Toy wasn't what I had planned to buy, but I decided that two Walmarts in one day (without a sale) was enough. And then as long as I was in the general area, I might as well go to Home Depot too. By the time I did all that it was time for lunch, so I had to stop at McDonald's on the way home.
And then when I was unloading the car, I noticed the wind was a bit much. I decided that the plants could wait a while. About half a hour later, it was worse. The trash had not yet been collected, and some of mine was starting to get blown down the street. While putting it back on the curb I briefly lost my glasses.
At that point I decided that I was done for the day.
A bit later, I went to my brother's place to watch cable, and then he took me to dinner.
Well, it was nice to stay clean all day.
I didn't buy that much (though my wallet is much lighter), but I did a lot of window shopping. There is all this stuff made from recycled tires that I will be buying as soon as I win the lottery. And I saw this product for sale at Walmart. This is the sort of thing that you buy if you have a lot of money and want to do the new Square Foot Gardening, while I have no money and sometimes try to do the old Square Foot Gardening by buying scrap lumber. I would love to have several of these, but they cost about forty dollars each. (I spend about four dollars each.)
Still, go and look at this on their site. I'm not sure about their calculations, but it is fun to play with.
Eventually, I want to have no grass in the backyard. I would rather just have pathways between the garden beds and trees and such. This is not impossible, as I do not have a giant backyard. Still if I am not going to have any grass, I will have to have a lot of stepping stones or mulch or rubber mats and such to replace the grass. That would take a lot of money, and a lot of work. But I am thinking that if I just buy a bit every time I am at Home Depot getting something else, that I would eventually get it done, and the work would not be so terrible, and I would not notice the money so much.
Speaking of not noticing the money so much, I am trying to remember where it all went to. The stepping stones have gone up to 1.27. I bought six while they were on sale for .94, and then I bought eight more. I bought one 2x6 rubber mulch roll for fifteen dollars, two bags of sand at four dollars each, about twelve dollars of bedding plants from a local independent, 2.50 on two bluebonnets, two dollars on a six pack of petunias, ten dollars on day lilies, and a bag of rubber mulch for seven dollars. The bag of rubber mulch is less than half the size of the mulch I usually buy, but it costs about four times as much. But I have decided to try it anyway, because in most places where I have put mulch, I can only see what I bought last year, maybe in some places the stuff from the year before, and the rest is gone. I'm assuming that the rubber mulch will last a lot longer than that.
So that was around seventy-five dollars, plus I've been mostly eating the dollar menu at McDonald's, so that and the taco place was probably another twenty. So I spent all the money that I had this week (just in case I had jury duty), except for twenty dollars, and I was thinking that wasn't too bad, cause I would spend the twenty on a phone card that I need to get soon. I was looking at my last twenty dollar bill and telling myself that it was okay, that of all that money I had spent (mostly on Saturday morning) most of it was either something that I really needed (like the sand) or something that I had planned to buy (like the day lilies, though I had thought that they would be six dollars instead of ten), and that my only real impulse buys were the two bluebonnets (which if I didn't buy them I probably would have just bought a second pack of petunias) and the 2x6 rubber mulch roll (which I bought at fifteen dollars after seeing it someplace else for twenty, and I figured at 1.27 each for stepping stones that I would pay about the same amount to cover 2x6, so I might as well get the rubber and have a look at it). But then as I was leaving the Home Depot I noticed that blueberry plants had been marked down to four dollars, and I bought one of those too.
So I no longer have twenty dollars left, I won't be buying that phone card til next week, and I now have a blueberry bush that I have to deal with. Blueberry plants are in the grand scheme of things, but I have not yet prepared that area where they will go, so now I have to wonder what I'm going to do with this plant until then.
At some point I went out and measured everything, but I seem to have misplaced the notebook where I wrote everything down, so I shall have to take all the measurements again. I should mark out where I want the fruit trees to go and build barriers to go around them so that I remember not to plant anything else there.
Now it is Sunday. Being all clean for a day was nice, but now it is time to get back to work.
Anyway, I have been transplanting things and picking up trash and emptying pots and filling pots and moving dirt from one end of the yard to the other, washing rocks, putting down a few stepping stones, etc.... I go to bed tired and wake up hungry and between moving this and that have watched most of Stargate SG1 season 8.
And it is not finished. Still, I do see a lot of progress. I think to myself, this part over here actually looks nice. If the weather would cooperate (and my would health hold up, and my husband would stay out of town, and I could find a magic ATM that dispenses money without deleting anything from my account), I could make this whole place look nice and have flowers and yummy vegetables and everything.
Of course, most of that won't happen. But the weather might be okay for several days next week, and I plan to keep working on it.
I have made such progress that one of my nicer neighbors came and almost hugged me.
The yard still needs to be weedwacked, which is something I just cannot seem to get the hang of, so my husband will have to do it.
Anyway, I had planned to do more of the same today, but it was just too windy. See, I blame the fact that I did not get more done earlier on the rain that came (dirt I can deal with, though slowly, but mud is entirely different), and today I used the wind as an excuse to spend most of the morning shopping.
I got an early start on the shopping. First there was breakfast at a 24-hour taco place at around seven this morning, then I looked around Lowe's, and then I went to Walmart to buy day lilies. I guess that I waited too late to buy those day lilies, but then I thought I'd go to a different Walmart. I found Pardon Me and New Toy. New Toy wasn't what I had planned to buy, but I decided that two Walmarts in one day (without a sale) was enough. And then as long as I was in the general area, I might as well go to Home Depot too. By the time I did all that it was time for lunch, so I had to stop at McDonald's on the way home.
And then when I was unloading the car, I noticed the wind was a bit much. I decided that the plants could wait a while. About half a hour later, it was worse. The trash had not yet been collected, and some of mine was starting to get blown down the street. While putting it back on the curb I briefly lost my glasses.
At that point I decided that I was done for the day.
A bit later, I went to my brother's place to watch cable, and then he took me to dinner.
Well, it was nice to stay clean all day.
I didn't buy that much (though my wallet is much lighter), but I did a lot of window shopping. There is all this stuff made from recycled tires that I will be buying as soon as I win the lottery. And I saw this product for sale at Walmart. This is the sort of thing that you buy if you have a lot of money and want to do the new Square Foot Gardening, while I have no money and sometimes try to do the old Square Foot Gardening by buying scrap lumber. I would love to have several of these, but they cost about forty dollars each. (I spend about four dollars each.)
Still, go and look at this on their site. I'm not sure about their calculations, but it is fun to play with.
Eventually, I want to have no grass in the backyard. I would rather just have pathways between the garden beds and trees and such. This is not impossible, as I do not have a giant backyard. Still if I am not going to have any grass, I will have to have a lot of stepping stones or mulch or rubber mats and such to replace the grass. That would take a lot of money, and a lot of work. But I am thinking that if I just buy a bit every time I am at Home Depot getting something else, that I would eventually get it done, and the work would not be so terrible, and I would not notice the money so much.
Speaking of not noticing the money so much, I am trying to remember where it all went to. The stepping stones have gone up to 1.27. I bought six while they were on sale for .94, and then I bought eight more. I bought one 2x6 rubber mulch roll for fifteen dollars, two bags of sand at four dollars each, about twelve dollars of bedding plants from a local independent, 2.50 on two bluebonnets, two dollars on a six pack of petunias, ten dollars on day lilies, and a bag of rubber mulch for seven dollars. The bag of rubber mulch is less than half the size of the mulch I usually buy, but it costs about four times as much. But I have decided to try it anyway, because in most places where I have put mulch, I can only see what I bought last year, maybe in some places the stuff from the year before, and the rest is gone. I'm assuming that the rubber mulch will last a lot longer than that.
So that was around seventy-five dollars, plus I've been mostly eating the dollar menu at McDonald's, so that and the taco place was probably another twenty. So I spent all the money that I had this week (just in case I had jury duty), except for twenty dollars, and I was thinking that wasn't too bad, cause I would spend the twenty on a phone card that I need to get soon. I was looking at my last twenty dollar bill and telling myself that it was okay, that of all that money I had spent (mostly on Saturday morning) most of it was either something that I really needed (like the sand) or something that I had planned to buy (like the day lilies, though I had thought that they would be six dollars instead of ten), and that my only real impulse buys were the two bluebonnets (which if I didn't buy them I probably would have just bought a second pack of petunias) and the 2x6 rubber mulch roll (which I bought at fifteen dollars after seeing it someplace else for twenty, and I figured at 1.27 each for stepping stones that I would pay about the same amount to cover 2x6, so I might as well get the rubber and have a look at it). But then as I was leaving the Home Depot I noticed that blueberry plants had been marked down to four dollars, and I bought one of those too.
So I no longer have twenty dollars left, I won't be buying that phone card til next week, and I now have a blueberry bush that I have to deal with. Blueberry plants are in the grand scheme of things, but I have not yet prepared that area where they will go, so now I have to wonder what I'm going to do with this plant until then.
At some point I went out and measured everything, but I seem to have misplaced the notebook where I wrote everything down, so I shall have to take all the measurements again. I should mark out where I want the fruit trees to go and build barriers to go around them so that I remember not to plant anything else there.
Now it is Sunday. Being all clean for a day was nice, but now it is time to get back to work.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday Morons-- how's that going to help anything?
Okay, I said that the problems with my husband's job deserved its own post, so here it is.
My husband got this job about three and a half years ago. It was much like other jobs he has had in the last fifteen years or so, just this was a different company. Some jobs he does his part, and then weeks later a salesperson will follow. Other jobs he has been paired with a salesperson and they work at the same place at the same time. (Once I was the salesperson, but I wasn't very good at it.) At this company he has been working with two salespeople. Most of the jobs he gets paid at least some commission. If a good salesperson is assigned to work with him, this is good. If a bad salesperson is assigned to work with him, this is bad.
At this company, when he gets to work with two good salespeople, this is really good.
So, for a time, my husband made a lot of money at this company. Okay, maybe not a lot of money, but almost twice as much as he was making before. That year, we both bought new cars.
And then this whole economy thing happened. People lost their jobs and had no money to spend. Other people who didn't lose their jobs were afraid that they might lose their jobs later, and they didn't want to spend much money either.
So, my husband still has a job, but not really steady work. And when he does work, people don't spend as much as they did, so he doesn't make as much money.
So, when he has a bad day, he makes about fifty dollars. When he has a good day, he makes about three hundred dollars. There are now a lot more bad days than good days. And then there are a lot of days that he just doesn't work at all.
The company has decided to change things around so that instead of working in groups of three, people will work in pairs. To make up for the change, my husband is supposed to get a slightly higher percentage commission. After doing some math, they have decided that the new plan will raise the current average pay of one hundred and seventy nine dollars per day to one hundred and ninety dollars per day.
This still doesn't get them anywhere near the previous three hundred dollars per day that he got used to getting paid on a regular basis.
And, everyone will usually have to work an extra hour per day and do a lot more work in general. Not really worth an extra eleven dollars a day, even if the plan works.
Okay, so they now have three people working together, and they don't have enough assignments for everyone they have already hired to work on a regular basis. Now they are going to change everything around so that people work in pairs. So either they will have to fire half of the sales staff, or they will have to hire more people who do my husband's job.
Now, if they fired half of the sales staff, and they manage to fire the half that doesn't make much money anyway, this might work out okay. If they just go out and hire more people, that will mean that my husband will only work about half the time that he has been, and he isn't working that often now anyway.
I have never heard of this company actually firing anybody. They just give people bad shifts and wait for them to quit. Some of them just don't quit, though I don't understand why.
Those are the salespeople my husband will probably get stuck with.
None of it really makes any sense. But they just refuse to deal with things the way they really are. They don't want to get rid of salespeople who aren't selling much and they don't want to cut back on the schedule so that they only work at sites where people actually want to buy stuff. They want to mostly keep doing things the way they have always been done. They want to try to bully people into buying stuff, even though the people just don't have money to spend on stuff.
Now, if they really want to improve things, they should maybe get rid of some of the people who schedule the accounts. They obviously don't care if the account makes any money or not. That isn't their problem. They don't get paid by how much money an account makes, just how many accounts they can schedule and how many customers they can lure in, even if the customers don't spend any money. So they should get rid of these people, or at least change the way that they get paid, so that they don't waste everybody's time working a site where there is no money.
So, they should get rid of some of those people, and get rid of some of the salespeople (those who aren't making much money anyway), and then see how many people are needed to work with them that do generate some business. Instead they are either going to hire or fire people based on this silly idea of having all the workers pair off.
My husband got this job about three and a half years ago. It was much like other jobs he has had in the last fifteen years or so, just this was a different company. Some jobs he does his part, and then weeks later a salesperson will follow. Other jobs he has been paired with a salesperson and they work at the same place at the same time. (Once I was the salesperson, but I wasn't very good at it.) At this company he has been working with two salespeople. Most of the jobs he gets paid at least some commission. If a good salesperson is assigned to work with him, this is good. If a bad salesperson is assigned to work with him, this is bad.
At this company, when he gets to work with two good salespeople, this is really good.
So, for a time, my husband made a lot of money at this company. Okay, maybe not a lot of money, but almost twice as much as he was making before. That year, we both bought new cars.
And then this whole economy thing happened. People lost their jobs and had no money to spend. Other people who didn't lose their jobs were afraid that they might lose their jobs later, and they didn't want to spend much money either.
So, my husband still has a job, but not really steady work. And when he does work, people don't spend as much as they did, so he doesn't make as much money.
So, when he has a bad day, he makes about fifty dollars. When he has a good day, he makes about three hundred dollars. There are now a lot more bad days than good days. And then there are a lot of days that he just doesn't work at all.
The company has decided to change things around so that instead of working in groups of three, people will work in pairs. To make up for the change, my husband is supposed to get a slightly higher percentage commission. After doing some math, they have decided that the new plan will raise the current average pay of one hundred and seventy nine dollars per day to one hundred and ninety dollars per day.
This still doesn't get them anywhere near the previous three hundred dollars per day that he got used to getting paid on a regular basis.
And, everyone will usually have to work an extra hour per day and do a lot more work in general. Not really worth an extra eleven dollars a day, even if the plan works.
Okay, so they now have three people working together, and they don't have enough assignments for everyone they have already hired to work on a regular basis. Now they are going to change everything around so that people work in pairs. So either they will have to fire half of the sales staff, or they will have to hire more people who do my husband's job.
Now, if they fired half of the sales staff, and they manage to fire the half that doesn't make much money anyway, this might work out okay. If they just go out and hire more people, that will mean that my husband will only work about half the time that he has been, and he isn't working that often now anyway.
I have never heard of this company actually firing anybody. They just give people bad shifts and wait for them to quit. Some of them just don't quit, though I don't understand why.
Those are the salespeople my husband will probably get stuck with.
None of it really makes any sense. But they just refuse to deal with things the way they really are. They don't want to get rid of salespeople who aren't selling much and they don't want to cut back on the schedule so that they only work at sites where people actually want to buy stuff. They want to mostly keep doing things the way they have always been done. They want to try to bully people into buying stuff, even though the people just don't have money to spend on stuff.
Now, if they really want to improve things, they should maybe get rid of some of the people who schedule the accounts. They obviously don't care if the account makes any money or not. That isn't their problem. They don't get paid by how much money an account makes, just how many accounts they can schedule and how many customers they can lure in, even if the customers don't spend any money. So they should get rid of these people, or at least change the way that they get paid, so that they don't waste everybody's time working a site where there is no money.
So, they should get rid of some of those people, and get rid of some of the salespeople (those who aren't making much money anyway), and then see how many people are needed to work with them that do generate some business. Instead they are either going to hire or fire people based on this silly idea of having all the workers pair off.
Monday, February 08, 2010
The video contest
I sort of want to label this a Monday Moron post, except that I'm not really sure who is the moron in the story, unless maybe it is me, and I was the moron last time.
Anyway, several months ago (I think it was September, though it might even have been August), I found out about a certain contest. The idea was to video a bit about what you could do with a certain amount of money, and then you post your video on YouTube and this other site, and then people would leave comments about the videos and vote on the videos, though the contest was supposed to be decided not by the public votes but by a panel of judges.
I had never made a video before, but I had a few ideas, and I noticed that there were not very many entries. There wasn't a big money prize either, but I thought that I might as well give it a try. First place was five hundred dollars, second place was three hundred dollars, and third place was a hundred dollars. With less than a dozen entries, the odds were good.
Now if I could just find a video recorder.
First, I thought that I would borrow my brother's. Now, he didn't have a problem loaning me the camera, he just said that it was old now and didn't have an easy way to convert to digital, which is what I would need to get the video on YouTube, so I decided to look elsewhere.
Dmarks pointed out that I probably already had a video recorder on my husband's digital camera. I didn't think so, but it turns out that Dmarks was right. Making videos with the camera was not recommended and did not produce videos of high quality, but it would probably be good enough for making short videos for YouTube.
My husband and I made the first one together and uploaded it on his account, cause I forgot the password for my account, and then I thought of a few more videos that I could make on my own. We put up two more videos on my account, though these were not as good as the first. Then we waited to see if we won anything.
The deadline for the contest ending was pushed back several weeks, cause there just weren't many videos. This upset me a little bit, because at the time the public vote had our first video in third place, and if the panel of judges agreed with the public we would have won a hundred dollars. At the time, I really wanted that hundred dollars. I planned to buy Christmas presents with it. If the entry deadline was postponed, there might be a new video that was better than mine.
But, there was nothing that I could do about that. I re-edited the two videos that I made myself and added a third one. The entry limit was five, but I couldn't think of another one. And I emailed the people having the contest, explaining that my husband and I had worked on the first one together, so that I really had four entries, though probably we could have gotten away with making five videos each and entering ten videos. I asked for some clarification on that and some of the other rules, but I received no reply. We both got a few automated responses for stuff like the entry deadline being pushed back.
There were more videos posted, but there still weren't a lot. Our first video stayed in third place. The second deadline passed, and we waited to hear if we won anything. This was in October.
And for about a week, nothing happened. And then my husband got an email saying that we had won third place. I sent an email thanking them and sent our address and phone number and such, and waited for our prize money to show up in the mail.
Another week went by, and nothing happened.
I then received an email thanking me for the three videos that did not win. Actually, I got three emails, one for each video, though all the emails were the same. I was told that I would receive a small prize for participating. I wondered if I would receive one prize or one for each video. I emailed back, again with our address and phone number, again explained how my husband and I had worked on the first video together and I had done the three others by myself, and I didn't want anyone to think that we had in some way cheated, cause the limit was five videos, and this only gave me a total of four videos. And I asked if I would still get the consolation prize since I had already won third place, or would my husband get third place and I would get one consolation prize, or would my husband get third place and I would get one consolation prize for each of the other three videos?
And I waited, and I didn't hear anything for another week. Finally, my husband received an email saying that he would receive the third place prize after he filled out some forms, and there was a fax number where to send the forms. And I received an email that said I would receive a consolation prize for each of the three videos that did not win, again after I filled out some forms and faxed them. One of the forms needed my our social security numbers, which I really didn't want to send if it wasn't necessary (which they said that it was needed for tax purposes), and if it was necessary did it have to be sent by fax? Both forms had the wrong amount, and I asked that they be changed, and then I saw that I could change the amount myself and did so, and I emailed about the change and that I would rather not send a fax, and I filled out the forms and waited for an email confirming that I could send the forms by regular mail.
I waited about a week, and nothing happened.
Okay, fax it is. I think that there is a fax on this printer, but I couldn't figure out how to work it. But, we had a new printer (sort of a spare, which we had put back in the box after printing one or two things with it), and that seemed easier to use, and I sent the fax.
And I waited about a week, and nothing happened. It is now November.
I was about to send yet another email to complain, when it occurred to me that the mistake might have been mine. So I again took the new printer out of the box and tried to send the fax. This time I see that it doesn't work, that the line is busy. I figure that they are just busy, that it is a Monday morning, and they probably just get a lot of faxes on Monday morning. I try again later in the day, but I get the same message. And I try again several times later in the week, but the same thing happens regardless of the day of the week or the time of day. Line busy, line busy, line busy.
I decide that the problem is on my end and give up trying to fax with that machine. I will have to pay someone to fax this thing, which I don't want to do. We aren't talking about a lot of prize money, and I can't even think of who does that sort of thing, other than hotels and maybe Kinko's and the places that rent mailboxes and such. Those places were not near my house, they were near school, and while I used to make that drive everyday when I was in school, I didn't want to waste an hour doing that when I had no other reason to drive there.
My husband had a few out of town trips, so I thought maybe I would use the motel fax. Except that most of the trips were to the middle of nowhere and he stayed at cheap mom and pop motels where mom usually doesn't speak much English, and I don't think that they had fax machines for us to use. But there was one trip in a city at a nicer motel, and I just assumed that I would send the fax from there, but I was told that they did not have a business center.
It is now December. I figure that I will find something while I am out Christmas shopping. I get busy with other things. I forget about the whole fax thing.
After New Year's I was in the grocery store getting some lottery tickets, and I notice a sign that says the fax machine is being repaired. I didn't know that they still had a fax machine. They used to offer fax service, and bill paying services, and copying services, but the copier has been gone for a long time, and they had stopped doing a lot of the bill paying services, so I had thought that that whole service thing had been done away with because most of us could do the same thing ourselves on our home computers. Not so. The copy machine was gone because it was just too big and they needed the space for something else. The bill paying stuff was mostly canceled, not by the store, but by the companies they were forwarding payments to. The fax machine was still there, just it wasn't used much.
I went back the next week after the machine had been repaired and paid to have the fax sent. And I got the little printout that says the fax was successfully sent, instead of "line busy" like I kept getting when I tried to send it myself.
I went home and sent an email explaining about the delay but that I had sent the fax.
While I was looking for the email address, I found an unopened email confirming that I could send the forms by regular mail and confirming the mailing address and such. I wanted to send the forms regular mail from the beginning, I just didn't want to do that without them confirming a mailing address, and here it was. The email just didn't show up on the day that it was sent. By the time I got it, I had a bunch of other emails that I hadn't deleted, so I couldn't see the email a few days later, cause the way the email is listed it appears in the order that it was sent instead of in the order that it was received.
Doh!
Okay, but that doesn't matter, cause I've already spent money to have someone send the forms by fax.
And I wait a week, and nothing happens. And because I have to think that this is mostly my fault and that they are not trying to cheat me, I wait another week. I still don't have my money. But I now have a confirmed mailing address, so I will send the forms yet again, this time by snail mail, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.
Anyway, several months ago (I think it was September, though it might even have been August), I found out about a certain contest. The idea was to video a bit about what you could do with a certain amount of money, and then you post your video on YouTube and this other site, and then people would leave comments about the videos and vote on the videos, though the contest was supposed to be decided not by the public votes but by a panel of judges.
I had never made a video before, but I had a few ideas, and I noticed that there were not very many entries. There wasn't a big money prize either, but I thought that I might as well give it a try. First place was five hundred dollars, second place was three hundred dollars, and third place was a hundred dollars. With less than a dozen entries, the odds were good.
Now if I could just find a video recorder.
First, I thought that I would borrow my brother's. Now, he didn't have a problem loaning me the camera, he just said that it was old now and didn't have an easy way to convert to digital, which is what I would need to get the video on YouTube, so I decided to look elsewhere.
Dmarks pointed out that I probably already had a video recorder on my husband's digital camera. I didn't think so, but it turns out that Dmarks was right. Making videos with the camera was not recommended and did not produce videos of high quality, but it would probably be good enough for making short videos for YouTube.
My husband and I made the first one together and uploaded it on his account, cause I forgot the password for my account, and then I thought of a few more videos that I could make on my own. We put up two more videos on my account, though these were not as good as the first. Then we waited to see if we won anything.
The deadline for the contest ending was pushed back several weeks, cause there just weren't many videos. This upset me a little bit, because at the time the public vote had our first video in third place, and if the panel of judges agreed with the public we would have won a hundred dollars. At the time, I really wanted that hundred dollars. I planned to buy Christmas presents with it. If the entry deadline was postponed, there might be a new video that was better than mine.
But, there was nothing that I could do about that. I re-edited the two videos that I made myself and added a third one. The entry limit was five, but I couldn't think of another one. And I emailed the people having the contest, explaining that my husband and I had worked on the first one together, so that I really had four entries, though probably we could have gotten away with making five videos each and entering ten videos. I asked for some clarification on that and some of the other rules, but I received no reply. We both got a few automated responses for stuff like the entry deadline being pushed back.
There were more videos posted, but there still weren't a lot. Our first video stayed in third place. The second deadline passed, and we waited to hear if we won anything. This was in October.
And for about a week, nothing happened. And then my husband got an email saying that we had won third place. I sent an email thanking them and sent our address and phone number and such, and waited for our prize money to show up in the mail.
Another week went by, and nothing happened.
I then received an email thanking me for the three videos that did not win. Actually, I got three emails, one for each video, though all the emails were the same. I was told that I would receive a small prize for participating. I wondered if I would receive one prize or one for each video. I emailed back, again with our address and phone number, again explained how my husband and I had worked on the first video together and I had done the three others by myself, and I didn't want anyone to think that we had in some way cheated, cause the limit was five videos, and this only gave me a total of four videos. And I asked if I would still get the consolation prize since I had already won third place, or would my husband get third place and I would get one consolation prize, or would my husband get third place and I would get one consolation prize for each of the other three videos?
And I waited, and I didn't hear anything for another week. Finally, my husband received an email saying that he would receive the third place prize after he filled out some forms, and there was a fax number where to send the forms. And I received an email that said I would receive a consolation prize for each of the three videos that did not win, again after I filled out some forms and faxed them. One of the forms needed my our social security numbers, which I really didn't want to send if it wasn't necessary (which they said that it was needed for tax purposes), and if it was necessary did it have to be sent by fax? Both forms had the wrong amount, and I asked that they be changed, and then I saw that I could change the amount myself and did so, and I emailed about the change and that I would rather not send a fax, and I filled out the forms and waited for an email confirming that I could send the forms by regular mail.
I waited about a week, and nothing happened.
Okay, fax it is. I think that there is a fax on this printer, but I couldn't figure out how to work it. But, we had a new printer (sort of a spare, which we had put back in the box after printing one or two things with it), and that seemed easier to use, and I sent the fax.
And I waited about a week, and nothing happened. It is now November.
I was about to send yet another email to complain, when it occurred to me that the mistake might have been mine. So I again took the new printer out of the box and tried to send the fax. This time I see that it doesn't work, that the line is busy. I figure that they are just busy, that it is a Monday morning, and they probably just get a lot of faxes on Monday morning. I try again later in the day, but I get the same message. And I try again several times later in the week, but the same thing happens regardless of the day of the week or the time of day. Line busy, line busy, line busy.
I decide that the problem is on my end and give up trying to fax with that machine. I will have to pay someone to fax this thing, which I don't want to do. We aren't talking about a lot of prize money, and I can't even think of who does that sort of thing, other than hotels and maybe Kinko's and the places that rent mailboxes and such. Those places were not near my house, they were near school, and while I used to make that drive everyday when I was in school, I didn't want to waste an hour doing that when I had no other reason to drive there.
My husband had a few out of town trips, so I thought maybe I would use the motel fax. Except that most of the trips were to the middle of nowhere and he stayed at cheap mom and pop motels where mom usually doesn't speak much English, and I don't think that they had fax machines for us to use. But there was one trip in a city at a nicer motel, and I just assumed that I would send the fax from there, but I was told that they did not have a business center.
It is now December. I figure that I will find something while I am out Christmas shopping. I get busy with other things. I forget about the whole fax thing.
After New Year's I was in the grocery store getting some lottery tickets, and I notice a sign that says the fax machine is being repaired. I didn't know that they still had a fax machine. They used to offer fax service, and bill paying services, and copying services, but the copier has been gone for a long time, and they had stopped doing a lot of the bill paying services, so I had thought that that whole service thing had been done away with because most of us could do the same thing ourselves on our home computers. Not so. The copy machine was gone because it was just too big and they needed the space for something else. The bill paying stuff was mostly canceled, not by the store, but by the companies they were forwarding payments to. The fax machine was still there, just it wasn't used much.
I went back the next week after the machine had been repaired and paid to have the fax sent. And I got the little printout that says the fax was successfully sent, instead of "line busy" like I kept getting when I tried to send it myself.
I went home and sent an email explaining about the delay but that I had sent the fax.
While I was looking for the email address, I found an unopened email confirming that I could send the forms by regular mail and confirming the mailing address and such. I wanted to send the forms regular mail from the beginning, I just didn't want to do that without them confirming a mailing address, and here it was. The email just didn't show up on the day that it was sent. By the time I got it, I had a bunch of other emails that I hadn't deleted, so I couldn't see the email a few days later, cause the way the email is listed it appears in the order that it was sent instead of in the order that it was received.
Doh!
Okay, but that doesn't matter, cause I've already spent money to have someone send the forms by fax.
And I wait a week, and nothing happens. And because I have to think that this is mostly my fault and that they are not trying to cheat me, I wait another week. I still don't have my money. But I now have a confirmed mailing address, so I will send the forms yet again, this time by snail mail, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.
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