Magic Cookie: Pitch Perfect

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Saturday, 15 August 2009

Big boy bed

Posted on 19:14 by Unknown
For the first time in months, a weekend stretched out before us with no plans. We had plenty on our to-do list, but no agenda.

Still, I was glad when JW, who had been lying on the coach bemoaning the latest of a series of minor illnesses, suddenly sat up and said, "Let's go to Ikea and buy K a bed." (#212 on the list.) Within ten minutes we were all in the car. A few hours, many mattress bounces, and several plates of Swedish meatballs later, we returned home with a Minnen extendable bed, a Sultan Sova extendable mattress, and Barnslig Rand sheets.

While JW assembled the bed, I bribed K with a strawberry lollipop to sit still for a haircut. (Which I was quite proud of. Maybe not salon quality, but no tears or tipping involved.) K was excited about his bed and kept running in and out of his room, climbing into bed and out again. He even said he'd sleep without a pacifier tonight because he was a big boy now.

K became nervous when bedtime rolled around. He kept requesting more books, demanded his pacifier, and got up twice during his bedtime song.

He's been asleep for a little over two hours now. We'll see how it goes.

Update: First night went smoothly. Naptime required a little intervention and was shorter than usual. Second night started off the same as the first, with repeated requests for one more book and one more song. But so far, so good. (Haircut update: I noticed a small bald spot above one ear, but he doesn't care, and I saved twenty dollars.)
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Posted in toddler k | No comments

Friday, 14 August 2009

Interview with a 2-year old

Posted on 03:16 by Unknown
Q: How was your day, K?
A: Good. It was not bad. It was good.

Q: What was the best thing that happened to you today?
A: I wanted some water and Mary gave me a cup of water.

Q: What was the worst thing that happened to you today?
A: I cried and cried.

Q: Why did you cry and cry?
A: Because I had snot in my nose.

Other things K has been up to lately:

- Getting chased by monsters.

- Wearing our shoes.

- Simultaneously playing as many instruments as possible.

- Inventing a complicated game where two plastic people wait for the bus but instead get picked up, and dumped out, by every wheeled toy in the house. This game takes about half an hour to complete and makes quite a mess. It also requires extensive commentary by the plastic people, voiced by me. I have tried to get K to take over this duty but he insists, "SAY!"

- Crashing engines into barbershops, thanks to a Thomas story we read. The other day he formed his grapes into a rectangle and announced that they were an engine. "Is the engine going to crash into the carrots?" I asked. He gave me a withering look. "Those are not carrots, Mommy. That's a barbershop."

- Taking all the kitchen utensils out of the drawer, naming them, and then putting them all back. As a result, he knows that an offset spatula is for frosting cakes.

- Reciting his books. This is the end of "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," where Little Cat Z takes the Voom off his head to clean up the snow. (Of course, if you've never read the book, this will be totally incomprehensible.)
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Posted in K update, pictures, toddler k | No comments

Monday, 10 August 2009

Post-bar reading list

Posted on 18:18 by Unknown
I read my last non-law book at the beginning of May. I don't remember what it was, but I do remember thinking, "This is it. No more pleasure reading until after the bar."

On a mini-vacation with CT, I bought three books. I rarely buy books (except for K), but I was feeling indulgent. There was one I was particularly excited to read. But even though I've been bringing it everywhere with me, I haven't opened it yet. Somehow it feels daunting to start reading for fun again after so long.

Here's my post-bar reading list:
The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds, and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot by Chip Brantley
Something Missing by Matthew Dicks
How to See Europe on Fifty Cents a Day by Lee Meriwether
The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein
Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby
The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

And some holdovers from my previous list:
Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century by Lauren Slater
Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions by Read Montague
Family Planning by Karan Mahajan
Things I've Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi
Songs Without Words by Ann Packer
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The books I did manage to read from my previous list were not that exciting, for the most part. American Wife was an interesting fictionalized look at Laura Bush, and was about as sympathetic to George W. as a liberal can get. The Dissident was well-written but slow-moving and sort of odd in that I was never sure whether the "twist" at the end was supposed to be a twist or whether you were supposed to know it all along. The Position had such an intriguing premise -- parents write wildly successful Joy of Sex type book starring themselves, what happens to the family? -- but turned out to be your typical divorce/dysfunction book.

One of these days I will get over my fear and start the pluot book.
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Saturday, 8 August 2009

Tiny violin

Posted on 07:29 by Unknown
I bought it off eBay after K kept trying to play my violin and ruined one of my bows (but actually made some vaguely musical sounds in the process). It took forever to arrive. I made the mistake of telling him that the mailman was going to bring him a little violin. I didn't mention it again, but for weeks every time we got a package he would ask, "My violin?"





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Friday, 7 August 2009

Money

Posted on 07:30 by Unknown
Ana wrote about her views on money. I agree with nearly all of them, but for different reasons than she wrote about.

1. Rules for expenditures.

Ana judges the wisdom of an expenditure according to whether the time will appreciate, depreciate, or retain its value. This makes a lot of sense, but I think of this as the "disposal value." In other words, how much will this item be worth to me when I don't want it anymore? I base my decisions about spending almost exclusively on the use I'll make of the item. How long will I need/want it? How often will I use it? How much satisfaction will I be getting out of it per dollar? I think about the "use value" rather than the disposal value.

For instance, we renovated our kitchen pretty soon after moving into the house. Will we make our money back? I think so, but I'm not sure. I don't care that much because we enjoy our kitchen every day and we could afford it at the time, so the expenditure was worth it.

2. Rules regarding displays of wealth.

Ana says displays of wealth are rude because to be gracious, you shouldn't make others feel bad that they have less. Again, this makes total sense, I've just never thought about it in quite this way. I've always thought that displays of wealth are tacky because they show that the person doing the displaying has their priorities way out of whack. When I see someone wearing some huge logo I think, "It's okay, you don't have to prove anything to anybody. Go home and put on something that you actually like."

Also, on wearing logos in general, Ana says "Why on earth would someone want to be a walking billboard that basically says 'Rob Me!'?" True, but I'd stop at "walking billboard." I am a human being, not an advertising space for a brand.

[Omitting lots of rules in the middle.]

9. Money doesn't make people happy.

Ana's point here is that you don't need money to impress people, and that "it's a means to an end." I agree with that. But honestly, money does make me happy. It makes me feel secure to know that we have enough savings that we won't be in crisis if one of us loses our job or gets sick. It makes me happy to be able to give money to people in need. It makes me happy not to have to scrutinize every purchase, to feel that I can buy anything I need and enough things I want. I don't think this is a huge difference in attitude, but it gives me a higher sellout threshold than Ana.

I guess all of these rules about money assume some basic ideas: that you don't buy things that you don't need (or really want AND can afford); that you don't spend beyond your means unless absolutely necessary; and that you have some sense of having enough and aren't consumed with the idea of money as an end in itself.
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Thursday, 6 August 2009

Salary negotiations

Posted on 13:09 by Unknown
Over at Starting to Melt, Cee asks whether she should negotiate her salary.

I wrote her a long comment (with a resounding YES), but here's my personal story. I didn't negotiate at one of my early jobs because a friend who worked there told me it was a small company and they probably couldn't afford much. I just asked them to match my previous salary and was happy they did. I really wanted the job and didn't feel I had a lot of leverage to negotiate anyway.

I was one of the few software engineers at this company, which was moving toward a mainly web-based model after years of producing print materials. That meant I got lots of responsibility very quickly. After a year or two, we started interviewing more engineers. My manager was careless and left an offer letter in the printer. I happened to see it when I was picking up my printout. The offer was for $13,000 more than I was making.

I had interviewed this guy. He had similar qualifications to me, but two years less experience. Meanwhile, I had worked my way up and was now in charge of one of the major product lines. I was furious and felt that I had been taken advantage of. (Which was true in a way, but I had also never asked for more.)

I scheduled a meeting with my manager and, without mentioning that I had seen the offer letter, outlined my accomplishments and told him that I wanted a $13,000 increase over my current salary. He pointed out that this was a large percentage. I said that I knew, but felt I was being substantially underpaid.

He came back with a counteroffer: an $8,000 raise now with an additional $5,000 raise in 6 months. I said I felt this was fair. He said, "You do? I mean, uh, that's great." (Did I mention he was careless?)

I learned that it's always worth it to negotiate salary. Negotiating doesn't mean making a demand and threatening to walk away. It's a request for more. If they turn you down, no big deal. If they give you everything you want, you probably should have asked for more.

Salary follows you for a very long time. At your current job, every raise and bonus will be based on a percentage of your salary. If you start out lower than others at your level, you'll end up a lot lower at the end. The fantastic negotiation book Ask for It by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever(reviewed here) makes this point over and over -- not negotiating in the beginning has a huge effect later in your career. At subsequent jobs, your new employer will always try to find out your previous salary as a starting point.

There are lots of tips out there for how to approach this negotiation, but in a nutshell: build up your case with your own qualifications and some objective standards for what the salary should be, then state your case matter-of-factly without apology or ultimatum. Remember that this is a business transaction. It is intimidating, but don't be scared because you're afraid they'll think badly of you. As long as what you ask for isn't totally inappropriate for your position, negotiating will show that you're capable of asserting your worth.

(P.S. - My story isn't meant to be a how-to -- I put myself in a bad situation, and while I'm glad I tried to get out of it, I probably could have handled it better. The story was just my wake-up call that I had to stick up for myself because nobody else would be making sure I got the best deal.)
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Wednesday, 5 August 2009

New car

Posted on 03:06 by Unknown
We test drove a car. I think this is our official entry into the market.

JW has been asking when we'll replace our ancient Saturn for over a year now. During school, I could use the excuse that we couldn't afford it. Lately my standard response is, "When it explodes."

Our car has virtually no resale value, but it's worth something to us. It's been fully paid off for close to a decade. It gets us from Point A to Point B. It still gets good mileage. It starts up almost all the time. Sure, it shakes at speeds above forty, and you can hear it coming from a block away. And one of the speakers in the stereo system has been blown for years. And it's been in about four accidents, two of which involved replacing most of the parts. So what if you can see nails on the outside where two pieces used to be connected, and there's a big crack above one wheel, and one of the side mirrors falls off if you look at it wrong. The car still works.

JW played the baby card ("what if K were in the car and something happened?") and that started to sway me. I was finally convinced when, as I got out of the car after the test drive, a piece of the door came off in my hand.

"This car has served us well," said JW. "It's taken a lot of abuse over the years. Let it die peacefully."

So I guess we're looking to buy a car. I hate buying big expensive things.
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Sunday, 2 August 2009

Everything I hate about Long Island in a neat little package

Posted on 17:19 by Unknown
As I drove down the six-lane highway past miles of strip mall, a kid in the car next to me stuck his head out and kept screaming at me, "HEY! HEYYY!!! SEE HABLA ESPANOL! SI! SI!!" F*** you, kid. You too, Long Island.
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