the Diva Platform

Last week I witnessed an event that was so horrifying to the librarian bits that still lurk inside me that I had to share with you a big searching secret: Google is not the answer for every single thing you do on the internet.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about what I saw (mainly because I don’t want to call out people—people that could potentially help me—and I do need a lot of help right now), but it was at a seminar, at the speaker asked someone to bring up Google on her projection screen, and she typed “blank.com” (i.e.—the actual website she wanted to go to) in the search box.

I cringed when I saw this because there is a bar at the top of your browser called an address bar. If you know the name of the website you want, you do not need to go to Google first. That just adds another step—and more time—to the process. Google is for multiple search terms or if you can’t remember the exact address or if you’re determining whether or not a company has a website. You know, an actual search.

Another person I know who does web development work says that this is standard, that people go to Google for everything. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it, but is it necessary? Are we giving Google internet power where it’s not due?

Just a friendly tip, folks. If you know the exact site, save yourself some time and put it in the address field.

One of the headlines in yesterday’s news stopped me cold yesterday:  The toilet on the space station is broken.  Luckily, space shuttle Discovery is on its way there this weekend, and NASA’s made room in the cargo bay for the necessary parts to fix it.

Like many of us, I do spend a fair amount of time in “the Office,” so I actually panicked when I read this news.  You mean, the toilet’s broken and they’re not getting a part for several days?  What are these astronauts doing?  Will they need to break out the space diapers? 

The story did slightly explain the problem.  “The space station’s Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection, not solid waste.”

However, that just leaves me with more questions.  How old is the toilet, or can I just insert a standard Russian-built joke?  What do you mean by “bypassed the problem”?  If females were on board, would this be a totally different situation?  A code red, perhaps?  (It would for me, that’s for sure!)

Thank goodness CNN has more answers (also, a scintillating video)!

Until then, the three-man crew will have to make do with a jury-rigged system when they need to urinate.

While one of the crew was using the Russian-made toilet last week, the toilet motor fan stopped working, according to NASA. Since then, the liquid waste gathering part of the toilet has been working on-and-off.

Fortunately, the solid waste collecting part is functioning normally.

Russian officials don’t know the cause of the problem, and the crew has been unable to fix it.

The crew has used the toilet on the Soyuz return capsule, but it has a limited capacity. They now are using a backup bag-like collection system that can be connected to the broken toilet, according to NASA public affairs officials.

The Russians are just lucky that a shuttle was planning to go and can bring the part.  Can you imagine this happening once the space shuttle program is scrapped?  I mean, that would be one hefty plumber’s bill (and I’m sure an interesting case of astronaut plumber’s butt).

When I was in high school, we participated in Red Ribbon Week, where pretty much everyone signed a pledge card and got a ribbon that said, “The choice for me, drug free.” Were we all drug free? I kind of doubt that, but we signed that pledge card anyway.

I remember that card distinctly because it was by one of these super-family organizations that think a ribbon is going to make all the difference when your child is contemplating trying drugs. Part of the pledge included not abusing caffeine, and after I signed the card and pinned on my ribbon, I read the pledge and thought, “Well, I’ve already abused caffeine, and I’ve got a lot of homework, so I’ll probably abuse it again. So much for this!”

The Red Ribbon is really one of those pledges that doesn’t have any staying power. It’s a feel-good measure, but does anyone really care about it? How many earnest teens are out there thinking, “I’ve signed this card. I’ve got to stick with this promise and never use any sort of substance! Ever! Especially not on my 21st birthday!” If there are, please speak up and change my mind.

I only bring up the Red Ribbon campaign because I have a similar pledge that’s been sitting on my desk since Earth Day. It’s the Chicago Environmental Pledge: “I pledge to do my part for the environment and help Chicago become the most environmentally friendly city in the nation.” You can take this pledge online, or sign the card and mail it to the Chicago Department of Environment office (and use up environmental resources by doing so). If you pledge, you promise to make changes in five different categories:

1. Energy: Replace 4 regular lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Maybe when my current lightbulbs need changing, but I’m not going to toss them when they’re still good. Plus, you have to be careful with the environmentally friendly bulbs because they have mercury in them. Great. Make it more difficult to dispose of them. How about turning the lights off more often? What do you think of that?
2. Water: Turn off the tap when brushing my teeth. After all the press this has gotten, what idiot still does this? Can’t we be more creative about saving water? How about turning off the tap while you’re soaping your hands? My hand-washing routine is get them wet, soap them, then rinse. Yes, I sadly sometimes leave the water on while I lather up, but that’s because I don’t like getting the faucet soapy. I’m trying to change that habit.
3. Air: Replace one car trip a month with walking, biking, or public transport. Not difficult to do when you don’t own a car! How about encouraging giving up your car if you live in an area that has decent public transportation and you hardly use your car?
4. Land: Plant or care for a city tree by watering, mulching, and removing litter. Do you have an adopt-a-tree program? What if there aren’t enough trees to go around? Where do you get the mulch? Can I just buy a tree and plant it anywhere in Lincoln Park? Honestly, I can see little kids trying to plant trees in a park, thinking they’re doing something good and then getting yelled at because they’re digging a hole in some park. I can also see people who don’t like soccer planting them in the middle of the designated soccer fields. Come on, let’s think through this one, people!
5. Waste: Replace plastic shopping bags with reusable bags. Done, but I didn’t need the pledge to do so. I hate having a million bags floating around my apartment. What I really would like is more garbage cans and more recycling bins on the streets. And maybe a recycling program that actually works. How about that, Chicago? And while you’re at it, get on those people who won’t clean up after their dogs! That’s waste I don’t want to deal with either!

But really, who’s holding you to this? Who thinks this pledge will actually make a difference in our city? And if you do, have you changed your own bad habits?

Since most of this pledge doesn’t apply to me, I think, Why bother? I already do these things, yet the environment is still in trouble. Obviously, I’m to the intermediate level of being environmentally friendly. Can’t there be tips for us? Or maybe you can pledge to come up with some for me.

I got this spam the other day:

Name: Boobs Unreal Boobs Boobies

Boobs Unreal Boobs Boobies…

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view…

Now, I know posting this will just incur more spam, but it made me laugh. It says, “Boobies.” Boobies is a funny word. Boobies!

Or maybe I’m just hanging around the Boy too much. Wait a minute….you don’t think he’s trying to spam me, do you?

I love fall. Yes, I realize it’s spring right now, but I recently realized why I like fall more than I like spring. I was feeling a bit guilty–after all, you get the wonderful flowers now, and there’s excitement in the air because it’s getting warmer.

However, I hate the spring weather shifts. One day it’s over 70 and you can put on your warm-weather clothes and everything is great. The next day it’s 40 degrees, and you’re contemplating digging out a winter coat. In May. And I’m not exaggerating–this happens every year.

See, once you can wear the capris and sandals, you don’t really want to go back to the sweater. You want to be able to pack those away until fall. Yet, Mother Nature constantly teases you with warmth, and you start to hate the beautifully sunny days simply because you don’t know if that fleece jacket is going to be heavy enough since it’s also fucking freezing.

When it’s fall and you get this same weather, you’re already anticipating wearing jackets and warmer clothes, so the temperature shifts aren’t as difficult to endure. You’re ready to ease into the colder weather.

Because really, another week of 50s and 60s is dragging me down. Better temps are forecasted for the weekend (of course, since it’s Memorial Day weekend), but I’ve been burned so much this spring that I can’t believe them right now.

Speaking of Memorial Day, I’ll be taking it off from blogging.  Get outside, enjoy the day, and take a moment to appreciate all of those who have served our country!

A quick recap of where I’m at with my attempts to perfect the grilled cheese. In the last couple of weeks I’ve tried two of your grilled cheese recipes (more suggestions accepted–especially in terms of bread, cheese, and shredded vs. slices).

First up was The Joy of Cooking, who as you may remember, recommended melting oil and butter in the pan, then adding the sandwich. This led to a greasy, crunchy mess that burned. I did try to go by the times they recommended (something like 2-3 minutes per side), but either I had the heat up too much, or this was just a bad recipe that shouldn’t be recommended.

Then I tried Danielle-san’s version that involved buttering the bread and using a lid on the pan. The buttering of the bread went all right, but even though I let the butter warm up a bit, it was still difficult to spread. I was careful about the flame on the pan being lower than medium, and I used the lid. Cheese-wise, I wasn’t sure whether or not Danielle used slices or shredded, so I used both: Private label sliced cheese (the package, not the individually wrapped singles), and Sargento shredded (You don’t have to tell me–I’m really popping for the good stuff for this project).

Overall, this method worked pretty well. One side was done a little more than the other, but the cheese was nice and melty. I may have used too much butter–or the unspreadable chunks glopped on may not have helped because it was slightly greasy to hold. Still, though, I think I’m on my way. Many more methods to try though!

Last week the Boy decided to follow this Dr. Oz Change-Your-Life-in-Seven-Days article that was in a recent issue of Esquire. This wasn’t too difficult, since he already does a lot of the advice: Floss, eat sea salt, don’t use antiperspirant. However, he also went gluten-free for three days to see if he felt better.

The original article says to try a dairy-free/gluten-free diet, but since he’s already off the dairy, he thought he’d try knocking out gluten as well. So much for the pasta I’d planned for the first evening.

Gluten-free is hard. Oh, you can get around it with things like the potato “lasagna” I attempted to create one evening (instead of lasagna noodles, use thinly sliced potatoes. no cheese–just the potatoes and a sausage tomato sauce), but I think at the end of the three days, he was happy to get back to eating gluten. I was happy to be able to cook with it again, that’s for sure. You don’t really think about how much gluten is in everything, and really eliminating it takes a lot of effort (and dealing with some not-so-tasty food. We had gluten-free snack bars one evening after our workout, and they were pretty disgusting).
Did it work? He did feel a bit lighter, but that’s because he was eating soup and salad during the day, and he didn’t snack on slices of bread. Another few days of only soup and salad at lunch would’ve gotten old quickly. Neither of us really think it helped much because it wasn’t that long of a trial, but perhaps it’s got the Boy thinking about different food alternatives. Me? I’m on the way to the kitchen to eat a cookie. A fabulous, gluten-filled cookie.

Dear Personal Finance Writers and Editors,

I realize you have difficult jobs. You’re on deadline. You’re trying to find stories. You have space to fill and eyeballs to attract.

But could you start thinking a little more out of the box when it comes to handy money-saving tips that will have you becoming a millionaire in no time? The ones you’re publishing? Either I’ve already heard and applied or already heard and don’t apply to me. And if I can’t apply said wonderful money-saving tip, I’m not anywhere near that million bucks you’re talking about.

And then I never want to read your publication again.

Thanks!

Your pal,

Jill

****

This note’s really directed toward the morons at Kiplinger, who had this “brilliant” article on Yahoo! Finance about turning $451 a month into one million dollars. And where can you find that extra $451? Why, you already have it!

But once again, the personal finance morons can’t seem to come up with something new. Here’s what they recommend (and seriously, if you can’t handle reading another version of “cut back on the latte,” either stop breathing now, or look at some cute animals to take you down from the ledge):

1. If you’re getting an average tax refund (about $2500) and are in the 25% tax bracket, you might be able to take more exemptions. Worth in Kiplinger bucks? $219/month. Worth in Jaracz bucks? Zero. Well (a) since I’m now self-employed, my tax situation will be weird next year, and (b) that’s the average refund? I mean, we get a refund, but it’s not that much. It’s probably not enough to take another exemption (because I’m sure once we did, we’d start owing every year, and that would be worse).
2. Bring your lunch to work! Worth in Kiplinger bucks? $100/month. Worth in Jaracz bucks? Zero. I already bring much lunch to work–well, I eat what’s at home most of the time. There’s no McDonald’s meals or Dunkin’ Donuts coffee (maybe I should give them a bonus for using Dunkin Donuts’ $2 coffee as an example rather than the Starbucks latte). I simply don’t have the money to eat out–and when I did have the money, I packed my lunch more often anyway. And really, how many times do we have to hear this one?
3. Do one less dinner/movie a month. Worth in Kiplinger bucks? $80/month. Worth in Jaracz bucks? Probably $50. We haven’t been to a movie in who knows how long (though we’ll probably go to a couple this summer), so right there forget $20/month. It’s more like $20 every 3 months that we’d save. We do like to eat out, but we’ve really cut back since I lost most of my income. That has helped.
4. Get a Flexible Spending Account for Health Care. Worth in Kiplinger bucks? $28/month. Worth in Jaracz bucks? Zero. Well, I suppose a FSA would be good to have, but I think the Boy would have to set that up. We don’t have to go to the doctor much though, nor do we have a lot of medications to buy, so I’m not sure how much we’d save in pre-tax money.
5. Raise your auto insurance deductible. Worth in Kiplinger bucks? $10/month. Worth in Jaracz bucks? Zero. Let’s start getting tips that don’t revolve around the automobile. They don’t work if you don’t have a car.
6. Speaking of, the next tip is keep your car maintained. Worth in Kiplinger bucks? $8/month. Worth in Jaracz bucks? Zero. See: not having a car. I will say at least the savings on this is small/realistic. How much money can you save by keeping your tires inflated? And does that include the 25-50 cents you may have to spend on air if your gas station doesn’t give it out free (and don’t you hate that)?
7. Get generic prescription drugs. Worth in Kiplinger bucks? $6/month. Worth in Jaracz bucks? Zero. I have one prescription, and I don’t think it’s available in generic form yet.

And those brilliant, never-thought-of tips will give you $451/month, which you can dump into an account that of course will yield at least 8% return a year over the next 35 years (which wouldn’t be my savings account. That interest yield has gone down yet again to something like 2.96%) and voila! You’ll have a million bucks!

It’s so simple, anyone can do it! That is, anyone but me.

Last week I went to Fat Camp for my second-to-last visit.  Preparation for these visits is usually difficult because it kicks in the week before that I’ll be having an official weigh-in, and I start getting a little more strict about my portions and making sure I get my exercise in.  I was lucky in the fact that the appointment was on a Tuesday instead of a Monday because weekends usually make me bounce up a little bit on the scale (and every ounce counts when you’re weighing in).  Unfortunately, we had our annual handbell dinner the night before, which meant I literally had to sit on my hands so that I’d keep them out of the bread basket.

This month’s appointment was with my newest Exercise Specialist (FCE3), and we went over my routine and what I wanted to do next.  Now that I’m done with the boxing classes, I can start running again.  I’m also enjoying a couple of classes at the YMCA, and I prefer not to have Maya yell at me on a regular basis.  I also feel like I should be doing some weights.  Oh, I get some with the Maya workouts, but I wasn’t sure if that was really enough.

Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty scattered about my workouts, and since I have a problem picking one goal, I was hoping FCE3 would be useful.  She helped me plan out a better schedule so that I can see what I’m supposed to do.  She likes the different Y classes because they’ll help me cross-train, and I can run a couple of days a week.  And she added exercises with a resilience band (now free with Fat Camp!).
FCE3 is a runner, so we talked a lot about running.  I like being able to run 5Ks.  It’s a nice distance and doesn’t kill you.  However, I’m only at 2 miles right now (again–I hate not running much during the cold weather and losing my running legs) and need to work back up to the full 3.1.  FCE3 recommended adding about 10% of distance every week until I’m at the 5K mark.  I should also increase my running up to three days/week, which I think I can do because I’ve currently got 2 days off in my schedule (that would be the schedule I’ve already crapped out on, having not done the strength training on Thursday and skipping my run on Friday.  Not good, I know, but I’ll get back into it).

We also spent a lot of time at the computer finding some 5K races to sign up for–I’m supposed to do one a little after mid-June, I believe, so she printed off all of these races to look into.  Now, I’m going to get on an old-fogey high horse here, but I thought today’s kids grew up with technology and knew how to find everything on the internet.  Aren’t they all geniuses with technology?  Because the young FCE3 didn’t know of the running events calendar at Chicago Athlete, which I had to tell her about after a couple of Google searches gave her garbage results.  Then I didn’t even have the strength/courage to nicely tell her what Bastille Day was when she said, “There’s one for Bastille Day, whatever that is.”

Even though she may not be intellectually bright, FCE3 did know her exercise stuff, and that’s probably more important.  She told me that for winter running I should buy some better clothing (get a piece at a time because it’s expensive stuff) from a knowledgeable salesperson, and having good-working gear might motivate me to get out in the cold more.  She also recommended getting a runner’s journal, but I think I’ll pass on that because I’m not very good at looking at past results (and it’s one more thing to keep track of).  She also gave me a challenging resistant band workout–and made sure I did all the exercises properly, which helped–and a bunch of stretches.  Will I stick with this workout schedule?  We’ll see how it goes.

Now for the numbers:

Last month:  172.5

This month:  170.9

I was hoping to drop a couple more pounds than the previous month–and up until Thursday or Friday before the appointment, I was doing well.  I was under 170!  Then came the weekend with a few extra beers, and I lost all hope of losing more than a couple of pounds.  And it didn’t help that the next day, I was already lighter.

Still, I’ve lost exactly 20 lbs since the beginning of Fat Camp, and that’s a pretty good feeling.  It’s weird because I feel so much lighter than I used to, but then I’ll look at myself at a different angle and notice, oh, yeah, I still have a ways to go.  I’m around another plateau, so we’ll see how it goes, but I’m actually getting close to the last plateau.  Then I’m hoping there’s a free fall, just as there was a super-quick weight gain.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I have one Fat Camp visit left, and that’s with the medical doctor.  I’m hoping I’ll be a little under 170 by then!

The Boy and I have had an argument for a little while about the bathroom trashcan. It’s usually overflowing due to used Kleenex. Apparently this is all my fault, though I notice that the Boy also needs to blow his nose a good amount in any given week.

The Boy doesn’t like the overflowing trash, and truth be told, neither do I, but I’m also not a fan of emptying the trash. What I tend to do is when I use up a roll of toilet paper and need to change it, I’ll smash down what’s in the trash with the empty roll so that we don’t need to empty it as often. That approach works for me.

However, I have been told that really, I should throw Kleenex in the toilet. It’s flushable/biodegrades easily, so send it down the pipes!

What I don’t get is why this is such a big deal (and I’m sure I’m going to hear, “I can’t believe you blogged about the bathroom trash issue. With all the other great material I give you for your blog, you picked that?! Thanks for making me look bad!”), but it is. At least we don’t have too many big deals like this in the running of our household.