What we’re doing for summer: update

The other week we asked you all what to do with our kids for summer and you had some great ideas.

DC2 recently had spring break while I didn’t.  This reminded us that zie reallllly needs more mental stimulation and interaction than what we can provide.  Basically by Wednesday DC2 starting talking and didn’t stop until school started again on Monday.  School has been online all year and it has been great– it keeps DC2 entertained, talking with classmates, and mentally stimulated so we can get normal amounts of interaction at lunch and after 5pm when I stop working for the night.

Meanwhile, we’ve been getting ads for online college credit classes for DC1.  I was irritated to find out that my uni lets high school students take classes during the school year but not during the summers!  What is UP with that?

But there are plenty of programs willing to charge $4K-$6K per 3-4 credit hour class to take either their own special classes for high schoolers, or in the case of Wisconsin-Madison, anything that they’re offering over the summer.  Right now we’re leaning towards C++ at Georgetown, though it is tempting just to do the C++ Coursera not for credit.  We’ve also been considering Intermediate Spanish courses and academic writing.  Vanderbilt has an interesting mentorship program that isn’t for course credit that DC1 may apply to, but zie hasn’t decided yet.  Even though there are a bunch of schools DC1 can’t go to because they require people to be 16 (and zie is only 15), we’re no longer super worried that zie will be doing nothing over the summer.

But, back to DC2 because while DC1 may need to do something this summer for hir own needs *I* need DC2 to do something for *my* needs.  I looked up online summer camps and was a bit overwhelmed.  It’s hard to tell what is any good and what is a for-profit scam.  I did see that the science museum in the nearest city has something, but it is only an hour per day so I wasn’t sure that was going to be enough.  The descriptions for that camp also sounded a bit like they needed more parental involvement than we really want to give.

Then one of our friends who grew up in the midwest recommended NIU– that’s one of the regional universities in Illinois.  Apparently they run some really great summer camps for kids each summer and this year they’re all online this summer, unlike all southern camps that are mostly back in person this year.  An actual university and a personal recommendation?  I will take that.  And it looks like each one is around 4 hours online, with some being 4 hours straight and some having a break in between for projects, which is pretty similar to DC1’s online schooling this past year. They also seem to know what our rising 5th grader will enjoy.  The only thing that sucks is that there’s no creative writing week for 5th graders.  (DC1 has moved on from Bad Kitty fan-fiction to epic fantasy.)

So we did the jigsaw puzzle work with the different options (5th graders are eligible for both elementary school and middle school camps and several camps conflict and several repeat) and signed DC2 up for most of the summer.  There’s about 2 weeks on either end and two weeks sometime in the middle of summer that are unaccounted for, but we can figure that out later or take an actual vacation.  All told it will cost ~$1000 give or take.  But well worth it if it means I can finish an email without being interrupted 5 times.

Link love

Sympathetic Police Know What It’s Like To Have A Bad Day And Kill 8 People https://t.co/O6MCzgA4Ii pic.twitter.com/agbbcv3S1h

— The Onion (@TheOnion) March 17, 2021

The 2021 Early-Retirement Update

Are college classes too difficult?

Ask the grumpies: How do you manage your email?

CG asks:

How do you manage your email? Mine is out of control.

We don’t.  :(

Ours is also out of control.

#2 once tried inbox zero and it worked for like 6 hours, maybe.

#1 has emails from 2016 still in the bottom of her inbox.  Don’t be like #1.

When times are good, #1 attends to her inbox but leaves stuff in there as sort of a to-do list.   When times are bad, everything gets converted to Last In First Out and things get buried for years.  This is no good.  Usually at some point #1 has to start scheduling an hour of going through email each day until she has scooped herself out to some reasonable point in time.  But it’s like shoveling during a snow-storm.  Ugh.

#1 has also given up on reading weekly newsletters of any sort– there’s a folder that says, “Research to read” that every week she puts all the journal and working papers emails in to read.  She used to read those every week, but now they just go in the bucket.  She feels bad about this and behind on what is going on in the field.  But… sometimes you have to triage.

Grumpy Nation:  How do you manage your email?

It’s Wednesday and cousins named Amy Jo

Happy Wednesday everyone! @KeithHabs @i8athumbtack @Hughiestonefish pic.twitter.com/T5kuKn3Si7

— Lewberger (@lewberger) February 24, 2021

So, completely unrelated to the above:  There’s this person on twitter named Amy Jo Cousins that people retweet a lot.  And every time I see her, I think, oh, I wonder what she’s up to these days because every single time I think it’s my cousin named Amy Jo.  And then I’m like, … she came out?  And why did she change her last name from [mother’s maiden name]?  Did she get married? And then I suddenly realize she isn’t my cousin.  That’s her actual last name.  In fairness– she lives in the Midwest and looks a lot like my mom’s side of the family.

My actual cousin named Amy Jo, to my knowledge, does not write erotic fiction.

I guess I will front-load DC2’s 529 too?

Previously we decided to stop contributing monthly to DC1’s 529 and instead invest a lump sum equal to what we would have invested each month in the time before zie graduated high school.  Once we knew more about hir college plans, we could adjust.

DC2’s 529 we kept investing in monthly as before.  I guess we’d decided not to because we were expecting to pay for DH’s relative’s son’s college.  But he didn’t go to college in the end.  And I was completely wrong about the stock market– I always am!  The stock market is unpredictable.  It’s irrational!  Especially when we have such huge income inequality.  (We will be paying for 2 years of DH’s relative’s daughter’s college though, tuition and fees but not living expenses– she’s recovering from being sick taking this semester off and plans to finish her remaining two community college courses in the fall, then transfer to a state school as an English major.  Hopefully that will actually happen.)

Right now we have too much in cash savings.  Even with the 12K gone for our annual IRA Backdoor Roth conversion.

We could also use a little bit more monthly cash flow to help me with accounting given DH’s continued unemployment.  Another $750/month wouldn’t go amiss, especially since my health insurance costs have gone up $300/month putting DH on the plan and switching from the  the Traditional 403(b) to Roth 403(b) (now that Trump is gone, I’m more willing to pay taxes now) is taking more money out of my take-home pay.

So we could do a lump sum in DC2’s 529 equivalent to what we would put in between now and when DC1 graduates from high school (or some other target date) and then stop contributing until we know what DC1’s college plans are going to cost.  DC1 is currently a second-semester sophomore so two full years would be $750*12*2 = $18,000 and then $750 a month additional for however many months more we want to add.  If we do that, our savings account will drop to a more reasonable level– a standard academic emergency fund (3 months summer salary + 1 month for emergencies) and a little bit more.

Now I just need to get around to actually doing this.  (Which is why this post has sat in drafts for a while.)

If DH suddenly gets employed before I get around to doing this, I might not?  But I don’t know if that is going to happen or not.  After the four interviews last week I’m not sure that there’s anything obvious to set in motion unless we are willing to move.

 

Link Love

🚨NEW: If you don't see this as the biggest story of the day, then you don't understand what is about to happen to our democracy. The right-wing is organizing and spending millions to enact voter suppression laws.https://t.co/D3HehtzsJY

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) March 8, 2021

This is every viral British news clip I've seen since the Meghan and Harry interview pic.twitter.com/5WGs6I4cLe

— Ryan Ken (@Ryan_Ken_Acts) March 9, 2021

Piers Morgan’s real problem

Lesson from a paper on superstitions: 80% of people who act like they believe something irrational do it from peer pressure, not belief. If others stop acting like believers, so will they. But 20% of people really believe the dumb thing & are validated by the 80% who conform 1/2 pic.twitter.com/35MYTbIRkd

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) March 10, 2021

All adult Americans will be eligible to get the vaccine no later than May 1.

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 12, 2021

Ask the grumpies: How do you make your beds?

Bethh asks:

How do you do your sheets when you make your bed? My mom makes beds with the patterned side of the top sheet pointing in, and leaves a very long tail at the top of the sheet so she can fold it back/over the blanket. I prefer to put the top sheet with the pattern facing out, and I tuck in more of the tail so when I pull the top sheet straight, it comes up to exactly where I like it to end.

We don’t really make beds ever.  Unless we’re visiting someone– we will make beds for company.  #2 doesn’t even make beds when people are over.  #1 will sometimes hide the bed with a comforter, but usually just keeps the door to the bedroom closed and hopes that more than two people don’t need to use a bathroom at the same time.  I guess technically we keep the guest bed made so guests can use the guest bathroom without thinking we didn’t clean for company.

TBH, when it’s not the pandemic (when we’re visiting nobody), really the only people we visit these days are relatives.  DH takes care of bed-making in that scenario because his mom is a nurse and taught him how to make beds like nurses do and that seems complicated to me, though quite fancy, especially at the bottoms.

I mean, I guess I just tuck the top sheet at the bottom and on the sides and if there are blankets I do the same thing and then if there’s a comforter or bedspread that goes on top.  I try to make it look like what it looked like before I made the bed– to match with whatever the person who owns the bed usually does.  (Which I cannot do when it’s DH’s mom’s place, see: above re: nurses.)

Grumpy Nation, do you make beds?  What is your preferred procedure?

What’s your Jungian archetypal dream?

So lately the anxiety dreams I’ve been having have revolved around forgetting to wear a mask or being the only masked person around lots of unmasked people.  I assume this was not part of Jung’s collective unconscious categorization, and perhaps evidence (since I know I’m not the only person who has had this dream) that maybe folks having similar dreams isn’t that mystical.

But there are a lot of random bizarre dreams that people share.

My biggest one is where my teeth fall out.  Before the internet, I thought this was just a me thing.  But now I know I am not alone.  (See also:  a support page for people who hiccup when they eat carrots, which I also thought was just a weird me thing, though sadly it is no longer up.)

Another common anxiety dream is public nudity.  For me I always discover I’m in a trench coat or bathrobe with nothing underneath and I somehow have to make it back to safety without anyone realizing.

I don’t have the flying dream, though when I was a child I did– I used to jump off a piece of playground equipment and just fly and it would be like swimming.  As an adult I guess I’m just too heavy even in my dream world.

#2 put peeing here as one of hers.  Apparently it is a thing even though it’s not my thing and is thought to have something to do with physiological needs.

#2 also notes nightmares about teaching where she shows up and she’s not prepared or she has forgotten to bring the exam on exam day or she’s been signed up to teach a class but doesn’t figure it out until the last day.  Fortunately those seem to have stopped or at least slowed down since leaving academia.  Not sure if Jung had that on his list, but the reverse as a student is super common.

I know several people, including both of us, who have had a recurring nightmare that the phd was a mistake and we have to go back and redo graduate school.  Mine is even worse– I have to redo high school(!) in order to get my PhD back.

Those are our recurring dreams that we share with some subset of the human race (I notice now that with the exception of flying, and maybe peeing, they’re pretty much all anxiety dreams!)  What are yours?  Tell me I’m not alone in the teeth one.

Update on DH’s job hunt

So… about two weeks ago, DH had finished a Coursera and done some exploration of using newer technologies on actual data and decided it was time to actually start applying to companies.  He applied to three (one through a head-hunter that contacted him) and immediately got three interviews.  Then one of his former colleagues who left the company (something about living in Europe) asked him to apply for their company (which just bought a company in the US) asked him to apply to their company sort of out of the blue and that resulted in a fourth interview.  He’s also been talking with friends and colleagues and alumni from earlier times in his life and getting advice and requests for his resume and stuff.  (One guy was like, you must apply for our company, but then DH looked at their job openings and didn’t know what a lot of the words meant, so, he was like, I didn’t see anything that fit but here’s my resume.)

The head-hunter job moved the quickest and did a programming interview last week after the first screen.  And DH was like, I am not going to be able to optimize a sort– I just have not done that kind of thing in at least 10 years.  And the screening programming interview turned out to be asking him to manipulate strings in C++ which… he uses macros for because he’s not just out of college and he hardly ever has to do, and never has to do for work and would never have to do on the job he applied for.  So it’s a very easy task, but he wasn’t able to remember all of the commands he needed in the time allotted.  There was also a sort-optimization problem.  So he was basically like– if they care about this then I don’t want to work at the company because their hiring process is stupid and geared only towards recent grads even for these upper-level positions.  If they don’t care about this, then we will see.  (DH did write me a very nice string manipulation program in C++ back in grad school to help me with my dissertation.  But now he does things like that in Python because apparently it is easier.)  The head hunter wants to have a call with him on Monday (today) to talk about it.  DH is not enthusiastic about this call.

A place one of his former colleagues is working that he’s worked with before was excited about him until they found he lived in a state where they don’t have any current employees.  They said their policy was to only hire people from states where they had at least 5 employees because they didn’t want to deal with the tax hassle unless it was worth it.  They’d thought he lived in the same state as his former coworker.  But look them up again if we move to this list of like 7 states (including MA and DC).  So that was kind of a bummer.

The third place said they weren’t interested in a remote worker for their specific group, but would shop his resume around to other groups.  (And if we ever move to Boston…)

The company his former colleague is at seems like a great fit in terms of the company is basically doing what he did in his last job, but has actual products, which makes DH happy.  He has a technical screen today, and it’s supposed to be on [words related to programming DH actually does as a grown-up], so hopefully that would go well.  He’s a bit bummed out about the previous “coding challenge” where he didn’t finish all of the strings manipulation tasks and not remembering how he did amazingly on the coding challenge for his last job.

So that’s where we are now.  I don’t know what next steps will be.  I hope today’s programming interview goes well because DH seems excited about this particular job and he knows he likes working with at least one of their current employees!

 

Link Love

So much to do, nowhere to goooo…. (I wanna be sedated…)

Stockton’s basic income experiment.

This dissertation on whether Dave Ramsey is lying to churches about how much more their members will tithe.  There’s all sorts of seedy going on in here and boy a big reminder that churches are first and foremost businesses (and should be taxed as such!)

Classic portraits and sculptures animated.