- The other SIL also decided to stay at home from this summer’s vacation.
- I found out when DC2 brought home all hir school stuff that zie had written an essay on “my Christmas vacation” that had me staying at home. I did not stay at home for that! I only stay at home for the summer vacation! What must her teachers have thought?
- As DC2 gets into the terrible 7s, I have more and more sympathy for Mrs. Bennett and her Poor Nerves.
- We’re replacing the fan in our 17 year old refrigerator again. $83.43. I asked DH if he wouldn’t rather have a newer fridge and he said no. (In terms of environmental concerns, we have a low-end energy star fridge and we would probably replace it with a higher end one. The last time I ran the efficiency numbers switching wasn’t helping much in terms of day-to-day, so we didn’t think it worth the costs of creating a new fridge. We could replace with another low-end fridge, but I didn’t run those numbers. I think that was a couple of years ago though, and the numbers may have changed.)
- After having been especially trying at daycamp dropoff and having privileges rescinded (a very rare occurrence!), DC2 came home (after enjoying hirself fully at daycamp), remembered the lost privileges, shut hirself in hir bedroom, and started sadly playing hir new harmonica.
- UGH, stupid HR sending me an email that I didn’t have the stupid wellness credit stuff done so I had to login and look up my stupid password and check even though I’ve had it done since forever and it doesn’t expire until after the school year starts. Don’t send me incorrect information!
- I feel like Hannah B would have benefited from watching Frozen prior to this season of the bachelor.
- Anna rhymes with Hannah and is also a palindrome.
- DC2 passed the test to skip 2nd grade and now we need to decide whether to do that even though hir Spanish isn’t great yet, or to wait another year. (More people skip 3rd grade and the test is supposed to be easier.)
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RBOC
July 31, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieLink love
July 28, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieMcConnell blocks two bipartisan election security bills. (See #2 and #3 here for action: https://twitter.com/Celeste_pewter/status/1155329994224099328 ) Related:
All Sonesta brand hotels are showing Fox News in their lobbies. I asked at the desk and they said it was a decision from corporate and they were not allowed to change the channel. Tripadvisor has complaints from all over the country about this.
Recommendations for how to organize code and data
On break
July 22, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieNothing’s wrong– just traveling and out of backlog! (If you’d like a grumpy hit, check out our back list– 2011 had some especially entertaining posts, for example.)
How’s your summer going?
Link love
July 20, 2019 — nicoleandmaggie1000 Jewish protesters block entrance to ICE HQ. Why Jews are getting themselves arrested at ICE centers around the country. A Jewish doctor talks about his experiences “here I am in Texas at the gates of a refugee camp”. Catholics also getting arrested protesting concentration camps for migrant children.
What is the connection between farmers markets and fascists?
FaceApp claims ownership of your personal photos and… has Russian ties.
How a taxable account can be as good as a Roth
Keep reading this thread on kodak... you think you’re done and then there’s another story…
Ask the grumpies: What do you watch on Netflix?
July 19, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieLeah asks:
Do you watch much Netflix? Any favorite Netflix originals? I really like One Day at a Time, and there’s several Netflix originals kids’ shows we love. Treehouse Detectives is the most popular right now in our house.
#1: I don’t… um… watch anything on netflix. DH watches Lucifer and when the next season of The Good Place is up he’ll be watching that. DC1 doesn’t watch anything except the occasional movie that DH is watching (usually super hero or star wars based). DC2 has mainly been watching youtube these days. Zie is a fan of Arthur, Wild Kratts, and Johnny Test, though zie watched them all on Youtube.
What do you all watch on Netflix?
Some books
July 17, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieCrosstalk by Connie Willis is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Sooooo good.
A Little Folly I’m not sure what #2 wanted to say about this
Stormy challenge by Jayne Ann Krentz writing as Stephanie James was just bad. It was from 1982 and both clunky and with an abusive stalker “hero”. Not sure if it is the James penname or the 1982 that is the problem. Legacy was another one from the 80s with a crazy abusive stalker as the “hero”. A Coral Kiss from 1987 was pretty decent. I checked it out from the library but I wouldn’t have minded if I’d bought a copy. Grand Passion was pretty good, though not as good as her more recent stuff. I broke down and bought the first Guinevere Jones book and then immediately had to buy the next two. They are novella length and not actually worth $6.99 on Kindle, but I think they are worth the cost of the used (not new) paperback compendiums. (The first two are better than the last two.)
The Earl I Ruined by Scarlett Peckham was ok. It started off well, but kind of fell apart in the third quarter.
I discovered that the city library I’ve been getting ebooks from has a lot of babara metzger on kindle. These have been mixed. Lord Heartless started off well, but then became a mess of unnecessary complication in the second half. There was plenty of plot to resolve without adding all the rushed stupidity and drama (though of course having the drama means that we’re not supposed to notice that the main plot from the first half never actually got resolved). A Worthy Wife is pretty dumb with an unlikable hero. An Affair of Interest is one of those where a middle aged grumpy controlling perfect oldest son and heir to a nobleman inexplicably falls in love with a teenager who is always getting into scrapes that he has to rescue her from… I know Heyer did one or two of these successfully (though the woman is never quite such an idiot) but when it’s not Heyer the trope seems a little gross and completely unbelievable (and even when it is Heyer I pretend the woman is older and the man younger!). Ace of Hearts’ hero was grossly slut-shaming so I didn’t get very far. An Angel for the Earl was ok. The Duel was pretty good. The Christmas Carrolls was really terrible– the patriarch date-raped a woman while traveling with his wife and kids sick at home and got her pregnant, a teenager gets married to the father of her boyfriend… and so on. The Luck of the Devil was ok. A Debt to Delia was silly but fine, though it had a slow start. The Primrose Path was pretty funny. A suspicious affair was quite good, though it was written in a different style then most of Metzger’s work– mostly third person perspective from a bow street runner, rather than from the hero/heroine (cw: the corpse that serves as mcguffin beat and possibly raped women, including the heroine, when he was alive). Miss Westlake’s Windfall was slow and boring… it speeds up near the end, but I skipped large chunks of the beginning and middle– a TSTL heroine. The Painted Lady’s hero was so extremely disgusting in the first few pages (talking about how the hero’s mistresses think he’s a generous lover, but in reality he’s just getting to know their bodies so he can paint them nude later without their knowledge… if he were modern he’d be secretly filming them) that I returned the rest unread. Lady Whilton’s Wedding started out really well– a decent take on the engaged childhood friends trope… and then a third of the way through turned into Weekend at Bernies, which… I dunno…
Rich People Problems is better than China Rich Girlfriend.
What have you been reading this summer?
Feeling like a jerk about money
July 15, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieIf you will recall, DH and his family go on a family vacation each summer.
This year at the end of the trip, they talked about where to go next summer.
A first suggestion was an East Coast beach tourist destination (not Florida).
This year we paid for the house and our travel and a portion of the food. DH’s parents mostly paid for the rest. But the house was cheap because it just doesn’t cost much to Air BnB a house in a state capitol in the summer. So total was something like $2,500.
East Coast tourist destinations are expensive and far away from the Midwest (except Florida, which is relatively cheap but still far away).
Another suggestion was a popular midwestern summer destination heavy on theme parks. Some of us would fly but some of them could drive. But the group houses there are expensive! I don’t feel like we could foot the entire bill like we did this year, especially since we’d probably be staying longer than three nights.
Neither of DH’s siblings asked about defraying the cost of lodging this year. We wouldn’t have let them contribute this year because it wasn’t a big deal, but if we’re talking about a more popular tourist destination, the price goes up. BIL has a good union job with a SAHW and a house that’s bigger than ours (glassdoor suggests a salary ~$90K, but who knows). SIL’s family makes over 100K now (she’s a teacher so her salary is public and MIL said her husband is now making more than she is with his latest raise– I am so crass!). Of course, BIL has paid for his wife’s family to go with them on a second trip to Disney World. SIL is financially supporting her husband’s family in many ways. So income is not the same as disposable income.
DH had been thinking that next year they could all gather in BIL’s hometown, which is an hour or so away from SIL’s. But it sounds like they want to do something more exciting. Which means we have to think about how much of the cost we’re going to defray and what we’ll let DH’s parents pay. And… I think it’s really unlikely that either DH or his parents will ask his siblings to contribute unless they decide to get separate hotel rooms instead of renting a house. And I think it’s really unlikely that his siblings will even think of offering.
What is wrong with me that we can’t just give a gift without me expecting some gratitude or acknowledgement? I think in this case, it really is the money. We can handle nobody knowing or caring that we paid for a lot of this summer’s vacation and other previous summers, but once they start talking about more and more expensive places without chipping in (to be fair, DH’s parents do offer to pay for the entire thing and have paid for whatever we don’t pay for in the past, or to be more accurate, with the exception of this past year they pay and we contribute) it seems like a bit much. We can fix that in the future by saying we can contribute X amount during the planning stage, so it’s unlikely to be a big deal going forward. I don’t think DH’s parents would spend so much on one of these family vacations that it would jeopardize their retirement, so we shouldn’t be worrying about that possibility.
Anyhow, I feel like a jerk about money. We do still make more than the rest of DH’s family. If we don’t offer to contribute, DH’s parents will pay for everything. As far as we know, they’re not in danger of running out of retirement money. This shouldn’t be a problem. And yet, I have to admit, I’m a bit annoyed. But we will probably continue this way unless and until some negative change in DH’s job situation.
Link love
July 13, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieA bit light on links this week. I was doing a lot of forensic data stuff (where did those numbers come from?) prior to a presentation.
The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy
Donate to Amy McGrath here. (This was my Thursday action) The bad guys are already gunning for her and she definitely needs some media training, but… see the above quote. Also, the more support she gets, the better her coattails will be in Kentucky’s state and local.
You know those headlines about American households not being able to cover an unexpected $400 expense? Turns out any household who said they would put it on a credit card or would sell property (like stocks?) is included in that number. So while it is definitely problematic that there are low income households who cannot handle those kinds of expenses, the high income numbers are not actually that concerning. Some of those are just people being more efficient with their money than we lazy high income people who keep too much in savings accounts with low interest rates. The policy brief is an interesting read.
Do you use a project management software for taking care of stuff at home?
Ask the grumpies: How will the Republican tax thing affect charitable donations?
July 12, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieFGA asks:
Because I no longer have mortgage interest as a deduction, it actually was better for me to take the standard deduction. My charitable contributions were no longer deductible even though it was many thousands of dollars. I am frankly worried about how this will Impact nonprofits moving forward. Grumpy thoughts?
It should discourage charitable giving because there will be fewer taxpayers who will find it in their interest to itemize, and also with marginal tax rates down etc. the savings for people who itemize will also be lower. If you’re getting 25 cents back instead of 33 cents, for example, you might be less likely to donate.
I’m not a tax economist, but there are actual tax economists who have predictions, including this article from the Urban Institute/Brookings tax center that has estimates.
There are a few complications of course. Fears of the future, beliefs about what the government is or isn’t funding compared to what needs funding, and just how the economy is doing will all effect giving, even in the absence of the tax cuts and job act. Additionally, the increase in donor advised funds has made it more beneficial to put money in the fund all at once to get a tax break and then to hold onto it before disbursing as it gains money. It made sense for a lot of people who were going to be losing their mortgage deductions to put money in DAF before the tax law went into effect. I don’t know if that actually happened though. I assume sometime in the next year or two academic economists will be trying to sort this all out.
I’ve certainly increased my charitable (and political) donations because of Trump, but definitely not because of any changes to the tax code– all of our donations are going in without any tax breaks. Which does make it easier to donate to places that aren’t tax-exempt (political non-profits, for example).
What are your love languages?
July 10, 2019 — nicoleandmaggieI’ve been listening to the By the Book Podcast recently, and one of their books was the 5 love languages. So DH and I took the 5 love languages quiz online (you have to put in an email, but you can totally put in a fake email– they will still give you your results at the end in addition to emailing them to you).
Here’s our results:
Me:
| 10 | Acts of Service |
| 7 | Physical Touch |
| 7 | Quality Time |
| 6 | Words of Affirmation |
| 0 | Receiving Gifts |
DH:
| 9 | Physical Touch |
| 8 | Quality Time |
| 8 | Words of Affirmation |
| 5 | Acts of Service |
| 0 | Receiving Gifts |
I think this works out very nicely for me because it means DH can show he cares by doing stuff for me. I just have to provide the physical touch and quality time that I also value! Total win for me! And, of course, words of affirmation which are super easy when he’s doing stuff that I appreciate. It’s a great exchange. :)
What are your love languages?
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