Books are the best! (But not all of them are the best)

DNF The Goodbye Cat.  Too many dead cats in the first two chapters along with it being twee and kind of repetitive, and also irritating gender stuff.  I’m sorry, Japanese best sellers written by men, so far you just haven’t been that great.

I thought Death in the Spires by KJ Charles would be too grim for me, but actually it wasn’t as bad as her Sins in the City series– all those warnings that it wasn’t her usual fare and it’s not a romance etc.  If you’re overly sensitive like me, it’s fine.  An excellent read for being stuck in an airport for 15 hours (it did not take 15 hours to read though– thank goodness for Kindles).

Everyone on this train is a suspect by Benjamin Stevenson started out promisingly as a farce, but started dragging about when there should have been a murder.  I gave up and skipped to the last two chapters with the solution and epilogue and felt like I hadn’t missed anything by not reading the rest.

The Partner Plot by Kristina Forest was ok.  The problem is it’s one of those books which was way more interesting when the protagonists were apart than when they were together and they were together most of the book.  I wanted more of the heroine’s life as a professional stylist to the stars.  More of the hero’s life coaching basketball and teaching high school English.  They just weren’t that interesting together.

DNF Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan.  Another one that was much more interesting without the romance, but this one just got irritating and juvenile when they were together.  I want to just read about the heroine breaking curses.  And maybe the hero doing his archaeology stuff.  Everything where they were together with their ridiculous unnecessary and just like.. teenagery enemies to lovers (they’re supposed to be in their 30s, which is really troubling) to enemies etc.  So dumb that I decided it wasn’t worth finding out more about the curse in the castle or how one goes about breaking curses.  So I gave up.

DNF Love at First Book by Jenn McKinlay.  Another American with a grumpy UK person, though not as juvenile as the above book.  Still, the grumpy Irishman hero is the heroine’s boss which is sketchy.  And it’s another one where it’s just more interesting when the heroes are apart than when they are together, and sadly they’re together most of the book.  I read about half (up to where they got together and joked about how much they love third act breakups) and then skimmed the rest to see if there was any closure with the heroine’s US stuff.  Meh.

I’ve started reading, or perhaps in some cases rereading, Mary Stewart books.  They are this odd combination of surprisingly modern (the writing style– which is often first person, usually tight, and also delightfully tongue in cheek) and a bit regressive (Wildfire at Midnight has lots of recommendations to stay with a cheating husband, though that’s not the choice the heroine makes at the beginning of the book).  Professor Google suggests she started the entire genre of Romantic Suspense, which I’ve been a fan of ever since I wandered upstairs to the adults section at the library and ran out of mystery novels (and discovered that Elizabeth Peters wrote books I liked even more as Barbara Michaels), so it’s quite possible this genre has kept some of her writing style as well.  (Though my guess would have been Phyllis Whitney as the founder, particularly with her jv books… I suppose they’re contemporaries.  Or maybe Mary Roberts Rinehart, though her suspense is a lot more gothic.)

I really liked the latest Emily Henry, Funny Story.  One of my friends said it was too slow and she’s not going to read Emily Henry books anymore, but I think this is my second favorite of hers (after Book Lovers).  It was just really nice.  Don’t be put off by the first chapter– the hero isn’t actually a pothead slob.  Though in the last chapter I did feel SEEN in a way I felt a bit uncomfortable.  Like, stop reading me, I’m supposed to be reading you.  Did not care for the third act breakup– it was out of character and irritating, but at least it was short.  I’ve kind of given up on counting dumb third act breakups against otherwise good books, especially if they’re short.  But authors, you do not need to have that trope.  There are other ways to end a book.  Also grand gestures are dumb, particularly when you know the other person doesn’t like surprises.  Still, I forgive the book.  (Also I skipped the sex scenes.  Boring.)

You Should be so Lucky by Cat Sebastian was REALLY GOOD.  It has a very similar vibe to the first book in the series (I believe one of the heroes of the previous book is the boss of one of the heroes in this book).  At its heart, it is a story about resilience, and how do we keep on keeping on when things aren’t going our way.  Given all the rejection I’ve had recently, it probably spoke to me more than it should have.  It’s not really about baseball.  As one of the characters notes, “nobody has ever written about baseball without it being a metaphor.”

People in Glass Houses by Jayne Castle seemed a bit rushed– the hero wasn’t particularly developed, nor was their relationship.  Still a decent read.  More world-building in the Harmony series.

The Lily of Ludgate Hill by Mimi Matthews had a really slow start (with the main characters much more interesting apart than together– a theme…) but then redeemed itself once they actually talked and then started being nice to each other.

 

The gifts of our partnership

Hm… this year’s anniversary falls on a Money Monday.  We’ve already gone through our monetary lives together back in 2013…  Although a lot has happened in the intervening 10+ years, most of that is documented in this here blog (click the money tag).  It’s hard thinking up something romantic and money-related!  (Ditto work-related…)

Googling love and money brings up ways for couples to communicate about money and avoid fights about it.  There’s a cute NYTimes story about how a guy’s future wife taught him how to spend money in order to be romantic.  And I mean, I guess I could talk about how we handle money… which is… you basically let me do what I want and when I check in with you or ask for your thoughts you provide them and we come to a decision together.  That’s like… not interesting?

Ah, but maybe I could talk about how it’s ok to be the opposite of that cute NYTimes story.  We are terrible at buying things for each other.  I’m terrible at buying things for you because if you wanted something, you’d have bought it already, plus most of the enjoyment comes from shopping.  You’re terrible at buying things for me because I was brought up in a way that it is very difficult for me to accept gifts and I really hate surprises.  (The Amazon wishlist has really helped me with this when it comes to extended family.)  Plus either it’s *our* money and I’d rather have a say in how it’s spent, or it’s your allowance and I’d much rather you get the joy of spending it on yourself.

But knowing that I hate purchased presents, you’ve come up with creative things that I cherish.  From the [Lastname] Radio Network to the [Lastname] Publishing Company to the art without a recipe installment… I love how every Christmas break you bring the children together and create a group story, whether it’s a podcast or comic book or video.  It’s been wonderful seeing your shared senses of humor as you combine the children’s interests at the time into something new, and then edit it for me.

Possibly my most treasured possession from you is the Name poem you carved with the diagonals of each word making my full name.  (For the reader, “Literati” would be an example of “I” in Nicole.)  Every word speaks to me and makes me feel seen.  I may not see myself in some of those words, but they are definitely things I value and aspire to and I am glad that you see them in me.

I also love the way we make each other cakes on our birthdays.

My love languages may not include gifts, but you’ve figured out how to give me things that make me feel loved, seen, affirmed, valued.

I don’t know how to return the favor.  But know that I love you, I value you, I affirm you.  And there is nobody I want to see or know more.

You are wonderful.  The best gift of all is being able to spend time with you.  To talk with you.  To snuggle.  To share a life– a past, present, and future.  I love you so much.

Happy anniversary!

Link love

Actually, the US economy is excellent right now.

This is where attacks on reading take you.

IRA holdings have shot up among young households, but who is it helping?

How to optimize your children’s inheritances.

Ask the grumpies: College Packing List

First Gen American asks:

What’s in your college packing list?

My sister drove DC1 to college otherwise we would have had a different list.

I think with these there are a couple of ways to do it.  You can either 1.  buy the minimum and give your kid a credit card and instructions on how to use amazon/target/walmart account or 2.  read all the college packing lists online and pick and choose.

Necessary items to bring:

1. Summer clothing for 2 weeks of wear (include two weeks of underwear)
2. Fall/Winter clothing for 1 week of wear (include coat)
3. Towel
4. Toothbrush/toothpaste/floss/etc.
5. Credit card
6. Cash
7. Cellphone
8. Extra long twin sheets.  (Needed for night 1 and the local big box stores may be out.)
9. External battery and cords
10. (depending on dorm situation):  A box fan. (May be needed for night 1 and the local big box stores may be out.)

Optional items that can be bought/sent as needed:

1. Laptop and cords including surge protector
2. School supplies.
3. Bedding
4. Pillow
5. More towels/washcloth/etc.
6. Soap:  Laundry/shower/etc.
7. Laundry bag/basket
8. kleenex
9. Flip flops for shower
10. Bathrobe
11. headphones
12. Dress outfit for formal/semi-formal events (business casual/business also ok)
13. swimsuit
14. umbrella
15. foldable hand-truck/cart (for getting packages from the mail room to your dorm room)
16. gochujang  (DC1 is out, but it costs $18 on amazon for a $4 bottle!) and other snacks
17. mini-sewing kit/safety pins
18. thermometer
19. first aid kit

Grumpy Nation:  What was necessary to bring for college? 

Experiences with at-home hair laser treatments Part 2

*Disclaimer:  All amazon links are affiliate– we may get some tiny amount if you buy through them but definitely don’t buy through them on our account because it truly is a tiny amount of money*

Several months ago my trusty Tria stopped working without warning.  I don’t know if it broke or if it had finished its limited number of flashes or what (they warn you that it only has a certain number of flashes).  Basically it just wouldn’t turn on even after fully charging.

I wanted to just buy a new one, but they had run out of the old version and the new version hadn’t come in yet, so that wasn’t an option.

Meanwhile, the occasional dark coarse facial hair started to pop up with increasing frequency.  Finally, with no way of knowing when I could get a replacement Tria, I rage-bought a Braun laser hair remover.  I don’t think this link is exactly the version I got, but I’m not going to end up recommending it anyway.

This Braun device is not great if you are trying to get rid of a single facial hair, coarse or not.  It did not do what I needed. In addition, the light is extremely bright and it’s difficult to use on yourself in front of a mirror.  Even with your eyes closed it has very bright flashes reflected (why stand in a mirror?  So you can see where to aim!).

That said, it does do SOMETHING.  It has a broad-range laser instead of a small focused one.  For fun, I decided to just use it on one armpit and not the other to see if I could find a difference.  And, indeed, after a couple months of use there is a difference.  I still have to shave both, and neither are patchy, but there is less/lighter/thinner hair on the one I treated.  So I’ve started doing the other side too.  This is probably best for broad areas like under arms or legs, particularly if you don’t need them to be completely hair free– if you just want shaving to take less time.  Some people on the amazon page look like they’ve had more success on these broader areas, but they also say they need to touch up every couple weeks give or take.

Fortunately for my sanity but not my wallet, Tria finally came out with its new edition and I bought it.  It works just like the old one.  It kills a very small area of hair and the flash is hidden.  It is expensive, but as someone who tends towards a Fu Manchu beard when left untreated, the cost is well worth the amount of time I would otherwise have to pluck out coarse beard hairs.  It doesn’t really get light or skinny hairs.  It’s not a total solution.  But it is a nice targeted solution.

I hate the patriarchy, but there’s only so much I’m willing to fight.  Stupid early 20th century capitalism selling razors and depilatory agents.  Stupid culture.  Stupid having to shave.

How do you deal with unwanted hair?  Would you spend $500 (twice!) on something that gets rid of maybe a few facial hairs at a time?

Changing our Home Owners (and spoiler: also auto and umbrella) Insurance

We have been good liberty mutual customers since we needed renters insurance in grad school.  We used them for renter’s insurance, then car insurance, then home owners insurance, then life insurance, then umbrella insurance.  We never shopped around.  They were reasonably good price-wise from people we talked to and the couple times we had to use them for car stuff they were very easy to work with.  They were just a good company.

Then they started their stupid ad campaigns.  And sold off our life insurance to another company.  Our car insurance still seemed reasonable, but last year our home owners insurance almost doubled to almost 7K.  We called and they said, oh, inflation, prices going up etc.  A google search suggested that yes, there were big jumps, but not THAT big.

So I tried to get online quotes and was taken basically to a clearinghouse site that instead of giving us actual quotes just gave our information to insurance agents.  Our inbox was inundated with spam from sketchy places and less sketchy places and we got actual letters in the mail and in the end the liberty mutual insurance just renewed and I paid it and got busy and gave up.

This year, one of my colleagues lives in my neighborhood and asked if we have an insurance provider we like because her insurance just went up to 3K.  And I was like… liberty mutual is 7K and your house is nicer(!)  She said they used to use liberty mutual but there was a crazy jump so they shopped around and were now using travelers. So I went to the travelers website to see if I could get a direct quote from them, but they just took me to the site with all the same clearinghouse site as before.  This time DH filled it out.  We got some more mailers which I collected.

Then we got this year’s Liberty Mutual quote– nearly 12K, again, almost but not quite double last year’s.  That’s not ok.

I called Liberty Mutual and they repriced as new down to 11K.  Which, um, not enough.

So I emailed all the people who had sent us mailers.  And I found this US News site which took me to places to get online quotes that weren’t as sketchy.  Well… Amica wasn’t sketchy.  The other online quotes were the same “we can’t give you an online quote call our agent” garbage.  But some of the emails we got back had links to fill out to get online quotes so we used those.  Any time someone asked to call, we said no thank you email only.

All-State gave us lots of low quotes from different agents.  State Farm directed us to one agent at one agency and I went back and forth with him via email to get a full quote which was pretty decent.  After filling out the Amica online site we got a quote there and we decided that was probably what we wanted so DH called them to purchase it and was on the phone for like an hour.  The number went up.  But then they found they’d not followed state law on something where we needed to have a different amount of coverage and the number went down by $1000 back to a little lower than the original quote.

There are two major differences between our Liberty Mutual coverage and the Amica coverage:

1.  Our Liberty Mutual had the replacement cost of the roof.  Our roof is on year 19 of a 30 year so it is going to be on the “bad” list for insurance companies (who assume a 20 year roof) probably for the next 11 years, give or take.  New insurance doesn’t do the replacement cost of the roof, just the actual value of the roof.  I am ok with this.  Insurance is for unexpected needs, not expected roof replacements.  I don’t need to over-pre-pay a roof replacement in installments to the insurance company.  Especially not for another decade.

2.  DC1 was not on the Liberty Mutual car insurance.  But since zie is home for the summer we needed to add hir, so we did.  Even with that (spoiler!) the auto is still less expensive(!)

So:

Before (Liberty Mutual):
Home: 11K
Auto (without DC1): 3K
Umbrella: 500 (it actually went up to $564 for next year, but we didn’t get that estimate until after we’d switched)

Total:  14.5K

After (Amica):
Home: 2.4K
Auto (with DC1): 2.2K
Umbrella: 350

Total:  <5K

So… there’s almost a 10K difference.  That’s more than a month of take-home pay!!!  That’s INSANE!

How often do you shop around for insurance?  What’s your trigger?  Would you have lost ~4K putting off shopping around for a year (though to be fair, I didn’t KNOW putting it off a year it was going to cost us 4K because I hadn’t done any shopping around).

Link love

Lynn Barber’s older man

Ask the grumpies: Childish fun as adults

FGA says:

A whole post dedicated to childish activities adults should try would be fun. Years ago, before kids, I hosted a slumber party but it was all adults. Some people went all out with their pajama choices. It was super fun.

This is a great idea.  I feel like since DC2 has gotten to tween age any childish activities have been put away, to paraphrase the Corinthians excerpt DC2 read at my sister’s wedding.  (I picked Song of Solomon for mine.)  Mostly I just work and read novels and watch the internet– I am definitely in a rut.

Grumpy Nation!  What childish activities are fun for adults too?

RBOBody (and some other random stuff)

• Down to 48 unfinished blog drafts … Not sure what we will do when they run out!
• I was feeling incredibly anxious.  Then I took a magnesium supplement and felt better.  Magnesium also seems to help with hormone-related headaches.  Vitamin D and also… salt… seem to help when I’m feeling tired for no reason.  I wonder how many of my personal problems are just vitamin deficiency.
• After a long time of not getting much spam in the wordpress filter, it’s starting to ratchet up again.  It also caught a genuine comment which I didn’t fish out until days later.  Sorry about that!  I’d gotten out of the habit of checking.
• As DC2 reaches tween years random people are starting to get really obnoxious about gender policing.  Zie purposely dresses somewhat androgynously and people, from school mates to waitstaff just flat out ask if zie is a boy or girl.  I guess people mistook me for the other sex back when I had a short haircut in elementary school and it only bothered me at swimming when they tried to give me a key to the wrong locker room, which is probably actually a good time for someone to just ask which locker room.
• my kindle battery is starting to die.  I hate planned obsolescence.  I also don’t want it to lose the order of when I last read something.
• Finally saw the pain doctor.  In less than 15 minutes, maybe even 5 minutes, he explained exactly what was wrong with me (spine triggering nerve which triggers foot nerves, and the left toes thing is an L5 thing and the right ball of foot thing is an S1 thing, both from the same broad-based disc bulge) and the three potential treatment options.  First line recommended treatment is a steroid injection which allows the bulging disc to heal — in cases like mine the first treatment often works within 3 months before it wears off.  Second line recommended treatment is physical therapy, but it doesn’t have as high a success rate on its own.  Third line treatment is an oral pain killer which he didn’t recommend.  So I got a shot in the office and a new appointment for September that I should cancel if the pain has gone away.  If the pain hasn’t gone away in 3 months he will give a second injection and refer to me to physical therapy.
• The injection was a lot like the dentist office (except I was face down with my shirt up and my pants down a little bit, something that doesn’t happen at the dentist office, thankfully).  It turns out that’s because the first shot is lidocane.
• He also said it was really good I’d caught it early because it means that I have a really high chance of healing.  A lot of people put off going to the doctor too long and it’s too far gone by the time they seek relief.  I mentally cursed my “just put lotion on it” GP, but said the podiatrist had told me the same thing and that a lot of people think it’s all in their head when it really isn’t.  I felt very validated.  (Also during that night’s insomnia, see below, I found the article he was referring to– 87% of patients get relief from this shot if they’re mild and only something like 64% if it’s severe.)
• He also took metformin off my record since I hadn’t taken it.  (He needed to know because he has to do different things if a person has diabetes.)  I explained that my GP had said I was overweight and had put me on it but then my blood tests came back with no indication of blood sugar problems so I never picked up the prescription.  He said good and I shouldn’t be taking metformin in that situation.
• The nurse said it will take about a week for the injection to seem like it’s doing anything.
• Things in the first week:  1.  insomnia, but it’s like the kind when you’ve had too much coffee, and 2. a great thirst.  Steroids, man.  Those wore off by the end of day 2.  3. The injection site was still a bit bumpy but eventually faded.  (I guess that’s why they say no hot tubs or swimming for a few days.)
• Also when they said to avoid blood thinners, they included aspirin and advil according to the sheet they sent home.
• Delta-Trainer became Co-Pilot is now Trainwell.  Microsoft stole their name so they had to change!  It’s still working well for both DH and me.  And apparently Wheezy Waiter

We protested our housing value

Our property taxes have been going up like crazy the past few years, basically 10% per year which is the max allowed.  A lot of that is them claiming our house value has increased more than 10% per year (it has not).  Specifically, this year, they valued the house $660K, which is insane because that’s nowhere near what nicer houses in our neighborhood are getting listed for.  We’re definitely not the nicest house in the neighborhood.

This year, one of my colleagues convinced me to protest.  We’ve had mixed luck with protesting before– generally we were only successful when we’d just bought the house or just had a formal inspection for the mortgage, so we just stopped.  But my colleague had had success last year getting MLS data from a real estate agent friend and was willing to share this year’s data.

So I took the data from the 2023 home sales in our neighborhood and I ran a regression on the information that was provided.  Then I plugged in the information for our house and got the predicted house value.  That is $502K (which is about double what we paid for it ~20 years ago– an ok rate of return but not as good as the stock market).  I also got a couple of other numbers, one which was taking the average price per square foot and multiplying it by our square feet ($506k), and another where I took the most expensive price per square foot and multiplied it by our square feet ($508k).

They dropped us to that most expensive price, which is ridiculous since our house is not as nice as that house, but they said they couldn’t go any lower.  Still, $508K is way better than $660K.  This will actually change our taxes since we are under the 10%/year range ($535K this year).  My colleague said that this year’s number for their house didn’t at all reflect last year’s number.  They just started from scratch again.  But even so, the base for a 10% increase is lowered so this will have effects on next year’s taxes too even if we do nothing next year.

The appraisal people also said that they appreciated getting the MLS listings because they don’t have access to them(!)  Like… WTF?  How are they calculating these if they don’t know what houses are selling for?  And doesn’t the county need to know how much a house has sold for just to have that information?  Like?  How?

Next up:  Figuring out home owners insurance since Liberty Mutual shot up to 7K last year.  (Other people with similar houses are paying $3K using other insurances… apparently something has gone wrong with Liberty Mutual.  My colleague switched last year but I didn’t…)  [update:  just shot up to 12K(!) this year]

Have you protested your housing value before?  What did you do?  What was the outcome?