- Working on my day off and watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. #
- Sushi-coma time. #
- To all the vets who have given their lives to make our way of life possible: Thank you. #
- RT @jeffrosecfp: While you're grilling out tomorrow, REMEMBER what the day is really for http://bit.ly/abE4ms #neverforget #
- Once again, taps and guns keep me from staying dry-eyed. #
- RT @bargainr: Live in an urban area & still use a Back Porch Compost Tumbler to fertilize your garden (via @diyNatural) http://bit.ly/9sQFCC #
- RT @Matt_SF: RT @thegoodhuman President Obama quietly lifted a brief ban on drilling in shallow water last week. http://bit.ly/caDELy #
- Thundercats is coming back! #
- In real life, vampires only sparkle when they are on fire. -Larry Correia #
- Wife found a kitten abandoned in a taped-shut box. Welcome Cat #5 #
Disclosure
I’m not terribly commercial, but I do enjoy making money.
As such, it is safe to assume that any company, entity, corporation, person, place, thing, or other that has a product, service, post, or link has in some way compensated me for said product, service, post or link. That compensation–direct or indirect–may be in the form of money, swag, free trips, gold bullion, smurf collectibles, super-models, or just warm-fuzzies. That list is NOT in order of preferred method of compensation.
To reiterate: If it’s commercial, and it’s here, I’m probably being paid for it.
A Well-Trained Husband
- Image by Getty Images via @daylife
I am so well-trained.
I was more than a bit wild when I was younger. For the most part, that ended when my son was born. When you procreate, it’s time to put the wild on a shelf and become a reliable provider. That’s just the way it is. Anybody who prioritizes the wild over the progeny needs to be forcibly sterilized and exiled before be sold for parts.
When my mother-in-law got a membership to Sam’s Club, she gave my wife the second card, so we effectively have a membership. For those who don’t know, Sam’s Club is a warehouse store that has some incredibly good deals and a lot of things that look like good deals because you are buying in bulk.
The thing I hate most about warehouse stores is the default accusation of theft when you leave. They require you to line up so the the person by the door can look at your receipt and pretend to count what’s in your cart while they are really scanning for the most-stolen items in the store and ignoring the rest. The only thing they really accomplish is making all of their customer feel like thieves.
I used to bypass the line and the checker and just leave. My wife got sick of the indignant screeches coming from the store as we left. Eventually she got me to stop.
Last night, I went back to pick up supplies for a fund-raiser I’m helping to organize on Sunday. I went with one of the other organizers, who had some personal shopping to do later. We checked out using his account and he paid, while I took the food home to keep until Sunday. Since he’ll be getting reimbursed for the food, he kept the receipt while I headed for the door. Anybody see the problem here?
When the receipt-checker challenged me, I docilely stepped to the side and called my friend to bring the receipt to the door. I hate the feeling of submitting to authority, especially when the authority is pretending to be customer service. I just calmly did what the door-cop told me, just like my wife wanted, even though she wasn’t there.
I hate warehouse stores.
Do 1 Thing
- Image by Sailing “Footprints: Real to Reel” (Ronn ashore) via Flickr
I’m lazy.
Really, I am. When I get home from work, I want nothing more than to plop down on the couch, dial up a movie and ignore the world for a few hours. I need some downtime to relax.
While I am keeping the couch from flying away, my wife gets home, makes dinner, does the dishes, changes the cat litter and maybe vacuums the floor. Once dinner is cooking, she usually throws in a load of laundry. Three kids is a great way to guarantee a lot of laundry needs to get washed.
I have just two things to say about that:
- It makes me feel really lazy.
- I love you, honey!
I’ve never considered it a problem because I work my butt off on the weekend. My wife isn’t happy with the arrangement because I tend to do next to nothing during the week. I think it’s a good balance. I’m productive on the weekend, she’s productive during the week. Unfortunately, my habitual laziness has caused a bit of tension. We’ve had a few “discussions” about that balance. It’s obviously not working.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying something new. When I get home from work I’ve been doing just 1 thing. I do one thing per day. One day, I fold laundry, another day I do the dishes. Some days, I pick a room to organize. It’s never very much, but it’s always something that needs to be done and, possibly most important, it looks like I’m doing more so my wife feels less abandoned to the housework. I’m not actually doing more, but it gets spread out over the week, so it looks like more. Slowly, surely, all of the work is getting done.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it seems to be working. More is getting done, my wife feels like I’m helping out more and I get more time on the weekends to pursue whatever I feel like pursuing. It’s a win for each of us.
How do you balance relaxation and a shared workload?
Charity is Selfish
I try to give 10% of my income to charity. I don’t succeed every year, but I do try.
I don’t give because I’m generous. I give because I’m selfish.
If you give to charity, you are too.
I’m not talking about people who give to charity strictly for the tax deduction, though that is selfish too. I’m referring specifically to the people who give to charity out of the goodness of their hearts.
If I give a thousand dollars worth of clothes to a homeless shelter, I get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I helped people stay warm.
If I send $100 to the Red Cross for whatever terrible disaster happened shortly before I made the donation, it makes me feel good to have contributed to saving those lives.
The put-the-inner-city-kids-on-a-horse thing we do? Makes me happy to get those kids into a positive situation.
Donating blood? Yay, me! I’m saving lives!
While it’s nice to help other people, that’s not the ultimate reason I’m doing it. I do it because it makes me feel good about myself to help other people, particularly people who–for whatever reason–can’t help themselves.
That’s the basis of altruism. It’s not about helping others, it’s about feeling good about helping others.
The truly selfish, the evil dogooders, are the ones who want to raise taxes to give it away as “charity”. They get to feel like they are doing something and helping others while not actually contributing themselves and, at the same time, stealing that warm fuzzy feeling from the people who are providing the money to start with.
Evil.
Charity has to be done at a personal, local level or the benefits to the giver are eliminated while the benefits to the receiver are lessened. Bureaucracy doesn’t create efficiency.
For the record, if it’s taken by force, by tax, it isn’t charity. Charity cannot be forced. Forcing charity is, at best, a fraudulent way for petty politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and activists to feel they have power over others.
Again, evil.
How Much Should You Tip?
- Image by cemre via Flickr
This post from CNN Money has been making the rounds. I’m getting into the game today.
With the holiday season upon us, tipping the people you work with is a tradition in some cases and actually expected in others. Here’s what CNN came up with and my take:
- Housekeeper. We don’t have one. I’d think $75-100 would make a nice tip/Christmas bonus. I seem to be more generous than average with my imaginary maid. Maybe that’s because of the outfits she wears.
- Gardener. Once again, we don’t have one. Even if we did, I live in Minnesota and have close to a foot of snow over the patch of weeds I call my garden. If I did have a gardener, I wouldn’t have seen him for a few months by now, anyway. $0!
- Mail carrier. I’ve only met my mail man a dozen times and I’ve never considered giving him a Christmas present. Do people really do that?
- Barber. I don’t have one any more. My wife has started doing my hair for me. When I did, I tipped about 25%, but again, I wouldn’t think about a Christmas present. I only saw him quarterly. I don’t think my wife has a regular stylist either. She’s just got a shop she goes to and gets whoever is available. Is there holiday tipping protocol for that?
- Garbage collector. No way. Really? I don’t know that I’ve seen the same guy twice. Am I supposed to give a present to the anonymous, interchangeable union guy that drives past my house every Friday?
- Newspaper carrier. One night, twelve years ago, while my wife was still working graveyard shifts, she had a hard time sleeping on her nights off. That’s natural for 3rd shift workers. At about 4AM, she was watching TV and saw someone run past the window. Scared, she came to wake me up. I handed her the phone to call the police, while I grabbed the only thing I had for self-defense and went to investigate. I ran out on the front step–in my boxers, carrying a sword–and saw someone lurking in the neighbor’s yard across the street. I yelled, “Y0u don’t belong here!” only to hear “I’m delivering the paper!” That’s when I start tipping the newspaper carrier. I stopped when we canceled our subscription a few years later. Who needs a dead tree in the morning, when there are a million news sites on the internet?
If the majority of people are giving Christmas bonuses to that many people, and are as generous as the article suggests, then I fall far to the loutish end of the bell curve. I am planning to give my virtual assistant 1/12 of the pay he’s earned this year, so that should make up for some of it, but that is an ongoing business relationship.
How do you compare when it comes to holiday tipping?
