Publishing, Painting, and Pooping

I do have a few interesting topics simmering on the back burner, but I have a feeling they'll have to be put off until next week when I'm sure to have more free time (yeah, right!) For now, here's a few quick highlights of a day in my so called life:

1. Game Carnival #4

New collection of game articles from around the web was just published by Yehuda. It features two of my posts from Splitting Eights and many other interesting stories, many of which I have yet to read (but will in the not so distant future). This is just getting off the ground, so please take a look and comment on what you like.

2. We're Home Owners!

The Mrs. & I just closed on our new house this past Friday and have been packing, cleaning, and painting in our free time ever since. This is my first real experience painting rooms and boy has it been an eyeopener--painting is a ton of work! We've worked the bulk of two full days and a few hours here and there shopping for supplies, cleaning walls, spackling nail holes, taping rooms, applying primer, waiting for paint to dry, and finally...actually painting! It's been fun, especially when we've been able to do it together, but we sure haven't made much progress. Since we're moving the bulk of our stuff into the new place on Sunday, much of the painting will have to wait. Oh well, it looks like we'll have two rooms painted anyway, which is better than none.

3. Potty Training Hell

When I picked up my son from daycare today we were informed that he had pooped in his pull-up, and this absolutely must stop right away. Apparently when a child reaches three (he will do so in September) and he isn't potty trained, his parents go to Hell. As if the entire potty training 'battle' wasn't enough, we need a little extra pressure from the peanut gallery. From my reading on the topic, potty training is something that you lead a child to, but the doing is up to him. I can't force him to do it, I can only help facilitate the process. So, I guess what I'm saying is...I want this as much as anyone, so do something constructive about it or shut the f&@$ up!

So, to sum up: 1. good 2. great 3. grrrr

Maybe one of these days I'll actually write something about games again. I think I need a muse.

IR Princess

"The Mrs" here. Nathan mentioned to me that I might want to explain my IR Princess nickname, as I work in a unique, specialized, often unheard of field, and many people may not be familiar with IR.

IR = Institutional Research. I work at a small, private, liberal arts university. At the University, I work in the Institutional Research office, which is charged with creating all of the surveys that we give to students, faculty, and staff, compiling and warehousing the data that we get from those surveys, and doing statistical analysis of that data for internal and external monitoring of the University. While this quantitative data analysis (from the surveys) takes up the majority of our time, we also do some qualitative research when trying to assist various individuals and departments in changing or forming policy.

So, that is sort of what I do. I always have a difficult time explaining my job. I do statistics. And as I am the asst. director, my friend Rex has given me the title "IR princess".

That's the story. I hope you enjoyed it and I taught you a little about what I do. If nothing else, I'm sure that Nathan might have learned something :)

Back To Work!

After a fairly brief summer off from work, I'm back to the grind on Tuesday. It is quite unfortunate that we weren't able to close on our house a couple weeks earlier (we close this afternoon) since we have a lot of work to do before it is move-in ready. Now with both of us working full time while we try to pack, paint, clean, and move, and only having two weeks to get it all done before our lease ends on our current home, we're sure to be more than a little stressed out. Hopefully work will be slow and I won't have to put in outrageous hours right away as the semester begins.

My emotions are a little mixed as far as returning to work is concerned. Certainly I had a lot of fun at times and did manage to relax a little when the kids weren't screaming bloody murder. Also I had a little extra time to do some reading, and lots of time to jump start this blog. I have some doubts as to how frequently I'll manage posts in the coming months; my current feeling is that two articles each week will be a good number to shoot for. Last week when I returned to work for most of a week I had a tough time working up the motivation to write anything at all. The issue isn't necessarily finding the physical time to post, but rather a combination of having mental energy enough to brainstorm ideas and motivation to get words down on (virtual) paper. I can find the time but it has yet to be determined if I can find the desire. Stay tuned!

There have been downsides to having the summer off as well, and not just the fact that I haven't received a paycheck in a couple of months. Although I loved the idea of spending lots of quality time with the kids at first, as the weeks passed my patience with them grew considerably shorter. On bad days I felt I should be committed (oh, the peace and quiet of a nice clean place with no kids! I can deal with the mentally ill.) On good days (well, day, I think there may have been one of those) I could sit back watching my brilliant, beautiful children and think how wonderful it is to be a parent.

Maybe an even tougher aspect of the time off is that I don't know what to do with myself when no one structures my days. I'm so used to being busy enough that free time is at a premium and it always feels like I need to make the most of it. When I'm here at home all summer one day leads into the next, I feel like I waste too much time just fiddling with the computer, and I never seem to really get anything accomplished or very often have much fun. I need structure! Sure, you'd think I could have self-imposed some structure on my free time, but if that's the case you obviously don't know me. Maybe I should have tried to get committed, I hear there's lots of structure there! Maybe next summer.

After saying all this it might appear that I am just an ungrateful bastard that doesn't fully appreciate a great gift that God knows how many busy Americans would love to receive in my place, but really I did enjoy the summer, and I am grateful to have had it.

But I'm still ready to go back to work. Of course, catch up to me in a month and ask me what I think about that, my answer may have changed by then.

Session Report: More Settlers With Dinner

The Mrs. and I played Settlers again with James and Karin, this time at their house and eating their dinner.

(aside: in order to keep the blog more honest (especially where it involves me), "The Mrs" (who, as a quasi-feminist, slightly despises that name and will from here on respond only to "Layla" or"IR princess") will be adding comments in purple. The blog owner (Nathan) states that he reserves the right to DELETE (not edit) any additions he finds particularly unsavory)

Dinner was great: ricotta stuffed manicotti, green salad with vegetables and olives, crusty Italian style bread, all delicious. I brought the wines this time around, although I managed not to pay much attention to the brands. I chose a simple Riesling and a Grenache/Shiraz mix, both of which were quite tasty. The Mrs. and I mostly drank the red (I'm a red kind of girl...and champagne! and long island iced tea! and shots of whiskey!), with Karin & James polishing off the majority of the white. Midway through our gaming later on we ran out of wine and had to transition into mixed drinks, so perhaps next time around three bottles of wine would be in order. They seem to be the white wine type, so I'm thinking two whites and a red is the way to go.

Everyone was eager to get to the game so we finished up with dinner and only paused for a quick smoke break before setting up the game. This time we jumped right into the random setup, unlike our previous one where we used the standard beginner's configuration. Everyone had lots of fun this time around and James and Karin seem quite addicted to Settlers, which is a very good thing!

The first game seemed to progress quickly until we had about six to eight victory points, where things began to stall. I was sitting on three cities, largest army, and absolutely no options for further building as close quarters gave me no room to place settlements. My only avenue to victory was pulling two vp cards out of the development deck. The Mrs. was stalled as well since she had lots of brick and lumber, all five settlements on the board, and was fighting over the longest road with Karin. She had no access to ore so had to rely on trading to upgrade to cities. James and Karin had been a little behind but began to edge closer as both the Mrs. and I spun our tires. I began to lose hope when the development deck got down to the last six cards, not even knowing if there were still two vps in there. Miraculously, two turns and two lucky vp cards later, I was the victor. An exhilarating win, indeed!

(Luck and persistence are the causes of this pathetic victory -- we were both at the same point, struggling with poor opening decisions, grasping at whatever we could do. The next game was much better....)

Karin suggested a second game, and we all heartily agreed. Certainly it is a good sign for things to come when everyone is up for another game when there are three exhausted kids in the next room and it is already 9:00pm. It was decided the kids could stay up a little later, and the game was on!

I don't remember a lot from our second game (defense mechanism), only that I had a good mix of all five resources and was building and expanding at a very healthy pace. Suddenly the Mrs. swept in, stealing the longest road from Karin, and adding it to her largest army and cities and settlements to score a decisive win. Still a fun game, but the ending was a bit of a shock, since I don't think any of us saw it coming quite so soon.

(Except Layla, who KNEW it was coming and tried VERY VERY hard to not give away the secret prematurely. The urge to shout "just give me the damn lumber so I can win already since it is happening ANY moment" was quite strong, but I called upon my meager allotment of self-control and managed to stun them. Honestly folks, it was a beautiful victory. I wish you had been there to observe their stunned silence at the massacre.)

This is as opposed to the previous game when the end dragged on a little until you expected someone to claim victory at any moment. We never had time for that feeling to develop in this one (too true).

Well, I'm quite happy to report that our first two sessions together seem to be pointing towards a frequent game night, which makes me very happy. Until our next meeting, I'll wait with much anticipation.

One last note: the unusually late bedtime for the kids (11:00pm) resulted in them both sleeping in until 9:00am...an unheard of occurrence in the Todd house! Certainly no complaints here (Layla isn't so eager to embrace this late awakening...who knows what tonight will bring).

Save or Spend: The Basic Financial Balancing Act

I would like to think of myself as a saver, and I tend to subscribe to the latte factor philosophy of savings. (I believe it is David Bach that owns the term, but the principle is universal. To see his take on the subject and calculate your personal latte factor, click here .) Essentially this consists of paying close attention to the details of your daily expenditures, then finding and eliminating those 'little' items that you buy but don't really need.

The basic point here is that it is quite easy to spend $5-$10 each day on coffee, snacks, magazines, and other seemingly small items that, while enjoyed for a moment, are really not very important to your happiness or well being, especially considering the immense impact the unneeded expense has on your finances. Every day when you spend that $10 it never seems like a lot of money but over a month, year, decade, etc. it adds up to a considerable amount.

This principle is important to developing a saving habit and goes a long way towards shoring up one's finances.

The goal of this exercise isn't to try to cut out as many expenditures as possible, but rather to perform a simple cost/benefit analysis on your spending. It leads to questions like "Is that latte and croissant every morning really worth $300 a month to me?" If it really is, then go right ahead and keep on spending that way. For most people, however, the problem is that they don't intend to spend that much on those items, but simply have never thought about the true costs involved. Those people will probably realize that their morning treat isn't that valuable to their lives and will look for for less expensive ways to start their day.

I think some people may take this principle to an extreme and forget that it is really just a method to make you pay attention to where your money is going and make you compare the benefit you receive from purchases to what you actually spend on them. I've seen some discussion recently online about people who are obsessive about saving for retirement (usually not a bad thing at all!), but perhaps make too many sacrifices throughout their working lives to fund their retirement accounts. What is the point in putting away all that money for your latter years when you may only barely be scraping by today? If money spent now on activities and items important to you would improve your quality of life significantly, by all means it should be spent! Sure, this is not a problem most people have, but it is important to realize saving can be taken too far.

Certainly it is important to save money for retirement, and there are lots of great guides out there for how much you should save and where you should put it. My point here is just to make sure you stay focused on the real goal for all of us: to lead a good life. Each individual must determine what they really want out of life, both now and far in the future, and plan accordingly. Spending too much now on frivolous things may make for a miserable retirement, but is an enjoyable retirement really worth misery in the present time?

The Mrs. and I are tackling this balancing act now, as we are both finally out of school and in the real world. Of course, making decisions about how much you need to spend to maximize your quality of life now and how much you need to save to maximize your quality of life in the future are not amongst the easiest you'll face in your lifetime.

The real point here is that it is vitally important to ask yourselves these questions even if you have no clue as to what the answers may be. Avoiding these questions, as many people do for far too long, only hinders you from controlling your own financial lives, and certainly reduces the chance of living a good life.

Country Boy in the Big City

Just a quick post while I'm packing for our big move...

We had a ton of fun in Ottawa, although we never did make it to any of the big tourist destinations. We did catch a glimpse of the Rideau Canal, but no art galleries, museums, or Gothic churches for us. This was largely due to running out of time, so our next trip will be sure to include more of those sights. We did spend a good deal of time driving around the city, and I'm happy to report that Ottawa is a very pleasant place to navigate. Sure, we had no idea where we were going most of the time, but we found our way eventually, and the driving process was much less stressful than I would have expected for any large city. One issue we had a tough time with was the lack of convenient parking; the spots we settled on were always a little further away from our destination than we had planned.

We ate at Anna Thai Restaurant on Holland Ave. Friday night, and the food was fantastic. This is coming from a professional cook, albeit one with very little Thai experience. In fact, I'd never had the opportunity to go out for Thai food until now, living as I do in rural America where they think Thai is something you do with your shoelaces. I've never considered myself someone who would like to live in the big city, but certainly if you can stand the cramped quarters and the rushed lifestyle, the food is well worth it! I can't wait to visit the city again simply to experience another good restaurant, an entity that if not completely extinct where I live, is certainly endangered. I don't recall names of dishes we had, but the Mrs. and I each started with a similar hot and sour soup with coconut milk, hers with chicken and mine with shrimp. I savored every sip of this delicious dish. One unexpected feature of the soup was that it contained sliced button mushrooms that were almost raw. At first I was skeptical, but it actually did work rather well in the end. I'm not sure if this was how the soup was intended or simply a rushed presentation, but it worked nonetheless. The Mrs. had a main course of chicken with vegetables and chilies: quite spicy but delicious. I had somewhat of a combination plate, one scrumptious shrimp spring roll with sweet garlic chile sauce, a good chicken and vegetable dish, and an orgasmic concoction of beef, peas, and eggplant fused together by a rich and spicy red curry sauce. I was very tempted by dessert (one of the selections was a ginger creme brulee which sounded heavenly), but I had practically licked my plate clean and was too full to consume another bite. If it wasn't for the variety and quality of restaurants in Ottawa I would be sure to come back to Anna on my next visit, and even so it might be hard to resist an encore at this fabulous restaurant.

So dinner was great, and the comedy club we attended afterward did not disappoint either. There were four comics performing at the club that night, but the best one by far was the MC of the evening, a Toronto performer named Andrew Evens. Check him out at www.angryandrew.com/ He looked just like the actor who plays House on television, and got lots of laughs for his joke about finally looking like a celebrity and still not getting any. Two minor complaints about an otherwise great experience: 1. Our waitress was rude and bitchy, albeit attentive and efficient. If she smiled a time or two she would have been great! 2. The bartender downstairs made the Mrs. a terrible Long Island Iced Tea (even calling this drink by that name is giving it too much credit). In fact this was the second similarly bad LIIT she had been served that night since she ordered one at a bar we stopped by on the way. Our interaction with the bartender went a little like this (of course edited due to poor memory):

Me: "So, do you make a good Long Island Iced Tea here?"
Bartender: "Yeah, sure."
Me: "You don't sound too convincing there, dude. We got one over at the Heart and Crown that was a disgrace to the name and your profession."
Mrs. "Yeah, it pretty much tasted like sprite."
Bartender: "It doesn't even have sprite in it."
Us: "We know."
Me: "Okay, I'm not sold on this, he doesn't seem to be too confident in his ability to make one."
Mrs. "So what is the best drink you serve?"
Bartender: "Long Island Iced Tea."
Us: Questioning glance at each other.
Me: "You weren't exactly selling us on it a minute ago."
Mrs. "Okay, I'll take one, but it better not taste like sprite."

He pours the drink and she tastes it as we turn to walk away. "Yup, just like the last one." I shake my head. Apparently they don't know how to make a Long Island Iced Tea in Ottawa. A shame, really, but next time we'll know better. Apparently we need to get better at interviewing bartenders before we let them make a complicated drink like that. It's evident that it was just too much for him. We need to ask specifically what the bartender thinks the ingredients are before ordering, and if only one alcohol is involved and the drink is 40% coke and 40% sour mix...just steer clear!

Anyway, an unexpected final highlight of our trip was shopping at Ikea. Granted the term 'shopping' here is used in only the loosest of ways since we didn't actually purchase anything there. We did compose a wish list totaling somewhere in the six digit range, but didn't actually pull the trigger on anything, largely because most of the items we wanted wouldn't fit in our car. Of course the fact that we just bought a $120,000 home and have almost no money to spare may have entered into the mix as well. We were very impressed with the store since in our area furniture is either much more expensive or much poorer quality than the items there, and usually it is both. Maybe next time we're there we'll actually buy something.

The final word on Ottawa for now: a beautiful city that I'll be sure to visit many times in the future. It certainly doesn't hurt that it's only an hour and a half away...

Cooling Off Party

This past Thursday, the Mrs. and I attended a cooling off party at the home we are purchasing. It was an odd feeling to be hanging out in the house we'd just bought with the sellers and many of their friends. In a way it makes sense since we needed to learn how to deal with some of the house's quirks before we moved in, but it was also quite strange since our perceptions of the party were quite different from that of the other guests. While everyone else there was recounting memories of the sellers and the home, essentially celebrating their time there, we were studying the layout, brainstorming paint colors, and considering furniture placement.

Perhaps the party allowed us a short glimpse of the life our place will have once it is filled with our friends and memories. A couple of odd moments--

The sellers' two year old dumped his drink on the hardwood floors periodically throughout the evening. Each time he did we would cringe just a little. "Those are our floors!" yelled the voices in our heads.

We talked with a woman at the party who we had met once before and discussed in conversation with friends another time. We were bound to remember her since her name is Rainbow ... needless to say she's the only one we know. She lives in the town we are moving to and has a daughter the same age as ours, so perhaps the second meeting means we are bound to become friends.

The house is truly beautiful with lots of natural light and great features, but it has really begun to sink in that there is lots of work to be done in the next couple of years. Most of this is cosmetic, but will still prove to be quite time consuming. I'm sure when all is said and done the finished product will be spectacular, but getting their might just take a bit of elbow grease.