Feeling much more in control of things.

When I first started my new job I tried to map out exactly what would come out of each paycheck, and made an Excel list to try to keep track. I thought $100 a week would suffice for all random expenses and sent the rest to debt and savings.

That didn't last very long. There were of course expenses that I did not plan on (such as a $39 per month prescription) and I kinda sorta flipped out. Since a large chunk of my income is going to debt repayment and to emergency savings, and I didn't want to cut back on either of those things, I got very upset about how I was going to be able to afford the things that I want, and how I would save for anything other than the emergency stash.

Part of what I was flipping out about was that I hadn't planned my deductions very well and sent too much money to debt and savings, and didn't really think about the recurring expenses other than that. So I pulled out my Quickbooks CD and made myself a ledger (business name: Me) and started entering all transactions. It's been about a month and I think I'm doing well with it. It's nice to know how much I am able to spend, and I also enter in transactions ahead of time that I know I'll have (for example, entering in the cell phone bill weeks ahead) so I don't get any surprises. (Except of course for Maggie's dog daycare place, which seems to pride itself on never cashing a check that isn't two or three weeks old. Don't you people want my money?)

Today I went the extra step and set up automatic bill pay for all credit cards, and my student loan, and automatic transfers to the two savings accounts (one for actual savings and one where the bills money stores up.) So now on payday all of that will disappear and what's left is the money that I can use. Chase is very useful in that regard, because you can pay bills to nearly anyone and set up a weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc schedule. I'm also counting on the fact that biweekly is not quite twice a month to help pay things down faster.

Switching to this wacky every-two-weeks thing is weird for me, since at my previous job it was once per month. That was super easy - just pay everything on payday, and you're done. But here's hoping that doing everything automatically means I won't get behind on anything. (Plus, I'm terrified that I'll accidentally miss a payment and get hit with universal default rates on everything - which is about the worst thing that could happen, financially.)

One odd thing I did notice - my paychecks are apparently not exactly even, because it alternates between $1240 and $1239.99. =)

On the other side of things, I'm trying to increase my discretionary money by making more and cutting expenses. Maggie's daycare got the ax, going from five days a week ($75 per week) to two days ($40 per week). They sell discount packages where you buy 10 or 20 days at a time, and once I have a little more in savings I'll buy her a 20 day package to save money on the average price of a day.

I've also been signing up for more mystery shopping - I did a dozen alcohol compliance checks last weekend for $8 a pop (plus lots of snacks!) and signed up for a restaurant shop ($35 reimbursement at a place that that usually covers the bill - not making money, but hey free steak!) and several grocery store shops. I use a free job site right now, but I used to have a trial subscription to a paid one that I'm thinking about renewing. It's $60 a year for a silver membership, but there really were a lot of shops on there that never show up on the free one. So that might be worth it. Perhaps another thing to wait until I have more in savings.

I also tried a new avenue - back in October I worked a one day event, and the company had the damndest time getting me paid. First they never sent it at all, and when I called to check where it was a week later, she told me that she didn't have my address. Really? But you had my telephone number, so that seems easy enough to get. Then (theoretically) she FedExed the check to me, but mysteriously FedEx failed to find my house - twice. I find this suspicious as we've never had any other package unable to be delivered, and she wouldn't give me the tracking number, or say if I could pick it up at the facility. Finally I just came to the office in person and she left me a check. Which, naturally, bounced.

I called the office and talked to her and she was very apologetic and said she'd get me a money order. That was, um, four weeks ago. I've tried her cell and the office several times since then as obviously no money order has been forthcoming. This is especially sad since the office is literally two doors from a post office. So I finally got fed up and sent the check to a bad-check processing company (who monitors the bank account and re-processes it when there's money.) So hopefully that'll come through soon as it was for $109 and that's nothing to sneeze at!

I also applied to grade tests online but don't know when I'll hear back on that - that would be nice, as I've done it in person twice before, and certainly have plenty of free time!

The best purchase I made last year.

The last year was not good to me financially. This year looks to be shaping up much better, thankfully. In 2008 I worked at four different jobs (that gave me a W-2), and continued working on my own business, but was basically unemployed for more than half of all working days last year. (Although I did get unemployment from mid-July to December.) This was a pretty depressing time for me personally and financially and I am pretty in the hole now from covering living expenses and household things with credit.

If I could re-do anything I did financially last year, it would be only through the magic of 20/20 hindsight - I'd cut spending back more, and also I'd apply for unemployment sooner. Last year, I kept almost getting jobs - to the point that it became farcical, and I was wholly surprised when my new job that I'm at now actually came through. I had multiple other jobs that I almost got (one's grant fell through, one's company instituted a corporation-wide hiring freeze, a few loved me except that I won't draw blood, etc) and so it seemed like the entire time I was unemployed, I wasn't worried about spending because it always seemed like a job was right about to start. (Plus I did actually get a job in June, but it was horrible and I was fired after three weeks. Thank God for getting fired or I would have quit.)

But there is one purchase that I made which required significant and continuing outlays all year, and usually when I was least able to afford it. I made this purchase of course right before I started to become aware of the circumstances that would force me to quit my last (full time) job in February.

And that purchase is my dog Maggie. Picture at the bottom to avoid spoilers. :)

Now those of you who have read this blog in the past (or cheated and read the archives) know that my pets seem to have a special ability to come up with terrible health problems that incur large veterinary bills. (For the newbies: I have two guinea pigs, both of whom have had uterine cancer, one of whom has recurring kidney infection problems, and the other has recurring cystic growths that occasionally need removed. I also have a cat which had to undergo bladder stone removal and several accompanying diagnostic tests of various types.)

The dog is no exception and she incurred her very first vet bill the day after we got her, because she was coughing and we though it was kennel cough but it turned out that she had scratched her throat eating a biscuit. This summer she also required about a thousand dollars in emergency care because she ate something at the park that caused her to not poop for a week. (Somehow the vet students at the hospital decided erroneously that my thin dog who doesn't like to eat had Cushing's disease, an endocrine disorder which causes you to eat a lot and gain weight. Luckily our regular vet said that wasn't so, and gave her stool softeners and IV fluids and she was just fine the next day.)

If I had known when I got the dog last January 24th that I was going to be unemployed for a good chunk of the next year, I would never have taken her. Because I would have known that that was an expense that I shouldn't take on when my income is about to be slashed. While she is a healthy dog other than the abovementioned, she still goes through kibble, special dog food sticks, lots of treats, a bzillion toys, and (recently) homemade dog cookies.

But having my dog at home with me really kept a bad period from getting much, much worse. Having Maggie in the house meant somebody to talk to, somebody to go places with me. Because a girl wandering around in the park by herself in the middle of the day might be a weirdo or homeless, but a girl with a leashed dog is obviously out for a stroll. And realistically I probably would have never gone to the park and never taken a walk without the dog. Going to the dog park gave me a chance to interact with others, and also gave me something to talk about with them. Having a dog also meant I had someone to think about other than myself - what she would like, where we could go, what should I feed her. She gave me something to think about and a built-in activity during the many days where nothing happened, and no one called.

I do feel a little annoyed with myself that I didn't put my time off to better use - while I did do a lot of mystery shopping, I didn't start any of the new businesses that I've been mulling over, I didn't take up running and get in shape, I didn't keep the house tidy or get everything unpacked after the move. But I'm pretty sure that without Maggie, I would have done a LOT less.

Here's a picture of Maggie, taken the day we brought her home. She is at least half husky (perhaps part Border collie?) and is now four years old and approximately 50 pounds. For the curious, she cost $95 at the Capital Area Humane Society.



Here is a crappy picture I took with my cell phone when she was in the river at the nearby park. She really likes going in the water and never gets cold. This was probably in August.

Annoyed but also amused by Chase. And other notes.

So I logged onto my Chase account a week or two ago and found that they had reduced my credit limits. To within a couple hundred bucks of my current balances on each card. This really pisses me off - the thing I'm working towards most right now is to get each card below 50% utilization so my score will improve. I tried to apply for credit cards about six weeks ago, to try and get a balance transfer for the higher rate cards, but no one would bite. Which is really upsetting to me because I've never had a problem getting credit in the past, and I've never missed a payment, and I do have an income now. So shaving thousands of dollars off my credit limits on my two highest balance cards means that it's going to take practically an extra YEAR to get everything down.. especially since I'd bet you that they will reduce my limits more as I pay it down more. I guess I should be grateful that they didn't reduce my limit below my current balance. None of the other cards have had the credit limit reduced although no one wants to take balance transfers right now. Unsurprisingly I do get cash advance checks sent to me in the mail, but yeah I am not going to pay the high interest on that.

Amusingly though, Chase sent me my 1099 for the $125 reward I got for signing up for a checking account - and apparently, they've already sent $35 to the IRS on my behalf to cover it. This wasn't mentioned and if tax was required to be withheld I would have assumed they would have made a bigger deal out of it (ie made it a $160 promotion, with some diverted, as opposed to a $125 promotion that people might not even find out about the $35 credit until months later.)

In other news I am trying to find a few days to make the ol' budget a little roomier.. I did a lot of mystery shopping while unemployed, and because I am young I can do compliance checks. I only do alcohol - while I neither drink nor smoke, I don't feel stupid trying to buy a can of Mike's Hard Lemonade, but I feel like I would be picked out instantly as someone who's never bought cigarettes in her life. Lately I have only done restaurant shops (free food!) but I applied for 11 shops to do this weekend. I did 23 in 2 days in August, that was fun. =P So I'll get $8 per, plus $1 for a candy bar or whatever (basically so I'll get a receipt) and try to buy alcohol without an ID. I get $8 per shop, so $88 plus 11 bags of Fritos. Or whatever. I try to vary it so that between Boyfriend and I we should eat all of it.

I also applied to grade tests at home with one of the test-grading companies I've worked for in the past - it really sucked to work 20 hours a week after work at their facility, but it does pay decently. Although it probably sucked mostly because I didn't have a car - so I got on the bus right after work and spent about an hour and 15 minutes on the bus to get out there. I did have a ride share home, but I'd basically be gone from 8AM till 10:30PM, and that was for about two months straight. Grading at home, especially since I can do it on the weekends, will be a lot better and I'd be able to put in more hours. But I won't know if I'm going to get put on a project or not until at least the end of February.

And one that was a little humiliating for me, but I thought it would be at least worth it to ask - I emailed my dog's daycare (yes the dog goes to daycare be quiet) to ask if they would be willing to trade my working there on Saturdays for her fees during the week. I haven't heard back from them yet, although it's hard to say if that's because they don't want to, they're thinking about it, or because nobody checks the email very often. But I don't think I can keep paying $75 a week for her to go every day and make any headway in savings. So if they don't want to do that, I am going to cut her down to two days a week and take her to the park more often. (Which would also be immensely helped by nicer weather which I hope we get some more of soon.) The daycare's fees are on a scale where the more days you go, the less each day costs - so $75 for five days, but $40 for 2. I'm probably going to get the 20 days package though, where you can buy 20 days to use anytime in any combination, which is $18.50 a day, and that would last us ten weeks.

I'm also (as usual) cooking up new business ideas - I have a couple I've been kicking around but I guess we'll have to see when I get the money to pay somebody to program the sites for me! If Boyfriend ever gets laid off, he has said he'd be willing to do it, so at this point he'd have months of backlog of ideas I've had that he could code for me. :) I guess I am a child of the Internet generation - pretty much every idea I have involves a website, and those that don't, involve specialized computer programs to make the business run more efficiently. I sort of think from the website up.. although not a bad thing I guess as I tend to stick to ideas that don't cost much to implement other than getting the dang thing coded.

In which our heroine realizes something patently obvious.

I've been in the habit these past few years of keeping a number of different checking accounts with money earmarked for various things. I had an account just for the gas, electric, and phone bills, one for fun purchases such as online music and new books, etc. Also there were several separate savings accounts that I would put money into each month to save for whatever the account was named for. I did this because I wanted to make sure that whatever was left in the main checking account was what I could spend without having to worry, am I going to have enough left over for the gas bill?

Since I have been out of (steady) work for about nine months non-consecutively and have just started to have normal income, I'm working with a lot less money than I used to, and am trying to pay down the accumulated debt with it. Also, I'm now getting paid biweekly instead of once a month, which complicates things in my eyes. So I made up a list of what I would pay each paycheck - half of what I wanted to pay each month to the credit cards, half of the estimated bills, half the rent to Boyfriend, etc. Since my previous method of having a bzillion checking accounts involved keeping some slush money in each account, I decided to bite the bullet and do things the way most people do them - that is, having everything paid out of my main account, so I wouldn't have to continually transfer money and have that much slush - when I was working before, I usually had $500-600 in the various accounts beyond what was needed.

I was worried, however, that I would spend too much without knowing and overdraw the account.

Then it occurred to me: As long as I stay within my budget, I won't overdraw, because I have planned out how that money will be spent. So as long as I don't spend more than $100, I know that I've got enough. (Plus I have a savings account attached to the checking, so I can transfer some money in if I need to spend more one week.)

I realize that most other PF bloggers have probably realized this a long time ago, but I feel much better now.

All is, er, well-er.

I started my new job December 8th (my birthday!) by getting on a plane and going to Kansas City, MO for training by the pharmaceutical company for three days. I like to travel but was a bit sad at spending my birthday on it. I did take myself out for sushi though.

The project is a bit slow to start up but I have been amusing myself by learning about multiple sclerosis, reading lots of articles and websites. I created a bunch of documents that I'll need - but before anyone can see them, Legal and Marketing have to review them, and with everybody gone for the holiday it's taking some time. So I really hope things get going this week because I'm getting pretty bored.

On the upside, I'm generally left to my own devices. Which is nice because I don't like to be micromanaged, and I pretty much know what I'm doing regarding my own job. On the downside, I had to ask around to find out such things as how to use the telephones and what sort of training I should do. My manager is in another city, so there's a person here that's helping me get everything done, but I also don't think it's actually her job to do these things - she's just picking it up because no one else is! I appreciate it nonetheless.

People actually seem pretty happy, which is a nice change from, well, everywhere else I've worked. Everyone seems quite enamored of my plant, Rupert, and came over to see him - since we're all in cubicles, you can see the plant over the top as it's 3' tall. (Three years ago, he was a 8" money tree plant.) Somebody left me a holiday treat bag and someone else left a candy cane. I came in a tad bit too late for the Christmas party, but there was a day with free cookies, which helps!

I'm also excited about having health insurance again. I'm very glad that nothing bad happened while I was off it. :) Now I have to choose though between going back on the Nexium that I had been on while working (which will cost me $38 a month, can only get 1 month at a time, and I have to go pick it up from a not-very-convenient location), or stay on the generic Prilosec I've been taking ($3.91 per month, can get 3 months at a time, and it's mailed to me.) However, the birth control is very cheap at $12 a month despite being a non-generic - clearly it occurred to someone that birth control is less expensive than a pregnant employee.

More updates

Well, now I've received word that I will NOT be an independent contractor, I'll be a real employee. However, I still have no idea when I'm going to start, which is really starting to aggravate me. It is nice though to have the prospect of being a real employee, because on the day that I found out that they were going to pursue that line, I also found out that I had been denied for health insurance. So being a real employee will get me health benefits, although it comes with less money. But it equals out, especially since I have no idea where I would have gotten health insurance - I've been turned down twice, once for my preexisting condition (heartburn - seriously, people?) and this time for being overweight, despite being perfectly healthy other than heartburn which is well controlled on OTC stuff.

Here's hoping I actually start this job sometime soon - I'm hoping that since they do hire people on a regular basis, they can get that accomplished faster than trying to write up a contract. I was supposed to go for training on Monday in Kansas City but that didn't get set up before the person who was supposed to train me left for vacation. I just hope things aren't this badly confused once I actually start working.

Finally some news!

I feel bad about not updating but when there isn't anything to report, I don't feel the urge to share. Now however I do have news to report. I've been offered a position in my field, at a company I really like, and I have accepted and am waiting for my contract to be emailed to me. Now you may say, contract?? Yes, I will be an independent contractor for this company and not a real employee. This was not the world's best situation, but due to the nature of the position it was what the lawyers ended up with. Basically the job is a partnership between a mail-order pharmacy and a pharmaceutical company. The pharma wants to conduct a study on people who use certain medications for multiple sclerosis, and the mail-order pharmacy has people in their rolls who are taking those medications. So the pharma is paying for research coordinators at three different mail-order pharmacy companies, and the pharmacies will provide the patients for the study. So I'll be physically located at the pharmacy's offices, but doing work for the pharma. It's an interesting setup.

The good thing about this setup though is that they did agree to give me more money than had been offered before, when it was going to be a regular employee position, to cover health benefits and the additional self-employment taxes. And they did come through with plenty of money to cover that, which was nice. Now I'm just waiting for the dang contract. This apparently has been held up in the pharma's legal department for some time as they haggle over it. So I am getting a little annoyed that I haven't been able to start work (and start getting paid) as I was supposed to start last Monday, but the contract wasn't done. Now I am supposed to start maybe Wednesday of next week, but since they need a couple days after I send the contract back, and I don't have it, it might be pushed back further. And then next week is Thanksgiving, so all the people who need to train me may be out of town. Sheesh.

This is going to be an interesting position - I'm essentially the only person at my location working on this study, and while there are other coordinators working on this project at other pharmacies, and people above me to advise me and train me, I'm not really sure that I'll have coworkers, per se. There are certainly other people working at this location, but I'm very interested to see if I have a real office, what the facilities are like, how much interaction I'll have with others, etc.

I'm going to restrain myself from making a five page post here so I will try to spread out my musings about the ramifications of going totally Schedule C over a few days. Plus more adventures in homeownership and more animal health issues. Stay tuned!

Adventures in Homeownership

So we're all moved into the house.. we had the floors sanded and refinished, the electrical system redone, fence installed, painted several rooms, to the point that the house doesn't really look like what we bought at all, and definitely feels more "ours". Truly, this house could have a million things wrong with it, and Boyfriend and I would be fine with that, because we can actually FIX things around this house. Our rental was a nice property but it was never really maintained, and there were so many things that, if fixed, would have made it much nicer. I guess we won't really have the shock of "but our landlord used to fix that!" because they didn't fix anything, so we did end up just living with a thousand little problems. Now of course we have the to-do list that's a mile long.. much of which costs money, naturally.

We had our first minor emergency - the central AC and the fan unit that's part of the furnace that runs the cold air through the house were both leaking water. Like lots of water. Considering that an air conditioner should not produce more than condensation, this was Bad. Luckily, we did get a home warranty on the place, and called in for that. Apparently we were very, very low on Freon. I am not certain that that alone would cause This Much Water, but if it doesn't fix it, we can call the contractor back within 30 days and not even have to pay the deductible again. So that's nice. The AC seems to be working fine now and isn't producing much, and we will watch it for the next few days. If it turns out to be a big problem, the warranty will cover replacement, at any rate.

In other news, I now have two sick animals - one of the perennially ill guinea pigs has a kidney stone causing a bladder infection, so she's on antibiotics for that while we wait for her to pass the stone. She was pretty cranky last week and seems OK this week, so I'm really hoping she already peed it out. She goes in next week to get an X-ray to see what's going on (another $90 for that alone.) I really, really, really hope that she has, both because with being still unemployed it would be painful to come up with the $700-800 for the surgery and inpatient stay, and I also really don't want her to have to live in a cat carrier for three weeks and get antibiotics and pain meds and be cranky. We've had quite enough of that thank you. The dog incurred her first vet bill (other than the first visit after we got her) since she helpfully let us know she wasn't feeling well by peeing on the couch. While sponging it up, I saw that it was pink, and off to the emergency vet room we went. Luckily we live very close to the Ohio State veterinary college, which has 24/7 care, and we weren't even the only ones there. I said when we came in that I thought she had a urinary tract infection, and $250 later, plus a pack of pills that we already had some of at home, they confirmed this. Sheesh. Hopefully that will be it for her and she will feel better soon. I also hope she didn't pick it up at daycare, since she went for two days while we were moving. The cat and dog have always been the cheap pets - luckily Kitty has never come down with anything more serious than hairballs.

In job news, the woman I interviewed with a few weeks ago is very interested in me and said that it would take about three weeks for them to create the position. It is hourly, which is nice, and I asked for $21-22 plus benefits, which I think is pretty reasonable considering that I will actually be performing three different tasks for them, all of which I am fully qualified to do. I called earlier today to check in but my contact person was gone.. hopefully she has good news tomorrow. It will be three weeks next Tuesday.

I also applied for unemployment - why the heck not - and do not seem to be excelling at the system. My social security number apparently didn't match my name (I don't have a middle name, which confused the computer) so I have to send in some documents to prove that I am who I am and they should give me $365 a week. Which, I have to say, seems like a lot of money to me because I am not paying my own rent or buying much of my own food, but if I were, dang, that's tiny. I mean, it's more than Boyfriend made while in school, but not much when you have a house, sick pets, dependent significant other, etc.

I have spent much of the past few days unpacking and contemplating the sheer volume of STUFF that we own. And also contemplating the fact that the cheese drawer in the fridge, by cubic feet, was one of the most valuable boxes we moved (minus laptops and flat-panel monitors.) I like my cheese.

In Which Our Hero Encounters A Ton Of Bad Things

So.. about that new job.. it turned out to be a really, really terrible place to work where everyone is unhappy and dreads being around the top doc. I got fired, but since I was about to quit anyway, it kind of works out. This was definitely one of those situations where it is not worth putting up with crap like that just for a paycheck, and I could not see myself there long-term. I had trouble envisioning myself there the next DAY, each evening. Your job should not be something you withstand.

Anyway. So, unemployed again. I do already have an interview tomorrow though. Someone called me half an hour after I had accepted the previous job, and I had to decline the interview. However, they were very very interested in me, and offered to beat whatever I was getting there.. but it's not a terribly good idea to turn down a known quantity for a potential, is it? They then said "well, if it doesn't work out, give me a call." So that I did, and I'm going in tomorrow. They're still very very interested and it at least from the outside appears to be a much better opportunity.

The big hang up for me in getting jobs in my field is that I am not willing to draw blood. For my own part, I would rather have my blood drawn by a nurse with years of experience than by some girl who just tried it out on her coworker once. However, for some reason, my not wanting to do this is rarely taken seriously. The example I usually use is that if you were afraid of the water, no one would ever suggest you learn to swim and become a lifeguard, but if you don't want to stick needles in people, most healthcare workers will just say, "oh but it's so easy! we can teach you and it's not a big deal." Few people actually respect that I really, really don't want to stick needles in people's arms. If I didn't have this hangup, I'd probably be a nurse. But unfortunately in some situations blood-drawing skills are an absolute requirement of the job. I had an interview some time ago with a place that seemed otherwise great, but the coordinators were required to do various tests on the patients and draw blood, and while I am perfectly willing to perform an EKG (which is pretty easy actually) I was not willing to draw blood, and by the end of the interview both me and the interviewer knew that I would not be back because of this. I don't apply for jobs that state in the description that phlebotomy skills are required or preferred, but it's often the case that they don't say one way or the other. So I'm really hoping that it won't be required, but it would not surprise me if it were, at this place I'm going tomorrow. Here's hoping not.

Of course, this has come at the worst possible financial time - we just got our gas meter read for the first time in months and the catch-up bill is $330, my car is in the shop for a bunch of bad-sounding things and who knows how much that will cost, we just went to visit both sets of relatives this weekend (hotel $100, car $300 since I am under 25 and they charge a LOT extra, plus I had to keep it for tomorrow because my car is in the shop), and on top of all that one of my guinea pigs is again peeing blood and went to the vet today, and is staying overnight. She has already had lab tests and an X-ray ($90 for 2 shots) and will require at the very least a bunch of medications three times a day for the next two weeks and then perhaps surgery after that. (she has kidney stone sludge in her bladder, which she may pee out, and if she doesn't, she will need surgery, but she is also pretty weak at this point since she also recently had to be spayed because of uterine cancer and she hasn't regained any weight yet. And that was $1100 too.) So in all likelihood, the 3 1/2 weeks of pay that I will get from my short-lived stint at That Place will all go to cover all of this recent stuff and I still won't be able to save any money or keep from going further into debt. Hooray. At this point I can't even begin to fathom how I am going to get back to where I was before. I have pretty close to a negative net worth despite having saved what now feels like a fortune in retirement money. It is somewhat tempting to think that I could just cash it all out and pay everything off, but the power of compound interest makes me leave it there. All of my debt is at 5.9% or below (much at 3.5% or 0%) so I know that is the smart thing to do.

In other news, we (or I should say Boyfriend) successfully bought the house and will take possession Wednesday, upon which we will start paying a bunch of other people to do a bunch of stuff. At least since I am unemployed, I can do the painting myself and save some money there. Might buy a paint sprayer but I have never used one and am wary of spending $100+ on something I don't know how to use. I do know how to use a roller on a stick. I will try to do what I can on my own - although some things are recognizably beyond my ken, such as installing chain link fence.

Phew.. a lot can happen in a week

It's been a bit busy. I started my new job last Wednesday and things are going pretty good. There was actually some back and forth about how much I was going to get paid.. I talked to Top Doc on the phone who just said, come in and talk to the office manager. So I showed up Wednesday morning and he had a very fuzzy recollection of me - apparently he had gotten about 15 seconds with Top Doc who just said, she's coming. So they had not had a conversation about my salary. He says he'll talk to her, and then for the next few days, I can never find him, plus I keep shuttling between two of the offices. Finally on Thursday evening before I leave, I sent him an email listing what I wanted to talk about (salary plus a couple other things) and said if I couldn't get a hold of him I would call him. I finally got him on the phone about 2PM on Friday and he said that they'd set me at $40k. Which is fine, I told them $40-45k in the interview, and while it is a little less than I used to make, I probably would have accepted less, but it does seem like bad form to cheap out on someone who's already BEEN there three days.

Something that is definitely a bonus though is that instead of working at the main clinic, which is out in the suburbs and is about 20 minutes of highway to reach, I'll be assigned to the downtown office, which is literally about five minutes from my house. So that's pretty awesome. Unfortunately it'll be longer after we move, but definitely not bad at all - about 12 minutes, none highway. If I REALLY wanted to, I could take a bus, with only a few blocks' walk to get to the stops at each end. But that's $41 a month for the bus pass, and I don't know how much the garage pass is going to be, but unlikely to be that much, and 12 minutes drive in each direction is pretty good on gas too. I'm also excited to be downtown because it's actually in a hospital, which means there are a lot of resources (like a cafeteria, a lot more bathrooms, gift shop, etc, as well as being able to schedule tests for my patients onsite.) Downtown also has a lot of lunch restaurants and some street vendors, so I could go out and get all kinds of good stuff.

(for those who used to read regularly, yes, I do now own a car. It is a 2002 Chevy Cavalier with about 9823498 dents, which is why it was about $2700. But it hasn't required much in the way of maintenance and I'll probably drive it into the ground. Driving is WEIRD but fun.)

One really awesome bonus though is that they FEED YOU LUNCH on Mondays and Tuesdays, and sometimes Fridays. Today I actually got two lunches, because I was in the suburban office in the morning when they were passing round the menu. Apparently the drug reps pick a restaurant and we all get to choose what we want off the menu. Most people got an appetizer or dessert in addition to a meal. So I picked out coconut shrimp (which they ended up not having) and chicken parmesan with pasta. Then at about 10:30 I got a call saying that there was someone to see down at the downtown office. I am meeting with the most experienced coordinator down there frequently for training. So by then the order was already in, and I went downtown before lunch arrived. And what do you know but they had Panera boxed lunches. Five kinds of awesome. So I got Panera for lunch, and my chicken parmesan was there when I got back to the suburban office. Hooray for free lunch! I am totally going to milk that. I don't think they do the menu ordering at the office I'll be at, but free food is still awesome.

In house news, we did our inspection on Tuesday, and there are of course a few problems. The ones we were most concerned with were the wiring and the hot water heater. The house is about 100 years old, so the wiring is pretty old, but it looks like someone rewired the downstairs but not the upstairs. The upstairs is not grounded at all, and there is knob and tube wiring in the attic that is under a foot of insulation. How this was explained to me as bad is that knob and tube has nice big copper cables, which can be good because they are much thicker than wires used today, and usually enclosed in a wall with air all around them to let heat escape. So being under a foot of insulation means the heat can't escape and this is a fire safety issue. So that's bad. The other big issue is that the hot water heater's air outlet is not drafting properly. The house has two chimneys and the air is supposed to go up one of them, and it's not. This might be because the chimney is full of leaves and crap, or it might be that the chimney has collapsed internally. Who knows. Not our problem. It's a safety risk. So we asked on our request to remedy that they replace and ground the upstairs wiring, and that they fix the hot water heater so it's drafting properly and the basement doesn't fill up with carbon monoxide. That's bad. We're waiting to hear back from them probably tomorrow about what they're going to do.

We also went in early this morning and Boyfriend signed lock papers. We are locked in at 6.25% paying half a point of discount (probably covered under what the seller is paying) and given the way the markets look now, that's probably the best we'd be likely to get, even given what our mortgage person was up to. When we first met she had said 6.25% with no points, but this is acceptable given that we are putting so little down.

In completely unrelated news, I've also been spending money on clothes. This is kind of new for me, and I forgot how much I actually really enjoy having nice clothes and looking like an adult. At my last job I kind of fell into wearing the same pants every day with different solid colored t-shirts and long sleeved t-shirts, and I felt like I was starting to look my age. (this is not something you want when you are as young as I am in the professional world where people have to trust you are providing accurate, potentially life-altering decision-making information.) So I spent some time at the outlets on Tuesday and spent about $250 on clothes, and for this got six dresses, a couple tops, and some assorted other items. Went to a different store a couple days ago and spent $75 on four dresses. Kind of getting into dresses now, to some extent. But like the commercials say, feeling like a grown-up at your new job: priceless. I'm going to try to weed out some of my older, less attractive clothes and slowly turn over my wardrobe. At this point, if I can't wear it to work, there hardly seems a point in buying it since I already have plenty of t-shirts and shorts, and you can wear black pants any day. I do need to buy some black closed toed shoes that I can wear barefoot, since I a) hate pantyhose b) bought a bunch of knee length skirts and dresses and c) you can't wear open toed shoes in a hospital. So that might end up costing more than my outfit on any given day, but hey, no one said looking like a grown-up was cheap.