So I got a new job. I've only been at my current job for 15 months, and there are parts of it I like. My current title is customer success manager (which I cringe at, a little) and I've liked helping people using our software get the attention & information they need when they need it. But I haven't liked having too many accounts to serve well, and I haven't liked that our software is so complex that I'm not expected to really know much about it (it's back office enterprise software, aka accounting, HR, professional services... complex stuff).
I applied for a couple of jobs last summer, and I wrote great cover letters to explain why I was looking after only 4 months on the job, but I knew it was too soon and so I stopped searching. And then, one of my coworkers let me know she was in the final stages for a job at another company, and they might be adding another person. She asked me to hold off on applying until she got her offer, which was fair, and I officially applied in early June.
They really did an awesome job of getting me through the process, and I got a job offer last week - whew! It's a 4% pay cut (6% if you factor in that they don't pay for home internet & cell phone like my last job did) but that's okay - I'm making enough money and think this will be a better fit.
I'll still be at a software company, with a better title (Strategic Account Consultant), fewer accounts to manage, and will be expected to be pretty skilled with our software so I can advise my accounts on best practices and help them use the software more & better than they might be currently.
Of all my jobs it's most like the one I was most enthused about, way back in the late '90s. I don't know if I can love a job, but it feels like this one has a chance at that. We shall see.
What was nuts that when I gave notice, my current job offered me a 20% raise. That is SO MUCH money. But... though I was dazzled, I wasn't tempted in the slightest. I feel super lucky to be in a place where I can make the best choice for myself by weighing all the factors, not just financial ones.
Monday, July 18, 2016
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Hiking hiking hiking FOOD
So far I've been doing a lot of hiking this year - in preparation for doing South Sister (outside of Bend, Oregon) in August!
Avalanche lilies
Mount Saint Helens, Mount Rainier, ten million flowers
Mount Hood
Mount Shasta
I also added yet another activity to my non-working hours: cookbook club! A friend organized this, and I'm so grateful she did as it's something I've wanted to do for a long time but didn't have the right people/energy to get it going. We pick a cookbook, everyone gets it from the library (or buys it I guess), we each pick recipes and tell each other what we'll bring, and then we have a potluck made up of dishes all from the same cookbook. OOOOOOH it is so good.
Food from the Jerusalem cookbook by Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi
Food from Mallmann On Fire by Francis Mallmann
Running continues to be a major challenge - namely, finding shoes that don't make my legs ache - and I've tried yoga three times at a spot in my neighborhood. Today I get to take off since I hiked 10.5 miles yesterday; since I had an enormous dinner after the hike, I might walk a couple miles today just so I don't feel like a complete slug. We'll see how the weather is looking when I get off work!
Monday, April 25, 2016
Doing a Duathlon
I've had a few fitness goals for this year:
- March: 5k run (completed in really awful weather)
- April: 62-mile bike ride in Salem (an hour south of Portland)
- May: 55-mile bike ride to the coast
- August: summit South Sister in the Bend area
I was supposed to do the 62-mile ride yesterday. It hasn't been a great training season so far - I haven't had a ton of motivation, and my training partner has really been off for a few years now, but hasn't fully admitted it. I think it's a combination of something medical going on, and also not being in the same place mentally she used to be. We've done some training together but everything is a struggle and she's exhausted after not a ton of effort - and I'm not motivated enough to do more on my own!
So, she got a bad head cold before this event, and her longest ride for the season was only 25 miles (at which point she was exhausted). I'd ridden longer, a couple whopping 36-mile rides, but wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to do more. So when she got sick I was actually kind of glad - the weather was looking horrible anyway, and I didn't want to drive 2 hours and bike for 6 hours in crap weather... or at all, to be honest.
BUT THEN I remembered that another friend was doing a duathlon this weekend! So I joined her. We had to run 5km, bike 15 miles, and run another 5km. I hadn't even been running in a couple of weeks and have been struggling with discomfort, so I wasn't sure how it was going to go at all!
The weather was actually not bad at all, so that was the first good news. We got there early to set up our bikes and gear in the transition area - every athlete stages their biking shoes, helmet, gear near their bike so they can change from running mode to biking mode and then back again. Some people had their stuff in buckets which was pretty smart - gives them a place to sit to change their shoes! I just piled my stuff on the ground and then draped a trash bag around the shoes & helmet in case of rain.
The first 5k went reasonably well - I ran (...trotted) the whole thing which was a pleasant surprise. I got to the bike and felt a little bit tired/unsteady, but once I was geared up and got to pedal, it felt nice to use my legs that way. It took me an hour to do the 15 miles, which is a pretty good pace for me! We had to go east, then west, then east again along a flat and open stretch of road, and the westward part had a fair bit of headwind, so it was nice to finish with the tailwind pushing me along.
I got back to the transition area and hung up my bike...and couldn't believe I had to do MORE...putting on my shoes I was kind of in a daze and really not sure how I was going to do anything else. I knew there were only about 10-15 people behind me in the event, but at least I wasn't in last place!
Somehow I managed to trot almost the whole first half of the final 5k, and on the turnaround I alternated walking and jogging as much as possible. I ran across the finish line and only got rained on a little bit! I knew that my friend was behind me so I hung out about ten minutes so I could see her cross the finish line and walk back to our gear together.
I never ever ever would have expected to do a duathlon. I honestly don't know if I'd do it again, but at least I know (at the moment) that I can do it if I want to! Talk about unexpected places in life!
Monday, March 14, 2016
March: money AND home-life stuff!
And now we have March. It's possible that 2016 is shaping up to be the year of Getting Stuff Done. In February I finished painting one single tiny wall that had been sample-splotched for two years, and got air conditioning installed.
So far in March I've ordered curtains for the three bedrooms, and got one set actually hung! (Okay, thanks to my boyfriend, but I totally could've installed that curtain rod on my own. It's not like I've had it sitting around for three years or anything...yes, he looked a bit disbelieving when I confessed that.) Anyway, it's done and I'm making big plans to hang/help hang the other two sets of rods & curtains soon!
I'm also thinking about removing the closet doors in the guest bedroom. It's a very small room, and I have a Murphy bed in it (a decision I semi-regret, but oh well) and when the bed is down, the person using the room has to very carefully squish between the foot of the bed and the closet door. Removing the door will allow a bit more clearance, but may lead to another future project in terms of building out the inside of the closet with organizers. I've been thinking about it for a while and then saw that a blogger I follow did just that (scroll WAY down for the pic), and it looks great!
I also had a small financial breakthrough. I have 27 years left on my mortgage and intend to pay it off at least ten years sooner - or faster, if possible. I have waffled on how exactly to accomplish this - is it better for me to just send in extra money every month, or should I invest extra cash in a stock fund with an eye to better returns and paying off the mortgage in a big chunk down the road? My mortgage interest rate is really low, so on the one hand it makes more sense to chase better returns in the stock market, but on the other hand the more I pay now the better, for psychological and amortizational reasons. I finally remembered I've got an extremely stable money market fund earning NO interest, so I just closed that and will use it to pay down 3% of my mortgage. That doesn't really answer my bigger-picture question, but it will help me get the balance below a certain large dollar amount by the end of the summer, so that's exciting.
I did make some other decisions about mortgage prepayment: in the short term I'm going to focus on rebuilding my savings, and then once I hit a specific balance in that stock fund, I'll shift to splitting my non-retirement savings between mortgage prepayment and the stock market. Mathematically it may make sense to put it all in the market, but I don't wanna.
Other items on the to-do list:
- add plants in my yard. We'll see about that one.
- finally paint the single wall in my guest room - or at least pick & purchase the paint and let one or two friends who actually enjoy painting know that I would welcome their time & effort!
So far in March I've ordered curtains for the three bedrooms, and got one set actually hung! (Okay, thanks to my boyfriend, but I totally could've installed that curtain rod on my own. It's not like I've had it sitting around for three years or anything...yes, he looked a bit disbelieving when I confessed that.) Anyway, it's done and I'm making big plans to hang/help hang the other two sets of rods & curtains soon!
I'm also thinking about removing the closet doors in the guest bedroom. It's a very small room, and I have a Murphy bed in it (a decision I semi-regret, but oh well) and when the bed is down, the person using the room has to very carefully squish between the foot of the bed and the closet door. Removing the door will allow a bit more clearance, but may lead to another future project in terms of building out the inside of the closet with organizers. I've been thinking about it for a while and then saw that a blogger I follow did just that (scroll WAY down for the pic), and it looks great!
I also had a small financial breakthrough. I have 27 years left on my mortgage and intend to pay it off at least ten years sooner - or faster, if possible. I have waffled on how exactly to accomplish this - is it better for me to just send in extra money every month, or should I invest extra cash in a stock fund with an eye to better returns and paying off the mortgage in a big chunk down the road? My mortgage interest rate is really low, so on the one hand it makes more sense to chase better returns in the stock market, but on the other hand the more I pay now the better, for psychological and amortizational reasons. I finally remembered I've got an extremely stable money market fund earning NO interest, so I just closed that and will use it to pay down 3% of my mortgage. That doesn't really answer my bigger-picture question, but it will help me get the balance below a certain large dollar amount by the end of the summer, so that's exciting.
I did make some other decisions about mortgage prepayment: in the short term I'm going to focus on rebuilding my savings, and then once I hit a specific balance in that stock fund, I'll shift to splitting my non-retirement savings between mortgage prepayment and the stock market. Mathematically it may make sense to put it all in the market, but I don't wanna.
Other items on the to-do list:
- add plants in my yard. We'll see about that one.
- finally paint the single wall in my guest room - or at least pick & purchase the paint and let one or two friends who actually enjoy painting know that I would welcome their time & effort!
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
February?!
It feels like 2016 just GOT here! The biggest news in these parts is home improvement!
I got air conditioning installed in my house yesterday. It felt scary deciding to do this - it's a fair chunk of change, and people are doing Things to my house that I don't totally understand, and Something Could Go Wrong - but I contacted four companies, met with the two who got back to me, and chose the bid I liked best.. and here we are. AC-having.
The good news is (and it's worth stating) - I have the money to pay for it. I HAD been saving for a deck but decided this would do more for my summer comfort, and is probably better for resale too. It's weird - traditionally Portland wasn't a place that needed AC but .. climate change is real, and we've had way too many 90+ and 100+ degree days these last few summers. The other good news is that I got 2 new credit cards to charge the project to, so I'll pay for the project AND get two 50,000-mile chunks added to my flight plans.
Other home improvement projects: finally finishing a paint job on a wall in my office (though my friend is advocating I paint a second wall too... will it never end?!?) (and yes.. there is more progress than in the above shot); swapping out some light switches and outlets (under my boyfriend's experienced guidance, but he did a great job telling me what I was doing and letting me do it all myself); next up: light fixtures.
Do you KNOW how many light fixture options there are in the world??? ....
I got air conditioning installed in my house yesterday. It felt scary deciding to do this - it's a fair chunk of change, and people are doing Things to my house that I don't totally understand, and Something Could Go Wrong - but I contacted four companies, met with the two who got back to me, and chose the bid I liked best.. and here we are. AC-having.
The good news is (and it's worth stating) - I have the money to pay for it. I HAD been saving for a deck but decided this would do more for my summer comfort, and is probably better for resale too. It's weird - traditionally Portland wasn't a place that needed AC but .. climate change is real, and we've had way too many 90+ and 100+ degree days these last few summers. The other good news is that I got 2 new credit cards to charge the project to, so I'll pay for the project AND get two 50,000-mile chunks added to my flight plans.
Other home improvement projects: finally finishing a paint job on a wall in my office (though my friend is advocating I paint a second wall too... will it never end?!?) (and yes.. there is more progress than in the above shot); swapping out some light switches and outlets (under my boyfriend's experienced guidance, but he did a great job telling me what I was doing and letting me do it all myself); next up: light fixtures.
Do you KNOW how many light fixture options there are in the world??? ....
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