Empty slates

My housemate (aka my sister) moved out at the end of December, and now I've got an empty guest room to deal with. It's exciting to have an empty slate, except my living room is ALSO an empty slate (we were using her furniture). Plus, I haven't painted yet. And I just got given a massive phone from my employer that is pushing me over the tipping point in terms of office furniture. Or.. I can just put stuff on the floor, I guess!

Empty living room

 But I digress.

Guest room: It's not a very big room, so I decided I'd like to get a Murphy bed so I can use the room for sewing or something when I don't have a guest actually using the space. That's all well and good, but it turns out Murphy beds are super expensive. Just the hardware runs over $500; a kit that has the hardware and the pieces to build a cabinet runs over $1000, and brand-new ones typically run well over two grand.

So, I turned to Craigslist, and found something a couple hours away. It was used, and super heavy, but they were willing to deliver (for a fee) and drop it in my garage. And there it loomed for a few days.

Fortunately I had family traveling through town just before Christmas, so I borrowed some rolling tools (a dolly and a little platformy thing) and we managed to wrestle the pieces into the guest room.

Actual bed platform

Cabinet that will attach to the wall

I've gotten as far as contacting a handyman, and we're working on picking a day for him to come out and assess the situation. I sure hope he's willing and able to take it on, because I'd like to get this thing settled soon!

Year-end financial review & goals

Well here we are, end of the year. Seems like a natural time to do some financial review.

Current situation:

• I bought a house! I've been in for almost exactly a year, and have gotten more used to paying a mortgage and all the bills that go with it. My old apartment's rent was $1035.20, and that plus all my bills (electricity, internet, cell phone, car insurance) cost me $1206/month. Now that I'm in a house, my mortgage (including taxes & insurance) runs me just under $1200, but the bills (all of the above and also gas, water, trash, yard guy (which I admit is optional)) bring me to just under $1650/month. In other words, the mortgage was only a 15% jump over my rent, but when I factor in all the bills, I'm paying 37% more per month. It's doable, and I think I can bring it down 5-10% this year by making a couple of tweaks.
• I'm still saving 16% of my income for retirement, with a 4% match. I'm not Roth-ing though, and I'm not hitting the max allowed in a 401(k) either.
• I have more in the bank (retirement savings + emergency fund) than I owe (mortgage + loan from my parents toward the down payment) so even with this first year of home ownership I did not tip into negative net worth. I wasn't sure that was going to happen, and it's not a HUGE number in the net worth column, but at least I'm in the black! Note that I'm not counting the house as an asset, just looking at what's in the bank vs what I owe. Note also that just because I have $X in retirement savings doesn't mean that X is available to me - it would be taxed and penalized if I withdrew it. So this metric isn't that solid, but it works for me as a rough thumbnail of my situation.

Immediate future goals:

• By end of January: pay off credit card. I've been doing a lot of credit card churning to bank airline miles. I'm mostly handling it well but I am currently carrying a small (sub-2k) balance that I will pay off by the end of January (I could pay it now from savings but prefer to feel the pain a bit). Overall I'm happy with my churning - I'm using miles to inexpensively do things like visit my BFF in Toronto, fly to Key West with my parents for my mom's birthday, travel to my brother's wedding in Hawaii, and attend my company's holiday party. I do have to be careful to NOT carry balances, and to remember that cheap flights often come with other travel expenses (namely lodging & food!). After this next card I think I'm going to take a break for a bit. I swear I can go clean at any time!
• By end of January: set a budget for living room furniture and decide how and when it'll be funded. 
• By end of February: finish stocking up my emergency fund. I could definitely get by for six months on it, but I have a specific number in mind and $1,000 more will get me there. 

Rest of the year:

• By end of March: start investing in taxable (non-retirement) accounts. I was going to start paying down my mortgage, but the interest rate on it is 3.35% and it seems like I'd likely get a better return by investing that money. My paycheck should be going up a bit due to a change in the cost of my benefits, so I'm mentally earmarking that increase to go into my investment accounts. I'll know by mid-January how much money I'll have to work with. 
• By end of April (probably a lot sooner): see how taxes work out with this house thing going on. Not sure I'll get a refund since I have to offset some contracting work. I usually do my own taxes but I'm a little trepidatious this year.... we'll see how that plays out. 
• By end of April: if I get a refund, decide how to split it between various options (Roth? non-retirement? living room furniture?).
• By the end of June: decide if I want ALL my non-emergency savings to be invested, or if I want to create a separate savings account to use for specific house projects such as a new deck. That's not something that would come from an emergency fund, and I'd like to do it in a shortish time frame (1-2 years) if nothing else comes up, so I don't know that paying for it from an investment account makes sense.
• By the end of June: in a similar vein - decide if my emergency fund (6 months' worth of spending) can also count as a house emergency fund, or if I'd rather have a separate one, and if so, how much should be in it. Should I save enough to replace my fridge (1k), my furnace (5k), or my roof (10k)? Or should I have some percentage of the house value (I read somewhere it's wise to budget to spend 1% of the house value in maintenance every year) in savings instead?
• By the end of 2014: finally consolidate my two IRAs into one account with Vanguard. 
• By the end of 2014: Have my finances in maintenance mode. I think once I make all these decisions this year, I'll be able to review my accounts but I won't have to make any major changes to my plans. We'll see though!

Minor travel

I got to go to the Bay Area for a work party this weekend. I really appreciate getting to go there to visit - living there was never a great fit for me, but I miss seeing my friends down there! I got to admire some of the city lights - and have a hot dog/pretzel dinner with some goofballs,

 

I went on a road trip north of the city and visited a really great open studio at a pair of potters: 

And I started the nigh-impossible task of furniture shopping, since my sister (with her living room furniture!) is moving out shortly: 

I had a great time, and I'm glad to be home. I don't know if he missed me, but I was thinking about this guy!

Back it up, baby

Nothing like a few blue screens of death to remind me to back up my work laptop! I've got an external hard drive so it's pretty easy to do a quick-and-dirty backup of the files that I have semi-organized on my desktop.

It reminds me of something interesting though: having a phone with a decent camera and an easy upload option has really changed how I take and share pictures.

Back in the dark ages of 2012 and earlier, I'd:
- take pictures on my digital camera
- eventually boot up my laptop (2006 and still working, largely because I don't use it for anything anymore but the occasional print job) (from 2006-2010 or so I'd often have my laptop up and running when I was home from work, but once I got an ipod touch connected to my home wifi network, my laptop time dropped dramatically)
- pull the memory card from the phone and insert it into my computer
- copy all the pictures onto my hard drive
- spend some time ruthlessly culling only the best pictures ("best" being a bit generous, but not for me ten pictures of essentially the same thing)
- use software to add tags and titles and descriptions to all the picture
- upload the pictures to my flickr account
- and finally, delete all the pictures from the memory card and re-insert it into the camera.

Now I've got a camera with me at all times, but I don't spend much time at all with metadata or deletion. I never understood how people would have reams of pictures on their phones, and yet here I am with 1,073 after nine months of owning my smart phone.

I do still upload things to flickr, but I have to remember to go in after the fact to cull and to add metadata and create albums. I email and text pictures more easily, but any photographic skill I had is atrophying.

Some of the history of the building and how its artist tenants worked with the city to pioneer legal use of
industrial buildings for artist - click to read, it's fascinating! 

I got to spend some time in an early 1920s industrial building yesterday, and was so glad I had the camera on my phone, yet wished for a great camera and better light. On balance, I think I'll take what I have now - and it IS one less thing to have to back up!

A new new thing

I have a new thing! After helping with the quilt earlier this year, I decided it was finally time for me to learn to sew - on a sewing machine. I resisted it for a long time since I didn't have the equipment and didn't want another expensive hobby that makes stuff I don't necessarily use (see also: knitting - I have a LOT of hats and stuff... though I also knit baby gifts and love my knitted socks and sweaters; and I'm happy to have a skill to make something special for friends who aren't well).

But ... I decided to learn anyway after I enjoyed the quilting project. I don't think I want to make more quilts, but I wanted to know how to do it at last. My friend has given me the long-term loan of her dead husband's sewing machine, with the injunction to make him proud, so I'm equipped! I found a 10-week class at a local community college, and it's been perfect. Most of us had never threaded a machine or loaded a bobbin, so I fit right in.

 

Pajama bottoms.. someday soon!

So far we've talked about the machines, about fabric, have done test stitching on a piece of paper to practice going in straight lines, and have pinned and cut out what will be pajama bottoms. I think next week we may actually sew some seams!

Now that I've got my toes in, though, I'm already trying stuff on my own. I made my very own cloth napkins earlier this week - well.. I made one so far:

And I also sewed a tube of fabric, filled it with bulgher wheat and steel-cut oats (they were inexpensive/on hand) and some lavender buds from my yard, and made a microwave-able heating pad to drape on my neck and shoulders. Actually I made two of them - and I just love it. I've wanted one for literally years and finally have achieved it! 

And, in the back of my head, I've wanted an apron like this for ages, too:

I like that it doesn't drape on the neck or tie in the back - easy on & off, but looks like it's pretty secure. I don't love that it's $88 but I realize it's sold at a specialty shop. Anyway, I want to make one like that. I had a hard time finding patterns at first, but got some help from a friend, and have found one that looks promising. And a couple of stores have fabric sales this weekend. So.. stay tuned, friends. I expect I'll make one based on the pattern that my friend found, and will then probably make some improvements on it. Fun!

Festa di pomodori

At some point in the middle of the summer, one of my genius friends decreed we should plan to have a tomato festival to celebrate the end of summer. Early in September we made it happen! Most of us brought home-made tomato dishes, and one person brought drinks, and we drank repeatedly to our cleverness. The festa must be repeated!

We started with salsa:

Then  had crostini:

Then we moved on to my sister's offering, gazpacho:

Then tomato salad - made with a surprising combo of water, oil, and vinegar, so it's soupy for dipping purposes:

Then we had pasta with a POUND of brie in the sauce... (but it did make a lot!):

And finished with my offering, a cherry tomato cobbler:

It was probably as well we had no dessert, though we did ponder whether tomato ice cream, gelato, or sorbet might be good. Perhaps we'll find out next year!

One year, or seventeen

It's officially been a year since I moved back to Portland! It's also just over seventeen years since I moved here for the first time - how's that for a concept to bake my noodle (as the Oracle phrased it so well in The Matrix).

I'd had a few things I wanted to accomplish in the month of September, to round out my first year back in town. I did get a few bike rides in, and I went to an Oregon winery's tasting room (and bought a pinot noir), but I didn't make it camping. I had sites booked, and friends lined up to participate, but we wisely cancelled when we were hit with massive volumes of rain - and had a pizza and game night instead!

It's been such a full and busy and great year. Highlights:
October: enjoying the terrific chef's tasting menu at clarklewis with three friends, putting to rest for good my admittedly ridiculous fear that I wouldn't get amazing meals here; house-hunting with my new friend/realtor; spending a weekend in Seattle and once again vowing to get there more often!
November: going on a hike with women I've known since the first time I moved here; seeing a wide range of local musicians all covering Bruce Springsteen songs at a local venue; continuing house-hunting; making an offer on what would become my house; joining a new book group; having Thanksgiving at a friend's house.
December: eagerly stalking the house I was in contract for, visiting the Bay Area for the first time post-move; traveling home for Christmas on the same flight as my brother.
January: starting the year right with a New Year's Day bike ride; closing on the house; moving in with the help of old friends; starting winter hiking up in Forest Park; having my sister arrive to begin living with me.
February: snowshoeing on Mount Hood; having a rocking housewarming party with friends from near and far!
March: starting the quilt project; visiting Hawaii 
April: showing my parents my new house; enjoying another Bay Area visit, this one including an absolutely perfect day in wine country - I felt tangible happiness that day that I can still experience when I remember it.
May: completing the quilt; getting a promotion at work; attending a friend's daughter's first communion; seeing another friend's band play at their very first gig!
June: risking a weekend at the beach with the women in my book group - and having it pay off when the houseful of semi-introverts had a lovely time; hosting a couple of friends from the Bay Area.
July: delivering the quilt to the brides; attending Happy Hours in the Park most of the summer; starting to harvest some garden bounty; picking something like 50 pounds of berries.
August: seeing Pink Martini at an outside concert; starting to consider painting in my house (project has stalled, but we'll get there); finally experiencing Trek in the Park; having a bunch of friends over for a potluck for an out-of-town visitor; having lots of birthday celebrations including three houseguests at once!
September: Enjoying a Festa di Pomodori with friends (about which I have yet to blog); generally appreciating how great life is.

And many happy returns!