Honest to god, I do not understand married people with separate finances. I just do not. Sorry, feministing, it does not compute.
Uh, it wasn't a feminist thing. It was a two-well-established people got married thing.
I think you should live on his salary and spend your salary on a great big RV. Every summer you could drive somewhere with a tolerable climate and earn gas money by selling those "Peeing Calvin" car stickers at fairs.
If you're not prepared to integrate your finances, the plan won't work. If you're prepared to integrate your finances, then it's pretty east to have separate personal accounts in which you each put some amount of discretionary money for gifts and butt-enhancers.
There was (as ever) a big throwdown in the blargosphere some little while ago on that topic. Your post reminded me. I should have indicated that. Oops.
I don't understand married people without separate finances. We have a joint account we each pay into enough to cover our bills. What we spend our money on otherwise is our own business.
But to the OP, my first question would be, what about his birthday presents?
It continues to be your own business, and now you have 1/3 as many accounts. Huzzah.
My life (finances) would be significantly different now if we'd had separate accounts when I was a married person...
That's a very fair point, but I guess I'd prefer to close my eyes and pretend there was no chance of things like divorce. Not, perhaps, prudent.
7. Except that Mrs y reads the bank statement and immediately sees what I've ordered for her birthday. Boo!
8: but, the point is that "spend all your money and save all mine" *is* a complete integration of the bank accounts (and, in a divorce, couldn't really be interpreted any other way), regardless of whose name happens to be on what.
Honest to god, I do not understand married people with separate finances. I just do not. Sorry, feministing, it does not compute.
It works if you've got similar incomes (so you're not dealing with a situation where one spouse is much richer than the other), and different money-management styles. Buck and I are kind of like Heebie and Jammies -- he's a highly organized, attention-paying spendthrift, and I'm a lazy, vague squirrel.
We split major bills in a disorganized fashion ("You got the mortgage and maintenance this month?"), he spends a lot more on one-off expenses than I do, and I build up savings for an emergency. This way I don't get cranky and secondguessy about what he spends on things, and we still have savings.
9: Oh, if we'd lived happily ever after, it still would have made a big difference. Some couples just have very different financial personalities.
Yeah, the 'covert present' conundrum is definitely a drawback. As would be irritating second-guessing (but that would seem to be a symptom of other problems, not avoided by avoiding the combined accounts so much as displaced).
Except that Mrs y reads the bank statement and immediately sees what I've ordered for her birthday. Boo!
You pay the price for being too organised. The trick is to buy the present within a week or two of the birthday, then it won't show up on the statement until after the birthday and it won't matter.
Jammies has a list of presents that he would like to be given already listed in a Google Doc spreadsheet which he has shared with me, his siblings, and his parents.
The trick is to buy the present on your way home from work on the birthday.
Quasi-separate finances works pretty well, too- my wife's solution was making both of our accounts joint, with mortgage and all day-to-day expenses coming out of "mine", other monthly bills and occasional large expenses coming out of "hers". Depending on relative levels in our accounts, we'll shift one or two bills back and forth. We both have money that's technically "ours," which is nice.
It helps that we don't have kids at the moment, and are both employed- we're living well within our means, enough so that ~15-20k of home improvements over the next year still leaves us with enough headroom to not have to track anything on a smaller time period than the monthly statements.
I know next to nothing about these things, but it occurs to me that there may be tax (and other legal) consequences to literally spending all of one person's money and saving all of the others. Might it not make more sense to just work out an amount to save and do it jointly?
Secret purchases: don't turn over the receipts for your credit card?
Might it not make more sense to just work out an amount to save and do it jointly?
It might for a different couple, but this plays really well to our strengths. Plus we already file taxes jointly.
20: Well, he syncs the paper receipts with what he sees on the online statement. So way to draw his attention to the discrepancy, Klug.
Sounds like Jammies has too much time on his hands. I used to be similarly anal, but then finally got too busy to keep track of all that shit. Give him more to do, and he won't have time to keep tracking all the discrepancies between your paper receipts and your online statements. Maybe give him another baby to take care of, or something like that.
The downside is that not paying any attention to this stuff makes you more vulnerable to incorrect charges, undetected identity theft, etc.
The only tax or legal consequences I can think of is that it might look weird in a divorce, and depending on how things worked out might result in an unfair split of assets. But as Brock says, it shouldn't -- any court looking at the couple's finances as a whole should see what was going on.
The 'doesn't it make more sense to actually agree on everything and work it out rationally and jointly' approach is correct for perfectly rational people, which I'm not and neither is Buck. As I said above, I'm the thriftier half of the marriage and joint accounts privilege spending over saving -- both signatories can spend unilaterally, but neither can save without the other's cooperation.
We have a joint checking account that most of our paychecks are deposited into, various joint savings accounts, and then separate checking accounts that get the remainder of each of our paychecks. The individual accounts pay for things like books and gifts, household stuff and bills comes out of the joint account. I'm a Grade A miser, so this allows him to buy fun stuff with his own money without me having a heart attack--I know that enough money is going into the joint account to cover expenses, savings, travel, etc., so if he wants to buy something frivolous, it won't affect our household budget.
As far as legal consequences in the event of divorce, that probably depends on how HG state treats community property, etc. Someone like Will would know better...
joint accounts privilege spending over saving -- both signatories can spend unilaterally, but neither can save without the other's cooperation
You can set them up with the opposite default (requiring two signatures on a check), but that's a huge pain in the ass. Also, it means no debit card.
22: I grew up assuming all adults did that kind of stuff and I was so happy to realize that only six people did that kind of stuff.
This allows me to gleefully rub my hands at our accumulating savings, and Jammies can responsibly buy all the weird little gadgets that he can budget for. I'm genuinely excited.
28: Well, yeah. Huge, unworkable pain in the ass.
28: My mom is one of them. In many ways I married my mother.
Let's hear some more of those ways.
Saving this much money is irresponsible under the current economic conditions. You should be spending all the money you make, and also taking on more debt to take advantage of low-interest rates.
My initial reaction to the OP was "Holy shit, that's a lot of money to be saving." But maybe my sense of what's roughly a responsible amount to be saving is way off base, since we don't currently save anything at all. (We have some savings that were accumulated while I was at a more lucrative job, but not lots, and nothing's been added to it in a few years.)
But for an early-thirties couple with young children, isn't that comparatively a very high savings rate? (NTTAWWT.)
They're both great french-kissers.
I was thinking the same thing, that it's wildly impressive that you can swing living on one income.
34: Well, it will take some tweaking to find out exactly what needs to come out of my salary to make this workable.
Right now the plan is that I'll cover vacations and mortgage. Kids are both on my health insurance.
Also this hasn't been implemented yet.
38: Wait, mortgage? Nevermind--34 retracted. I'm no longer in awe.
When I first saw "live off his salary", I presumed that this was going to be the "90% of my salary goes to pay for day care anyway, so the only reason I don't stay home is so I don't ruin my future career prospects" story.
40: It's all up in the air, to be honest. We need to roll the home improvement loan in with the mortgage, which can't happen until construction is done, etc, etc.
Our current mortgage payment is pretty low. Low enough that it hasn't been worth it to refinance, because the closing costs would eat up like 10 years of savings.
When Jammies made me the offer, mortgage was going to be on his side of the table. But then you guys seemed so astounded. Go back to being astounded.
I grew up assuming all adults did that kind of stuff and I was so happy to realize that only six people did that kind of stuff.
I do that kind of stuff. So wow, heebie's mom, Jammies, and me-- we've got half of the people covered!
the only reason I don't stay home is so I don't ruin my future career prospects"
...go completely bonkers by the third day.
IIRC, Blume reorganizes her shopping list according to the layout of the grocery store, which puts her on a special pedestal above my mom and Jammies. I think it's safe to say that both Tweety and I married up.
I do that kind of stuff.
How often do you find real discrepancies that work out in your favor? If I invested the time to do this, would it be likely to pay off?
Actually, I do it ever less, but I still enter expenses in our budget from receipts before they would come up online about 50% of the time now, I'd say. It's a holdover from my student days, when I had my own apartment to myself (= giant housing costs) and was coming close to $0 at some point every month.
I'll also take this moment to recommend the budgeting program YNAB (You Need a Budget). I find it has a super clear layout and is very easily customizable. Love love love it.
47: I don't know that I ever have. It's more about the need to know exactly where my money is all the time. And as I said, I've gotten less anal about it as I've become a bit more financially comfortable.
It has been a big revelation for me in the past year or so to come to see just how much money stress I've lived under, oh, all my adult life. To have something like a parking ticket be an annoyance, but not something that would cause me stress for the rest of the month and for which I would have to really kick myself about, is a kind of privilege I hadn't realized I was missing.
Take out one of those prepositions. Kick myself about? Kick myself for? (Over?)
And as I said, I've gotten less anal about it as I've become a bit more financially comfortable.
My experience too. Being able to take a parking ticket in stride is huge.
Being able to take a parking ticket in stride is huge.
Word. We never made enough to have separate finances until the last couple years but we haven't bothered to do it. But we have very similar spending habits and thankfully money has never been a source of conflict.
Blume reorganizes her shopping list according to the layout of the grocery store
Heck, I do that. But I don't balance my checkbook.
OT bleg:
I need someone with an opinion on bathtubs to tell me what tub to want. General feeling among my acquaintances seems to be that I should get a clawfoot tub, as those are supposed to be nice, and would be in keeping with my house design and my general aesthetic. But, aren't they hard to clean? With an inset tub you only need to clean one outside surface -- the flat side facing out. With a clawfoot tub you have to clean all around the tub and underneath, and also the underneath floor, which seems like a pain since it would be hard to reach, and also basically impossible to do thoroughly.
This is the most boring question ever, sorry. Trying to have opinions about toilet paper holders and towel rings and stuff is really hard. They are demolishing my kitchen right now, and I got up at 5:30 to make sure my countertops were clean. Clean enough to be demolished!
This is what comes of dames workin'. Instead of baking cakes and being pretty, they get ideas. Then you got social breakdown, godless communism, fluoridated water, anarchy! Then who's bakin' cakes, fellas? That's right: nobody!
Claw-footed bathtubs are objectively adorable. It has never crossed my mind that they'd be harder to clean, but maybe so.
53: Me too. 95% of what we buy was what we bought the week before so it isn't hard.
They are cute! They take up more space, I think, than inset tubs. Also, how do you clean the outside surface of the side facing the wall? I suppose you could, like, floss it with yarn. I can already tell this would make me insane.
54: You still have to clean the front of the tub if it is inset. Unless you can't aim or really splash a bunch, I don't think the rest of the tub should involve much extra cleaning.
I vote for flat sided. Unless the clawfooted bathtub can walk around. In which case, definitely get that one.
Then who's bakin' cakes, fellas? That's right: nobody!
I've never had a clawfoot tub, but I have always shuddered when thinking of the task of cleaning underneath one.
Also, are you going to be taking exclusively baths in this tub, or will you use it for showering some/all of the time? With a clawfoot you've got to have shower curtain going all the way around, which can be annoying (curtain blowing in from ALL sides!) and harder to keep the water from getting out. With a set-in tub, you've also probably got a ledge on the inside wall for your soap and shampoo and such.
Get an inset tub, and then attach little shoes to one side. It will either look like a clawfoot tub or like you landed on some munchkins instead of the witch.
The Dwarf Lord & I do about what the Roadrunners do; joint accounts for the vital stuff, leftover income for us individually. Note that, if you earn unequally, you can stll do this as seems fair: 50% of each salary into the joint acct & live on that, or whatever.
Not having any separate finances would be wierd to me; if one was a SAHP I think we'd route a set percentage into their private account.
Vital stuff had better include savings before vacations, I'd say (ant, ant, ant). Damn, but the 'bucket list' meme is expensive.
61: The sugar prison cake was impressive. I hadn't seen that one before.
I vote clawfoot tub. I can think of two solutions to the problem of cleaning the wall-facing side:
(a) Don't put the tub next to the wall but, rather, have it be more toward the center of the room. Advantage: decadent. Disadvantage: everything else.
(b) Don't clean that side. What is this, the elder days of art?
Also, how do you clean the outside surface of the side facing the wall?
But if its facing the wall, who can tell if its filthy?
Also, how do you clean the outside surface of the side facing the wall?
This seems like it would be about as important a problem as how to clean behind the stove in your kitchen. In theory, it's a difficult question. In practice, there's a perfectly good, very simple solution.
In practice, there's a perfectly good, very simple solution.
Indentured servants? Small, controlled fires? A two-dimensional maid?
The place where I lived in SF had a clawfoot tub. Was the wall-facing side ever cleaned? Better question: was it ever seen? Beats me. It did have all-the-way-around shower curtains, but they were in fact no big deal.
As with the question whether gay marriage should be allowed,, there are no intellectually respectable arguments on the "no" side of the question whether you should get a clawfoot tub.
62. Oh, I forgot about the horrible shower curtain blowing in and sticking to your legs thing.
You have to clean the underneath of the tub, and also the back side. The thing is, a clawfoot tub is curved, so there's no clear line marking where you should stop cleaning. You could always clean just a leetle bit further, now with your hand, now with your fingertip, now with a q-tip, etcetera. I suppose you could graduate the cleanliness, for an ombre effect, but this is hard to execute effectively.
Vital stuff had better include savings before vacations, I'd say
No, not for me. Visiting family regularly is a priority, and I'm willing to pay through the nose to do so.
Visiting family regularly is a priority, and I'm willing to pay through the nose to do so.
Does it matter whose family you're visiting? Because we can work something out if you take some visiting off my plate.
Don't tell the airlines or that will become a new screening procedure.
Yeah, what Ginger said. If you have a big enough bathroom that it can sit in the middle and look queenly, go for it. Otherwise, I always pick the plainest things possible because I mostly don't care.
We have always had separate bank accounts, didn't really cross our minds to merge them - I certainly don't remember any sort of conversation about it. But then we do only live off one salary (plus my extremely part-time earnings), and C transfers me money each month. We have the bills fairly randomly split between us, according to who set up what, but I do all the shopping and kid stuff. He has a smallish amount left to play with, and I can obviously prioritise mine however I want. And I've got all the savings.
The thing is, a clawfoot tub is curved, so there's no clear line marking where you should stop cleaning.
Sure there is!
Stand as far as possible from the tub such that you are still in the bathroom and you can see the tub. Don't crouch down or anything, though you're allowed to move your head; remain standing. Now take the line from your eyes (of your sight, one might say) tangent to the curvature of the bottom of the tub. The point of intersection of the line and the curve marks the furthest down you should clean.
Clawfoot tub plus cleaning service!
44: I do that kind of stuff. So wow, heebie's mom, Jammies, and me-- we've got half of the people covered!
As does my wife. So 2/3. She is adamant about wiping out any inconsistency down to the cent. Cliff Stoll in drag. She is also very religious about keeping it all updated in Quicken, and I will admit that now that we have 15+ years of detailed info (pretty consistently classified) it is interesting (at times disheartening) to see the %s and changes in same.
Yeah, what Ginger said. If you have a big enough bathroom that it can sit in the middle and look queenly, go for it.
I too at first thought GY meant "can be walked around", but I think he may really have meant what he said.
79: If you are the tallest person in the household, I think you'd better crouch a bit to get the right view.
Make one of your few regular expenses a very small deposit into a Smarty Pig that only you control, so that when you want to buy something in secret, you can transfer it to your debit card?
55: that's the flippanter I know and love.
there are no intellectually respectable arguments on the "no" side of the question whether you should get a clawfoot tub.
Well, there could be building structure issues. Cast-iron claw-foot tubs are friggin' heavy, and could potentially make your floor sag.
If you are the tallest person in the household, I think you'd better crouch a bit to get the right view.
The shortest person in the household should obviously be cleaning the tub.
and could potentially make your floor sag.
Spanx can fix that.
80 is very tempting, but my expenses are mounting.
If I had a bathroom large enough, setting the tub apart from the wall would be a good solution, but my bathroom is in fact so tiny it's hard to find a tub small enough to fit at all. Perhaps the thing to do would be to install my tub in the center of my living room, hoisted high enough off the floor that a mop can easily pass beneath. Then I can bathe with my windows open and invite Megan's neighbors to come over.
I think I'm going with an inset. Thanks everyone!
I would think a claw-footed tub would enjoy a good belly flossing.
Oh, and I keep all my receipts and balance everything up too. C and I have never in almost 16 years had an argument about money, so I think our way is the best.
If you have a small bathroom, forget the bath altogether, and turn it into a wet room.
The perversions of the British take a whole room?
Yeah, it's hard to make a clawfoot work in a tiny bathroom.
Cliff Stoll in drag
Now I'm curious how many people here recognize that reference (another book that I read in HS before I'd done any computer work) .
Have I ever explicitly said the ways in which I aspire to be Asilon and C?
98: Yes. One day, in August 1986, his supervisor (Dave Cleveland) asked him to resolve a USD$ 0.75 accounting error in the computer usage accounts. He traced the error to an unauthorized user who had apparently used up 9 seconds of computer time and not paid for it ... So maybe it should be "Dave Cleveland in drag".
OT: This is funny, like many of the guy's songs, but I wouldn't listen to it at work. Or around other people, really.
jms, if you get a clawfoot tub, do not follow the example of the previous owners of our new place and cover the "public" exterior with floral wallpaper/contact paper/I don't know what. It does make it easy to know where to stop cleaning, yes, I suppose, but it's freaky and weird and I want it gone.
The inside is easy to clean, especially if the tub is angled properly and drains easily. Mopping around it hasn't been too hard, either. Sitting in it to read is the most fantastic thing ever, so I'm definitely on team clawfoot.
We looked around here, though I'm not bringing you to a very useful page there. I have two sets of shower curtains, a clear one that goes on the wall side, where we have a window (used during showering and when Mara's taking a bath) and a lined one with a pattern on the outside so we can pull it shut and pretend there's not a tub with a dirty floral exterior in that corner. The comfort is way beyond any other bathtub I've had and I absolutely recommend it and will probably gladly babble on longer here if you'd like.
my husband and I have decided to downsize from our current home when our lease is up in december and move to a cheaper place. this will be in order to stop spending his salary, plus my (admittedly, so far small, but growing) profits from my business, plus an embarrassing amount of our savings in the form of stock sales, every year. because we are a couple of fuck-ups. we don't have even marginal control of our finances and are just counting on other people giving us more money soon to make up for it. we are total morons. it has been working out fine so far but I can't recommend it unless people are always giving you money. I'm actually embarrassed to tell you this.
the claw-foot tub is a no-brainer and way better than the regular kind. you just mop underneath like normal, they're not that low to the ground. a swiffer can get in there. the outside of the tub is rougher and doesn't get dirty as fast. leave 5 inches between the tub and the wall and swiffer down the side occasionally. it's not as if anyone can see it. in a way you can get the floor cleaner with no damp grout line the deal with. however, no one should take financial advice from me.
on preview: pwned by thorn
If the clawfoot tub is in a bathroom with tiles going up the wall to a decent height then the back can be cleaned simply by spraying with a hose. Then you shop-vac the water up and dump it down the drain.
In a sensible world all bathrooms would be equipped with floor drains and could be cleaned by removing anything that needed to be kept dry and then spraying down with a hose. Personally I'd like a floor drain in the kitchen too. If I get to build my own house there will be floor drains in the bathroom, kitchen, and entrance/mud room.
A floor drain in the kitchen is genius.
I have no idea what the market is like for used clawfoot tubs, but we got ours refinished because it was nasty on the inside and it cost $425, which I justified as being cheaper than buying a cheap new plain tub and also not requiring paying anyone to lift 400 lbs of tub. A friend of mine in another part of the country said that was the going rate for her too, so I'm just throwing that out there in case it's universal. Now the inside of the tub is all shiny and lovely and any dirt that's in it is our own.
At the link in 102 one can view $3,000+ copper claw foot tubs.
A copper tub sounds like a bad idea in many different ways.
A copper tub sounds like a bad idea in many different ways.
Unless, according to Harold McGee, one happened to be whipping up 10,000 egg whites.
Or making large quantities of candy.
There are THREE, yes THREE sellers of clawfoot bathtubs that I pass on my way to work. Two in the tiniest podunk town, charmingly named Geronimo, and a third located in an old church, down the street from me.
I strongly feel that no one over 7 should be taking a bath. Baths are disgusting; sitting in tepid water with my own filth is not awesome. Personally, I would avoid getting the bathtub at all and spend the money on a nice vacation.
I have to say that being single and not having to yoke your financial decisions to those of another person is great. Maybe I would feel differently if the other person was really, really rich.
Thinking about it, it's amazing how many of my life choices have been driven by a desire to not have to worry about paying for parking tickets and other minor financial mistakes. At this point I honestly feel that without financial room for (a) easily paying parking tickets, and (b) paying for a housecleaner, I couldn't survive.
Back to the OP, now that I'm understand that the proposal isn't as ironclad as I'd originally thought, in terms of things that can be done with heebie's monies, why not just do exactly as you've described, except just go ahead and buy butt-enhancers and jammies's birthday presents from your account (and thereby save a little less those months)? If both you and he trust you to be frugal enough not to blow money from that account indiscriminately, you'll still be accumulating plenty of savings. (Unless "private" purchases like these things are a bigger portion of your overall budget picture than I realize.)
Instead of just a drain in the floor, why not a floor that is a metal grate over a cement floor with a drain? They make these for pig barns, but you can probably get them with some kind of finish this is easier on the feet. You could just shower and/or void where you were standing at the moment.
sitting in tepid water with my own filth is not awesome.
Ideally, you can control both the water temperature and your own filth level.
I'm surprised Halford isn't recommending two baths instead of one. I thought constrast baths were the rage with the CF crowd.
One's own seems like the best filth to soak in.
If you really feel that you are covered with filth but still want the relaxing bath experience, you can take a very brief shower to wash off the outermost layer of grime before stopping up the tub. Such an approach admittedly makes it harder to engage in that popular pastime, reading whilst bathing.
why not just do exactly as you've described, except just go ahead and buy butt-enhancers and jammies's birthday presents from your account (and thereby save a little less those months)?
Oh. Because, uh, I don't know.
Do you only have one ful bathroom? If so, then you need to get a regular inset one that allows both convenient showers and baths. Otherwise you can consider specializing and having one bath bathroom and one shower one. Don't get a clawfoot and expect to take showers in it. It's awful, and furthermore the wrap-around shower curtains ruin any ostensible visual advantage of the clawfoot.
I had a "drain in the floor" shower for a month at a sublet once and loved it. But in the long run giving up baths forever would make me a little sad.
I don't understand how people read in the tub either.
How do you keep your book or magazine from getting wet fingerprints? Or, alternatively, how do you have the self-discipline to keep your hands out of the water? Or, alternatively, is there a towel precariously balanced and a spot to lay your magazine for when you need to scratch your foot? Also, how long can it possibly be comfortable to hold the magazine or book up out of the water instead of resting it anywhere? Also why is the bath better than reading in bed?
Or, alternatively, how do you have the self-discipline to keep your hands out of the water?
You're busy reading, is how.
Or, alternatively, how do you have the self-discipline to keep your hands out of the water?
I won a contest.
Or, alternatively, how do you have the self-discipline to keep your hands out of the water?
You read until you can't bear the temptation to put your hands in the water any longer, then you put your book (or, I guess, magazine) down outside the tub. Then you plunge your hands into the water, a moment of divine, delayed pleasure greeting you as you break the surface that an immediate hands-wetting, unaided by anticipation's magnifying powers, could never match.
For a while, I used a board placed across the tub to support the book and one hand.
It's decadence and filth all the way down for you bastards, isn't it?
Magazines are hard to read in the bath, because they're floppy. But a paperback, particularly one that you don't care if it gets the occasional damp fingerprint, is fine.
Why, I've not only read blogs on my iPhone, but actually commented while bathing. (And you thought Apo was the only one not wearing pants.)
I read and touch myself constantly. (Masturbation jokes ensue.) But actually I'm talking about random scratching and shifting and whatever. No one else is constantly grazing themselves with their hands?
Similarly, how does anyone wear make-up without rubbing it off or smearing it all over the place by inadvertently touching their face within twenty minutes?
Reading in the bath is better because I have scoliosis and soaking in a hot bath is as close as I get to non-pain, plus it would be boring to just lie there and not read. I used to have a little shelf that rested on the bath, but I need to get a new one since it would fit on this tub and didn't on previous ones. I think I once fell asleep in the bathtub and dipped a book back in middle school, but I just alternate hands or positions as needed, which I assume is going to set me up for some low-hanging-fruit-type comments. I can't speak for anyone else, though.
The back side (where the sitter's back goes) of our clawfoot tub is in a little nook, so it's easy to tuck the curtains back there out of sight, but they scrunch up small anyway and wouldn't be unsightly even if the whole length of the tub were visible.
I understand 128. That is a sane answer.
When I was a kid, I kept a bean bag and blanket in a seldom-used bathtub, and I'd read there for hours. It was cozy and comfy and wonderfully escapist. Now that is decadence.
It's decadence and filth all the way down for you bastards, isn't it?
[Shoots dingy lace cuffs, adjusts threadbare velvet lapels of scarlet smoking jacket, throws self on fainting couch, shoots "V.R." in wall over fireplace, eats opium, is fanned by Abyssinian maidens.]
I shall bid you good day, sir.
It's like the Sherlock Holmes text adventure over at your place, sounds like.
I have a personal finance dilemma at the moment... I get paid 50% from a grant and 50% from teaching. Last year I taught one course each semester. This year I'm teaching two courses the same semester. This means the default is that I get 75% now and 25% in the spring. Should I try to jump through whatever administrative hoops I need to in order to balance that out for tax purposes? Or will the happiness I get from having larger numbers in my bank account be worth it? (For reference, I'm a lazy squirrel like HB and LB.)
Clawfoot tubs are easy to mop under, they're tall. I moved one out of the room once when tiling a bathroom floor (a friend and I; he's strong but they aren't *that* heavy), and the backside wasn't especially dirty. The deep lip is a drip-skirt, it sends overflow to the floor to be mopped. It was also nice that we could alter the freestanding plumbing to be taller than tall people -- some 6+ footers have never had the shower fall rainlike upon them, so sad.
If you want to read in the tub and have a short room, look for slipper tubs. Other than that, I'd go for the wet room, although it's hard to do that in a conventional house and have a tub at all. I long for a wet room mudroom, though: emergency shower for yard accidents. Definitely kitchens should have floor drains! And kitchen sinks should have floor pedals, like medical sinks. Medical plumbing comes up used surprisingly often, and hey, it's all steel and sterilizable. My mother got a debridement tub and was going to make an outdoor soaking tub of it, but it became an underground rabbit run instead.
I have embarassing 1990s fondness for Taft tubs.
Re vacations vs savings: does the preference hold in total? That is, if no-one in the family has savings, would you still all spend on vacations instead? Some of my savings are a hedge against family getting in trouble. (We are kind of low in payment-defined pensions, as a group, so our savings are sadly likely to sink together, too.)
A question somewhat related to the OP:
How many people these days living in medium-to-high cost of housing places actually pony up a 20% down payment for a home?
This means the default is that I get 75% now and 25% in the spring. Should I try to jump through whatever administrative hoops I need to in order to balance that out for tax purposes?
I'd say yes, depending on what that allocation might do to your tax burden in tax year 2011.
My tax burden for next year is totally unknown. (I may or may not be getting summer funding from anywhere, I hopefully will be getting a higher paying job but might not, my wife will be unemployed for at least part of the year.)
137: If you really can save enough to no go short this spring, I'd take as much as I could now. There's currently a 2% SS tax cut and I think that is scheduled to expire. Obviously, you should look at your tax brackets and whatnot, as noted in 140.
I read in the bath, and it's pretty much like 127. If I do have to scratch my foot or whatever, I then dry my fingers on my hair.
Have I ever explicitly said the ways in which I aspire to be Asilon and C?
No! Tell me them!!!!! Are you going to get a dog?!?!?
And then all the rest of you can tell me all the million more ways you don't want to be like us.
142 is interesting, because if I do go through the "jump through hoops" route I can either try to move the teaching income (which is easier as I can just go talk to people) or the grant income (which is more "technically correct" but requires dealing with government people far away and might run into weird rules). But only the former is payroll taxable.
I too at first thought GY meant "can be walked around", but I think he may really have meant what he said.
I did. Come on, what could be cooler than stomping around your home in a mechanical bathtub? While reading.
On that subject, reading in the bath is the main thing I miss about my old flat. It's so much better than reading in bed. You can temperature regulate. You can comfortably sit up without an ungodly number of pillows. And if you get bored of reading you can submerge yourself.
There are bookrests to fit on your tub that also hold a wineglass & candles. They probably only fit clawfoot tubs.
I got a gift of a placemat inexplicably made of cork (or some imitation thereof) that was fantastic as a board to lay across the tub and put a book on.
Similarly, how does anyone wear make-up without rubbing it off or smearing it all over the place by inadvertently touching their face within twenty minutes?
You've got me. Waterproof mascara is about as far as I can get without making a mess.
reading in the bath is the main thing I miss about my old flat. It's so much better than reading in bed. You can temperature regulate.
I am so confused.
Protip: a wineglass will remain upright floating in the bath and does not need support, if you don't mind it getting tepid and filthy.
I am so confused.
Water of your chosen temperature comes out of the taps at the rate of your choice.
How many people these days living in medium-to-high cost of housing places actually pony up a 20% down payment for a home?
Not a lot? Even in these depraved times, banks were willing to loan to us with a 10-15% down payment (last February). I think our down payment plus what we spent on renovations was near 20%, but the lenders were there, at least for people with good credit.
Grin - 150 reminds me that I used to have a glass bowl (I think it was a jelly mould as it was dome-shaped and quite ornate) that I used as an ashtray. That used to float beautifully in the bath. And getting stoned in the bath beats reading in the bath.
151: Though the range of available temperatures is narrower, you can also adjust the air temperature in my house.
I tend to find that except under ideal weather conditions, beds are either too warm or too cold (insert Goldilocks joke here). Actually, that's not strictly true. Sometimes, with only a thin sheet on top, it's the right temperature but lacks that satisfying engulfed-in-a-duvet feeling. Whereas in a bath, you get that feeling all the time at precisely the temperature you want.
Water of your chosen temperature comes out of the taps at the rate of your choice.
How on earth can it be more better to regulate your body temperature by changing the ratio of hot and cold in a bath, compared to sticking one leg outside of a blanket?
And getting stoned in the bath beats reading in the bath.
Who says you can't do both?
How on earth can it be more better to regulate your body temperature by changing the ratio of hot and cold in a bath, compared to sticking one leg outside of a blanket?
Are you kidding me? You've got one leg out of the blanket, that's how.
I'm being treated as if I'm being dense, but I'm pretty sure I'm actually the one sane person here.
I like reading in the bath and reading in bed. I don't think the reading part is better in a bath (I get books wet, and the overall quality of the experience varies a lot depending on the size and shape of the bathtub) but soaking in hot water is better than anything else, ever.
When I am rich and famous, I will buy a super deep Japanese soaking tub, and stay in it all day.
156 may as well have been written by an alien.
That may be, but you're still wrong.
And kitchen sinks should have floor pedals, like medical sinks.
Yes. A thousand times yes.
Because the thermal conductivity of water is higher than that of air. If you're in a bath and your body temperature is slightly wrong, you adjust the water temperature and your whole body is instantly at the right temperature. If you stick one leg out from under the blanket, you're still too hot but with one cold foot.
Re vacations vs savings: does the preference hold in total? That is, if no-one in the family has savings, would you still all spend on vacations instead? Some of my savings are a hedge against family getting in trouble.
I'm not sure how long I'd hang on to family vacations if our finances were going down the tubes. But it would be a really upsetting sacrifice if I felt like we couldn't see our family at least once a year.
166 to 156.
and to 160, yes. A friend in Japan had a tiny little very deep tub with a chairlike seat, so you were sitting on a ledge neck deep in water. It was great -- if I had lived there, I would have come home from work, instantly gotten into the bath, and never left.
||
Setting up flights for other people according to a schedule is hard.
||>
160/168: I think you can make those fairly cheaply. I don't know where you would put one in an NYC apartment.
. If you're in a bath and your body temperature is slightly wrong, you adjust the water temperature and your whole body is instantly at the right temperature. If you stick one leg out from under the blanket, you're still too hot but with one cold foot.
I swear this makes no sense to me. If I'm cold in a bathtub, then the bath temperature is going to lag while the water ratio changes. And then when it's warm enough that it feels right, within 5 minutes I'll be totally overheating and boiling. And so on. All the while it's getting deeper, or else you're also regulating the drain now and then. And all of this is highly disruptive to the reading experience.
Whereas nudging the blanket up or down your torso is completely mindless.
The difference here may be in your level of pedal dexterity. None of these adjustments disrupt the reading experience, because they're all done with the feet while one continues to read. If your faucets/drain/toes are such that that would be hard, reading while bathing would be less attractive.
You are all doing these adjustments with your feet?!
Not, admittedly, at the moment, I'm at work. But in principle.
You are all doing these adjustments with your feet?
Yes.
Well, not any more. But I was. And still do when I visit my parents.
I typed this comment with my feet.
||
I need advice for my upcoming trip: My thought was to fly to NYC, go straight up to Boston, then to Maine all in the same day, and then on the return leg, spend 3 days in NYC.
Greyhound/Concord Trailways seems fairly reasonable pricewise, but it's a long time on the bus. Amtrak looks okay, same time, more legroom, only $20 more. A bohemian friend recommended the Chinatown bus, but that worries me in terms of making connections and stuff.
Thoughts?
||>
a tiny little very deep tub with a chairlike seat, so you were sitting on a ledge neck deep in water
Was it like a mini version of the japanese-style hot tubs? Because that's my experience of those. So awesome.
More on the DC/NY route than Boston/NY, but everyone I know takes the Chinatown bus. Much cheaper, and not apparently much scarier. Don't know reliability offhand, but I've heard fewer complaints about Chinatown buses than Amtrak.
And for your stay in NYC, may I be the first to suggest a meetup at the Blarney Stone?
I suppose I could fly to and from Portland, since I have no particular reason to go to Beantown, but I HATE HATE HATE flying to Portland. Sigh.
180: Well, it was the tiny Japanese apartment version, but that was the idea.
Oh, I didn't realize you could take it from Penn Station now. Is that better or worse than actually getting it in Chinatown?
181: may I be the first to suggest a meetup at the Blarney Stone?
Is this a joke I missed? Did someone go to the wrong one once or something?
I just couldn't make myself type Fresh Salt. But of course that's what I meant.
Often open jaws (that is fly from A to B with a return from C to A or the equivalent) are no more expensive than ordinary round trips. You should just fly into Boston and out of NYC.
For ground transport between NYC and Boston I think my favorite is Megabus. Boltbus is also ok, except that they don't have a good line system in NY (it's fine in Boston) and so getting good seating requires shoving people around. Both Bolt and Megabus are cheaper and have nice amenities (plugs and wifi, though they only have maybe a 50-75% chance of working on any given trip).
If you're doing greyhound be sure to poke around, they offer tickets at one price on the main site, but if you click through "deals and discounts" you can get the same ticket for half the price. (This only works for buses from NYC to major cities where they're competing with bolt/megabus/chinatown.)
The chinatown busses aren't so sketchy anymore, but they're not much cheaper than megabus/bolt and they leave from chinatown in NYC which is less convenient for a lot of things. (And means you have extra NYC traffic.)
187: Yeah, it looks like a few bucks more, for the times I want, but not that much.
I was categorizing Megabus and Bolt as "Chinatown buses" for no good reason other than that they don't stop at the bus terminal.
There's also "Greyhound express" which is new. It seems to be interchangeable with bolt/megabus (only goes between major east coast cities, ostensibly has plugs/wifi/new busses, has very cheap tickets if you buy in advance) but I haven't tried it myself.
What I really really want is for one of these NYC-Boston bus companies to have a bus that leaves uptown. They all drive within 4 blocks of my house, and it's infuriating to spend an hour of travel just to get back to my house. I'd even rather get off somewhere in the bronx and take the damn subway. Then you don't have traffic.
One vote for Amtrak if there isn't much difference in cost. On Amtrak you can actually see America, not just the trees along interstates.
Tthe section along the Rhode Island shore is particularly pleasant (take the route that goes through Providence, not the one through Hartford and Springfield). Also you cna walk aroudn more on Amtrak.
Most Japanese home baths IMX are deeper than ours, dipping below the regular floor level, and get filled up to the brim. It's fantastic. And probably pleasing Halford, it's only for after you've showered (though a family will normally all use the same water, covering it over to retain the heat).
192: Well, now UPETGI9 has me excited about the open jaws. I did take Amtrak St Paul to Boston back in my youth. That was pretty fun. I heard there is less legroom now though? It used to be bordering on the excessive.
You probably know this already, but you can't take a train from NYC to Portland because trains from NYC go to South Station and trains to Portland leave from North Station. But there are some busses to Portland from South Station I think.
I'd even rather get off somewhere in the bronx and take the damn subway.
My sister lives in the Bronx, so when going there I take the train so I can get off at New Rochelle. It would add over an hour to my trip to go into Manhattan and then bus or subway it back out to her place.
195: I think I had found that out at some point. But I'm comfortable using other cities' public transit, so it wouldn't be that much of an impediment.
Why do you hate flying to Portland? It's a nicer airport than Logan. And not nec. more expensive (does Jet Blue fly to Minneapolis)?
I thought "Chinatown bus" was the same thing as "Megabus". In that neither of them existed five years ago when I might have used them, and now they do.
Hrm, I bet from where I live walking to 125th street and then taking metro north to New Rochelle and then Amtrak is faster... Certainly more expensive as the Metro North alone is half the price of a bus ticket to Boston.
Well, now UPETGI9 has me excited about the open jaws.
ATM
198: The flights are never even close to on time, and there's no amenities, and everything is cramped, and it's the exact same layout as Epley Airfield in Omaha, which I also don't like.
Megabus doesn't appear to go from the midwest to the east on a single ticket. You can't buy a ticket from Pittsburgh to Chicago.
199: The chinatown busses have been around for over a decade. They used to be vans and you bought tickets at a bakery in chinatown. I think they got actual busses around a decade ago. Megabus/bolt are much more recent. (Though megabus has existed in the UK for longer.)
I'm with heebie in 171, although I do do the taps and plug with my feet. But my hot water is often a bit slow, so I'll be getting cold and then have to add cold water for a while before I warm up again, which isn't good. Definitely easier to add a T-shirt, or take off a blanket, or whatever, in bed.
It's "Eppley Airfield" and what's not to like? You can walk from parking to the ticket counter in two mintues.
Plus, it's only five minutes from downtown Omaha and all the glories therein.
Looks to me like MSP/PWM roundtrip flights are roughly $50-75 more than MSP/BOS, and you can do both for around $300/$350. I find it hard to believe that an elaborate bus ride plan would be preferable.
I think it's important to keep in mind that although bolt/mega are like chinatown in that they don't use bus stations, run express, and are cheaper, they are very different in that the sketchiness ordering is bolt/mega < greyhound < chinatown. The chinatown busses have worse safety records, more connections to organized crime, more grey legal status historically, etc.
Arg, html ate my less than signs. Can someone fix that?
Only flights you exit onto the tarmac are Real, in my button eyes. SJ used to have some.
I don't get your reasoning, heebie. Sure, not having enough money would be bad, but I save first because not making the mortgage /healthcare would be even worse than having forgone several trips. It helps that my whole family are ants and also we were half raised on seagoing/military/pioneering tales of long, long absences.
Plus, Eppley used to have a Godfather's Pizza.
SCAD is like oid programming - I can post during compile!
203: Megabus doesn't appear to go from the midwest to the east on a single ticket. You can't buy a ticket from Pittsburgh to Chicago.
Yes, Megabus is a bit odd that way. I think it is a legacy of being an incomplete agglomeration of separate bus companies (they do the same paint job, the pricing and the website but are still separate on the back-end). There used to be an "air gap" between Cleveland and Pittsburgh and I would sometimes accumulate young people at my house in transit, but now (who knows for how long) there is a Cleveland/Akron/Pittsburgh route and you can do the "connection" in Cleveland.
216: You can also connect in Toledo, if you want to maintain social standing.
Just for the heck of it, I tried to see how long it would take Megabus to get me somewhere useful (i.e. Omaha). It appears problematic because the bus for Omaha leaves Chicago at 11:15am and the bus from Ohio comes in an hour later.
209: more connections to organized crime
Yes, my other informant was regaling me with stories of late-night Chinatown bus stopovers where everyone was told to stay on the bus, while the bus driver unloaded some boxes by the side of the road and then drove off.
Eppley/Epley, whatever. Both of those airports make me grouchy, even if one is an airfield and the other a jetport.
What's really ridiculous is the rail gap between Minneapolis and Omaha. Amtrak goes to both cities, there are extant rails running between them, but you have to go through Chicago if you want to travel by train from one to the other. All these rightwing psychopaths who talk about our national heritage and refuse to address that issue are full of crap.
I haven't had any trouble with the line for Boltbus in NY (as mentioned in 187), but I've taken it probably fewer than ten times.
Another mark against the Chinatown bus (Fung Wah or Lucky Star) is that they often don't check tickets that closely. You end up with situations where there are way more people trying to get on a bus than there are seats, be it because they oversold or because they're letting people with later tickets get on. I have done some shameless line cutting to get on a Chinatown bus (that I had a ticket for), all the while thinking, I am being a really shitty person, but dammit, I am getting on that bus.
220: I'm guessing that as far as rail gaps go, it wouldn't be hard to find many more ridiculous ones.
There were lots of Chinatown buses, used by all stripes of society from freshmen to postdocs, years before Mega and Bolt, but I don't think they had much advertising or other public presence - more word-of-mouth.
I wonder why it takes Amtrak an hour and three minutes to go from Omaha to Lincoln but an hour and thirty five minutes to go the other way.
I first heard of what later became the Fung Wah in the fall of 2000, when one of my roommates showed me a flyer for the van that left several times a day from a bakery in Chinatown. I took that van once with her. She spoke Chinese; I otherwise would have been too intimidated by its incarnation those days. There was a hole in the floor of the van, through which you could see the highway whizzing by below you.
226: The jet stream and the prevailing grade would both make west to east quicker.
226: Wrong direction. Same for elevation.
Sunspots.
||
My cousin is holding a destination wedding, to which my other cousins from other parts of the world are also going. I would not otherwise go to this destination, but it is beautiful and exotic with tasty food. The part that does appeal to me is two generations of cousins in a giant house for three weeks. That is going to be great.
But airfare alone is costing me and my sister and her boys $10K. We'll be a year paying that off. That's before three weeks of lodging in the giant house. I keep feeling like this was a huge imposition. Cousins! I keep reminding myself of that. I keep trying to forget the thirty hours of travel time each way. I've put myself through that, traveling solo, but I'm the only person that suffers that trip.
A family wedding is more-or-less a subpoena, and it is too late to un-buy the tickets. But crap. This was a lot.
This has been another episode of Rich People Problems.
|>
It should be noted that Moby offered no alternate solution.
222: Notably, to get from Cleveland to Cincinnatti you havde to go through either Chicago or DC.
229: I've been invited to a wedding in Grand Island and am pondering the same kinds of questions except not really.
224: Lincoln elevation: 1176 ft. Omaha elevation: 1090 ft. Hmmm. Back to the Unified Field Theory....
224: the mules go faster back to the barn.
230: Probably making sure the coal gets from Wyoming to the power plants.
I can't be the only one surprised to find out that Megan regards a family wedding as something she has to attend.
Three weeks?! I guess if you're traveling that far it's a shame to turn right back around and go home, but holy moly. How can most people even get that much time off?
You generally think of me as a savage with no notion of duty?
Cobble it together; take some of it without pay.
I keep feeling like this was a huge imposition.
And when it rains, do you keep feeling like the ground is wet?
Wow, that's some family loyalty.
Of my family, two sets of uncles and aunts out of five came to my wedding and two cousins out of eleven.
Yeah, wow. I feel reasonably confident in my ability to pay for a thing like that (though I'd definitely grit my teeth and look at how many mortgage payments or tech toys that would pay for), but time off is even more precious. Even if I could swing that much time off at once, I would deeply resent the fact that I wouldn't have any left for the next year or so.
We are hard up for cousins, and we live in the US and France. Having the three families in one place is strong inducement.
First wedding: 3 for 3 sets of uncles and aunts, 4 for 5 cousins, some with kids.
Second wedding: zip. I tried to game it by getting only my favorites to come, but it backfired.
Yes, that's a huge imposition. On the other hand, they say that you get way more happiness utiles from experiences than things, so if you've got enough things to survive maybe it's a good investment.
Friends are planning a destination (gay) wedding in South Africa on New Years Eve 2012-13. He gave us like two and a half years' notice. I approve.
Heh. My sister can't push Pay on the airline tickets. We are this very minute looking at sub-combinations.
If I got an invitation like that, I would assume that I wasn't really invited.
248: Kinda the same here -- I'd open the invitation, think "Oh, how nice of them to think of us" and send regrets and a blender without thinking twice. $10K and three weeks? Not happening.
I have a semi-similar dilemma, in that I'm getting married without much notice in another country; I'd like to tell friends and family that they're welcome to come but at the same time I fully expect no one to be able to attend. But it's a tricky balance to extend such an invitation, and I ended up apparently implying to my own mother that she shouldn't come! (We're going to do something in California anyway, later. But I do actually want my mom there, ya know, which was fortunately realized soon enough.)
That's the kind of money I think gets spent on land. On which my family can live, and/or have experiences, e.g. creating the art & foodstuffs else regarded as destinations.
But no-one else need think so; it only bids the price up.
My rule of thumb for "destination weddings" is that it's fine to have one and invite people to them, but non-local invitees shouldn't feel obliged to go. That said, pretty much all my family's weddings end up being de facto destination weddings and I've been to all of them in the last ten years. The furthest I've been for a non-family wedding was Germany.
225: Apparently Fung Wah was the first to offer inter-cty in 1998. I would have thought earlier. I recall literally not believing the prices when I first heard about them from a relative who lived in NYC. An early (2002) I found in the Times was this article about someone making a roundtrip just to eat at Anna's Taqueria since the burritos in New York were so mediocre.
Where is the closest good burrito to NYC?
There's got to be good Mexican food somewhere in the five boroughs. I've never had good Mexican here, but it must exist. Probably in deep Queens someplace.
I'm talking about random scratching and shifting and whatever. No one else is constantly grazing themselves with their hands?
Yes, I assume I look like a crazy person but there is not a damn thing I can do about it; it's practically a form of akathisia or something. When I was young and had longer hair I would kind of twirl it between my fingers but it drove my mom crazy and she drove me crazy about it so I stopped. Now all that energy goes into weird rubbing-my-face gestures and head-scratching that is way less attractive. I would love to grow my hair out enough to fiddle with but unfortunately it looks baddish.
135: I'm moving there!
one of the cost savings that could be made in our lifestyle would be like not spending $25,000 going to see our family in OR, martha's vineyard (where house rental was required), washington d.c., south carolina, and new york. but it was part of our decision to live in narnia that we would visit our family every year! and I really care a lot about my family! I am planning to lure them to see me but there's a lot of bitching about 15,000 mile plane trips and blah-blah-blah. is it fucking shorter the other way, people whom I visit every year at great expense?
I use Lucky Star between Boston and NYC with very few problems. Depending on the time of day you sometimes get caught in traffic.
Mexico is a big place, and New York doesn't have mexicans from the burrito making part of Mexico (which is to say, California). So even finding good Mexican buried deep in Queens doesn't mean you'd find good burritos.
on the books in the bath front: you get them wet and the cheap pulpy paper expands in your hands. sometimes they must be left open on the radiator for some time. dry off your hands before your smoke the joint; that's what all the muhfucking towels in there are for.
on the makeup front:...uh, don't touch your face? it makes you have pimples, anyway.
I think if you find a good mexican buried in queens you should call the nypd.
When I was young and had longer hair I would kind of twirl it between my fingers but it drove my mom crazy and she drove me crazy about it so I stopped.
I continue to constantly twirl my hair.
People claim, I believe, that Sunset Park has good Mexican food,* but "New York has no good Mexican food" has been a constant belief of mine now for more than 30 years and I've yet to have it corrected.
*As UPETGI acknowledges, burritos (at least, "Mission style" burritos) are not Mexican food.
They are Mexican food. They're just from a part of Mexico that happens to have been invaded by another country.
When I am rich and famous, I will buy a super deep Japanese soaking tub, and stay in it all day.
When I'm rich, I want my bathroom to look like the Korean Spa we went to last week, with lots of super-powerful water-jets coming out of the ceiling and stuff. And there will be a Korean restaurant upstairs. I can't wait to be rich. (This is after I sell out and go do corporate social work, aka Big Hugs.)
I was taking as a given that you can't find a good burrito in NYC. But surely you can find a good burrito without going all the way to Boston right?
A thing to know about Megabus (which is vaguely my favorite because it's double decker and I am four years old...well and because there are outlets which, as noted, work maybe half the time) is that for some reason, their NYC-Boston route includes a 100+ block drive up city streets (10th Ave I guess) before you get on a highway that can add a really long time to the trip.
Fung Wah I have actually had bad experiences with (random detour off the highway in Connecticut, bus drivers asking passengers for directions) but Lucky Star seems fine and goes right out of Chinatown onto the BQE which in turn, yes, can be a complete standstill.
Amtrak to Boston is fairly but not wholly reliable, a much more pleasant ride, has a quiet car, but costs a lot more. I mean, you could be late on a train or a bus: there's traffic on the highway but Amtrak is Amtrak.
Hi, yes, I spend a great deal of thought on this question as a matter of course and there is really no resoundingly preferable option. I'd say Amtrak on the whole if you don't mind the extra $.
Congrats, Paren! This is the first I've heard of your nuptials.
The South Africa case feels like a star-aligning case in a number of ways -- it's far enough off to plan, I have other reasons to want to go there, the other friends and family who are going want to do a little vacation together independently of the wedding.
251: People in Grand Island are certainly more than happy to discuss spending money on land.
(I actually have the Lucky Star Bus site up in another window, I just realized.)
Would it be safe to say people have different definitions of "good burrito"? I like the ones at La Taqueria in Park Slope but I don't know if they're Tex Mex or Mission or live up to some foodie orthodoxies about burritos. Generally, no, there is not a lot of satisfying Mexican food in NYC unless you want to fork over rather more for haute Mex, but generally no burritos there.
There was a place I liked on Eighth Avenue around 20th or 21st, but the burritos probably weren't authentic and I haven't been back since I moved out of the neighborhood.
Thanks, gents! I'm in the annoying phase of can't stop talking about it, but fuck it, I'm excited.
Also, this reminds me that I really need to go eat some good Mexican food before leaving. And work on learning how to make half-way decent fare at home.
Kitchen/Market? The internet suggests that was the best burrito in manhattan. But they closed 4 years ago.
When I'm rich, I want my bathroom to look like the Korean Spa we went to last week, with lots of super-powerful water-jets coming out of the ceiling and stuff.
Those Koreans and their amazing "shower" technology...
Congrats Paren! So are you getting married here in England? I'm sure then that you'll have plenty of time for a UKUnfogged meet-up!
Congrats paren! I think a warm bath is in order, too.
The Park Slope burritos are pretty good California-style, and there's the place in East Williamsburg that AWB introduced us to that has good veggie options. Sunset Park has excellent tacos, and cheap (although more expensive than the cheap ones in L.A.). Boston's plentiful, delicious burritos were a nice surprise.
The Concord Trailways from Boston to Portland is pretty good, and the tickets aren't for a specific trip, which is nice. The Amtrak is more fun, though. Also, Portland meetup!
That sounds right, or at least I remember there being something typographically pointless about the name.
Well, talking about it, I don't know, Moby.
Incipient nuptials are to be talked over instead. ((Congratulations!))*
* pun-ctuation.
Buying land, at least corn land, is probably a bad idea right now. Prices seem kind of high.
I'm on the west coast; we buy water rights that come with land. Even before Megan, those looked like a good bet above 40m.
Yay Paren and Paren-partner! And yes, you'll want to be making your own Mexican food. Probably with ingredients shipped from home, unless things have changed dramatically since my day.
224: Someone may have answered this, but it's probably about putting some flexibility into the schedule. My experience is that on the trains between Chicago and California, there can be a lot of delays - the freights own the tracks for the most part and get priority - so the schedules are built to allow the trains to make up for that. You can run an hour late for hundreds of miles and then you end up on time again.
I took my kids on the bolt bus from baltimore to nyc this summer. Wifi and power on the bus is a sweet deal.
I ate at this Mexican restaurant in the Bronx last week and it was so good I almost cried. I had the t-bone bistec azado con nopal y chorizo en salsa verde.
Thanks, everyone.
Asilon, I shall surely have enough time for a meet up! Pretty much endless time, really, at first.
Gabardine, I think you're right re: Mexican food ingredients, but at least they're stocking chipotle chiles in the supermarkets now - definitely better than the last time I was there!
171
I swear this makes no sense to me. If I'm cold in a bathtub, then the bath temperature is going to lag while the water ratio changes. And then when it's warm enough that it feels right, within 5 minutes I'll be totally overheating and boiling. And so on. All the while it's getting deeper, or else you're also regulating the drain now and then. And all of this is highly disruptive to the reading experience.
I'm with heebie here. It's been like forty years since I took a bath but my memory is it was impossible to satisfactorily regulate the water temperature.
279: Also, Portland meetup!
I'd be up for that, tho' I'm not planning to spend a whole lot of time in Portland, and my friend is probably taking the day off to hang out, so I'd want to make sure she wouldn't be sad. If you're working that day, would a lunch meet-up make sense? Or do you sleep right after work and get up at midnight or something? I'll email you.
289: I had to read that 3 times before I remembered that showers exist.