My big pet-peeve right now? ING Direct only allows a person to have one checking account, even if one is joint and the other individual.
I can have a million and one savings accounts with them, but only one checking account. Aside from the line-of-credit aspect to their overdraft, it’s unclear to me why that is.
I’m looking to open a set of individual bank accounts (checking and savings) by the end of the year, and am conflicted. Keep reading >>
I’m now fully in the flaky phase of the tattoo process, and am losing large black/grey flakes at a pleasantly quick rate.
It’s really, really hard not to encourage the process, though, especially when (squick alert!) attached flakes are catching on my shirt at work.
Grody!
Sleeping has been rough since Saturday. When it was all raw and fresh, it just (ha!) hurt badly. Once it dried out, it hurt to do anything that stretched the skin, like lie on my stomach. Or lie on my side. Or relax my shoulder.
The winning solution for sleep so far is to use a small pillow under the front of my tattoo’d shoulder so I can sorta sleep on my stomach and keep the shoulder propped up. It’s not unlike my sleep solution for when I first hurt my shoulder, except that was on my back.
An even better solution (thanks, Angi!) was to switch from using lotion to using vitamin E oil. So soothing. Difficult to avoid overuse, though.
I’ve been conflicted between wanting all this to be over with–to just have a damn tattoo already–and enjoying the strangeness of what’s happening. Now that the pain’s mostly abated, I’m feeling more in-the-moment.
Anyway, in the midst of all of this, I’ve finally caught up on some innernet reading:
Keep reading >>
Okay, not “already”. 2011 was long as hell and busy.
I resumed going to church fairly regularly. Had my perspective on interpersonal communications majorly shifted. Got married to a great fellow. Got a running partner. Made good progress on my novel. Learned how to incorporate a business. Paid off my student loans (!!!). Lost some weight. Got stronger, more fit, and resumed dancing. Made and held to some good financial plans. Blogged pretty regularly.
Still feel like I only did about half of what I “should have”, of course, but I’m happy with the year, overall. I succeeded at most of what I wanted,
I’m going to finish my last sliver of debt. I’m going to finish not having a long-term financial plan. I’m going to get married. I’m going to finish my novel. I’m going to finish not being happy enough,
and made good headway on what I didn’t finish.
Regardless, 2012 shall be a more adventurous year, featuring new employment, two trips/vacations, and a plethora of writing, coding, financial management, and gettin’ fizzit.
It’s been a hot minute since I posted any links. Apparently this is also the Elf Sternberg addition, since three of his posts appear here. Good stuff.
Then donate. (Mine is in the queue, and I’m so excited to see what I get!)
I’ve become too much of a people person to want to detach and be a pure observer. I’m not sure that Stoicism is a good fit for me, but after reading Elf’s account, my curiosity is piqued. Keep reading >>
$25,691.32 in student loans, paid off as of today. That’s $30,100 (give or take $100) of debt paid off total over the last 3.5 years of financial consciousness.
I think I’m supposed to throw a party or something.
I’m still kinda in shock.
One (of a thousand) things I’ve let slide in the last year of struggles is one of my most favoritest: dance.
I haven’t been to belly dance class since at least last summer, haven’t learned any new moves or choreographies, and have barely practiced on my own.
I told myself that “when everything was more under control”, that I’d go back.
Well, that “everything” got under some sort of “control”, but then recovering from that was exhausting, and then healing stuff that’s been askew in my life forever is too all over the place.
The thing is I know not to wait for life to get to back to “normal” before living it. I’m already living it, however it comes. Live it like I want it to be.
So when a buddy said, “Hey, let’s try this West African dance class,” I said, “Sure!”
My passport has arrived. My Amazon cruise fell through due to concerns of sketchiness. Where was I going to go for my first trip out of the country?
My colleague has picked a marathon… in Iceland. I need no such excuse–I’m just going to Iceland because it’s Iceland.
End of August, five nights, right before DragonCon. Lagoon and coastal tours are already planned, and restaurants are being picked.
I can’t even read the street names on the maps of Reykjavik. This is going to be awesome!
(This is fourth in a series of posts about Atlanta Poly Weekend 2013.)
Now for a downside of my APW 2013 experience: ableism.
I didn’t perceive very much physical ableism except for an awkward-as-hell “lame” reference in the closing ceremonies. I don’t think anyone even laughed. Then again, I know I’m also less sensitive to physical ableism than mental, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more.
For the mental ableism… it was everywhere. Therapists there used the word “crazy” and people talked about their “crazy, bipolar” exes. One person even said their ex was so crazy “they shouldn’t have been allowed to date.”
(This is third in a series of posts about Atlanta Poly Weekend 2013.)
I was utterly delighted at how many panels and discussions touched on questions of identity and codependence. I mean “identity” here as a self-discovery and self-listening process, rather than the external application of labels.
I’m early yet in my own exploration of codependence and the unhealthy behaviors I’ve harbored for many years. One of the things I’m focusing on is (re)discovering my own life patterns and identity. It’s a large component in why I moved into my own apartment.
When I saw a 5-7 adult family (with kids!) at APW, my first thought was, “Holy fuck, how do they stay themselves?”
(This is second in a series of posts about Atlanta Poly Weekend 2013.)
Puck: Hi, I’m Puck.
Me: I’m Melissa.
Puck: What’s your preferred pronoun?
Me: Um? “She.”
Puck: Mine’s “they.”
I’ve never been asked my preferred pronoun before.
Jackie wished she could have gone. She’s poly, too: she loves everybody.
APW–or “Ay Pee Dub”, as the kids say1–is Atlanta Poly Weekend (SFW), and I went to it for $50 and half a hotel room.
Holy. Shit.
I’m going to a conference this weekend, so I’ve been preplanning all my time slots (double- and triple-booked, of course, as I do). My last conference was DragonCon, and it used a DragonCon-branded mobile app that was built using Core-Apps’ EventLink and FollowMe platforms. It really struggled to keep up with the heft of DragonCon–every load of or task-switch to the app checked the servers for event info and friends’ statuses, I don’t think Twitter postings worked, and the app crashed pretty frequently on my iPhone 4, particularly when network conditions were bad.
I really, really hope DragonCon switches to Guidebook this year.
The conference this weekend is much smaller than DragonCon, but Guidebook is already a much smoother experience just for preplanning. The UI is clean and unbranded by the con itself, I can have multiple cons (or museums, or schools, or associations) in my guidebook without having to have separate apps for each. It’s quick and easy to see my personal schedule, and the app is fast and feels lightweight.
I want to see more apps this cleanly designed.
Irrsinn.net by Melissa Avery-Weir is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The fiction segment of this site is driven by Elf Sternberg's Narrator system.
