Funding My Unemployment

More easy listening.

Deciding to take a few months off work takes some planning, and some foresight. Which means before I resigned I probably should have ran some numbers to see if I had the funds to pull it off. Better late than never, I suppose. My objective is to determine my allowable discretionary cash burn rate.

·         I know how much I’m going to have to pay for my cell phone and car insurance.

·         My parents say I have to get health insurance so I've gotten pricing just for some basic high-deductible catastrophic insurance.

·         I've roughly mapped out road trips so I can calculate my gas.

·         I've gotten a sublet in Ann Arbor which will be $320 a month, and I’m going to pay my roommate here $50 a month to store my stuff. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do for September and October. Since I’ll be in Europe for a portion of September I might bum around that month. Hopefully by October I’ll be starting a new job, but right now it is kind of a guess.

·         I've factored in lodging for campgrounds and $1,500 for a trip to Europe. That would be more but I’m getting free flights to and from the continent.

So I subtracted all that from my starting funds, and found out how much is left and then divided that evenly over the 6 months to determine how much I discretionary spending I will have.  It worked out to $900 a month or $30 a day for food, drink and necessities. Luckily from my college days I’ve found out that $20 split between Taco Bell and Malt Liquor can go a long way, leaving $10 a day for toilet paper from all that Taco Bell and Malt Liquor.

I know what you’re thinking. What happens at the end of October when you have no money? The story there is that my starting amount is just what I budgeted for this endeavor. I have a reserve fund that could last me another 6 months without a job, but by that point I would probably find something to do even if it was menial. Otherwise I can use my reserve fund to set up in a new city once I figure out what I want to do.

I Resigned My Job

Some easy listening for the post.

It's true. I formally resigned my job last Friday. It is the biggest life event to happen to me since I started my job. After almost 4 years with my organization I hit the ceiling for growth and was just treading water. There were no opportunities for advancement, and even so the only promotions I could get would be jobs that would make me miserable. At the same time with the budget reductions I had very little work and was staring down a furlough that was going to cut my pay anyways. It was a good time to leave.

Even so, I'll look back on my first job with a since of thankfulness  I really did cherish the work I did and the people I've worked with. I'm very grateful for the opportunity but I'm also looking forward to doing something different.

The other reason I chose to leave my job is that ever since moving out here I've always dreamed of going back to Ann Arbor for at least a summer. I've decided to spend the summer living in Ann Arbor and travelling around the country visiting friends and family. I'm going to road trip from Seattle to Ann Arbor at the beginning of June, and then planning an east coast road trip for July or August. Then I'm looking at going to Europe in September for Oktoberfest. So if you live in the US, or want to go to Oktoberfest and would like to see me, let me know. I will drive to your house and sleep on your floor.

Eventually I'll need to go back to work. Probably after I return from Oktoberfest. Which also means I'll be looking for a job starting this summer. I've also been thinking about staring an enterprise, which I think would be fulfilling and challenging.

As always, I tell myself that I'm going to blog more. I'm really hoping this is true. To inspire me, I've changed the banner name.

The Championship Post That Wasn't

I spent the last few days thinking about what I would post if Michigan won the National Championship. By the time Michigan was up 1 at halftime I had a pretty good outline of what I was going to write.

I was planning to start with my own history with Michigan BBall during my college years and talk about how I suffered through the Amaker era. I wanted to touch on how during the 2007 season I could just show up to games, flash my MCard and walk down into Maize Rage without a ticket.

I'd tell some of the stories too. About how in 2008 I bet my best friend that we wouldn't be a top 4 seed in the NCAA tournament for the next two years (a bet which I won by the way). How in 2009 Penn State filed a formal complaint with the Big Ten regarding my behavior at one of the games. I wanted to write about how I went down to Crisler in 2009 to watch Michigan get a 10 seed in the selection show and then skipped two days of class to go watch the opening round of the tournament it Kansas City because "who knows the next time Michigan will make the tourney"? It wouldn't all be fun though, I wouldn't overlook having to watch Michigan get bounced out in the first round of the 2012 tourney in Nashville (which I didn't blog about because it was also a bachelor party).

I really wanted wax poetic about the journey the program made between 2008 and now. I wanted to write about Manny Harris, DeShawn Sims and how much hope we had for Zack Novak and Stu Douglass. Then I would transition into how Zack and Stu would have Vogrich type roles with the talent we had on this year's team.

My big gamble would be the centerpiece of the story. About how I was so sure this would be a special team with Trey Burke back that I bet $40 Michigan would win it all before the season began. Yeah, it would be hard not to brag about "calling it" and collecting my $1,000 at the 25:1 odds I got back in September. I'd probably also brag about how my Yahoo bracket of Michigan beating Louisville in the finals put me in the top tenth of the 99th percentile instead of sitting at 88th percentile. I'd ensure the reader that I was never off the bandwagon.

Instead I'm left thinking of all these things, but surprisingly not being that upset (except about all the stupid things I could have spent that grand on). I'm still really proud of how far this team has come since I started going to games in 2007, and I'm even more proud of where this team is going. I'm more excited for the future than nostalgic for the past which has become an ever increasing rarity for me.

Go Blue.

"Happy Bday Bruss"

In what has turned into a very sad yearly exercise for the blog I now present my annual gripe about the number of birthday Facebook posts I receive. I've updated the chart from the 2011 post to now reflect the last two years worth of data.

Birthday Facebook Wall Posts by Year

So I'm back up to my historical averages, and I've officially attributed 2011's pathetic haul to a fluke that hid my birthday on Facebook. But that does provide insightful data that only about 6 people remember my birthday without the help of Facebook  In addition to the wall posts, I got 3 emails, 1 Google chat status, 4 text messages, 2 phone calls and 1 card. The winner of best text message goes to my sister Laura who sent me "Birthday Boy!!" continually throughout the day at perfect 2 hour intervals.

Unfortunately there was no post from Mr. Ray.

This post title is from the hands-down most common facebook post I received  although a younger me would have gone with the exceptional "Happy Birthday Fart Face" from my friend Beth.

Moving Again

Last Thursday night I finished moving for the 9^th time in the last 8 years. My favorite move was when I moved from State and Arbor to State and Hoover in college. The entire move was only about 200 yards, and I took most of my stuff to the new house via my childhood wagon. An amusing aside, while moving my clothes a cop pulled over my wagon and searched it thinking I was hiding a keg underneath the clothes.

The new house with the Jeep

I lived in my last residence for 2 and a half years, the longest I’ve lived in the same place since I moved out of my parents house when I was 18. It was a perfect townhouse for someone coming out of college and wanting more space than an apartment, but not ready for a house.  My roommate on the other hand is 4 years older than me and ready for the house. After much procrastinating he bought a house a few miles away from where we lived. It has a lot more space, an acre of land and a garage. It's not the house I would have bought, but he seems happy with the purchase. It means that I can no longer walk downtown or to the post office. It also means that I had to move from a large bedroom with its own bathroom and walk-in closet to a much smaller room with a shared bathroom and no walk in closet.  But the rent I’ll be paying to my roommate is such a good deal, that it wasn’t worth it to move somewhere else or pay rent in the townhouse by myself.

I spent the last two weeks slowly moving things from one house to the other. I went up to Mt. Baker last weekend so I had to do most of the moving during the weeknights. It really made me think about the things I need vs. the things I have.  It went from things I needed for the next 2 weeks, to things I needed for the next few days, to the next night, to the next couple hours. I eventually went full opium den with just a mattress, computer, change of clothes and a towel.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be living in this house. It’s not exactly where I envisioned myself spending my middle 20s. I realized just how much stuff I have that I don’t need and I’m considering just keeping some of that stuff packed away unless I need it. On one hand, it’s nice accumulating the stuff that you always wanted but on the other it’s relieving being able to live with just what you need and little more. In college I only owned what I could fit into a bedroom and moving was easy. Those days are gone and every move I make from now on is going to be a pain in the buns.

My 1984 CJ-7

I really enjoy my Camaro. It's a great car and is fun to drive. But it has a few drawbacks that doesn't make it the ideal vehicle for every situation. Firstly, it's quite enclosed so on nice days it is hard to enjoy the sun while driving. Secondly, it's a rear wheel drive vehicle that doesn't do so well in the snow. I found this out the hard way in December when we received a couple of inches and my Camaro got stuck in the lot at work for a few hours.

So I decided to purchase a second vehicle that would be fun to drive in the summer and could go places the Camaro couldn't. After looking around for awhile I bought a 1984 CJ-7 from a guy on Craigslist. He had just finished completely redoing the body and had done some work on the interior.

This is the only picture I have of her, since she has mostly been in the garage.

Part of the reason I chose to buy such an old jeep and not like a 90's Wrangler is that I wanted something I could work on. I was looking for a vehicle that I could also spend some time fixing up. Since body work is not my forte I was glad that this jeep was freshly painted.  Buying a 30 year old vehicle that has 113k miles on her means there will pretty much always be stuff to do.

I realized exactly how soon I would have to start working when I started driving it home from Olympia and she died on the way and couldn't get started again. Job-1: Purchase and install a new battery. From there she did fine on the highway home until I got to a red light where the engin would stall every time the vehicle came to a stop. I eventually got her home after a very long trip, but Job-2 was to disassemble and clean the venturi assembly in the carburetor and reset the mixture screws to the manufacturers specs.

Last week I attacked some of the electrical problems. The tach, fuel gauge and radio were all dead and a ground somewhere was constantly draining the battery. Job-3 was the fuel gauge where the fix was as simple as finding and connecting the right wires. Job-4 was the tach which was hard wired to the battery for some reason. Job-5 was the most important, finding a live wire to connect power to the radio which for some reason had been cut.

This week Job-6 was replacing a dried and leaking gasket on the 258 straight 6 valve cover which took the better part of two nights. It would have been an easier job if there wasn't a stupid bolt in the 3/4 of an inch between the valve cover and the firewall.

Right before putting the valve cover gasket on

I also had the enjoyment of registering the vehicle and paying the absurd WA state use tax, which requires people to pay sales tax on things they buy from other private citizens. So if I bought an Xbox on craigslist or scalped some concert tickets, I as supposed to pay the state 9.8% of the purchase price. Obviously no one does that but when it comes to vehicles the State actually has an effective way to collect the tax by not issuing a registration until you pay. I guess that's what we get for not having an income tax.

This weekend I took down Job-7 and Job-8; the first was flushing the radiator. I had to disconnect most of the hoses to get to the valve cover off, so why not put some new coolant in. Job-8 was a simple oil change and a new filter.

Since the guy I bought it from had only had it to do the body work, I really don't know the last time it's had any maintenance done so I'm pretty much assuming that everything needs to be checked or changed. It's been a good amount of work the past two weeks, but I've really enjoyed having something to do each night and it's gotten me off the couch. I think I've taken care most of the major stuff I'm aware of right now. My goal is to have it in good shape by the summer so I can take the top and doors off and go up into the mountains with her.

I think the next few jobs will be changing the air filter, tracing down a bad connection somewhere in the speaker wires and checking the brakes which seem a little iffy.

I'm looking excited to having another vehicle and especially one that I can work on. The other nice thing is that when I drive the Jeep onto the ferry I get a discount because she is so short.

Passive-Aggressive Notes

I'm not newcomer to the world of passive-aggressive notes. I've seen my fair share. For example, take this little gem from our Sophomore year house.

Now, I was only tangentially involved, but it does highlight the brilliance of a quality response to the passive-aggressive note. Yes, I've been to the website.

Anyways, I found myself holding a passive aggressive note from my neighbor just this week. Admittedly, it wasn't overly passive-aggressive, and she probably has a good point. But I still needed to respond to let her know three things, and didn't really feel like being a total dick, like I've done in the past..

1) I'm aware of her complaint. 

2) I do not intend to do anything about her complaint. 

3) If she waits a bit the problem may just solve itself.

So here is her note, and my riposte.

Not my greatest work, but still good enough to blog about.