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Inspired by Missing FinCon15
Starting today, a number of awesome people are descending on Charlotte, NC for FinCon15. I attended FinCon in 2012 and 2013, but have not been able to go the last two years. I miss the conference overall, but I really miss the people: Jana of JanaSays, Joe of Stacking Benjamins (and The Free Financial Advisor where he writes as Average Joe), and Kathleen of Frugal Portland (and now also Stacking Benjamins). Those are just three of the awesome people I have connected with, and stayed connected with. I want to make a plan to attend FinCon16. At the same time, I wonder if I can really call myself a financial…
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Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir
The Martian is soon to be a major motion picture starring Matt Damon. I know this not only because the cover the book tells me so, but because I saw commercials for the movie this weekend during football. Not that this matters much to me, I will not see the movie until it is available on HBO or Netflix or something similar, because we pretty much never see movies in the theater. However, this is not a movie review (which would be really hard as the movie is not out yet) but a book review. And the book is out. And the book is good. And I would totally recommend…
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In Defense of “What’s Up?”
You have likely seen this meme before. And you likely agree with it, at least in some fashion. Yes, you think, I want to talk to people about things that “matter”, small talk is for small minds, “what’s up” is nothing you care about. What if I were to tell you that all of your talking about “atoms, death, aliens, faraway galaxies” was in fact, small talk, and small talk for the express purpose of not having the important, deep conversations about “what’s up”? When I care about someone, I do, in fact, want to know, what’s up. I want to know how their job is going. I want to…
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I Am an Extrovert. I Hate Crowds.
Often it seems as if my social media feeds are overtaken by memes about introverts. As a somewhat rare extrovert among my friend group, I feel the need to share some information about extroverts. Let us start with the plain and simple fact that all extroverts are not the same. Most of my friends are familiar with the Myers Briggs personality types. Most of the free MBTI tests just give you your personality results. For example, I am an ENFP – extrovert, intuitive, feeling, and perceiving. What those free tests do not show you, but the more complete tests do, is that you are on a scale, a continuum, so…
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Book Review: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
I thought the hardest part about writing a review of a book that has been famous as long as The Handmaid’s Tale has been would be the fact that most people who want to read this book already have, or at least, already know they want to read it. That, and anything there really is to be said about the book has already been said, and probably by more talented critics than myself. But that is not true. The hardest part about writing a review of The Handmaid’s Tale, a book first published in 1986, is how relevant it still is, almost 30 years later. And sadly, that comment is…
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An Open Letter to the Blogger on Scary Mommy Who Got Arrested for Disciplining Her Child
This is an open letter to the author of this post on Scary Mommy – The Time I Got Arrested for Disciplining My Child. I do not know when it was written/posted, so it might be a year old. But I saw it for the first time today. Dear Samara, You do not know me, and we will likely never meet. But I want to introduce myself. Like you, I am a mother doing the best I can. I am not perfect, far from it. And honestly most of my mistakes come around discipline. It is certainly the area where C and I are most likely to disagree. I…
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The War on Girly
Recently, in a conversation with my daughter’s sister’s mother (trust me, this is not the most confusing relationship you can get when you adopt), I made the comment that if I had had control over the situation, there would be a lot less Barbie in my daughter’s life. But, she arrived at my house with a number of Barbies and a love of playing with them, so, short of taking away some of her favorite toys for no reason beyond the fact that I am not a huge fan, I had no control in the matter. I do not hate Barbie. I just think there are better toys out there,…
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Quantity vs Quality
I recently attended a training on Liberating Structures. These are simple tools that can be used in meetings/large group events to accomplish more in less time. One of the Liberating Structures is called Wicked Questions. These are questions you ask that seem contradictory. For me, the Wicked Question as it relates to this blog is “How can I maintain a semi-regular posting schedule so that there is new content for the readers while still only publishing posts that I believe are interesting to my audience and of the quality that I want?” I realize that this may not seem like that difficult to others, but as someone who previously blogged…
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House Hunting for Fun
So even though we are happily in our house, I still love looking at houses. And this weekend, a house literally just down the street from us had an open house, so we popped in. Neighborhood House: $405,000, 3 bedrooms, 2.25 bathrooms (1 full, 1 half, 1 three-quarter), 1,860sqft, 8,063 sqft lot, 2 car garage The Good: The house has a nice large, one level, fully fenced back yard. There are some holes in the fence here and there, but those are easily fixed. It has a true two car garage with some extra storage space. The downstairs is finished, but not so finished that you could not do something…
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Learning Lessons from Being Wrong
Every once in a while, I realize exactly how lucky Pop Tart is to have C. I do not mean in a way that she is lucky to have been adopted (because if she were truly lucky, she never would have ended up in the foster system to begin with). I mean that there is C to balance me out. I am the bad parent. I am the unsympathetic parent. I am the parent who does not naturally react in the way her therapist thinks we should, because it goes against my grain. Tonight, C kicked me out of the house. I was planning on going out to write anyway,…
