Bunny’s TMI

We had dinner with a bunch of friends at Ricksha (I can never recall how they spell it, Rickshaw? Meh) for their $1 sushi night. Their list is really short though so I ended up having koroke and edamame to round out my dinner. They close at 9pm so we actually got home and to bed at a decent time. I even managed to still do my five minutes of exercise in spite of my headache/migraine. I have just under an hour till I have to leave, but I want to bake cookies for a friend coming into town tonight from Reno, and the ones I want to make need at least an hour to chill in the fridge, so I’m off!

I had to get up early for my neurology appointment, which I still ended up being late to due to getting lost driving… and then getting lost in the building too. I found out my headaches are actually migraines (usually- it depends on the type of pain). The Dr. wants me to keep a headache log, so I’ve decided to try using Twitter via IM as a log since it captures the date/time and I almost always have easy access to IM. More so than a piece of paper I’d have to remember to carry and pull out (and I type faster than I write) or an Excel doc I’d have to email or edit online. I guess I could use google docs, but I think I’m preferring Twitter already.

Going out for $1 sushi tonight with friends, and I need to get back to some lunch time phone calls I need to make.

Or in this case, pdf winner.

In other news, I think I’m finally done with the project I’m working on with annoying guy at work. WHEW!

I’m getting back into being more productive at lunch too. Laundry is going and I’m posting!

One of my three credit cards is paid off. The second will be in 2-3 months, and then the final one by the end of the year.

I’m looking forward to getting to reduce my hours and find a good balance between work, relationships, me time, responsibilities, etc.

I’m actually thinking maybe a 2 hour lunch would be enough. Time to be productive and also get a nap. And leaves the evenings free to socialize or relax.

I’m sure I have more to catch up on, but right now I can only think of my to do lists. Like, finish taxes, google map directions & drive time for my nuerologist appointment, stuff like that.

So back to enjoying my lunch with my fiance and my kitties.

I’m actually staying at my current job, they were able to match (and actually beat!) the other offer, so the only real worry I had about switching jobs is gone. I don’t have to feel guilty about leaving so soon, I don’t have to deal with the stress from switching jobs and starting new again. And I’m really happy and able to really settle in at work even more now that I know I’ll be here until my fiance graduates and finds work somewhere.

It was a really hard decision to make, the new job sounded really fun, and the people seemed really nice and were so excited, so turning them down was really hard. But leaving would have been even harder. I had to do what was best for me health wise.

Anyway, time to get ready for work!

So the job situation is up in the air somewhat at the moment. Either way I have one, and either way it will be transitioning to an alternate schedule December 2008. Hopefully it gets settled soon so I can put the stress from making these decisions behind me.

The second batch of chocolate bars from CostPlus.

The NewTree Forgiveness (Dark chocolate with lemon).
You’d think this would be good, but the flavor just didn’t do it for me. Part of it was that it was a really hard and dry chocolate. I tried melting it to soften it up but accidentally burnt it, so I don’t know if that would have helped. And I didn’t like it enough to bother trying it again.

The Hachez Cocoa D’Arriba (77% cacao with mango & chili). We normally like the chili ones, and we both do like mangos, but this one kinda flopped. The chili is hardly noticable while the mango is strong - but seems over sweet or artificial (though the ingredient only lists natural mango flavor and nothing artificial).

We also recently tried the World’s Finest Chocolate W.F. Crisp (milk chocolate with crisped rice) that HK’s cousin gave us. I actually liked that, the chocolate was thick and smooth, with a good balance of crunch. The mints and caramels were good too. They disappeared in one day at work, and I couldn’t resist having two or three of each.

We ended up melting the crisp and the D’Arriba to use for fondue, which worked out fairly well.

Still have one more bar to try before stocking up again.

I’m looking at redesigning the site with just CSS, so I’m going with the boring default for a bit while I test things out.

I have a backlog of updates to do, but this one can’t wait.

Thursday I interviewed for a 50% time web job on campus. I was supposed to hear back from them next week, but they called today with a job offer. So now I have some decisions to make.

They can’t offer me the max pay for the position. But! They offered to make the position full time for a set number of months (the number of months needed to pay off my debt) before going back to 50% variable. They also sounded ok with the fact that I don’t want the position to go back to 100% after my debt is gone. Temporarily for certain projects sure, but long term? Not so much.

If I do this it would also be only a slight raise compared to what I’m making now. I need to crunch the numbers and be sure that I could still pay all the necessary bills once I go to half time.

Possible downsides: My current bosses and coworkers (except for the token one person of course) are awesome and I love working with them. That might not be true at the new position. But if it is then I can just look for a another new position or see if my current one is still open.

I feel bad leaving my current position after barely six months with the training they invested in me.
On the other hand, I don’t want to let guilt keep me a wage slave.

Also as far as the guilt goes, I also mentioned that I’d like to give a month’s notice instead of two weeks and they were ok with that too. And the temp my current boss has right now might be interested in my position, which would make it easy to train my replacement.

I considered the possibility of working both positions at half time until they find a replacement, but that can take a long time and I don’t know that I could handle the added stress. My therapist already warned me that working two jobs halftime each is more tiring than one full time job. I’d still be available via email/phone/im to answer questions.

So the last question is really can I afford to go half time with the pay they’re offering? Calculator time!

I fixed the master bath faucets. The cold handle had gotten all loose and wonky and they hot had been drippy since I moved in. It was getting to the point where we’d have to really crank both closed hard just to reduce the drip to a mall one. I got them apart, replaced the bad washers and cleaned things up, replaced the bad screw on the cold handle and put them back together. I tested to make sure they work, we’ll see if the slow drip is really gone.

We also installed the new shower head we got at Home Depot since we had the water off anyway. That seems to be working too, though it might have a drip where the hose attaches, I took it off and put it back on so hopefully it will be ok.

I used the instructions from here:
http://www.hammerzone.com/archives/plumbing/faucet/washer/replace.htm
http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=17727&pageIndex=2
And the Ace hardware guy was super helpful.

I didn’t need any of the specialty tools, just the screwdrivers, adjustable wrench and adjustable pliers I already had. So I only needed to buy silicone lubricant (stinky!) and two washers and an O ring (we lost one somewhere along the way). WAY cheaper than having a plumber come do it!

Or at least from CostPlus World Market.

I need to write this down before I forget. Last time we stocked up on chocolate bars from there we got:

• Dagoba Xocolatl 74% Chilies and Nibs
  - We share this with friends and I didn’t give it proper attention. I remember liking it but not being wowed by it.
• Ghirardelli Espresso Escape™ - This was good, but not as good as I expected for some reason. Maybe a tad too bitter with the coffee and dark chocolate.
• Chuao Spicy Maya Bar - First spicy chocolate I’ve been disappointed in. The best I can say is that it was ok. I think I might even like Dove’s plain dark chocolate better. Plus their web site sucks. Frames = not good.

We just picked up three more today, so hopefully I’ll remember to blog them as we try them. We got a lemon dark chocolate, mango & chili dark chocolate, and another spicy dark chocolate.

So far though the Vosges Fire is our favorite of the spicy chocolate bars.

I think we’ve both figured out after the Scharffen Berger factory tour that we like flavored darks the best, though a plain semi-dark is still better than a flavored milk chocolate. The darkest one on the tour was just a bit too dark. But I enjoy milk chocolate when it’s with other flavors I like. I had the Ghirardelli holiday pack, and surprisingly I like the peppermint one the best, the almond second and the eggnog third. I thought it would be the exact opposite order.