Weekly Round Up: The Sellout

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Yes, I know I'm a bit off schedule but bear with me and we'll catch up on all the things.  Today lemme tell you the latest in food, workouts, my Nora Ephron binge, and how the jobby job thing worked out.  In a few days I'll come back to tell you about my latest trip.  

Let's start off with a picture of stepdog in my office in her best "Zoom pose".  We brought in the white mat so that she has a comfy place to rest that's not right behind my desk chair, and that spot just so happens to be visible when I'm on camera.  I had a lot of on-camera meetings yesterday and she faithfully attended them all.

I'm trying to figure out how to handle my blogging life.  It works best if I write on Sunday and edit and publish on Monday, but now that I usually make day trips on weekends it's harder to find time to write on Sundays. Mondays are always a little busier/crappier due to the start of the work week, which doesn't always lend itself to taking time out to chitchat on the bloggo.  The next few weeks are going to have action packed weekends, so the trend will continue for a bit.  Until I come up with the answer, I'll just post "late" and be flexible about what the definition of the week is that we're rounding up.

Eats

I had a solo weeknight at home recently, which gave me a chance to try out a new recipe.  I'm not the biggest fan of the NYT Cooking section, but the crispy tofu with cashews caught my eye.

I took two shortcuts which made this a very fast meal to get on the table:

• Tofu - used a package of frozen deep fried tofu that I got from the Asian market (note to self - I need to hit up the Asian market very soon to restock).
• Veggies - skipped the snow peas and tossed a few handfuls of Costco stir fry veggies in the air fryer to cook up while I was making the sauce.
  

The sauce has coconut milk and there were a few reviews that said that the sauce was bland.  I was tempted to add some spice, but I held off and followed the recipe, which turned out to be a wise choice.  This definitely has a strong coconut taste to it, and IMO it's a good thing.  Next time I will increase the veggies a bit (I used two cups which only lasted for two servings).

Workouts

I'm definitely behind in my updates here.  A few weeks ago I finished the Caroline Girvan CGX app beginners series.  The takeaways:

• I care less about lifting the heaviest weight that I can manage and instead go for the one that...you know feels like I'm lifting something heavy and leave it at that. 
• I'm now Team Bodyweight for lunges.  It's not that I *can't* do them with weights but I have better form and feel like I get more out of them without added weight.  The series started with bodyweight exercises, so that was how I figured out that the bodyweight sets>weighted sets.
  
• There's some hope on the pushup front, but I still have to do them outside of my strength workouts.  The video in the form library was very helpful.  Basically if I can get my whole body engaged I can do pushups very well, it's just that my body doesn't always play along.

My plan from here is to do full body workouts three times a week.  I had been pairing a short lower body and a short upper body workout each day, but I was getting FOMO for the new Iron program, so I decided to do the Iron full body workouts on Fridays in real time as they are released.  I used this week to catch up on Iron and then I'll go back to short lower & upper on Mon & Wed and full body Iron on Fridays.  Once I run out of short workouts I'll dip into full body workouts on the Youtube channel.

On the cardio side, I'm continuing with a variety of "I made it up myself" 20 minute run-walk on weekdays and a longer run-walk on Saturday.  I hope you're sitting down when I tell you that I'm up to 4 minute running intervals on weekdays and [gasp] there was a 0.75 mile interval in last Saturday's workout.  I might possibly run an entire mile this Saturday just for yuks.  Or not.  TBD.

Watching

I am in the middle of a Nora Ephron binge in my watching and reading lives.  Two things happened to bring this on - the movie side of it is that I saw a reference to the "trilogy" of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You've Got Mail.  I'll talk about the other thing in a second when I get to books.  

I saw When Harry Met Sally last year, so I saw the next installment in "the trilogy" over the weekend.  I'd seen Sleepless back in the 90s, and while it didn't hit me like Sally, I still enjoyed it.  My takeaway was wondering how Jennifer Anniston's hair became a thing in the 90s when she had Meg Ryan's hair as competition.  I believe that there was a Topsy Tail involved.

 

I'll be hitting up Mail as soon as time allows.

Reading

The second thing that kicked off the Nora binge was HI NICOLE raving about I Feel Bad About My Neck.  I'd read it back when I was a spring chicken in my early 30s and enjoyed it back then, but it's a book that you definitely grow into with age.  I grabbed the audio book to take along on my weekend trip.

At the age of 48 I do not yet feel bad about my neck, so I'll check back in with the book sometime in my mid 50s, but I howled when I heard the title of the second chapter: I Hate my Purse.  YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This book is such a gem, and a very efficient audio listen at 4 hours.  

My next move from here will be I Remember Nothing - which I also read back in the day and aptly the only thing that I remember from it was her takedown of egg white omelettes.  I'll report back.

In my non-Ephron reading.  I've got a lot going on.  First up is some Proper Non Fiction.  Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark was a recommendation from Purple (aka my favorite person on the internet).  I can't find the post but just go to her blog and you'll find something good.  While I was waiting for the library hold to come in, I polished off another of his books, How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times. 

These are good books, it's just the time issue of being able to implement any of his suggestions.  Or if I'm being honest, the desire to take the time to implement any of his suggestions.  Yes I could polish up the ol' writing but it's hard work you know?

I'm not ready to move on from ATGIB quite yet so I started Tomorrow Will Be Better, which is Betty Smith's second book.  I'm trying to pretend that we're still in book club and was reading a chapter a day, but I've kind of fallen off the wagon.  I haven't gotten far enough in to tell you what it's about, besides a 17 year old Brooklyn girl who's just finished high school and is working at her first job.  I know it's not going to be anywhere near as good as ATGIB, but it's still a good book.

And finally, I'm also reading Pictures of You by Caroline Levitt.  It's the story of the aftermath of a fatal car crash.  It's OK, good enough to keep reading but not an OMG-drop-everything-and-pick-this-one-up-NOW kind of a deal.

Werk Update (Sellout Edition)

I waited until I had my new offer in writing to do the update, and then I was bored with the whole thing and couldn't get motivated to write about it.

For posterity, the initial offer was a $15k raise.  I did a little pushing and was able to move $5k from my bonus to my base pay - so technically it's the same amount of money but I'll get it on each pay check instead of quarterly and it gives me some protection if they ever decide to pay less than 100% of bonus. 

So at the end of the day my base salary will go up by $20k which now brings me to the elusive Dream Number for salary.

Sigh...that's enough to keep me at my desk for now.  I'm not sure if it's the right decision, but at least it's one that's easily reversible;-)

The only point of staying at work is just to have a little more time to get comfortable with not working (though I am pretty much there) and to build up a little more cash and possibly avoid having to go back later.  It's easier to work for big pay now than to step out of the workforce and then possibly come back in later for less pay - well financially it's easier, not so much on the emotional side.  I think my grand plan now is to give work two more years to get good - if I can't find a job that I enjoy in that time then I'll hang it up and play the FIRE card.  Yes I'm still looking, but being pickier in what I apply to for the time being.

My target date to get out is now July 1, 2025.  I'll be 50 so that means I'll be a proper grown up at that point.  And oh yes that date lines up with a stock vesting, of course it does.

See you in a bit to talk about my latest weekend trip.