Omnibus

Omnibus |ˈämnəˌbəs| : (noun) an anthology of the works of a single author or a volume containing several novels or other items previously published separately. ¶ There’s your word of the day. This section just combines all the other sections of my site on one page in chronological order. Specifically paginated chronological order, ten articles to a page.

Sewing Whatsits—The Tomato Berry

Posted on 21 Jan 2011 by Rae

When I was a kid rifling through my grandmother’s sewing supplies, I always got a kick out of the little berry thing that hangs off of the traditional tomato pin cushion. I never understood what it was for, I just thought it was cute and silly. Ok, no past-tense about it. I still think it’s a little cute and silly. But now I know what it is for.

The berry is filled with emery, which is an abrasive powder. Emery is commonly affixed to boards to create files, among other uses. In this case, its purpose is to keep needles clean and sharp.

Over time and with use, needles and pins will dull, tarnish, and burr (to different degrees depending on the quality of the metal), making it more difficult to push them through fabric. By running needles through the emery berry a couple of times before use, you help keep them in better shape, so they work much better as they age.

So there you have it. The berry does have a purpose. The most common use is for hand-sewing needles, but it can help pins and even machine needles.

Although the image above is of mine, which is the cheap Dritz one I picked up at Joann Fabric, these days you can get a wide variety.

From the
Basic Red Tomato
or the
simple Dritz in various colors like mine
There are even
super-cute, funky ones

There are also many free pincushion patterns on the Web, so you can make your own. Use the emery berry off of an old tomato one that needs replacement, and you’ll still have the useful berry around.

Is there another sewing whatsit that you want to know more about? Let me know in the comments. Also, if you know of any super cute pincushions or pincushion patterns, pass them along! After writing this post, I feel like I need something much cooler than my yellow tomato.

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TurboTax Free vs. Freedom, 2010 edition

Posted on 17 Jan 2011 by Rae

Last year, I posted “Don’t Let TurboTax Free Edition Fool You—You Probably Want FREEDOM Edition,” and it is one of the most often viewed posts on this site. Here’s the update for 2010. In short, before you try the Federal Free Edition, make sure you don’t qualify for Freedom Edition, which will allow you to file more than 1040-EZ and also allow you to file your state for free (in participating states).

Freedom Edition: Do you qualify?

  • Your AGI is under $31,000 (same as last year)
  • You are/were active duty military in 2010 with an AGI under $58,000 (up from last year)
  • You qualify for the Earned Income Credit (EIC) Find out if you qualify at IRS.gov

If any of these are true for you, try the TurboTax Freedom edition.

If you do qualify, you can also file for free in these states: AL, AR, AZ, GA, IA, ID, KY, MI, MN, MO, MS, NY, NC, ND, OK, OR, RI, SC, VA, VT, WV.

What are you waiting for? Head over to the IRS Free File portal today!

The IRS Free File program

TurboTax Federal Free is not associated with the IRS’ Free File program, which allows anyone with an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $58,000 or less e-file for free, including some state returns. TurboTax Freedom is.

What is AGI? Your AGI is your gross income minus any tax deductions and exemptions.

This means things like your personal exemption ($5,800 for single filers), retirement savings in your 401-k or Traditional IRA, Health Savings Accounts and other tax-deductible spending are deducted from your income. The result is your AGI.

TurboTax Freedom has stricter limits than the Free File program, so you may want to explore your options and choose another online preparer if your AGI is over $31,000.

The Free File page can help you choose the preparer that is right for you. Make sure to check if your chosen preparer will allow you to file your state income taxes as well.

More good news: because the normal deadline falls on Emancipation Day, meaning gov’t offices are closed to receiving mail and processing returns, you have until April 18 this year to file your taxes.

What’s the real difference?

For the most part, both programs step you through the process of filing, helping you make sure that you claim all the credits and deductions that you qualify for. Freedom Edition, since it isn’t restricted to Form 1040-EZ, has many more options and will allow you to itemize deductions, claim small business income, and capital gains or losses. Federal Free edition is very limited in what it will allow you to claim beyond the standard exemptions. You can’t itemize deductions at all.

What made me notice the difference is the cost of filing for state income taxes: Freedom Edition allows you to file states for free, so long as they also participate in the Free File program. Federal Free edition charges you $27.95 for each state.

Freedom edition does not have as nice of an interface, though, so if you want to be wowed by pretty graphics (at the expense of not filing for free), it’s not the program for you.

I am not a licensed tax preparer or financial professional of any kind. If you have questions about your taxes, you should consult a qualified tax professional. This is simply my observation based on my own research for filing my own taxes. This is also in no way sponsored by the IRS or Free File program. I just want everyone to be as educated as possible.

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Fired Up

Posted on 12 Jan 2011 by Rae

Fired Up by Jayne Ann Krentz

Book 1 of the Dreamlight Trilogy, book 7 of the Arcane Society

Putnum Adult, 2009 (Jove, 2011)

Rating: 3/5

Breaking my usual habit of reading a series from start to finish, after reading In Too Deep, I decided to jump back to book seven in the Arcane series, which happens to be the start of another trilogy.

This trilogy is tied together by the legend of Nicholas Winters, and the “burning lamp” he created at the end of the seventeenth century. Fired Up follows his direct descendent Jack Winters, who believes he’s going insane because of the curse of the Winters family—modified DNA from Nicholas’ experiments with the lamp causes increased power at age 36 for rare descendants.

According to the legend, Jack must find a powerful dreamlight reader—a woman who is sensitive to the unique waves given off in dreams, and also those contained within the lamp. Until she is able to save him, he must also stay off the radar of Jones & Jones, for fear that they will execute him as a monster—which he thinks he’s becoming because of the curse.

Enter Chloe Harper, member of a family of skilled artists with a history of making fake antiques, ids, and any other number of forgeries. She’s a strong dreamlight reader, and Jack’s perfect counter.

Like with In Too Deep, Krentz does a good job of providing plenty of information to the reader in case she hasn’t read the previous books in the series. Overall, there was very little feeling that I was missing something.

One thing that did bother me was transitioning. Some of the transitions between chapters and characters were very jarring. The worst is the first time we’re introduced to Fallon Jones in this book—we’re dumped straight into his point of view with no previous reference to him or his purpose in the story.

The trilogy is set as a present–past–future series. Check back next week for more on Burning Lamp, Amanda Quick’s follow up set in Victorian England.

Form your own opinion: Buy from Amazon or B&N

Preview it online: Google Books

This book was acquired with my own resources. No money or goods were exchanged for this review—it is my personal opinion, not that of the author, publisher or any other entity.

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The Curve is Apparent!

Posted on 11 Jan 2011 by Rae

So, back in November, I left you hanging about the progress of the bargello quilt. We didn’t have class in December, and I’m woefully behind because my machine was acting up and in the shop. But I have it back now, and it is time to get to work! Class this week focused on measuring and building borders, but I haven’t even completed the main part of the quilt. I need to finish it, have borders added and everything sandwiched for class in two weeks!

The progress so far

Because of how the color runs require swapping in and out different rows to get the color shift, the quilt is best constructed from the outside in. The pattern groups strips into different sections (A*–H*), and in my layout, B, C, F, and G all have strip swapping. This means from C-E, I’m able to focus on one side at a time, which I’ve done.

This is row groups A-D on the blue-dominant side. You can see two green shifts so far (of four total). Also, on the far right, I’ve moved into the more difficult mid-block insertion for the purple pieces.

This is section A and B for the green-dominant side. Only one shift has taken place here, which you can just barely see on the left of the photo (that’s the back side, because the section is hanging folded in half).

Overall, the progress has been pretty simple. Simply cut the right widths from the color run, swap out the required blocks for purple ones, and sew the strips together, alternating seam direction (sew every other one from the bottom up rather than top down). I’ve been sewing the strips for each group together (they range from 1–5 strips), then sewing each group to the next, rather than sewing each strip to the next for the whole quilt. As I mentioned when making the color runs, I think it lessens shifting and bowing.

You can see in the progress above that my current progress isn’t exactly square, although the angle of the photo and pinning I did exacerbate the problem in the photo.

One important thing to note when doing a staggered pattern like this is that the tops and bottoms of your rows will not be aligned. Rather, there will be a 1/4″ staggering effect because the half-blocks will not have the full seam allowance. Instead of trying to line up the rows, I start pinning by marking the midpoint of the second full block down and matching that up with the correct seam on the connecting row, then back tracking. If I ever find that my strips aren’t matching up correctly, I simply use that method again later, and adjust the ease through the intervening pieces.

Part of my issues with the progress being out-of-square is that I didn’t realize this until about 4 rows in. It’s much trickier on the narrow rows.

Mid-block insertions

For most rows, my plan to add in the purple contrasting curve simply requires removing one block from the color run and replacing it with a purple one of the correct width.

For a few strips, however, this would result in the purple taking over the existing curve, which I don’t want. So, toward the middle of the quilt, you’ll start to see partial blocks. The first one in the blue-dominant side is apparent on the far right of the progress.

I accomplish this by cutting out bits of the existing blocks (keep your seam allowances in mind!), and inserting the purple block midway, rather than substituting it for an entire block.

There are a few more like this. You can see them all, and get exact measurements in my downloadable pdf of the pattern.

The importance of remembering seam allowances

I made a very amateur mistake while my machine was in the shop. I decided to start cutting out all the little purple blocks so that I could start pinning everything together and be ready to sew once I got the machine back. Then, I misread my notes and ended up spending an hour cutting out pieces that were all .5″ too short—I forgot the seam allowance. It’s really de-motivating when you do something like that. But, we all must soldier on.

Even worse than the motivational factor is the fact that I don’t think I have enough purple left to re-cut all the pieces, so some of the middle ones will likely be pieced together, adding even more bulk and seams to the project. I’m hoping that I can get through all the strips with two purple blocks, and then piece together purple blocks for the center of the quilt, where there is only one block per strip.

Do you have any tips and tricks to keep your runs from shifting? What about getting yourself back in the mood to work on a project when you really mess up (like my cutting problem)?

This is part four in a multi-part series. Keep following along by subscribing to the Sartorial Stitchery RSS feed, or view the related posts.

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New Project Launch

Posted on 10 Jan 2011 by Rae

I launched a new Web project a couple of months ago, but am just now getting a chance to post about it. The project is the Student Loan Facts Page, a site and blog about student loans. The importance of it to this Front-end dev blog, however, is that I want to let you know my thoughts on the HTML5 Boilerplate.

I’ll start with a caveat: this is a personal project, so I made a conscious decision to use elements in the design and coding that won’t work in any current release of IE. That’s not to say that IE users can’t see the site or anything, just that some stuff might be a little wonky. Like, the homepage makes use of the content CSS attribute to display numbers next to the six main links.

But my main goal with this site was to play around with WordPress a little more and start something with HTML 5. HTML5 Boilerplate seemed like a good place to start. I’m a fan of CSS resets, so that’s all there. I’m also intrigued by some of their approaches:

  • CDN hosted jQuery with local fallback failsafe.
  • JS located at the bottom of the page.
  • IE/JS-specific classes on the html tag (or body tag, depending on which version you’re using) to allow for progressive enhancement.
  • Asynchronous Google Analytics use.
  • Forcing a scrollbar in non-IE browsers to for design consistency.
  • Consideration for a:focus.
  • Text input/label alignment.
  • Progressive HTML5 form error classes using the :valid and :invalid selectors.

… and much more.

There’s also some stuff that I’m not as happy with, like non-semantic classes, but I can see why they included it.

As a whole, I think it’s a great start for developers who know what all of the code does. It is a very simple setup to modify as a solid basis for your own personal framework. It’s not really a straight out of the box solution, though.

It’s also not a great solution for a newbie to use. They’ll end up with bloated code and unnecessary stuff. Although, my current code on that site isn’t exactly pretty.

I’m impressed enough to use it as a jumping-off point for a redesign of this site coming later in the year, though. I hope you have a good experience with it as well.

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In Too Deep

Posted on 8 Jan 2011 by Rae

In Too Deep by Jayne Ann Krentz

Book 1 of the Looking Glass Trilogy, book 10 of the Arcane Society

Putnum Adult, 2010

Rating: 4/5

I began reading this book with the misconception that it was the first book in a new series. I’ve never read anything by Krentz (or her numerous pen names). To her credit, it took almost half the book for me to really understand that this is actually book 10 in a series spread between her different pen names. The “trilogy” is really just a new story arc. I really dislike jumping into a series mid-way (or at the end, since this is the latest book). But, Krentz handles it very well. She was descriptive enough for me to jump into the world without feeling completely lost. It’s just going to wreak havoc on my resolutions as I try to fit in all nine previous books this year.

Krentz’ world of the Arcane is centered on a section of humanity with psychic powers. This book in particular follows psychic P.I. Fallon Jones as he continues his quest to take down an anti-Arcane Society group of rebels while finding a stash of Victorian para-weapon/artifacts and finding love in the form of his new assistant. It has a rather Warehouse 13 vibe to it (a SyFy TV series), frankly.

The story flows very well, and kept me captivated regardless of my lack of knowledge of the previous nine books. I think that is probably the highest praise I could give any author, really. The romance part is integral, of course, but well-written and not too overly formulaic (okay, as un-formulaic as a romance book would be, which really doesn’t say too much).

From what I understand, these trilogies are sort of past, present, future set-ups, with Krentz as present, Amanda Quick as past, and Jayne Castle as future. So, book two in the trilogy (11 in the series), Quicksilver will be released by Quick on April 19, 2011. A teaser is provided in In Too Deep, setting it in Victorian England. I’m extremely intrigued by the whole multi-author, era-spanning concept. I do so hope that she executes it well.

Form your own opinion: Buy from Amazon or B&N

Preview it online: Google Books

This book was acquired with my own resources. No money or goods were exchanged for this review—it is my personal opinion, not that of the author, publisher or any other entity.

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Rattle Giraffe

Posted on 7 Jan 2011 by Rae

Once again, I’ve gone back to Simplicity 2613 to whip up a baby gift, this time for one of Carl’s coworkers. Rather than sew the elephant for a third time, I chose to make view B, the giraffe. To be entirely truthful, I constructed this a while back, but never finished stitching the felt eyes on or stuffing it (which is how I “sewed” it despite my sewing machine being in the shop).

The pattern cover

Courtesy Simplicity Co.

For the mot part, the giraffe was as easy to build as the elephant, however I did find a few issues to keep in mind.

Issues

The shoulder curve

The arm openings are very tight, so a tool to help push in stuffing is very helpful. More importantly, I found that the quilter’s flannel I used wanted to separate at the shoulder seam. For best results, reinforce the curves with a second line of tighter stitching just inside the seam allowances. Since I didn’t realize this until after I’d begun stuffing, I darned over the corner with matching thread. The hidden reinforcement would have been better.

The importance of a proper stuffing hole

When I constructed the body, I was on auto pilot sewing all the pieces together and forgot about leaving an opening for stuffing in the suggested center back seam. By the time I realized my mistake, the only remaining logical place to leave open was the side neck seam, since I didn’t want to rip any stitches out.

It wasn’t until I actually began stuffing that I realized how unwieldy it was to stuff through the neck. In hindsight, it would have been worth it to rip out the back seam to leave a proper stuffing opening.

I still can’t figure out how to get the limbs to fall as cutely as they do on the pattern envelope. I think it has to do with the stuffing, but it is quite mysterious (unless of course they used hidden pins for photogenic toys).

A note on the neck ruff

Double-sided fringe

The suggested construction calls for fringe with adornment on only one side, so that you can sew the unadorned side straight into the seam. Mine was double-sided, so I first sewed the center-back seam together, then topstitched my fringe down on top of it, folding the bottom edge under for a nice finish. The top edge was sewn into the side seam as one piece with the back.

Just keep in mind that you can use any fringe/ribbon—with adornment on one or both sides—even though the pattern instructions aren’t provided for the latter.

Rattle construction

Like the two elephants I made from the pattern, I added a small rattle-like creation to this stuffed animal. It’s really quite simple to make.

Start with the metal bases of two tealight candles (mine are from a pack of Ikea ones, but I imagine any will do, so long as they have metal-ish base like these, on Amazon). It is best to use the bases of un-used candles, so you don’t have to deal with melted wax. The candles I have just slip out of the base with a slight tug on the wick. I put the container-less candles into other, larger candles that have burned to the bottom (leaving a wax cylinder) so as not to waste a perfectly good tealight.

Partially fill one with grains from your pantry (in the past I’ve used basmati rice, but this time was couscous. I liked the result a bit better). Play with the amount for desired sound.

Two tealight candle bases, one with couscous

Place the second candle base over the first, trapping the grains inside. You might have to add a small crease in the side of the inner one to get them to fit.

Halves of rattle combined

Wrap in duct tape to waterproof/seal the halves together.

In the future, I want to try using hot glue (or perhaps melted wax) to seal the rattle, because the duct tape muffled the sound a bit, but alas, I have no hot glue gun at present. My last roll of clear duct tape was less muffling than this new roll of yellow. The whole thing is very unscientific, so play around to find what suits you best.

The result was another quick creation that I hope the new baby will enjoy.

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Stash, stash, stash

Posted on 4 Jan 2011 by Rae

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Mine consisted of an 11-day trek to Missouri to visit my family, then Carl and I drove down to Biloxi, MS/New Orleans, LA for two days, then back home. My machine is still in the shop, and we’ve been gone for essentially two weeks, so I haven’t accomplished any sewing, but I thought I’d share my fun fabrics I bought at a little quilt shop in New Orleans called the Mes Amis Quilt Shop.

Don’t get too excited, they’re just cell phone photos I took after washing and ironing all the fabric.

Fat Quarter Pack

This was a bundled pack (35% off, woohoo!) The fabrics look a bit pinkish, but really they are much more orange. I have a couple different ideas of pieced tops to make out of it.

Big Easy Fabric

The owner was in love with the birds and recommended them to me when I had her cut my selections. She hadn’t seen that I already grabbed the pre-cut fat quarter! I just thought the cats were very jazzy and New Orleans-y, so it’s more of a souvenir rather than something I have a good plan for. The batiks are gorgeous in person… far more purple and green.

The hedgehog print is the only one that I had her cut, the rest were pre-cut fat quarters from the various bolts she had. It was very hard to limit myself… there were so many other cute prints, like the whole line of designs that the two on the left belong to. I wish she’d had a fat quarter pack of them. She did say she was willing to do call-in orders to ship… maybe I’ll try that once my bank account recovers from the trip.

I forgot to take a photo of the fleur-de-lis fat quarter I picked up. It’s just a simple black-on-pale yellow ~2″ tall print. Unfortunately, after handling it a little more, I’m pretty sure that it’s not 100% cotton. It just feels too poly to me. But, I still want to use it. I’m thinking of using it fussy-cut in the corners of a LeMoyne Star (sometimes called Lousiana Star) block and eventually making an album quilt of state blocks for all the places we visit.

While were in NOLA, I went to Promenade Fine Fabrics to really tease myself with all the beautiful, natural fiber apparel fabrics. Considering the average price per yard in there was likely $20, I just went in to look, but I did manage to pick up a couple of remnants. One is approx 1 yd of bright pink silk/wool blend that I have plans to use as a fashion outer fabric for a corset. The other is a wonderfully soft silk in dusty blue. It’s about 1/2 yard, maybe 3/4. No plans yet, but I couldn’t pass it up.

Wait, it doesn’t end there! When we visited for Christmas, my grandmother gave me ~5 yards of blue and white calicos she bought to make a house block quilt once upon a time (including her one finished block). Someday I’d like to finish it, probably using the one block as part of a medallion center. She also gave me some various cutting templates and a 24″ sliding rotary cutter—I’m really looking forward to trying it out. I was surprised she had all of it. She’s not really much of a sewer. She does make gorgeous crocheted blankets though.

Carl’s parents gave me a pair of pinking shears and a gift card to JoAnn Fabrics, so I’m sure I’ll have even more sewing goodies to play with soon.

In the historical costuming front, I really want to recreate this dress, worn by Winnie Davis (daughter of Confederate President Jefferson Davis) in the early 1880s when she was Mardi Gras queen. I think the docent said she was 18 or 19, which would be about 1883. It looks very medieval-inspired to me.

Winnie Davis Painting Photo

The photo is of a painting of her wearing it that hangs in her former bedroom at Beauvoir in Biloxi, MS. It’s not a very good photo. Neither Carl nor I thought to grab the good camera out of the car when we decided to tour the home. Oh well, it is an excuse to go back once they finish rebuilding the Presidential Library, which was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Okay, enough about me. What crafty things did you get for Christmas?

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2011
Re-
solve

Posted on 3 Jan 2011 by Rae

Accountability (əˌkountəˈbilitē): asking for a kick in the bum when I start neglecting my routine.

I’m not a resolution-maker. In the past, I’ve never made resolutions that lasted beyond 00:01 on January 1. But, as I approach the quarter-century mark in June, I’ve realized I have a problem I need to solve. Or re-solve, as it’s only been problematic in the past few years. So, I don’t think of these as resolutions so much as problem-solving strategies.

Sloth
Sloths aren’t all that attractive, huh?

The problem? Sloth.

Lately, I seem to be leading a rather lethargic life. My motivation went on vacation some time back in 2007, and I’m having trouble convincing it that it needs to earn a living.

So I’m going on a sloth hunt.

I resolve to re-solve this issue of motivation.

My approach? Routine social exercise and breaking a binge-reading habit.

The former will force routine activity—motivation or no, while the latter will compel me to evaluate why I’m in a bingeing mood and accomplish something other than reading a string of crappy romance novels when I’m burnt out, stressed and depressed. If I don’t allow myself to binge, I’ll have to get motivated to do something else.

Healthy Activities

I know that I don’t exercise alone. Something about group activity makes all those I could stop now. I really have to stop nows turn into something more like I can’t stop now, because I can’t fail when others are succeeding. Healthy world view or not, it’s the truth. So, I resolve to participate in a group activity at least twice a week.

Tuesdays I plan to do yoga. I’ve never done classes, just a couple positions in college that a therapist said would help with the tendonitis in my knees. The gym that I have a membership at has free sessions for beginners, so it seems like a good plan.

Thursdays until the weather warms up, I’ll head to the local bike shop to ride my bike on a trainer with a bunch of other new– (and some experienced–) cyclists (the Thursday session is run by Carl, which helps me get motivated to go and support him). In warm weather, I’ll transition to a group ride outside.

Calendar legend: Events with times are planned activities. All-day events are completed activities.

There are some other activities I want to try, but there are no solid plans yet. I want to take dance classes again. And go out cycling more than once a week. And do the Sunday morning yoga offered by the gym. But, I am starting my twice-a-week routine first, and will build from there.

Reading Limits

I binge read when I am burnt out, stressed or depressed. By binge, I mean I do nothing but read when I’m not at work, showering or sleeping. I’ll blow through a whole new series or a new author’s bibliography. It happens a lot lately.

Most importantly, when I’m bingeing like that I’m not accomplishing anything I need and want to do, like cleaning the apartment, working on Web projects, writing on this site, or sewing.

My approach is to limit myself to a book a week. That’s 52 books for the year, max. No rollovers allowed if I don’t have time to read one week.

I’m limiting myself to six new authors or series in 2011. I’m reading enough series with new releases in ’11 to fill my calendar. The limit doesn’t include non-serial books from authors I’ve read. I may allow more series, only if it is brand new and the second book will not be published in 2011.

Calendar legend: Books with times listed are likely-reads for the week. If they are listed on Sunday, they’re previously released books. Wednesday listings are new releases. All-day events are completed books.

My posts in Ravenously Read are spotty at best as it is, so this might have a beneficial effect; I’ll try to review every book I read. After all, I won’t have time for some of the books I’m too ashamed to admit to reading!

Getting things done

Of course, no new year is complete without a list of to-dos, and I’ve made mine. Some are short-term spring-cleaning, others are long-term projects to consider for the fall, but with my routine motivation back, I hope I can start crossing them off one-by-one for a prosperous, interesting, productive new year.

Some tasks are still vague, but the list includes things like:

  1. Complete 3 quilts
  2. Launch a redesign of this site (you’re getting a preview with this post, but it’ll be a couple of months until the final launch is complete)
  3. Grow the readership of the Student Loan Facts Page, a project I launched a couple of months ago
  4. Complete my Devil in a Blue Dress outfit (2 years in the making)

Comments are coming soon… I haven’t completed that part of the redesign yet. In the mean time, you can contact me by e-mail: rae.arnold@gmail.com or use the contact form on raearnold.com.

Updates

Week 1 (1/2–1/8)

On the health front, I already failed. I was only planning on doing the Thursday activity, as I don’t yet have membership to the gym (it was partially set up on Sat 1/8, but final setup must wait until next week). Then, I caught a bug that had me bedridden on Thursday.

Book limitations were failed as well. I read four books. Mostly because I was sick on Thursday, unable to do nothing else when I wasn’t asleep. However, it is important to note that I wasn’t in a binge, just intrigued by a new series that I didn’t realize I was starting on book 10 rather than book 1.

Week 2 (1/9–1/15)

I still hadn’t gotten my gym membership squared away for yoga, but I did do the cycling!

Reading-wise, I’m still failing. I just can’t limit myself to one book a week of the Arcane Series (another review). However, I don’t feel like a failure, because this is not depressed binge reading. In fact, I made crazy progress on my current quilt project, so all in all, it was a good week.

Week 6 (2/6–2/12)

Gym membership? Check. Bicycle? Nope. Finished quilt? Check.

I’m both successful and not, at the moment. I have not been going to yoga, because it’s just impossible to get out of work by 5pm on Tuesdays. I did attend one Sunday morning, but it is more advanced than I am. So, yoga and I are at an impasse at the moment.

Also, I sold my bike. It has never really fit me correctly. So that means Thursday cycling is also out for two or three weeks. But, only until my new bike comes in, which is being ordered on 2/10 (had to sell the old one to afford the new one).

I have been doing some dance stuff though. Every Wednesday is belly dance for bikers—sort of a Cliff-notes version of authentic Egyptian belly dancing to help stretch and relax the muscles that get bunched up when cycling (neck, shoulders, back). This week I also had a Fandango (traditional Spanish dance, sort of like flamenco) lesson and an Indian dance lesson. So, there are three group exercise things, just no real cardio.

Lastly, I’ve pinpointed a binge-reading trigger. Unfortunately it has to deal with work-related stuff, which I’m not sure how to resolve. However, I’m doing good so far this week about not bingeing—even if I’ve really wanted to. In fact, I haven’t been reading at all the past couple of weeks—I’ve been too busy with dancing, sewing and trying to find a new bike that actually fits.

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You just got a 2% pay increase! Use it wisely.

Posted on 22 Dec 2010 by Rae

…well, kind of, sort of. On Dec. 17, Congress agreed to extend many of the Bush-era tax cuts, which is generally pretty awesome in the more-money-in-my-pocket way but not so much in the holy-staggering-national-debt-increase-Batman! way. In addition to the extensions is what I’ll call Making Work Pay 2.0 (officially the Tax Relief Act)—a employee payroll tax decrease.

The payroll tax, more commonly known as the Social Security tax, is normally 6.2% of your gross income. Everyone who earns money by legal, non-tax-avoiding ways pays this, no ifs-ands-or-buts, although if you make more than $106,800, your maximum tax is $6,621. For 2011, the tax for employees is reduced to 4.2% (a max savings of $2,136). If you’re self-employed, you’ll still have to pay the full employer-side 6.2% for a total of 10.4% instead of 12.4%. And if you’re an employer, you still have to pay 6.2% for each of your employees.

So, that begs the question: what are you going to do with it?

I’ve already made my decision—it’s going straight into my retirement account. I figure I might as well save for my own retirement while I’m getting a reprieve from paying for someone else’s. The proper paperwork has been signed, sealed and delivered. I waffled about this or paying off debt faster, but I’ll have my over-5%-interest consumer debt all taken care of by the end of January, and I expect that my retirement returns will be higher than that in the long run. It just makes financial sense. After all, thanks to compounding interest, your early 20s is a great time to start saving for retirement.

What’s your plan, Stan?

One note of import: since it’s all very last minute, your employer has until Jan. 31 to fix their payroll system so that the money goes in your check instead of to the government. This means you may not see an increase until February. Then, your employer has until Mar. 31 to give you whatever they owe you from not having the system set up correctly in January.

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