raise the percent . . . just a little bit
This hardly matters much now, but it's irritating me so I feel compelled to mention it even though it's ultimately pretty meaningless detail from four and a half months ago: I happened to look again at my blog post detailing my visit with Ivan in Vancouver, which I posted on August 20, and an error I had made with the html caused three full paragraphs of what I had written not to be visible. (Basically, because of a typo in a link in the first paragraph, the way the original post read, it started with the first paragraph's text to the link five words in, and then continued with the text after a link three paragraphs later.)
I had written about my process of finding an AirBnB place to stay, and a little bit of detail about the guy who operates the house I stayed in. Now that I've fixed it, it's paragraphs four through seven. Granted, full disclosure, pretty much all that text was copied and pasted directly from that trip's photo digest email anyway, so it's not like forty-some people hadn't already read it anyway. In fact, I'm willing to bet more people read it from that email than actually read it in this blog. Hey wait a minute, I can actually put this to the test, thanks to Squarespace Analytics! On August 20, 2018, this blog had . . . fifteen unique visitors. Hell, even if I included August 21 -- when I again had fifteen unique visitors -- the text would not have reaches as many people as I have on that email distribution list. Of course, in all likelihood at this point no more than half the people who get those regular photo digest emails bother to read it. So, my best guess is a fairly equal number of people viewed the email versus the blog. Except the people reading the email actually got the full text I was intending to share.
I'm just annoyed that a pretty significant portion of the blog post from August was invisible all this time. I guess all I can do now is basically "un-hide" it, and now I've done that.
Oh! I nearly forgot -- I was called into the small conference room to the right of my desk about fifteen minutes before I left for the day yesterday, for a brief meeting with Scott's boss, Justine (Center Store Director), and her boss, Darrell (VP of Merchandising). It was right after a brief meeting with Noah, so I was pretty sure what it was. I even said so, after Darrell said, "It's good!" -- I replied, "I'm pretty sure I know what this is."
And, indeed, I did: notification of how my wages will change for 2019. "It's going up," Darrell said. Well, that's a relief! The actual number was hardly a surprise, as it's been pretty much the same cost-of-living increase I've been getting every year now for the past seven years -- although, actually, now that I've looked over the history, this year's increase is slightly higher than I know for certain it's been in years: "The number that I have to work with," Darrell said, "is 3.5%." He then gave me the hard number of my annual income as of 2019 but I don't remember what it was.
My increase for 2018 was actually slightly lower, at a hard 3%; my increase for 2017 was the same. I don't have a definitive record of what the 2016 record; only when Darrell spoke to me that year it was "basically cost of living." And, I can't find any record of posts I in which I mentioned raises for 2014 or 2015, but if they had been at all significant there would indeed have been a dedicated post about it. My 2013 increase was also 3%. It's been since 2012 that I've gotten a raise notably higher than that, when it went up 11.6%, the second-highest it was ever increased at one time; between 2007 and 2009, I received five different wage hikes, four of them increases of between 13% and 22% over what I had been making a year prior. Those were all thanks to Jennifer.
Those days are clearly history now, but that's fine; I have always felt Jennifer kind of overdid it anyway. So long as I get basically cost-of-living increases and don't feel like the value of my wages is going down, then I think it's all good. My budgeting will be different this year given that even though I'll have this 3.5% increase, I have a thousand bucks being siphoned off pre-tax for the first Flexible Spending Account I've ever signed up for, to cover medical costs. The MasterCard for that just came in the mail the other day. In any case, that money being taken out will make my take-home slightly lower than the result of this raise would otherwise make it. It amounts to an average of barely more than $84 a month, though -- or rather, $38 a paycheck -- so the difference it makes should be nominal. Clearly the raise won't be that much more per paycheck, so it will kind of feel like a pay cut. On the other hand, I won't have to use money in my checking account for doctor visits at all until that thousand bucks is used up, so that's good.
Not much to tell about last night, except I made the choice not to go see a movie so I could be home to take the Christmas decorations down. I did that after Shobhit and I made pasta for dinner. Taking the lights down off the windows, winding up the light strands, taking the ornaments off the tree, wrapping them in paper and packing them in their big tin I keep them in, and packing the Christmas Tree back into its box -- all this took far less time than I was expecting it to, actually. It went pretty quickly, and Shobhit helped carry all the boxes down with me, as we also still had the suitcase we'd used for both the December trips to Wallace, Idaho and Olympia. The living room always looks so much bigger when the Christmas decorations are gone, mostly because the windows are far less obscured and there's a much larger area of view to the outside.
Shobhit had gotten home only barely before I did, even though he got off work, at 1:00 -- but, it turns out, he'd gone out for an afternoon hookup. It was with this older couple he's had hookups with at least three or four times now, that I'm aware of, anyway. It's all good, I'm pretty indifferent to it, truly, but did encounter something without precedent yesterday regarding it: Shobhit was telling me a few things about these guys, their lives and their careers, and apparently they suggested I come with him to have lunch with them sometime. Okay, so I'll go and have lunch with these guys my husband has been fucking. That's . . . new.
But, also, probably fine. It's an idea that felt weird when first presented to me just because it's something it never even occurred to me would ever happen. And maybe the odder part of it is that Shobhit has had sex with these guys, I have not, and I don't expect I'll ever have any desire to. (I'm not into older guys.) I'm sure they're perfectly friendly generally speaking, though, so, why not have lunch with them sometime? I'm willing to keep an open mind about that. If anything about it makes me uncomfortable, all I have to do is not do it again -- and really, in all likelihood I won't be uncomfortable anyway.
[posted 12:48 pm]