cost of living
Pretty leisurely evening last night. Once work was over, I ran a few errands, taking the car while Shobhit, who otherwise had the day off of work, also had his twice-weekly Project Management class online from 5:30 to 8:00 in the evening. I left shortly after 4:00 and was back at around 6:00.
First, to the library downtown: drop-off and curbside pickup. Then, to the office, to swap out paperwork. The stack I picked up was way too thick because of a bread vendor with very frequent deliveries at fifteen stores has been charging incorrect costs. This shit is driving me crazy. Anyway, then I went to the Greenlake Village PCC to do a bit of grocery shopping, because the Deep Indian Kitchen (formerly known as Tandoor Chef) pizzas are still carried there and they are on promotion; I bought six. I guess these products either don't quite fit our product standards or are very low sellers—or both?—but they seem to be getting phased out very, very slowly. Right now all that's happening is, they stay at older stores, but any new store opening in the past couple of years (Ballard, West Seattle, Central District where I usually shop now, Bellevue) just doesn't get them cut in at all. And I love these fucking pizzas! Also, it's good to stock up when they're already on sale and then I get a 15% employee discount.
After I got back I ate dinner while watching the last two episodes of the Netflix documentary series about Fran Liebowitz, Pretend It's a City. The series inspired me to write down two places I have never seen in New York City that are now on my list for when I next visit.
Then, after Shobhit's class was done, I got him to watch the first episode of Bridgerton on Netflix with me. It's kind of all the rage lately—Claudia is obsessed with it—and so I wanted to give it a look. I found it all right, though I'm still interested in watching more. Shobhit, on the other hand, was almost shockingly into it. Like, literally leaning over the edge of the couch. He loves Jane Austin though, and so even though he conceded the show is "kind of cheesy," he clearly really liked it in spite of that. (Not that insane cheesiness ever stopped him from watching anything anyway.)
Oh! Speaking of money, I nearly forgot! I had my first 1:1 meeting with Eric in a couple of months yesterday; these weekly meetings were put on hold for the holidays because he was too busy. And the meeting yesterday was rather short, mostly because of pretty notable technical difficulties, where for instance I would see his lips move and then for a few solid seconds there was a delay before I actually heard what he said. We joked about it being like having a video chat with someone on Mars. ("Thanks for tuning into my transmission from the red planet," he later emailed me.)
Anyway, as for the content of said meeting, he finally let me know I was getting a small raise. I looked up what the Seattle cost of living increase had been this year, and according to the first Google result, it was 2.8%. My raise was 3.5%, so to me that's plenty reason to feel gratitude. That said, although my insurance premiums were basically cut in half now that Shobhit was forced to go on his own employer's insurance, another thing, perhaps my increasing the FSA deferral from $1000 to $1,500, probably contributed to the increase of my actual take-home pay on today's paycheck working out to 3.1%. Still higher than 2.8%! I'll take it.
Back in the LiveJournal days, I used to share the exact amount of my hourly wages. But, knowing the potential for people I work with seeing the stuff I post, I would share those posts as "friends only." I don't have "friends list" here on this blog so I have no choice but to make all posts totally public. And I would actually be fine with sharing how much I make (let's just say that considering what I do and how long I've done it, it's enough), but because of American dipshit-culture when it comes to money, I know it's still in my best interest not to share. We don't want to give people reason to be resentful or to gloat, right? (I suppose for anyone who did not get a raise or who got a higher threshold of one, that could still be a different story.)
Eric did tell me that there are some cases where a raise is not given to someone, if they are already on the high end of the bracket allotted for their position. I must not be on the high end of mine then. It's been some time since I last did not get at least what amounts to a cost-of-living increase, though, and conversely, I don't expect another particularly notable raise beyond that unless I ever get a significant promotion. And I quite specifically do not want one of those.
[posted 12:27 pm]