As requested by Stacking Pennies when I first mentioned flying Allegiant, my opinion now that I've flown my entire round trip: You get what you pay for, but only if you pay very little.

Pay more than $30 each way and you will probably be livid at what you overpaid for.

The MD-80s are creaky, ancient jobs that more often than not spill water on people towards the back (polled frequent fliers: this is true in their experience); the engines are so loud that you might suffer temporary hearing loss if you're seated too close to them; they charge for everything like the right to choose your seat, even the "standard" free beverage so don't expect a free glass of water, you cannot check in beforehand, if you miss your flight you have to wait a week for the next one or buy a new ticket on another airline.

It's as barebones as you can imagine.  More.  I don't know if you're charged to use the lavatory but I've started to expect so.

So yes, if you snagged one of those magic $10 tickets, you should put up with all of that without complaint but if you ended up paying nearly standard fare before opting for any amenities, I can only imagine you'd be a tad grumpy. *hand raised*  Other than that, we saved the cost of a rental, though marginally offset by the cost of public transit going to and from the Oakland airport on this end, and maybe a few dollars more than that for a standard fare into a more metro city.

Still, it got us into the destination with a minimum of fuss for our hosts and given the fact that they put us up in, while not decadent, very well fed fashion, I'm glad it was very easy for them to pick and drop us off. So there's that.


My thanks .....

to Well Heeled for hosting this week's Carnival of Personal Finance and including my post on the costs of PiC's Marathon entry win.

After a nice settling in, the rest of the weekend was incredible. Restful, full of good food, good sleep, nice people, exploring, and good laughs.

It's an incredibly runner friendly town we visited, and I felt like we were in the country though we honestly weren't.  We didn't manage to hike because it rained most of the time, but we still managed a lovely 3 mile walk around a park and visited with the world's wriggliest puppy, had hot chocolate and coffee at the Wandering Goat Coffee House, drinks at the local posh restaurant where they acknowledged their local foragers (apologies for the photo quality but it was just so cute):


By the by, my French 75 cocktail? Knocked me on my tail!  I'm not much of a drinker to begin with, but 1/2 way through on an empty stomach, I realized, oh, I'm going to be that girl tonight. I like to pretend that I wasn't, but I probably was.

While this wasn't an inexpensive trip, it wasn't too pricey either. We ate in most meals, with the exception of one lunch and one very nice dinner for four.  PiC and I footed the bill for that dinner because we didn't bring a hosting gift, and our host friends cooked simple but alarmingly* good food the rest of our visit. 

My biggest disappointment was forgetting to take food pictures - everything was so fresh and delicious we immediately devoured it, every time.   

I'm not one for trite phrases, mouthed because they feel good in the air, but pop hollow in the heart. If you haven't got something real to say, I'm ok with sitting around in silence.  As evidenced by my friend's husband and I sitting here companionably, tap tap tapping away on our computers. This weekend, we spent a lot of time talking about life and work situations and I got to thinking about the few times that people have repeated catchphrases that, in my mind, were incredibly empowering for being all of less than ten words.

"Don't let nobody steal your joy today." - my favorite bus driver 

No matter how horrible the environment I was about to walk into was, there was always a moment of Zen when I disembarked the bus with those words at my back.  Years ago, I was having an incredibly, unbelievably stressful time and each morning, it was nauseatingly hard to convince myself to keep walking into the mess that work had become.  Hearing those words reminded me that no matter how put upon, no matter how targeted, victimized, or on the verge of quitting the higher-ups wanted me to feel, I could choose to keep control over my own feelings and my own joy.

There was still good in the world, I was still strong, and I would still find it.  Thanks, bus driver.   

"Make your next move your best move." - @thefitlounge

Moving to a new city, being on my own (except with PiC) for the first time in my life, leaving my family and worrying about them from afar, and starting a new challenging job all at once nearly six months ago, well .....  mornings were never my best time of day. Mornings became a trial of "what have I done," "don't make me go to work," and "I don't wanna."  Until I popped onto Twitter for a few minutes to get my bleary eyes tracking and saw East Coasties and their morning greetings.

Single Ma's Good MornTings! Ruth's #wmata updates, getting ready in the morning updates, they helped get my brain to turn on and start ticking, but BK and her morning exhortation was the turning point.  That put a smile on my face, a boot in my pants and got me going because I suddenly felt like I could DO this thing.  I look for that tweet every morning. Thanks, BK.

This time we're flying, thank goodness.  Not that our relationship didn't weather the last two drives to Southern California, it's just that PiC insists on doing the majority or all of the driving and that wipes him out spectacularly.

This is our first time trying a mega-discount airline (Allegiant Air) and I've got to say, I'm a little hesitant about this.  The "administrative fees" tacked onto the ticket had me seeing red when he first booked the tickets, so with that and the one flight per day frequency, I can't say the deal was good enough to stoke my enthusiasm.  While I'm usually a no-frills traveler, this feels closer to riding the rails without any siding on the car.  We're giving it a shot, a review will follow after the weekend if I'm so motivated by joy or rage.

Arrival at Oakland Airport doesn't do much for the wary, adventuring spirit either.  Between the 1960s decor of Terminal 1, the nearly barren dining landscape and dim lighting reflecting off the extra shiny metal strips that sporadically covered an otherwise exposed ceiling strung with festive ... wiring...  well, I'm just glad that I'm here with PiC, a working laptop, phone and plenty of electricity to charge up both pieces of tech.  Especially since PiC's left to go wander about.  Perhaps he'll discover something strange and wonderful and bring it back for me to pet.

(Maybe the free wifi will let me load Twitter so I can chitter chatter with my friendsy strangers online instead of the strangers I'm stuck at the gate with during this two hour minimum delay?) 

We're visiting some friends this weekend, and we've got something lined up almost every weekend from here through the end of the year, whether I know what it is yet or not.  I asked PiC if we could simply have one month when we didn't travel and he just laughed at me. *sigh*  Not this year.

At least we'll have racked up 4 free roundtrip flights on Southwest after Chicago between flying and credit card rewards.  That's gotta count for something.

Oh so very randomly, except for the bit where he entered on purpose, PiC won a giveaway for a free entry to the Chicago Marathon.  I'm told that registration runs a bit over $100, and it's one of the races he's always wanted to run, so I was willing to support his desire to go. In spirit.  To complicate matters, though, because our friends have moved out of the Chicago area, he wouldn't have anyone to stay with so he wanted to make a weekend of it with me.  Oh, the nerve of him, wanting to spend quality time together! ;)

Financially, I was hesitant. We have very different saving and spending styles, so if the Travel Fund doesn't support it, I'm usually less in favor of taking a trip. He, on the other hand, regularly saves a big chunk every month sight unseen and says that's good enough - the rest is for spending.

Leave it to a giveaway prize to reveal our money philosophies, yet again!

My compromise was this: Given the potential cost of a marathon weekend out of town, I'd be willing to consider going if we could keep it under a certain amount.  In the meantime, however, I would check hotel points and other airline points/miles/reward options to see if we could creatively fund the trip.  Between a Southwest reward flight and Hilton points, I was seeing the budget drop to less than $400 for transportation.  Clearly, I was Olly-olly Optimism.

Alas, Southwest's Standard rewards were already all booked out, leaving me with only the Freedom reward.  For those who aren't familiar, that'd call for using two 1-way tickets to equal an unrestricted free 1-way flight. Not exactly worth it in this situation.

A sale came up and PiC jumped on it during the work day, but I'd rather he didn't yet tell me how much we blew my second estimate out of the water (I'm guessing airfare was about $900 for both tickets, *cringe*); meanwhile I've finally put my hard-earned Hilton points to good use and booked two nights for free at a downtown Hilton hotel.  I've been using the Hilton Platinum American Express for six years, charging only post office, cell phone and restaurant bills for a 5x point return to earn enough points for two nights in a decent hotel. Call that dedication to the financial cause! :)

It's a bit stressful doing all this last minute planning for a trip in early October, and all the while wondering if he's going to be physically prepared for the race because I can't carry a full grown man to the airport on my back if it comes to that.

We set up the reservations so that I could back out up to the week before without any real financial repercussion and he wouldn't lose the hotel room as it's booked in both our names. Well worth the 10 minute phone call to the Hilton reservations line!

Speaking of giveaways, here's hoping my luck is as good as PiC's but costs us less money in the following!


My thanks .....

to Danielle for hosting this week's Carnival of Personal Finance and for including my post Forebearing Fridays:  Warning Signs During an Interview.  Be sure to submit to next week's Carnival!

Giveaways are being hosted by .... 

Couple Money: Celebrating their first anniversary, Couple Money is giving away a new laptop to a lucky winner!

Out of Debt Again: is hosting one of those monster celebrations for her 3 year anniversary with over $800 in prizes!

Ok - though I'd promised Week of the Geek, I ran out of time because some candidate interviews crept up on me.  My boss has been incredibly busy and so I was scrambling to rearrange the whole interviewing schedule on the fly while trying to hide the fact so the candidate didn't think I and we were complete idiots. We're not, we're decent people, honest, but it's been chaotic because 80% of the company is undergoing a systems change in a week. (*gulp*)

It turns out that it didn't matter so very much.  While I usually choose not to talk about my work here on the blog, I felt like so much of what I learned this week during the interview process was worth a mention.

Do you remember when "they"say: be nice to the secretary?  That's all very well and good, but I would like to extend that to a General Corollary: be polite to everyone. In my company, the semi-crazy looking dude in a weird t-shirt is the CEO.  Some days. Other days, he's pretty spiffy. But Upper Management does not feel compelled to wear their titles so no matter who you meet, no matter how dressed up or dressed down they are, if you don't know their names and who they are, it's not safe to assume they're a nobody and treat them accordingly.

LISTEN.  And Do Your Research. 

Candidate No-Way never did either.

We're a small enough company that my name is not repeated so a quick check of the company website would have given any candidate a good idea of who I was. CNW both ignored my self-introduction as a member of the interviewing panel and didn't have any idea what I did in the company. Had CNW bothered to do any background research or listened to my explanation of the structure that she requested, CNW would have realized that her prospective position would be partially managed by ... me. 

Never mind that, though, I enjoy observing people's behavior when they think I'm either monolingual, a teenage kid with no role, or an assistant. CNW was pushy, aggressive and ran right over me in conversation when given the opportunity.

I manage a large group that would be two tiers below this one, and there's no way I'd recommend a candidate who'd treat me in that aggressive manner without knowing who I am during an interview; how do you suppose she'd treat my staff?

That was just my first impression.

My ruminations later covered our actual interview over lunch and her multiple gaffes there, again very much variations on the above themes:

A) Despite having interviewed with the hiring manager and her prospective boss, she couldn't remember his name;
B) Despite having interviewed with my boss, and her boss's boss, she couldn't remember either of their names;
C) Despite having been told more than once who reported to whom, she asked me if the BiggestBoss reported to her prospective boss;
D) She mistook my boss for the office manager after spending an hour with him.
E) She took the lunch interview far too casually, acting like we were just friends on a lunch date

I have the feeling, after she dropped mentions of job offers in the East Bay and the considerations of San Diego that she didn't actually want this job much anyway.  After all, she couldn't be bothered to do much preparation so I'm sure it won't break her heart that we're extending an offer to the other candidate instead. 

But if you actually care about landing a decent job with a company you think "is incredibly cool with a great mission," I cannot recommend any of the above techniques.

Hat-tip to Alison Green at Ask A Manager for articulating so much good hiring advice that CNW's smooth attempts to hide her poor candidacy through constant, dominant conversation was obviously a snow job even to this less-experienced interviewer. She does boot camps!

As I write this, the neighborhoods two miles away are ablaze. I had nothing to do with it.

Do you all read forewords? Back in high school, we were made to read the introductions and forewords like medicine. These days, I read them in comics to sniff out new authors to follow. If you can hook me in the 400 words or 1000 words allotted to introduce a trade paperback, if you're really that entertaining or well spoken, you're probably someone I'd be pretty happy reading.

The line-up for the six volumes of Scalped would be a perfect example, except they're all big enough names and big enough entertainers that I'm already well aware of their writing.

Take, for example, Matt Fraction. The man knows his way around a story. He weaves, like any good yarn deserves, twists and turns, colors and spikes into his writing that has you Not Breathing for extended periods before you realize what he's just done to you.

He's not just a good writer, though.  He's fantastic on his feet. As witness, his participation in w00tstock (go, go, Google or YouTube "Matt Fraction w00tstock 2010" and revel in the geekery, I'll be here when you get back).

And he's generally a pretty cool guy. My Con BFF texted me on the Sunday I was flying away from my beloved SDCC: In line for the Fraction panel, he just worked the line. We just talked cancer.

Me: ... what?

Con BFF: A girl in line had a cast on her ankle and he told her she needed a more heroic story for the injury. We brainstormed: kicking cancer in the face.

If that wasn't enough, his answer to the question "Why do you write strong female characters?" was "I'm married to a very strong woman. And I have a daughter. I know my wife, and I know that she's going to raise my daughter so that, one day, my daughter is going to look me in the eye and I'm going to have to explain to her my involvement in this world in which I work. So I'd better do the right thing now."

If I didn't know all that, his introduction to Jason Aaron's 4th Volume of Scalped in which he shared the Legend of the Alabama Corn Snake would have clinched it.

I'd reproduce it here but I don't want to steal, it's not nearly so tasty in excerpted form, and really, I want you to read all the way up to Volume 4 of Scalped to revel in the goodness of the foreword, marvel in the comic and support the industry. But mostly, it's really late, I'm tired, and maybe I'll do some of it later.

In the meanwhiles, I heartily endorse the reading of introductions. At least for comic books - there's some excellent footage to be had.

Of Mine Own:

Mice Templar (Vol 1), by Bryan Glass and Michael Avon Oeming
Usagi Yojimbo (Vol 1-2), by Stan Sakai**
Alan Moore's Complete WILDC.A.T.S.
Sam and Twitch (Vol 1-2), by Brian Michael Bendis
Wolverine, by Jason Aaron
100 Bullets (Vols 12-13), by Brian Azzarello and Edward Risso**

Of the Borrowed Variety:

The Umbrella Academy (Vols 1-2), by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba
Scalped (Vols 1-6), by Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera
The Boys (Vols 1-4), by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson**

Of the Gifting Sort:

Daredevil: Return of the King, by Ed Brubaker and David Aja
Batman: Private Casebook, by Paul Dini

**Still waiting to be read
~~~~~~~~~

I cannot proclaim enough how incredibly creative The Umbrella Academy is, or how gutwrenchingly compelling Scalped is. I try, I really do, but I feel like it's just not good enough. Just to give you an idea: I'm pretty sure that I'm an adult now. I've got some incredible impulse control. I can make a package of Oreos last a MONTH. Girl scout cookies, TWO. My birthday gift has been sitting in this house for over a week and I haven't rent the packaging to particle bits despite knowing what joys await me.

But I tore through all six volumes of Scalped, cover to cover, in less than 72 hours.  It's no feel good comic, but it grabs hold of your intestines and doesn't let go. And now I have to wait until March 2011 for the next trade to ship. It's already preordered, I'll tell you what. 

Oh. I've got an 8 am meeting and just got the EYE from PiC so further exultation must wait.

PiC insists he's fully on board, being with me, but I have got to be trying his patience. Heaven knows I've worn through my own patience with this state of affairs.

This past week was one of the rougher, tougher ones in which I was barely good for anything in private and not much more than that in public.

I made it to work each day, drugged up to my eyeballs, or in so much pain that I was well beyond wishing for the sweet release of death. You bet your sweet bippy I took the time to make the right calls, but that left my willpower to deal with anything beyond the core necessities drained to the last dribs. By Thursday, all I could think was: I'm not cooking a darn thing tonight. By darn, someone is going to feed me!

Through the weekend, we hosted an old friend who has been nomadic for quite a few years of her high-powered career. As we missed her birthday last weekend, I felt obligated to be present for her so I tried to hide the pain behind normalcy.  I didn't do a good job of it but my next best shot was to sacrifice PiC's support and continue to struggle behind the facade of maintaining even at home where I would normally collapse and stop pretending.

It was exhausting.

As much as I care about my friends, I was intensely grateful to stop pretending when she left on Sunday and for the day of rest on Monday to enjoy PiC's company. With any luck, I can slowly lay off some of the pain meds so that this week isn't a complete fog.

Living in a haze of pain isn't just draining, it's expensive!

The painkillers cost money, the eating out costs money, the being waited on hand and foot costs ... one heck of a lot of good will!  And that's the most worrisome bit of course. How long can someone keep up the caretaker role before burning out?

But you know what?  I'm tired of all that. Forget honesty - I think you could all stand a good solid blast of uplifting, happy geekery, could you not?  If not, bear with me, it can't possibly be worse than the me even I was sick of!  (And as I assured my ever so flamboyant friend, even if it was only the "me" in the abstract.)

I declare this: Week of the Geek!

Our houseguest just got a new job with a hefty salary in a low COL and so when I introduced her to Shabby Apple, she filled their coffers with nearly four hundred dollars in exchange for, among other things, my favorite dress.  Finally I can see it on someone in real life! It's pretty fun to watching people with zero budget problems shop like there's no tomorrow.

And in the spirit of spending freely, free money for two people! 

Out of 51 entries, including comments, tweets, and a hilarious arm-twisting referral, my first winner is entrant #46: Elaine of Clothed Much and my second winner is entrant #25: Kay Lynn of Bucksome Boomer!


Congratulations, ladies!