~Tuesday~ I took Kevin (av8rdude) to the airport this morning to pick up his rental car instead of this afternoon to catch his flight back to Seattle, as his plans changed while he was here, and he’s off to the northeast instead.
I worked from home with the exception of running in to the office from about 12:30 until 2:00, for a meeting with one of the four students we interviewed on Friday for our intern position, who we brought back in today for a follow-up meeting.
On my way to the gym, I stopped at the post office to buy a “love stamp” to put on a sympathy card I was mailing. Evidently, they are all out of love at the Avent Ferry Post Office. Join the club, Eunice.
I settled for some Purple Heart stamps instead, and I placed one on my sympathy card to one of my favorite of my ex-wife’s aunts and uncles:
| Dear Aunt Mickey,
I was so saddened to hear about the passing of Uncle Nick. What a beautiful soul he was. Donna shared the “Afterglow” thoughts from the back of his prayer card, which I found impossible to read without seeing his lit up, smiling face, multiple times. I’m so thankful for that. Not surprisingly, the same words that came to mind when thinking about having known Vince, also resonate for having known Uncle Nick. And they’re from the song, “For Good” from the musical, “Wicked”: Changed for the better Because I knew you… Please accept my condolences for your loss of a beloved partner, and my warmest wishes as you continue to live and grow in a new light. Much love and affection, |
I arrived at the gym before the after work crowd, where I did a 30-minute cardio workout on the elliptical machine, on level 5, for a 595-calorie burn. I’ve decided I’m going to do more 30-minute workouts on level 5, as opposed to 60-minute workouts on level 4, for a couple of reasons:
- 30 minutes flies by like that and I avoid all that—what has to be detrimental—negative self-talk that inevitably happens when I’m going longer, and
- that way I don’t dread heading to the gym as much.
I added the item, “Money and Happiness,” to our Salon XIV agenda, which was inspired by this article, Money can buy you happiness, to a point, in general, and specifically by these two quotes from the article:
Happiness got better as income rose but the effect leveled out at $75,000, Deaton said. On the other hand, their overall sense of success or well-being continued to rise as their earnings grew beyond that point.
“Giving people more income beyond 75K is not going to do much for their daily mood… but it is going to make them feel they have a better life,” Deaton said in an interview.
As a person who’s annual salary history has roughly gone as follows:
- $18,000, 1980, starting off at IBM when I got my undergrad degree
- ~$90K, 1993, when I left IBM, taking an “incentive package” of ~$30K cash with me
- ~$6.75/hr [minimum wage was $4.50/hr], 1994, for about 6 months, working for Manpower counting widgets after I came out to Donna
- $31K, 1994-1996, hired in an administrative position as a contractor to IBM
- $39K, 1997, found another job for that amount, and they matched it to keep me there
- $110K, 1997-1998, hired by a dot.com in San Jose, as one of their East coast consultants
- $65K, 1998-2000, working for a computer contracting company after leaving the that dot.com just before the bust
- $88K, 2000, getting hired back at IBM
- $101K, 2008, what I was making when I left IBM
- $49K, Currently, at NC State
I have some thoughts on this, and I’m interested in hearing the thoughts of my fellow salon members on the topic. Feel free to express any of your own here.
I had intended to attend a keynote address by one of the co-creators of Twitter at 8:00 this evening on campus as part of NC State’s Cyberinfrastructure Days, but I chose sleep, or rather it chose me, instead.