March's Single Solitary Goal

I got lazy in February and didn't set a single goal for myself. Not one.

That's why when I was showering this morning and determining my March goal I thought I should take this last day of February as pre-season and practice reaching my March goal.

My March goal is to eat and be healthy.

Generally speaking, I do OK on this but it probably wouldn't kill me to cut out the mid-week glass of wine, or chips and queso or the late-night Saturday nacho snack. So that's what I'm gonna do.

I'm going to eat and just in general, be healthy, for all of March.

Well except Fonda San Miguel night, BenAnna night and Jess night. Those are going to be my free passes because they are unique and it would be a damn shame to turn down the wine/queso/dessert on those nights. A girl has to be realistic.

I need your help to stay accountable and to not suck. Pester me every now and again about it please.

Oh and Ben, I'm gonna need some of your delicious guac on BenAnna night; it'll be nearly my only night to indulge in the best tasting green stuff on the planet.

Tax Time

In about half an hour, we're heading over to the Turner home to file our 2010 taxes. Now I can't say we enjoy doing our taxes, but honestly, we don't really dread it either.

As long as we've been together, we've always received money back. So it isn't fun to meticulously go through all these documents, but the refund always seems worth it. I mean what else can you do, at home, with a glass of wine for an hour that will wind up with a deposit into my bank account?

Past years we've gone through every single little thing together. Ross will sit at the computer with TurboTax and I'll have a file folder of all our documents. It's like a baseball line up. Ross: On deck, the 1098. Me: Got the 1098. Who is in the hole?

Our little deduction



And then we brainstorm. Can we claim this deduction? How much mileage did we drive that we can deduct? How much were those clothes we donated to Goodwill worth? Do fancy peep-toe-pumps for a special meeting count as a work uniform and therefore a deduction? Can we claim Lexi as a dependent or at least, as a home security system?

(Note: A volunteer I knew from Girl Scouts works for the IRS. He once got a tax filing turned into him where the guy claimed his dog as a security system and to the penny deducted food, vet bills, everything. IRS guy thought this was so clever and funny, that he let the deduction stand.)

Taxes have traditionally been an exercise in good communication for us so I can't say I dread it. I'm just crossing my fingers that this year's tax filing will go as smoothly as past ones and will continue our refund streak.

Second Helping of Beef

You know how some things, like casserole, are better as left overs? A beef that you have can be like that.

1. Wisconsin budget. I don't think this has fixed itself but at least Diane Sawyer reported on something else tonight so I wasn't irked by it.
2. Volunteer experience. When I was in "breaking-up-with-my-charity" mode last night I contacted the Breast Cancer Resource Center of Texas about volunteering. They got back to me lickity-split. I hope to be meeting with them next week to talk about helping with marketing or fundraising. Not only is this exciting because I think breast cancer is an important cause, but it's exciting because they partner with the Georgetown Fire Department for the Pink Heels Tour in October. And I happen to know one really cute firefighter over there in Georgetown. (And actually my current charity, as if it knew I was irritated, finally contacted me. I'll be helping with social media for the big event.)
3. Texas Rangers. Well, tickets still aren't on sale but a very nice person in ticket sales gave me the scoop today. March 5. On it like white on rice.

Beef

Beef is typically what's for dinner but tonight it's three things that are driving me a little crazy, that I have a beef with. (Chicken and rice were for dinner.)

1. Wisconsin budget. I'm fairly fiscally conservative but the Wisconsin budget thing just drives me crazy. I'm not going to pretend to know all the details of the Wisconsin budget and other cuts that may exist but I am going to comment on cutting things back for first responders. First, if you lay-off first responders (EMTs and firefighters), you are going to put your communities in increased danger. Your response times will be increased and as soon as one powerful/rich person loses their house, pet or even worse, family member, you'll hear about this loud and clear. Not to mention all the regular folks who will suffer in the meantime. Second, yes, firefighters have good pensions. But have you ever seen a firefighter's paycheck? They are liveable but, unless Wisconsin is the land of firefighting milk-n-honey, there isn't a firefighter alive who is going to become a millionaire based on that salary. When my husband calls me to say he had to go to the hospital for an anthrax scare, well yes, I think that pension is the least the city can do for us. Ya gotta keep that pension plan or increase annual salaries if you want to keep sending folks into burning buildings and anthrax scares.
2. My volunteer coordinator. I won't name the organization by name (if you did some blog research you might be able to sort it out), but she is not being a good volunteer coordinator/fundraiser. I'm on the committee and am on a great subcommittee. Or so I thought. This week I'm told that due to safety issues, my subcommittee can't actually do its function. What?! So why did you let me sign up for the subcommittee in the first place? Further, my other attempts at being involved have been thwarted. I just want to volunteer to raise money for this cause I feel very strongly about but at this point, the experience has been so disappointing that I think I may switch organizations...despite being involved in this one since college.

3. The Texas Rangers. You know baseball takes precedent over state budgets, career benefits and passionate volunteer causes. We want to go to the April 2 Texas Rangers game so I can watch the Sox smoosh them. The Rangers however won't sell me tickets! I mean, come on, I am trying to give you money so I can then pay for parking and spend an embarassingly large sum on game concessions. Let me do it! Oddly enough, you cannot buy single game tickets to any Rangers game in the whole season right now. The season is only a month away. I hope the Rangers fix this because I really want to see my Sox smoosh them...er I mean, really want to go with my hubby to his first game in Arlington (and then chuckle when his team is SMOOSHED).

Dad, Girl Scout Cookies & Thank Yous

This is 95% a Team Black blog. 95% about Team Black, personal triumphs and adventures.

But I'm going to share with you something that is partially personal and partially professional.

Here's my blog about a lesson my Dad taught me in elementary school that has professional application, so much so that I blogged about it at work: http://www.connectioncafe.com/posts/2011/02-february/dad-girl-scouts-and-thank.html.

My Dad is great and I love him.

Feels Like April

I'm 100% certain it is February. All the signs are there. Valentine's Day last Monday, Emal & Brenda's birthdays on Friday (happy birthday y'all!) and a calendar that abruptly ends on the 28th. It must be February.

But it feels like April...minus all the excessive birthday cake. It has been in the 70s all week in Austin. If I heard right, Wichita Falls (north of Big D) actually set a heat record for this time of year with a glorious 84.

With the lovely weather, I've been walking Lexi lots and opening every window I can find. In a nutshell, our lives have been colored warm and spring-like.

Friday Nichole, Brittany and our new friend Kendra came over for a girls' night of wine and munchies. Kendra is a coworker of Amanda's Aunt Pam up in Boston and she recently relocated to Austin to take a different position. So now she's here and our friend; it's great! Anyways, they came over and let's just say it was an extended night. I believe I'm finding that to be the key in making my 2 day weekend feel sufficient: stay up so late Friday that it feels like a weekend day in its own right. Done.

Saturday I did some outlet mall shopping where I rescued a box of Girl Scout Cookies from a Brownie troop. All part of the no cookie left behind policy here at Team Black. Then I went on a long Lexi walk and read outside on the porch in the sunshine (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). We ended the night at Erin and Jon's with venison burgers -omg delicious- and baby-palooza consisting of a 6 year old, 1 year old, 3 month old and Lexi. All 4 were carried around like babies for a large portion of the evening...despite that only two are the appropriate age/species for such.

Being able to grill burgers outside in February while drinking margaritas and only needing a light sweater when the wind picks up is excellent. And is exactly what I had in mind for living in Texas.

Happy oddly-warm-February to ya!

$$ Tips From Us, 2

You may recall the original $$ Tips From Us post from last year. I actually got a positive comment on it. And I started thinking about that today when my first conversation of the day was receiving advice from financial planner and one of my last was giving advice to a friend.

So I'm here to do a sequel. Here's three money tips from us.

1. Have a misc line item. First, I suggest line items in your budget. They can be as broad or narrow as you like. And I highly suggest a misc line item. For us, "misc" includes gifts, house things (like hoses or dish towels), puppy dog nail trimming, people hair cuts, Christmas lights, etc. It's a big list in our world so it's kinda a big dollar amount. These are things that don't happen every month, but gosh darn it, you know they are going to happen sometime in the year. Just because they aren't regular doesn't mean you can get away with not accounting for it.
2. Spending money. This was originally a Ross idea that I was not into, but as much as I hate to admit it, he was right. This works swell for us. If we're good friends, I've probably told you about this so I'll be brief. Basically we each get a little money every month for crap. For me "crap" is Starbucks and pedicures. For him "crap" is video games and maybe golfing. Frankly, I don't know a whole lot about what his "crap" is because it comes from his spending money and thus doesn't affect me. And that's the beauty of it. In general we define spending money as something that benefits you alone including happy hour (without the other one), pedicures, golf, Starbucks, alone-vacations and the like. (Note: it does not include gas which I've seen some couples do and I have to admit, I just disagree with. You can't help if your job is 30 miles away and his is 3. Or if you take his car everywhere because it gets better mileage. These things hardly seem fair so I recommended having gas as its own line item.)
3. Invest. I knew this...kinda but this is actually borrowed from Erik, my new bff at UBS. Today he told me that we have to invest more. Apparently cold hard cash, while awesome, ain't gonna cover it for retirement. I'm taking Erik's advice and as soon as I can figure out the paperwork associated with my 401k will be increasing my contribution from 3% to 5% in hopes of ending my days in a South Texas beach condo. Confession: This is the tip I know the least about. Investments and I are still a relatively new friendship but I hope to become besties soon.

If you and your honey are trying to figure out your money, I hope this helps. We're not experts but every once in a while we stumble upon something that works really well and I say, why reinvent the wheel.

It's Spring. In February.

78. That's how warm it got today in Austin. 60 is the low tonight. And though the weather has been beautiful like this for a few days now, what really made me appreciate it was getting into my PJs tonight.

Shorts and a tank top. Without the heater on. LOVE IT.

More Food! NoRTH

"...just like an independent. See? 'Chain' doesn't have to be a dirty word."

- Texas Monthly

In Austin we're big fans of locally owned places. While I must admit that Team Black is not the best at being regular patrons of locally owned establishments, we do try our best for special occassions or dinners out where the motivation is more than "I don't wanna cook. Where can we grab dinner cheaply?"

Tonight we did a Valentine's Day double-date to NoRTH, a modern Italian place near my office which until Googling, I mostly assumed was locally owned. However, it is not but the Texas Monthly quote above kinda says it all: chain does not necessarily equal bad. (And you know my feelings about Texas Monthly: love.)

NoRTH, one of a small chain in the western part of the country, served us delicious Italian food tonight. I ordered the scallops with wild mushroom risotto. My first risotto experience, inspired by the many risottos on Top Chef, and it was excellent. I can confidently tell you this was one of the best Italian meals I've ever had.

The scallops I had in NYC were good, but it was really the fuschia puree that took the cake there. Here the scallops were delicious...possibly in a slightly undercooked way (it was much more appealing than it probably sounds). They literally melted in my mouth. And the risotto was so mushroomy! Yum!

I was also pleased with the calamari, bruschetti trio and the wine. The second and slightly more expensive glass of wine proved to be worth the price as it was definitely better than the first (and no, not just because it was the second; it was a full hour later).

If you are in north Austin and want a nice Italian place, let me be the first one to recommend NoRTH in the Domain.

The Life of Pi

I started 2011 out by reading the first book on my year-long reading list: The Life of Pi. I had no idea what it was about but knew it was one of those books you are "supposed to read" because "its really good," or so they say.

The first quarter or third of the book was slow. Even having finished it, I'm not terribly sure why it was included. I think it could have been 20 pages of character background instead of 100.

The next section of the book was very interesting. I won't be giving away too much plot if I tell you there was a boat filled with zoo animals and a teenage boy, all stranded in the Pacific Ocean. See? Interesting. I bet you want to figure out how that works. Reading this section was easy and interesting, many trials and tribulations to keep the plot going. However I have to admit, I still wasn't sure why The Life of Pi was receiving such high acclaim.

The very very end though explained exactly why.

It had a "The Sixth Sense" type ending; one that makes you want to do the whole thing over just to confirm that it does all align. I was really surprised by the end and it made the rest of the book (sans that first quarter) be all the more intriguing and interesting. And it definitely leaves you with a "this is a really good book. people should read it" mentality.

I'm not entirely sure if 4-5 pages of awesome ending puts a book in the "really really good" category but it definitely elevates it from hum-drum.

Verdict: Skim the first quarter but read the rest, especially the final section. Wow.

I went to NYC and all I took was pics of the library

Despite seeing family and Deltas, the only pictures I came home with are of the New York Public Library.





I hope the BPL doesn't think I'm cheating.

Best. Lobster. Ravioli.

In Boston, my fav restaurant was/is the Altantic Fish Company. They put lobster in everything, most wonderfully surprisingly the ravioli and mashed potatoes.

Tonight at my TriDelta reunion dinner (where I failed to take a single picture) at Maria Pia, lobster ravioli was on the menu. Obviously, I had to have it.

Oh. My. God. It was the best, most lobster-y ravioli I have ever had. I believe it was only about 5 pieces of ravioli but they were large and each one was jam packed with lobster.

Usually things made with lobster, in my experience, are mostly everything else and very light on the lobster. Not these bad boys. You could tasted every ounce of lobster and it was amazing. It was honestly better than any lobster ravioli I ever had in Boston (or anywhere else).

In addition to fantastic lobster, I had lovely company at dinner. I saw Erin who was TriDelta president when I rushed, Suzie who was one year ahead of me and Kristin who is/was among the members of my pledge class who I was attached to the hip with throughout college, most especially senior year.

They are super fun ladies and it's so very interesting to hear the direction life has taken all of us, yet to still be able to have such an easy, comfortable dinner together, almost like we never left college. Erin works for the NY Post and is getting married this summer. Suzie is a fancy fancy corporate lawyer in Manhattan. Kristin is a physician's assistant in Jersey. And of course, you know my married-in-Austin-nonprofiteer-at-heart story.

A great last night in the Big Apple. I've learned so much at my workshops and am looking forward to getting back to Austin and implementing it all at work. Oh yes, and I'm looking forward to getting home to my hunky hubby and perfect pup. They are totally the best.

New York, Here I Am!

Yesterday I flew to NYC for Social Media Week. From a work perspective, its going very well. We hosted a panel today that I thought went off without a hitch.

Other than work stuff, there's two things I want to tell you about: misc random stuff and my dinner out with my cousin, Alan, and his girlfriend, Alex.

Random Stuff

• I should have stuck to my guns when this past summer I decided to quit Newark Airport. Sigh, maybe I'll have learned my lesson now, one power outage later.
• The evening news anchor on ABC here in NYC has some serious Texas hair...like bigger than most Texans. You go girl.
• I forgot and since getting here, have remembered what always made NYC "not my city." You can't see the sky. Have you seen the Texas sky? Its huge. Alan agrees, the Texas sky is bigger than any sky. But in New York, skyscrapers get in the way and you can't see it. Strange since I KNOW the sky is up there someplace.
• I also forgot how much I love being in a city and just walking everywhere. Even in the cold temperature, I've loved walking everywhere all the time since I arrived. I've not set foot into a cab since I made it to my hotel and I'm loving it. I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow.
• So much I've forgotten since leaving Boston, and among the list the glory of a cold sunny day. I remembered that I liked these but I forgot just why and how they felt until today. Something about the seeming paradox of cold and sunny just really does it for me. (Note: possibly not a paradox to everyone but in Texas it is cold or sunny, rarely to never is it both.)
• A Starbucks on every corner. We have a lot in Texas but the walking city gives whole new meaning to "a lot."
• The sound of trains running regularly. I don't mean the train whistle like I could occasionally hear from my old Austin apartment, but the regular vibration and noise of a steady subway or commuter rail. I'm staying at a very comfortable hotel but being just about a block outside the heart of Times Square, the subway is present and is a pleasant reminder of the exciting, bustleing city all around me. I love the energy it suggests!
• AT&T blackhole. Very poor cell service apparently because the whole city has iPhones and the network can't handle this. I remember this happening in Austin...for one weekend, ACL. Not every day life. As Ross said, this can't be good for business.
• Seeing the scene outside my window as the back drop for multiple mainstream news shows, including Nightline which just came on my TV.

I think that covers random.

Now dinner with Alan.

My cousin Alan (from the Lowe side) lives here in NYC and works in the film industry. He's kinda a big deal; his name shows up in film credits. Since we don't see each other all that often, we made certain to grab dinner while I was in town and I was able to meet his mystery girlfriend, Alex. (I call Alex the mystery girlfriend because 5 years into their relationship I still had not met her but in fairness, she does live in NYC and I'm in Texas; kinda far. Further, Alan's parents swore she existed so perhaps I should have believed them.)

Alan met me near my hotel and led me through the NYC maze a few blocks to a swanky restaurant in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yes, that's right, the Met, iconic NYC museum. The Modern was fa-ancy. Anthony Bourdain and the whole Top Chef crew would have been impressed. As you might guess, it was a very sleek modern decor, not too fussy, lots of straight clean lines.

The menu suggested ordering items from each of the menu's three pages but our trio decided something from two of the three pages would be sufficient.

Before I tell you about the magnificient food, let me tell you, Ross and I don't really do fine dining. We're your typical glutenous Americans and we like our plates heaping with mashed potatoes or dripping with cheesey enchiladas. However, we rarely finish the full meal when we're out so really, would probably be fine with the petite portions of fine dining. But all that said, the food at The Modern was magnificient but I can't resist commenting on the presentation.

My first course was a DELICIOUS wild mushroom soup with ravioli. The soup was rich but not necessarily thick, just dripping with flavor. The ravioli were fried which surprised me. I'm not sure if I was supposed to put them in the soup but the looked like they would taste off the charts good if submerged in mushroomy deliciousness. I was right. Funny element: I got three ravioli. Three. Who serves three ravioli when they are half dollar size? Stupendous restaurants like this do.

My second course was, in true Cheryl seafood loving fashion, the grilled scallops. They were brought out to me with a little garnish of spinach and cabbage. Um, yum. And then just as I'm devouring it with my eyes waiting for my fellow diners to be served their food, the waiter fills the (oversized with an comically large lip) bowl with...are you ready...fuschia puree.

Fuschia.

When have you ever had fuschia in your dinner? I never have but holy cow, I could do it again. It was outstanding! And I can't use any word besides fuschia to tell you how it tasted. That describes it perfectly.

Once done with my scallops (again, three), I was feeling fairly content in terms of food consumed and quite dandy overall in terms of quality of food. I start to wrap things up when Alex tells me that this place is known for it desserts and that of course dessert isn't even a question: we are having it.

I figure, what the hell, why stop with fuschia doused scallops, bring on the dessert. It's not every day that this Texan visits NYC. In that true spirit, I ordered the cheesecake.

My cheesecake with mango sorbet was delicious, interesting and citrusy. But what I wish I could share with you is Alan's dessert. I don't really know what it was but it included chocolate and caramel and was named Something Something "Dome." His personal tribute to the Astrodome. It was served on a white rectangular plate. Chocolate dome (literally) on one end, scoop of ice cream on the other and drops of chocolate syrup and squares of gelatin carefully dotting the middle. Dotting the plate. I thought you only saw that on Top Chef!

I took out my phone and took a picture.

Call me provincial but this fine dining experience just made me giddy with New York-ness. It was so outside of my normal every day lovely Austin life that it actually transported me into the chic urban environment that is the Big Apple. And it was FUN.

I had a great time, not only eating and giggling over perfect, thoughtful presentation, but also chatting with my cousin and getting to know his girldfriend. We talked about everything and nothing at all, vacations, work, parents, weather, etc. The normal chatter of people who know each other well-ish and are having a great two hour plus meal.

An excellent night out in the City indeed.

Our next 30 years

Tomorrow morning I am meeting with a financial planner from UBS. We're going to discuss all of mine and Ross' financial goals forever. You know I'm a planner. I love to plan. And I love to reach goals. And I really love to save money. So a plan to save money and reach our goals should be right up my alley.

And it is but it also sounds a little ridiculous. I mean at age 25 I'm going to set our goals for forever? Yes, yes apparently I am.

So what's on the list? Allow me to share

• Forever home
• Kids' college
• Ranch in West Texas
• Beach condo
• Self-sufficient retirement
• Not giving up everything else in life

We've talked about timing for most of these. The forever home will be in a couple years. I figured for kids' college (geez not even pregnant nor done with my own college expenses), if we do a little consistently for their whole lives, they'll have a nice little savings when they get there. Ross wants to buy the ranch in the next 5-10 years (specifically he'll tell you 7 years). Once we have the land we figure we can slowly build the house. And the deal is when we sell the forever home when we are old, I get to take that money and buy a beach condo. Oh yes, and we want to do all this without giving up the little things like weekend trips and dinner out.

I think we can do it...maybe...but it won't be easy. I'm hoping that the planner tomorrow will say "Y'all have ambitious goals but by being a little crazy and starting to work toward them now, you can do it."

Then our craziness will have paid off and I'll feel less crazy for trying to plan out the next 30+ years.

Snow: My Savior

Yesterday I had a pretty good day. After work, I ran to do some quick Target shopping. On the way home from that, I was talking to my hubby about our Friday night plans when he said nothing too crazy, he had that thing all day Saturday. I laughed and told him that thing, as in baby Blake's first birthday party, didn't start until 3 p.m.

BAM - he did not mean the baby's birthday. He meant another day of umpire training. All day.

First, I was bummed because I had just bought the baby's present and was now going to go to the party alone. Total suck. Then I was double bummed because he works Sunday and I leave for NYC on Monday. And then I was down-in-the-dumps, grouchy, triple quadruple times a million bummed because I realized how long it would be until we were both home again.

14 days.

That's right, we were looking down the tunnel of 14 days without one of being in the same place and awake for more than 4 straight hours. DEPRESSING. So much so that I poured a glass of wine and called my girlfriends. Lucky for me when I talked to Nichole she was at my exit so came over to share the wine and whine.

Fast forward to 7 a.m.

Coming in from a run in the snowy yard

SNOW. Glorious glorious snow. And glorious email from HR saying the office won't open until 10. Followed by even more glorious emails from my whole team declaring it a work from home day. We're all good Texans and know we don't know how to drive in snow. No reason to risk lives.

Hubby gets home and says its a darn good thing that everyone declared a work from home day because he sees scary accidents and loves me and I wasn't leaving the house today to drive no matter what anyone said. So there.

I can't tell you how happy this all made me. Yes, I worked for the vast majority of the day (confession to coworkers: I did take a kinda lengthy lunch that included a shower and cooking of actual food, and I might still be wearing PJs [yes I put them back on after my shower; I saw no reason not to]) but it was so nice that even if I was working, hubby was just in the other room. We had lunch together and all my water breaks included a smooch.

It's been exactly the break in the long stretch of conflicting work schedules that I needed. I'm so thankful for my reasonable and flexible job....and for snow.

Fiery Red

At work recently I did a personality test. It was really hard. For each question there were four pairs of words, you had to rank the pairs as most like you, least like you and in the middle on a scale of one to five.

Anyways, today we got back the results and I am Fiery Red. As is probably no surprise to any of you, this means I'm results-driven, possibly a little controlling, task-oriented and fast-paced. My motto, according to the test, is "Do it now."

The results were frighteningly and brutally accurate, from my strengths to my weaknesses, especially the ones I know I have and am frustrated that I have. (I mean nobody wants to admit being a bad listener right? But I probably talk too much to qualify as a good listener.)

The funniest part was in the "weaknesses" category it literally said...are you ready?

It said should not go into china stores.

Uh hello, random. But agreed, I'm sure I'd break everything in sight.

Now back to the "Do it now" motto. I knew it was true from the get-go but just now Ross and I had a classic example of it.

The ceiling light in my room isn't working. We thought it was just the bulb but that doesn't appear to be it. It's been out for a few days and with the short winter days and lack of natural light, it's driving me crazy. I come home from the gym tonight and tell Ross my plan of action (which includes an upgrade to the lighting and thus, $$). He asks questions. I answer questions. He explains that X part of my plan isn't optimal. We go round and round and round. We're both getting a little frustrated at this point. Ross says let's deal with it later. I say "no, now."

Hello, my name is Cheryl but you can just call me Impatient.

I have to admit, it was the classic example. I hate putting off decisions. It just means I have to think about them again later. They loom over me. Ross is not this way. I work through a decision quickly and vocally. He works through decisions a little slower (as in he prefers more than two minutes) and mulls over the options in his head. I suppose they both have their benefits and drawbacks. I get things done but I don't always take the time to think through everything, even on simple things. Ross thinks through all the options but incurs decision-making jet lag.

I mostly enjoyed the personality test we did at work and have to laugh at its amazing accuracy. I wish we had access to it for Ross. I'd like to see where on the color wheel he is in relation to my Fiery Red. And if he's allowed to go into china stores.