Queercents

We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. - Dr. Bob Moorehead

Jeanine and I both plan on working after we adopt our child. Why? We need both incomes to continue living the way we do. Or at a minimum, to stay in our house that happens to be in a really good school district. If it weren’t for the housing part, we could certainly get by on one income.

Much has been written about two-income families. She Works / He Works: How Two-Income Families Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off by Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers first came into print over decade ago. Better off than whom? Or so, as the topic is explored by this reviewer: Read the rest of this entry »

Since returning from travel in Central Europe and reminiscing on my David Černý sculpture hunt, I’ve been thinking a lot about the complexity of looking at (broadly categorized) anti-communist (and I’m not talking about propaganda here) art through the eyes of a remorseful (but definitely not repentant) capitalist.

Money is a good thing. Free markets are a wonderful thing. David Černý and others sharing his ethos remind us of this with their work as mouthpiece for a region engaging the capitalist’s life relatively recently.

For the train from Prague to Krakow, I got a hold of the most recent Umelec, an international art and culture publication, and found that the editorial by Ivan Mecl was addressing something in the neighborhood of this aforementioned complexity. He begins, Read the rest of this entry »

I lead a fairly simple life, for a city girl. My partner and I are slowly but surely uncluttering our lives, our home, and our brains. We don’t tend to buy a lot of consumer goods (not always difficult, since we’re not usually marketed to directly.) Living frugally is not really a choice at the moment, either, unless we want to rack up huge credit card debt, so I’ve been avoiding planning any large purchases that don’t have anything to do with my impending career change.

But last week, one of my colleagues at massage school shared some excellent news with me. He knows that I live my other life as a web developer, and since I’m tech-savvy, he knew I’d appreciate the new toy he’s bought for himself: his new iPod Touch.

(Actually, he bought a pair: one for him, and one for his wife. Very cute.)

Cue the choruses of angels! That thing can play music, sure, but it can also play videos with great definition, keep track of appointments, surf the web wirelessly — it seems like it’s got all of the stuff the iPhone has, minus the phone functionality. And I want it. Badly.

Read the rest of this entry »

So you’ve decided to take the plunge and upgrade to a premium online dating service. The main value of a paid dating site is that you’re meeting people who are financially motivated (by membership costs) to find a serious relationship, or at least date. There are also other features like compatibility matching or safety features. Here’s how to get the most bang for your buck.

Do the research. Check with the Better Business Bureau and read complaints if you can find them. You can also email the sites about their success rate, though be prepared to take their answers with a grain of salt. Alexa traffic is another great resource that lest you see how many hits a particular site gets. There are a lot of sites for gay dating out there that just don’t get much traffic. Primarily straight dating sites may do well on traffic but have very few gay subscribers, so make sure there’s enough singles for you to date. If you can’t tell with a basic search, email their customer service.

Read the rest of this entry »

I realized after my last post that I was feeling a little down on myself. I’ve made some less-than-perfect decisions in the past, but so have we all. So I thought I’d put together a list of choices I’ve made since starting college that have turned out to be great, if not always the best option for keeping us financially afloat.

1. My choice of college. Even if the education and networking that come from attending a fancy Ivy League college weren’t enough, I met my partner there. I don’t care how expensive four years at that institution was, it’s worth it for that reason alone.
2. Living out of my comfort zone. Barb and I spent two years in Flagstaff, Arizona so that she could attend graduate school there. I joined her, kicking and screaming, and really disliked being so profoundly landlocked. We also had to keep a very tight budget, and didn’t make any headway on debt. But the experience of living in an environment so different from the East Coast areas I’d lived was eye-opening, and ultimately good for me. Read the rest of this entry »

The reasons for tipping in restaurants are pretty straightforward—servers make their living entirely on tips. But what about people who are otherwise paid a standard wage? Is the mere act of doing something for another person eligible for a gratuity?

To help answer this, let’s examine something else very near and dear to my heart: Blogging. You might see a tenuous comparison at best, but bear in mind—a great many blogs are written in coffee shops. Considering the amount of time that goes into researching, writing and publishing posts, should bloggers be compensated by their readers? Or at least given gift cards for additional lattes?

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“Money is related to class only in the minds of people who have too much of the former, too little of the latter or none of either.” – Doug Robarchek

A couple of week’s ago, the New York Times published an article about the survivors of the notorious nightclub fire in Rhode Island that took the lives of 100 people. It records how they feel forgotten:

At first, all kinds of help poured in for the roughly 200 injured survivors and families of 100 others who died in the disaster, one of the worst nightclub fires in the nation’s history. But that help has all but disappeared, even though many of the injured face more surgeries, cannot resume full-time work, and struggle to afford heating oil and other basics.

Why has the help disappeared? Some argue it has to do with class: Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting in the laundromat down the street, waiting for my triple-washer to finish its spin cycle. The owner has asked me to hang out and talk with him today. “I feel a sermon coming on,” he says.

Father Peter is an evangelical Christian. He’s a priest at a nearby church, as well as the owner of my neighborhood laundromat. He hangs photos of Jesus in the laundromat and says “praise the Lord” a lot. He thinks the only options for Christian sexuality (read: legitimate sexuality) are celibacy or as part of church-sanctioned marriage.

And yet, I continue pumping quarters into his washers and dryers. Read the rest of this entry »