Friday Randomness 4-11-14

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• Big news in our house this week!  Ken accepted a new job and put in his two-weeks notice at his current job.  The new job is literally a 4 minute drive from our house, which will be a welcome change considering his current one hour (each way) commute.  The new job is lower pay, but 1) he will be saving $3000 on metro commuting costs alone, and 2) he will be reclaiming 10 full hours per week thanks to the near zero commuting time.  So the minor paycut was well worth it.

• We finished Season 7 of Dexter last week.  Only one more season to go!

• I lamented last week about buying new cookware.  I decided on the Calphalon Unison line.  It’s nonstick, dishwasher safe (KEY for me!), and has a lifetime warranty.  The pieces are fairly expensive though, so I’ll just be buying them piecemeal.  The sets are slightly less expensive per-piece, but there are at least two or three pieces in a set that I don’t need.  I’ve also purchased a few additional cast iron pieces.

• I had to get an oil change this week.  I let them talk me into the upsell of having my transmission flushed.  I figure I have said no to any upsell they have ever tried for the last six years, so maybe I should listen to them for once?  Do you ever grow tired of the constant upselling during oil changes?

• My seedlings are growing beautifully and I’ll be transplanting them to regular pots in the next few weeks.  I just purchased this container gardening drip irrigation system, so I don’t have to actively water the plants outside.

• The weather here in the DC area has been beautiful these past few days.  Ken likes to call this weather “Temperature Zero.”  It’s when you go outside and you don’t feel cold and you don’t feel hot.  It’s like the temperature is so perfect you are neither warm nor cold.  Temperature Zero.  You heard it here first.  Spread it around.

• I have been tempted to request a standing desk in my office.  Sometimes I just grow so tired of sitting.  My butt starts to hurt.  Plus, I fidget a lot, so I wonder if standing would help me, well, not fidget, because I’d be burning all that nervous energy by standing.  But I can definitely see growing tired of a standing desk quickly.  If I am standing for extended periods of time, I get some lower back pain, no doubt due to poor posture.  Plus, I’m lazy and sometimes just want to slouch down in my chair and do what I need to do on my computer.  We’ll see.

Any interesting news for you all this week?