Self-storage woes

    For a while, I worked for a self-storage company. One of the perks was a free 10x10 self-storage unit, which I very definitely took advantage of. The company was eventually bought out by another self-storage company, and we were told that the owners had negotiated some sort of deal where they couldn't immediately charge us full rate for our 10x10s, which was pretty nice of them. For the last several years, I have been paying less than $10/month for my space and trying to keep as low a profile as possible, so that no one noticed and did anything about it. Sadly, it seems my luck recently ran out. 

    In December, I got notice that my rent would be increasing to $60/month come May. Sucks, but in light of the heavy discount I'd been enjoying, I figured I'd just suck it up. Until I get a reminder that my February rent is due - I was pretty sure I'd paid a couple months ahead, because why not? I log in to check it and NOPE! I owe almost $100. What? They'd upped my rent to $117 without (I'd thought) giving me notice. 

   Naturally, I wanted some clarification here. I'd resigned myself to $60, but almost double that felt like a gut punch. Got on the website with their oh-so-helpful chat function and, after wading through the automated responses and getting assigned a real live person, was told that they couldn't do anything, I'd need to call this number. Which, of course, closed 7 minutes ago. Thank you, very helpful.

Impostor syndrome... or maybe not

     I've been reading a book titled Influence: The psychology of persuasion by Robert Cialdini lately, about various methods by which people - typically unscrupulous ones - get us to agree to do or buy something we didn't initially want to do or buy. I wouldn't classify myself as a pushover, per se, but I do have a tendency to give people too many chances to make my life difficult and I figured this would hep me to at least be aware of when I fall for fallacious entreaties.

     While I'm only about halfway through the book, it has already been eye-opening and informative. One section talks about what the author calls the fallacy of pluralism: nobody wants to appear flustered or at a loss, so we constantly side-eye what others are doing and take our social cues from what seems to be the status quo. In most cases, this is perfectly fine: you can judge how to interact with a new ticket counter by how others approach it, or that a clown getting in your personal space at a work party is funny rather than something to be offended at, that sort of thing.

Cross-promotion

     For those of you who don't keep tabs on this sort of thing, I started a business this year, making hats and bags for cosplayers (Steampunk in particular), and those of us who don't fit the "one-size-fits-most" hat sizing that women have been saddled with. As the winter's coming on, and things get colder, I discovered that my go-to hat, which is unlined, does absolutely nothing to keep my head warm when the wind comes through. So, the latest offering from the store is a fully-lined hat made from old tweed jackets that covers the tips of the ears (for those of you without thick hair to keep them warm). Go check it out!

New winter hat, the first of many!

Good days and bad days

Saturday:

• Did laundry (down 2 flights of stairs),
• Washed sheets (also 2 flights of stairs),
• Hand-washed my winter coat,
• Did the dishes,
• Cleaned out the fridge,
• Cleaned out the cabinets,
• Culled old clothes that no longer fit from the closet,
• Put stuff up on eBay,
• Wrote up a study guide for Russian Fairy Tales midterm,
• Watched Russian cartoons to expand vocab and listening comprehension,
• Read a (short) French book,

FTP 42 - Know your audience

     I am happy to admit I am quite enraptured with my smartphone. For me, it is a combined street map, day planner, weather forecast, on-the-go translator, stopwatch, timer, clock, phone, text and internet connection, and of course, timewaster. I love silly little games that I can play really quickly while waiting for someone to show up, or for an appointment to start, or just to wind down at night. I do have a few requirements for these games, though; the games 1) cannot be timed or done in a way to make me feel rushed (it's a way to relax for heaven's sake!), 2) must be easily interruptible (they are a time filler, and should be put away when anything important happens), and 3) absolutely must require some amount of logic, intelligence, or problem-solving so that I can, in some small way, justify them as brain-training or self-improvement timewasters.

Happy Commercialized Holiday!

     For the last couple months, the Sunday paper- one of my few indulgences- has been covered with advertisements for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, New Year's, Presidents' Day, and, most recently, the Super Bowl. The coupons all focus on whatever holiday it is, and all the gimmicks that accompany it. So it really should not have been a surprise to open today's paper and find it chock-full of red and pink hearts, and exhortations to buy buy buy everything that your significant other supposedly has had their heart set on, but has not received within the last few frenzied months of consumerism.

     I realize that, as a starving student who has acclimated to minimalism, my views of random purchasing aren't very common, but it just seems a little overdone to me. The average price of a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolate around here comes to roughly $30-40. A dinner out at a nice restaurant for two comes to roughly $40-60. Even ignoring the fact that either of those options can buy a week's worth of groceries, if you're careful, why on earth would anyone want to further compound the issue by buying a $40 "Be My Valentine" red blender that will probably not match the rest of the kitchen décor, and certainly doesn't fit under any definition of "romantic" that I've ever come across?

This store is refusing to sell vacuums for the week before V-day. Hilarious.