gadgets and whatnot

So, among other news since I last blogged a million years ago (not counting last week): I quit my job in April. Everyone congratulated me on my "decision to stay home with the baby." Well, thanks, but I never really made that decision. I decided to quit that particular job. I did look around for other jobs before I quit, and I didn't find anything, and I decided I didn't really need to find the next rung on the ladder before I let go of that one. With a lot of support and encouragement from my husband and wisdom from my parents, I let the job go and did not know what was next.

I decided I would do a little bit of work on my own in the neighborhood. I told everyone I knew that I was starting my own practice, even though the truth was I had NO IDEA if I really wanted to start my own practice. Suddenly, I was pretty busy! I actually have real, live clients who are paying me in real, live money. Pretty cool.

I kept daycare twice a week, and Baby still enjoys going there when I have client appointments, court dates, or other things to do. It has worked out well. Of course, it's not free, and even though my little nascent firm is doing ok, I am not consistently making more than the cost of childcare, and we are of course behind where we were when we were both working full-time. So, that has led to some creative belt-tightening. Here is what we do:

CHEAP FOOD

Though I am not much of an environmentalist, I did find some inspiration in an online publication called The Daily Green. In a blog post about foods that cost less than a dollar a pound, the site dishes out some pretty excellent advice. So, we eat a lot of chicken legs and thighs, lentils, beans, bananas, cabbage, beets, potatoes, eggs, and rice. And you know what? We are happy and healthy. Also, I do not miss boring, flavorless chicken breasts one bit.

CHEAP ENTERTAINMENT

We cut cable! This was a pretty exciting step, and it wasn't painful at all. First, we realized that our wii, which we already owned thanks to Santa Claus a few years ago, can receive streaming netflix and deliver it to our tv. So, for $9.99 / month we signed up for Netflix, and now have unlimited access to streaming movies on our wii, or computer, our iphones, and our (new) iPad. It is amazing. We can also receive one DVD at a time via mail, but we rarely bother.

We got an iPad. I will not pretend that this was a budget-conscious purchase, but we can watch almost all primetime ABC shows on it, which is pretty neat, and we can also watch iTunes on it. And, with a $30 cable, we can connect it to our TV and watch iTunes on our tv. We do this for Mad Men, which is one of the few shows we love that we cannot watch on wii/Netflix or Hulu. The season pass to Mad Men on iTunes was $30. Anyway, the iPad is amazing, and I will gush about it more in a later post.

I also bought a digital antenna for $20 and can receive HDTV via free digital broadcast. Most of the channels come in pretty well. And, don't tell the cable company, but since we are still internet subscribers, the cable that comes into our house still gives us the first 13 channels for free. Not in HD, but clear enough to watch the Giants preseason game yesterday (unfortunately the Giants play just as poorly on free tv).

CHEAP COMMUNICATIONS

We got Vonage and cut our telephone service that we had been subscribing to through the cable company. We pay $15 / month now for 200 minutes of outgoing calls and unlimited incoming calls. We also get call waiting, caller ID, and voicemail, and the voicemail gets emailed to me as a wav file, so I can listen right on my iPhone if I am out or on my computer (or iPad) if I am home. Pretty cool. And, we were able to keep our phone number.

Our "triple play" through the cable company used to cost $189 / month. After getting rid of TV service and phone service, we now pay $41 for internet service, plus $15 for Vonage and $10 for Netflix. Pretty cool.

We also use Skype all the time, to talk to my parents, my in-laws, and friends around the country. They get to see the baby, and the baby gets to see them. This is essential at 10am when the baby gets fussy and bored, and my mom sings Itsy Bitsy Spider to her via Skype.

And, just now, I enabled the calling feature in gmail. I can call any phone in the country for free from my computer. Zero dollars. Awesome. I am looking forward to using this a lot.

.... I think that is it for our major adjustments lately. But we are having fun!

xoxo,

Your faithful blogger

Back, with a request

Ok folks, I am blogging again after more than a year. Is this thing on? Can anybody hear me?

Just to bring you up to speed ... in the 13 months since I last posted, we had a baby girl named Noodle (not really), who has red hair and is adorable. She is now 10.5 months old and almost walking. She knows a few words and has a very silly sense of humor. She is a good napper and a pretty good sleeper, God bless her.

We are still in the same apartment -- it will be three years next month! Since Noodle's arrival, it has gotten kind of full and cluttered. I was really loving our apartment until I made friends with a mom two doors down living in an apartment identical to ours, but much better decorated. Suddenly I feel like all of our stuff, especially our furniture, is too big, and the whole place looks like an old lady lived here for 50 years and died, leaving a huge pile of junk. I need help! I am humbly posting pictures of my living room from four different angles. Please ignore the huge mess in the dining room and kitchen -- I had to move some clutter out so that you can see what is going on in the living room. I do not have much of a budget for new furniture, so we need to work with what we have, and I am open to rearranging it. Also, the long chaise piece on the couch can be moved to any other couch cushion or the arm chair.

Thank you, and please be nice!