Tag: life

Here’s this week’s pizza. It came out much more circular. I added some whole wheat flour too to make it a little healthier. I’m getting better at this!

This was our second attempt at pizza. Last week didn’t go so well, the crust had trouble. But this week was a lot better. I overstretched it so I kind of had to flop it over on itself to get it to fit on the pizza stone, but it still tasted pretty good. I’m still working on the whole making it circular thing too. The crust we used had some reviews saying it was bland, so I added some honey and Italian seasoning which worked out great.

I keep hearing on the radio and Internet about how the economy is recovering from the recession. The stock market is back up and high-end retail sales are up and unemployment numbers may, possibly, perhaps, might be starting to turn around. But I haven’t seen any evidence that things are actually getting any better. In fact, all the evidence I’ve seen suggests things will only be getting worse.

For instance, in December 2010 the Secretary of Energy announced that DOE employees and DOE contractors (which I fall into) will have a pay freeze in effect until January 2013. That means my income is not likely to change. However, since December 2010 all of our expenses have gone up not insignificantly.

Gas prices here are nearing $4 a gallon and all expectations suggest that they will continue to rise. In December, they were around the $3 per gallon mark. So we have to absorb a 33% (and possibly higher) increase in gas prices with no possibility of wage increases.

We don’t have cable or satellite television, but we do have a Netflix subscription. The price of the same Netflix plan increased from $9 to $11 per month—a 22% increase for the same service.

Our Internet connection increased by $5 per month with no upgrade in service—a 14% increase.

Food prices have been steadily increasing over the last several months. For instance, a head of lettuce used to be about $1.50. This week I decided not to buy it because the lettuce was up to $3 a head and the heads were probably about 2/3 the previous size. I understand there is apparently a nationwide lettuce problem, but in a more general nature we used to get by on about $80 per week in groceries, but the last several weeks have been closer to $100.

Now, this isn’t to say that we’re struggling. We’re still very blessed to be able to put the same amount of money into savings each paycheck and contribute to our retirement account at the same level we have been. But we are having to make some adjustments to maintain the balance. We’ve been doing a lot better about not eating at Panda Express as often as we used to (within walking distance, so tasty, so hard to resist). And the Social Security payroll tax reduction that went into effect in January has also helped soften the blow of rising prices.

But all the pundits that keep pretending things are getting better don’t seem to be living in the same world as us. We’re not going to be increasing our spending on non-essentials so long as necessities keep going up in price. Of course, Netflix is a luxury we can live without (and we’re paying for it out of our luxury spending), but Internet access is very close to essential these days, and I don’t like having to sacrifice fresh produce (I like lettuce on my sandwiches and tacos!).

Valentine’s Day this year was fairly standard. I always find it humorous to see the guys dressed like thugs trying to act tough while they’re waiting in line with a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates at the grocery store.

Surprisingly, Livermore has more than 1 (and at least 3!) gourmet cupcake stores. I decided to give one of them a shot and ordered a half-dozen gourmet cupcakes for Jess. I brought them home at lunch, along with some flowers. There were 3 vanilla and 3 chocolate cupcakes. The chocolate ones had a cream filling. They were very tasty. Jess happened to like the vanilla more than chocolate and I liked the chocolate more than vanilla, so it worked out well.

For dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory. We knew it was going to be busy, but it was busier than I expected. We got there around 6 and there was already a 2-hour wait. But, it’s located at the mall, so we just spent the time wandering around the mall. The food was good and we, of course, each ordered a slice of cheesecake to take home and eat once we weren’t completely full.