I Gots To Get Paid

Tags

entrepreneurship, jobs, starting a business, work

Well, tomorrow is Mean Vet’s last day, and that means that my hours are being cut down, as of next week.

The boss is going to try to run two clinics at once, going back and forth between them.

Right now I’m only scheduled for 3 and a half days next week.

I spoke to my dog training friend and we’re going ahead with registering our training business!

Does anyone have any advice or warnings when it comes to advertising a new business, making a business plan, running a general partnership, etc?

 

Edit: This is my 500th post! I feel like I should offer a giveaway or something in celebration.

SO.

I will mail something complete useless and of no financial value to a random commenter on this post! Deadline to leave your name for If By Yes’s Big Exciting Gift Of Crap will be Dec 1st. 

Parenting Pressure From The Land of Eden, or, In Which Persia Saves A Baby From Icy Death

Peer Pressure.

We all succumb to it.

Some people get it constantly. How to dress the baby, how to discipline the toddler, what to feed them, what toys to give them.

Until recently, I have been surprisingly blessed in this department. I don’t get much pressure from my friends, or my mother, or even my in-laws.

But now it has started, and it comes from…

My daycare.

Occupy This

Every now and then, something from the Occupy movement drifts onto my Facebook.

Usually it’s stuff like this:

a

And they’re often put forward by friends who I know for a fact are non-rich, left leaning, well meaning people.

And that tells me why the Occupy movement is not succeeding.

Because people don’t understand things clearly. They don’t understand the concept behind the Occupy movement, and that complete incomprehension is going to be the biggest hurdle for the Occupy protestors to overcome.

People just don’t get it.

Take the above sign. Does it make sense to you? Then you, too, fall into the category of people who don’t understand what Occupy is all about.

Let’s think about this for a moment:

The expression “I am the 99%” refers to the distribution of wealth in America. In the U.S, 1% of the population controls (depending on how you crunch the numbers) up to 40% of the wealth. 20% of Americans control 85% of the wealth.

So if you live in the U.S., and you make (individually, before taxes) less than $400,000, YOU ARE IN THE 99%.

Now do you see why the above sign is ridiculous? This person had to work FULL TIME to get through college. Despite having scholarships, he/she doesn’t have enough money to eat out even once a month. Unless he or she considers 400,000 a year to be “barely above minimum wage” and just happens to be an insane cheapskate, he or she is DEFINITELY in the 99%.

“But Carol”, people might argue, “maybe he or she is purposely twisting the slogan, indicating that 99% of people are lazy layabouts who want everything handed down to them from the rich.”

Maybe.

But that’s simply not true.

Remember, they started out by occupying WALL STREET. Not Beverly Hills or Boca Raton.

The Occupy movement is not about the poor gathering together with their hands out.

It is about holding corporations accountable for the economic crash, and protesting the corruption that both caused and resulted from it.

It is about letting people who DO bust their butts for what they earn actually KEEP enough of it to put a roof over their heads and feed their families, instead of taking it and buying new jets for company executives.

It seems funny to me that the banks can go to the government with their hands out and get billions of dollars in the name of good business sense, but if the working poor just want to keep some of their income to feed their families, they are deemed to be lazy bums.

The idea is supposed to be that by giving corporations tax cuts and bailouts, you give the companies the leeway to hire more employees, pay higher wages, and so on.

This model doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, personally.

Seems to me that if you just let the less wealthy taxpayers keep their money, especially the really strapped ones who are struggling to make ends meet, then they’ll have more money to spend, and the companies can make money that way.

Because, trust me, if you hand money to someone who almost never has any, they’ll respond by spending it, not stockpiling it. It may be on food, or clothes for their children, or college tuition, or it may be on a car or a vacation, but they will spend it. 

And isn’t that how businesses are supposed to make money? From their patrons?

Giving money directly to the businesses seems backwards to me. You see, businesses are FOR PROFIT and they’re just as likely to stockpile the money to add to their company’s value.

Or maybe they’ll give it to an executive who already has lots of money to contribute to the economy, and he’ll stockpile it instead.

Which seems to be just what happens. It turns out that there isn’t much trickle-down from corporate tax breaks.

This isn’t just an American problem. Canada seems to be the poster-boy for the utter failure of corporate tax breaks to make an actual dent in unemployment rates.

Which is why you have Occupy Vancouver, Occupy Toronto, and Occupy Halifax, despite the fact that our banking system is MUCH more secure and came out of the crash not too badly.

MOST people, if you come right out and ask them, agree that corporate fraud is bad, that employment is good, and that more money needs to flow through the economy in order to stimulate things properly. 

That’s why there are conservatives, liberals, and libertarians alike joining the Occupy movement, and why the Occupy movement is not merely an American thing.

…And that’s also why people are confused.

WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE STANDING TOGETHER? CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS CAN’T AGREE, SO THEIR MESSAGE MUST BE VERY MIXED AND CONFUSING!

Or, maybe they’re all part of the 99%, agreeing on basic things like money = good, greed and fraud= bad.

Unfortunately, people can’t grasp that simple a concept, and so they point to the millions of different ideas that the disparate groups have for solving the problem.

Sure, it’s haphazard and non-cohesive. But that’s the beginning of Democracy.

Let’s band together, and figure it out together, because whatever we’re doing right now isn’t working. 

And if you’re Canadian and still unsure, you can double check your position in the percentiles here.

If MacLeans gives you a number greater than 1%, YOU ARE THE 99%. 

For a really detailed breakdown of the wealth in America, you can try analzying this post from XKCD. 

In Which Carol Gets A Man Cold But Can’t Pull It Off

The existence of Man Colds is a well-recognized phenomena among married women. 

A couple of weeks ago, the winter cold season hit, and with it, a flurry of Man Cold cases.

Owl brought the cold home, and I caught it from him. 

Perfect Husband is always very sympathetic when I am sick, but I assurred him that it was a mild cold, not one of the “death colds” (as he calls them) that I am prone to contracting.

A day of sore throat, a few days of stuffy nose, and that was about it.

A good thing, too, because my work is far too short staffed for me to call in sick, and because being sick doesn’t at all change the fact that there is still a baby to take care of. So life went along as usual, uncomfortable illness notwithstanding.

But then PH caught the cold.

PH’s cold was DIFFERENT.

It was a MAN COLD.

He was dying.

I believe his exact words, a few days in were, “I can’t wait until I don’t feel like DEATH.”

There was much moaning, and sleeping, and flurries of snotty Kleenex as he suffered under the excruciating misery that is the Man Cold.

Was he actually sicker than I was? Maybe. How can we compare the subjective experience of illness? Perhaps his immune system didn’t rally as well as mine. It’s really hard to say.

They say that men have a lower pain tolerance than women do, but I have the lowest pain tolerance IN THE WORLD, so that can’t be it. He must really have been sicker, unless “general discomfort” is different from pain, tolerance-wise.

All I know is that I mentioned to my friend ~K that PH had a cold, and she immediately responded with,

Uh oh, and it will be worse because it will be a MAN COLD.

The next day, a neighbour on Facebook posted

Alert! Man cold in the house!

and in reply to a flurry of sympathetic female posts, she added

The worst thing about a Man Cold is the woman also loses her sick nurse and has to struggle on taking care of the kids without his help while also taking care of HIM.

A day after that, the Domesticated Nerd Girl made her own post about the Man Cold phenomenon.

Yes sir, the Man Cold virus was everywhere, taking down normally helpful and useful husbands left, right and centre.

Happily, PH recovered in about a week and he no longer feels like death.

As I say, it wasn’t a bad virus.

But then mine somehow resurrected itself, and this time it was PISSED OFF. 

For the last week I have been struggling under increasingly painful sinuses and hacking up bits of lung/vomit into the sink, all while working a long week (a staff member was on vacation) and caring for Owl as per usual.

It got so bad that my boss sent me home yesterday so I could go to the doctor, where I was given an asthma puffer and the recommendation to take 1000 mg of Tylenol and 600 mg of Advil every 4 hours.

That’s when PH put his foot down.

He called my boss and said that I wasn’t coming in tomorrow. It was too bad that there was absolutely no one to cover for me. He wasn’t letting me go in. 

It was time for a woman to be accorded Man Cold status, with all of the lazing, sleeping, and complete lack of responsibility that goes along with it.

So I took Owl to daycare today (which was a struggle in itself because my first instinct, in having a day off, is to think “yay! A day with Owl!” and to voluntarily give up time with him feels completely foreign to me) and went home.

The goal (according to PH) was to spend the day in bed and resting. I took an hour-long hot bath (baths of that length were a daily occurrence befor the advent of Owl, but I haven’t had one since that time), and then a good nap.

I pulled myself out of bed at 1:30 and looked forward to spending the afternoon blogging, eating more soup, and generally being a complete bum until it was time to get Owl from daycare.

I still felt like $%^# but I had to say, the Man Cold has its advantages. This might turn out to be my best day off in, well, 14 months.

Then I got a phone call from the woman who had been pulled out of vacation. Could I come in for 2:15? Because she absolutely HAD to leave by then. Prior commitments.

What can you say to someone who shouldn’t have had to work today at all, but for you?

I said I’d be there.

Now I’m sick AND disappointed.

No Man Cold Day for me.

Edit: Oh, and did I mention that I had already traded my Monday off to the Vacation Lady, and I still have to work tomorrow, so somehow, in all of this, I have actually LOST a day, plus I will no longer be paid overtime for working a sixth day tomorrow?

PH is on the rampage. 

Guest post: Ah, misogyny. I love it when you’re mathematically provable.

PH here. And boy howdy if I’m not slightly pissed off.

After reading this blog post and realizing just how amazing I was on the marital rating scale, I must admit I was feeling quite the cock of the walk. Especially as I realized, “20 points for giving my wife sufficient marital congress! GO ME!”

And then I thought, “…Wait. I get 20 points for giving her good bow-chikka-bow-wow, but she only gets 10 points for rocking my world? These numbers seem to be reversed. *scratches chin in confusion*”

Followed by, “Well, she must get extra points somewhere else that I’m not taking into consideration.

“…or is she?”

So I crunched the numbers. And I’m sorry to say this, ladies, but you got a bum rap in this test.

The maximum number of demerits a man can get is 90. The maximum demerits for a woman? 102. A swing of 12 points is enough to move you more than halfway down a category.

Okay, so women can get more merits than men to make up for that difference, yes?

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

Assuming you have five children (because you get extra points for more children), the maximum merits a wife can earn is 125. For a childless couple, maximum merits is 100. That means that if you, as a woman, got all of the merits and all of the demerits, and you had five children, you’d score 23, making you a “failure”. If you were a childless couple, you’d score -2 – off the charts in negative territory. That’s how horrible you are, you nasty, nasty woman.

As for the men, the maximum merits a husband can earn is 161! (Assuming he takes his wife out on a date every night.) That means earning all of the merits and all of the demerits, a husband scores 71 – a very high “superior” score, just out of range of “very superior”. Even if the husband only takes his wife out once a week, his score is 41 – only one point away from “average”, and much better than the -2 the wife would get for a comparable answer set.

In order for a wife to get the same base assumption score that a husband gets, she would need to have 12 children. So, according to this author, it takes 12 kids to make a woman as important as a man.

Any less than that, and you are an inferior creation. Probably dirty, too.

So yeah – husbands, don’t let your heads get too swelled by this test. The game is rigged, and rigged hard. 

…BUT I STILL WIN. 😛

This Is Why You Call Me Carol, Not PW

click to enlarge

PH has been doing victory chicken dances all day.

Maybe I can convince him to keep me supplied in labour-saving devices if I promise to write to his parents regularly and have another baby.

Family History on 11/11

Tags

family history, hard over harry, remembrance day, world war I, world war II

So, how about those World Wars, huh?

When I think of them, I think of stories.

While I remember the classes on WWI from grade 8 social studies, anything I can tell you about it is more likely to come from Rilla of Ingleside than from school.

And for World War II, I think of The Devil’s Arithmatic, Number the Stars, Schindler’s List, Maus, and The Pianist. I’ve been meaning to read Inside The Third Reich. We own it.

And for my own personal connection to the wars? I go to family history.

I know that my… great grandfather? Great great grandfather? Was in World War I. He was taken prisoner, but escaped to Belgium. There he sought out some business partners… or maybe employees of the shipping company that he owned. Anyway, they were related to him through business some how, and they hid him until the end of the war. Since he only spoke English, he couldn’t speak without giving himself away, so they told people he was some deaf-mute cousin of theirs.

When he returned home after the war, I guess he was a little shell-shocked. He wasn’t reckoned to be much use, and he left his wife and child (children?) and ended up getting mixed up with some con man in the States.

Then there is my grandfather’s cousin, whom my mother called Cousin Harry. The rest of Canada knows him as Hard Over Harry, a heavily decorated naval officer with the dubious distinction of firing the first shots of the Canadian Navy in WWII.

I was honoured to attend his funeral when I was a teenager. I don’t think I ever met him in person, although my mother spoke of him with fondness and had always pointed him out to me in excitement whenever he was interviewed for a WWII documentary on TV.

It’s not much of a connection. But it was of these men, and their families, that I thought at 11 AM on 11/11.

Lest We Forget. 

It’s Noble. We’re Supporting the U.S. Economy Or Something. Not Greedy. NOBLE!

Tags

America, Canada, cross border shopping, economy, food prices, shopping

We love America.

We just don’t want to live there.

Some Eastern friends of ours went to the States on vacation last summer and were shocked at how cheap everything is.

I had to try and explain about how other costs of living (like health care – man, reading about @grammargeek’s hospital bills was just shocking for me. I can’t imagine trying to decide between my health and child… and financial solvency) balance things out.

We pay a little more for groceries, but we pay way less in health care. I’m not complaining.

But in any case, stuff is really, really cheap in America.

We Vancouverites are used to it, however, because we treat the States like our personal shopping mall.

For those of you who live in America:

Did you know that you have stuff for REALLY FRIGGING CHEAP?

Like gas. My gawd.

It makes no sense to me, because WE are the ones with oil. We rival the Middle East for oil production and yet, for some reason, we pay $1.36 a litre, which works out to 5 bucks a gallon. And then we cross the border and see your gas prices, and it’s like: WHOA.

We seriously contemplated buying a Jerrycan just so we could buy MOAR GASOHOL.

And groceries? Wow. I don’t know if it’s the way Americans seem to be in love with everying bulk, or what, but dang some things are cheap.

Like chicken. Chicken is frigging expensive up here, so we stock up on a LOT of chicken when we go to the states. And cheese. Man, we love to buy your cheap cheese.

But the ultimate in U.S. shopping experiences was going to Cost Co in the States with some friends who have a membership.

We drove down together and let Owl, who is a natural born U.S. citizen, although neither he nor the U.S. are aware of it yet, explore his native soil.

SHOW ME THE SHOPPING

One thing we have found about shopping in the states is that you can get most things in bulk – cheese, meat, waffles, margarine… except for vegetables.

You want 2 lbs of butter? Sure. But 2 lbs of frozen beans? Not in the cards for us. Oh well. We have fruits and vegetables back home, and we’re not supposed to bring them across the border anyway.

On the other hand, you do get WTF products like this: That’s right. Pancakes and Sausages. ONNA STICK. And they”re artificial blueberry flavoured. If that isn’t a product that sells itself, well…

I was also awed and disturbed by the gun display IN WALMART.  I mean, dang, it wasn’t just like a couple of .22 hunting rifles. They were massive, black, gleaming, deadly looking things. To someone like me who NEVER sees actual guns except maybe on the hip of a police officer, it was truly bizarre.

I didn’t take a photo of the murder-weapon display because I thought that would look suspicious, but I did have to take a photo of this:

You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

…Then we went on to Cost Co where we got 5 pounds of cheese, pre-grated, 20 pounds of chicken, and a lifetime supply of waffles.

We also bought, like, 15 bottles of pop, and we got ALL the pasta sauce. America has no more. It’s all in our pantry.

Owl, can you say "consumerism"?

Good boy!

Stayin’ Upright

[vimeo 31789868]

Warning: Ridiculous cuteness. I dare you not to laugh.

He’s 14 months old today!

Canada’s Worst May Be Some of Canada’s Best

Tags

Canada's worst driver, driving, tv shows

Monday is back to being my favourite day of the week.

You know why?

Well, perhaps you might guess that it’s because I have Mondays off, and that would be partially correct.

But the real tipping point is Canada’s Worst Driver, which is now airing new episodes again!

This is one of the best shows on TV. I frigging love it.

If you aren’t Canadian, you don’t understand. Allow me to try and explain.

Canada’s Worst Driver operates on a simple premise: Canadians submit their friend/wife/husband/mother/father/sibling/enemy as a candidate for the show. The show investigates, and they pick some of the absolute balls-out worst drivers they can find.

The people who go on Canada’s Worst Driver aren’t seeking prizes. There’s no cash award for being Canada’s Worst Driver. They go on because they want the TV time (I’ll be famous!) or simply to prove to the world that they are NOT that bad (often those are the ones who “win”…)

Usually, in a given season, you have the following types of bad driver:

• The nervous wreck, who cries constantly, panics, and then does something really idiotic (usually a woman, but the winner of a recent season was a man who fell into this category)

• The speed demon (usually a man who fancies himself to be an excellent driver who simply chooses not to follow stupid rules like speed limits, the yellow line, or not hitting other people)

• The party animal (usually there are a couple of these of either gender: the person is just so busy chatting with their passengers/on their cell phone that they can’t be bothered to watch the road. These people usually laugh hysterically when they hit something).

• The complete moron (Can be of either gender, means well, promises to follow instructions, and then fails spectacularly. Every. Single. Time).

Once selected, these candidates have their cars and licenses taken away and they are thrown into “driver rehabilitation”, where they are given driving classes followed by “driving challenges” while a tall, worried-looking Andrew Younghusband lectures them, and then narrates to us as they proceed to screw up.

He gets very specific about exactly HOW they are screwing up, and WHY they suck so much. Every episode a group of panelists vote for the person who is most rehabilitated, and that person gets to go home.

The last person standing is dubbed Canada’s Worst Driver. They get a trophy and a good helping of shame.

It’s awesome.

It is amazing how crazy/stupid some of these people are. For example, many of the drivers are astoundingly bad at identifying basic road signs, like Angelina in Season 5 who got ONE out of ten basic road signs, or Dale in Season 6, who, when shown this road sign:

went on a ramble claiming that it means that the road is going to turn, and there will be a dead end at the end of it.

A couple of times Andrew Younghusband has had to turn to the camera and say, “THESE ARE NOT ACTORS. WE CAN’T BELIEVE THEY’RE REAL, EITHER.”

If you have never watched the show, here’s a taste:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz-A7PloD4s&feature=related]

There’s an American version of this show, but it sucks donkey balls for the following reasons:

1. It doesn’t have Andrew Younghusband.

2. It doesn’t try to rehabilitate the drivers.

3. It doesn’t point out all of the ways in which the drivers are terrible drivers.

4. It doesn’t explain how to drive properly, so that you can feel smug and say “I ALWAYS shoulder check when changing lanes”.

5. It doesn’t have Andrew Younghusband.

All it really does is steal some of the challenges from CWD, and then have Robosaurus eat the car of the person who failed the most challenges.

…Which is cool, I grant you.

CWD doesn’t have Robosaurus.

But it isn’t as SATISFYING.

No, it’s not the same.

But the important thing, is that CWD 7 is BACK ON THE AIR, and the third episode is tonight.

LOVELOVELOVE.

We don’t pay for cable, but if we did, it’d be worth it just to get CWD.