Housework June 19: 15 minutes

... which consists of pouring myself a bowl of cereal for breakfast & offloading the dishwasher. Not bad. Again, though, I had dinner out: an alumni thing for the University of York. This leads me to wonder why I find it sweet that York includes me in events, and annoying that Columbia asks me for money. Maybe I just answered my own question. York is so eager to get an alumni group going over here in the Wilds of the Western US that they're ridiculously excited when I respond to them in any way - whereas Columbia wants cash. Sigh. In contrast, York spotted my drinks and calamari at the Thirsty Bear: "It's on the Uni!" said with the big smile that always seems to accompany someone who doesn't often get to expense things and is just thrilled to have the chance. Sweet indeed. 

More thoughts after reading comments: 884 pages of housework instructions? Maybe I shouldn't admit it, but I didn't know it was possible to clean drains before they were clogged. What do you, pour down soap? That can't be right. I may not know what I'm doing but I have at least noticed that one of the primary ingredients in drain-clogs is soap scum. 

And multi-tasking housework is still housework; I'm not trying to optimize my life (that would be too much like work), I'm trying to figure out what it takes, measure the status quo before considering whether I care to adapt. 

One interview down, X to go

I wish I didn't have this nagging feeling that the value of X depends on how the first interview went. I mean, it seemed OK, but who can really tell from the interviewee's chair?

Housework June 18: zero hours :)

I had a rotten day at work yesterday (no, not bad news, just another stall), so I insisted on going out for Mexican food and margaritas for dinner, hence no cooking time. And curiously, the idea of tracking housework made the idea of emptying the dishwasher before I went to bed pretty damn unattractive, so I skipped it.

I also noticed another interesting stat in the same article: lesbian couples with kids (no data yet on gay men) do a total of 31 hours of housework per week - about a third less than straight couples. 

Wha... ?! Clearly the lesbians are on to something. 

So of course I brought this up with my guy over dinner. Our guesses: 1) women and men traditionally notice & care for different areas around the house, but a lot of housework isn't strictly required. So in a lesbian relationship, maybe the "guy" things just don't get done - which makes me really, really curious about gay male relationships and housework load! and 2) a lesbian couple is already outside society norms in some senses, so maybe it's easier to avoid getting your ego caught up in having a perfectly-kept house. 

Which leads to the question, what is housework? For purposes of tracking it, I'm figuring it's things I do in the house (or yard), which benefit both me and my guy. That ropes in cooking, cleaning, yardwork - but no errands, and no time spent setting up our various networking gadgetry needs which are totally gratuitous, really, and fun anyway. 

And for today's count (as yet incomplete of course): I spent 10 minutes emptying the dishwasher and pouring myself a bowl of cereal this morning....

Housework: are you *!?%$** kidding me? (part 1)

This weekend I read a New York Times Magazine article about couples who attempt to achieve 'equally shared parenting.' Ok, fine, that's nice - but what really stood out was this statistic: 

"the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14"

That's appalling from a gender-relations standpoint, it really is - but right now I'm not thinking about that. No, right now I'm thinking, "45 hours of housework PER WEEK?!" No matter how you divide it up that's just awful. That's more time than I spend at work. If I hired someone to do all that I'd be paying them overtime! 

And so I embark on an experiment. For the next week or so I'm going to track how much housework I actually do and report back here. And it had better not be 31 hours - or anything approaching that.

I might actually interview sometime ...

... because I just got approval to do interviews. This is the next to the last step on the transfer process (the last step being all the relevant people agreeing that the interviews plus resume etc look good enough for it all to go through). Keep your fingers crossed for me. 

And no, of course I don't know the timeframe! Why would I know a wacky thing like that? 

For all those who are wondering if this means I'm leaving my current Big Tech Company: nope, not at the moment. I've got lots of reasons to stay, the main one being that I like it here. All the talk of recruiters and resumes and interviews is just what our internal transfer process looks like. Makes you want to apply from outside, doesn't it? 

The black hole speaks

... and says I might know something by the end of next week. Gasp. Dare I believe it?

No, not really, no I don't. I'll believe it when I see it. But it was pretty funny that the recruiter actually referred to himself as a black hole, without my doing it for him!

Money shock

My guy and I did some financial planning this weekend (reallocating a 401k: such an exciting way to spend a Saturday morning!).

This morning, my brain still wrapped in numbers, I plugged some data into the crazy rent vs buy modeling spreadsheet one of the guys at work created and helpfully shared.

And for the very first time, the model shows that it might make sense to buy.

Wait, what?

I have no idea what to do with that. I've been happily using "it makes no financial sense to buy a house!!!" as the unassailable justification for my geographic commitment-phobia. If that's no longer the case, then [gasp] might it actually be time to think about where I want to live?

I dunno if I'm ready for that. Maybe AMT will make all the numbers change again, and I can procrastinate a little longer.