Beethoven In Trance - Episode 69

2018 went by fast!

We finally found our new home and moved out of our apartment in Feb. The first thing I did was to replace all the light bulbs to LED. Then, I started my painting journey to fresh up the look of the house. In the following 5 months, I painted the four bedrooms(including taking down wall paper in one of the bedroom before painting), one basement room, two bathrooms and over 20 doors. I also cleaned and refinished the wood trim. It was a big undertaking, but I am glad it’s done. I got most of the paints as “mistinted” from the paint stores and I was lucky to find a few good colors including a pink color for Alice’s room. Once the room is painted, we replaced the carpet in the living room, stairs and one bedroom. They were in horrible shape. We still have the basement and three bedroom carpet need to be replaced, but that will be future projects. 

We hauled a few free furniture to fill the home after we moved in. There is an email list in my company for people to trade stuff. Sometimes people give away furniture, provided that I pick them up myself. I made a few of those trips for several bookcase, three desks, dressers for my parents and Alice, and two sofa. All in great condition. I was able to get rid of some cookware through that email list as well as I changed to the induction cooktop in the new house.  

Once all the home projects are done, I started to look to change team. My team at the time wasn’t doing well, and the team mates weren’t strong. I looked around and quickly found a similar role in a different team. After couple interviews, I moved to the new role in July. I also explored another PM role at the same time but didn’t get it. I did enjoy the chat with the hiring manager so I asked him for being my mentor, and he agreed. The new teammates are strong, and I do see things that I can learn.

Soon after I joined the new team, I started to playing pingpong with the software guys in the office. I haven’t played since secondary school, but I was still able to dust off my skills and beat them. I have been getting more and more serious about the game and watching videos online to learn the technics. My mom even found some community center in town that have tables for people to play throughout the weeks. I now have options to play during week days in the evening or weekends in the afternoon. It’s a good exercise for my parents too. I take them to play in the local community center during the weekend and my dad met some people from his hometown in China. It became a social events for him. I get more exercise as well.

I started to run again during the weekends since the house is close to the parks. The view along the way is very pleasant, but the route shares the road with traffic so it’s not a quite run in the woods. I signed up the half marathon in March 2019 just to prove that I still got it. Fortunately, one of the best work perks is that the massage is covered under health insurance. I started working with a therapist for a year now it helped with my recovery. I now have monthly appointments.

In 2018, I started the hi-fi reboot by selling my Logitech 5.1 speakers, and trading some used speakers and amplifiers from the company mailing list and local thrift stores. It was a lot of fun. The performance of the speakers doesn’t disappoint. I bought a set of speakers through company email, and eventually turn around sold it as I didn’t like it that much. I did learn from the experience and started to noticed the difference in sound. I appreciate the music better than before. There are a lot new music I come to appreciate in 2018, but Alison kraus and union station’s “you say better when you say nothing at all” is particularly worth mentioning.

The memorable movies in 2018 include Ready Player 1, and three billboard outside of ebbing Missouri. I also revisited AI and Minority Report and found both movies excellent. I saw those movies before and watching them again brought new appreciation. I watched Avengers Infinity War in IMAX, and I wasn’t blown away by it. Few months later, I caught up with all the previous Avengers movies, then I realized how many details I have missed in the Infinity War. Now I have high anticipation on the last installment of the movie which will come out next month.

2018 is not a good year on finance. We made several financial mistakes that I think we can avoid and some unforeseen costly events. First, I decided to try a CPA for tax filing. I go the referral from our friend and hired a CPA in Ohio to do the tax. I thought the filing would be complicated due to the moving state, and selling the house. In retrospect, it’s not that complicated. What ended up happening is that we missed several tax due dates and had to pay penalties. That was painful, I don’t recall we ever paid late penalty for tax when we did our own tax. Hiring a CPA to do tax doesn’t mean letting go the whole process.

The second financial mistake is that we overfunded the FSA and by the end of year, we still have a thousand dollars in the account that we didn’t use, and we couldn’t get it out. Seriously, a thousand dollar wasted!

Third, my wife underfunded her 401K plan in 2018 by thousands. We usually max out our 401K but my wife somehow missed the target by a large margin. This will impact our retirement projection, and let’s hope this doesn’t happen again.

Another money eater in 2018 is the legal fee for the neighbor easement dispute. The neighbor uphill has been trying to cut trees in our backyard in the last two centuries. The previous owner has been fighting them since the beginning because the cutting could potential damage the soil and cause landslide. The neighbor has been trying tactics to get us agree to let them do it. We had to get a lawyer involved so that there are no misunderstanding and miscommunications on what’s allowed and what’s not. This costed money, and we still see no ending of this. This neighbor will keep bugging us, and every time he does, we need to get the lawyer to respond. I am anticipating another letter from him and I will ask the lawyer to issue an ultimatum to tell him to stop harassing us.

One unfortunately event that also costed us is an accident happened in the memorial day. My in laws came into town to visit before they flied to Shanghai. My mother in law jumped over a steep steps on the lawn and fell. She broke her FEMA and had to get to hospital. We were so inexperienced and tried to go to the right hospital because she doesn't have insurance. We ended up having to change the hospital because the first one doesn't have necessary equipment for xray. We then had to call another EMS to transfer her. She had the surgery the next day and stayed in the hospital for several weeks. They missed the flight for sure and they lived with us after she came back from the hospital for recovery. Fortunately, the hospital approved our application to waive the fee due to their income status. We still need to pay for the EMS, and our home insurance went up after this incident as well.   

We started to look into Will last year, because it was covered under the legal benefit that I enrolled. However, we never follow it through. 

The food theme changed a bit after we moving to Seattle. We have a lot more Asian food grocery stores to shop from. We went to couple local restaurants and buffets and are pleased with most of them. I also love the local wine at Costco, they are cheap and cheerful. I bought couple variety of beer from my friends’ husband this year. Some of them are good, but consistency is lacking.

We finally got time for vacation this Christmas. We went to an all inclusive resort in Mexico. It was not a long flight, and we spent all the days in the hotel. It was ok, worth going once, I guess. I wish the food is better. The swimming pool is not that clean. The unlimited drink is an overkill for us. I remember the checkout day wrong and almost missed the flight on that last day. Fortunately, we realized it the last minute and got back home as original planned.

Close to the end of the year, I got bitten by a wardrobe upgrade bug. My original line up for work was completed replaced except one merino shirt. Thousands of dollars were spent on technical shirts, jackets and sweaters. I got them on sales, and they do look great. They keep me motivated to stay fit.

Alice settles into the new school well. She is in violin, Chinese dance, and Kungfu classes. Not much changed from living in Ohio. My parents are more and more accustomed to the city, they bus around town for English classes, shopping and Chinese senior activities. My wife has found local dance classes as well. Everyone has some activities, that’s good.

As for my work, it’s not that glamorous as it sounds working in my company.  It was ok, but I do love the fact that I can use shuttle bus to work. I will keep my options open in the coming years. My wife will keep her eyes open as well.