Tour Guide Opportunities at the ICA! and Backpacking

All you all who live local to Boston, my museum is looking for some new tour guides- The training is great-- it's just like being back in school again, you get access to more than a membership to a museum, and I think it is really fun to show people how to look at contemporary art to people who aren't used to talking about it. See website here:  

Wanna become an Institute of Contemporary Art Tour guide?


On another note-- I'm in Seattle now, and C. and I went backpacking camping! I never did it before, I have only car camped before. It was really amazing scenery. We backpacked near Rialto Beach on the Olympic Peninsula coast, camped right on the beach next to the Pacific Ocean, and you can hear high tide crashing in at night when you sleep. There are rocky beaches, huge pieces of drftwood everywhere, really tall rock formations, and tidepools with starfish and sea anemones.

401(k) Venting, avoiding taxes and getting your company to pay you more money

Finally, I'm going to be eligible to start the 401(k) program at work! After casually discussing it at the lunch table, the one thing that I noticed is that there is fear and confusion when it comes to changing the dollar amount that shows up in your bank account when you sign up:
1. It sounds like people think that they won't be staying at their company that long, so they won't start on their plan, because, "why bother, I'm not going to save that much, I'll be leaving soon! " I'm thinking that these said folk don't realize that the company is going to give you a little contributing match your savings (in my case up to 6% of earnings). What does that mean? It means, "even though we didn't tell you about this plan at orientation, you actually bothered to sign up for the 401(k) , so we are going to give you even more money!" whoohoo for you! It's a bonus you barely had to do any physical work for, except fill out a form!
2. All of these contributions to your 401(k) are tax free- if you think about how much money Uncle Sam steals from your paycheck every week, it's just too fabulous of an opportunity to keep some of your earnings away from his grubby 28% hands by putting it in your 401(k) account. Income is taxed WAYYY too much. Investments are taxed wayyy less. And taxes are not going to touch your 401(k) account for a long long time!
3. Lastly, if you leave your company and you don't really care for the management of the company 401(k) plan, you can take the money with you in a traditional IRA and still not have to pay taxes on it. So who cares if you only worked there for a couple of years, you got some tax-deferred moolah in your hands that you get to keep for forever until retirement! Yippeee! This Smart 401(k) Moves When You Leave A Job, on the Suze Orman website says some really concise things about rolling over.
4. Lastly, don't go asking me if you want to pay for your overseas backpacking trip to Guam by cashing out your 401K hanging out at your old employers 401K, it makes my skin crawl. All of the friends that ever mentioned cashing out I wanted to yell at them. This is why: Not only will you get charged income tax that you avoided, but you also get an additional 10% taken away. AND you don't get to take advantage of the compounding calculator fun that an account is supposed to perform for you!
Anyway, hope I didn't make anyone feel stupid because they didn't know all this stuff, I'm just making sure everyone I know who reads this will make sure that they are signed up to take advantage of avoiding uncle sam and make their employers pay up, by signing up!

Eating Real Food

With all of the recent news about food manufacturing, I've acquired a recent slight paranoia about industrially processed food and eating food that I pay other people to make for me, like at a restaurant. One of my friends, A. has also informed me that she has stopped buying food products that say "Made in China." I was never conscious of this before, but I realized a lot of my Asian food products have the "Made in China" label.
As a result, I've been hunting for food from farms and looking for local produce. So not only do I visit Union Square Farmer's market, I also finally went to Concord, MA to Verrill Farms. They are just starting to sell tomatoes, and delicate peaches from B.'s hometown of Bolton, MA. And i found another farm, Turkey Hill Farm, in Haverhill, where they have some very good blueberry and raspberry picking! It is run by a Mr. Butt, who is plenty nice, with some New England quirkiness. But since I can't eat just vegetables, I also have to make a run to either Market Basket or Shaw's , and depending on traffic, Whole Foods, to get the other stuff.
On the shopping list-Cherry tomatoes in a bright orange and reddish pink, some Bolton Peaches, Green onions with a nice purple cast at their necks, a head of young red leaf lettuce, and carrots! Wild Blueberries! Golden Rasberries! Zuchinni that comes in green and yellow!

Birthday Flowers from C.

Yes, it was my birfday, and someone sent me flowers from Organic Bouquet to my office! Sooooooo pretty! Sooo schweet of C.R.S! And all of the ladies at work enjoyed them too, and now you get to also:

First Life= T-shirt, Second Life= Pocketbook

So, as my sister and I were perusing Target for Transformer's stuff for our little 80's Optimus Prime party we had, we noticed that there were no Transformer's stuff for girls! Waah? I'm sure some Hasbro marketing people ran a focus group, with a bunch of little girls that refused to have anything to do w/Transformers merchandise, who were NOT adult women in their late 20's/early thirties who watched tv after school when they were little because mom and dad were at work. So, I thought, why not shop in the little boys section? And buy this t-shirt?

Would I wear the above t-shirt? OF COURSE NOT! However, I would wear this:
This is a pocketbook (as they say in New England) constructed from the t-shirt in it's entirety. Only a few little scraps were not utilized. The adorable model, L., was in diapers when the TV show first came out, hehe! I'm seriously carrying this around now, and the hilarious thing is that most of the people I run into have NO IDEA what this logo is....

And did I mention, a Transformers 80's party? Some proof:

Union Square Famer's Market

My sister and I went to the Union Square Farmer's market in somerville--it's nice to go to because it's on Saturday morning. It's small, but it's really fun to look at pretty vegetables and home made pies! as the weeks go by, we will have more veggies to choose from. We brought home a small head of lettuce, some bread, carrots, shelling peas, rainbow swiss chard, and bok choy.

Issey Miyake A-Poc

Finally, some press coverage about the fashion concept I love the most more than anything in the world, way more than my thesis project! I wish I read about this earlier, the Businessweek article is from April! of last year! Waaht? Oops.
Last Year's *new* A-POC product
Sigh, if this was a high end electronic hardware product, A-POC wouldn't be as obscure as it is. It is basically a production method of clothing where no-sew clothing is programmed into a computer that weaves or knits the clothing so the seams are already in the fabric. So all you do is cut it open and wear it to your customization. Minimal labor, minimal production, optimistic view of the clothing of the future.