I thought the Tide Pods commercials were great!

Great idea! I need to stay more involved so that I can stay focused. I feel like I do worse when I don't keep this at the front of my mind!

I'm also kind of wanting some off-topic advice... maybe this would be an appropriate place to ask! I'm switching jobs soon and it's looking like two of the job applications I put in are possibly panning out.

Job Number One is with my same employer, but at a different location doing different work that I probably won't enjoy as much. It's more of a jack of all trades, master of none situation while my current job is VERY specialized.
The plus side though is that I will get to expand my skills in areas I haven't seen since right out of school AND the real reason I applied for the job... the hours will be almost exactly what I want. I'll only work 3 days a week (on the weekend) in 12 hour shifts which would be perfect for when my fiance and I have a baby in the next few years because we shouldn't need to pay for daycare. I figured it up and with this job I would be gone less than 40 hours a week including commute, but still considered full-time with full-time benefits.

Job Number Two is at a really fantastic place that almost everyone wants to work in... Think Fortune Top 100 places to work. The benefits are fantastic, everyone I know who works there talks about how much they love it and have never looked back, etc. My weekends would be free except maybe 1 weekend day after 6 weeks or so, but I would have to work Monday through Friday during the busiest part of the day, hitting rush hour traffic on my way to and from work. I would also be in a NEW just as specialized area that I may or may not like and I think with this job I would probably be gone more like 50+ hours a week including commute. It pays more (about $1 more per hour,) but we would DEFINITELY have to shell out for daycare... which is something I really don't want to do.

What do y'all think? Anyone want to weigh in and help me decide which is right for me?

Sorry! I hope no one feels like I shanghai'd the conversation! I had just gotten back from job interview number 2 and it was weighing heavily on my mind. I think I've decided to go with number 1 though! When I think about working there/that shift I feel happy while option 2 makes me nervous and scared, so I think that's the right choice. (And I also did make a pros & cons list which helped me sort it out!)

@CheezWhiz88 That really sucks about having to wait 6 months. I guess it's better than risking it though! And on the bright side, that gives you more time to lose weight. I don't know exactly how you feel, but I can sympathize because it's looking like an 8+ month wait for us since I won't be fully transitioned into my new job until sometime around October. They want me to continue working here 3 days a week until then so that they can get my replacement trained.

@theowlbox & @Mellykay88 I'm looking forward to spring (and summer!) too. It doesn't even get that cold down here, but it's still the pits and I hate having to drive to work in the snow and ice!! I need something with 4WD or AWD already... What kind of cars do you guys drive?

rabidhamster87 wrote: »

I need something with 4WD or AWD already... What kind of cars do you guys drive?

I'm one of those weird folks who actually doesn't mind winter or even the big snow storms. Then again, I live in WV where heavy winter usually runs from late November to late March. And we have periods of warmer weather mixed in with the cold stuff. I think it might be a totally different story if I lived on the plains or somewhere where the snow started flying in September and didn't melt until May!

I have a 2006 Honda CRV with 178,000 miles on it and I love it. Safety experts have really begun recommending snow tires if you live in a snow-prone area even on 4WD and AWD because they are made specifically for the conditions. All seasonal tires work fine in southern areas, but they are jack-of-all-trades-masters-of-none. I strongly suggest looking up some of the videos on snow tires versus all seasonals - its amazing! A 2WD car with snow tires will have better stopping and control than an AWD with all seasonals!

Sorry - that's must my little safety advert. I do have snow tires on my Honda AWD and I can see a huge difference in how it handles. I feel much more confident on slick roads with them. What stinks, though, is that the car is 12 years old and has some high mileage on it, and the heater doesn't work so well anymore and its gets stinkin' cold in there!


I also have a 4WD Ram 1500 pickup. It's a 2015 model and I love the thing It's become my main vehicle and the heater is awesome in it But I only have all seasonal tires on it, and pickups are notorious for being light in the rear end making them easy to fishtail. I just go slow and steady when I drive it. If I can get the money together, I'll get snow tires for it next year.

In comparing 4WD to AWD, I prefer AWD. 4WD locks your 4 tires together, so to speak, which makes it stubborn to make tight turns, which can be a pain in WV lol I like having the constant AWD and for me, it feels like it handles better. Either one has excellent traction, though, and I have no problems getting out of my mom's icy driveway while my sister's 2WD got stuck

@rabidhamster87 I’d go with job 1 as well, you’ll definitely need all the time you can get when you have your baby so it would make sense, also the other place will still be there in the future so it’s not saying no forever it’s just no for now.

@CheezWhiz88 I’m so sorry to hear of your delay, that’s a really hard thing to deal with when it’s totally out of your control. I’m sure you’re devastated but I guess I’d say maybe try to see it as even longer to get the perfect baby growing body ready?

As far as cars go, I’m in the uk and I drive a Mini Countryman. I’ll try to find a picture as my sister who’s in Canada says they haven’t made it over there yet, but I love it! Total girlie car and we don’t really get much in the way of snow because I’m right on the south coast. I did have a Subaru Impreza before that though, it was awesome in the snow and had 300bhp. The Mini only has 200bhp but it’s a lot more economical to run and I do loads of miles for work.

@rabidhamster87 I hope you're happy when you began your new position with your company. You can always go to the other company, but, it might be harder to get re-employed with your current company, if you chose to go back (if you moved on). Just a thought.

I'm glad I found this chit chat thread and finally came to it and read all of you all's posts. As for cars, I drive a 1998 Ford Escort, with 151,000 miles on it. I live in Jacksonville, Florida, so the most snow we might get is usually a few flakes in the air, every few years. I never knew that you all had to think and prepare so much for driving in the winter. We really don't hardly have a winter here. I only get out of my shorts for usually about for 1 1/2 weeks, which I have to wear sweat pants. I always try to ride the city buses around Jacksonville. It's much cheaper, more comfortable, and saves my old car.

This group is SO motivating for me. I didn't pick up my laptop for about 3 - 4 days, and thus, didn't come to this group. I slipped up and was eating too much, too often those days. I think I need to be here, around you all, much more often. I just HAVE to lose 9 lbs before March 10th. I've never had my back up against the wall like this before. Maybe I need to feel this way. Maybe it will help.

amy_kee wrote: »

I'm glad I found this chit chat thread and finally came to it and read all of you all's posts. As for cars, I drive a 1998 Ford Escort, with 151,000 miles on it. I live in Jacksonville, Florida, so the most snow we might get is usually a few flakes in the air, every few years. I never knew that you all had to think and prepare so much for driving in the winter. We really don't hardly have a winter here. I only get out of my shorts for usually about for 1 1/2 weeks, which I have to wear sweat pants. I always try to ride the city buses around Jacksonville. It's much cheaper, more comfortable, and saves my old car.

This group is SO motivating for me. I didn't pick up my laptop for about 3 - 4 days, and thus, didn't come to this group. I slipped up and was eating too much, too often those days. I think I need to be here, around you all, much more often. I just HAVE to lose 9 lbs before March 10th. I've never had my back up against the wall like this before. Maybe I need to feel this way. Maybe it will help.

Winter driving can be a challenge! For the area I live in, the fact that we don't keep a snow blanket on the ground all winter long, but go through thaws and melts then re-freezes, makes for a challenge at times.

Like this week: we had a good 4" snow fall on Sunday, which was a pretty wet, heavy snow (good packing snow and yes, I made a snowman for my front lawn I've found that being single, I tend to have my childish moments still lol) Monday and Tuesday were warmer, so a lot of that melted. But at night, the temps dropped down below freezing, so all that water that used to be snow re-froze on the roads, leading to a lot of ice. Black ice is so, so dangerous because it just looks like a wet spot on the road, but it isn't - it actually a thin sheet of ice. A lot of folks who are sensible winter drivers will none-the-less get taken by surprise by black ice. It's even worse when we have a period of that and then get snow on top of it like Wednesday night - Thursday morning, I got up to find a covering of more snow on top of all the ice.

I live in WV which has a lot of country and 2 lane roads, and lots of twisty, winding roads in rural areas through tree-covered lanes (not to mention the up and down the hills). This makes us doubly prone to black ice conditions in bad locations - trees shade the roads or even the mountains themselves, so early morning, there will be patches of black ice in various locations where the sun wasn't able to dry the pavement the day before, or in places where water is running off from the hills across the road and froze. Its even worse as these places can be in the curves of the road or at the bottom of a slope. Coming around a curve always has forces pushing against your car; suddenly losing traction can sometimes tip that balance just far enough so that the car's tires slip and you go sliding! (sorry - I'm an engineer, and while I"m a pretty lousy one, I still tend to be a bit of a math geek lol)

However, that sounds bad, but after you get some experience with it and learn what to look for, and DRIVE SENSIBLY such as slowing down, leaving a space between you and the cars around you, driving steady with no sudden movements, brake slowly and steadily, and pay attention to your surroundings and your car, it's not really so bad! I tell folks that its not the road conditions that scare me - driving on snow and ice don't frighten me, though blowing snow that leads to white out conditions will make me nervous. What scares me are the other idiots on the road with me who want to drive likes its a sunny, dry day in the middle of summer, who want to go 70 mph (112 kph) and will whip around you on the interstate and try to pass you when the salt truck hasn't cleared that lane. I'm always holding my breath as they come around me, praying they don't start skidding! Then again, the folks that are driving 10 mph drive me nuts, too.......


And I agree about the motivation of this group! This group has been so much more helpful to me than the other one I was in - I love to chat as long as I'm safely behind a keyboard lol and your stories and chatting really lifts me up!

rabidhamster87 wrote: »

I definitely don't drive in the snow everyday! I live in Mississippi But it did snow here a few times last month and I had to drive in it then which was terrifying. I work in healthcare, so I can't call out for snow I'm terrible at driving in it and lost control of my car twice (terrifying!) So, I'm determined that next year I'll be ready. I'll get a car with AWD AND snow tires like @bmeadows380 recommended! If they even sell snow tires here...

I better put a disclaimer on my previous rant lol

the thing with the snow tires is really mostly recommended for folks in areas that get a lot of snow in the winter, or icy conditions. Being in Mississippi, it may not actually be needed for you, especially if you only rarely get the ice and snow conditions.

AWD would be fine because AWD is about getting moving and traction, which has benefits all year round - for example, if its been raining a lot, AWD will help you get out of muddy driveways and such.

Snow tires are made with a softer rubber, the benefit of which means it doesn't get hard at the same temperatures as regular rubber tires, which helps it grip ice better. However, that also means that in warmer temperatures or on dry pavement, they wear pretty quickly. this is why if you have snow tires, you really need to wait until snow season hits to put them on and take them off promptly in the spring.

I'd suggest reading these articles; it will explain some things even better than I do!

https://www.goodyear.com/en-US/tire-guide/winter-tires-vs-allseason-tires

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/2wd-awd-or-4wd-how-much-traction-do-you-need/index.htm

amy_kee wrote: »

@bmeadows380 I love reading your posts! You make everything so interesting with your great details. Thanks for taking the time to really tell things like you do.

@amy_kee thank you! I usually figured that most folks would be sighing and rolling their eyes with another of my epic posts......I can't seem to keep a story short and to the point for the life of me lol I am an introvert, though - honest! I'm just a very talkative one! :laugh:

normally, I'd be in church. But I stayed with the friend last night because her work shift ran until 12 am and I wanted to be sure that 1)she'd still have a job and 2)that after spending the week in the hospital that she'd be all right when she got home. And we stayed up very, very late talking So I slept in this morning.

Now I"m contemplating hard boiling some eggs while I start putting my things together. I plan on heading home after she leaves for work.

@tammyfranks2 sounds like my Sunday too. Homework, cleaning, and laundry almost finished. I just have to round the family up to fold and put away the laundry. Good job on not having fast food!! The flu is awful here too. I'm glad your son is better.

I tried a blackened cod recipe for dinner tonight and it was awful! I'm a terrible cook anyway and this one was just beyond me. My family is having noodles and I just ate the veggies and called it a day. My sweet potatoes were super yummy though and filled me up.

I ordered a food scale and used it today to prep lunches for the whole week. I was shocked to see that I have been erring on the side of too little food. I actually thought 1 ounce of cut up chicken was 4 ounces. I'm so clueless when it comes to food.

And I went for a walk with my dog today! It was a bonus one too. Yay for one more day toward our goals! We're all going to rock this week!

@rabidhamster87 He and I both clean the house here. We definitely work to stay on top of the cleaning needs. Poor guy, he always gets the parts that require bending over. Neither one of us likes clutter, so, things stay where they should be. So, there's usually not a whole lot of house work to be done at one time. For example, all of our dishes are washed right after we eat, so there's never any dirty dishes laying around anywhere. It's so much easier to maintain the house when we take care of things as they need attention,

@amy_kee To give credit where credit is due, Ed actually cleans more than I do! He's a lot better at keeping up with it as it happens like you said. That's still something I'm working on though. I tend to let it go all week and then pay the price on the weekend while he will usually take 30 mins out of his day every day to do something -- even if it's just one load of laundry, vacuuming one room, putting away the dishes, etc. I'm trying to do better, but I'm just so exhausted after work!

@Bmeadows380 Wow! You've stayed busy! That all sounds like great exercise... I bet you have a lot of muscle under your weight! I completely understand about your build too. I'm 5'8 myself and I like to say I'm from "hearty peasant stock." People are always shocked when they find out my weight and then will say I carry it well. I think that's because it's well distributed. A lot of it everywhere! Funny enough, my grandmother's last name was Meadows. Maybe we're related!