1) I was a bit surprised to find a paper on my door last week about renewing my lease. I can’t believe I have been in this apartment for two years already! I was also surprised to find out that my rent will be increasing by $300 per month. !!! They have never increased my rent that much and it’s a staggering number. I started looking around at rental prices, though, and even with this massive increase, I will still pay $300+ less than anywhere else for the same amount of space. Ugh. So I’m going to renew my lease for one year and start making plans to move out at the end of that lease (November 2023). I’m just not in the financial place to move (nor in the financial place to see a $800 increase in rent!), but if I have 14 months to prepare, I know I can make it happen. I’m already looking forward to the packing/unpacking process! (Not sarcasm; I genuinely enjoy this process.)
2) My big toe that got injured during my tumble down the stairs on my vacation is healing nicely. It’s still a little sore from time to time, but I can walk normally now and I’ve been able to work out again, although I’m trying to take it easy with low-impact workouts. I’m guessing I just bruised the toe; I thought I had broken it because there was a bruise right above the toenail and that’s usually an indication of a fracture, but I think it just got a bit pummeled in my fall and bruised up. I’m just really glad I didn’t have to go to urgent care! There’s not much that can be done for a broken toe anyway, but I would have gone if I was still in great pain/unable to walk after a week. Hooray for saving a few hundred dollars on an urgent care visit. 🙂
3) I had a big dinner failure this week, when I tried to make a grilled cheese sandwich for the first time ever. Can you believe I’ve never had a grilled cheese sandwich? I didn’t love cheese when I was growing up, so it was never something my mom made for me. And most grilled cheese sandwiches use yellow American cheese, which is my least-favorite cheese. But I decided to attempt an elevated version of this recipe, using sourdough bread, sharp cheddar cheese, and this delicious butter spread, cooked in my air fryer. Unfortunately, my grilled cheese sandwich turned out incredibly burnt and disgusting-looking. AND I picked up an unsliced loaf of sourdough bread at the grocery store this week, and trying to slice it up on my own was way harder than I expected. Womp! It was not a good time. I’m going to attempt to make it again tonight, using pre-sliced sourdough bread and bringing down the cook time in my air fryer by two minutes on each side. Fingers crossed!
4) I always listen to audiobooks on 1.75x speed, although I will sometimes bring it down to 1.5x speed, depending on the narrator or book topic. I know people who listen to audiobooks on 2.5x or 3x speed, which seems crazy to me. I’m kinda skeptical that you can really take in a book’s contents when you’re listening that fast, but I digress. I do not, however, listen to podcasts on faster speeds. For some reason, it just felt wrong to listen to podcasts on faster speeds but I’ve gotten woefully behind on my podcast queue so I decided to try speeding up my podcast speed to help me knock out more podcast episodes in less time. I don’t do this for all podcasts, especially ones that are history-based or educational, but the ones that just have people chatting about everyday life? Hey, why not? I’ve been listening on 1.25-1.5x speed for those (and finally utilizing Overcast’s Smart Speed feature to shorten silences). It’s been great! There are a few podcasts that I think sound better on a faster speed, haha.
5) It will be a busy weekend around here! Today, Gladys (my beloved Kia Soul) has her first doctor’s appointment! Last weekend, I got an alert that her tire pressure was low and while I was able to go to one of those drive-up oil change places to get her tires pumped up quickly, I also decided it was time for a service check. (I’ve been waiting until she needed an oil change, but then I found out that I was supposed to schedule a service check after 6 months, which was in May. Oops.) I’m going to do that this morning, since I can work while I wait. I’m also going to retry my grilled cheese sandwich recipe while I watch a comedy special tonight! Tomorrow, it’s another podcast recording day with Bri! We plan on recording two more episodes of season 2. I also have a writing date with Mikaela in the late afternoon. And Sunday is, of course, football! It was so nice having football Sundays back in my life last week. My brother, my nephew, and I spend all day at my mom’s watching the games, and it’s a delight!
Do you speed up podcasts/audiobooks? What are your weekend plans?
This is a good reminder that I REALLY need to take my car in for a service check. I’ve had a message on my display since June – yikes!
I listen to audiobooks at 1.75x speed as well. It seems like the perfect speed. I think I’ve tried it at 2x before and for some reason that jump is too much for my brain to process! But maybe someday I’ll get there. 🙂
I’ve only been able to do 2x speed on certain audiobooks. I think mostly memoirs? 1.75x seems like my ideal speed, too. It’s just fast enough to make pay attention!
I hope you booked that service appointment! It’s such a hassle and not a fun way to spend a morning/afternoon!
Can you negotiate a 2 year lease with a $150 increase?
They don’t negotiate here, and that’s because they don’t have to. They can lease my apartment so fast (especially considering the rent here is $300+ cheaper than anywhere else!) that they don’t need to worry about current tenants and negotiations. There are almost never apartments available for lease because they lease them out faster than they can get them on the website! It’s nuts.
OH NO – I’m so sorry that your rent is raising – that’s just so frustrating!!! Hoping you can find the best place in the next year to move to.
WAIT – not a grilled cheese??? Its a weekly staple for us – I love grilling a tomato on mine too!!! mmmmm
I’ve never had a PB&J sandwich so I guess everyone has one thing they dont try.
Audio books… I have tried so many times speeding it up – I just cant hang with it. I’m a SLOTH apparently
Oh wow – now, this is something I want to know: the one food staple that it seems everyone but you had tried! I still haven’t figured out how to make a good grilled cheese! I don’t think the air fryer method works for me.
I know many people who listen to audiobooks at 1x speed! It took me a while to be able to listen at chipmunk speed. 😉
I have never listened to podcasts or audiobooks at increased speed. I’m really sensitive to sounds and the way it makes voices sound is so distracting to me that I can’t focus on what they’re saying. Also, to be honest, I struggle to actually have enough audio content (I’m super picky about what podcasts I listen to) and I don’t need it to go by faster!
A $300 a month increase is insane!! That’s so dramatic. If you work from home, is there any reason you can’t move to a more affordable area?
Honestly, moving to an affordable area would mean moving 1-2 hours (or more) away from where I live now, and being so far from my mom/family/friends would be very detrimental to my mental health. I’m hoping things calm down by this time next year so I can stay in the area AND have an affordable apartment.
Ugh, that sucks about your rent increasing but I am not surprised as rent is one of the components of inflation that has increased the most and those increases are sticky and we usually need to see higher unemployment/lower wage growth to see rent prices coming down. With mortgage rates at such high levels, it’s increasing demand for rentals and those increases have been especially bad lately! But it really really sucks as that is a huge increase to stomach. I hope things normalize soon. Chances are we are going into a brief/moderate recession in 2023, so hopefully you’ll see better rental rates next summer/fall!
I listen to podcasts at 1.2x speed and my ap minimizes the silence, too. Phil heard me listening to a podcast one day and asked what the heck was going on w/ the speed of it. He said he would be so stressed out to listen to something at that speed. But I like the efficiency and it’s a better listening experience for me. I think the fastest I’ve listened to a book is 1.5x, though. I don’t know how people do 2-3x speed!! Paul has started to like a kid’s podcast called “the big fib’ and I have to remember to slow it down so it’s at a better listening speed for him!
This was so interesting to read, Lisa! Thanks for the insight on the rental increase. It seems like everyone is feeling the pinch, even homeowners, as I know homeowners insurance/property taxes are increasing (or something like that). My mom just had to buy a new car and the interest rate was insane, considering she has excellent credit. It’s just not a good time all around. Oof.
Wow, I am stuck on the First Grilled Cheese Ever. It was such a staple of my childhood! Mind you, I have never tried it with an air fryer and in fact I haven’t had a grilled cheese in probably ten years or more. I will wait for MORE GRILLED CHEESE UPDATES. I think it’s good to make them in a pan with lots of butter. My sons never would eat macaroni and cheese, which I think is such a childhood staple, but here we are.
It has never occurred to me to speed up my podcasts! I just like them at regular speaking speed.
I tried it in an air fryer for a second time and still did not like it! I don’t know if it’s the air fryer or the cheese I used (sharp cheddar). I’m going to try it in a pan and change up the type of cheese. Third time’s the charm, right?!
$300 a month! What the what? Geeeesh!
I am glad your toe is healing and you saved some money on not going to the dr too.
Hmm, maybe I should try faster speed on podcasts to catch up. It would be good for me to work on my hearing too.
I never even considered that speeding up a podcast could help with hearing, but that makes sense! It makes you process words at a faster rate. Interesting!
Wow, $300 is a BIG jump. We got a notice earlier this summer that they were raising our rent another $100 (which I already thought was hard to stomach), but $300 is a huge amount to come up with in your budget. Ugh. I am so sorry. Inflation really hits EVERYWHERE these days.
Glad to hear your toe is healing!
I usually don’t listen to audiobooks/podcasts (as you know, haha), but when I do – or when someone sends me a voice message – I usually listen at normal speed, UNLESS someone speaks very, very slowly, then I’ll speed up to 1.5x.
It was so crazy to get that notice and realize how much they were raising my rent! And they’re still soooo much cheaper than anywhere else. But that’s the way it goes these days… I am trying to feel grateful that I will be able to afford this, and hopefully will get a nice raise at the end of the year to offset this massive increase.
Oh, man. That rent increase is awful. I’m sorry. I was super-lucky this year and was “grandfathered” in at the same rent. I know. I actually thought they made a mistake and asked, and was told that I was one of the few they didn’t increase. Maybe because I’ve been here so long? Who knows… but I suspect I’ll get slammed next year.
I hope Gladys is ok! This reminds me that I should make a winter prep appointment for my car… so, thanks. 🙂
And, I listen to podcasts at 1.25, and the same for narrated news articles. I can’t stand the 1x speed because it’s slower than I read (with my eyeballs, LOL). 2x sounds insane, though!
I’ve been at this apartment complex (in two different apartments) since 2016 so I wish I had a similar grandfather clause in mine, lol. But at least this gives me the push to move to a better apartment next year. I’m excited to move somewhere where I can have an actual office!