I have, however, been reading a lot during my commutes. So, while I get my act together over here, I’m going to share a few articles with you that are worth reading.

• For the graduates: 10 Things You Won’t Hear at Commencement (original article in The Wall Street Journal)
• and the follow up from NPR 
• For the under-employed: Kiplinger’s Advice for “Girls” (it’s advice for the characters in the HBO show, and it’s pretty solid)
• For the career-minded: Again from Kiplinger, this one on How to Ask for a Raise
• And finally, an article that speaks volumes about where we all are right now… “Generation Now on Hold” from the Chicago Tribune. Can I relate to the folks they’re talking about? Uh, yeah. Me and all my siblings are “on hold” right now. Some of us a little closer to goals than others, but all four of us “on hold” in some form or another.

I hope you enjoy the reading, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the articles if you get a chance to share.

Separately, you guys? If you can, would you mind saying a little prayer for me? I don’t want to get into too much; I’m sure I’ll write about it later, but at the moment our household could use some positive energy. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Catalog Photo of My New Wetsuit (Once it Gets Here)

I bought a wetsuit!

If you can believe it, renting one can cost anywhere from $40 to $65 for an entire weekend. I was kind of surprised by this, since you can rent them right outside my office on Lake Michigan for just $10 for an afternoon swim.

Once I saw that renting would cost up to $65 for my June race, I started looking into buying a discounted used suit, but nobody had my size on Craigslist (not in Illinois or Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, nor in Houston or any Florida cities) or on Beginner Triathlete (and I’ve been looking frequently for weeks). I asked some friends to borrow theirs, but nobody had my size.  I checked several “wetsuit warehouse” type sites, but I couldn’t find anything in my size for under $150.

Finally, after much frustration, I found a discount code for a wetsuit in my size from XTerra for $127 plus free shipping, for a suit originally priced at $300. Score!  For those of you keeping track, that’s the equivalent of two race rentals. And now I can swim in the lake whenever I want.

My only dilemma now is where to put it. Hmm. Perhaps I’ll finally get rid of some of those old bridesmaid dresses I’ve been keeping around and make way for something more useful.

My 15-Year High School Reunion

Spirit fingers waving, I attended my 15-year high school reunion this weekend with a small crowd of fellow classmates. We roamed the halls of the school — which sort of looks like Hogwarts, as you can see from this photo — catching up on everyone’s careers, families, and relationships, and reminiscing about our past lives as scholars, athletes, dreamers, and schemers. I went to a remarkable private school in Chicago, St. Ignatius College Prep, thanks to scholarships, loans, and work-study programs, and frankly, I still can’t believe I had the privilege of attending such an academically rigorous, spiritually caring, and well-credentialed, well-rounded school.

I’m simply in awe of my fellow classmates — one works in a high-profile White House position,  and loads more work in Washington, D.C.; several have doctorate degrees or are on their way to them, and at least one has a professorship at an Ivy League school. Others are writers, entrepreneurs, finance professionals, teachers, doctors, and lawyers. They are a humbling group to be around, and I feel proud to call them my peers.

As you might expect, the economy came up several times. Most of the folks who attended the reunion were happily employed, and eager to share news about their career, but most also mentioned friends or family affected by the recession. And since we were about 300 graduates short at this particular event, who knows how many more classmates are unemployed or underemployed at the moment.

Aside from the economy though, another facet of our reunion struck me. One of the graduates honored at our reunion was previously an infantry officer in the Army, having spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan before starting his civilian career.  Another graduate I spoke with enlisted in Navy years ago, and had completed four tours of duty in Iraq. The loss of one of my classmates who was was killed in the World Trade Center on September 11 was poignantly felt, too. A far away war, which has gone on for most of our working lives, was acutely present at this reunion in a way that I’ve never felt before. It got me thinking about how deep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have affected each of us. I myself formerly did communications work as a civilian for the U.S. Army, and the experience changed the whole course of my career. I wonder how many other lives in my class have been touched by these hard years, how many losses have been felt.

For our class of 1997, who graduated from college in 2001, our working years have been filled with drawn-out wars and economic uncertainty. We graduated high school full of optimism, ready to go into the world and make a difference after four years of college. But almost immediately after getting to the working world, with freshly printed diplomas in hand, so much changed the instant we arrived. There has never been a “normal” for us since the day the towers fell, which for many of us was during the infancy of our first post-graduation internship.

I wonder what the rest of our careers hold for us. So much of what has defined success for this class has been surviving. Surviving rounds of mass layoffs, surviving the attacks, surviving recessions, surviving  tours of duty … surviving.  We feel lucky to have been the ones to survive it all. I hope that the next decade brings a little more stability and normalcy for the class of 97, and that we see more classmates, not only surviving but thriving, at our 25-year reunion.

Congrats! You graduated!

For those of you graduating this year, I want to first say CONGRATULATIONS. You have worked hard to earn your diploma, and I hope you get some time to celebrate and enjoy the accomplishment. Go to dinner with your friends or family, get a cake from a local bakery, and relish your well-deserved achievement.

Note, I did not say buy a plane ticket to Vegas or Europe, or splurge on bling (are we still calling it that?), or adopt a pet, or rent a yacht. While you might feel like you deserve this level of celebration, and lots of your friends will be doing things like this, the reality is that graduation, for most US graduates, also means that you owe somebody a lot of money, more than you can imagine. 

I remember sitting in an auditorium learning about the terms of my loan. I remember hearing that I would be paying $200 a month for 10 years, and calculating that with my starting intern salary, which was $10 an hour (and no benefits).  This was 10 years ago, and debt hadn’t ballooned as out of control as it is today, with some undergrads paying up to $800 per month towards loans. Still, the thought of owing $25,000 was terrifying. It was the biggest debt I had ever taken on, and to this day remains the biggest debt I’ve ever taken on.

But despite that overwhelming initial terror, I got over it, made due and ended up paying off my loan without going broke – ahead of schedule by a few months, even.

And so, when I read about the woman in the Tribune article who took on nearly $40,000 for student loans and now can’t pay it back because of financial mismanagement, I saw a good opportunity to share what not to do when you graduate with a lot of debt in a bad economy. The truth is this: you can pay back your loans. It will take a lot of work, but with smart choices and some good planning, you can do it.

What not to do as you start your new life with a college degree and lot of bills:

• Unless you are relying on income from your parents to support your lifestyle, what you make is what you can spend. No more than that. Do not put a ton of new clothes, furniture, rent payments, vacations, or anything else on a credit card until you can afford it. Within “what you make,” even if it’s $10 an hour, you must fit in: your rent, your loan payments, any other credit card debt you incurred in college, your living expenses like heat, groceries, and transportation. If you write this down on paper and you can’t cover everything with your new salary, you either need to cut some expenses or bring in new income (ie. take on a second job). You cannot spend more in one month than you make. This will be your mantra.
• If you don’t have a job, you can’t take on rent. Live with your parents until you figure out how to make money. In this economy, it’s not wise to rent a place with only a few hundred dollars saved up and hope you can grind it out until you find something. If you have the luxury of staying at home (I did for two years after college), do it. Yes, it will be miserable. But not as miserable as being even more in debt. Trust me on this.
• If, like the woman featured in the Tribune story, you have $100,000 in student loan debt, please do not plan to take on a mortgage of any kind until your income can handle both your student loan AND your mortgage.
• Same goes for a car. I waited until I paid off my student loans completely to buy my car. I never had one before that. If you really need a car, save up for a used one and buy it cheap. Not on your credit card and not with a loan if you can’t make the monthly payments.
• If you can’t make your monthly payments, also don’t take on pets that require lots of vet care. I can attest that they can be very costly.  Maybe try a plant first, or a goldfish? The woman in the article took on $4,000 in vet bills. I understand she felt she needed to. But if you’re in debt, don’t let it get to that point. Animals are expensive, that’s why there are so many of them in shelters right now, abandoned by owners who couldn’t afford them. Wait a few years for your pet, until you at least know you can give them a safe, healthy, and secure home for life.

In summary, the recipe for paying off your mega student loan bill goes like this: don’t spend money you don’t have. Don’t go further into debt for anything, except perhaps your health. 

I promise, promise, promise you, this does not mean you can’t have fun. There are free things to do everywhere, interest groups to be joined, clubs to be formed, and more. You might find that you end up loving your completely broke lifestyle. And most importantly, if you stick with the plan, you’ll be less stressed about your finances and a happier person overall.

Good luck to you and let me know how it’s going. I know you can handle this!

I am definitely sensitive to gluten.

The treatment for both of these conditions is a gluten-free diet. The diagnosis for celiac requires a specialist visit and an endoscopy, an invasive procedure that requires anesthesia. My physician says that based on my family history, she doesn’t need a celiac disease diagnosis to tell me to go gluten free, I just should do it. However, she said if I need to know whether I am celiac or not, I could see a specialist. But the end result would not be different; I would need to avoid gluten either way.

What a pickle.

After years of digestive testing that started in high school, it’s come to this.  How much do I want to know? How much do I need to know? What will a diagnosis do for me that a probable cause will not?   

I go back and forth. The reason for my current dilemma is this: in November a blood test for celiac came back negative. In February I went gluten-free for nearly 30 days, with positive results. In March, I added gluten back in, with very negative results. I took another blood test yesterday, but since the first came back negative and the tests are notoriously fickle, I don’t expect to learn much from it. Celiacs will tell you a diagnosis with endoscopy is necessary, pursue it. Non-celiacs say to leave it at gluten-sensitive and move on. The question is, can I?

After years of visits to different GI docs and primary care visits for various pains in the abdomen, and a supremely unsatisfying “irritable bowel syndrome” diagnosis several years ago (which is basically the equivalent of a shoulder shrug and a pat on the back), plus many other seemingly unrelated irritations like migraines and ovarian cysts, I would like to know.

I would like to know for sure whether this is “all in my head” or if something truly is happening. I would like to know if I can have a beer and a pizza every once in a while and risk only a headache and some discomfort, vs. risking intestinal damage. I would like to know.

Still.

If one physician tells you that he or she need doesn’t a confirmed diagnosis to start the treatment, why pursue the diagnosis? Why go under anesthesia, at a cost of (I believe) about $1,000 plus the specialist visit?

Objectively, I tell myself that it makes more sense to just consider gluten off-limits for the most part and proceed with life. The end result will be the same. Plus, working in academic medicine, I believe that in five or 10 years there will likely be another, better, less invasive test that is cheaper and more accurate.

Still.

My mind has questions. It wants confirmation, validation, something.

Anything.

I know that as a patient, I am my own best advocate. But then I go back to the doctor’s question: “How will the endoscopy make anything different for you? If it comes back negative, won’t you still go gluten free?”  Yes, I will. The end result will be the same. It’s a good question to ask, and is probably along the advice that many doctors would give, especially as physicians are criticized in the media for ordering unnecessary tests, spending too much money, and driving up the costs of health care.

To her credit, she left the discussion somewhat open ended, “It just depends on whether or not you need to know. I would need to know. But everyone is different. It’s up to you. The results will be the same.”

I have the number for a specialist. I’m not sure whether I will use it.

What a pickle.

The Arch in St. Louis

2011 was my second trip to St. Louis. I have a cousin who studies at Washington University, we decided to do a half-marathon together, and St. Louis was the destination. It took almost five hours to get there by car from Chicago, but I’m glad we decided to check it out. Aside from the always fabulous Ted Drew’s custard, it turns out St. Louis has interesting restaurants like Bridge and Cafe Osage, a tasty craft brewery in Schlafly, great neighborhoods to check out like Central West End, and lots of parks to stroll through – including the Arch park, which officially is called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and gorgeous Forest Park.

After the race, which traveled through loads of beautiful city neighborhoods, ManFriend I spent a leisurely afternoon chilling in Arch park. We went up in the Arch, which was fine, but the vibe was actually way more peaceful just sitting in the grass, watching birds in the trees.

The one mistake we made with St. Louis was that we stayed at the most budget hotel we could find, the Missouri Athletic Club, which was just not up to code for us. I originally meant to book that place, then Priceline a nicer hotel closer to our stay, but totally forgot to make the change (lesson learned!). If I was going to St. Louis for anything other than a race or a game, I would not likely stay downtown. On the positive side, though, it was walking distance to the starting line and a perfect location for our itinerary.

View from the top of the Arch, St. Louis

In all, I had a great time in St. Louis. If you happen to be headed there, make sure you do your research and try to talk to locals about which neighborhoods to visit and where to stay. I think it will make all the difference in your experience.

About Budget Travel Friday – Photo Inspiration

The idea is this: I am a champion budget traveler. I have traveled to beautiful places, both remote and urban, across the United States, every year since I’ve had my own job, and have never needed to dip into my savings to do so. I have this crazy wanderlust that drives me out of the city every so often and pushes me to learn about new places, explore them, and meet new people along the way.

I also happen to love photography and while I’m less great at it than budgeting, I have a collection of photos from the east coast to the west coast and everywhere in between to share with you.

You know the tactics behind budget travel: research and plan ahead, go off-season, use Hotwire or Priceline for hotels – or try camping, purchase air fare when prices are cheap (or just fly Southwest ;), shop at grocery stores and local markets instead of eating at fancy places, visit museums on free days, etc.

OK, you have the tools, but where should you go? I hope you’ll check in with me every Friday for a photo example. If I’ve been there, you know it’s on the cheap, and you’re only a few clicks away from being there yourself.

Me: This is my best headband. Not too loose, not to tight, stays in place, holds my hair back.

ManFriend: Sounds like what a headband should do.

Me: You’d think, but you have no idea how hard it is to fulfill those requirements. I must have more than 20 headbands here that don’t fit the bill. If I lose this one, I’m screwed.

ManFriend: Why don’t you just buy more of that same one?

Me: (Whining) Well, they’re six dollars or something expensive. (Pause) I feel like they should be two dollars.

Um, note to self, this is probably why I have 20 headbands I hate sitting in a drawer collecting dust. I will be adding “buy Under Armor headbands” to my next trip to the gym. Sometimes you have to spend a little more to get what you want.

Haystock Rock at Cannon Beach, Oregon

This photo is a little blurry, but it’s from 2005 and was taken with my old camera. We got a great deal on a little inn when we stayed there – our own fireplace, a walk-out path out to the beach, and convenient access to all kinds of cute little places to explore. It was cold when we went, which is why everything was so cheap, but still a great place to visit. 

Plus, you can drive to some wonderfully scenic hikes, full of tall trees and forests that I call “magical,” like this:

Nice Bridge in Oregon

And at nearby Ecola State Park, you can spend hours exploring tide pools to find gems like this…

Starfish at Ecola State Park

Those who live on the west coast probably know about Cannon Beach, but in Illinois I’ve only ever run into a handful of people who have heard of it. When we went, we flew into Seattle, where we spent a few nights before driving south along the coast to reach the beach. You can also fly into Portland if you can find a good deal on the fare. If you’re looking for a new place to vacation, I would recommend checking it out during the off-season. There’s plenty to do, the food is fresh and tasty, and the locals are friendly. We will definitely go back one day!

About Budget Travel Friday – Photo Inspiration

The idea is this: I am a champion budget traveler. I have traveled to beautiful places, both remote and urban, across the United States, every year since I’ve had my own job, and have never needed to dip into my savings to do so. I have this crazy wanderlust that drives me out of the city every so often and pushes me to learn about new places, explore them, and meet new people along the way.

I also happen to love photography and while I’m less great at it than budgeting, I have a collection of photos from the east coast to the west coast and everywhere in between to share with you.

You know the tactics behind budget travel: research and plan ahead, go off-season, use Hotwire or Priceline for hotels – or try camping, purchase air fare when prices are cheap (or just fly Southwest ;), shop at grocery stores and local markets instead of eating at fancy places, visit museums on free days, etc.

OK, you have the tools, but where should you go? I hope you’ll check in with me every Friday for a photo example. If I’ve been there, you know it’s on the cheap, and you’re only a few clicks away from being there yourself.

But I thought it would be fun to share a “nice to have” wish list. These are smaller, though not small, things I daydream about that I won’t necessarily buy (some of them I might). I’d love to have all of them if my resources were unlimited.

1. My own washer and dryer. Seriously. 14 years of pay-as-you-shrink-everything will drive you nuts.
2. A new racing bike. I’d get a tri bike. Mine is a hand-me-down road bike that I got for free. It’s fine but it’s a little small for me. I’d like a brand new one that’s sized for me.
• And while we’re on it, I’d also like pedals with the clips and clip-in shoes for my bike.
3. A wetsuit. For swimming in races and Lake Michigan. I have borrowed one for free in the past, and will probably rent one for my race in June. Too hard to store one in my place, though.
4. An iPad. I’ve been entering every drawing for one that I can, but all I get is more junk email. Darn. Can’t quite commit to another gadget right now, but I think this would vastly simplify my commuting life.
5.  A dog. A big one. One that will be my running buddy. Again, space issue. But so is my work life with this one.
6. A TempurPedic mattress. My brother has one. It’s the bomb. I’m sure it would make my hips happy.
7. New glasses. The last time I saw my eye doc, I got new lenses in an old pair to save money. I’m ready for new ones at my next appointment.
8. A new iPod. I forgot about this in my excitement about the iPad. My iPod is completely broken, nothing shows up on the screen anymore. I’ve been running to Pandora on Blackberry but the service cuts out way too often.
9. A new suit. Mine are getting pretty old.
10. Ear plugs. As I am typing this, a woman on the level below mine on the train is yelling so loud into her phone that it’s hard for me to think. I always forget these at the store, but am reminded of their use nearly every day!

So that’s my selfish little list. What’s on yours?

Here’s the breakdown.

Friday

• Dinner at Mama Thai in Oak Park – $25

Saturday

• Lunch at Feast in Bucktown with my family – $30 (this involved some mimosas…)
• Gifts for my nephew at PsychoBaby – $27.38 (I couldn’t resist getting him a “Punk Rock Baby” onesie)
• A summer hat for myself at Goorin Bros. – $41.61 (A white and blue version of this one. All I can say is that I was suffering from a major sunburn when I bought it, and my mom said it looked cute and I should buy it. It is now dutifully awaiting use for summer backyard parties, beer gardens, and festivals.)
• Face scrub from Lush – $5
• Dinner at Trattoria 225 in Oak Park – $34.04

Sunday

• Breakfast with a friend at Blue Max in Forest Park – $12
• Sports Authority – Swimsuit and sun visor for summer workouts – $70 (totally could have gotten both cheaper online, even AFTER the coupon, lesson learned)
• Bricks for our turtle patio – $5.50
• Groceries – I will have to add this in later because the receipts are not with me

Grand total before groceries = $250

Shoot, this is not the “belt tightening” of someone who is looking to save money for a downpayment in the next six months! Good thing I wrote this down, otherwise I probably would have forgotten how much I spent, and then next weekend would end up being another spendy one. I sometimes get “spending amnesia” where I think I’m being all frugal all the time, like “I haven’t bought any new clothes in three months, and I never eat out!” and then I realize later that I bought a new hat and a swimsuit last weekend, and all I’ve been doing is eating out.

Good thing next weekend is Easter, although my mom will probably tell  me to do something easy, like make a salad, and then I’ll spend about $30 trying to make it THE BEST SALAD EVER but forget all the ingredients at home, then have to run to store by her house and spend another $30 on the same salad. Yeah, that sounds right.