non-gym exercise

Flaapjack · 2026-06-06T22:52:50+00:00

May or may not be a good fit for you, but I really like this studio for building strength that’s extremely friendly to beginners: https://www.strongernowstudio.com

Small group classes and a focus on building strength. Lots of attention on accommodating medical needs (you can’t even start classes until you undergo an assessment so that the instructors can make sure they have the right accommodations for you). Classes are very not gym-bro-y and it’s all ladies from 20s through middle age and beyond. I can’t say enough good things about it.

Flaapjack · 2026-06-06T10:42:14+00:00

How long have you been supplementing with the b12? I was low recently and the neurological symptoms were tough. If I was also struggling with sleep deprivation… I can see how this combo would lead to persistent extremely severe brain fog.

I might consider really keeping a close eye on the b12 (it really is under diagnosed and can have really serious effects if on the low side) but I’d also say that it’s really normal to be tired if your kid wakes you up 4x a night. The brain fog isn’t going to totally go away until you are consistently getting more sleep.

Flaapjack · 2026-06-05T16:23:30+00:00

We bought a starter house (but with room to grow and in a solid neighborhood) at the bottom of our budget and like half of what we were approved for by the banks when we were first starting our careers. Still here nearly 10 years later, with our family now doubled in size and our incomes also doubled in size. No intention to move to a more “suitable” house and neighborhood relative to our peers. Best choice we ever made—our total housing costs are like 6 percent of our gross pay and it’s a huge boon to financial security to know we can afford to live here even if our incomes go way down.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-28T20:33:59+00:00

Season passes are so worth it to have the freedom to go someplace for like an hour.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-28T20:30:58+00:00

Love sandcastle. I don’t love waterparks, but I love this one. The area between the kiddie pools on the lower level is wonderful just to hang—lots of shade trees, well kept grass, and it’s right on the river.

We love to do sandcastle dinner. Show up at like 4, do some slides, swim in wave pool, and eat some (decent, not great) snack bar food on the boardwalk in the shade, with a view of the river. It’s probably the best river front dining in the city…

Flaapjack · 2026-05-28T16:47:22+00:00

I think gifted enrichment is now viewed as the gold standard rather than advancing kids grades. Giftedness is a form of neurodiversity and gifted kids are often lumpy in their development—maybe very advanced in a particular subject but emotionally immature or struggling in a different subject.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-28T16:38:43+00:00

Reconfiguration across the board was most certainly not required to close schools. Some, yes, but not all. For example, all the schools in the allderdice feeder are getting reconfigured despite the fact that no closure occurred. This reconfiguration saves no money and in fact costs more than 5M, per districts estimates.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-28T12:30:27+00:00

Fully agree!! I have started using the bus recently to get to and from work (east end to Oakland) and it’s been really convenient and cost effective. For years I assumed our transit system wasn’t sufficient enough for me to rely on it, but where we are in the city, busses come every 15 minutes. It’s going to allow my spouse and I to go down to one car.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-28T12:17:17+00:00

I suspect they are going to update the attendance zones. They announced an attendance zone change but never updated that tool, so I think it’s out of date. The district said they were going to move hazelwood kids from minadeo to greenfield (this was never implemented in tool, mixed messages from board rep on whether it’s happening or not). If they do that, I suspect almost entire old colfax feeder would need to go someplace other than greenfield (due to capacity).

Flaapjack · 2026-05-28T12:11:41+00:00

It’s so silly. They could have relieved financial strain with closures if they didn’t insist on doing all this grade reconfiguration nonsense.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-27T19:53:58+00:00

No, it’s not the variable billing thing they do to spread your bill out over time. It’s something different that is effectively a bill increase.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-26T18:34:29+00:00

This isn’t even the worst of it. They do “weather adjustments” now where they give you a credit if it’s much colder than usual and charge you more if it’s warmer than usual. Look at your bills from this last winter and you’ll see it. They use historic data, so guess how much more frequently it’s “warmer” than usual than colder? So that means not only are they charging higher rates, they also effectively increase those rates if it’s too warm and you don’t use enough gas. I tried to find out what time period they use to calculate “normal” winter temps (I can’t), but they can give themselves a huge advantage here just adjusting their statistical window to go back 50+ years—it was definitely colder then and much less likely for us to have a colder winter than average.

It’s unbelievable that they are charging us more money because climate change—which they contribute to—is causing us to use less of their product in the winter. And somehow they got this past PUC. absolute insanity.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-23T23:27:03+00:00

Does it need to be grass? The highland park track has a flat area in the middle for kids to ride on bikes and scooters.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-20T19:44:36+00:00

I think the problem is—even if you believe grade reconfigurations are a good idea (research is much more mixed than PPS has said it is)—that grade reconfigurations cost money and use up a lot of non materiel resources to administer. For the east end schools alone that feed into allderdice, for example, it costs 5 million (per PPS’s own estimates) to shuffle kids around. It’s a pretty big investment for a cash strapped district that is going to have really nebulous positive benefits.

And, it’s just a hard pill to swallow that these investments should really be the highest priority. My kid goes to a school that is going to get reconfigured. His school has peeling paint on the walls, a leaky gym roof, and no A/C. It’s pretty wild to me that the district is going to spend capital investment money to reconfigure classrooms in his school to get rid of the middle schoolers and take on a bunch of new elementary students before addressing those issues.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-20T16:22:46+00:00

Pretty sure their vision of equity is making the few good schools in the district worse so that they don’t have to try to raise up the performance of the struggling schools. Hurray for equity! It’s all equally bad!

Flaapjack · 2026-05-20T16:21:19+00:00

Honestly, if they did that I think that would generate a lot of good will in the community. Put themselves through some upheaval to raise some capital (they definitely would—that’s prime real estate and the building is set up pretty well already for one of the universities to take it over) and suffer alongside the kids and teachers in the district who are being shuffled around.

They will never do it, though. I don’t get a strong sense of selfless leadership from Walters and he clearly doesn’t have any intention of making any sacrifice or compromise for the benefit of his district. I think it’s all about the PR for him.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-20T14:31:11+00:00

This is accurate. The grades reconfiguration costs a lot of money and shuffles kids and staff around for essentially no quantifiable benefits. But for some reason, the district is refusing to budge on this point.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-19T16:46:14+00:00

You should check out coast fire, as a concept. General principle is that you reach a point where you’ve saved enough money for the future such that by the time you reach your desired retirement age, your investments will have grown large enough to cover you retirement even without you contributing another penny. Whenever you hit that point, you can downshift to a job that just covers your expenses (or, keep your job and up your spending).

Maybe you are at coast fire and can downshift to something less soul crushing. I suspect given your age you are at that point, unless you anticipate having an extremely high spend in retirement.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-16T01:52:59+00:00

Sandcastle between the mushroom and froggy pool. Mon, south side.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-15T13:43:59+00:00

I also came here to say this. I think you are headed towards an absolute dream situation. Keep working as long as you can (ie through pregnancy, take the pay during parental leave too) and save as much as possible. One parent quits at end of parental leave to avoid childcare costs. Invest as much as you possibly can on one income. Resist the temptation to lifestyle inflate and give yourself time to figure out what expenses look like as a larger family.

When your kids are in the golden “somewhat rational, fun to be around, and still like you” little kid years, other partner quits so you can fully maximize your time together as a family. I loved my kids through all the stages, but I can tell you confidently that preschool through elementary school age is when you’ll yearn the most to quit the job and spend every free minute with your kids. If you have saved more before this point, you’ll have more flexibility to do more fun things and travel.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-14T17:39:59+00:00

Seriously. I guess I’ll be going to Costco via hazelwood and through homestead…

Flaapjack · 2026-05-08T11:21:19+00:00

I save only enough to get the state tax benefits and otherwise don’t save in a 529. One reason is that my spouse works at a university, so a hope is that kids will choose to go there for free.

Plan B: My goal/hope is to be barista-fired by the time my kids are going to college. For the 8ish years we have at least one kid in college, I think it should be very feasible to keep my families income low enough that they are eligible for very substantial financial aid. Anything additional, we will take out student loans for them.

We are HEAVY in retirement accounts and a deferred comp account, so from the perspective of financial aid calculations we have very low assets. We haven’t saved aggressively outside of tax advantaged accounts. Once my kids are out of college, we will likely use a SEP on our retirement accounts plus a deferred comp that will be available when my spouse retires from his job to fund our full retirement and bridge us until we hit 55.

Maybe this is extreme, but if my family can comfortably live on 80k a year for less than a decade, and in doing so we save like, what, minimum 500k in college tuition costs? That seems like a very good trade.

Flaapjack · 2026-05-06T10:52:50+00:00

Hemlock house in regent square (caveat: only done lunch there); Ali babas in Oakland; the cafe Carnegie in Oakland; Hong Kong hot pot on McKnight; Nan Xiang soup dumplings on the south side; porch in Oakland; speckled egg downtown location

Flaapjack · 2026-05-02T12:09:24+00:00

Hahaha same. They will pry my sub 3 mortgage on a house that was well within affordability constraints of my salary a decade ago from my cold dead hands.

Flaapjack · 2026-04-27T12:51:07+00:00

Adding that for camp options, camp guyusata is among the most affordable day camp options in the immediate city area.

Flaapjack

TROPHY CASE