Little Gym Puyallup

Hanging out at the Little Gym, in Puyallup, watching my kiddo learn to follow instructions and do physical skills, with other kids, is one of my great peaceful pleasures.

Why I'm a Big Tipper

For various reasons, some of which I'll outline below, I always tip about 20%, and more if I really liked the service.  My wife has the same philosophy.

We don't dine out often, and at the end of the month, tips we've paid don't cost us very much (on a $40 tab, the difference between 15% and 20% is two bucks), and - maybe just as a symbolic gesture - a decent tip can help improve someone's bad day (or flip a bad attitude).

The "average" tipped wage in the United States is about $11.82 per hour, or just above the federal poverty level for a household of 3 (say, a widowed mother trying to raise two kids).

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_States)

(https://obamacare.net/2017-federal-poverty-level/).

(http://www.convertunits.com/hourly/11.82)

Note, that is the *average*, as many states have a tipped minimum wage as low as $2.13, and the employer is only required to make up the difference to $7.25 (the laughable Federal minimum wage, which is definitely below the FPL for  anyone except a single person).  I had a buddy living in Tacoma for a while. He had full-time minimum wage work, paid $300/month for a one-room apartment, and the mother next door was struggling to raise her two kids - on minimum wage - after the father died in an accident. (Subsistence living is devastating and bad economic policy.)

Few restaurants provide benefits to employees, such as health insurance. Instead, they may take tax credits for helping employees scrounge health insurance from outside sources.  Thus, whatever they manage to earn can still get sucked away by things that many people consider "basic requirements of life."

(https://www.zanebenefits.com/blog/bid/289948/does-my-employer-have-to-provide-health-insurance)

(http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pay-employee-benefits-restaurant-owner-14656.html)

I was unemployed for part of last year, and we had to buy insurance through the ACA - we got a plan that was pretty much gambling we would never be in a car accident - for about $300/month (family of 3).  At $11.82/hour, that's 15% of gross income (and if we had lived in a one-bedroom apartment, at $300/month, that's another 15% off the top).

My family has been very blessed in life.  I tip well, because it doesn't cost us much, I believe in "paying it forward," and the small gesture really can have a big impact.

Pubic transit

I'm going into the office early today. That means I'm taking different buses and trains than normal.

It's always interesting to see how my presence screws up the normal social dynamics. Whenever I change my schedule, I always get looks of "Oh, who are you, and now where am I going to sit?"

There's always a cascade effect, too, as people on later stops are also disrupted. It's interesting.

Change seats, confuse everyone

Today, I'm sitting in different-than-normal seats on the train. It's really interesting watching people and seeing how this change throws everything off.

Seattle Monorail

Riding the Monorail for the first time. Fun way to get a different view of the city. But creepy seeing directly into people's dining rooms. What a different mindset required to live downtown than I'm accustomed to.

Off to Arizona

Heading to Arizona for Christmas.

Seattle Public Library

Holy cow, they have a lot of locations throughout the city.

Never been here (the Central Library) before. OMG this place is awesome.  It's won a crapload of awards, and I can totally see why.

My daughter and I visited one lazy Saturday afternoon to kill some time while waiting on filmmaker mom to do her filmmaker thing elsewhere.  Turns out the kiddo is afraid of heights, even though she was riding on my hip and glued to me, but that's the "open space" impact of this place.

They also have a really awesome "map room" with a 3-ft diameter topological globe (I think that's the term) - and kiddo had fun spinning it, running her fingers over up and down the mountain ranges and into the oceans.  She also had fun pulling open the drawers to look at the different kinds of maps inside - all kinds of maps. I had no idea there were so many ways to draw the British Isles and bring out details, etc.

Kiddo had fun in the kids section, pulling DVDs off the shelf as a "shopping list" and was really bummed when I explained we don't have an SPL membership.  Maybe since there's a branch near my day job office, I should look into it.

(Note the pages I found these images at seem to be broken - Google found me the image, but "visit this page" results in a broken link; go figure.)