Sex

Virginity: It’s None of Your Business

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So, you’re a virgin.

Or, you’re not.

Either way, has someone ever told you that it’s a “big deal”? That they can’t believe that you’re still a virgin. They can’t believe you lost it so young. They can’t believe you lost it with that person. They can’t believe you didn’tlose it with that person. They aren’t sure your virginity really counts, given what you told them about it when you were drunk. Given what they know from that person you were seeing, they don’t believe you’ve really had sex.

For something that seems so personal, people seem to have a lot of opinions about your virginity. It can be really hard to sort through what you want and what matters to you, as opposed to what other people expect.

It used to be that a woman—without an education, a job or the right to vote or own property—had little else besides her virginity that she could use to advance her place in the world. To a woman, virginity was something to hold onto tightly while a man, on the other hand, could be expected to “sow his wild oats” before he got married. Even today promiscuity is often expected of men and considered poor taste in women. But we live in a different time now, a time where sexuality is personal. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) determine how far one goes in life. It can be as important or as unimportant as you want.

That idea used to sound strange to me:  society’s outdated value judgments aside, your virginity is supposed to be a big deal. It’s shackles. It’s the first time. It’s your most precious gift. Or whatever. Those are things that I’ve been told my whole life.

But it’s not true. Or maybe it is. That’s the great secret: we all get to decide. It took me awhile to realize virginity was just a social construct. It’s like the first time you do anything new—the first time you kiss someone, the first time your parents leave you home alone, the first time you ride a bike. But if it’s important to you, if it’s a moment that means something to you, then it means something. No one gets to tell you that it doesn’t.

As with most things, there is a flip side to that: virginity doesn’t have to mean anything either. It can be the first time you try something new, it can be with someone you’ve just met, or it can be with someone you’ve known forever. You can be in love, or “like,” or you don’t have to be. It can be on the fifth date, or your wedding night, or the first time you meet. You can wait until you’re 30 or 40 years old, or you can have sex for the first time at 18. Or you don’t ever have to have sex at all.

That’s right—you don’t ever have to have sex at all. You can have sex every day. You can have sex with girls; you can have sex with guys. You can have sex with people who don’t fit into society’s gender binary. You can define your sexuality or you don’t have to.

Sometimes, you’re going to struggle with it, and that has to be okay too. It takes serious mental effort to get through our socialized concepts. In spite of everything I’ve said to you here, things that I truly believe, I still struggle with it regularly. Because the social construct doesn’t go away and people asking about it doesn’t go away. Things are going to make you call into question your choices and people are going to try and force you to defend them. You may feel uncertain about what you’ve done or whom you’ve done it with. You may feel that you’re not as experienced as your friends or that you’ve given things away too easily.

Virginity is subjective. It’s socially constructed and it’s extremely personal. The person with whom you choose to have or not have sex, how old you are, when or where—none of that matters as long as you are honest with yourself about what you want. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true! In this, as in all aspects of life, the best thing that you can do is be good to yourself. Be honest. Be loud. And know that whatever you decide is okay, as long as you decide it. No one has any right to tell you what virginity means to you.

So, remember: your virginity is your business. Consent is sexy. If it’s not sexy and enthusiastic, then it wasn’t consent. And no matter who you are, no matter what gender or sexual orientation you are, you get to define sex for yourself—the first time, and every single time after that.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Career

Understanding Employee Benefits

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Congratulations! You’ve got a new corporate job. Your HR representative hands you a big envelope detailing your salary and all these benefits—401K, vacation, health insurance etc. And the questions start to pop up: Mom, do I need life insurance? What’s an employer contribution? I don’t know what any of this means!

BenefitsSquare

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

It’s important to understand your benefits and have the tools to take full advantage of them. If used correctly, your benefits can add approximately $10,000 value to your compensation package. (Note: I have no idea if this is a proven fact, but this is just something my parents and my first HR rep told me. They are all ‘money people,’ so I believe them.)

Here are a few things to look at a little more carefully while choosing your benefits:

1. Health Insurance

If you have any benefits, you probably have health insurance. Usually you have a couple options: plans where you pay more upfront and have lower out-of-pocket costs later, and plans where you play a lower premium but have to save that money for the “big bill” later.  Other important things to take a look at: your co-pay, deductible, and if there is an annual or lifetime maximum. One time, an employer offered me health insurance and, upon further investigation, I discovered there was an annual maximum of $1,000. My car insurance was offering me better medical coverage! I looked to purchase insurance outside my benefits plan because I knew that in any sort of serious situation, that medical insurance wasn’t going to help me.

2. Employer Match/401k 

Employer-matching contributions are another great benefit: your employers will match your 401K contributions up to a certain percentage of your salary (usually about 5% to start out). It’s a great way to increase your savings quickly! One important note: if you leave your company before you are considered “vested,” you will lose all your employer contributions. (Total bummer, I know!)

At my first company, employees didn’t become vested until two years in, and I left after a year and a half. But my current company’s 401K vests immediately. If you do happen to find new employment, ask HR what would happen to your vested balance if you came back to the previous company. I found out before I left that if I went back to my old company within two years of leaving, I would get my employer contributions back. Pretty cool research to have in my back pocket!

3. Life & Disability Insurance 

Life insurance is another common benefit. Generally, if offered, your employer will pay for the amount of one year’s salary, while giving you the option to purchase additional coverage. You also get to designate this money to your loved ones, so be prepared with all your beneficiaries’ social security numbers ahead of time.

Many companies also include short-term disability and long-term disability insurance options. Depending on your insurance, this may extend to illness or injury while not on the job (pneumonia, hospitizalion, etc.). That’s why you want it to pay extra for it, even though workman’s compensation would cover injuries on the job. Even if you are working a desk job, if you can make an affordable monthly contribution to earn these benefits, I would recommend you take it. Accidents happen everywhere and there is nothing more taxing for you or your family than a career-ending injury. Some examples of career-ending injuries include accidents in company vehicles, slipping on ice, and falling down stairs. Again, all very unlikely, but could lead to severe injury that would keep you from working.

You should also figure out when your disability rolls from short term to long term. An employer cannot replace you until you are considered to be on “long-term disability,” which can be anywhere from 3-6 months. If you like your job, you would hopefully recover during the short-term leave, before you get rolled to long-term and find yourself out of a job.

Finally, perhaps the most important thing about corporate benefits is to feel empowered to ask questions. Many corporations provide benefits hotlines that can answer your questions, get you specific details on your medical plan, and just help it all make sense!  If you don’t have a benefits hotline, your HR rep will be able to talk to you about any questions you have.

Brainfood, Career, News

That One Time I Started a Blog: The One Year Anniversary of UE

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A year ago today, we started the UNDERenlightened.

In the past year we’ve covered everything from lock outs to hand jobs, drunk texts to internet slang. We’ve offered advice on dealing with your finances, your eyebrows, your car, your face, your period, your apartment, your roommates, and your toolbox. From finding the perfect lipstick or playing Quidditch, going to brunch or making cocktails, getting started with Android or trying out cosplaying, our writers have shared their stories and their experiences. They’ve taken you through being diagnosed with cancer, losing their wallet, turning 26, getting catfished, and going to the West Bank. We’ve created primers on religions, grammar, programming, wines, fan fiction, STIs, and an article on vibrators that is consistently the most viewed post on our site. We taught you how to make a GIF, make new friends in a new city, get from the couch to a 10k. Offered tips on outfits, interviews, restaurant behavior, DIY transformations, and decorating. And whether it’s getting that first number, meeting online, dating long distance, moving in together, or proposing, our writers have tackled relationships, sex, and dating with honesty and insight from their own lives.

When I first dreamed up the idea for UE in my friend’s kitchen, I had no idea it would grow into what it has become today. I am immensely proud of the articles we’ve put up this year, the people behind them, and I believe I can speak for all of us when I say that we are eager to continue bringing you the great content you’ve come to expect from us in this upcoming year.

Like all fledgling projects, our first year has not been without its ups and downs. And, in keeping with UE tradition, I would like to share with you some or our successes and some of our mistakes. While I can’t give you a textbook for starting a blog, collaborative or otherwise, I can tell you what it’s been like to start this one:

Start With An Idea

Back in early 2012, I was listening to my friend tell me about getting her license suspended and it got me thinking about all the things we will forever be learning how to do. I started keeping a list. The more I talked about this idea of being “under enlightened,” the more ideas people gave me. Soon I had several hundred “potential” article topics. Even though I knew most of these experiences had to be lived to be understood, I hoped that by creating a place where we could share these experiences, we could make it just a little bit easier for us.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted UE to be a collaborative site. I had so many friends who, like me, were writers without a place online where they could showcase their work. I wanted to start building an online writing portfolio but I found the idea of starting and maintaining a solo blog overwhelming–plus, let’s be honest, I’m not that consistently interesting. But through our combined efforts, we could maintain a constant content source and build a community where both writers and readers were learning from each other.

Just Do It

I started by talking to everyone about UE. And I mean everyone. Even my Grandmother was trying to wrap her head around “collaborative blog” during those first few months. At first, I was just trying to drum up potential writers among my friends but, to my surprise, the idea struck a stronger chord with some and they offered me their professional skills along with their time and dedication. I’d pretty much planned to beg, barter, and bribe people into helping me with the more complicated aspects of putting together the site (i.e. web design, graphic design, etc.) but before I knew it, my idea had spread from my friends to their friends and I had people sending me emails with their resumes asking if they could help.

I still remember saying right after a “phone interview” with a potential new editor, “Doesn’t she know that we have no idea what we are doing?” The managing editor at the time said back to me, “It doesn’t matter because you sound like you do.” Over the past year I’ve come to realize, with the help of UE, that no one has it figured out: there is no “right” way to do things. You just have to do it and trust that you will work it out.

Find a Team

Through sheer luck, our staff ended up being a mix of very close friends, good friends, and brand new acquaintances (whom I now consider very good friends). I knew there was no way I was going to pull off something this massive on my own but I still hadn’t anticipated running a staff of people dedicated this idea. I already knew how valuable a team could be from years of collaborating on creative projects and I felt an obligation not to waste their time or efforts. It was also important to me that they felt some sense of ownership in the site, so I saw each of them as the director of their own “department.”  I knew that giving them responsibility (read: trust) would foster a truly collaborative environment.

The minute you decide to make a collaborative blog, that blog is no longer yours. Even though people will often assume that I do all the work behind the scenes or call UE “Anastasia’s” blog, I do not like this. Whether in praise or in blame, I am always quick to remind them that there is a team running this show.

Be a Leader

Leading isn’t about telling people what to do, it’s about guiding a vision. It means listening and learning. When it came to creating something new, generally I would start by offering my vision for a particular aspect but used this merely as a place to get the conversation started. Give your staff the creative freedom to come up with their own approaches and implement them. You’ve put together a team of brilliant minds, trust in their talents. Your job is to keep everyone pushing towards the same goal.

Take the Time to Get it Right

Since our staff (and our writers) are located all over the country, we had to do all of our communication via the Interwebs. We embraced the power of Google. We use Google Drive to keep all of our articles, photos, publishing schedule, to do lists, etc., in sync and Google Hangouts to run our staff meetings. For many of us, UE is the job we do in addition to our full-time jobs. So, when we were building the site, gChat became an essential tool for getting things done during the work day.

We spent weeks working to get the look and feel of the site just right. We all agreed that it was essential to have a fully polished site before we went live. Even if this meant pushing our launch date (initially planned for early July) all the way to early September. We spent those months finessing every single little detail on the site. No link or font or color choice was too small to warrant some sort of discussion. We wanted UE to be a brand, so this meant coordinating not only the site but also our social media accounts as well. Every time we crossed something off the to do list, five more things would get added. And as the launch date moved closer and closer, it seemed like it would never get done.

The two hardest things were the site navigation and the legal. Try condensing a site about “everything” down into easily navigable subcategories. We’d come up with a plan, we’d throw it out, and we’d do it again. This process went on for weeks until slowly we built one that worked. The legal, on the other hand, ended up being a solo mission. It’s probably the least read thing on our site, but it’s one of things I am most proud of. Researching and drafting the various policies and agreements was particularly daunting for me because UE is legally registered and paid for by me. It would be my ass on the line if anything ever happened. There was one night, the week before launch, where I seriously considered scrapping the whole thing because I couldn’t get my head around it all. But with a little focus and a read-through by someone with a law degree, it came together. Now we have a solid User Agreement, Comment Policy, Submission Agreement, and Privacy Policy.

Honing Your Tone

I was so focused on putting the site together that I neglected the editorial side. I wanted us to have a backlog of articles before we launched the site. But what I didn’t anticipate was that when you are asking people to write for an unestablished site, no matter how much explanation you give them upfront, you’re going to get a lot of different tones back because they don’t have any clear examples as a base. And even if you thought you had a clear sense of your tone, once you start reading articles it will start shifting. So you have to balance deciding exactly what you want your tone to be, and communicating it back to both your writers and your editorial staff, all while carefully nurturing these fledgling professional relationships. This took time, practice, and a lot of mistakes. And, even a year later, we’re still working on getting it all just right.

Learn Your Limitations and Admit Your Faults

I believe the best managers are the ones who can admit their own faults: mine is deadlines. Despite all of my delegating and my best intentions, I’d overestimated the workload that I could handle. I was taking longer to edit submissions than I’d allotted time for, and since I couldn’t stick to my deadlines, I felt bad nagging my writers to stick to theirs.

Even with my team, for the first few months, I was still the lynchpin to the site running. If I went dark for a day, so did the site. So while I’d dreamed of UE publishing content every day, it got harder and harder to do so with both my managing editor’s and my own increasingly hectic schedules. We struggled along for a while, with a lot of last minute posts, but without either of us to keep the publishing schedule together the site fell silent.

We were dark all through the holidays and I felt tremendously guilty. I didn’t want to admit where I had failed but I also wasn’t willing to let all our hard work go to waste. I wanted to get the site back up and running but I knew that I needed to take a hard look at where we’d fallen short and be very honest with myself about what I could and couldn’t handle. I knew this would mean handing over control on things I’d previously been overly concerned with. But, as I said before, this was not “my” blog and if I wanted it to really thrive, I had to really let it go.

I called my managing editor and we had a very frank conversation about our time. This is where a lot of people might say working with your friends can get messy, but I thought our honesty in that conversation only strengthened our friendship. Together we reached out to one of the editors and asked if she might be interested in stepping up to take on the role.

When she agreed, I handed over complete control of the editorial side. I asked her to come in and implement her own ideas and system and to let me know where I would best fit in. I still wanted to read every article before it went up on the site but no article would again be held up by me in the editing process. We shrunk our publishing schedule down from five or six articles a week to a much more manageable three and we spent a lot of time making sure our new system worked before we were ready to officially “relaunch.” I really can’t thank Meggyn Watkins, our incredible managing editor, enough for her tremendous dedication and persistence. Without her efforts we would not be here today.

But if I have learned one vital lesson from UE this year it is:

The Importance of Commitment

This includes the commitment of the staff and writers, but I mostly mean a leader’s commitment. If you want to create something like UE, you have to remember that you are the reason all the wheels keep turning. If you lose drive, if things stop being shiny, if you don’t have time, or you stop pulling your part of the weight, everyone else around you will do the same. Not only are you the barometer of motivation, you’re also the source. If you’re not meeting your deadlines, why should anyone else? How can you be annoyed at someone for not doing their job, if you’re not doing yours? Teams are only as strong as their weakest link. If someone on your team is dropping the ball, it is not their fault, it is your fault for letting them.

To everyone reading this and to everyone who has ever taken the time to read any of the articles on our site–thank you so much for being a part of the UE family. We look forward to continuing to bring you great content for another year. If there is ever anything you’d like to read on the site, please let us know here. If you are interested in writing for UE, drop us a line over here.

Again, thank you for this incredible year.

Anastasia Heuer
Founder & Editor-In-Chief

Geekery

How Humans Talk to Computers: Programming 101

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Programming languages come in many different forms, but they all accomplish the same thing: they allow a programmer to communicate with their computer and make it do what they want it to do. At this point in our history, we rely on computers for just about everything we do, and yet many people have no idea how they actually operate! Learning a programming language not only lets you write your own programs, but it gives you a stronger understanding of the hardware that affects your everyday life. Programming builds your analytical abilities and, like learning a foreign language, it keeps your mind sharp. This article is a basic introduction to some of the concepts you will need to know in order to successfully learn a programming language.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Programming languages are divided into high- and low-level languages. High-level languages are written to be easily read and understood by programmers, while low-level languages consist of assembly languages and binary, which the CPU reads and understands. The most basic type of code a computer understands is binary. Binary is made up of strings of ones and zeroes which can be used in different combinations to make different characters. Binary is very easy for a computer to understand, because it only has to recognize two states (a one or a zero). Each 1 or 0 is called a bit, and a set of 8 bits makes a byte. One byte is enough data to represent a letter of the alphabet, or a number up to 255.

The position of a bit in a byte determines its value. From left to right, bits represent exponentially larger numbers. Programmers can string together multiple bytes to store larger amounts of data.

Below is an example of how the uppercase letter “A” would be represented in one byte of binary:

0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

This expands out to represent the equation below:

00 + 11 + 02 + 03 + 04 + 05 + 06 + 17 = 65

When you type an uppercase letter “A” on your keyboard, your computer is actually saving a value of 65, which is interpreted graphically as the uppercase letter “A.”

However, it requires a lot of effort for a programmer to program directly in binary: it takes a lot of instruction to do even basic tasks! This is where assembly language and the high-level languages come in. In order to go from an assembly language to binary, the code is run through a program called an assembler, which translates the assembly language into the machine’s language (binary). The same process is true for high-level languages and assembly languages. In order to make your high-level language (one that programmers can read, like C++ or Java) program into assembly language, it goes through something called a compiler. Most programmers set up a development environment in a program such as Visual Studio which allows them to write and compile the code all in the same place. The benefit of this structure is that programmers don’t have to work in low-level languages like binary. C++ and other high-level languages are easy-to-read and use common words that a human could understand, even without an extensive background in programming.

One of the most basic programs is the “Hello World!” program, often used for absolute beginners. Below is an example of “Hello World!” in C++ and an assembly language. Notice how complex the assembly language is compared to C++. Even if you don’t know any C++, you could probably make a pretty good guess what the different lines of code do, while the assembly language is much more cryptic.

C++ Assembly – x86 Windows 32 bit

#include <iostream.h>
main(){
cout << “Hello World!”;
return 0;
}
.486p.model  flat,STDCALLinclude  win32.inc
extrn            MessageBoxA:PROC
extrn            ExitProcess:PROC.data
HelloWorld
db “Hello, world!”,0
msgTitle
db “Hello world program”,0

.code
Start:
push    MB_ICONQUESTION + MB_APPLMODAL + MB_OK
push    offset msgTitle
push    offset HelloWorld
push    0

call    MessageBoxApush 0
call    ExitProcess

ends
end Start

The main challenge in learning a new programming language is the syntax. Even though they are designed to be easy to read and understand, programming languages require the user to know the correct syntax, just like learning the grammatical rules of a foreign language. A computer will read all of the information it is given exactly as it is presented, so minor things (like forgetting to close a bracket) will show up as errors.

This will work:

#include <iostream.h>
main()
{
cout << “Hello World!”;
return 0;
}

This will get an error:

#include <iostream.h>
main()
{
cout << “Hello World!”;
return 0
}

The only difference is the lack of a semi-colon after the “return 0” line, but it is enough to stop your program from functioning.

My own experience with programming has been through game design and development. There is a much greater need for game designers to read and understand code than to necessarily be masters of programming, so I’ve taken a more everyday approach to my practice. Many of the complications I have run into are usually related to setting up a proper development environment. If you work with different libraries, it can sometimes be difficult to make sure your program files are all organized properly. In game design, it is typical to work from massive amounts of pre-written code, which you then have to make sure are all connected and communicating properly. This is known as a “game engine,” and allows game programmers to spend less time reinventing the wheel, and more time adding new features to their program.

If you keep these concepts in mind, learning to program becomes a lot easier. It takes time and effort to truly master any language, but you can start with a solid foundation by learning the basic concepts before worrying too much about complex grammar rules and syntax. Anyone who wants to learn a programming language should look at the books available in their respective field, in order to learn not just the basics but how different languages are used specifically in each field. For example, expect a software industry job to be more involved in low-level coding, while game design will typically focus on high-level coding. Probably the most popular code for beginners is C++, because it is particularly easy to read and has many attributes found in most popular programming languages. For game designers, I would recommend the second edition of Starting Out with Games and Graphics in C++ by Tony Gaddis. It begins with a well-rounded introduction to C++, followed by an introduction to a simple game engine, the App Game Development Kit.

Relationships

Long Distance Sucks: How to Make it Suck Less

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For two years, my partner and I lived across the country, on opposite coasts. It was totally worth it, because he’s awesome, but the situation was awful. There are really no two ways about it. I constantly felt like I was reevaluating my decision to leave the city we both lived in for a really fantastic career opportunity, making me wonder if I was ungrateful. Or I would listlessly watch airline prices go up and down. All in all, it was a super fun set of emotions.

Here are a few of the things that worked for me to make things suck a little less:

Know your tools: The Internet makes life a lot better. For example, just seeing a familiar person’s face on a screen can boost your mood automatically. And if it’s your partner’s face—even better! Skype, Google Calendar, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, AIM, Tinychat, Instagram, Snapchat: all of these are ways to informally and quickly stay in touch via the Internet. Relationships are not all about two hour heart-to-hearts. While those are great, I need to feel like my daily quota of small cutesy interactions is being filled. These apps/programs/services work super well for this. A good friend who is currently in a long distance relationship recommends the app Couple, which allows you to text, play games, make pictures, and “finger kiss”—a little cheesy, yes, but what isn’t?

Know when the long distance will end: But don’t necessarily keep a countdown on your phone if it’s more than a couple months, mmk? No need to remind yourself that there are 682 days ‘till you can live in the same time zone. However, knowing that there was a stop date sometime in the future made it so I didn’t slip into ennui.

Know when you’ll see them next: This is a good one to keep as a countdown on your phone, if you are able to visit during your time apart. My partner and I would always try to book tickets for our next trip when we were physically together so that there was never any “I don’t know when I’ll see you next” time. This wasn’t always possible, but was incredibly helpful when we could manage it.

Know your limits: Mine, for whatever reason, is 30 days. Exactly, like clockwork. After that, I better go to Costco for tissues. There is just something about passing that thirty-day mark where things get really tricky. This doesn’t mean that I bought plane tickets every month (because, damn, flights from DC to SF can be expensive), but I knew that I would need more support from my partner and my friends after the thirty-day mark. In fact, we typically saw each other about every three months, so I knew to make friend dates and phone catch-up nights more regularly during months two and three of apart-time. I learned to actively seek out support before things got hard. Speaking of…

Know your support network: Who can you call when you are at wits’ end about this stupid decision and stupid world that makes life stupid and hard who won’t say “Well, you chose to do long distance”? Hearing that when you are at rock bottom will only show you that there are actually a couple more special levels of hell you have yet to explore. Make a list of people who support you well (newsflash, not all friends are equally supportive) and tape it to your fridge so you don’t have to think hard when you already are feeling totally ragged.

Know your schedule: Worst for me was not knowing when I would talk to my S.O. next. Even if it’s only a 10 minute chat, knowing I got ten minutes of phone time at 7pm on Tuesdays was really comforting to me! Google Calendar is great for this. Try to work the time difference to your advantage, if there is one. Is there any chance your lunch break is while they are eating breakfast? Or your break between classes is when they are driving home from work? It’s definitely worth exploring to find the parts of your schedule that make for easy touch-base times. Share your calendars and give your partner permission to make changes to events. Maybe it’s me, but I always loved having a meeting with my partner pop up unexpectedly on my schedule.

Know what you need: Have really open and clear conversations about what you need in order to make it work. Does that mean you need them to respond to your texts within at least an hour or two? Fine. Does that mean you need to watch a movie together over Skype every two weeks? Talk it out. Daily mix tapes expressing your general mood? Okay, if you’ve got that kinda time, it’s definitely worth throwing the suggestion out there. Not every request needs to be honored, but it does need to be discussed.

Know what happens next: Do you move in together when you are back in the same place? Are you considering marriage? These are huge questions, I know, but they’re totally reasonable. Long distance is work, and I personally think that if you’re going to do it, it shouldn’t be just because you don’t feel like breaking up. This does not mean you have to walk out the door engaged or anything. But it’s good to know you are on the same page, whether the agreement is that you both think this might be a good marriage someday (if you decide marriage is a thing you both want to do), or just that the goal is that you will live within 10 miles in 5 years. Coming back and having the relationship fall apart because there was no discussion about where things were going is totally common, and can make you feel like you wasted a lot of time not hooking up with all the new available people in the place where you moved (you know, if that’s your jam).

Know that when you’re together, it may not be a bed of roses: I would beat myself up when I would hit a rough patch with my partner when he was in town, because ugh this is the only time I get to see him! Which led to this strange anger/shame/frustration spiral that inevitably ended with me lying on the floor sobbing and him just beyond confused. You are in a real relationship, and putting on a perfect face for the weekend/week/month they are around just doesn’t work. Yes, you should work hard to fully enjoy the time together, but allow yourself to be a human being with complex emotions. You’ll feel more whole, and be able to work through the issues more quickly if you aren’t also dealing with feeling like a failure for being upset.

Bottom line, there is no cure-all for being in different cities, states, countries or continents (besides moving to the same place), but there are definitely ways to make it less painful.

Any other tips and tricks? Leave a comment below to share your experiences and successes!

Photo by Sara Slattery

Geekery

How to be Veronica Mars: Getting Information via the Internet

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You don’t have to be a tiny sassy blonde in order to sleuth your life away! All you need is a bunch of search know-how, a little creativity, and some perseverance.

Photo by Sara Slattery

There are many different reasons you might have for needing information about people. You may need to gain knowledge on potential employees, employers, dating prospects, roommates, buyers, sellers, caretakers, that shady friend… Sometimes a little free DIY background check is necessary to prevent yourself from making a huge mistake. It’s so easy to create a false identity by using the Internet, and on the flip side, it’s so easy to be fooled. Here are some of my tricks that I use to find out what I need to know, as well as what you can do to prevent people from finding out the same information about you.

Search Engines

This is obvious, but so many people don’t know how to utilize the full potential of a search engine. The information that you need is out there, it’s just hidden among everyone else’s details. These days, many people share everything on the Internet. They’re just giving it away without a second thought. And to start your search, sometimes all you need is a first name, a significant detail, and a search engine. You can use any major search engine—it’s up to you.

Once you know where to look, use these tips:

1.   Quotes for fine-tuned results: “Donald Draper”

2.   Use the right keywords: location, education, career, first and last names. You can also try searching for their name and location grouped with the activity you suspect: “Donald Draper” + “Rio de Janeiro” + “Starbucks” + “fraud”

3.   Search again on another search engine. Cross-reference and double-check everything for maximum accuracy.

Basic name and contact information can also be found at these people-specific search engines:Pipl,Spokeo,WhitePages (reverse phone look-up comes in handy every single time). Don’t bother signing up for a subscription to these sites, though: you’ll get the basic information you need and you can use that information to search elsewhere (like on a major search engine). With these, you want to look up screen names, email, nicknames and phone numbers. Screen names usually turn up the best results because these are what people use to assume their Internet identity. People also tend to keep the same username across various accounts, so search for the same one across multiple websites. What I also like about these people-specific search engines is that they tell you when there are more online accounts for the person you’re investigating.

Keep this in mind when you are signing up for your own accounts. Use separate email addresses/variations of your own name when signing up for accounts that you wouldn’t want just anybody to find.

Yelp

Know where the person works? Use Yelp. Maybe they’ve been mentioned in a review. Or if their place of work has a website, check it out. Leave no stone unturned. You might find out that your hopeful employer is a real shady character who has a history of treating employees unfairly.

You can’t really prevent someone from using your name when they’re writing a review, so this is a bit tricky to prevent. You can try to limit the exposure of your last name, but this is very dependent on what kind of job/career you have.

Social Media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Google+,Tumblr, Instagram)

If you have access to a person’s Facebook, don’t just check out their history—click on their friends as well. Genuine interactions with other people are important. Anyone can create a hundred different profiles by using a hundred different email addresses, but it’s harder to fake an actual life. You’re looking for quality profiles! Conversations, details from shared events, responses to tweets, and photos with the people they say they are friends with—these are all good signs. An abundance of photos showing the person actually doing stuff, participating in events, hanging out with friends and such may bring relief, but this can still be faked. These photos could actually have been stolen from another Facebook! Interaction is very important: I cannot emphasize this enough.

If you have incriminating information on your Facebook, try keeping your own profile private and don’t post valuable information about yourself on other people’s walls. I thought I was being super careful by not friending my employers on Facebook, but unfortunately a few of my other coworkers had, so a manager was able to see a comment I made on a coworker’s wall that was not work-appropriate. Very frustrating, since I thought I had all my bases covered.

People

Do you know people? Then use them! Just be subtle. However, you should always keep in mind that all sources are biased, so try to scope out concrete definitive facts. Know the right things to ask (this will vary based on your situation, obviously). Pay attention to all the details. This is where it pays to be a good listener.

Before you go searching, be prepared. Do you actually want to find what you are looking for? It’s important to remember that whatever you find may be inaccurate or attributed to a person with a similar name. The Internet is a big place, and wrong turns happen. I’ve searched for people from my childhood and instead found people that could be them, but in a bizzaro, meth-y world. Take a break and try again later—maybe you overlooked a link.

Even if it is accurate, it may seem worse than it actually is without the benefit of the bigger picture. Keep an open mind: the Internet can’t give you all sides of the story. Also, please don’t do anything creepy. This is defensive investigating, not offensive. Use what you find to protect yourself and not to ruin any lives.

It’s too easy to find out information about people’s lives via the Internet. The same can be said about you. The Internet is NOT a place of privacy. It’s a community made out of glass and everyone can see what you’re doing.

Relationships

How and Where to Find Your New BFF (of the Canine Variety)

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When my spritely Papillon, Sydney, came into my life, I was a 19-year-old college sophomore to whom nobody should have entrusted a puppy. Ever. And yet, there she was. She was mine. The breeder very happily sent her home with me (with a hefty $600 price tag on her impossibly tiny head).

“DO NOT WANT, GET ME OUT.” “For the love of God just hold still and let me Instagram this moment.” (That’s just the kind of parent I am)

Sydney and I have been through a lot together: three different New York apartments, college (and everything that came with it), a semester abroad for me / a semester at my mom’s house for her, a college graduation, a cross-country move, and the subsequent three different LA apartments that accompanied said move. For a 19-year-old who probably should not have owned a puppy and a puppy who had no choice but to be owned by a 19-year-old, I’d say we did a pretty decent job!

Seven years later, this past June, my boyfriend and I welcomed a second dog into our home: an off-the-charts-bonkers Siberian Husky mix named Avery whom we rescued from a local shelter. Even though she came to us saddled with phobias we couldn’t even begin to translate into humanspeak (fear of mirrors, fear of stairs, fear of every single sound effect in Grand Theft Auto), working with her has been one of the most rewarding experiences we’ve ever had. Seriously, I think every single dog on the Pacific coast heard me squeal with glee when she finally sat on command.

The great pet-ownership debate generally revolves around the morally weighty “Breeder Puppy vs. Rescue” question. That’s what most people ask me about right off the bat: “I’m thinking of getting a dog. Did you get yours from a breeder or a shelter? What would you recommend?” Well, now that I have owned both a breeder puppy and a rescue pooch, I have to say that I don’t think there’s a clear “right” answer here. There are advantages to both! But if you’re unsure of which route to take, here are a few pros and cons I’ve gathered over the years about each adoption option:

Pros – Adoption

  • Obviously, #1: You are saving a life! Name a feeling that is better than that feeling. See? You can’t.
  • There’s a chance your new BFF might come home with some basic training knowledge, depending upon his history. We really struck gold in this department: Avery came to us completely potty trained.
  • It’s incredibly cost-efficient. It was $90 out the door for Avery, which included shots and her spaying fee. When we took her to the vet for her first checkup, the office visit was free of charge because she was a rescue! All we paid for was one additional booster shot and heartworm prevention meds. I jokingly/lovingly refer to Avery as our “discount Husky.” This is why.

Cons – Adoption

  • There is really only one major downside to adoption, which is the mirror image of the one major upside to breeder acquisition: because you don’t know this dog’s history, you don’t know everything about his personality. Now, if you get a puppy from a shelter, you’re in better shape than if you, say, adopted a 3-year-old dog. But more likely than not, you won’t know what sets this dog off. You don’t know what her nervous ticks are. Those things won’t reveal themselves during that first euphoric visit at the shelter as you loudly proclaim, “YES, THIS IS DEFINITELY MY DOG!” By the time her bad habits rear their ugly head, you will likely have bonded with your new buddy too much for any of them to be deal breakers. But even after you enroll the dog in obedience classes, you must display the patience of a thousand Buddhas. An adult dog whose origins are a mystery to you, and who already has ingrained habits, will take longer to train than a brand new puppy. That’s just science! So be prepared to wait a while for that first, magical, “Sit! GOOD GIRL!”

Pros – Breeder Puppies

  • So, here is the one significant pro about purebreds: you (mostly) know what you’re getting with this puppy. You’ve met its parents, or have at least seen lots of pictures of them winning blue ribbons at dog shows. You’ve researched the breed. This dog is a highly impressionable eight weeks old when he comes home to you; he’s a perfectly blank slate! Yes, you have to train the puppy. ASAP. But puppies are people-pleasers and generally learn pretty quickly if you work with them consistently. In my personal experience, I think getting a puppy from a breeder is a wise choice if you either a) have a family or b) are considering starting a family sometime in the near future. Dogs with kids are unpredictable. Kids like to scream and pull tails and put tutus and tiaras on dogs (or so I’ve heard). At least with this blank slate of a puppy, you have a chance of getting it to behave appropriately around your children with early obedience training. So, if family is a major factor in your decision-making process, that might outweigh some of the cons I’m about to rattle off about purebred puppies.

Cons – Breeder Puppies

  • They’re disturbingly expensive, and I’m not just talking about the price you pay for the puppy herself (though that can get really pricey too). Purebred puppies typically cost upwards of $500. I’ve even seen some of those crazy designer hybrids going for like 2k! (Bich-Poo, anyone?) Then, remember that the puppy is going to need to another round of shots at the vet (sans that sweet rescue discount!), and will eventually have to be spayed or neutered. You could be looking at $1,500 minimum just to get your puppy physically up to speed! Woof.
  • And then, there’s training the little bugger. Even if the breeder worked with the puppies every day, chances are he won’t know to go potty outside all the time when you bring him home. This takes insane amounts of dedication. I am not proud to say that it took me several years (yes, count ‘em, years) to get Sydney fully potty trained. Why? Maybe because I was a college student with a wackadoo schedule that the dog couldn’t even begin to predict. Nothing was consistent, and dogs need consistency if they’re going to fully commit to housebreaking. Otherwise, one can just imagine the internal struggle: “Hmm, she’s not home. She should probably be home. Is it a good idea to pee on the floor now? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Okay, I’m peeing now.”
  • Another thing I learned the hard way: Purebred dogs have some really bizarre health issues that can unexpectedly crop up due to centuries of inbreeding and things like that (creeptacular, no?). Even if the breeder is highly reputable, these things can absolutely still happen. When Sydney was five, she suddenly started going blind and nobody could figure out what was happening. It turned out that she had a very severe case of glaucoma, and after spending exorbitant amounts of money at a veterinary opthamologist, we concluded that the illness was probably caused by nothing but genetics. There was nothing we could have done. * Therefore, because of things like this, I highly recommend getting pet insurance for your purebred puppy! I had it at one point, thought it was too expensive, and cancelled it. Now, I wish I’d held onto it, knowing what I know now about Sydney’s health. I signed up for a new plan last year that will hopefully cover any crazy unforeseen future issues!

*Sydney is in fact totally blind now, but she can hardly tell the difference! Dogs can teach us a whole heck of a lot about adaptability. Dogs pull it together and get on with life. It’s pretty admirable! I’m super proud of her, to say the least.

Addendum: Breeder pups

Not all brand-spanking new puppies are purebreds. There is indeed such a thing as a backyard breeder: for example, a neighbor whose beagle ran away and got pregnant and now has six puppies to give away. You might find out about these puppies on Craigslist, at a local vet’s office, or just through word of mouth. Backyard breeders are generally discouraged, though, because the American Kennel Club looks down on the practice (I mean, it’s usually people who didn’t get their dogs spayed and let them just go get preggo, so obviously that’s a big issue). However, those puppies are the same ones who might wind up in a shelter if people don’t take them home right away. So if you hear of someone locally who has a few puppies to spare, it might not be the worst idea to check them out. That way, you get that impressionable 8-week-old puppy you’ve been searching for, you save a lot of money, and you rescue a pooch that might eventually land in a shelter. These “breeders” are under the radar though, so it might take you longer to find this kind of situation. I personally have never found a puppy this way, but I know it’s an avenue that exists!

Do not let the perfect pose deceive you. You’ve seen America’s Next Top Model. You know how many takes wind up in the trash. Avery, you wanna be on top?

So, here’s the thing: if you don’t have a family situation that warrants a more predictable dog, I would strongly recommend heading over to PetFinder.com and finding the peanut butter to your jelly at a local shelter. I think if I had it to do over again, I probably would have gotten both my dogs at shelters. But then again, Sydney was and still is the perfect dog for me. I wouldn’t change a thing about her! So perhaps the moral to the story is this: in the end, the perfect dog for you is the one that best suits you and your lifestyle. As long as you’ve thought long and hard about your needs and don’t jump the gun, the right puppy is out there for you!

Here are a few helpful, awesome links that have assisted me throughout my pet-parenthood:

  • http://PetFinder.com  — This is how we found Avery! It lets you sort through shelter pets in your area by size, breed, age, etc, so you get exactly what you’re looking for!
  • http://www.akc.org/ — For purebred puppy searches and breed information. Any reputable breeder will be registered with the American Kennel Club. So if you’re looking for, say, American Eskimo Dog breeders in the Chicago area, you can find them on this site!
  • http://www.andreaarden.com/ — Andrea is a New York-based dog trainer with whom I briefly worked back East. She’s very well known and highly knowledgeable! Even if you’re not in the NY area, her blog is full of great pointers for all kinds of behavior problems.
  • http://www.karmadogtraininglosangeles.com/ — A really fantastic LA-based group of dog trainers who are currently working with our discount husky. If you’re in Southern California, you might want to check these guys out! They have great rates for both group sessions and private sessions, and also do board-and-train if you want to go on vacation and come home to a well-behaved dog!
  • http://www.petinsurance.com/ — VPI Pet Insurance is the plan most vets recommend and has some really reasonable rates, even if you only want it for emergency situations. You won’t use it all the time, but you’ll be glad you have it the day your puppy eats a pair of underwear and you receive that inevitable mind-boggling vet bill! **

**Yes, puppies eat underwear. All the time. Or they try to. Dirty laundry = heaven on Earth. At the very least, they will humiliate you when you have friends over by trotting out of the bedroom with a pair of racy unmentionables pulled fresh from the hamper. This is a true story.

Happy puppy-hunting, boys and girls!

Travel

That Time I Went To The West Bank

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In the fall of 2011, I was living and freelancing remotely in Tel Aviv, which is a major metropolis along the Mediterranean coast of Israel—vibe-wise, it’s somewhere between Manhattan and Miami. My good friend Idan had promised to take me to Hebron, a city in the West Bank controlled jointly by the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. He had been stationed there for a while during his time in the IDF (Israeli Defense Force, the military service which is mandatory for young Israeli men and women) and had been meaning to take another visit, especially because of the significance of the city to the Jewish religion—Hebron contains the tomb of the Matriarchs and Patriarchs: Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.

West Bank Square

Photos by Alyssa Kurtzman

I was intrigued to see such a significant (albeit difficult to get to) spot, especially with Idan, who is a veritable encyclopedia of Jewish lore and, even though it’s not his first language, probably speaks better English than I do. While in the IDF, Idan had been a pretty big-deal military paratrooper but sadly can’t disclose most of his airplane-leaping past. A slight guy, he has a seeing-eye-school flunkout Golden Lab named Ray (irony intended), and his drinking stories usually end with “and then I beat the shit out of him!” We made plans to go to Hebron in November, a few days before I was scheduled to fly back to New York. Needless to say, I decided against telling my parents in advance that we were taking a jaunt into Palestine.

Let’s pause and take note that everyone and their urologist has an opinion about Palestine. It’s a polarizing topic, and I expected to find it just as tumultuous a place. The furthest I had previously been into the West Bank was a couple months earlier, when my friends and I had raced up the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem for kicks and, needing a place to buy water, wandered into East Jerusalem (which was totally uneventful). I was very curious to see what deeper parts of the West Bank would be like, particularly in a city both so theologically important and so marked by conflict. Control of Hebron has changed hands and seen violence many, many times since Israel’s independence in 1948. Currently, a tense peace is maintained in Hebron by the fact that both peoples manage to get around without almost ever seeing each other.

The day came for our field trip to Hebron. Idan and I hopped an early coach to Jerusalem, where we switched to a second bus with reinforced, bulletproof windows heading into the Territories. It had occurred to me earlier that I might need a passport, but Idan kind of rolled his eyes at me when I brought it up and ensured me that there was no sort of “border” process. Much of the highway we passed through, as we wound our way eastward over some mountains, had cement curved walls extending from the cliffs above, apparently to prevent kids from hurling rocks down onto passing vehicles. Adventures!

After an hour or so, the bus stopped in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish town bordering Hebron, and the bus driver made an announcement. Hebrew is not a strength of mine (let alone muffled Hebrew) so Idan translated: the bus wasn’t going any further. Why? Who knows. “Okay, no problem,” said Idan. “We can hitchhike the rest of the way.”

I guess if you’re going to hitchhike for the first time, Palestine is as good a place as any.

We waited at a main road between the two towns until a woman in a small car pulled over and rolled down her window. Idan told her we were going to Hebron, and she said to hop in—she was headed into the city center to set up for a friend’s wedding. We wedged ourselves into the car, which was stuffed with streamers and balloons, and she streaked off up the windy road around another steep hill. She let us off near the entrance to Hebron, which was surprisingly desolate for a Sunday (a weekday in most Middle Eastern countries). We headed toward the giant, ancient tomb, observing some of the homes along the way.

Photos by Alyssa Kurtzman

Jews and Arabs in Hebron live quite literally on top of each other. Some of the buildings along the border of the two communities are owned by differing families, one (Jewish) entering through a door from one road and taking the bottom floors, and another (Arabic) entering through a door from a road on the other side, and residing in the upper floors. Two different tenants, living in one building, never seeing each other. This isn’t to say that these two families would lunge at each other with kitchen knives if ever they met, but it does point to the kind of tacit truce that exists between their communities, each claiming their right to such an important religious focal point but trying hard to avoid an excuse to engage in any more violence. Interestingly, many of the homes have locked screens completely covering the terraces, not to keep the people inside safe, but to keep them from throwing rocks or bottles onto the street below.

On our walk over, I began to hear what sounded like speakers switching on all around us. I can’t say that I wasn’t a little on edge by this sudden, 360-degree sound, but Idan recognized it immediately as one of the five daily Muslim prayer calls. At once, dozens of loudspeakers all around us began booming out the ululating pre-taped prayer chant from every mosque in the city.

Standing in the shadow of one of the most important relics in monotheism, hearing these ghostly echoes bouncing off the hills around you—this is a point at which you become keenly aware that you are in the middle of a place that is vital enough to have sparked wars, both on the ground and in the chambers of the United Nations. The vibration of the panoramic sound is absolutely unreal—it’s like being swallowed up by religious purpose, like the ground under your feet is the nucleus of ideological gravity.

I’m getting carried away here. Trust that it was a sound I’ll never forget—especially because I managed to record it the next time it happened that day. You can listen to the recording here and I recommend you give it a listen, because, whoa.

The prayer ended, the world stopped vibrating, and we proceeded to go find cigarettes for Idan. Waiting for him, I hung out at a gift shop next to the tomb, where there were plenty of tchotchkes for visitors of any of the three major monotheistic religions. We then walked up the long ramp to the entrance, which is about halfway up the massive structure. A young, bored-looking guard waved us in, which was pretty illustrative of the trip so far—simpler than I had ever imagined.

A classroom inside the huge building’s entrance was filled with fidgeting young boys studying Talmud. Idan went to grab a yarmulke (the round Jewish prayer cap) as I looked around. There’s something really exciting and unnerving about visiting a place that’s extraordinarily important to your culture and that almost none of your ancestors have probably ever seen in person.

We followed some signs to a large chamber, where individual gated mausoleums marked each burial spot with a banner depicting the religious figure’s name in Hebrew: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah. I obviously can’t say if there are actual skeletons of those people underneath each banners, but this is the gravesite that a world of people have decided to believe in, and that’s pretty cool.

The entire chamber was almost entirely empty. Idan, who’d been there before, stepped away for a moment to help some praying scholars form a minyan (that is, a group of at least 10 Jewish adults needed to perform certain prayers) while I hung out solo. There were a couple of stone basins lit up with traditional memorial Jewish yarzeit candles, and I decided to light one for each of my deceased grandparents. A nice plan, except there were no matches to be found, and no Idan nearby to supply me with a lighter. So, not wanting to leave and disturb someone in the halls asking in terrible Hebrew for a light, I started to crawl around looking for a spare match. If I never expected to be in the tomb of my religion’s founders, then I can safely say I also didn’t expect to be slithering on the floor there, examining broken matches like a hobo. I finally found the remains of a matchbook, and then there was light. Kin, welcome to the tombs.

Photos by Alyssa Kurtzman

I found Idan outside the main chamber, and we left to explore the rest of Hebron. We went wandering up toward the Arabic neighborhoods on the hills above us, exploring a very old-looking cemetery as I took photos of some of the crumbling abandoned buildings (and one gutted 70’s-era Schwepps Truck) surrounding us. I stepped into the doorless atrium of one former home, empty except for a tipped-over desk chair. Idan stepped in behind me as I was snapping a picture and gasped. I turned nervously to him: “What?” “We used to smoke in here!” Ah, yes.

These vacant areas of the city really were like a patchy, cement playground. In parts where the hills were steep enough and the buildings close enough together, you could leap from rooftop to rooftop. (Try not to sing the Aladdin song. Try not to sing the Aladdin song.) Idan showed me different parts of the city where he had been stationed: tall guard towers, assorted little barred kiosks near schools and markets. Eventually, we had wandered high enough that I worried we were encroaching on the less outsider-friendly neighborhoods. “Oh, don’t worry,” said Idan, reassuring me that we had been in that section for some time now.

Along one road above us, two boys poked their heads out from behind a stack of burlap sacks. “Salaam!” they greeted us. “Salaam!” we said. Then, hesitantly, they said “Hello!!” “Hello!” we said back, still from a distance. The boys looked gleeful, probably that they had gotten us two idiots to mimic them. From behind the stacks emerged someone who looked like their father, investigating what his sons were yelling at. We exchanged waves, and then he shouted something down to us in Arabic that I didn’t understand. Idan turned to me. “He wants to know if we want to come up for some coffee.”

I can’t pretend that I wasn’t a little nervous to approach a strange Arabic man, wearing jeans and no head cover, accompanied by an Israeli male that I wasn’t married to, in the supposedly unfriendly section of a city in the mostly hotly contested territory in the world. But I knew to follow Idan’s experienced lead. Good thing we both love coffee.

We walked up to the gate of the man’s home, and he let us in. We followed him around the back of the small house, where children were playing in a little yard next to a wooden shed. When we walked through the doorway into the house, I half-expected to find a gathering of other tourists, similarly puzzled to have been invited in. Instead, we were led into a beautiful parlor with intricately upholstered furniture. The man invited us to sit, and we started chatting. His Hebrew was about as stilted as mine, which made it one of the most productive conversations I’ve ever had in that language. He told us he was a sandal-maker, and we told him we were visiting from Tel Aviv but I was originally from New York. The two sons came in with their sisters, sitting down and pointing at us, giggling to each other.

The man’s beaming wife came in with a tray of beautiful silver Arabic coffee cups. In case you haven’t had it, Arabic coffee is kind of like espresso but stronger, darker, and brewed with almost equal parts grounds and sugar—at least if you make it right. We all took a cup and then she sat down, too. At this point, the sons were bored enough to turn around and start playing some shoot ’em-up computer game with Arabic subtitles, but the girls stayed put. One of them started playing with the big SLR camera around my neck, and her mother shooed her away. “That’s alright!” I said. I showed her how to look through the viewfinder and how to twist the lens to zoom the picture in and out, and she was entranced.

An older woman came in and the man introduced her as his mother. The granddaughters jumped aside so she could sit, and she asked her son a question, which he relayed to us. Are we married? I don’t know the Hebrew or Arabic word for ‘platonic’ but I think leaning back and shaking your head with your eyes wide open is universal code. “No, no, no, we’re friends.” The women both started laughing at this absurd notion, and Idan and I just kind of smiled and shrugged. Then, the man asked us if we wanted to see his factory. (Actually, I don’t know for sure if he explicitly said “factory,” because Idan had to translate that one for me.) I still couldn’t believe where we were and how unremarkable it all seemed—not that it was a mundane experience, but that it was exactly what you might expect from a conversation over a coffee with some friendly people you don’t know.

After we finished the coffee, back outside we went. This time, we walked down into that little shed in the backyard—the sandal factory. Inside were four old men working at ancient-looking sewing machines and smoking cigarettes. Our host showed us a few finished products and told us that his sandals were some of the best quality you could find in the Israeli markets. Idan and I promised to tell our friends.

And that was it. Idan shook the man’s hand, we thanked him and his family for hosting us. I wish I had gotten a photo of all of us together, but regretfully I didn’t even think of it, not to mention my new little friend was having too much fun with the camera for me to want to take it back any earlier than necessary. We didn’t realize until later that Idan had been wearing his yarmulke that whole time.

The rest of the trip was entirely uneventful: We watched stray dogs and ate sandwiches from the gift shop while we waited for the bus back. When it came, we hopped on and headed back to Jerusalem.

I don’t know what groundbreaking lessons are to be grasped from our day in Hebron, except perhaps that 1. Religion is quite a powerful thing and 2. People are generally as generous as they are curious. That said, I can’t say that I would have traveled to such a foreign place without a trustworthy friend who knew the city so well. Before the trip, I never expected any experience in Hebron to top the Tombs in terms of enlightenment, but then I got a rare chance to see the expectation of culturally-rooted animosity completely disproved. Also, I can say that I have breathed the ground-dust of the holy tombs of the Matriarchs and Patriarchs, and it smelled like history.

DIY

Let Me Fix You: Box Spring to Bed Slats

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Scouring thrift stores can be a great, cheap solution for outfitting your space with vintage furniture, but it can also be the source for a growing to-do list of DIY projects. Such was the case with the beautiful wooden bed frame I found at my local Salvation Army. I scooped it up for $120 and brought it home to my new apartment only to discover that my box spring now posed two major problems: (1) the box spring, combined with my modern day super thick pillow-top mattress, made the bed too high to get into (like step-stool necessary), and (2) at some point during the move, my box spring developed this squeaking sound that creaked every time I rolled over.

So, I could get a new box spring (but it would set me back another $100 and it still wouldn’t solve the height problem) or I could replace my box spring with an alternative. I went online and discovered many mattresses today, particularly those of the pillow-top variety, don’t need to be flipped and thus don’t require a boxspring anymore. My first thought, of course, was: IKEA! They don’t believe in box springs either! Which would have been an excellent solution, if only my new bed frame had had a center rail—an integral structural support to the thin slats sold at IKEA. Not eager to test out their buckling potential, I looked into: a single sheet of plywood, which was nixed for its apparent susceptibility to mold growth, or a bunky board, except that they are designed to only be used in addition to slats (which made me question why people buy them at all?). This left me with only one option: it was time to make my own bed slats.

Step 0: Googling

I started researching making my own bed slats and found this excellent slat tutorial.

Step 1: Acquiring Tools

You know what’s awesome about doing all your previous DIY projects in your Stepdad’s back shed? Power tools. Do you know what my apartment doesn’t have? Power tools. It does, however, contain a wimpy (albeit visually appealing) toolbox! But, given the scope of this project, and even though I had some woodworking knowledge under my belt, doing this on my own was going to require purchasing a few things.

With the number of DIY projects starting to build up in my apartment, I decided it was time to invest in a power drill of my own. Turns out, a power drill/portable saw combo at Home Depot only costs $10 more than just a power drill. Considering I was already set to spend the money, naturally, I bought the combo. It was the cheapest brand, Ryobi, but at $99 I wasn’t being picky. I double-checked reviews online, compared the features to the other drills around it, made sure the set came with a lithium-ion battery (not nickel-cadmium, which was the former battery standard but is now being phased out), and that the battery pack would work with any future Ryobi power tools I chose to purchase (next buy: power sander!).

But once you’re the proud owner of a fancy new power drill, you still need two things before you can actually use it: drill bits and screws. I opted for a slightly larger drill bit kit because I wanted to make sure I had a set that included all the basic screwdriver heads. Because I had no idea what kind of screws I’d need for all my drill powered future projects, I settled on this assorted wood screw pack to get me started. I also purchased a variety pack of nails just in case this whole plan blew up in my face and I had to resort to my good ol’ hammer. (For more tips on what you should have in your toolbox, check out Michelle’s suggestions here.)

Note: I have yet to use my portable saw but my vastly more experienced Stepfather strongly suggested I buy myself a Work Mate before using it. It’s a foldable and portable work table with clamps that you can use to saw things more easily (read: without hurting myself).

Step 2: Acquiring Materials

Chances are, wherever you go for wood, they are going to have an overwhelming number of options. There are several key decisions that you will have to make:

Note: Before you go to a lumber supplier (in my case: Home Depot), it is important to measure–actually measure with a tape measure and everything. Don’t be rushed, and don’t skip this, or you’ll end up making the same mistake I did.

First thing you have to decide is what type of wood you want. For a project like this, where no one will be seeing the wood, you can go with a cheaper soft wood like pine or Douglas fir.

Next, you need to decide on what thickness and width you want your wood to be. When I think about lumber, “2-by-4” is more of a name than an actual description. Turns out it’s actually both. The first number is the thickness of the wood and the second is the width. So a 2×4 is 2” thick and 4” wide. Unfortunately, to be extra confusing, lumber is actually identified by what they call nominal lumber sizes, meaning that it is labeled as the size it was before the wood was planed and cut. Therefore a 2×4 was 2” thick and 4” wide. However, now as it lies in front of you, the wood is only 1.5” x 3.5”. Not confusing at all, right? I totally didn’t know that until I was researching for this article, so of course I took the length of my bed (72”) and decided I’d need eight 6″ wide boards. With each of the eight boards spaced 3″ apart this would give me: 48″ of wood + 24″ of space = 72″. When I got home and realized the real measurements of the wood, my 3” between each board turned into 3.5” but it still worked. I wanted the slats to be as thin as possible for the mattress to sit on while still being strong enough to hold it up without bowing, so I went with 1” thick wood. Don’t be afraid to ask for help! The blog post I was following had me looking at 2×12 boards, but the employee helping me saved me a ton of money by suggestion I use 1×6 boards instead.

The next thing you need to figure out is length. My 1×6 boards were each 72” long. (Again, the blog had suggested 16’ (192”) boards, but these were way more manageable and cheaper.)  72” is a lot longer than my full bed, so I needed to trim them down to size. I may now be the proud owner of a portable saw, but I still had the friendly folks at The Home Depot cut my wood for me. The first time I tried this, however, I had been lazy and rushed in my measuring, so the super quick measurements I scribbled down were actually wrong. When I got my perfectly trimmed 52.5” boards home, I discovered that they were too short by 1.5”. One thing the blog had right, which I ignored, was the common bed sizes: if I’d listened to them regarding the width, I would have cut my wood correctly (to 54”) the first time and not wasted $30.

When buying wood, it’s also important to check for defects (like these common wood defects) in each board. When I got home with my second round of correctly cut 54” wood, I realized I had one “weak” board, meaning that the board was easier to bend in the middle than the rest. I already had my boards spaced 3.5” apart and I didn’t want to lose a whole board and risk putting too much weight on the remaining ones. Instead, I put the weak board on top of the metal frame on the end, where it would be more supported and have the least amount of pressure on it.

bed 2Step 3 (which should have been Step 1): Designing using your vast structural engineering knowledge… or what you learned from Google

So, at first, the plan (devised from the blog I’d found) was just to get a bunch of boards and lay them across my frame. This would have been great except that, unlike their example, my bed frame didn’t have anything on the sides to keep the slats from moving or, worse, slipping off. Not wishing to experience this in the middle of the night, I had to do a little extra planning:

Let Me Fix You- Box Spring to Bed Slats

Thanks to my earlier wood measuring error, I had a few extra boards to work with, so I decided to add two support boards to keep the slats from moving and/or slipping off the frame. Once flipped over, the supports would hit against the metal on the frame, thus keeping the slats in place, and look like this:

Let Me Fix You- Box Spring to Bed Slats (1) If only I had made these drawings BEFORE I started and not just for this article. Add that to the lessons-learned list.

This was the final product:

Bed Slats square

After a month of excellent sleep, without injury or sagging, I think it’s safe to call it a success!

Travel

Budgeting Your Overwhelming Trip Overseas

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As I demonstrated in part one of this topic (Planning Your Overwhelming Trip Overseas), when it comes to trip planning, Effie Trinket has nothing on me. I charted a course for my best friend and myself through Paris, Rome, Florence, and Venice, scheduling in every sight we wanted to see and restaurant we wanted to eat at. In two weeks. On a student budget.

traveling square

Photos by Remi Coin

Since my first installment was an overview on how to approach planning a trip abroad, I wanted to follow up with a deep dive on how I budgeted the trip. It can be tricky knowing where to splurge and where to pinch! Again, this article comes from my personal knowledge traveling France and Italy, but these tips can definitely be of use when planning any trip.

When you start budgeting your whirlwind trip overseas, break down your choices and approach them step-by-step as you estimate and add up prices. Naturally, every traveler will have personal preferences on where they want to save money and where they want to go a bit crazy. My friend might have rolled her eyes at me when I laid down 40 euros to make a necklace of hand-blown Murano glass beads in Venice, but I maintain that maybe she didn’t need a ¼ liter of wine at every meal, either! It was no big deal, though, as neither of us expected the other to pay for something huge unless we both wanted to. Make sure to plan what you want to spend the most on, and consult with your travel partner(s) so no one is taken by surprise.

1. Airfare – This will likely be the biggest price tag, with round trip plane tickets overseas easily going into the thousands of dollars. You can save a lot here by planning ahead! Studies have suggested that the optimal time to buy plane tickets is either weeks in advance and that tickets are pricier in the morning (when business people are typically booking on the company dime) than in the afternoon (when future vacationers come home from work and plan their own trips). Websites like Kayak, Expedia, and TripAdvisor can also help you find cheap airfare by allowing you to plug in numbers and play around with different airports in nearby cities and compare prices from many different airlines. These sites even let you set up notifications for certain flights, so the site emails you if one of your saved flights lowers in price.

2. Accommodations – Depending on your comfort and safety preferences, the cost of your accommodations can vary greatly. If, like many young backpackers, you are planning on hitting up the local hostels, you still have a wide range of options. Websites like HostelWorld and HostleBookers can be hugely helpful in finding accommodations that fit your preferences and budget. These sites have listings for tons of places and come with reviews, photos, lists of amenities, rates, availability, and maps to show where you’ll be in the city and where public transit is located—everything you need to plan your trip.

When I was sorting through this wealth of information and options, I considered price and location first and foremost. Often, the cheapest accommodations are distant from the main attractions and events the city has to offer. Do some research into the city’s public transit: is there an easy way for you to get where you want to go, and does the transit run as early/late as you’ll need? Also, keep in mind that staying out all day without a stop at “home base” can be draining. My friend and I went abroad during July and were often hot and exhausted after lunch. Finding a park to nap in became a frequent routine that was critical to our enjoyment of the rest of the day. If that doesn’t jive with you, make sure you’ll be able to head back to the hostel fairly easily when and if you need to.

Aside from price and location, it is also important to consider the atmosphere of your accommodation. In Italy, we stayed in a vastly different hostel in each city. A Venice Fish was a communal, hippy-ish house full of excitable, partying Australians. After Venice, we stayed in PLUS Florence, one of a chain of hostels under the PLUS name. Though we were worried that it would feel distant and corporate, it turned out to be an awesome experience and it was very geared towards ease of the traveler, with everything from a money exchange at the front desk to preplanned daytrip offers for the guests. In Rome, we stayed in these cabins outside the city. About half of them seemed to be populated with other travelers, while Roman citizens rented the other half to temporarily escape the hustle and bustle of the city. This seemed like it would be a really relaxing stop at the end of our trip, but since the cabins were sorted by type of occupants, we ended up in one end of a duplex shared by five or six enormous bros who drank and listened to dubstep until approximately 4 o’clock each morning. In short, even though you will never know exactly what a place will be like until you get there, you are going to be spending a significant amount of time at your accommodations, and it is worthwhile to scour reviews and photos to find a good match for your personality and preferences.

3. Travel within City/Country/Continent – This item varies a lot depending on where you are going. In some places I’ve been to, like West Africa, one could take daytrips from a central location very cheaply and easily, but traveling from country to country took either a good deal of time (a few days) or much more money (flights around Africa are nearly as much as flights from North America to Africa!). However, traveling around Europe was (relatively) cheap and, because it is such a frequent destination for people in their 20s taking a modern-day Grand Tour, there are many discounts available to young travelers. RailEurope is an excellent tool to plan and book tickets, as you can layout your trip and get price quotes for each leg or find special offers that help guide your planning. Another benefit is that you can buy passes that will work on any one of a number of given days. That means if you decide to stay an extra day or leave early from a city, all you have to do is look up when the next train comes and hop on!

Once you’re inside your chosen city for a few days, you’ll want to get around to all the sights. You can certainly take taxis everywhere, but most of us just don’t have that kind of money, or we would rather spend it on awesome stuff instead of a yellow car that smells like cigarettes. Getting familiar with the city’s subway or bus system is a must. The bonus to this is that you can spot the deals ahead of time and get the most ride time for your money. Our lack of foresight in this aspect of our trip was what ultimately led to our ferry ticket in Venice, as we were trying to make it back to a station large enough to have 5-day passes for sale without having to purchase another one-way pass. C’est la vie! But it is a fate you can now avoid.

4. Food Budget – I am a huge foodie, make no mistake. A big part of traveling for me is trying the weird things they like to eat there and the classic foods for which they’re famous. That being said, I revolved my Italy/France trip around art, not around food. Still, I was able to find a plethora of tasty food options all over every city. For me, the Rick Steve’s guide to Europe was invaluable. It (and other travel guides like it) collects the tastiest and most interesting food options and sorts them by neighborhood and price. With short descriptions of the restaurant’s atmosphere and fare and a little pricing scale, we had no trouble choosing a restaurant just a short walk from wherever we were.

When planning ahead for a budget, it’s extremely helpful to use these guides and the benefit of your home Internet to plan ahead a bit and check out the online menus and price lists of the type of restaurants where you plan on dining. Though there is, of course, no need to commit to a specific restaurant tour just yet, this will help you estimate costs and allow you and your travel partner(s) to consider where to save and where to splurge.

5. Attractions and Shopping Budget – This part is very broad and very dependent on your interests, budgets, and need to bring home cheesy souvenirs for your loved ones. Keep in mind that you will possibly be paying for things like entry fees for museums, covers for bars, tasty bottles of wine, key chains that say “I ♥ NY,” and other things that spark your interest. Consider your buying habits and maybe even make a list of what kinds of things you plan to purchase while on vacation, so you can more easily budget your money for those items and not buy the first 20 euro Eiffel Tower paperweight you come across.

As for attractions, the Internet is the perfect resource for discovering that admission to the British Museum is free but a ride on the London Eye costs 26 pounds. You can also often find similar tourist deals as you did for transit—for example, the Paris Museum Pass gives you free entry, with skip-the-line privileges, to over sixty Paris museums and monuments. That is something I wish I had researched before spending two hours outside the Musee d’Orsay.

In closing, plan your budget, stick to it when you can, and most importantly, have fun!

Photo by Remi Coin

Photo by Remi Coin