Just before I was born, my parents bought a house on St. Marys St. When I was six, we moved into the house next door and my aunt/uncle bought our old house. So for the longest time, St. Marys St. was home. Then my parents sold the house and moved to New Mexico. I love it there, but NM is not my home.

When I say home, I guess I mean where ever Joe and I are living at the moment. I'd love to say home is where ever he is, but he's too often not there for it to be the case. Instead, I think home is where, Joe, Ellie, and the dogs are. Together, they all make it home.

eta: Just wanted to add, that I, also, say "I'm from MN, but I live in (where ever)." I think I'll always be a Minnesotan. I do wonder how moving around will affect Ellie. Will she have a strong identity with one place or another?

eta2: I have this thing on my wall that says "Home is where the Army sends you" and then it lists below all the palces we've lived together. I'm a bit behind as it only goes up to Colorado.

Like Nora, my home is wherever Jason and I are. I call the city we moved to when I was 10 and my mom still lives in my "hometown" (Shout out to Reston, VA, Yo) but I don't consider it my home.

Assuming no bad tax news, save half of the net, spend half is sensible and adult right?

Assuming it's not a colossal amount, yeah.

Aw, my wife made me tear up a little. She's my home, too.

I went a long time having nowhere that felt like home. Too much moving around. Too much change in the places left behind.

Assuming no bad tax news, save half of the net, spend half is sensible and adult right?

Hmm, maybe I'll adopt that. I already have a list of things to acquire before I do too much pissing away.

My identity as a New Mexican is really strong, which is funny since I haven't lived there in 13 years, and probably won't again.

This is how I feel about Alaska. For a while, Z was home, but, well. SF is the first place I can see claiming as mine.

ION: I am still reading "Things My Girlfriend and I Argue About." It is strange and troubling, and I can only read one or 2 perilously fraught items before my eyes hurt from the dark background/light text. But yet, I cannot stay away for long.

Those people are both total lunatics. But, I love them. Or love laughing at them. Something.

Assuming it's not a colossal amount, yeah.

How big is colossal? I ask for next year, of course.

But no, if I thought it was going to make a serious dent in the chances of me owning a home, I'd shift the percentages some.

Colossal is in the eye of the beholder, clearly. I meant in the serious-dent sense. Like if I got $50K or something, blowing half of that seems slightly nutso.

Question for lawyers on the board - my employer is doing something I suspect is not exactly legal, although I'm not sure if it's in the gray area or wildly against various and sundry laws.

Several years ago they revised the employee manual, gave everyone on staff a copy, and required that you sign a form saying that you had read the manual and agreed to abide by the policies in it. There's been major turnover since then - I may be one of three to five people who were here at the time. A week or so ago, in a staff meeting where we were discussing leave policies, it came up that our CFO - who, with a minion, is responsible for HR-type issues (we're too small to have an actual department - has been revising policies, revising Word files on our network, and saving them there. There have been no announcements and no distribution of new/revised policies. One that hits me especially is that he announced any staff who leave will only be paid for five days of accumulated leave time - anything over that will be lost.

After hearing this, I went on the network and dug out the files. I didn't find anything about the restriction on how much leave time will be paid for on leaving. But I did find one where they said that the standard lunch break is 30 minutes ... and everyone takes an hour (some more).

So ... any opinions out there?