Polenta. Why?

Yesterday I bought some polenta at the grocery store. I've only ever eaten polenta maybe twice before, both times at Italian restaurants. "Huh, let me try this at home,"I figured, on a whim. "It'll give dinner an Italian flair."

Then I read the label as I was prepping to cook dinner. The ingredients? Water. Cornmeal. A few preservatives. That's it. So much for flair. "Polenta" is basically Italian for grits. ...Actually, no, grits have more character.

Hawk and I ate the polenta I prepared. Gently fried up in butter with a bit of garlic and mild pepper it was... filler. We enjoyed store-bought challah bread better.

$1,000 Gift. Woot!

"What's your address?" a coworker of mine asked a week ago. "I'd like to send you a thank-you gift."

The coworker is one of the account executives I'm teamed with. He crushed his quota last quarter; I helped him with that as his solutions architect. I've never gotten a personal gift from a sales colleague before though I've heard of other colleagues getting one occasionally.

The gift arrived in the mail today. It's a pair of Visa gift cards. "$20-$500" read the cardboard sleeve on each. I've gotten a handful of these from management in that past as small "Attaboy!" rewards; $25, $50, or $100 each. At first I thought this might be similar. But a small receipt tucked in the envelope that looked like it could have fallen in by mistake said 500.00 twice. Could it be?

I registered the cards online. Sure enough it was— $500 each, times two. $1,000! 😳

Feeling Giddy

This gift has me feeling strangely giddy. Being in Sales I'm no stranger to getting bonuses in my paycheck. Indeed, I've gotten bonuses of $1,000 or higher numerous times. Only one that I recall has made me feel this special. The difference is that this one is personal. It's not my company paying a bonus as part of a sales compensation program approved by the CEO and the board. My colleague gave me this significant gift from his own money.

As part of my joy in receiving this gift I'm already thinking about how to spend it in a way that will be suitably special. Unlike those company payroll bonuses I mentioned, this one's not just a check that gets direct-deposited to my bank account where it commingles with everything else, becoming un-special and likely just going into long-term savings where I won't appreciate it for a few decades more, by which point I'll have entirely forgotten the reward or what I did to earn it. Besides, the way I'm working my long term savings, a thousand here and a thousand there are drops in the bucket.

How to Spend It?

Ordinarily when I get gift cards I think, "Ugh, what a pain in the butt to spend this." The cards are actually inconvenient to spend; I'd rather have cash. But the fact that these are gift cards and not cash, and thus not fungible like cash— and fungible is what makes cash forgettable— makes them feel more special. I have to actually plan how to use them.

With smaller gift cards in the past I've taken the easy approach to spending them. I used them on small, ordinary expenses in lieu of paying with my credit card. While that solves for the problem of "How to use the darn things" it negates the specialness of the gift. It's the fungibility thing again. I could totally spoil this $1,000 gift by swiping the cards on my next several trips to Safeway and Costco buying groceries.

I don't want to make this gift un-special, though. I'm brainstorming ways to spend 2x$500 that will be memorably enjoyable. I could buy something nice for myself.... Maybe replace my laptop that's getting long in the tooth? Replace my aging phone ahead of time? Buy another brick of a lens for my camera?

The thing is, I'm not pining for any of these right now. While any of them would be nice I feel like they're just not nice enough. I'll have to think about it more.