NoodleDog

Wow - how things change in a year. When last I wrote, I had just agreed to purchase a small property management brokerage, which sounded like a good idea at the time. It was, upon reflection, NOT!! Dun dun dun!!

I suppose the actual purchase could have been a good thing. However, the person we were purchasing from turned out to be a horrible individual who I hope goes away and never darkens my door again. He is awful to deal with, really. I do not wish him any good things in his life, since he's chosen to make my life so much worse than it could have been!

However, we signed the paper and paid a down payment (which he refused to return), so we're stuck with the deal, and are proceeding. Rob is working with me and has been a life-saver. We've hired an employee. Oh, and did I mention, we also had a baby during that year? Yeah... that's the main reason for the difficulties with the broker we're buying out - he objected to me being pregnant and doing the business deal. Well, I wasn't going to stop being pregnant just to make him more comfortable!

We had a beautiful baby girl named Abigail Miranda, and she is a treasure. She is bubbly and happy and cheerful all the time and is really an easy baby to have. She's four months old now and is only getting prettier and prettier.

The dogs have all taken well to her, as have the cats, and basically, I think we have the makings of a real family here. I will try to post more often to make this thing a bit more coherent, and so I don't forget all the exciting things that happen in our lives!!

J - out...

Well, it's another year, and here I am again, making another leap of faith.

I've entered into an agreement to buy a small Property Management company. It's not that things haven't been going well with my current broker - quite the contrary. Things have gone great, and I'm finally at an income level that is nice again, so of course I have to shake things up.

I was offered the new management company, and it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. It will allow me to progress about five or six years into the future over where I would be if I didn't do anything... by my loose reckoning, anyway. The big thing is that it will allow Rob to join me in the business, so we can both work from home. I think Rob is going to be a fantastic property manager - people love him. And he is so good with them, and seems to have fun... and he's actually interested in how properties work, what the trades and contractors are doing - I think it's going to be so nice to have someone to work with and talk to during the daytime (I have to admit, there have been lots of times in the past year when I have lost focus, not having anyone to work with...).

So Rob's given his notice and has only another week with his home-builder company. Then, he'll be working with me, and we'll be putting our home office together so we'll have a place to work, and he'll be starting to take over some tasks from me, which will be great. Over this next year, I have to get my broker's license. I guess it's a long course, if you take the courses, but if you just do it by correspondence, I can't see it being much of a problem. I can do the educational component to the license now, but will have to wait until next August before my license can be upgraded - according to RECA, you have to have an active associate's license for two full years before you can be a broker. That's kind of a pain, but we're allowing for it in the purchase agreement. The broker who is selling me his company is going to stay on for the next year, transition things to me slowly, and then will be sort of retiring at the end of next summer. Then, it'll be all mine! Yay!!

I sat down and figured out what it's going to cost us - not only in terms of getting a loan and startup costs, but losing Rob's income to the household - and it's scary. I am a little worried I am taking on more than I can handle, but if we don't try, we'll never succeed, so hopefully it all works out. People keep telling me it'll be alright, so I'm just going to have to go with that!

That's the exciting news on the business front. On the other fronts, the wedding last summer was fantastic - the perfect wedding for us. I loved it, and had a great time. I hope all my friends & family did, too. Our honeymoon out East was great, we spent three weeks travelling - we went to my grandmother's farm again, and then came back slowly, saw some sights. The sad news - while we were on our way home, about five days after we left the farm, Granny passed away. It is still crushing news to me, and it doesn't seem real, and I really don't care to think about it much. I went back for her funeral in October, which sucked. Some of my mother's relatives (hey, they're not MY relatives - I can limit the scope of that relationship if I want) are kind of horrible people. It's amazing how a death in the family serves to emphasize how selfish people can be.

Fall went by pretty fast, Christmas went by fast. My sister had a baby in April, named her Natalie Marin. My brother looks like he has a job this year, which is really nice and he'll be back in Indiana instead of Atlanta, so not too far for us to go and visit him next year. The dogs are all good, the cats are all good, my parents seem alright, Rob seems alright, so I guess life is good. Oh - our yard looks fantastic. We have been doing a lot of work in it and it is now a little corner of paradise in the world, a place to relax for us, as if we needed more encouragement!

That's the update. I hope all is well out there in the world of the web.

Hello! I am back. Well, not that I went anywhere, really. I have just been doing so many things lately, that it’s hard to know where to start with everything. There are a few things that people have requested I blog about.

First off, I have quit my job. Yay for me!! Unemployment rules! Well, technically, I was only unemployed for about a week, or not really at all, when you really think about it, because I kind of started my own business here. Yes, no more workin’ for the man. Either that, or I am the man. I could be still workin’ for the man, just that it’s me. Any way you slice it, I’m working out of my home office, and that took some doing, because the home office was stuffed full of junk. It took considerable re-organizing, but it’s now to the point where I can sit in here throughout the day and actually get stuff done. It’s kind of nice. Two of the dogs sleep at my feet throughout the day, and Fearsome sleeps right in the doorway. The other two dogs (the bad ones, of course) like to be out in the living room or on the bed, where I can’t see them get into mischief. Of course, I can still hear them, so periodically, I have to put people on hold and go and take away whatever it is they have that they shouldn’t.

It’s nice to be working from home. I’m starting to relax a bit more than usual, which is a change for me. I’m used to being pretty tensed-up, and I’m not that tensed-up these days. Oh, sure, I still get hungry and tired from time to time, which makes me irritable, which tenses poor Rob up, but for the most part? I have to say I’m adjusting to working from home pretty well. At first it was kind of hard to focus, because the little office wasn’t cleaned out, so I was working in the kitchen. Man, that was distracting. Phone ringing all the time, dogs barking all the time, dishes needing to be done, house needing cleaning, all the little things that you’d do if you were at home, but at the same time, I felt a strange feeling like I wasn’t getting anything done. Being in the office here is different because it forces me to focus on the work part of life. Plus, it’s taken me about a month to teach the dogs not to go insane at every little noise or person who walks by outside. I’d be all on the phone, chatting away about something interesting, and Beau or Millie would see something outside, and man, it’d be on. Barking to beat the band. And did I say that the dogs started howling at sirens? And we live right near a fire station? Yeah – that was cool… every damn time a damn siren went by, the dogs would start to howl. It was like living in a tin drum. But it’s been a month since I’ve been home and they are getting MUCH better. Beau has to go to bed if he barks too much, so he is a lot better, and Millie won’t bark much if she doesn’t have someone to bark with, and the Noodledog and Cooter mostly just sleep in the office with me. So life is good here.

I should also note that the wedding plans are proceeding extremely nicely. I have the caterer all set and the tent rental people all lined up. We are building our fence (don’t get me started – we were supposed to have guys build it for us, but they seem to have bailed right out on that) and the new sod is down in our back yard, so we actually have quite a nice setup going these days. My dress is being altered appropriately, I kind of have some good shoes (old shoes from my closet, but they will do), the nieces are outfitted with good dresses for the day as flower girls, Rob has a new suit – sort of, he hasn’t picked it up yet – and we have a very cool wedding cake on order. On the to-do list still: the liquor arrangements, wedding bands and marriage license. Dog clothing is kind of ordered. Hair appointments are set up. I think we are going to be OK.

We haven’t registered anywhere. Mostly because I can’t think of a thing in the world we need. Truthfully, I mostly can’t think of a thing we could use or need or where to put more things in our house. We must be the luckiest people alive, because we don’t need a single damn thing more. Oh, except a boat. We don’t have a boat. Not that I really want a boat? But it’s the only thing we don’t have. We have everything else. We have our dogs and cats. We have all the vehicles we can use. We have a fantastic house and a great yard and a garage full of tools and cool stuff. We have all the furniture we need (and then some – the house is full of furniture). We have all the kitchen stuff we need. We have a good set of dishes (and we don’t have anywhere to put a fancy set of china) and cutlery. We have lamps and area rugs. We have coffee tables and end tables. We are well and truly set. So yeah, it probably sounds kind of arrogant, but really that’s not the way it’s intended – we are just so lucky that I can’t think of a single thing we need.

This, of course, is causing my mother some anxiety. She doesn’t know what to give us as a wedding gift. She has already given us money, so in my books, we’re square. But she has friends who are asking where we are registered or what they can get us, I guess, because she keeps asking and bringing it up. I would be perfectly happy if people would make donations to animal-related charities on our behalf as a wedding present, but apparently that’s not done as much. I have no idea how this is going to play itself out, but we will see in about a month.

So whereas last month, I was a bit worried about things for the wedding, this month, I feel fine. Funny how it all goes.

I did have kind of a funny story to tell that I was thinking about last night. This all came down about a year ago or so, and I’m not sure if you’ve all heard, but there are two movies with “28 days” in the title. One is “28 Days” and the other is “28 Days Later”. You can see how they could become confused, right? One is a movie with Sandra Bullock in it. I must admit, I’m totally charmed by Sandra Bullock. I think she’s great. She has a certain way about her – she is cool, and funny, and unassuming. She can bring good life to a movie, something even as bad as, oh, say, “Speed”, where in spite of Keanu’s best efforts to pound the life out of it with his woodenness, and terrible fifth-grade writers and Dennis Hopper’s over-the-top insanity of the World’s Worst Villain bent on world domination, it’s kind of watchable because of Sandra Bullock. Like you kind of care what happens to her, the poor working girl who is just so cute… Yeah. I dunno, she is just great. There is a whole litany of films she’s in, my favourite being “Miss Congeniality”, which, every single time it is on, I am compelled to watch.

Anyway, this isn’t all about Sandra Bullock, but you get the idea that I’m kind of a fan. She’s in one of the movies and it’s kind of about her drying out from being a drug addict, I think, and sure, it’s not funny like her usual stuff, but I kind of had always wanted to see it. I knew it wouldn’t be amazing stuff, which is why I didn’t go and see it in the theatre. I was waiting for it to come on TV one day.

The other movie, “28 Days Later”, is a horror film. I’m sure most of you probably already know this, and knew about it from day one, and I’m sure I was kind of vaguely aware it was out there, but I am not a horror film fan. I find them quite disturbing and painful to actually watch. Hey – I scream at Jaws. I watched “Deep Blue Sea” and screamed the whole way through it, and that was just cartoon sharks, OK? Anyway, “28 Days Later” is about fucking zombies. And the reason I know this is that I accidentally watched it when I was trying to watch the one with Sandra Bullock.

I kind of thought it was odd when it was set in England, and it seemed to mostly be about this guy, but at the back of my mind, I kind of thought that might be some sort of opening dream sequence or something, you know, like what a drug addict might have been thinking about, waiting for a new fix or whatever. Then it went on, and the guy was all alone in the world, and his parents were dead and there were fucking zombies all over the place, and he ran into some interesting folks who seemed a bit of alright, and it seemed like they might have a shot at getting out of the city alive…

And no, I’m not totally stupid, after checking the guide a few times, about an hour into the movie, I figured out that Sandra Bullock wasn’t in the stupid thing, but by then, it was too late and I was already watching the fucking zombies. Fucking zombies. Fucking zombies. I can’t say it enough. Fuckers.

Anyway, by the time I was horrified enough to try and get out of watching it, who should show up but David, from “Shallow Grave”, playing an army guy. Sure, he was a total prick, but there he was, and he is a great actor. So I continued watching it, even after the little girl’s father dies from that infected blood falling in his eye, and he hadn't even done anything wrong, and it kind of looked like civilization was going to be obliterated by the fucking zombies and everyone was going to be infected. I watched it right to the end. And it haunts me to this day, about a year later. Fucking zombies. I hate zombies. I mean, there’s no reasoning with them. They are just there to destroy. Kind of like people, I guess, but on a more basic scale, but still? They freak me out a lot. At least with vampires and werewolves and stuff, there’s a bit of animal nobility to them and you think that they might be partially civilized or something… maybe it’s because their legends came out of the Victorian age or fairy tales. I don’t know. They seem a lot better than fucking zombies, anyway. I’d far rather be killed by a vampire or werewolf, or even a shark, than a zombie.

And I never have seen “28 Days” yet. Oh, sure, “28 Days Later” comes on TV periodically, and strangely, I feel compelled to check to make sure Sandra Bullock isn’t there somewhere, and then I get sucked into watching parts of it. But “28 Days” is still out there, waiting for me to happen across it.

So anyway, that’s the story these days. If you know of any properties that need property management in the Calgary area, send them my way.

My sister got married last Saturday. It was a great wedding, really. She was married in a meadow on a mountain in Banff, and then their reception was in a very pretty hotel reception room in the townsite. It was lovely, and it suited her and her new husband very well.

Heh - I referred to Shane as her "new husband"... they have been together for twelve years now, so he's not exactly "new". Neither is she. They're old - ha!

It's not her wedding to which I am referring with hatred. It's mine. We spent some time helping out, or trying to help Laura out, with her wedding. We couldn't do much. I can't understand why people offer to "help" with wedding planning. I mean, really, the person doing the planning pretty much has to make all the decisions and do all the work themselves anyway, unless they are putting that control in the hands of another individual, which neither I nor my sister would ever do.

My wedding planning is finally starting to gather a little bit of steam. And as much as I'm kind of looking forward to it, I am also starting to hate some facets of it. Like people, for instance. I feel that I am kind of starting to hate people. Not on purpose, although that wouldn't be beyond something I could do, but really just as an accidental circumstance of being exposed to them so constantly lately. And the fact that people can be stupid... maybe it's not the people, individually, that I am starting to hate, maybe it's the stupidity. No, it's probably the people.

So I have some friends from way back when. They are nice enough people. I e-mail with them occasionally, and most of the time, I don't have to see them or socialize with them. It's nice. Except one of them calls and asks to get together a lot, and I don't spare up the time. I feel a little bit guilty about that, but at the same time, I feel pretty defensive about my personal time. I don't get that much of it, because I have to work in the evenings during the week a good chunk of the time. And Rob and I really are busy this summer trying to get things prepared for the wedding. So when I do get a free evening, the last thing I want to do is hang out with someone who makes me feel guilty, or uncomfortable, or just plain old unhappy. Yeah, I'm probably a really crappy friend, but I just don't want to hang out with people I don't want to hang out with. If that makes sense...

Anyway, the one spearheading the little group has been asking to get together for a few months now, and I said, about a month ago, that I could make it last night. It seemed pretty far out. Until last night rolled around... First, there was the fact that the dinner reservation was made for 8:30p... I can't eat that late. I'm trying to lose weight, which means I'm trying to eat more regularly and more healthily. I generally have to have dinner by no later than 6p, or I get tired, irritable and then just flat-out miserable with a headache. So I said I would skip dinner and then just pop by for drinks afterwards.

Only when it came to actually going, I hadn't eaten properly that evening, and I was tired and didn't want to go... Oh, we went, alright, but I don't think I had a nice time, and I don't think I was in any way properly nice enough to the friends. I didn't socialize nicely, I didn't take an interest in anything they were saying/doing... I feel bad about it, but there isn't anything I can do about it now. And I think I'm just going to leave it as that - I won't see them again now until our wedding, and then I'll probably be too busy to really say much...

Earlier this week, Rob's brother told his dad that he thinks we don't like them (him and his wife). It was a pointed comment that was supposed to make its way back to Rob, apparently because Rob hasn't talked to him about the wedding yet. Seriously? I don't get that. There really, honestly, isn't anything to say. I swear. We don't have some secret plan going on, although I am quite tempted to makea secret fucking plan and then carry it the hell out, inviting ONLY the people who aren't pissing me off right now, which consists of a small group of folks I'm still talking to... And fuck the rest of everyone. They can find out about it in the news later. So it's not like Rob has been keeping secrets from his brother, there just isn't anything to tell. We kind of have a date selected, and I'm working on the rest. I have a list of chores as long as your arm of things that need to be done before the wedding is "officially planned". Like I need a caterer, tent/equipment rentals, lighting & music selected, clothing for the groomsmen, shoes for me, dresses for my bridesmaids, and other things. Like a cake, flowers, etc.

I don't need any "help". No one can pick my flowers for me, or pick my cake for me, or buy me shoes, or write out my invitations. No one can select the menu and interview caterers. No one can select my hairstyle for that day. If other people did that stuff for me, then it wouldn't be my wedding, would it? No one can rent the tent and equipment because they don't know how many people are coming because we haven't sent out the invitations yet and don't have a number back. No one can really do any thing to help with this, and really, that's perfectly fine by me. I'm quite happy to just plug along and get stuff done. If people really wanted to help, they'd send me some rye so I can stay sane. Take my dogs for a walk. Feed my cats in the morning. Save me a little time here or there so I can get something done, but even then? That's not necessary... I quit my job (yay!) and my last day is next Friday, so I get to stay home and hang out with the dogs and plan the wedding. Sure, I have a new job starting July 1, but it's working for myself and I won't be very busy for the first two months anyway, so really? I'm good.

I don't really even want to talk to many people these days. There are some notable exceptions, like my brother's ex-girlfriend, with whom I was very good friends in University. I have been thinking of her lots lately and she's e-mailing with me again, so it's really nice. But other people? Well... maybe my sister, and maybe my other bridesmaid, Rose... a little bit here or there to talk to, and I usually enjoy talking with my brother... but really, that's about it. I would kind of rather withdraw a little, make some awesome plans and then emerge in a month and reveal everything and have everyone over so they don't have to do anything other than enjoy themselves. Seriously. That, to me, will be a good wedding.

It's also Rob's stag party tonight. I don't really begrudge him his stag party, but at the same time, I really think stag and stagette parties are about the stupidest ideas, ever. They separate people by gender, which is pretty insulting, and are kind of childish. I mean, we're not 20 years old. We're 34. We live together. It's not like all the boys have to get together and snigger about how the groom is going to see girl parts on his wedding night. And the girls don't have to get together and giggle about how the bride is going to be ooohh... married. Yeah - get over it. We're old people here. Plus, I have to say, stag and stagette parties exclude large chunks of friendship membership. If I have a stagette party, my guy friends aren't included, and that sucks. Some of my guy friends are way more fun to hang out with than some of the girls. And I know Rob has friends who are women, and they don't get to wish him well before the wedding.

Also, that brings me to my next point. We're getting married and having a wedding to celebrate our getting married, so why do we have to celebrate celebrating? I don't get it. When did the wedding stop being enough? I mean, yeah, stag parties mean everyone can get together and celebrate the engagement, but isn't, kind of, in a roundabout way, that exactly what the wedding is? It's a party. To celebrate making our lives permanently joined. We now have to have parties (gender-segregated parties) to celebrate the fact that we're having a party? Wow. Idiotic.

And one last final hate-on about stag parties: who is my best friend, anyway? Rob. Why, on earth, under any circumstance, would I want to celebrate anything, especially something having entirely to do with him, without him? I would not. Stags and stagettes are fucked-up. They suck, and are throwbacks to an archaic time when women cooked and stayed home, barefoot and knocked-up, and never asked about how much money the household was bringing in, and the men drove the cars, worked and stayed out with the boys smoking cigars and drinking all night. Yeah - stupid.

The amount of anxiety I'm experiencing about our wedding is rising. Sure, brides get nervous. Or, they're supposed to. I'm basically planning a party for all our closest friends and family and I want it to be nice. That, all by itself, is probably enough pressure to make someone a little edgy. However, the dynamic that comes with doing anything with Rob's friends is prohibitive. I may have said before that I kind of dread doing things with them. It's true. I fear seeing them. They are an intimidating group, and even after three years' exposure to them, I can't see it ever getting any easier to deal with. In fact, in some ways, it just gets worse and worse.

The main thing I do not want to have happen is that our wedding turns into an excuse for his friend group to have a party. That is not what it is. However, that's what I see happening... I don't think they do it on purpose, but the group kind of has a way of taking over everything... Sure, that could just be my perception, but that being the case, it kind of puts a major damper on me having fun at my own wedding. Which, then, begs the question of what the fuck is the point of having a goddamn wedding that is going to cost us tons of time and money if I am just going to dread it, hate it and be miserable on what should be the happiest day of my life, the first day I spend being joined permanently with the man I love more than anything else on the planet?

I can't answer that. Really. It's the question that forces me to keep a speed-dial list of all the suppliers for the wedding so I can quickly cancel the entire shooting match. Seriously - I already have a cancellation fax drafted up so all I have to do is write in names and fax numbers of the trades and suppliers for the wedding and send it out.

At any rate, part of me is really looking forward to celebrating our marriage with my friends and family. That part of me thinks things will really be tons of fun. The other part of me that is wary, unsettled and anxious? Wants to kill the fun-loving part and then cancel everything, hold a very strict family-only ceremony, and then if Rob wants to, he can have a party afterwards with all his people, and I will stay home and hide under a pile of coats, entertaining myself quietly.

Odds on whether one side will emerge victorious: 60-40. I ain't sayin' which side's ahead.

Well, it’s spring here, officially. My cherry bushes have bloomed overnight, and my rose is starting to grow. I have a garden full of strawberry plants that seem not to have noticed that we had a winter, and all sorts of little plantlings are growing. The Tiny Car is back on the road. Whoo!!

I have noticed a strange phenomenon, one that I had kind of seen in previous years, but today it is strikingly apparent. Once it gets nice out, everyone forgets that we had inclement weather last week. I happen to remember it quite well, because it caused all sorts of problems. And I also tend to remember, from year to year, when we had bad, cold weather over the winter. When it gets nice out, everyone starts to say things like “well, our winter was pretty easy this year”, or “I don’t recall any really cold snaps this winter…” These people all have terrible memories. I understand the reasoning behind forgetting bad things, but that’s ridiculous. It wasn’t that nice for us in April. We had an occasional good day, when it was slightly warm. We did not have the typical April weather we usually do, here. But now that it’s nice, everyone is wondering why projects aren’t finished. You can’t put siding up when it’s cold out… which is why it wasn’t up last week!! Sure, the workers could get to it now, but I have a list about as long as my arm of various repair and replacement projects that all need to be done, like, instantly.

Yes, it’s nice out, but let’s all try to be realistic about our expectations, shall we? We have a whole summer ahead of us in which we can waste time working on things.

Anyway, I got a wedding dress last month. It’s very nice. It’s simple, but pretty fancy at the same time. I’m looking forward to losing a few more pounds so it isn’t quite as tight, and won’t cut off the circulation to most of my body when I have to wear it for eight hours or so. Heh.

Rob and I have so many projects to do in order to be able to have our wedding at the house, like we are planning. It seems kind of daunting right now, actually. We have to finish the floor in the basement, remove a bunch of trees and hedge shrubs along the side of the front yard, extend the fence down to the front to increase our usable yard area, Rob has to finish his truck and get the shell truck out of the yard, we have to re-sod the back yard for sure and maybe do a bunch of work in the front… and we only have a certain number of weekends to do it all in. Plus, my sister is getting married in June, and of course there is the camping… every long weekend. Man. It’s a little much, actually. I had been kind of hoping for a relaxing summer. Those socks full of oranges are starting to look pretty good, again.

Work is, of course, more work. The other condo manager here has quit and gone to another company. That same company had been trying to get me to go over there, and I just finally decided this weekend that I would really NOT go. I’m going to pursue my business deal with the independent broker. I think it’s probably the best time for me to try it, and if it doesn’t work out, I can always get another job in the industry… it’s not like they’re going to stop building condominiums in Calgary anytime soon, after all. I swear, more pop up every single day here. With the lack of available affordable housing, the government should be supporting the home-building industry, rather than wasting time talking about rent controls, which are a ridiculous idea. Before our little boom here in the past couple of years, rents hadn’t increased in, well, I have no idea how long. A long time, anyway. And that year before the boom, when we had a 10-20% vacancy rate, rents had gone down. No one complains about that, do they? “Oh, no, the rents are going down!! We should have rent controls in place so they don’t drop.” Idiots. Poor landlords – I mean, it’s not cheap trying to run a building. All you get when you put rent controls in place is deferred maintenance, slums, and shitty places to live, which bring everyone else’s property values down.

No, the government should be trying to build their own affordable housing, and should be relaxing approvals on projects that would provide affordable housing, such as mobile home parks. We have a mobile home park quite close to where we live (right across Blackfoot – a big busy road, so it’s kind of far away, but really not), and the owner of the park just informed all the residents about a month ago that the property was being sold. Now, all these people (about 60 families, I think, if not more) have to pull up stakes and find somewhere else to live. Except there are only two other mobile home parks in Calgary, from what I can tell, and they’re all full-up. One of the ones I know of is in jeopardy, as well, of losing their land lease. It is very sad to see these hard-working, mostly older people pulling the porches they built themselves off their mobile homes, scrapping everything they did to make their little yards look nice, and then ripping skirting off so the units can be relocated. And they don’t quite know where to, either. If the government (oh, and the friggin’ whiny liberal factions pushing the authorities in that direction) really cared about affordable housing, they would try a little harder to provide some incentives for land owners to create mobile home parks, they’d relax approvals on re-zoning, they’d make services easier to run. But no, because that might cause some discomfort for other people having a mobile home park move in closer.

No one provides for bread price caps, or leisure activity gear price caps, or vehicle price caps. I see that the cost of public transportation, slow though it may be, has increased over the years (and it’s still not where it needs to be to fund the system, of course). I see that the cost of gas keeps going up, and the cost of utilities goes up. I don’t see any other industry where the people who work hard for providing the service are prevented from turning a profit – again, when rent controls are put in place, it causes landlords to shy away from investing in the industry. Fewer large-scale landlords buy rental places – why risk it? You can build new and sell. And we see many more independent, private landlords – those who can afford to buy an extra house or condominium do, and rent them out. There’s less control over these independent landlords, and you can’t force housing standards to be maintained as strictly.

The government and social charity organizations should supplement the individuals requiring affordable housing, if they actually care about the people. I think mostly they are jealous they didn’t have rental properties themselves, when the vacancy rate hits less than 1%, though, and want to even the playing field, as it were. Why should a landlord be supplementing his tenants? Is his work and investment any less valuable? No. And will the social organizations and the government supplement the landlords when the vacancy rate goes up, and they “lose” money on their properties? No. But then again, the taxpayers don’t really want to support and supplement the poorer sectors of our society, either. Not for zero return… There has to be a better way.

IF humanitarian needs were actually a concern, the Provincial or municipal governments might legislate that each rental building larger than 20 units would have to dedicate a certain percentage of their units to an “affordable housing pool”, which the authority could rent at market value. Units from this pool could then be rented to needy families by the government. It would suck for everyone a little bit, but it wouldn’t victimize anyone exclusively. Landlords with large buildings could trade affordable housing credits from property to property, or with smaller, more independent landlords. Having a guaranteed renter, too, would be a bonus to them. There might be some drawback in that neighbors don’t like to share with poorer individuals, but they’d have to suck it up. The government would have to come up with the funds to rent the housing, but the new residents who would be able to live and work in the province and city would be paying taxes and contributing to industry. Yes, it’s a little left, it’s a little right, but everyone is inconvenienced equally and benefits equally. I can’t believe no one is talking about this sort of an arrangement, but is rather wasting time on “rent control”. Yeesh.

That’s my rant for the day. I have work to do, in the Property Management industry. I should note, however, that I have no interest in rental properties whatsoever. I manage condominiums, those properties where folks with disposable income buy units, because they are easy to maintain, and rent them out to idiots who apparently can’t read and don’t care about living within the rules. The only benefit to having condo units rented out is that I can evict bad tenants out of them, and it’s much harder to evict bad owners than bad tenants. The tenants in the condos I manage tend to be a little better than the owners, because they learn quickly that if they break the by-laws, they’ll be sent packing, and good luck finding places to rent in a less-than-one-percent vacancy rate market.

Yo. Peace out.

Another month – much has happened lately! We managed to get the trailer out of our yard, finally. We had to move both our summer cars from the yard to do it, but we got it out for an overnight trip a couple of weeks before the Easter long weekend here. Then, last weekend (for the Easter long weekend), we hauled down to our camping spot in the Forestry District by the Old Man River (near Coleman, Alberta). When we got down there, it was snowy and cool, but by the time we left on Sunday, it turned extremely nice, the snow all melted and I was able to sit out in the meadow in a camp chair, relaxing the heck out of things.

The trailer works really well, I’d have to say. It was very nice and warm inside the entire time, and we seem to be back on track for the camping season this year. We ran the dogs, who were totally exhausted by Saturday night. On Sunday, when Rob was puttering around on his quad, they could barely even chase after him, and barking was at a minimum.

Millie’s stitched area on her back has healed nicely. Of course, the patch of hair the vet shaved to sew her back up is growing in kind of beige, and it’s in the middle of her black saddle, so she looks pretty funny. She is also still dumb, apparently, and ran her back into the stairs on the trailer again, gouging another gash. This latest one isn’t quite as large as the last one. I would have had it stitched, but I was at a meeting when it happened, so we have left it to scab over on its own. She can’t reach it to worry it, but Beau does that for her and has picked it clean a few times now, delaying the healing process. I’m tempted to put her back in her jacket to cover it, but it’s right at the bottom of her jacket coverage, so I’m not even sure it would work, and she gets soooo itchy in that jacket!! She is funny when she’s itchy, and rubs up like a bear against everything she can find.

My sister is getting married in June this year. She’s planning to have the wedding in Banff. It’s all great, except she used this wedding coordinator, Rocky Mountain Weddings, and apparently, they’re not so hot. Her wedding has a number of out-of-town people coming, and the coordinator hasn’t put a hold on any rooms for the event, so of course the hotel where the reception is booked doesn’t have any extra rooms for Laura to hold. We’d totally secure them up front, too, as long as the guests can then make the payment arrangements themselves when they confirm bookings/reservations. Plus, two of her bridesmaids (I am the third) have cancelled (one will be too pregnant to fly out here from Onterrible, and the other seems like she’s kind of just chintzy, because she said it would be “too expensive” to come), and she needs replacements.

For my wedding, I have secured a wedding dress – a very nice one. We have started booking stuff for it, and I think we’re settled on August 25th, which is the Saturday before the Labour Day long weekend. There are many, many silly details that must be pre-arranged when planning a wedding. Personally, I don’t know if I have the patience for it. We’re going casual with ours, and plan to have it in the green space behind our house. Like a house-party on a larger scale, so friends and family can come and celebrate and have a nice time, without getting too stressed about it. Less travel for us, too, and we can keep the dogs involved in the ceremony, and stash them in the house or yard for the reception. I am actually starting to look forward to it now, which is better than before, when my attitude was more “I think I’d rather be beaten with socks full of oranges than have a wedding.”

So life is good. All except for work. My job has become fairly intolerable, and I am making exit plans. My current strategy is to just leave here and go work for myself, under a broker I know who seems amenable to the idea. It won’t be for a few more months, though, and I’ll be pretty poor when I start up, but I get money back from taxes this time around (ha!), and no time like the present to get started. Hopefully, it will all come together and this time next year, I’ll be managing my own portfolio of good properties and enjoying not having to wrangle with poor accounting and silly bosses from a silly province on the Coast. The West Coast. Populated by hippies and old people.

That’s all for now – stay well folks!

And it seems I've missed another two months here. Yikes. I can't stay ahead of this thing we call time.

Well, let's see. Our trailer is stuck firmly in the yard. We tried to take it out for Family Day long weekend, and sure enough, we got stuck in the alley. First off, the brake stop pulled loose, instantly applying the trailer brakes when we were trying to tow it out, bringing everything to a dead halt. Once we rectified that, it seems that the alley was pretty slippery, and the Suburban managed to jackknife at such an angle making extraction of the trailer impossible. Mission time: 30 minutes.

We then hooked the trailer up to the poor Jeep, thinking that since it was a shorter vehicle, we'd get the clearance we needed to get it past the fence, but no go. The Jeep's hitch is lower-down, and all we accomplished was to drag the entire hitch assembly into the alley's mud and ice. Mission time: 1 hour.

We then decided to take a different approach. We took down the fence to the green space behind the house, and fit the Jeep in to angle the trailer back, only to discover that the Jeep isn't quite strong enough to move the payload of nearly 10,000 lbs. So? We decided to hook the Suburban up to it through the green space fence.

Only, see... the Suburban is wider than the Jeep in addition to being longer. And that meant it didn't really fit between the fenceposts to the green space. So one of them had to come down, and Rob got out the new chainsaw he got for Christmas, and it was down in a jif!! Whoo!! However, all we could manage, still, was to get the trailer back into the yard. Mission time: 2 hours.

We tried a second time to get the trailer out of the yard using all the clearance we could between the yard and the now-down green space fence. Again, the Suburban jackknifed and we just couldn't get the traction or the clearance we needed. Mission time: 3 hours.

We gave up, but then had to reinstall the green space fence, which we did using a couple of pieces of rebar, making the fence-post into a breakaway post in case we need to do this again for fun or profit in the future. Mission time: 3 hours, 45 minutes.

After all of that, we decided not to go. It turned out to be a good decision, because just last weekend, we went out to the area where we would have camped and promptly got the Suburban stuck in the snow. I suspect something similar would have happened with the trailer, only it would have been a lot harder to dig out with all that weight. After getting stuck last weekend, it was a quick trip by ski to the shed at the camping area nearby to get a shovel and a rake to dig out our vehicle, so we had quite an enjoyable afternoon, after the work of trying to get the car out of the damn snow.

Everyone is well at home - the cats and the dogs are all fine. Millie isn't quite as smart as we thought, it seems, since in February, she managed to gouge a deep gash in her back running underneath the trailer. Honestly, she was outside for about five minutes after I came home one afternoon, and when she came back inside, she had a huge cut in her back. I had her in to the vet not ten minutes later to get stitched up, and four stitches, $90 and fifteen minutes after that, we were home again. She is pure mischief. She had to wear her jacket for a week to keep her from picking at the stitches. It was pretty funny when she was running around rubbing up against everything in an attempt to scratch away the itchiness...

Work is still pretty grim. I'm trying to finish my license so I can open the world of options. I've been seriously considering going on my own, here, since all the property management companies I know of are pretty crappy. Hopefully, I can pull it all together and get something going over the next few months.

Wedding plans are still stalled - no time for planning. Hey, I can't even update my blog more than once every couple of months, so let's not go overboard trying to plan a full-scale event!!

That's all for now...