Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Trailer Tenants

I'll just lay it on the line, up front, all out:  If I could keep these people here forever, I would.

If I could pay them a salary for the work that is done around here, I would.

If I could not charge them anything, at the very least, I would do that, too.

Call me selfish, call me whatever you want, but these people are jewels in human form. 

Excellent cooks.  Clean.  Moved from doing things outside to doing things inside - well both is what I'm saying.

If I could get a nice travel trailer for them, yup, I would do it.

If I could put them in one of the rooms without feeling the punch of the loss of income, yup, I would do that, too.

I can only say that what they are living in is far better than a tin shed in the back of someone's house with a bunch of pot smokers inside. 

Onto other things.  I was back at Fry's Electronics again today.  I'm nudging myself to make the "investment".  Investment - in a computer?  Well, yes, I would call it an investment.  Not that I could get the money back out of the thing I want to build that I am going to dump into it, no. 

But making money off of it isn't even in the equation.  Nope.  It's mostly enterainment.  News, Cafe World, Ebay, Craigslist, my blogs, all kinds of stuff.  The investment is in my entertainment.  I rarely go to movies, I rarely - do much of anything anymore.  Not that I don't want to, but, I'm watching the pennies. 

My bonus money went to more fixes on the old Buick and trying to get caught up on bills.  The insurance payoff?  That's what I'm using here plus some on top of that. 

They had the 1 Terabyte harddrive in stock that they didn't have they other day.  I got that while it was on sale.  The minimum you get nowadays for a new computer setup - at least IMO - is a 1 TB.  I bought nothing else.  I was very tempted, but, I keep putting on the stops.  I can't say for sure why, just this thing - been there done that.  In, spending money on something and then some "thing" comes up and you are left scrambling.  But, I imagine that by this weekend, I will dive into it, buy all the components and get this done.  I do reserve the right to not buy a new monitor.  People are selling those things on Craigslist all the time for cheap. 

I was questioning yet another salesman - what is this slot for, what is the purpose of that.  I didn't understand the 2 slots for PCI Express, so I kept asking until I got it.  While that was happening, ANOTHER older gentleman, just like the other day at Fry's, stepped in.  In fact, he cut us off to ask a question because he was intrigued by our conversation.  I can't say why I didn't find his intrusion offensive, so I can't explain it, but I just stood silent and listened to another conversation unfold.  I have a lot to learn about computers, that's all I can say about it.

I got the paperwork to get my new harddrive and headed to the line.  That gentleman was, by chance, in front of me.  He profusely apologized for interrupting our conversation but he had found it so intriguing that he was compelled to get in on it.  I told him he was a jerkoff, shove it up his @$$ - that's what most of the world around me does.  I did no such thing, actually.  Instead, it was no problem, have a great day.

So, how does my spending money on a new computer and these trailer tenants equate to what I started this entry with?  I can't tell you that I'm going to end my life and keep a hold on doing ANYTHING in order to help other people out.  I have given consideration to giving them next month's rent free.  After the extreme amount of water money shelled out a few days ago and the fact that electric usage is WAY down now, I can probably afford it.  But I am not telling them that.  I won't make that decision until we're there.

I would love to build a garage with loft on top of it.  If it were built the way I wanted it, I would move out of this house, they could have my master bedroom and I would move up there.  I have seen layouts - a totally open design - that are awesome.  It's sort of a giant kitchenette - but MUCH nicer.  One can always dream : )

I was also thinking that, if I found a way to afford it, to take their monthly payment and dump it into a savings account.  For a couple thousand bucks, I could buy a much nicer travel trailer than that thing out there. 

They told me the other day that my ponds are my "pondering" place.  Lol, isn't that true?  I ponder these things and much more while watching all of these fish go crazy when I throw the Koi pellets in.  Well, that and that flakes - the smaller fish have to have ground up flakes or they ain't eating, at least not the pellets. 

Hmmm, I have lots of pondering to do.  A great lack in my life rears it's ugly head here and there. 

Ain't going into that here.

G'nite.

ben
Tuesday


Tenant issues. Always. Lol. I had to leave a notice for the newest member of the household to not make so much freaking noise in the morning. This at the request of the Army reservist. The guy gets on a conference call with a company he is working for and talks VERY loudly and has that speaker turned up JUST as loudly.

That is done. Whatever the results are, I have no clue. All I know is that it tends to get complicated when there are 3 renters living in the house. I could probably live off of two, but the third gets me caught up plus helps to get to fixing things, replacing things, whatever needs to be done around the house.

Onto the Koi. I bought I think it was 10 small ones from a seller a while back. They all died in short order - they had been subjected to high heat in transit from NC to here. I had lost his email address but then found another one of his ads. I wrote him about the dead fish - no great loss at only $20 but I wanted to see if the dude would make good on bad fish.

Nothing at all the response I received from him. Bug off. Get a life. Go F yourself. This was from a simple statement about the dead fish. I didn't even ask him to do anything about it, ie: replace them, I just told him they had all died. This guy has a freakin' COW. I mean, talk about person who needs to get a life.........I wrote him back and told him if he's going to be that pathetic about this situation that I was going to start flagging his ads. The cows turned into whales - didn't know humans could put out anything that big, but this guy did. Told me he would SUE me if I flagged his ads!! ROFL!!!

Well, I will take it further than that. His business ethics being questionable at best (if it were me selling the fish, I would have simply offered replacements), I wrote up an "re:" ad telling everyone my misadventure with this individual. I also told the guy that I doubted he had a business license or was paying taxes on the proceeds from the fish.

I haven't heard back from that one, though, I am not holding my breath, I don't really care WHAT kind of threats this guy comes up with. Sometimes, this is what you have to deal with on CL. Not for the feint of heart, I'll tell you that right now. The fish are a loss, they were $20, not like I lost hundreds, but still, I did want to see if he would offer anything.

I am trying to get the bravery up to go into Fry's electronics and buy everything I need to put together that computer system. The problem is this: I go, spend the money and then some emergency comes up and I don't have the money to deal with it. Been around the block a few times now, it seems things like to happen that way. I was also considering taking this money and paying off the 401k loan and then getting another. Why? Then I would have a couple of thousand for backup emergency funds instead of - almost nothing.

Let's say the AC went out again right now and I had to replace another $800 compressor. I could come up with the money, but it would put bills and such into "jeopardy".

I dunno. Making these decisions sometimes is very difficult. To pay off the 401k loan, I would have to wait 30 days to get another one.

Well, whatever. I'm sorta sitting on this deal until I get some peace about it one way or the other.

Work day approaches, albeit there is nothing in the truck routing system to do......

G'day.

ben

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