Thursday 3/31/2011

Thursday

I received something in the mail yesterday from Sierra Vista, where my dad lives. I opened it up and found a newspaper clipping with a picture of my dad in it. I about died: I thought it was an obituary! What did I miss?!! I started reading it and it quickly became evident that it was a write-up about him, what he has done in that community and the fact that he is moving out of that community to go live in an assisted living center in Tucson - a pretty good drive away from there. 

It was a great article and a fitting farewell to a man that has poured out his life in terms of ministry to all kinds of people, from the homeless to the rich and wealthy and everything in between. It was cool to read this article, it was pretty long and it covered a lot of ground. I finally got an email back from him this morning: he is in the middle of moving and it is pretty much consuming him and his time. 

My buddy Fin wrote an interesting comment to my last blog entry and it got me to thinking about this situation: whether to keep the house or short-sale it (or any of the other options available). What hit me is that I should get a big piece of paper, 11X15 anyway, write down pro's to moving on one side and con's on the other and start jotting it all down. In my mind, there is SO much to sort through in making such a decision. Writing it down in such fashion might help me to get a clearer picture of all of it. 

Taxes. Moving right along with that portion of it. I have house fire totals listed with my version of that fair market value is of each item, the contents of the house that is. I am going to print out pics of the burned out structure, proof that yes, my house burned down along with the fire report. It's more than just that, though, the pics will verify that the house was a total loss. Not just a small fire, it was a BAD fire that caused the destruction by one of 3 methods: the fire itself; the intense heat that spread throughout the house and the extreme smoke damage that finished everything off. 

I was thinking yesterday, though, what it would be like to still be in that house. Old, yes. Cheap - operative word. The mortgage payment was only $450 per month. No need for tenants and all that kind of aggravation. By now, I would have had the interior finished with a complete renovation, I had it about half done at the point of the fire. 

Not crying over spilt milk, I was musing things. Now I have tenants to make up the difference. I do think that to make the quality of my life a bit better, I need to focuse on keeping good tenants and getting rid of the bad. To that end, the kid needs to go. I believe he needs to have one of those rude awakenings in life: go live with kids his own age and find out how they deal with his junk. In his mind, I'm sure he has already HAD a rude awakening - such as when he was yelling at me on the phone and I spit it back right into his face. But there's the rest of it, not worth going into here, just to say that it's more than I want to deal with. 

Which reminds me, that old computer's monitor is kaput. Need to find a good used one somewhere. Lynnette uses it to try and find a job, plus doing surveys that actually do pay money to do them. I don't use it anymore, at all. It's an old behometh to me, but to everyone else that uses it, well, it's better than nothing.

Musing for today: over, work day is here.

G'day.

ben