Saturday, December 11, 2021

 Spent a good part of yesterday traipsing around the property putting pink ribbons on trees I want to save.  I have a lot left to go, but I did the entire 1,351 feet of driveway, down around the back side and coming back towards the street on the other side. I got tired of getting pricked by thorns and left after I had been there quite awhile and decided I had accomplished enough for one days' worth of pain and blood.  

Okay, the pain isn't that bad lol, it goes away after a while but it is recurring, no matter how hard you try to get around those thorns, they are everywhere and there is no avoiding them completely.  I'm going to get assurances that the dozer they bring will include blading the entire property around the trees and getting that s*** up off the ground, those thorn vines just grow directly out of the ground and up trees, shrubs, bushes or just - grow up. 

That stuff has got to go and I want a guarantee on that. It's 12 grand, I want my money's worth out of it. 

With all of that junk in there, that property is absolutely useless.  

The cash out loan plods on.  More info they want and the appraisal was rejected by the company doing the appraisal, they wanted near $700 after being offered $550.  That's crazy. My land cost $350, I think, nothing even close to that?  It'll be more work, tho, the house, in trying to find comps.  Whatever the case, the lender is going to try to find another company to do it.  

I don't want to spend $700 on a loan I might not even get....

Did I say I despise going through this process? having had been through it already not that long ago? Oh, yes I have probably said that a dozen times on this blog lmao.

I'm still trying to get corporate to send me the W2 from 2019.  I'm going to go through everything yet again, I know I didn't throw it away, I just can't find it anywhere. I have no clue what I did with all of that. Probably hid away in a safe place .... so safe I can't even find or remember where I put it!

It might actually be out in my SUV, a place I haven't checked yet and a thought that popped into my mind.  I was using all of that stuff for the last loan, but I thought I was using it in here, in the house, I had no use for out there.

Another thought that crossed my mind is that I will very likely have to travel to Phoenix to sign off on everything if this loan goes through.  I know they are requiring masks on airplanes, I don't think they have started requiring vax for domestic flights yet..I hope not because I will reluctantly make the journey over there to close if I must. Excepting this time, I'm leaving from the airport in Longview, I'm not driving clear to Dallas or Fort Worth unless the savings are that substantial. 

But there is free parking at the local muni airport and it's 35 miles away versus 157 to Love field and paying exorbitant prices for daily parking.  The money spent may be the money - and aggravation of dealing with that entire area - saved.  For that much money I will definitely fly to Arizona, but it will be a fly in and fly out, try to do it all in the same day type of thing. No visiting anyone.  

I've been sick a lot this year and I am not taking the chance of giving my mother some kind of illness that potentially could be signing her death sentence. No thanks.  Covid has changed everything, literally, in the way we see and think about things such as travel. Tho, we don't observe any notions of in house masks and no one here is getting vaccinated and we will have over whoever wants to come over.  We only give out warnings if someone is sick.  Then the person or people visiting have the option to make up their own mind about whether they want to come or not. At the moment, everyone is healthy and we'd all like to stay that way for a while.....

And so it is, it rained last night so the property is probably muddy.  A funny thing tho, after I bladed portions of the intended RV park, grass started growing. I mean, all over the freshly bladed areas. there was no grass there before and I certainly didn't plant any seeds. It's like seeds fell from the heavens to make the earth green!  Yes, I know bird droppings can do that, but that much in such a short period of time?  I dunno, maybe.

Regardless of the mud and the fact that it's chilled right on down since yesterday - it was in the high 70's and today it's looking to be a high of 50 degrees - I'm going over there for at least a few hours and continue on with this nonsense.  Yes, getting cuts all over my arm and neck and junk going down the back of my shirt is nonsense, IMO, necessary nonsense, yes, but nonsense never-the-less.

What am I waiting for? Uhh, just a dose of motivation, lol. I'm only doing a couple of hours worth and it's only 9:39 am, so yeah, I have plenty of time.  I will pick it back up after this Brownsville trip - we are getting at least a day off atm after every trip.  I don't really want a day off after every single trip, but everything slows down this time of year and we have lost a lot of business to other tanker companies entering into the division to haul what we once had a monopoly on. Blame the company that took over our company for that, they didn't heed existing management's warnings, didn't get enough equipment - namely new trailers - to cover everything and walaah. 3 different companies came in and took a chunk of our work away from us.  I've still made quite a bit of money this year, I can't really complain too much. 

So losing this job over a camera? Well, sorry Charlie, that thing is going to be covered with tape on every single trip until they attempt to call me out on it and then, it will likely result in parting ways.  It's amazing how many people just accept it as "normal" and just give up their personal privacy in the name of - what exactly? Safety?  How does a camera facing inward increase safety? How does a microphone listening in on your conversations increase safety? Just too creepy for me, I can't deal with that s***,.

Get the park up and running, that's what i need to do. Get something going and get headed towards the ultimate goal of not having to work for anyone. But with the park running even at a small capacity, I can find a local job and supplement my income with a 5 day per week, weekends off job that has me home every night. I won't need to make the money I'm making now to be able to afford to live my current, lavish lifestyle.

Lmao.  I don't lead a lavish lifestyle, lolol. I have a 10 year old vehicle, I live in a rented room. I have some debt but nothing too great and - if I get this loan - I'm paying all of that off.  Reduce my expenditures to next-to-nothing and then I can lose the job altogether and not even replace it with another one and probably still be able to live solely off of RV park revenues. 

I've done the math. At 80% occupancy per month, deducting 30% in expenses, I will have $7,056 left over to pay myself with - and save for further expansion.  I could easily live off of that.  Especially after paying off debt. And after a year I can apply for a business loan, showing my net income and not have to project anything at all, it will all be based on immediate history.  More than double the size of the park and walaah.  A very decent income even after taxes.  Give my friends full time jobs if they want them - and yes they have good work ethic - and make it a family style venture that hopefully will continue to expand in scope and size for years to come.

And, I still haven't ruled out buying much smaller properties, loading them up with mobile homes and renting them out.  I'm hoping and praying this cashout will go through, this will finance everything else I need - excepting more lots, it won't do that - and I will have the structure set up for a very nice park with all the amenities that people will hopefully rave about in reviews and direct traffic my way.  That coupled with the website designer helping me get the word out - he's very knowledgeable and very reasonable rates - it shouldn't be too terribly hopeful in assessing a successful business even charging the same rates everyone else is doing in this region but giving much more amenities.  

Well, after a morning full of kids crying and temper tantrums, meltdowns I am off to a much more peaceful and serene environment.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some thoughts on your facebook post. I will NOT allow that website on my computer and use an old fire tablet with NOTHING else on it to look at fb once a day usually.

I tried to post about the camera thing and it took what i painfully wrote one letter at a time and turned it into nonsense. DONE with that!

Kind of glad to see hints that my suggestion re borrowing against Phoenix property may be working and working well. Makes me glad I suggested it.

You may be lucky to have other income to fall back on, because I have a feeling the full weight of the fed govt is going to come down on you for blocking the camera, regardless of your reasons. to be continued

Anonymous said...

Part 2

I have seen, and you may have as well, videos of commercial truck drivers changing drivers at 70 mph as a joke. You may sense I often cringe when you post photos or worse videos that you shoot out the windshield when you are barreling down a crowded highway in front of tons of toxic material going over one hundred feet per second.

I had a major fight with someone I care deeply about who wanted to listen to a book while driving in six lanes of traffic approaching NYC at dusk. There are states where that is flat out illegal, but none in which it is not a distraction. And distracted driving probably causes as many accidents as drunks.
-more-

Anonymous said...

So, while it looks like you may well see abortion outlawed, I seriously doubt you will find much support for NOT Keeping a sharp eye on the largest vehicles sharing roadways. The reaction of an employer might well be that you have something dangerous you want to hide. That would not be an unrealistic attitude, really.

Like many things, those idiots who do stupid and dangerous things which kill and mail people cause the rest to have to 'suffer' for their assholeness. Thats life.

As for refusing to get shot, again I don't know how that wave is going to break. The one at most danger is yourself, as MOST of the people actually dying in hospitals are unvaccinated. I can't see much difference in the spreading of contagion actually.

BenB said...

Per the Phoenix property, I had already tried doing a HELOC loan, none of them were interested in it. Cash out - refi I learned about quite by accident. We still don't have an appraiser yet, but they best get it done soon because that locked in rate is only good until the 23rd, I think, of this month.

I'm not sure which video I made with a crowded roadway, I don't take videos often while driving and if I do, I usually try to do it on open highway with no traffic. I also don't look at the phone while videoing, it's in my hand and I hope it's pointed the right direction. I do take pics of accidents frequently, but that is either going less than 5mph or stopped, well I do take pics of sunsets. Again, this isn't something I do all day long or of any frequency.

I find forward facing cameras acceptable, there's been on in my truck since I started driving there in the various trucks I've been in. I find an inward facing camera - replete with a microphone - both offensive and creepy. I've been driving for 36 years. No major accidents in a truck and the only at fault minor accident I had that was my fault was running over a set of mailboxes - I was new to trucking and had no formal training.

To say that we can't eat a sandwich or drink out of a cup while driving (not you, but the manufacturers of this camera and presumably my company) is stupid and ridiculous. Hands free phone activities using Siri and bluetooth are perfectly acceptable in most states. I no longer smoke but I wouldn't consider that a dangerous activity either - lots and lots of truckers smoke. A piece of machinery telling me that I am tired? I've completed my second trip with that thing completely covered up except the outward facing part, no one has said anything to me - yet. The real deal I have to fall back on, however, is the-then COO in October of last year and now both the COO and the CEO stating, in writing, that they were only going to get forward facing cameras. There has been zero communication from anyone in the company since then that they were going to install driver facing cameras and I'm perfectly fine with covering the thing up with duct tape.

I absolutely refuse to drive for a company that wants to spy on you, period. They are already short handed as it stands and are attempting to lure drivers that have lost their jobs to Central Freight - apparently that entire company is going under. They shoot themselves in the foot getting rid of drivers over petty stuff.

As for the vax, I have explained my stance on it several times. I have bad reactions to various medications and flu vaccines, I took the chance, I've had the virus, I know now I will survive any future engagements. The vax does not stop the virus from spreading to vaccinated people, tho it apparently helps keep people out of the hospital. The Omnicron variant allegedly is milder than the Delta.

BenB said...

But I will say that I was more motivated to try again after you said something about the house loan stuff....

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