Final

I finished the gate portion of the fence today and have the fence actually hooked up. I removed the temporary fence and now it looks 100% better. A pain in the rear of unprecedented proportions - I just think of how bad other people have it right now and find myself glad for having to endure such "pains". I just have the line that runs along the bottom of the chain link - stretch it tight and dogs cannot simply push their way through the bottom of the fence.

I just sold the old sliding-glass-door doggy door for $25. I originally bought it for $60 if memory serves correctly. I could've gotten more out of it, but the flap is broken and those flaps are $40. So, I was happy to get rid of the thing and this guy that took it was very happy - at least by the look on his face - to have gotten it at such a cheap price. New? $140.00 One man's junk - another man's treasure.

Well not much else, I just had those things and am working on the next party. I have somewhere around 30 people confirmed coming - this time I asked for an RSVP - and many of them are bringing food. I am trying to find the email where that one person said they would give $300 "now" or $600 for "advanced notice". I have no clue what I did with it. I must have saved it somewhere and now I can't find it.
DARN. The party has sparked a lot of interest. Besides volumes of email, I put a Feedjit on the site I just gave out the URL to today - hundreds of hits locally and from all over the world, actually. Ummm, you can come from all over the world, but I ain't paying your airfare.

I felt SO uneasy about the person that was wanting to move here and rent my room, I started looking into it. That person gave their name and address. I found that person's name and address on a Dexonline.com search and called that person. I left a message - no answer.

This guy calls back 10 minutes later. The person that is replying to Craigslist room ads is a fraud. He's using this guy's physical address and then doing the certified check fraud scheme that's going around. As I said in my prior post, I felt uneasy about it for whatever reason. This man I talked to on the phone said he's received at least 15 phone calls from around the country. Okay, well, you have to actually find the guy's phone number, it isn't given to you on the reply from the scammer - of course. So, how many people actually believed the scammer's story and - got raped of funds?

Yeah, who knows. I'm very careful about this out-of-state renting business and will continue to remain so. It's a source of tenancy - yes - but even Craigslist warns everyone that people from out-of-state and out-of-country you should be very wary of. I won't even consider out-of-country and say so on my ads - yet they ALWAYS reply to my ads, and if you were to read one of these replies, you would know why I don't deal with them. It's SO obvious it's a scam, there's no reason to even respond to them.

Okay, I copied and pasted the email from out-of-country that I received to my latest ad. What do you see as the clues/obvious telling that this person is messing with you?

???????Hello,
I am a female, i am from Manchester,England .I want you to know first before anything that i am christian but i dont critisize other people's or religion .Here are little things i would like you to know about me. I'm 29 yrs and single.Never been married.I'm clean, quiet and respectful. I am a sensitive,intellectual,patient and caring person, have a good sense of amusing and am easy to get on with. I am a faithful and committed person,who is very considerate of other people's feelings. I don't drug, I don't smoke and i don't drink.. I enjoy going out with my friends to movies, plays, parks, hikes, anything to do with the ocean and horses but i'm cool living with people.... I also love to go on date but seldomly party. I swin for fun and sometimes play tennis.... I model for a clothing company here in England .i am on a programme supported by England Goverments in the states for All stars modelling comptition that will take place in united states .and I am searching for a place to stay.I will like to know more about the room and I would really want to secure the room before my arrival,I will like to know if it would be possible for me to pay for the room before my arrival,I will want to know the total amount of the room per month with the utilities included .All these vital information are very important for me to know before submision of my proposal to the Promoter . The following information will be needed to get the payment to you.
(1) Your full name as it will appear on the payment.
(2) Address.
(3) phone number.
Hope to hear from you...Bonnie????????

C'ya later.
ben

Sunday

Beautiful out.
In fact, a bit cool.
Just been sitting here looking at stories on the internet.
Apparently Obama wants to get friendly with Cuba.......

I've had a couple of replies to my latest CL ad for a roommate.
One is out of state - something didn't feel right about that one so I moved onto the next. This one? Who knows. I wrote them back and am awaiting a reply - I invited them to come over and tour the property. I've had several that had replied to the ad before this one - but too much time has passed. That ad was placed when I got the current roommate in.

I have altered my ad as well. Now, the rent is lower at $325 per month, but I am now asking for 1/3rd utilities. I think people may be wary about having to pay an unknown cost for utilities, though, so I may have to revert back to a flat fee per month. I am just trying this ad out to see if there's any kind of interest. I can always place another one. The room won't be empty until the 16th, and then I will have to see if I need to do anything in there - though that lady will have been in there less than a month and I just repainted the room, so unless the carpet is dirty, it should be good to go.

Still, there isn't a lot of replies to any kinds of ads I am placing lately. I don't know if that's because there aren't enough potential renters to go around - there were over 200 room rental ads placed in Phoenix room shares alone yesterday. I read a lot of them - there are people asking as much as $700 for a room in a house! lol. They have ritzy houses in fancy neighborhoods - I guess they can ask that much, I just wonder how much interest they get. My ads are extremely descriptive - I may be letting on too much. Then again, if someone gets in here and doesn't know the odds and quirks about this place, I don't think that fair to the potential renter. Dogs/2 other renters/teenagers. Probably doesn't appeal to a large number of people - but - if I can appeal to even just a few, that's enough for me. It's quite amazing how many ads a person is willing to go through to find the place they want. I had a person contact me last week about an ad I placed 3 weeks ago. That's thousands and thousands of ads that person had to go through to find mine.

Anyway - just enjoying the peace and quiet in here right now. I'm trying to motivate myself to go outside and finish the fencing, or at least as much of it as I can. It's just a pain, basically - but the finished result will look pretty good, I think. I also concocted an idea to keep the southern sun off my house in the summer. Instead of trying to save for a pricey awning, I can get 2x4's - 10 footers - and some lattice work. Put that right next to the house, and then stretch some material behind the lattice work to keep the direct sunlight off the house. It's one of the reasons my room gets warm in the summer - warmer than the rest of the rooms in the house - because of the summer sun baking the back of the house. I figure I can do that project for less than $100. Not only that, but I could start some vines growing on the lattice work and eventually it would look pretty good and would be a very good sunblock.

I'm just trying to think up ideas that will work that don't cost a lot of money. I'm definitely going to put at least one gazebo on the western side of the house - right in front of the sliding glass door. That will look far better than tacky, gaudy looking styrofoam isulation - though I still have this idea in the back of my head that I could wrap some fabric over the insulation and make it look good. So - I haven't totally given up on that idea yet.

Yes, at $13.00 per panel, and only needing 5 panels, the back of the house could be done for about $75.00.

Well, I have things to get done - normal Sunday stuff.
Have a great day!
ben

One of several blurps I was reading online that are coming out and saying some things that I have had in the back of my mind for some time now.

"""""Here's the problem for those who are buying gold and the safes to store it in along with guns -- in their nightmare scenario, what makes these folks think that they'll be able to get food and safety in exchange for bars of gold? You can't eat gold and it's hard to get change for a $50 gold coin if you want to buy a stick of gum.

It would probably be best for these people to learn how to hunt, fish, build campfires, and farm. I'm not sure the safes and the gold will do them much good. To be fair, the fear is real and I think the United States has an opportunity to help people deal with that fear in a more effective way."""""

Apparently, people are buying gold and safes by the droves. Stock prices in Smith & Wesson have allegedly gone WAY up. More and more talk of the D-word is surfacing everywhere on the internet. Circuit City is shutting it's doors for good this weekend and 34,000 more people are now jobless.

Fortunately for me - if it ever came to that - I already know how to hunt, I have a small game trap that can be used to simply capture rabbits and other small, edible game. I never did buy any vegetable seeds - I was going to do that but just forgot about it. My food stock continues to grow as I continue to purchase more long-shelf-life foods. I am also purchasing 50-pound bags of dog-food at least twice a week - though they ran out at Fry's, I was going to buy another one today which would put my dog food up into the 250 pounds worth range.

The question is, how far is this economy going to tank before it bottoms? What is going to happen to these people that have lost their jobs, lost their homes and sooner or later, lose their unemployment benefit? Where is all of this going to end? Do you have the answer - if you do, I would love to hear all about it. Now, they're talking two years from NOW before the economy recovers. I can't even imagine that. There is no question in my mind that my company is going to continue to shed itself of employees as the monthly numbers continue to tank lower and lower and lower.

I WISH I had money right now! There are homes all over Phoenix going for as low as $13,900.00. That particular home is a condo, the foreclosed upon owners apparently got mad and tore up the place, including TEARING THE CEILING OFF! I am hearing all of this because my new tenant just bought a home and she was presented with all of this stuff. People that are getting foreclosed upon are tearing out appliances, walls, toilets, fixtures, sinks - basically gutting the houses they are being forced out of. I don't think there is a huge market for used toilets and torn up drywall, so at least some of it is simply being done in anger and "paybacks" to the banks that are forcing these peole out.

What would the mortgage be on a 14 thousand dollar house? Lol. But something that torn up would cost a chunk of change to fix, even with used stuff. I've done it before, though. You can find good used fixtures, sinks, all of that stuff at a variety of second-hand type of stores at much less cost than new. In other words, a totally gutted house would probably be a couple of thousand dollars worth of stuff providing I had the time to search it all out, obtain it and install it.

I'm just dreaming. Even if my credit was good right now, banks are wanting large down payments - I've heard anyway - before letting people get into new mortgages.
Of more concern to me is this newly surfacing fear of not being able to get food. Fry's is having yet another 50 cent per can sale on vegetables, I intend on buying 60 cans of it tomorrow when I have to go back up there and put money on the card for power. I'm not bathing in money, but - this situation going on all over the U.S. is starting to get unnerving. People who are desperate will go to great extremes when it comes to eating.

I wasn't going to continue talking about this subject, but I have spent some time today reading more about this situation and now more dire views and forecasts are starting to surface. Much more dire than anything I've read up til' now. The unemployment rate is the highest it's been in 25 years - there's got to be a lot of desperate people out there and I really am thinking I want to get a shotgun in my house. You can call it knee-jerk reaction if you wish, but I have been thinking about doing this for some time now anyway. They aren't very expensive. I think you can pick up a decent one for around $250. I'm not into hurting or killing people, but I am definitely a firm believer in protecting my house/people living in it whatever it takes.

This is why I probably won't be driving to North Carolina for that family reunion - I have other priorities that, to me, are far greater than visiting with people. Who knows - I'm stashing away a little money here and there into my ING account, plus I have a regular, set amount being deducted every 15 days. I just think that saving money right now - even if it's just little bits here and there, is more important than vacations.

AS for today, I went to Home Depot and bought a gallon of paint and some more caulking. Stopped at Fry's and got some stuff there, did a few other things besides the dog walk this morning and that's about it. I'm feeling particularly lazy right now - think I'll just get away from the internet and reading all this horror/panic stuff and relax.
ben