Quiet Choices

What happened to the United States of America?

Sean — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:24:17 +0000

I remember when I had freedom. I was a little kid, not worries. So why is it that when you get to be an adult, you are told what and how you can do things for the rest of you life?If you buy a piece of land and want to build a house, you cant just set down with a pen and paper and decide what you want to build and then build it. Everyone else has their hand out wanting money to tell you what you can and cant do.This is just one of the things lately that are making me wonder what happened. Wonder if you really have choices left…..

Man has it been a while…

Sean — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:12:00 +0000

I kept thinking all summer about getting on here and just writing a few things down, but it never seemed to happen. Now an entire summer has passed without me even writing anything down. I understand this is the problem with most people who try to blog, you have to have the time and the will to set down a couple of times a week and write something and hope it gets picked up by others.The other problem is that most of us already have a full time job and don’t have the time to do all the things like to day for instance: Wake up go to the local business market to gather good foods and things, get made aware that an idea that I had actually people are wishing for… cold drinks on location. So what do I do? I get the courage up to run down get water, ice, and soda, get the teenagers in my family to get the coolers together and start what someday might be a small business. Costs: $30. Sales for today in the hot sun, not even enough to begin to get out of the hobby range $20. That was the start of the day! After setting around for 4 hours helping get the hobby started, I went home and changed the fuel filter on my pickup. Then I went to get kids hooked up for school clothes 20 miles away. After spending a small fortune, went out to dinner. Sounds like a lovely day right? Well here it is 7:0opm and I am catching up on email and find SPAM posting on here, after almost two months with no activity I get a wonderful SPAM post. Well at least it got me to stop and write something down.Hopefully your adventures are not as hectic, and the choices you make help you succeed in the long run. I hope to post more and remind my self to do so…

How do you start blogging regularly?

Sean — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:15:09 +0000

I know I have not done anything with this site for a while. It is intended to both be useful to me as a thought process and possibly to make a dollar or two, so far… $0.75. Well it is a start but not quite what I want. I understand that you need to write regularly to get people to look and maybe either sell a product or sell an ad. The problem is that with a full time job, two kids, two houses, three dogs, well you get the idea. So how do you make the time to just set down for a little while and put a few thoughts into writing? I have a plan that I am working on that is doing well to lose a little weight, that is eat more salads and fruit for dinner, it actually is showing after just a couple of weeks! Maybe it is just like that, decide to do it and make it happen. Well I might even just setup a weekly announcement in my calendar to “remind” me of what I need to do….

Time to start planning.

Sean — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:54:50 +0000

Now that most of the new basement is empty of boxes, it is time to start planning what to do with the walk out basement. It is already plumbed for a third bath, but everything else is a blank slate. I started by insulating between the top of the block wall and the floor of the house towards the exterior plate. That helped with the cold seeping into the basement and through the uninsulated floor of the house. Next is to get some ideas of the layout to begin construction.

After looking at everything it make sense to add a master suite near the back wall of the basement that is fully exposed, that way I can add a few bigger windows by removing the existing smaller ones. I also want to remove the eight foot slider that someone put in backwards and replace it with some nice patio doors. The layout can be made to where you have a nice sized master bedroom, with attached laundry and bath, and the remaining area one large den with only a small area walled off for utility access.

Well I suppose it is time to put it on paper and start finding out what materials cost in this area. One of the things that interests me though is making some upgrades while I finish the basement. For example since there is no insulation in the floor of the house it makes perfect sense to install a radiant heat system while the area is exposed. The new bathroom can well be made in a “green” manner with upscale materials.

I guess it is just time to make a few more choices and see if the pocket book can support them. I am really dreaming now about alternative energy since this is an all electric home….

Finding Time

Sean — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:17:41 +0000

As usual, I have many more interests than time to accomplish them. This blog is one of them. I have tried to get this thing off of the ground and keep writing something but it seems the 78 hours at the real job per week are starting to keep me from getting other things done. So now the goal is to find out how to not put in so many hours at work so that I can find the time to do the other things I want to do. I did less than nothing this weekend just because I was so tired. One of the goals of this blog is to find a second income and eventually retire, not rich, but retire early. Looks like it might be time for another choice or two.

Getting to work

Sean — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:00:58 +0000

Working on unpacking that is. You never know you have so much stuff until you move. There are things you have been looking for that you have not seen for months that suddenly show up. There are also things that you know where they were, that dont seem to be available any more… wonder where that is… etc. Well the move has gone well. Now the challenge of paying for two houses. It looks like we will have to keep the SoCal house for the time being because the market is so bad. Hopefully we can rent it out soon and not have to pay the entire payment for many months. Now we are on to trying to set up house here and get back to doing the things that we like to do. We have to find all of the services that we had, plus find all of the local groups that we supported in California, here in the new location. I guess when you make the choice to move across the entire U.S., you have to get to work, just to get back to normal.

Got the new house.

Sean — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:02:47 +0000

Well today was the day to close on the new house. What a load off of my mind. It is still quite a load knowing that the house in SoCal is most probably not going to sell, and I will have to make a choice of rather to give it back to the mortgage company as so many people are doing, or to some how keep it and ride out the storm.

The problem is that the only houses in SoCal right now that are selling are the repos. Because they are repos, they are hardly bringing anything when they go up for auction. When they sell they set the comp price for the neighborhood and screw up even the people that have made all their payments on time, and are not in trouble of losing their home.

However if you just for some reason get transferred during this time, even with the relocation package, the offer for your home may not be anywhere near what you need to pay it off even. So there you go another choice to make.

Do you give it back? Or find a way to ride it out?

The long time gone

Sean — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 03:54:23 +0000

It has been a long month! The family and I have been apart while I worked on one coast and they on the other. Then the kids visited family in Texas while the better half and I flew to DC to look for a house and have Christmas with some of her family in North Carolina. Then the two of us made the mad trip back to SoCal, via bad weather planes, just in time to get all of the household loaded onto the moving truck the day after Christmas. Then the real fun began. 26th of Dec. Work on cleaning and painting while the movers loaded the truck. Then drove from SoCal to Flagstaff Az. to spend the night. What a long day, but just one of many to come. 27th Drove from Flagstaff through bad snow and ice at Albuquerque NM., to Lubbock Texas, after picking up the kids found a room and crashed. 28th Started the day by having breakfast with my Dad and his current wife, then went to get a UHaul, and load up some very old furniture of my Great Grandmothers, after that had a miserable drive through the panhandle of Texas over to Oklahoma all on ice with the trailer most of which was 30 MPH. Had supper in Oklahoma City with the better half’s brother and kept moving until we hit the Arkansas border and stopped for the night. 29th Started from Arkansas and drove in good weather until we got to the middle of Tennessee, where we stopped for the night. The dogs are already tired of the drive at this point. 30th Drove in from Tennessee to The DC area where we will stay until the new house closes in mid January and then we will move out to WV to start life and East Coasters.You just want to make sure what your choices entail, and if you can handle them before you jump in!Now to sell a house, buy a house, get the kids in school, look for a job for the better half, and settle into the new job no problem……

Wow it has been a while.

Sean — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:51:51 +0000

The choice I made has put the entire family into a tail spin. Many things have to be done to move your family completely across the entire US. There is the sale of the old home, the buying of the new one, shipping all of your household goods, shipping your autos, making all the arrangements to take care of all the little things like your dog and cat.

The new job is quite a challenge, and will take a lot of my time in the beginning. It looks like something that is a challenge, and will fit into what I like to do, it is good that it is with the same company so I do not have to learn new things about the company also. It certainly makes it much easier to deal with.

Moving from the Sun to the Cold is not much fun but it is nice to see weather. Where we were the weather was mostly the same all year long. Here there was a snow storm last week and rain so far this week. I will not like the wet hot weather in July, but there is always something that does not suit you.

Take a chance, make a choice, see where it takes you.

Reading other Blogs gets me High

Sean — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:38:27 +0000

On life that is. It is always wonderful to see other people actually making money blogging. There are many different people out there just writing about what they know, and then selling ads to make a new life.

Really that is one of the things that makes this interesting is that you can make a career out of this. People post just how much money and from what type of product they are making the money from. I have also read about the struggle to decide to go full time in this business, or stay working for someone else.

What a choice to make! To be able to go and do what ever you want to do when you want to do it, and as long as you write a couple of times a week, still stay in business and have a very different life. That is where I would like to be one day, but it is a long road from here.