Month: February 2016
Every week, usually Sunday but sometimes during lunch on Monday I sit down and try and write this post. I think back, “What happened.. uhh. nothing.”
I had Monday off. Not because it was President’s day but I just took it off. I don’t remember what I did. I think I was supposed to run errands. I was supposed to get my hair cut and didn’t. I was supposed to get the oil changed on the car and didn’t.
Tuesday through Friday mostly work happened.
The weekend was very warm. I mostly worked on stuff but Saturday around lunch I went for a jog. Like a real one. I hadn’t gone for a real jog in over 8 months. I did better than expected.
On Sunday I made my now favorite three bean chili with cocoa
Just for Fun .. sorta:
Warning both the written version of this and the video contain adult language and themes. I am pretty sure the video shows a naked guy for about 1/10th of second. I wasn’t going to slow it down to find out. They are funny but actually say something that ties into stuff I have been blogging about.
You realize that it’s not about hitting a goal weight, or lifting a weight. It’s about being able to wait. Waiting, being patient, and trusting that life will slowly inch along and things will eventually get better. After all, change takes time.
Change take time and patience. It takes the will to day after day make the choices that will eventually lead you to where you want to go. Spoilers for those of you not going to read the post or watch the video. A guy gets dumped and decided to change his life. He starts going to gym and eating healthy. He eventually finds a new girlfriend. After a year he reflects back on how the things he did over and over changed his life. It is actually really funny.
The video comes from this blog post.
Just Tell me how to get out of Debt:
Oh come on just get to how I save money? Nope. Before we can get to acting properly we have to think properly. My actions might have gotten me into the debt hole, but my thoughts and attitudes about money influenced those actions.
How You Got Into This Mess:
You consistently over a long period of time spent more money than you made. It is really simple. You bought things you didn’t have the money for. Yeah maybe you had some big emergency. The car broke down or a medical problem happened. But if you had been being intelligent with your money those things would not have hit your finances so hard. Saturday Night live offers a comical look at the problem. *
No Quick Fixes:
There are no quick fixes to this situations. Oh there are things you can do that will quickly wipe that debt away in the short term. Perhaps a rich relative dies and leaves you money. Maybe you have enough equity in your house and by selling it you pay off your debt. Maybe you win twenty thousand dollars on a scratch off ticket. Or perhaps you take the more likely route and get a debt consolidation loan or a balance transfer. This low interest loan will surely lead you to the promise land. There is only one small, and by small I mean really large, problem. You haven’t changed anything. The debt isn’t your ultimate problem. The actions and thoughts that created the debt are the problem. Like the statistic thrown around about dieters, 95% of people who take care of their debt this way will find themselves right back in huge debt in 3 or 5 years.
Take Ownership:
You have to take ownership of this situation. Your problem isn’t your debt, your problem is you. Don’t try and fix your debt, fix yourself. You have to be able to make lifelong lifestyle changes. Find the capacity to grind it out decision after decision through the long slog of years. If this all sounds familiar, it is. Yes I am talking about applying all that stuff I wrote a few months ago about creating habits. This will be an example of applying those concept to real life.
Don’t lament the past:
Don’t lament the past. Whatever got you to this point, it’s gone. Whether through years and years of stupid small choices, or big foolish ones (I advise not buying sports cars you cannot afford), or even the actions of someone else(a spouse) what is is. The past is gone. You can’t change those decisions. You can only control your decisions going forward.
My Favorite analogy:
Think of debt as a giant pit you are in. You got into this pit by digging. You are at the bottom of this hole and you are still digging. You get a debt consolidation loan or uncle Morpheus snuffs it and give you a big payout. The hole is filled in but you are still digging. Soon you are back in your giant pit. What we are going to do is to learn how to start filling the hole in. Eventually after a lot of work we’ll be standing on level ground again. At this point we aren’t going to start digging again or stop pilling dirt on the former hole. We are going to keep building until we have created a mountain. That mountain will be our investments and our retirement.
*
This is for people like me. People who made enough to live and even save and invest but made poor decisions. If you are not bringing in enough to even survive and put food on the table you have a much more serious problem then I can help you with.
A very important announcement was made Thursday. If you aren’t into science you might not have paid a lot of attention. LIGO found evidence of gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are evidence of the collision and merging of two black holes. Most importantly it proves Einstein right about the theory of relativity. This is one of the most important scientific discoveries of the last 100 years. I can neither confirm or deny that I knew about the announcement a week early. I began to joke around that they hadn’t discovered gravity waves but that the giant space turtle that holds up the universe moved. So I started tweeting out #spaceturtle
The weekend was extremely cold. It snowed on Sunday. It didn’t snow that much and I decided to go to the gym during a break in the snow. It started again while I was working out. It still hadn’t snowed a whole lot but the roads were horrible. I saw cars sliding all over the place. I don’t know what was up with people trying to drive fast on the slick roads. I survived but spent the rest of the day at home with Jobu.
Just a bit of fun:
The geniuses over at Bad Lip Reading have given us another masterpiece. Not as good as Bushes of Love but quite good.
I started the week off with a cold. I had a cough, a sore throat, and produced enough snot to fill buckets. With all the snotting and coughing I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep. Both Monday and Tuesday I was pretty useless at work. Of course my Boss would say I am pretty useless at work most days 🙂
I spent the rest of the week trying to catch up and waiting for my contract for extra work to be signed. It still hasn’t been. Oh and my Tax Return came in. I am rolling in money…..
On Friday I finally got the brakes fixed on the car. $450 later and I am not rolling around in soo much money. I feel like driving around everywhere and slamming my brakes all the time since they are so new and shiny.
Saturday afternoon, I decided to enjoy the nice weather we had by going for a walk. I wore my running shoes for the walk and decided to try and turn it into a jog. Now I haven’t run consistently since I think April so my walk/jog mostly involved walking. In fact after only a few short bursts of jogging my ankle and foot started to hurt quite a bit. But hey maybe I’ll start up running again.
Sunday brought to us all THE BIG GAME(not TM), the Superb Owl. I joined some friends at a local watering hole. We all brought bits of food to make a potluck and sat down to enjoy a mediocre game of Football(American) and snicker at a few of the commercials.
I looked into some interesting things about the trademarked term Super Bowl (GAHH I SAID IT!!!!) I joked above about not using the real name. I can talk about watching Super Bowl 50 and my thoughts about it. What I can’t do is claim to have some sort of official sanction to use the name or to use it in advertise. Now the NFL has been so litigious that many people refrain from saying it all together. For example Colbert came up with the superb owl name even though he legally could use the trademark for parody.
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| Not my Car |
When we last left our hero he was marooned at home with a very flat tire. Our hero also forgot to finish writing the last TWTW post. On that Sunday, I put the spare on. It took some effort. I hate those little jacks that come with cars these days. You crank and turn and finally you’ve moved the car an inch. The spare itself didn’t have much air in it, but it had to be better than the completely flat thing I showed you last week.
On Monday, I eased the car the two blocks to the nearest air pump and filled the spare donut up to the required amount. It was at 12P SI and needed to be at 50. I then drove to a local mechanic and had them look at the tire and the brake warning light. They patched the tire up nice and good and it only cost 25 dollars. The said I needed new brake pads and new rotors. The quote came to over 400 dollars. That seemed a little excessive and unnecessary. I had looked at the brakes and rotors when I replaced the tire and they seemed ok. I paid for the tire and left determined to find a cheaper brake solution.
Tuesday I met with some people about possibly doing some work for them in my off hours. On Thursday I signed the contract that will bring me in some needed extra money for the next few months. Since I will be using my free time on this new project, I don’t know how this will affect my voluminous blogging.. HAHAHA see it’s a funny joke since I don’t blog much. The scratchy tickets just weren’t giving me the extra boost of money I needed 🙂
The two highlights of the weekend… the three highlights of the weekend were: or should it be; ;’. > stupid English punctuation. The weather this weekend was amazing. It hit 59 degrees F on Sunday. I went for a jog. I forgot to record the jog with my phone so did it really happen? I also made three bean chili and on a whim decided to throw in a couple of table spoons of cocoa powder. Really a good combination. I think we forget cocoa can be used in things besides sweets. I spent some time researching brakes. Things have changed since I was a young lad working at an auto parts store. Brakes are now made of a much harder substance than they used to be. They last longer but do a number on your rotors. So I think since my 2007 has the original rotors they probably do need to be replace.
Peace out!
The air is heavy, heavy as a truck
We need the rain to wash away our bad love