Last month, for one of her final school projects, Laura went to Vietnam for a week with her class. They were providing business consulting for four companies there. She said it was a real learning experience.
It turned out that the company her team was assigned to was basically in bankruptcy and most of the business was no longer viable. The company had worked with Laura’s professor the previous year, and to save face (his and theirs) they were reluctant to admit how poorly they were doing.
It took a couple of days of investigative work for Laura’s
team to even realize in what bad shape the company was. For example, Laura’s
team had to discover on their own that the company’s several storefronts were all
closed and the company had only an online presence left.
As Laura’s team uncovered the situation, they had to decide
how to handle the disconnect between what the company was telling them and the
reality they were discovering. Should they be open about the actual state of
the company and provide genuine and useful advice, but embarrass the company?
Or should they gloss over the worst of it and provide suggestions that were
probably unrealistic but more politically correct? The fact that they were
working in a different culture just added to the complications.
Here’s a cute little video from Laura’s hotel room, showing how random the traffic was. https://youtu.be/5mkUboekXnk
Here’s a lot of great pictures she sent.
Laura has now graduated with two Master’s degrees; an MBA
and a Master’s in Business Analytics. Congratulations Laura!
I have declared today a rest day. I’m going to sit and blog, and order a refrigerator, and stream music. Because I now have internet! The internet guy arrived at 7 AM this morning. And I’m tired. And I’ve been traveling, and in between traveling I’ve been moving.
And in between traveling and moving, I’ve been trying to get one of our rentals rented. The tenants left at the end of April, but I didn’t advertise it at the end of April, because I was in Boston for a week. Then I didn’t advertise it at the beginning of this month because I was in California for a week. Finally, as we drove across the desert on our way home, I put up the ad and started fielding inquires.
As I started scheduling rental showings our way back from California I realized that I was going to need to spend all week in Albuquerque showing the rental. And John works in Albuquerque. So it made a lot more sense to be in Albuquerque than in Santa Fe. And guess what, we have a house in Albuquerque! Only problem – it was completely empty. We closed on our new house purchase back in April, but we haven’t had any time to get moved in. No furniture, no refrigerator, not much of anything.
We had toilet paper at the new house, and we had luggage with us from our trip to California. I found a blow-up mattress in our Albuquerque storage unit. So that first night we stopped up in Santa Fe to snag sheets, blankets, a few more clothes, and a couple of towels. Wa-la, moved in!
After a few days of camping in our new house with the barest of necessities, John took Friday off and we were able get an old refrigerator out of our storage unit in Bernalillo. I don’t even know which house it came from or why we didn’t get rid of it at the time.
John and I loaded it into our pickup truck (we’re so happy to finally have a pickup truck, we use it all the time). We were in two vehicles, ferrying stuff down from Santa Fe, so he drove the pickup out to the Placitas house to do some watering since we were already up in Bernalillo. I had a migraine so I opted to drive straight home to our new house, hoping I could get a quick nap in before needing to get back to work. When John got home, he didn’t want to bother me while I was resting, and decided he could unload the refrigerator by himself.
And he dropped the refrigerator on the Mini Cooper!
He felt bad about it, but I just felt guilty for taking a break when I should have been helping. The fridge was fine, and the Mini is scratched a little. That’s the second car damage we’ve suffered during this move (we also dented the 4Runner trying to back the boat around a curve into an impossibly tight parking spot at the new house.)
The old white refrigerator from the storage unit is too large to fit in my new kitchen, but seems to run fine. I’m very happy to have a working refrigerator in the garage. I would typically have considered it a major nuisance to have my refrigerator in the garage instead of the kitchen, but it is far better than not having a refrigerator at all.
On Saturday I was finally done getting the rental fixed up, showing it to prospective tenants, and sifting through applications. Whew. The new tenant is very excited about the house and I think she’ll work out well. The rental is going to end up being empty for an entire month, and I try to get them turned around faster than that, but it is what it is. She sounds like she’ll stay awhile, which will be nice.
Also on Saturday John got the doggie door installed at the new house. It was a challenging installation – it ended up in a closet, lol. There were stud issues where we had initially hoped to put it to the right of the closet. I’m not sure whether we’re just going to remove the closet doors or what. We’ll figure it out I guess. This is the middle bedroom that’s going to be sort of a man-cave hang-out space. Someday I’d like to replace that window with a door to the side yard – it’s a big side yard and I want to make good use of it.
The doggie door also ended up several inches off the floor due to grade differences in our yard, so John’s going to add an interior step.
We had new fencing and lawn installed, so the side yard is fully functioning as safe dog space. The new grass is currently looking very stressed, but the weather has recently cooled off considerably, so maybe the grass will rebound.
You’re going to laugh – I ordered this for Kai.
It’s a fake fire hydrant for boy dogs to pee on! Totally unnecessary of course, but we thought it was cute. And I get annoyed when Kai goes up against my plant pots or the legs of my outdoor furniture and gets pee all over my patio. This is going right in the middle of the new lawn! He will love it.
On Sunday we unloaded our first pod. The first pod contained all the garage, cabinet and closet items from the house in Placitas. All the junk, but none of the furniture and decor.
There’s no furniture because we left the furniture in Placitas to stage the house.
So mostly what I have in my new house right now is John’s random stuff. Some of which seems useful to me, and some of it not so much 😉
We now have an empty pod in Santa Fe, ready for us to fill up with all my stuff, but we haven’t had time to pack and load in Santa Fe yet. I plan to go up there tomorrow and try to get a bit organized.
Mostly what I’ve been doing is scheduling – lots and lots of showings at the empty rental, fencing at the new house, sod at the new house, weed control at a rental, pest control, a broken window replaced at a rental, tile work at a different rental, getting bids for a roof replacement at the third rental, solar tubes at the new house, pod deliveries, refrigerator delivery, the internet guy too early on a Monday morning…it’s my new exciting career in logistics.
As you may remember, we have been struggling to figure out what to do with our boat in New Mexico. We’ve had it in dry dock storage near Lake Mead, we’ve had it stored in Bernalillo, we’ve had it in a slip at the main marina in Navajo Lake but almost never used it and they kept getting our bill wrong and over charging us.
So we pulled it out of the water, but then we were sad that we didn’t have it in a slip ready to use, so we put it back into the same lake at the smaller marina last spring. Except we still only used it once or twice that year. And slips are expensive!
Our lease for the boat slip was over at the end of last year, but it’s not very feasible to pull a boat out in the ice and high winds of winter. The small marina is closed all winter until roughly the beginning of April, so we figured we could get away with leaving it there past the lease, as long as we had it out of there before the marina opened. We watched the weather all January and February, and finally in March we spotted a window of opportunity and went to fetch the boat.
We saw lots of wildlife and semi-wild-life on our drive out to Navajo Lake and back.
Barren, deserted marina in the winter…
Our boat looked fine.
Doesn’t it look lovely? Every time we pull our boat out I’m sad. But we had only used it once – maybe twice – that summer. The problem with summers in New Mexico is thunder & lightening, and strong, variable winds, which doesn’t mix well with boats, particularly sailboats with masts. It’s like you’re carrying your own lightening rod with you. How handy!
After checking to make sure the boat was there, we went to get the trailer. And there we encountered a problem. The lot where the trailer was stored was locked for the season and we didn’t have a key. We were not going to be able to get our boat out of the water if we couldn’t even get to our trailer!
It took some tugging, but we managed to pull and push the trailer by hand up from it’s parking place to the gate.
John had to remove the side guards, but then we could push it under the locked gate. Stealing our own trailer!
This marina ramp seems to be hard to use, but John managed to get the boat winched up onto the trailer
Then we got it “sealed.” This ensures that the boat isn’t carrying the invasive zebra mussels. There are none at Navajo lake, so as long as our boat isn’t used, we aren’t carrying zebra mussels. The inspections attendant locked a wire with a code between the boat and the trailer, and as long as that “seal” is intact, our boat is known to be mussel-free.
So yes, there was an inspector out there on that cold March day, even though the marina was closed for the winter. An inspector was on duty to make sure no boats were put into the water without an inspection to ensure no invasives were introduced into Navajo Lake. She had what must be the most boring job in the universe. She sat in her car all day, and probably never saw anyone launch a boat for weeks at a time during the winter.
Then John managed to get the boat up that long ridiculous driveway in Placitas and backed carefully in place, were it lived for a month or so until…it was time to get the house ready for sale.
We could have left the boat there while the house is on the market, but John and I both have perfectionist tendencies, and we were determined to get it move out of there before picture day.
We closed on the purchase of our new house just in time, and drove the boat down to Albuquerque to its new home. The new house has space for RV and boat parking, but it’s challenging to access, particularly when backing up a trailer. You have to back around a tight corner. Here is John trimming a tree at the corner of the house to make more room.
At that point we got stuck. The boat is inches from the wall, but John can’t turn anymore because of a huge juniper bush in the front yard.
John had a saw with him, so he set to hacking at the bush. Luckily I’m not a fan of this type of hedge anyway.
It was one of the first nice weekends of the year, and our new neighbors were all outside getting work done – and keeping an eye on the newcomers hacking at their front landscaping. I’m sure we made a great first impression!
We put a moving blanket over the newly exposed juniper branches, hoping to avoid scratching his new 4Runner. Unfortunately, scratches turned out to be the least of our worries.
We finally got the boat where he wanted it. With no space to spare!
Here’s what we didn’t realize until later – his contact with the bush dented his new 4Runner!
Someday I hope we can both say we are enjoying our boat.
That pretty much explains why we’re selling such a pretty house with amazing views…
…and buying a much less impressive house with a protected yard and no views whatsoever.
I live to be outside…more specifically, I live to be comfortable outside…so I’m not much of a fan of weather. Do we deliberately create “seasons” inside our homes? Do we create high winds and sleet inside? No, no we don’t. We keep it as close to 72 degrees as we can, with no more than the slightest breeze from our ceiling fans or forced air heating systems. Because that’s what’s comfortable. My goal in life is to live outside as much as absolutely possible – comfortably. Therefore, weather is not my friend.
So why don’t I live in San Diego? Well, maybe someday. I could find a job in San Diego with no trouble. But John’s not enthused about the idea of having to get a new job. Or of doubling our cost of housing. And we do like the unique culture here. Even though the wind in New Mexico blows trains off tracks! (I actually find that hard to believe. Did it really blow the train off the tracks?!?)
Here’s the updated link to the video, which needed corrected and reposted because the photographer spelled my agent’s name wrong, https://vimeo.com/334078172
I’m not sure how long these links will work, so later I will download it all and post it in another more permanent post. But I wanted to share right away because these are fantastic photos. The house has never looked half that good before.
Our agent, who is excellent, staged the house with our own furniture and decor. John put a ton of time into it recently, plus we hired handymen and landscapers and all kinds of paid help. It was an enormous undertaking for everyone. Our entire focus for the past several months has been the countdown until picture day.
Someday John and I are going to get smart and make our house look beautiful while we’re still living there, and not just after we’ve left and are selling it!
This week my parents are moving two blocks away from my brother and his family. So now half of my family is going to be half hour from Hell.
Maybe this summer the rest of us can go visit and we can have the family reunion from Hell.
I should check with John first before making final plans. Hey hon, you wanna go to Hell?
John often suggests that I go on family visits by myself, because they’re not really his thing. But this time I’m going to tell him, John, you can just go to Hell.
I did a Tripadvisor search in Hell, and discovered a lakefront “heavenly oasis”. Perfect! Heaven in Hell! Unfortunately it’s booked through the summer and not available until the second week in September. https://www.tripadvisor.com/VacationRentalReview-g42265-d10686841-A_heavenly_oasis_on_Half_Moon_lake-Gregory_Unadilla_Township_Michigan.html
But if we plan now, maybe next summer we can all go to Hell!
Here is something Darren wrote recently on facebook. I don’t use facebook, but the kids send me their posts in an email when they think I’d be interested. Darren says:
As many of you know, April is Autism Awareness Month. What a lot of people don’t know, is that Autism Awareness month is actually harmful to people with Autism, but we can change that. Here’s why and how.
You see, a lot of Autism awareness symbol and campaigns (including the blue puzzle piece and paint it/light it up blue), were started by a group called Autism Speaks. The majority of adults with Autism consider Autism Speaks to be a hate group. https://awnnetwork.org/is-autism-speaks-a-hate-group/
Autism Speaks raises funds by creating ads that portray Autism as this horrible, helpless thing, and portrays having an autistic child as the worst thing that can happen to a parent. In fact, in one Autism Speaks video, a parent states that she wants to murder her autistic child, in front of the child! The rest of their funding goes towards research into eugenics, and to finding a “cure.” Practically nothing goes towards actual support for individuals with autism. There is not a single individual with Autism on Autism Speaks’ board of directors. There was one, once, but he resigned in protest. https://jerobison.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-resign-my-roles-at-autism-speaks.html
The message the Autistic community is receiving from Autism Speaks, and from the community that supports them, is, in essence, “What the hell’s wrong with you? I wish you had never been born!” It’s no wonder that studies have shown that individuals with autism are 10 times more likely to die from suicide than the general population.
So what can you do? If you see the rainbow infinity neurodiversity symbol or #redinstead, these are individuals fighting not for Autism awareness, but for Autism Acceptance. Join us.
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