Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Dining Out Can Be Stressful

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We try to enjoy a dinner out but are foiled by bad service.

My friends John and Lorna, who spend their summers in Maine and winters in Arizona, were extremely helpful today. So helpful, in fact, that I wanted to buy them dinner.

We decided to go to a local restaurant called Sangini’s. I happen to be very fond of Sangini’s pizza. They make a thick crust pizza and the crust is good. Other pizza places in town make thin crust pizza. That’s fine, if you like thin crust. I don’t.

John and Lorna like Sangini’s Hawaiian pizza. For those of you unfamiliar with this culinary delight, it’s pizza with ham and pineapple on it. Yes, I did say pineapple. I haven’t tried it yet. I’m afraid to. Where I’m from, the words pineapple and pizza are never used in the same sentence, let alone put together on a menu or in your mouth. Hawaiian pizza is a west coast thing.

Anyway, we all met in Sangini’s at 6 pm. The main dining room had a few people in it and, as we waited to eat, it filled up. Business was pretty good for a Wednesday night.

I examined the menu. I usually eat pizza or perhaps a calzone. But I decided to try something different. I wanted to think of Sangini’s as something other than a pizza place. The only way I could do that was to order something other than pizza — and like it. I decided on the chicken scaloppine.

Trouble started when Mike, my significant other, asked for vinegar and oil on his salad. The waitress, who was probably about 19 years old, looked at him as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“What did you want on your salad?” she asked.

“Vinegar and oil.”

“I don’t think we have that,” she said.

“I’m sure you do,” Mike replied.

She went away looking doubtful.

The whole thing reminded me about a breakfast we’d had in a small town restaurant one day. Mike says the restaurant was in Wickenburg, but I don’t remember it that way. Anyway, blueberry pancakes were on the menu. Mike asked the waitress, who was probably still in high school, how they were. “Very good,” she replied. “The blueberries are fresh. We just opened the can today.”

(To those of you who don’t get it, fresh blueberries don’t come in a can.)

Oddly enough, I had just told that story to John and Lorna earlier in the day. I repeated the punchline: “The blueberries are fresh. We just opened the can today.” Then our conversation turned to young people who grew up in Wickenburg and had no idea of anything other than what they saw in town. And how limited that was. And then about young people in general. We were sounding like a bunch of old folks, which is very discouraging when you’re still well under 55.

The waitress came back. “We have balsamic vinegar,” she reported.

“That’s fine,” Mike replied.

When she returned with the salads, mine came with bleu cheese dressing, as requested. Mike’s came with a little plastic container filled with what looked like balsamic vinegar. There was no oil. But before he could ask, the waitress disappeared. She then somehow imagined to avoid making eye contact for the next five minutes. Finally, Mike got up and went to the kitchen. He came back a moment later to tell us how crazy he was. He’d asked for olive oil to go with his vinegar and they’d told him they didn’t have any.

Now this pissed me off. I’d read the menu and I distinctly remember reading a description that included olive oil. Virgin olive oil, if I remember correctly. So either they were lying about not having any olive oil or the menu was misrepresenting one of the dishes.

Mike poked at his salad, but didn’t eat much of it.

Then came the very long wait. I’d say that we waited for at least 45 minutes from the time we placed our order until the time the food finally appeared. Meanwhile, the restaurant filled up and just about everyone else was fed. Some people who came in after us got their checks. We couldn’t decide whether we’d been blacklisted because Mike had asked for vinegar and oil or whether ordering something other than pizza was a mistake.

The food came. It was interesting. Although mine was good and it met the description of what I’d ordered, it wasn’t what I expected. Still, it was good. And although the plate was cold, the food was hot. So I was happy.

Mike’s on the other hand, was nothing like any of us expected. He’d ordered sole parmesan. What came was some fried fish filets with the same lemon sauce that was on my dish, along with some grated parmesan cheese. Parmesan — at least the parmesan I know from being half Italian and from New York — means the meat or fish is covered with a tomato-based sauce, melted mozzarella cheese, and a sprinkle of parmesan. Still, it must have tasted okay because he ate it all.

John and Lorna had Hawaiian pizza. They were happy.

We waited a long time to get the check. And then, once we had the check, the waitress neglected to come by to take my credit card. Finally, Mike, John, and Lorna got tired of waiting. They left and I went to the cash register to pay.

I looked for the owner in the bar on my way out. The place was surprisingly full of young people. In fact, I think everyone in town between the ages of 21 and 28 were in that bar. There may have been some imports, too. I didn’t even know we had that many young people in town. But the owner wasn’t among them.

It’s hard to get good help in Wickenburg. The labor force simply isn’t very good. Mature, was the way someone I know put it. The young people have no work ethic, no experience, and a poor attitude. The older people don’t really need the job so they’re not reliable. Employee problems are what drove me out of the airport fuel business back in April. Employee problems have hurt quite a few local businesses. They certainly didn’t help Sangini’s today.

The way I see it, dinner out is made up of four components: atmosphere, service, food quality, and value for your money. Once you’ve lowered your standards enough to deal with the limited choices in a small town, you don’t mind going out to eat in a place that’s only going to score high on three of these four components. But when a place scores poorly on two or three components, you simply can’t go there anymore.

I’ll still eat Sangini’s pizza. But until the service problem is resolved, I’ll take it to go.

And for the record, Mike and I eat at home more now than we ever did in our lives.

January 4, 2009 Update: This restaurant went out of business at least 6 months ago. A “For Sale” sign is on the building, but no seems interested in reopening it.

Landlord Stories, Part II

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An update on my landlord situation.

We finished work on the rental house that my tenant had trashed.

The painting was done last week. The carpet was replaced on Friday.

Mike, John, Lorna, and I spent Saturday cleaning the vertical blinds — which had probably never been cleaned before — and fixing the broken things throughout: kitchen sink faucet, garbage disposal, exhaust fans, etc. We also cleaned out the storage closets under the carport. The tenant from hell had just stuffed both closets with things she no longer cared about — toys, games, photographs, clothes, trophies — you name it. The highlights: a 8×10 photograph of her mother (recently deceased) and someone’s service medal. Anything that looked as if it had value went to the local thrift shop. Everything else went into the trash. We filled the curbside trash bin for the fifth time that day.

The house looks absolutely great now. I’ve already gotten some calls from prospective tenants, but so far every single one of them has a dog. No pets. No exceptions. I’m not going through this again.

I also started the wheels turning on refinancing the place. My goal is to get a separate mortgage for the apartment building and the house. Right now, they’re on the same mortgage. Once they’re separated, I can sell each one individually. I’d like to sell the house and keep the apartment building. I’m pretty sure I want to put my office in Unit #4, which is upstairs and has nice views. But I got a call from someone who’s interested in renting it for three months and if she does take it, I’ll put off my office move until she’s gone.

Of course, since the whole property — house and apartments — are currently listed for sale, I might just sell everything off and be done with it. I just hope that if they do all sell together, it happens soon, before I pay over $4K in bank closing costs for the new mortgages.

Wickenburg is an Island

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Some more thoughts on living at the edge of nowhere.

Last night, we went out to dinner at House Berlin with our friends, the Wurths.

House Berlin is one of my favorite places to eat in Wickenburg. The food is always good and lately the service is good again, too.

The Wurths are a semi-retired couple who moved into Wickenburg not long after we did seven or eight years ago. Jim had been an airline pilot for Eastern Airlines and took early retirement before Eastern went bust. Judith had been a flight attendant back in the days when they were still called stewardesses and had done a few other things I didn’t know much about. Now they live in Wickenburg where they manufacture and sell battery-based aircraft starting devices called StartPacs.

Jim flies a helicopter now and that’s how I know him. He has a 1969 Hughes 500c, exquisitely refurbished and painted. As he likes to say, it’s the Porsche of helicopters. He gave me a ride up the Hassayampa River once that was quite memorable, primarily because of the positive and negative Gs he pulled. In a helicopter. My little Robinson R22, which I owned at the time, couldn’t fly like that. But then again, it didn’t cost $500/hour to fly, either.

Anyway, we went out to dinner and had a nice meal. Jim and Judith had just gotten back from a trade show in Reno, NV, where they’d sold a lot of StartPacs to agricultural operators — companies that do crop dusting, etc. They had lots of stories to tell about the aircraft they’d seen and the stories they’d heard. Judith had caught a cold from Jim and was quieter than usual, looking more tired than I did. (I’d spent the day with Mike and some other friends cleaning up my rental house.)

I’d driven my Honda S2000 to the restaurant and parked out front with the top down. It had been an extremely warm day, with temperatures reaching the 80s in the late afternoon, so it had been nice to get out in the convertible. I rarely drive the car; I’ve had it since August 2003 and it has just over 7000 miles on it now. The car is an eye-catcher in Wickenburg, which probably has more pickup trucks per capita (among year-round residents, of course) than any other town in Arizona. At least that’s how it seems. When I go out with the car, I like to park it in an obvious place, top down, to draw attention to the business I’m visiting. It’s my way of saying, “Hey, this is a cool place. Come on in and check it out.”

[A side story here. Earlier this year, members of the helicopter owners group I belong to descended (literally) on the Wayside Inn, just southeast of Alamo Lake. Five helicopters and a Citabria airplane landed at the restaurant and went in for lunch. (The Citabria landed on the dirt road that runs past the place.) The Wayside Inn is in the middle of nowhere (not even close to the edge) and doesn’t get much business. (Location, location, location.) But with five helicopters and an airplane outside, it seemed that everyone who drove by stopped and came in to eat. Every single table was full. Frankly, I think they should feed us for free when we come in, just to drum up business.]

I left the top down on the car for the drive home. It was only 7 PM, but it was dark and very cool. The desert is like that in the winter. Imagine that the sun is a big heat lamp shining down on the desert. The angle of the sun in the winter is low, so it never really gets very hot. But when the sun goes down and that heat lamp is gone, the air cools very quickly. It’s not unusual to lose 20°F in an hour. But I had the windows rolled up and the heater on in the car, so we were quite cosy.

The moonless sky was full of stars. It was a beautiful night, despite the cold, and although I was tired, I didn’t feel like going home. I felt like going for a drive.

I thought back to the days I lived in New Jersey, not far from Manhattan. Sometimes, on the spur of the moment, we’d drive into the city for a few hours, riding down the streets, dodging the yellow taxis, listening to the sound of the car horns bounce off the tall buildings on the side of the road. We’d drive down Broadway through Times Square, past Herald Square and Washington Square. We’d see the punkers and cross-dressers and plain old college kids in Greenwich Village and sometimes, if we got a parking spot, would hop out and take a walk around. Other times, we’d head down to Chinatown or Little Italy for Chinese food or some Italian pastries at Ferrarra’s. (I remember a few years ago taking a $14 round trip cab ride from midtown to Little Italy, just to pick up a box of pastries — they’re that good.) We’d drive down past the Municipal Building, where I worked for several years, and City Hall. Then we’d drive up the east side on the FDR drive, past the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges. The lights of the city’s skyscrapers would be to our left as we headed north while the darkness of the East River was to our right. Past the Queensboro Bridge (immortalized by it’s other name in the Simon and Garfunkel song) and the tramway to Roosevelt Island. Onto the Harlem River Drive, past Yankee Stadium, and up the ramp to the Cross Bronx Expressway. Then a short drive over the George Washington Bridge and into the darkness of the Palisades Parkway to the north. A while later, we’d be home again, full of memories, Chinese food, or pastries — more likely a combination of these. Although we lived on a quiet, tree-lined street in a town so small that few people knew of its existence — Harrington Park — we were only 26 miles from midtown Manhattan. Two hours was often enough time to have a brief evening out in the big city.

Last night, in Wickenburg, reminded me of an early or late summer night in New Jersey. The weather was about the same. But that’s where the similarities end.

Wickenburg, you see, is an island surrounded by desert. When you drive away from Wickenburg at night, you drive into darkness. Eventually, that darkness is replaced with another town or more. Go southeast and you’ll pass through Morristown, Circle City, and Wittman, none of which are very impressive day or night before you finally get to Surprise, which is growing rapidly, spreading northward at an alarming rate. That’s where you’ll find the bright lights of the strip malls and big box stores and parking lots. Go west and you’ll eventually pass through Aquila, Wenden, Salome, Hope, and Brenda before finally hitting I-10. These tiny communities make Wickenburg seem like a thriving metropolis. Go north and you’ll pass through Congress, Yarnell, and Peeples Valley on your way to distance Prescott, which is a thriving metropolis.

And Phoenix, to the southeast, is not only distant, but it’s a poor substitute for New York.

So I guess it’s safe to say that Wickenburg just isn’t a good starting point to take an evening drive. It’s an island that is surrounded by distance rather than water.

All this passed through my mind in the distance between Double D and Safeway on West Wickenburg Way. So we just went home.

If anyone knows of a place to get good Italian pastries — and I mean real Italian pastries — in the Phoenix area, please let me know. It might be worth a drive just to check it out.

Real Estate Wheelings and Dealings

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I listen to an offer from a real estate investor and learn a lot about buying and selling real estate.

Back when I first started making real money as a writer, I invested in real estate. The first year, I bought a two bedroom condo in town as a rental. The second year, I bought a property that included a 2 bedroom/2 bath house and a small apartment building with four furnished studio apartment units. The third year, I realized that there was far more fun things to do with my money so I bought a helicopter.

I still own all that real estate, although I don’t really want to. I hate being a landlord. I hate dealing with tenants and cleaning up after them. I hate showing the apartments. I hate evicting tenants who can’t seem to pay on time. I just hate the whole thing.

I moved my office into the condo about three years ago. It’s more space than I need, but at least I don’t have to deal with tenants there anymore.

A few years ago, I half-heartedly put the five-plex on the market. I gave the Realtor I listed with strict instructions: only show the place to qualified buyers. Give the tenants at least 24 hours notice and get their permission before showing their units. Unfortunately, a local Realtor who was too lazy to show the property properly gave the address to a potential buyer. The buyer didn’t do just a drive by. He drove in. And he started knocking on doors. When one of my tenants told me about this, I wigged out and took the property off the market.

This year, I needed to upgrade my helicopter from a 2-place Robinson R22 to a 4-place Robinson R44. To do this, I needed to either take out a huge aircraft loan or pull equity out of some real estate. So I put the five-plex back on the market.

It’s been shown a few times and I’ve gotten some low offers. One of the potential buyers was extremely obnoxious about it. He didn’t want the house. He just wanted the four-plex. So he offered an insultingly low amount. I didn’t even bother to counter.

I arranged helicopter financing another way, so I’m not desperate to make the sale. But I do want to sell. And I’d like to sell sometime before next summer.

The other day, my Realtor (a different one from last time) called to ask if I’d be interested in carrying 20% on the property. I thought about it a while and said yes. And yesterday, I met with someone who made me an official offer, one that shows exactly how much wheeling and dealing someone can do in the world of real estate.

This buyer wanted me to finance the 25% the lender would normally require him to come up with as a down payment. He wanted to pay me only 5% on the amount I’d carry (when his lender was getting 6.5%) and amortize that over 30 years, with a balloon payment in 3 years. He wanted me to pay all closing costs. He was, in essence, trying to buy a property listed for $324,000 for only $290,000 without any out-of-pocket costs. I’d basically be financing part of his investment, with a high-risk loan that had little collateral.

The deal got weirder as the meeting progressed. He said he worked very closely with his lender and appraiser and could get the property appraised for just about anything he needed it to. So to make the numbers work, he could pay up to $350,000 for the property. I’d still have to carry 25% — which was now over $80,000 — and I’d also have to give him a “seller rebate” of $20,000 so he could make some improvements on the property. So not only am I financing the investment for him, but I’m making the improvements, too. And hanging a lot of money out there for possible loss.

I came to the meeting prepared with a spreadsheet. I punched the numbers in and saw that it was possible for it to work. On paper (or pixels). But was I willing to risk $80,000+ on someone who wasn’t willing to put up any of his own money? No way!

This morning, I came up with a counteroffer that I know he’ll turn down. I e-mailed it to my Realtor. Hopefully, this buyer will just go away. My head is still spinning from his scheme.

But I did learn one thing: I can separate the two properties and refinance them with two loans. I can pull my equity out and be in a good position to sell either property on its own. That’s something I hadn’t thought about going into this and it’s a damn good idea.

SpongeBob SquarePants and Other Highlights of the Week

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A review of a somewhat trying week.

It’s Friday at about 5 AM. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop and cup of coffee. Alex, my parrot, is having his breakfast atop his cage. He’s quiet right now, except for the sound of his beak hitting the ceramic bowl each time he picks out a piece of scrambled egg and his tiny footsteps as he moves into his favorite eating position at the edge of the cage top where he can watch me. The refrigerator is humming and the heat is on. Other than that, and the sound of the laptops keys as I hit them, the house is completely quiet.

The last of our house guests are gone. They left on Wednesday morning. I feel an incredible amount of freedom. “Free at last” was the way Mike put it when he got home on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t think we’ll have back-to-back house guest groups again.

The refrigerator has just clicked off.

Last Friday at this time, I was preparing for the first day’s breakfast for the second group of house guests, Mike’s mom and her friend Mildred. I wake up very early and need coffee quite soon after getting out of bed. Once I’m awake and in the kitchen, Alex is awake. And once Alex is awake, he’s talking and whistling just like any self-respecting parrot. At least he doesn’t scream. But some of those whistles can be pretty bad. If I can put his breakfast in front of him quickly, I can minimize the noise, since he’s generally very quiet while eating. But sometimes he just doesn’t want to come out of his cage and other times he eats quickly to get on with the noisier part of his morning routine. As a result, any house guest who is not deaf is likely to wake up not long after we do. Then he or she wanders into the kitchen and comments about how early it is. This week, I prepared the coffee pot for my guests when I made my own coffee. They drink decaf, I don’t. I have a Black and Decker Cup at a Time coffee maker which brews one cup of coffee at a time, right into the serving cup. This is my third one; I’ve had one for about fifteen years now. Mike doesn’t usually drink coffee in the morning and I won’t drink coffee unless it’s very fresh. I mean, it has to be brewed just before I drink it. (That’s the reason I’m willing to pay $3 for a latte; at least it’s made fresh for me.) I also have a 12-cup Braun coffee maker. That’s what I fixed up for Julia and Mildred every morning. As soon as one of them appeared — normally Julia; Mildred is hard of hearing so she doesn’t hear Alex in the morning — I turned on the pot and let it do its thing. Whether they finished the eight cups I brewed them every morning was up to them. (Of course, 8 coffee pot cups only equals 4 real cups.)

Julia & Mildred at the Grand CanyonI went to work on Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I didn’t spend much time with this group of house guests. That was probably a pretty good idea, since I was already suffering from house guest burnout. Mike took them to the Grand Canyon on Sunday, since Mildred had never seen it before. Mildred, like Julia, is in her 80s and was born and raised in New York. They live in the same apartment building in Queens, with lovely views of the Throgs Neck Bridge. They’re New Yorkers, through and through. (Who else would arrive with two dozen real bagels, lox, cream cheese, and white fish?) This trip to the west was a real eye-opener for Mildred.

She told me that she wanted to see the Grand Canyon because of something her grandson had said. He told her that he’d had all kinds of religious training, but he’d always had small doubts about the existence of God. But when he went to the Grand Canyon, he said he knew there had to be a God because there was no other way something that beautiful could exist.

Mike had reservations for two rooms on the rim for Sunday night, so that’s when they had to go. But on Sunday morning, when they left, snow showers were forecasted for that day with snow predicted for Monday. Temperatures were in the low thirties during the day. Julia didn’t want to go, but left it up to Mildred.

“We’ll give you some time to think about it,” Mike said to her on Sunday morning.

“How much time?” Mildred wanted to know.

“How much do you need?”

“Twelve minutes.”

“Okay, let us know in twelve minutes.”

“I want to go,” she immediately replied.

So they went. We advised them to bring warm clothing, but when it didn’t seem as if what they’d packed was warm enough, Mike packed a few extra coats, hats, and pairs of socks. I watched them drive away, knowing I had just over 24 hours to myself.

Unfortunately, I really needed that time off. Earlier in the week, I’d stepped foot into my rental house to learn that the previous tenant and her son had trashed the place. The carpet, which was soiled throughout with dog poop and urine, right down to the padding, had to be replaced. The walls had to be repainted. Celia, my cleaning person, had spent about six hours trying to clean the kitchen and needed another day to finish the house. I’d spent about two hours with her that Thursday, just dumping trash left in the kitchen and throughout the house. The painter’s prep guy had been there on Friday, taking down the window coverings and prepping walls and window sills. I’d stopped by that day with two friends of mine to remove the 1,100 AOL CD ROM discs the tenant’s brat had thumb-tacked to the ceiling.

I spent Sunday just lazing around the house. I read, I even watched a few movies on TV. The weather was rainy and not very pleasant. I didn’t really want to be outside anyway. And I certainly didn’t want to go into the house on Jackson Street.

On Monday morning, I went to work. I’m between books right now. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a book lined up yet, though. I actually have two of them. One is a revision of my Mac OS X book for the next version, called Tiger. The other is a revision of my QuickBooks for Mac book. I’m under contract for one book and will soon be under contract for the second. Both books are for Peachpit Press. But I’m also working with an eBook publisher to do a pair of PDF format books for a new eBook imprint called SpiderWorks. And I usually spend the time between books writing articles for Informit.com and FileMaker Advisor.

That’s not all that’s on my plate. I’m also doing work for Flying M Air, my helicopter tour company. I’m waiting for the delivery of my Robinson Raven II helicopter. I got the bad news on Monday: the helicopter’s delivery date had been pushed back three weeks and would not be until the first week in January. That meant I’d have to cancel the gig I’d tentatively scheduled for December 31 at Stanton. One of the things I needed to do for Flying M Air was line up other flying gigs. There’s the potential to make a lot of money at these gigs and I’m trying to schedule at least two a month to cover the cost of the helicopter. Lining up gigs meant finding events that helicopter rides would work at, contacting the organizers, and getting permission to fly. I had about a 50% acceptance rate among those people who responded, but not everyone could be contacted by e-mail. I also needed to finish up the paperwork for my Single Pilot Part 135 certificate. This would enable me to offer air taxi services, which is not possible under my current Part 91 status. (This is all FAA stuff.) Finally, I needed to get permission from the BLM and state land offices to land my helicopter at the remote locations I wanted to fly passengers to.

So I had a lot to do on Monday and for the rest of the week. But I was in full procrastination mode. I get like that sometimes. I keep busy doing things that need to be done, but I somehow avoid doing the high priority things. For example, I really needed to get together an outline for my Mac OS X book. I had the beta software installed and had spent some time looking at it. But it wasn’t until Wednesday that I finally submitted an outline. Apparently, my editor is also in procrastination mode, because although he promised to get back to me the next day with comments, I never heard from him.

The whole week went like that at work, keeping busy from the time I arrived — normally around 7 AM — to the time I left — about 2 to 3 PM. In between, I made lots of trips to Jackson Street, to check on the painters, let in the carpet guys, and measure the place. Measuring was for a special project. I’d gotten a phone call from someone at ADOT (Arizona Department of Transportation). She was looking for unfurnished rentals for some of the people who’d be working on the bypass project in Wickenburg over the coming years. Holy cow! Is it possible that I could get the place rented that quickly? When she asked for square feet, I made a special trip to measure the place for her. I now know it’s 1,400 square feet. I also measured the condo my office is in. Heck, if they’re willing to rent that, too, I’ll move out into one of the studio apartments I own (something I’ve been considering for a while) and let them have it. It would be nice to get some regular income from that place again.

I also had to begin the process that would take my former tenant to small claims court in an attempt to get back some of the $4,300 I spent to restore the house to rentable condition. The limit for small claims court is $2,500 and I’m going for all of it. It cost me $2,200 to replace the carpet she destroyed and the back bedroom definitely required professional repainting. I took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, the painters tore out the carpet (because of the smell) before they painted, so I didn’t get as many photos of the carpet while still on the floor as I would have liked. No matter. My friends John and Lorna helped me photograph carpet sections, including the underside, outside on the driveway. I printed the photos yesterday and they do a fine job of documenting the damage. I also took a few carpet sections that I could display in court. I wonder if the judge will want to sniff them.

The rental house is coming along nicely. The carpet guys, who were supposed to come next Tuesday, had a cancellation and were able to do the job yesterday. They very kindly used some vinyl tile leftover from another job to retile the front bathroom, charging me just $30 for labor. I can’t blame the damage there on the tenant — it was already pretty worn — but it’s nice to get the place fixed up a bit more. At this point, I’ve already replaced all of the floor covering in the house and I’ve only owned it for four years. I replaced the back bedroom’s floor covering twice. Today’s the day when I write the big checks to pay for all of this work.

Meanwhile, that entire property is up for sale. It includes the house and four studio apartments in a separate building. The studios are fully furnished and quite nice. The house will be wonderful when it’s done. There’s a potential buyer lined up, and he’ll be presenting a formal offer today. But I already know that his price is low and he wants me to finance part of the purchase. I’m probably going to have to say no. When I’m finished typing this, I’ll crunch some numbers to see what I need in case I need to present a counter-offer.

Plan B is already in the works. I’m getting a separate water and gas meter for the house. If the rental with ADOT falls through, I’ll officially split the house property from the apartment property — they’re already on two separate tax parcels. I’ll sell the house and use the money from that transaction to pay off the mortgage on the whole property. Then I’ll move my office into Apartment #4, which is bright and airy and has excellent views of the mountains. I’ll fix up the condo and sell that. That won’t get me as much money as the sale of the house and apartments, but I will own the apartments free and clear. Income on the three remaining apartments is $1200/month. Expenses are less than $400/month. So that’s a nice little income each month. And if I need cash, I can always refinance the apartments and take out a loan on it.

So that gives you an idea of what’s going through my mind. A lot. Too much, maybe.

Last night, we went out to dinner at the Mecca with John and Lorna. I’m getting to be a regular at the Mecca. They make excellent margaritas. Afterwards, we talked John and Lorna into coming to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, which was playing at Wickenburg’s oneplex next door. I’d heard good reviews about the movie on NPR. But those reviewers must either have kids or undeveloped brains. The movie did have a few jokes that only an adult could pick up, but there weren’t enough of them to sustain me. Seeing a movie like that makes me glad I don’t have kids. Thank heavens the movie was short. Fortunately, National Treasure starts today and I think that’ll be a bit more enjoyable for the over-six crowd.

So it’s Friday morning, at about 6 AM. Alex is in full talking mode. “Hey now!” That’s his favorite new thing to say. And “Are you a duck?” Mike will be down shortly and Jack the Dog will be with him. Mike will have tea and Jack will eat up all the egg Alex dropped on the floor. I’ll put this away and clean up around Alex’s cage. In an hour, I’ll go to the office and try not to procrastinate any more than I already have this week. And, with luck, the meeting with the possible buyer will go well and I’ll sell my rental property once and for all.

But at least the house guests are gone.