just my thoughts

I’m going to not even mention that it’s been over two months since I’ve posted.

There’s been a lot going on, but I’m certain I won’t be able to remember most of it… I suppose that is why I should write more often, so there isn’t a huge gap in between where I forget crucial things that have happened.

I guess I’ll go in memory-based order, rather than chronological order, seeing as one thing I remember will probably make me think of something else that happened before that.

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I finally finished up healing from the most recent collar bone surgery, so the clavicle is all good to go according to the doctor. The muscles and surrounding area are still sore, and sensitive to touch, but the bone itself is apparently 100% now. It kinda blows my mind that somehow bone is stronger after it’s broken then heals, than before anything happens to it. I keep picturing myself running into a wall during racquetball or getting hit in a fun football game or something and the bone just shattering and my shoulder exploding from the pressure and the plate just screwing everything up.

Doesn’t sound too enjoyable, but I swear it’ll happen.

So seeing as I am all healed up, I went ahead and started negotiating with the Insurance company for the settlement money from the accident. This was a bit of a ‘back and forth’ between me and the lady, but after consulting Kristi’s bosses (at Denali Law in Wasilla) they basically said it probably wouldn’t be worth the extra money they’d be able to get out of the case for how much time and effort it would take, then I’d have to pay them, and it could drag out for months of course.

So I opted out of pursuing legal routes, and just did some personal negotiating with the insurance company myself. Ended up getting 25% more than the initial offer, (not going to say, so just deal with it lol) so I ended up happy. I will say I don’t have to worry about my school loan from Full Sail any longer, so that’s definitely a great freedom to get off my shoulders, and opens up other financial opportunities in my life.

The check took 3 weeks for the bank to let me actually use it because they had to do a bunch of checks and double checks to make sure it was valid and such, but it finally came through a few days ago, so I’m doing the basic smart investments like paying off the school loan, maxing out my 2009 contribution to my Roth IRA, and wiping my credit card balance.

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The money left over from the settlement is in a high yield savings account for the time being, but I’m looking around for more passive income sort of investments that I can see return from it greater than the stupid 1.85% from the Wells Fargo High Yield Savings Account, which is not even keeping up with inflation, so screw that I say.

I was talking to a buddy of mine, Robert (my racquetball doubles partner) who is a bit of an entrepreneur himself and is always looking for these kinds of opportunities, and he recommended I look into doing an owner-occupied 4plex living arrangement.

Basically you purchase a 4plex (anywhere from 250k+), and if you’re going to live in one of the apartments, you can buy the building for 3.5% as the down payment. So if you buy a 4plex that costs $250,000 - your down payment is only $8,750.00 And upon acquiring the 4plex, you get all the renters’ first and last month’s rent up front from the previous owner, so if your going rate is $1,200 for a 2BR apartment, that’s $3,600/month, x2, so that’s $7,200 right there back on your initial $8,750. So really you’re only out around $1,550. Your monthly taxes and insurance on the mortgage of the 4plex is only going to be around $3,000 - so you’re A) Living there for free, B) Profiting a clean $500-$1,000/month depending on what you charge and/or how nice you make the apartments!

Anyway, that seemed like pretty dang good logic and sense to me, so I have a meeting on Tuesday to get pre-approved for everything. I have a credit score of 707 so I don’t think there will be any problems. Needless to say it’s kinda cool and I’ll start looking around at the 4plexes in Anchorage next week hopefully.

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My one ’spoil myself’ purchase I’ve made with the settlement money was that I took the dive and got LASIK surgery Thursday. Last month I went in for the pre-op exam to see if I was even an eligible candidate to get it, and it turned out I have good thick corneas and the tests went well, so they scheduled me for July 16th. So that was this past Thursday, and it went well.

If you can imagine the part of Minority Report where Tom Cruise gets his eye surgery and has his eyeballs swapped out… it’s pretty much like that lol. I wasn’t nervous or anxious or anything at all, but as I was getting it done, it was actually really scary, just because it’s so surreal and kinda futuristic how you just stare at a blinking orange light while you’re laying down, and it gets closer and closer and you get your eye propped open with a clamp thing, then the doctor is basically painting on your eye with some goo that you don’t feel him doing because your eyeball is numb, then everything goes blurry, and he moves you to another machine, then you stare at a new little light that has 8 smaller lights spinning while it approaches your eyeball and suctions on, then you go blank like you just died or passed out, but you’re supposed to ‘keep staring forward’ except you have no frame of reference to know where the heck ‘forward’ is… then 10 seconds later he takes the clamp off your eye and you can close it finally and it feels crazzzyyyy.

It was really intense actually and it kinda scared me, because the whole time he’s like “JUST STARE AT THE BLINKING LIGHT… DON’T LOOK ABOVE IT, LOOK DIRECTLY AT IT” - and for whatever reason, like when you look at a star, you kinda don’t look DIRECTLY at it, but my eye wouldn’t go straight at it, and it was just… ah! Stressin’ me out.

So basically it wasn’t painful at all, just really uncomfortable, and just more strenuous than I’d imagined it would be.

So the rest of that day I had my eyes covered, and napped basically all evening, then the next day I woke up and had a post-op exam, went back in to Anchorage (mom driving me of course) and I passed the ‘hopefully you can see this good at this point’ test with flying colors - and can now, (only 3 days after the surgery) see basically as well as I could with my contacts before.

The surgery bruised my eyeballs, so there are patches of red here and there, but I’m sure that’ll heal soon, and at night time any lights like car lights or streetlights and such are pretty blurry and have little halos around them.

After about a week I should be in tip top shape and good to go I think, then fully healed within a couple weeks.

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So Ryan Lewis and Erika Dirks finally got married! Ahhh it’s about time Mr. and Mrs. Ryan Lewis haha. Well I had the honor of being a groomsman for the wedding, as well as being the pianist. I played “Only Hope” by Mandy Moore as she walked down the aisle, and “When You Wish Upon a Star” before she came down the aisle.

The wedding went absolutely perfect, thankfully I didn’t screw anything up while playing lol, and all was well. The reception was pretty much ridiculous, and humungous. A little weird for me and Rory Egelus because we didn’t really know anybody except Ryan and his cousin Cambria, so we just kinda did our own thing most the weekend when we couldn’t tag along with Ryan and Erika! Either way, the weekend was really great and a total blast, and good to see Ryan after so long, seeing as he’s down in Idaho and I never really get to see him.

Then a couple weeks ago they had an ‘Alaskan reception’ for all of Ryan’s friends up here who couldn’t make it down to the wedding, which is a great idea and I’m sure everyone up here appreciated it a lot.

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Also, Ryan Bender and his lady Krista got to come up last week for a while which was a blast too… gettin’ in some ping pong, racquetball, and we went up to Glitter Gulch to do an awesome class 3/4 white water rafting trip, then went to a dinner theater melodrama skit thing that night. It was a bit of a drive (3 hours each way), but it was a good day over all for sure. Kristi, myself, Ryan, Krista, and my parents went. The parents took motorcycles and tried to beat us up there, but Ryan’s parents’ Acura was a bit much for even the motorcycles lol.

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I need suggestions for where to go if I go somewhere either this winter or later this summer as a ‘go see people’ kind of trip, like I did a year and a half ago. I’m sure I’ll go to Orlando to see the gang there, and depending on when I go, I’d like to hit San Diego to see TJ, and I’m sure New York to see Ryan and Krista on their home turf. Kristi could maybe go see her friends in MN, then I’ll hop up there and meet her there, then we shoot over to New York and do it the right way with a little more time maybe, who knows.

So feel free to lay suggestions on me… hopefully getting off of work won’t be an issue, I guess that always just depends on how busy things are at work or what projects are underway.

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As an update of what sites I’ve made recently… not that much has been going on, however I did finish up two one-page sites for friends - for Robert, and his carpet cleaning business, www.warrenandsoncarpet.com - and for a family friend who’s starting up a local B&B here in Palmer, Fisher’s Sweet Spot B&B, www.fisherssweetspot.com.