PBR Light

Apparently monday is blogging day. I guess it just works out that way.

I took the two Praxis II exams on Saturday morning. Mathematics: Content Knowledge and Mathematics: Proofs, Models and Problems. I should have studied a lot more. At least matrix algebra, I drew too many blanks there. I may have passed the Content Knowledge multiple choice one, most of what I knew I was very confident on. But there were about 6 questions or so out of 50 that were just a blind guess. Not very good. The other test which was 4 problems, write out your own solutions, I will definitely be taking again at some point. There was only one hour to complete it, if I had three I might have had a chance, but in one I was pretty hopeless.

It really won't take that much for me to do well, I've just got to give it a little extra effort. Hopefully when I start classes in a month I'll get some good study habits going. But I definitely squandered a good opportunity to knock a hurdle down, but it'll come around again.

Apparently people are starting to recognize my bicycle. At a light on Front and Market downtown coming home today, another cyclist asked me if I lived on 21st and Clinton, apparently he had seen me come home on Saturday after my test during the Clinton Street Fair. I really need to throw up a picture here.

I think this next weekend is the one to buy a car. I already emailed somebody selling a 91 Subaru wagon 5-speed for 800. Although if i could find a blue Camry wagon that would be perfect, since Isaac has a white one and Ginny has red. Ya gotta have something to aim for.

This is also the weekend of the garage sale at REI in downtown Portland. I think I'm going with Jake, and I swear it's only to try to find some sandals for Ginny.

I'm excited for the Ethnos camping trip in two weeks. And to go mountain biking with Troy. Church was indeed a bit of a rollercoaster yesterday as Dave said it would be, but God is clearly there and moving and I love it. I think it's going to be really good to have the gang together for the better part of the weekend.

I rode the bike and the MAX back from church last night. Took the opportunity to get $20 worth of groceries from the beaverton Trader Joes on the way to the station. But they have exactly zero bike racks. Weak sauce Joe. I was the only passenger on the train from beaverton until PGE park. I guess that's sunday night for ya. Also convenient was that the ticket stamper machine was out, so I didn't pay, and don't really feel bad about it in that situation. A little conflicted maybe, but they gotta keep their equipment up.

When I got home I decided I needed some PBR. So I walked over the the yuppie New Seasons and yes, they are not above selling PBR. It was about the only 12 pack for under 10 bucks. And as my cube-mate so very well put it today, PBR is for when you'd really like a beer, but also think that some water sounds good too. Some may laugh, but that's how I feel most of the time. And I like it.

On another note, it finally occurred to me the other day what I think is the simple difference between keeping a budget for personal finances and merely managing your cash flow. Because the two documents can look nearly identical. I feel the difference is that on a cash flow diagram, the column that shows the date each row is due is nearly as important to you as the dollar amount for each row. I don't think that a budget should exclude that information, it is helpful. But when you are budgeting, the exact date each monthly item is due isn't relevant. At that point you have a contingency and could pay all of the bills simultaneously. At least that is the difference as I have experienced it.

Because the two things could have the same information displayed in the same way. Only the maker knows what pieces are the most relevant. I had a "budget" neatly organized in Excel for a long time that in fact I treated as a cash flow diagram. The idea is that when one is earning more than they spend, or spending slower than you earn (however you like to think about it) you are able to have some leverage and budget what you want to spend more than react to what you are committed to.

This is what I was telling myself as I was having an argument with God about whether I was going to buy some Tillamook Ice Cream this evening from the yuppies, after I ignored the first couple answers of no, I heeded the final one that involved it costing more than 5 dollars. And thus I suceeded in spending slower than I earned for another evening. Besides, I had a box of funfetti in the cupboard that'd I'd forgotten about, and it was almost as good as CCCD, and a lot cheaper.

Traffic

Have I mentioned lately that I don't care what the price of gas is? I just thought you all would like to know, I consider it to be irrelevant information. There. I just had to get that out there before I remember that I have fill up Ginny's car and soon Dave's LRT on occasion. But the bike riding is fairly freeing in that respect.

I was talking to Bohnam before his party on Saturday about interactions between bikers and cars and pedestrians, some of which have been quite newsworthy lately, and I realized today I left out the most interesting interaction as far as I can tell. And that is biker to biker. I'm told that a full 10% of all commuters in my SE neighborhood do so by bicycle, and from my personal observations of the volume of bikes I believe it. And recently I've experienced something that sure didn't happen 11 years ago when I rode my bike to Benson everyday, and that's when two bikes meet at a four way stop and have to figure out who has the right of way. Cuz we all know how bikes dart in front of cars and don't stop, and threaten to run over pedestrians rather than lose our momentum.

What you may not realize is that on the few occasions where we do feel the need to come to a stop and yield to the car that clearly does have the right of way, the misguided doofus waves us on through quite often. What the crap. Make us play by the rules or don't. Cuz if I was going to go in front of you I sure as hell wasn't going to stop. Now that I have stopped, I don't mind at all you taking your turn in front of me. What I don't like is the extended time period right in front of a car that I know want to move in my path. The other morning I was going east on Glisan near 205, and this gal fully passed me and extended to a couple car lengths in front of me with her right blinker on, turned her car slightly as if to turn, and then stopped in the middle of traffic in an attempt to let me back by. Nope, not going to happen sister, I'm not getting out in front of you, you clearly don't have good judgment. I stopped and put my feet on the ground until she went by. So for those of you who are frustrated with idiot bikers, you are probably mostly justified. But don't be overly nice to us, because that just makes the problem worse.

Anyway, back to the bike on bike bit. I haven't really come close to hitting another bike yet, but it is just fascinating to sort the intersection out, and as the number of bikes increase we'll have to figure things out a little better. I think that the bike vs. bike scenario will be the one that gets it though to the teachable people how to yield and be courteous.

What's also fun is the unofficial races. Now when you're on the road in the car sometimes you get in situation where you are pacing someone, and most often it comes down to who wants to break the law the most to finish in front. Not so much on the bike. It is quite literally who is bigger and stronger and has the nicer bike. My bike is kinda slow and I often am carrying some extra weight in my kitty litter buckets. ( I should post a pic, but not tonight) But in the heat of the moment that is no excuse, it is a matter of who wills to pedal harder, and I love it. Coming up Interstate or the Esplanade in particular, I've had some good matches. And I usually lose, sometimes to a girl even, and it makes me want a faster bike. And maybe someday, but this one was free and it's working great, and I am very thankful. Bigger quads don't necessarily have a price tag attached to them, and I want them too.

And while I'm on the subject of transporation, lets talk about freeway merging habits. Oregonians are stupid. Now, I hate it as much as you do when some jerkoff passes on the right in a lane that's about to end, such as on I-5 south at the Rose quarter, or I-5 North coming up the hill out of Tigard, among countless other locations. It really gets my blood boiling at the audacity and lack of common courtesy, and even more so because I realize that they are driving rationally and I don't have the balls to.

Lets think about this. The freeway is only so wide, as we all know. The more lanes there are, the more cars can travel. At some point in the above described scenario, an "extra" lane on the right terminates. Cars in that lane will have to merge to the left. If they merge at the last possible moment, the freeway is effectively wider and can therefore carry more cars more effectively. By merging before the last possible moment, especially in scenarios where traffic is nearly stopped anyway, you are effectively creating a smaller freeway and more of a bottleneck. How early should we merge over, Mr. Oreslownian driver? 1/4 mile? 1/2 mile? 3 miles? By doing so you do reducing the size of the freeway, not efficiently make use of the full road available to you, and you aggravate traffic problems. It would seem that the turd passing on the right is aggravating traffic problems, but if everyone behaved that way, traffic would move more smoothly. Be the change you want to see. Instead of raising taxes to widen the freeways, use all of the ones we've got first.

you can get anything you want, at Alice's Resturant...

Well my short lived love affair with that house is over. It was a good time though. God will have something better for me when it's time. And it might not be time for 5 years. There's also a few things to be said for renting from your friends; its usually a little cheaper, builds community, and it kinda insulates that community from financial disaster should the economy really turn sour. And I'm at peace with that.

Climbed Mt. Hood over the weekend. It was about the best possible day for it. Cold enough the night before that the snow was firm going up, and sunny and clear all day with almost zero wind, even on top there was no wind. It was awesome. My body felt pretty good the whole climb, I had trouble keeping my head in it the whole time, and I sure hurt right now, but it was worth it. Hopefully I'll get on Adams or a Sister later this summer as well. The pics don't seem to be uploading, but they're on my facebook.

The job continues to go well, I guess I get to be responsible for the building envelope rehabs going on in the Beaverton School District and Legacy health systems eventually. I like my co-workers, the guy that I share the conference room with currently and I a cappella country music together probably a little too frequently, but it's a good time.

My brother/roommate and I are getting along a whole lot better lately. We had about our third or fourth emotional chat a few weeks back, but the last one didn't have anger as one of the participating emotions, and we may have come to a better understanding of each other. And when I say emotional, I mostly mean me, David is pretty good at keeping his composure. In any event, I am much happier sharing space and trying to help him out these days, and I think he's a little more relaxed too, so it seems like a good deal.

I'm going to have to buy a car here pretty soon, as soon as I get a couple of paychecks under me. Late 80's early 90's toyota wagon here I come all over again. I just don't see how the combination of fuel economy, cargo/person capacity, reliability and ultimate coolness can be beat for the price. We got Ginny's for 1500 from a starting point of 2200, and I'm pretty much looking to duplicate that exact transaction. I might even take the jaguar off of Thor and put it on the hood of whatever I end up getting.

But overall God is really looking after me. My job, my friends telling me exactly what I don't want to hear regarding real estate, reconciling with David, being able to ride my bike to work, providing that bike for free from Ginny' dad in Cali, my relationship with Ginny, where I'm able to live, selling my truck the 1st day, getting me into grad school, Jake giving me Ramsey's book at the right time, safety on the mountain, health insurance that started immediately, and I know there's a lot more. The point is I can clearly see God's hand moving things around in my life right now. And I don't feel like I have that firm of a grasp on anything, I can envision the future in many different ways and I trust that it will work out somehow, because Jesus loves me and is in control.

And there are a lot of things that I'm not doing right. I say dumb things and waste most of my free time. But it's goina work out. I keep trying to shop for a new laptop and look for a car, but especially with the car there just aren't the deals out there that I'm looking for right now. And its because it isn't the right time because I don't have the cash. When I do, I know the right one will appear, and I'm going to enjoy going to buy it, flashing the benjamins and giving the dude the Tim Duncan stare until he knocks the price down. Or I'll keep riding the bike. And if I didn't have to have my own rig for work I wouldn't get one, but they have a big enough empty parking lot I'm just going to leave it there.

I did find a good deal on a computer, but there will be a better one. I wrote it down so that I can confirm that conviction in about a month. I'm taking out a 10k stafford loan for this term of school, tuition is a little over 4k, I'll spend around 600 on a lappy, I'm sure they'll be some books or other random crap that I'll need, and then I'll figure out that I don't need to take out that much for next term. I'm already beginning to doubt (with some helpful prodding) the logic of using that money to pay down credit cards, though there is about 2k of my 14k mess that was tuition from the class I took previously and tests I've paid for that I will apply to a card without hesitation. Which leaves about 3k of too much loan I suppose, but I think that's OK for the first term until unknowns are discovered.

I wish I had something more to show for a 14k mess, either in possessions or vices, but I just don't. As if gambling it away or something would be more respectable than buying food and gasoline in excess. I do have a full compliment of camping/hiking gear I suppose. It's very tempting to look at others with nifty electronics that they've seemingly paid for while not really making substantially more money than I and wondering what the heck why can't I have just a little bit of the peril. But comparisons just aren't a healthy road to go down, and I have to remind myself of this often. I do think my main problem was the truck, sucking the life and flexibility out of my checkbook just a little bit faster than I could deal with. The creditors all love me though, I'm about their favorite person in the world. People that carry large balances and have never missed a payment on anything. Can it get any better than that from a CC' perspective? Damn them and damn me for buying into the hype.

But things are going well. Lord willing and we live, at the current pace I'll be outta the hole in less than a year, maybe nine months. And that's without any boost from Stafford money, but it's also without buying a car. So as long as those things stay in balance, I continue to have unprecedented purchasing patience, and everyone around me keeps telling me no to all of my bright ideas, things are going to go very well.

I think I'm reaching a point where I may be able to break away from blowing too many hours on the internets. (I say as I write another manifesto :) I'm getting bored of espn and drudge a lot more quickly now, if I can just break the habit of loading them in all of my downtime I may be free. I think it's similar to what happened to me and video games, they just became uninteresting after a certain point. Fantasy football will be starting in a couple months which will be a time drag, but I'm going to be so stinking busy with other stuff I will definitely have the opportunity to break away. And I think that if any of you read through my page history you would wonder how the heck I've remained interested in the same old junk for so long as well. Again, I almost wish there was a clear vice here to blame like porn so it would be easy to see what needs to be cut off. But I don't even know what I do for 3 hours, I just know its almost time for bed every time.

Yeah, that's about it. I haven't been paying too much attention to BO or JM lately, I will again when the time gets closer. But I promise to have many violent divisive opinions soon, I just need some time to recharge my batteries.

peace

Rumplestiltzskin

I guess I haven't really sat down in this room for a bit. The office job continues to be just what I need right now. I gotta be a little more careful now I suppose because somebody will probably find this if I don't want them too, but I do think it is going to be the perfect job for me. I'm going to learn a lot about how to seal a building properly from the weather, which is an art that has been lost or value engineered out of construction over the last few decades.

But it still is (primarily) an office job, and as such it won't be that hard to leave when I'm finishing up at Concordia in about 19 months and need to student teach. At least that's the plan, which never seem to work out as they are planned, but I feel like I've got a few good options going. This job, teaching license in the future, and I will still have my contractor's license. So any of those three plus whatever life throws my way, I should be alright. I don't presume to know what will happen.

I met up with a realtor and looked at a house on Saturday, the one linked to in previous house posting. 4736 N Haight, ML#8046334. It is in fact the house and location of my dreams. For about the right asking price, $213k. And I crunched the numbers, and with the help/cosigning/$ that Fleming would offer me if I asked, I could pull it off right now. But it would be pretty ugly, a risk that I'm not even comfortable with, and I think that's saying a lot. Like butter spread over too much bread. Now if I wait until about January, my financial picture is going to be a lot simpler. I would still be talking about trying for an FHA loan with only 3% down, and things would certainly still be quite tight, but I think that then it will be a much better risk. And I'm still fairly Hazardous.

But this property was IT. It might still even be around in six months, but I won't be holding my breath. All the electrical (knob and tube) and probably the plumbing has to be ripped out and replaced, it needs a furnace and likely a roof, the basement might be a bit damp, the kitchen is original 1906, the garage is boarded shut and needs to be knocked down, the windows are rippled single pane and the whole thing isn't really insulated at all. The asbestos siding is actually in awesome shape and would be at the very bottom of the list of things to fix, but it is asbestos. All of which is why it might still be around.

It will likely be gone because I'm not the only one who can see the beautiful fir floors and ten foot vaulted ceilings throughout the entire 1000sf first floor. Or the potential to rip out one of the bedrooms and put in stairs to the huge empty attic space and add about 650sf worth of bedrooms, bathroom(s?), windows and skylights. Or the ability to finish and configure the basement space into about a 700 sf full apartment with separate outside rear entrance. And the golden location in NoPo near the booming Mississippi district, 12 blocks from the MAX and 10 from I-5.

I would imagine if I were to get in there tomorrow it would take me 3-5 years of evenings and weekends to get it to where it can be. But that would be a money maker, a 2600 sf property with easily 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, separate rentable space downstairs or up, wide open floor plan on the main floor, and a good mixture of new and old everywhere. You can tell I'm a little excited. But if this isn't the one for me there will be something better, I have felt a significant peace difference in my heart in the moments when I have thought about waiting vs. those of diving in right now. But if one of you wants to buy it I would highly recommend it.

Lake Oswego is ghetto

And this is why those that are so inclined are justified in their contempt for the snobs in Lake Oswego. Like myself. Maybe it's just a few folks, but I think the attitude in the air there fosters garbage like this. Let them play ball.