Even now as I type this on a Friday afternoon, when I should be enjoying the start of the long Labor Day weekend, I feel the weight of one of my work deadlines calling out to me from next week. I can’t relax knowing the deadline is out there, already joining forces with my self-imposed home project deadlines and parenting responsibility deadlines. As soon as one deadline is met, another reveals itself. So that a never-ending to-do list constantly fills…
A few months ago my mother-in-law, hereafter known as la suegra, had a bit of a health scare. Luckily, everything turned out alright for her. It was more of a mobility issue; bad arthritis of the knees. My wife and I both work, and my suegra has been the foundation that allows both of us to work full time: she watches our children during the day. During her flare up she couldn’t watch our kids for a few weeks. It…
I get into work early. At 6 am each morning I’m the first one in our main office and will usually be the only one diligently typing away till around 7:45 or so when others begin to trickle in. This isn’t an abnormal time to start work in construction, but it’s extremely abnormal in the main office setting, where I notice people roll in around 8 or 9. I relish this alone quiet time in the office when I’m the…
While sitting in my backyard on an early Saturday morning reading the news, I came across another one of those silly happiest countries on earth reports. I find them silly anyway. Trying to determine an entire country’s happiness and then ranking them against one another seems to be a waste of time at first glance. But the silliness and the thought of hundreds, maybe thousands of hours spent making this report piqued my interest, and so I decided to dig…
Losing money isn’t fun. It’s even worse when you lose someone else’s money. When I look back over my 17-year career in construction, I think I may have lost somewhere in the range of $100k of my employer’s money by making mistakes or less than ideal decisions. It’s tough to think about it. Even writing it down right now and doing the math is difficult. I want to see myself as having gained all my professional experience and wisdom by…
When my construction project ended in March of 2020, my company sent me to another job that had a notorious reputation as being plagued with problem after problem, coupled with a very difficult owner. This job was running two years over the original completion date and nobody was happy about that. Right after getting word of where I was going, being curious about my new future, I looked up on our shared drive for recent photos and drawings of the…
May felt much like a blur, as I’m at a loss right now for any notable events that occurred. I’ve started refinishing my kitchen cabinets. We bought our return tickets from Portugal and an Airbnb. I’m very much in my grind at work, if it can be called a grind. More like a routine. I love routines and habits, especially when they make you a better person, but I also believe that too much routine is what makes life speed…
My youngest daughter is four and still a bit scared of the dark, so she likes to keep a stuffed unicorn named Corny Corny with her when it’s time for bed. It’s a big round tie-dye pillow like blob with a unicorn horn and two stiched on happy eyes (see featured image). Corny Corny gives her security when it’s time to go to bed because she can grasp onto this soft unicorn when she looks out at her shadow ridden…
Once a month or so my wife and I have a money meeting. We jokingly call this meeting our monthly “Coffee Chat”. These clandestine meetings take place in the morning and under the noses of our sleeping daughters. On any given Saturday morning, we’ll make our way downstairs, cat burglar-like, to the kitchen to plot our escape from the workforce. Ironically, we treat this meeting just like one we’d have at the corporate workplace we’re trying to get away from;…
We are hovering around our average monthly spending of 6K a month. Which I think is pretty good for a family of 4 in the hella expensive Bay Area. traffic Despite what the media has been saying about the San Francisco slash Silicon Valley exodus, the freeways are now packed again to pre-covid levels. The empty freeways of my dreams were nice while it lasted, but I’m back to morning and afternoon bumper to bumper traffic. The saving grace is…