PhoneBoy Says

Last night I was out attempting to get the lawn mowed before daylight left for the day. I noticed there was a huge heavy metal concert going on behind my house. I couldn't see it because of the patch of wetlands, but presumably it was beyond that in a development somewhere.

I ended up talking to our neighbor--we haven't met them all yet, so it's always good to eventually do that. This was an unusual occurrence for this normally quiet neighborhood. Better yet, they stopped before it got too much later. Otherwise, some cops might have been called. Maybe they were, we'll never know.

These are ours, even though technically, they are in the neighbors yard.

In an effort to keep up with the increased expenses, I may be signing up to do yet more work. Right now, I am getting paid to blog a couple of places. It's not a lot, but it's, in theory, steady income that will help offset some of the increased expenses.

The biggest expense is the new mortgage. While I can't do much about that, the things we can eliminate once the old house sells are the old house mortgage and a bridge loan.

And therein lies the problem. Existing home sales are down--way down. It doesn't help there are plenty of choices on the market, both new and pre-owned homes. It also doesn't help that mortgage rates are increasing, despite the fact the Feds just lowered the prime rate.

Meanwhile, this new work is going to involve writing. This time, not blog posts, but technical material for books and similar venues. Will also get to review stuff as well. It should pay significantly better than the blogging, but will take more time and energy.

I am having problems keeping up with just the blogging right now, mostly because we are out of our regular routine. Moving has a way of throwing that completely out of whack. I'm looking forward to Jaden going back to school so we get some semblance of regularity with the routine. More immediately, I need to get back to the regularly scheduled day job work as well.

And maybe, just maybe, I need to sleep more. Hard to do when the only time I have to write is at night.

Zoe is small enough to sit in the window, but Toby's a little big for that. But he can still lay in the sun.

Growing in my yard in front of the fountain in the backyard.

We are on the way towards getting things back to normal around here, though clearly we have a ways to go. First trip to the grocery store this morning. Amazing how much stuff we needed to buy despite having brought food with us.

There's also a ton of stuff still at the old house. The wife and I went over and loaded up the minivan. There's plenty more after that. It's not act of loading up the car, it's the act of having to put it away on the other end that's not desirable. But at least we're doing it a bit at a time instead of all at ones.

We have a number of appointments tomorrow, which hopefully will also bring a faster Internet connection to the home. This Verizon EVDO card is not that fast in these parts.

Sorry for the lousy quality.

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