PhoneBoy Says

Not in Gig Harbor. This is right next to the Police Station in Gig Harbor.

It said 102 before I got the bright idea to take a picture!

One issue that comes up with this new house we're about to move in: our expenses are going way up. The new house costs more, thus it means a higher mortgage. And we're getting a much less favorable interest rate than we got on the current place. Times have changed.

The long and the short of it is that our family is going to need to make more money. I suspect that, over time, my "normal" job will increase my pay to the point where it will be a non-issue. However, that is long term. More money now will be really helpful in making the ends meet.

One of the things I've been looking at is finding a way to make my passion for writing actually pay.Sure, I run ads on phoneboy.com, but that only goes so far. At the moment, I'm trying to find blogs that will pay me to write for them. There are a couple of places that advertise these kinds of jobs. These kinds of jobs don't pay all that well, but then again I am not looking to make that much extra money. And I'm going to write anyway, so I might as well get paid something to do it.

Today, I applied at a couple of blogs. One of my applications got acknowledged, so at least I know they got it. The other, I did not get anything. We shall see if this pans out. Meanwhile, if you're aware of any cool blogging jobs that might bring in some extra cash, contact me or post them in the comments.

My dad asked me a question today: now that you're old (yes, I celebrated another year of not being dead today), what are your plans? I thought it might make a good blog post. But then I realized, I don't really know what my plans are. Oh sure, I have some vague ideas about what I'd like, but plans?

I certainly have some short term plans. They involve lots of stuff related to packing and moving into a new house. Getting the house all set up so we can live and I can work. But what are the long term plans? I don't really have any.

Planning is one of my weak points, namely I don't do it before I have to. It's the reason why I frequently end up taking the kids to the same places on the weekends. I don't think about it a day or two before. I'm lucky if I think about it the night before, but it's usually that morning when I start thinking WTF am I going to take the children today?

I think what it is for me is that once I have my mind set on doing something, I do it. This is handy when it's something entirely within my control, say eating nothing and drinking nothing but lemonade for 10 days, or writing a couple of books. When I don't do it, usually because of something outside my control prevents me from doing it, I don't handle it well.At all.

The fact of the matter is, most plans of any sort are going to involve things outside of my control. As such, I have a hard time getting to the point of making plans because it's difficult for me to think about planning when I see all these variables that I have no control over or can't reasonably constrain. So I don't plan, or I plan (purposefully) vaguely.

The "good" thing about planning this way is that things go sideways, I can get over it much quicker. Why? Because I didn't have a plan. Furthermore, I don't feel constrained by my "plan" if something different comes along. I can roll with the punches a lot easier.

So to answer dad's question, I have no plans. Other than to try and stay employed so I can support my family.

She's not going to be doing this much longer.

What board game are you really good at? Really bad at?

Monopoly is probably my favorite board game. I had a lot of practice playing it growing up. My mom was really good at it. I had to bone up on the game to get to the point where I could beat her and others.

I've trained Jaden to play it, and he can occasionally beat me. He's still got a ways to go. He's only 7. Because of the amount of time it takes, we don't play it as often as I'd like. Once Gracie gets a bit older, I could see it becoming a game for "family night" or something.

Pictures from Lake Morton