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You’re Gonna Die, Part 1

Life

Death of a surrealist soldier
Image by funadium via Flickr

If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today? How would you spend your last hours?  Would you go skydiving before the chance evaporated forever, or would you spend the day talking with your loved ones?

If you knew you would die in a month, what would you do?  Would you plan a trip to the one place in the world you’ve always wanted to see?  Would you look up all the friends you’ve been too busy to see?

What would you regret?  Is there something you have always wished you’d done, but have put off for some reason or another?  Do you want to write a novel, or backpack Europe, or watch a shuttle launch?   Far more people regret opportunities missed than those they’ve taken.  If there is something that you could do that would let you die happy, take steps today to make that a reality.  Remember that you are probably not going to die in a day or a month, but don’t let your entire life slip away without doing the things that matter most to you.

Our lives are short.  Far too short to waste time on the things that add no value.  Everything you do should advance your happiness, either short-term or long.  That doesn’t mean you should waste your life pursuing hedonism.  Lives need meaning.  Chase that meaning.

Find out what gives your life meaning.  What do you do that lets you go to bed with a smile on your face?  Those are the activities that you should maximize.  What is wasting your time?  You can probably shut off the news and never miss it.   It’s just too much information that doesn’t add anything to your life.   Does obsessing over Charlie Sheen’s latest antics ad any value to your life?   Take that time and write a screenplay, take a walk, smell a flower, hug your kids, anything that provides actual value for you.  Don’t waste your life on meaningless activities that do nothing more than kill time.  Time is the one thing we have that we will not get back.

Many people go to their deathbeds thinking, “I wish I had X.”  What is your X?  What would you wish you had done?

 

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The End of Litter

Finance, Life

In honor of Earth Day (a day late), I’m going to talk about ending litter.

kitty toilet training phase 3
Kryptonite?

Not the stuff you find on the street or throw from your car window.  I don’t mind that because, on a long enough timeline, everything is biodegradable.  Mother Nature is tougher than I am.  She can handle my McDonald’s wrappers.

No, I’m talking about the real scourge: cat litter.

We’ve got four of the things, and let me tell you, they make poop.  Everyday.  I keep telling my wife that they are going to continue making poop as long as we keep feeding them, but she continues to give them food.

For those of you who don’t know, most cats use a litter box, which is a fun pan full of a sand-like mixture of diatomaceous earth and bentonite clay, which trains your cat to use the neighbor kid’s sandbox if you let the little potsticker go outside.

Thanks for that.

So, everyday, our four cats crap in a couple of pans full of sand. Until the sand pans get too full of cat crap.  Then, they use the couch.

Who decided this was a good system?  Is it a conspiracy of Big Couch to force people to buy new furniture on a regular basis, the way Big Oil suppressed the 1000 mile-per-gallon carburetor, Big Pharma suppressed the cure-all hemlock pill, and Big Sword suppressed world peace during the Dark Ages?

There’s got to be a better way.

Right?

Enter the CitiKitty.  It’s the miracle cat potty trainer featured on The Shark Tank.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Move the litter box to the bathroom and start using flushable cat litter.
  2. Once the cats are comfortable with that change, put the CitiKitty on the toilet, under the ring and add litter.
  3. In a week or two, when all of the cats are comfortable with the setup, pop out the center ring of the CitiKitty.   This gets the cats used to doing their business over water.
  4. Every couple of weeks, pop out another ring until the cats are used to standing on the slippery ring and crapping directly into the water.  Praise the cat when it happens, because cats give a crap about your opinion.
  5. Throw the litter box away and brag to your friends.

Because I love testing things to make my life easier, and I hate cat crap, I gave the thing a try.

It worked great until step 3.  Apparently, pooping directly into water is similar to trapping a vampire with running water and causes the cats to panic and find somewhere else to poop, never to return to the bathroom.

There’s really nothing better than stumbling into the living room half asleep, turning on the news and flopping onto the couch, only to find a little lump, still warm, under your butt.

Don’t get me wrong, step 2 was a pain in the neck, too.  In order to use the toilet, you have to take the stinking sandbox off of the toilet without spilling litter all over the bathroom, find a place to set it that isn’t disgusting, do your business, put the litter pan back on the toilet, and wash your hands really hard.   If you’re a friend of my son’s sleeping over, it’s easier just to not notice the litter box sitting there and top it off in the middle of the night.

It’s a heck of an idea.  The best execution I’ve seen for getting a cat to crap in the toilet.

But it doesn’t frickin’ work.  If you’ve got a cat using the toilet, I’m guessing you had to sacrifice the neighbor kid to some kind of evil Lovecraftian entity to make it happen, because the CitiKitty didn’t do it.

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‘Mommy, I’m bored!’ Top 5 online activities for your kids

Finance

This is a guest post.

When nasty weather, a cold or the flu keeps kids indoors, plan ahead for those days with some great online activities kids will enjoy. Whether it is learning a new language with mom or dad, or practicing multiplication tables with an older sibling, kids can find plenty of cool things to do to kill their time. Here is a top five list of things your children can do while surfing the net.

Fun Languages
Learn Spanish, German, or French online with your kids. Give your children the gift of language with some key phrases and words to encourage brain activity in the language zones. Studies have shown that children exposed to multiple languages in their elementary years are more likely to learn a second language as adolescents and adults. Statistics indicate basic knowledge of a second language promotes better understanding of English grammar. The internet has some great resources for older children and parents wishing to improve their vocabulary knowledge and grammar skills. Word a day programs and test prep programs are often as entertaining for the parents as they are for the kids.

Arts and Crafts
There is a plethora of sites offering downloadable art project sheets, coloring pages, creative flash cards, art activity books and art games on the internet. Let the creative genius of your young artist shine through with how to draw tutorials and interactive art history sites. Don’t forget the musician in the house, as there are plenty of great music tutorials complete with video and audio for the young future soloist to watch. Many sites offer interesting and kid friendly “how to” videos for piano and vocals. Many sites offer inexpensive or free holiday cards the kids can create and print for one of a kind holiday or birthday gift giving. Crayola offers terrific downloadable coloring pages, games and activities.

More Academics with Math
Colorful math puzzles, homework practice sessions all online, downloadable speed tests and great interactive programs abound for the math whiz. Fun and entertaining, these online interactive programs are often free and downloadable in seconds. Your kids will never be bored again when accessing such interesting activities as tangrams, money games and creating their own math flash cards. Periodic tables and math and science in the kitchen bring fun and kid friendly experiments for rainy days and long summer vacations. Keep them interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) with how things work videos.

Early Learners Have Fun Too
There are wonderful sites that teach young children and early learners about counting, colors and shapes. Teach your children about telling time and other valuable skills. Learn about money, traffic safety and stranger danger in fun and engaging videos and interactive games. Young children are remarkably quick to pick up on new skills through technology. Parents can take advantage of wonderful online activities at many educational websites.

Games and More Games
There are free and not so free video and mobile device games for children of all ages. Fun and diverting puzzles, adventure and arcade, card and board games for younger to middle school aged children can be found just a few clicks away. Fun and challenging sports and trivia games for high school aged kids are often found at no charge.

Sell old CDs
Got some unused video games ready for the bin? A DVD that you kids received for Christmas and never watched? An old CD they don’t like to listen to anymore? Here it is another opportunity to spend some time online having fun. Websites such musicmagpie will allow your children to sell their unwanted CDs and make a bit of money out of it. Less clutter around the house, more fun for your kids. That sounds like a win-win.

Mortgage Race, Part 2

Finance

As I mentioned last month, Crystal and I are in a race to pay off our mortgages.  The loser(henceforth known as “Crystal”) has to visit the winner.   Now, since–judging by the temperature–Crystal lives in Hell, I think it would be good for her to visit in the winter.  There something about the idea of going ice fishing, staring at a hole in the ice while sitting on a 5 gallon bucket, cursing the day I was born.

Today, she threw down the gauntlet again.   She has apparently decided that, since her prerequisites are met, she’s going to win.  Sure, she’s closed on her house and built her savings back up to $20000, but it doesn’t matter.  I’ve sent a small army of arson-ninjas to keep her from getting ahead.    They are so small, they can only carry tiny matches and single drops of gasoline, so the damage they can do is tiny, but it will add up.   Just a word of advice:  if you hire an army of arson-ninjas, go for the upsell and get ninjas that are at least 2 feet tall.   Anything less is just inefficient.

When I announced the race last month, my mortgage balance was $26,266.40.  Today, it is $25,382.53.   In three days, there will be another $880 applied to the principal.

In February, our renters will move in and we’ll conservatively have another $650 to pay.  When that starts, our balance should be around $23,000.   Adding a portion of the rent payment should mean we pay off the house in May 2014.  However, when I bring in our side hustle money, that will bring us back to September 2013.

Crystal’s projected payoff is July 2013, so I’ll have to hustle.

 

Power

Finance, Life

At 8PM Friday night, our power went out.

We had 70 MPH straight-line winds and horizontal rain.  Trees came down all over the neighborhood.  Two houses down, 3 tree played dominoes, creaming the house, the fence, and two cars.

How did we do?

The skeleton I keep hanging in my tree lost its right shin-bone and we lost power.  So did 610,000 other people in the area.

It’s interesting to watch what happens when the power goes out.

I’m assuming every generator in the area sold out.   I don’t know, because I already had one.   I do know that most of the gas stations near me ran out of gas on Saturday.   Most places were out of ice, too.  Batteries were hard to scrounge.

The restaurants that either didn’t lose power or had backup generators were raking in money all weekend.  Sunday morning, McDonald’s had a line of cars backed up an entire block.

Our power came back on Monday night.  74 hours of living in the dark ages.  We had to read books on paper and cook all of our food on the grill.

We did okay.  A few years ago, when the power went out for a day, I bought a generator.  Saturday morning, I finally had a reason to take it out of the box.

The generator cost me $450.   Over the weekend, we put about $40 worth of gas into it.  That kept our refrigerator and freezer running, saving at least $5-600 worth of food.   Two neighbors filled up our available freezer space, so that’s another $200 worth of food that didn’t die.

That’s a $500 investment to save nearly $800 worth of food.

Pure win.

The generator also allowed us to keep a couple of fans running, which is great when the power goes out when it’s 90 degrees outside.  We also fired up the TV and DVD player at night to help the kids settle down for bed.  This is one time I was glad to have an older TV, because cheap generators don’t push out a clean electricity that you can safely use to run nice electronics.

We have a couple of backup batteries for our cell phones, so we got to stay in touch with the world.   We borrowed an outlet at our rental property to charge the batteries when they died.

We had about 5 gallons of gas on hand, which was convenient, but not enough.  I’m going to grow that.  A little fuel stabilizer and a couple of 5 gallon gas cans and we can be set for the next time gas runs out.

We cooked everything on the propane grill.  I keep two spare propane tanks on hand, but we didn’t use them.   Sunday night, my wife made spaghetti on the grill.  The hard part was keeping the noodle from falling through.   Nah, we threw the cast iron on the grill and cooked away.   Had pancakes and bacon made the same way on Sunday.

We had to buy more lanterns.  We had two nice big ones, but at one point, we had 9 people in our house.   That’s a lot of games, books, and bathroom breaks to coordinate with only two main lights.  This weekend did teach our daughters that the emergency flashlights are not toys.  Two of them had dead batteries that needed to be replaced.

Going out to dinner Monday evening was a treat.   We sat in a building with air-conditioning!

All said, we spent about $250 that we wouldn’t have if the power would have stayed on.   That’s $40 for gas, $80 for dinner(you try feeding a family of 5 for less than that at a restaurant that doesn’t have a drive-through) and $130 on new lanterns.  The lantern bill caught me by surprise, by a lot, but now we are set for next time.

How would you do without power for three days?

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Why Jodie Sweetin’s Latest Divorce Should Make You Start an Emergency Fund

Celebrities, Gossip

Jodie Sweetin, American actress; cropped versi...
Jodie Sweetin, American actress; cropped version of :Image:JodieSWEETin.jpg Taken March 7, 2007 at Rutgers University with Bethany S Murphy. Original file history Image:JodieSWEETin.jpg 00:12, 8 March 2007 . . Bethanyshondark (Talk (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There’s lots of people talking about former Full House star Jodie Sweetin these days. Recent news reports are telling us that this 31-year-old mother of two is now on her way to filing for her third divorce. Yep, that’s right. Divorce #3. Sweetin got married in 2012 to Morty Coyle, and reports say that she is already on her way to filing the legal documents necessary to ask for a separation, which she claims is due to irreconcilable differences.

It was in 2008 when Sweetin filed for divorce from husband number two, Cody Herpin. She blamed the breakup on an already rocky marriage, as well as extreme financial hardships. Sweetin’s first marriage to Shaun Holguin, who she married in 2002, ended when she entered a treatment center for her longtime drug abuse.

Divorce

Because the life of a celebrity is more often than not on display for the whole world to see, there tends to be a belief that famous people get divorced more often than us other ordinary everyday folks. Although this isn’t true, when the news is telling us about a celebrity who’s getting ready to file for their third divorce and they’re only in their early thirties, it tends to make people start thinking! Thinking about what they would do if they ended up being in a similar situation.

Emergency Fund

Although everyone of course intends to stay married forever once they exchange those sacred vows, reality tells as that of least half of all marriages are going to end in some type of separation or divorce. This is the reason why the vast majority of people who plan on getting married one day don’t even bother to plan for what they would do in case of a divorce. They simply don’t think that divorce is something that will happen to them, just everyone else.

Although Sweetin surely didn’t believe that she would have three failed marriages by the time she was 31, her failed marriage situation is helping other people by letting them understand how important it is to have in emergency fund in case such a situation comes up. An emergency fund is going to allow for a lot more freedom of choices if the instance of divorce does happen to come up.

Good to Know

Money struggles have been an issue in all three of Sweetin’s marriages, which is still the number one reason for divorce in America. It’s not hard to start an emergency fund and is something every newly married person should do asap. Well, waiting until they first return from their honeymoon might be a good idea.

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