Category Archives: Challenges

Never Let Your Fear Decide Your Fate

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Going out on a limb. Taking a risk. Trying something new. Following your calling.

They all sound so romantic when you read about someone else doing it. When it is you, it takes a lot more guts. Britton and I really have a good life here in Colorado. We have relatively high paying and highly esteemed careers, we have a house, car, extra houses, extra cars, friends, family. We have time on our hands. We are fairly healthy, happy and numbingly comfortable.

So why leave it? Some people have asked, or rather, told us. Why leave a good thing? And logically, I really don’t know. I mean we have everything “they” tell you we should aspire to have. Everything the school system and the government and our parents and everyone with a stake in “us” turning out to be productive people said we should try to be. And we have. We are!

And yet.

And yet there is something that pulls me -us- out of the comfortable. That says that excitement will not be found in doing the usual. That growth and adventure do not lie in the routine. That there is more to life than being a cog in that same system that had a hand in making us one. But it is oh, so hard to let go once “you have it made”. Or at least it is for us.

We have some idea what our life will look like when we move to our property in Rincon, Puerto Rico. But not a whole lot. Anything is possible. It is much less predicable. Here in Greeley, on the other hand, I know exactly what to expect more or less. Little things change, but for the most part, life will go on exactly as it did last year and the year(s) before that and so on.

And so.

And so there is something inside of me that says: “There is more out there in the world for you to uncover. You have played this game, you have passed this level. You are ready for a new adventure.You have even set yourself up so that it is very unlikely to fail at the next game. Why are you scared?!”

This is a part of my lesson that I must do to learn: To never let my fear decide my fate.

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Snow Day Fun at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery

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Sunday was a very snowy day with about 8 inches of the cold white stuff falling. We had made plans with our friend Sean to go to Fort Collins to see the Museum of Discovery there. We weren’t sure if they would be open or not, but when we called and they said they were and Sean said he would drive in his 4×4 truck we said we were up for the adventure! And it was a bit of an adventure…

We actually got a flat tire on the way in! Thankfully we were all the way to Fort Collins and were stopped at a gas station because he noticed the tire pressure slowly draining away. So I went in the store and got a hot tea and Britton and Sean changed the tire out in the snow.

Then we arrived at the museum and had a lot of the fun. The main station we spent the most time at was the music one. It was fun playing with all their hands on exhibits and learning a little bit about different musical instruments and the science behind music.

Britton Bass
Britton and the upright bass

Cassie and Sean
Me and Sean at one of the music exhibits

They also had some nature science exhibits with an emphasis on the flora and fauna that is or was native to this area. Including this bison!

Buffalo Gal
Just feeding the (taxidermied) buffalo

Britton in the dome
Britton playing in the beaver house

It’s been a long time since we’ve gone to a museum but this one was fun and interactive. There were a lot of little kids around, but since we didn’t have any to watch ourselves, we got to act like them instead! 🙂

Afterward we went to our favorite restaurant in Fort Collins and I had the most delicious Harvest Squash Ravioli and we topped the night off by splitting some tiramisu. The roads were icy as we drove home, but we made it back just fine even with the new tire.

Overall it was a great Sunday snow day adventure!

 

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Taxes Hurt!

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We just talked with our accountant and he said that we are going to have to shell out quite the check to the Federal and State governments. This is mainly due to the sale of our rental house last May. While we still came out ahead, it is REALLY expensive to sell a house especially if it is not your primary residence. Ultimately where we thought we had a nice profit margin from the sale, we are only walking away with about 40% of that. Sixty cents of every dollar we made went to either tax, fixing it up for the FHA requirements or the realtors and closing costs! That is insane!

property-tax-bill

We were bracing for this tax bill ever since we sold it, but it still hurts when the time comes. I can see why the government does tax withholding on labor income because even though we paid way more than this amount throughout the whole year in automatic withdrawals (from our employment), it hurts a lot more to just write the big check all at once.

The thing about taxes is that it pays for many good and important things in society, but your contribution just feels like one of many and the roads and schools and things would still be there if you weren’t there (or hadn’t sold a house). Unlike a direct purchase where you get to use it right away and see its direct effects, taxes are much more ephemeral.

As it might be fun to get a little card in the mail like those programs in Africa where you feed a child and they send a note from a full-bellied child thanking you for your donation, it would be nice to get a thank you card that says “so and so street was built due to your generous tax contributions” or “this and that fire station” or “some war was paid for because of you” (well maybe not that one so much). But you get the idea.

Oh well, it’s a part of society and as they say there is nothing certain about life except death and taxes. In the mean time, I am dropping the Rincon progress vine down just a bit to adjust for this big bill. :-p We’ll make it up, we always do, it just hurts for a while. And we can’t lose the perspective that we still made money on the whole thing. Just not nearly as much as we thought.

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Drywall Free Interior Walls

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I was driving into work today while day dreaming about the house in Rincon.  I was thinking about what to do with the wood house and specifically about what to do about the interior walls.

The wall cavity between the outer siding and the inner panels/drywall seems to make a great place for bees, rats and bats to live.  This is a problem, because while I don’t have anything against any of those things in general, I don’t want them to live with me.

We know we are going to paint the inside of the house white to brighten it up.  The inside has never been painted and is all a natural wood color so it tends to be pretty dark.  I thought…”well who the hell needs drywall?  Or wood paneling?”.  Here in Colorado we need that space to insulate us from the outside which gets pretty darn cold.  The only purpose it really serves in our Rincon house is to cover up the studs and apparently make nice nests for  pests.

It is fairly hard to locate pictures of what I have in mind but I did find a few.  no drywall
Here is the idea

Basically remove the existing panels and drywall, clean everything out and paint.  Done.   It also provides shelf space.

Now, I am not sure we would do this in every room, but we don’t have to.  Some of the wood paneling can just be painted white and some can removed and the empty cavity painted.

Wall 2
Another example grabbed from Google images.

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