4am comes early, 4am to be precise. This morning I awoke to
another Minnesota blizzard, and braved the storm to go to the gym as I normally
do on my days off. I’ve been a busy boy. I’m at the tail-end of a complete
financial makeover. When I got out of prison, I accumulated an incredible
amount of debt acquiring a lifetime of needs, and the debt continued to climb
when we bought a house. I’m talking about credit card debt; the worst kind. We
are at a point now where we no longer need the aid of high-interest cards to
obtain our livelihood, so I consolidated all of it into a much lower interest
rate loan. I pay about the same every month, but I pay a lot more toward the
actual debt.
I have also refinanced the minivan and the house into
lower-interest loans. It actually costs quite a bit to lower the payments, but
the numbers added up to significant savings over the terms of the loans. The
house was appraised at $10k over what it was last time, so we have more equity
right off the bat.
I said in a meeting the other night that I was astonished
that I was capable of even starting these tasks, let alone credit-worthy. A lot
has changed over the past 5+ years, and I am happy to settle into this cozy
life for a while before I try the next big thing.
I should mention that
I am still working on the basement wall, which has all of the drywall up and
the first coat of mud over the tape. If it weren’t for great neighbors, I would
have been lost in a mystery of angles, measurements, and electrical
maneuvering. I still don’t yet feel confident to tackle the upstairs bathroom,
but maybe when the basement is done, I’ll give the old tile a knock-down.
In unrelated news, I recently became a certified ServSafe
instructor and proctor. This means I can teach the course required for the
Minnesota Food Manager’s certificate, and administer the exam itself. I suppose
the exam is the requirement for the certificate, but I’m not using backspace
today, buddy. I have yet to make a certified proctologist joke at work or at
home, but it’s coming.
It’s a complicated process, the course management. I haven’t
fully figured it all out. There are hundreds of pages of instructions and
information that I haven’t quite assembled in my head yet, but I will keep
reading until I understand what to do and build confidence to schedule my first
class.
As I’ve written in previous posts, I am also a HACCP
manager, and I’m still in the works with the Health Department to get my first
plan approved. I’ve sent in my third revision, and I have high hopes that his
time I won’t have missed any scientific data. I have typed clostridium
botulinum so many times, I didn’t even have to right-click on a red underlined
mistype to get it right. I had to draw by hand something called a process flow
diagram because I am so computer program illiterate that I couldn’t figure out
how to make boxes with arrows with words in them. But hand-drawn is an
acceptable format for the health department, so I sent it. Maybe I’ll get a
gold star or other type of congratulatory sticker for my artwork. I can only
hope.
And finally, speaking of congratulations, I am sick of being
congratulated for things I haven’t done. Specifically, every day I receive an
email from PayPal that congratulates me for qualifying for a 2% back credit
card. Looking closer at the advertisement, I’m actually being congratulated for
the opportunity to apply. I’ve accomplished nothing, and I believe PayPal is diminishing
the effect of the word which should only be used to recognize bronze or higher Olympians.
Or, to take this to the extreme, here is a short list of tasks and
small accomplishments that I believe deserve a congratulations and a handshake:
1.
Getting a haircut
2.
Using a coupon
3.
Completing a one-season show
4.
Sneezing
5.
Eating most of a meal
6.
Reading this blog post
Congratulations everybody! You really should feel like a
winner.
