Sorry.
Mea culpa.
Lo siento.
Scusate.
Mi dispiace.
I know that if I did not see a post from one of the bloggers who I follow for a few weeks, I would start to wonder.
Well, wonder no more.
Through a combination of too being too busy, enjoying my life a bit more and suffering with a hint of laziness, those reasons and others that I could come up with have combined to keep me from typing words into the blogosphere for the past two weeks or so.
Oh, well. It's not like this is the Huffington Post or I am supporting my family by the dollar of ad revenue that I generate in a month. Far from it.
This was originally going to be a play-by-play of what kept me from working on it at all last week, but that week quickly turned into a busy weekend, which ended four days ago and led to this week. Funny how that works.
At the risk of being like one of the "Dear Diary" entries that frustrated mommy bloggers do, consider this a "Dear Diary" entry by a middle aged, middle class guy who strives to be a mensch. Because I thought of so so many blog ideas in the past two weeks, I could not think of which one to start with thus will write this explanation/excuse post which will then free my mind to return to money-related themes, since that's what people want in general and expect from a dude who labels himself Money Mensch.
Snarky Mensch & Son
I took my son to see and hear Snarky Puppy at the Ravinia Festival last Monday, ten days ago. Thus started a long string of busy evenings and late nights that kept me from typing my thoughts for a week or so.
Ravinia is a good hour from our home and we made it in time to catch two horrible acts starting at about 6:30. The snarky dudes came on stage around 9 PM or so and played for a good hour and a half. They rocked or whatever it is that you call their music. Jazz/funk fusion is a better description.
Anyway, we enjoyed the show quite a bit and afterwards, my son purchased one of their CDs and we waited in line to meet them and get the band to sign it.
I could go on at length, but suffice it to say that they are a cool band and we got home around midnight on a work night for me, a night that my son slept in to Noon the next day.
But I do not think that either of us would have traded that outing together for more money or whatever. All told, the tickets, parking, food and drinks probably ran a bit over a hundred. I made him buy the CD with his own cash.
Bombs Away!
The following work day for me was brutal. Besides being fairly tired, I got chewed out by the big boss simply for relaying a financial incentive request from a developer whom I had met with the previous Friday. I did not relay the request on Monday because my Millennial boss was out that day and I did not want to explain it twice or go over his head.
Although the request was reasonable for a high-priced suburban Chicago community in 2018, I was still chewed out because we have no mechanism by which to convey any financial incentive of a significant amount and I had advocated that we "find a way." So much for encouraging one of their best and most hard-working employees.
Mind you, this developer/shopping center owner would purchase our oldest and most highly vacant shopping plaza for $2.1 million, and then would invest an additional $2 million in renovating the whole thing, and potentially an additional million bucks into dividing a 32,000 square foot former grocery space into three units, one of which would become a liquor store, another one becoming a restaurant and the third one becoming a child's play-type business with little rides.
Anyway, after defending my words and actions in the meeting with this developer and later explaining to my boss that this is an extremely typical scenario if a community wants its most blighted shopping center redeveloped, I made it through the rest of my day.
My wife and son no longer interested in watching fireworks, I took my daughter to the nearby town where we have viewed fireworks for the seventeen years that we have lived where we do.
It was a spectacular show, as always, but the gigantic pain in the ass was the neighbors down the block from us (thankfully about twelve houses away) who launch M-80 after M-80 from their driveway every single year. We should be used to it by now, but it was another late night following fireworks with my daughter and snuggling my little baby (our Morkie) who was scared by the explosions detonating throughout the night.
Beach Party
My daughter and I went to the beach in Evanston on the 4th. It was the first beach outing for either of us all year, and my brother and one of his daughters joined us. He was in town most of last week due to having court hearings two of the days and arbitration on another. He has three children and has taken to rotating which one he brings to town with him.
By the way, the Evanston beaches cost $8 if you are not a pass-holder. But it limits the riff-raff element.
Since my best friend still resides in Evanston, I texted him to let him know we would be at the beach, and he joined us too.
My best friend is a brilliant economist, although his profession is in IT for the biggest and most evil insurance provider in Illinois.
Worthy of a post or several posts on its own, he warned me about the housing crash for about two years prior to 2008. As I kept telling him about the houses that we wanted to move to going up and up and up in price, he kept telling me that a housing crash was imminent. I did not believe him.
There was a particular suburb that I wanted to move to and talked about for quite a few years. We had been outbid on a few houses in that community, and those houses escalated in price by a hundred grand while ours went up less than half that amount.
Anyway, he was obviously right. Although my own point is that, once you are a homeowner, the cost differential in the house that you want to purchase and the one that you would sell is more important than the prices, themselves.
Case in point: I would rather sell my house for $300K and then purchase a different one for $350K than sell my house for $250K and then purchase a different one for $325K. If you are going to take out a mortgage or even pay cash for the differential, you are better off moving to a home that costs fifty grand more rather than seventy-five more.
Regardless, he was right. The housing market crashed hard and that's another topic for another blog or book by another author. The Recession has been dissected, explained, studied and written about millions of times, just like the next one will be.
As they say, Economists Have Predicted Twenty Out of the Last Two Recessions.
I have been reading, hearing and thinking a lot about when the next Recession will hit, and many serious economists and other thinkers are predicting one in the next year or two. I cannot go a day or two without hearing and reading about it and more lately than the past few years.
Now that I am returning to the business of blogging and Tweeting, I will do an upcoming post on the three things that changed with my discussions with my buddy, but again that is another post. For future reference, the three are:
Mea culpa.
Lo siento.
Scusate.
Mi dispiace.
I know that if I did not see a post from one of the bloggers who I follow for a few weeks, I would start to wonder.
Well, wonder no more.
Through a combination of too being too busy, enjoying my life a bit more and suffering with a hint of laziness, those reasons and others that I could come up with have combined to keep me from typing words into the blogosphere for the past two weeks or so.
Oh, well. It's not like this is the Huffington Post or I am supporting my family by the dollar of ad revenue that I generate in a month. Far from it.
This was originally going to be a play-by-play of what kept me from working on it at all last week, but that week quickly turned into a busy weekend, which ended four days ago and led to this week. Funny how that works.
At the risk of being like one of the "Dear Diary" entries that frustrated mommy bloggers do, consider this a "Dear Diary" entry by a middle aged, middle class guy who strives to be a mensch. Because I thought of so so many blog ideas in the past two weeks, I could not think of which one to start with thus will write this explanation/excuse post which will then free my mind to return to money-related themes, since that's what people want in general and expect from a dude who labels himself Money Mensch.
Snarky Mensch & Son
I took my son to see and hear Snarky Puppy at the Ravinia Festival last Monday, ten days ago. Thus started a long string of busy evenings and late nights that kept me from typing my thoughts for a week or so.
Ravinia is a good hour from our home and we made it in time to catch two horrible acts starting at about 6:30. The snarky dudes came on stage around 9 PM or so and played for a good hour and a half. They rocked or whatever it is that you call their music. Jazz/funk fusion is a better description.
Anyway, we enjoyed the show quite a bit and afterwards, my son purchased one of their CDs and we waited in line to meet them and get the band to sign it.
I could go on at length, but suffice it to say that they are a cool band and we got home around midnight on a work night for me, a night that my son slept in to Noon the next day.
But I do not think that either of us would have traded that outing together for more money or whatever. All told, the tickets, parking, food and drinks probably ran a bit over a hundred. I made him buy the CD with his own cash.
Bombs Away!
The following work day for me was brutal. Besides being fairly tired, I got chewed out by the big boss simply for relaying a financial incentive request from a developer whom I had met with the previous Friday. I did not relay the request on Monday because my Millennial boss was out that day and I did not want to explain it twice or go over his head.
Although the request was reasonable for a high-priced suburban Chicago community in 2018, I was still chewed out because we have no mechanism by which to convey any financial incentive of a significant amount and I had advocated that we "find a way." So much for encouraging one of their best and most hard-working employees.
Mind you, this developer/shopping center owner would purchase our oldest and most highly vacant shopping plaza for $2.1 million, and then would invest an additional $2 million in renovating the whole thing, and potentially an additional million bucks into dividing a 32,000 square foot former grocery space into three units, one of which would become a liquor store, another one becoming a restaurant and the third one becoming a child's play-type business with little rides.
Anyway, after defending my words and actions in the meeting with this developer and later explaining to my boss that this is an extremely typical scenario if a community wants its most blighted shopping center redeveloped, I made it through the rest of my day.
My wife and son no longer interested in watching fireworks, I took my daughter to the nearby town where we have viewed fireworks for the seventeen years that we have lived where we do.
 |
| My daughter and I went to see fireworks on the third. |
Beach Party
My daughter and I went to the beach in Evanston on the 4th. It was the first beach outing for either of us all year, and my brother and one of his daughters joined us. He was in town most of last week due to having court hearings two of the days and arbitration on another. He has three children and has taken to rotating which one he brings to town with him.
Since my best friend still resides in Evanston, I texted him to let him know we would be at the beach, and he joined us too.
My best friend is a brilliant economist, although his profession is in IT for the biggest and most evil insurance provider in Illinois.
Worthy of a post or several posts on its own, he warned me about the housing crash for about two years prior to 2008. As I kept telling him about the houses that we wanted to move to going up and up and up in price, he kept telling me that a housing crash was imminent. I did not believe him.
There was a particular suburb that I wanted to move to and talked about for quite a few years. We had been outbid on a few houses in that community, and those houses escalated in price by a hundred grand while ours went up less than half that amount.
Anyway, he was obviously right. Although my own point is that, once you are a homeowner, the cost differential in the house that you want to purchase and the one that you would sell is more important than the prices, themselves.
Case in point: I would rather sell my house for $300K and then purchase a different one for $350K than sell my house for $250K and then purchase a different one for $325K. If you are going to take out a mortgage or even pay cash for the differential, you are better off moving to a home that costs fifty grand more rather than seventy-five more.
Regardless, he was right. The housing market crashed hard and that's another topic for another blog or book by another author. The Recession has been dissected, explained, studied and written about millions of times, just like the next one will be.
As they say, Economists Have Predicted Twenty Out of the Last Two Recessions.
I have been reading, hearing and thinking a lot about when the next Recession will hit, and many serious economists and other thinkers are predicting one in the next year or two. I cannot go a day or two without hearing and reading about it and more lately than the past few years.
Now that I am returning to the business of blogging and Tweeting, I will do an upcoming post on the three things that changed with my discussions with my buddy, but again that is another post. For future reference, the three are:
- I told him that he can still save thirty grand for his son's college over the next five years;
- We spoke for a good half hour about when the next Recession is going to hit and what it will be like; and
- I told him that I have accepted that my job is difficult and kinda sucks but that I am going to retire from municipal work in seven more years.
My brother, my niece, my buddy and I played catch with a squishy ball in Lake Michigan for a good, long while. My daughter sunbathed and, man, did she draw a lot of stares from guys ranging from about twelve years old to older than me.
We had my daughter's BFF's family over for a huge BBQ dinner, fruit and beer that night. My brother and his daughter came by as well.
If I must relate this to money again, we spent another hundred or so on fourteen Shish Kabob skewers, fruit and the makings for s'mores. Our daughter's friend's family brought beer and asparagus and cauliflower, which we roasted. My brother brought some chips and dips and even some dolmades.
Talk about a feast!
For those of you readers who are beer aficionados, our guests brought some good stuff that I like very much including Two Brothers Domaine DuPage, Lagunitas and Heineken.
Later that night, the fireworks were blasting around our house in every direction. Since my daughter and I had already attended fireworks, we did not want to deal with the huge crowds and traffic nightmare of the firework show in our town.
Since my niece wanted to see fireworks, I took her outside around 10 PM, and we walked around as different families in our neighborhood shot off full-blown fireworks.
My brother borrowed one of my son's trumpets and jammed with him until what I consider very late for a work night, around midnight.
Even though I was as tired as ever, I could not sleep that night. Did you ever have a night where your body is so tired that you cannot even move, but you cannot get comfortable no matter what? My wife was snoring away by the time her head hit her pillow, but I tossed and turned, tossed and turned and then tossed and turned some more.
Fireworks, jazz music, beer, s'mores and swimming in the lake...
My throat started itching.
A Lost Day
I slept about one hour on the morning of the 5th, and right before my alarm went off.
Between swimming in the lake and drinking one too many beers, my throat hurt a lot when I woke up last Thursday.
Even though I have over a hundred sick days on the books, and that after cashing out quite a few over the years, I had to drag myself in.
I had a meeting scheduled with an apartment developer who I have been meeting and corresponding with for the better part of the year. The community that employs me has almost all single family homes and the apartments in town are very dated and a bit sketchy. This developer wants to build modern, upscale units with rents that would exceed the carrying cost for my house (mortgage plus property taxes plus insurance plus utilities etc.).
I cannot recall what other things that I did that day at work, just that I got through them despite my sore throat and lack of sleep.
Even though I had thought of so many cool posts to write during the first three days of last week, by the time I got home Thursday night, all I could do was lie around after dinner.
After three consecutive nights of being up and about until midnight and not sleeping the night of the Fourth into the morning of the 5th, I did not have the energy to type my name, let alone write all these thoughts down.
Friday through Sunday
I'm getting tired of writing this post, like you are tiring of reading it (are you still reading it?).
I had a great weekend that included biking with my son on Saturday and then stopping for two Jamba Juices afterwards (damn are those expensive!). I think that we grilled on Saturday night.
My daughter attended a graduation party on Saturday for a very gracious girl from a wealthy family, the captain of the poms squad, at her family's large home in a nice part of a nicer town than ours. We just gave her a gift card for Target, chipping in with the other freshman parents.
On Sunday, my daughter wanted to go on an outing with me, so we drove to two different river towns about an hour away from our house. We took my baby with us, and she was super hot walking around these downtown areas for a few hours.
My throat was improving a bit because I had been taking Nyquil Cold & Flu Nighttime relief liquid the past few nights and catching up on sleep.
We watched movies, we barbecued a few more times, we took our dog on long walks.
We had a great weekend, which passed too quickly and I do not recall logging onto a computer even once even though the post ideas kept popping into my head.
Oh, I should add that I probably read books for two hours per day last Friday through Sunday.
Long, Painful Monday
My department now has a staff meeting every Monday morning. This is a relatively new thing, having just started in July.
Not that I'm not a nice guy who doesn't play nice with my co-workers, but...
Disclaimer: please skip the next sentence if you are easily offended.
Our weekly meeting is a gigantic, colossal, huge completely asinine shitty fucking waste of an hour of my life every Monday that I have to be at work.
Back to more non-offensive words.
After the staff meeting, I had a conference call with a consultant who we hired to complete a hotel feasibility study. Guess what? Even though we are paying him a good chunk of change, I am the one who has to get him in touch with the large employers in our business park.
Thus, after spending many long hours in conference calls and meetings on Monday, I spent a good two to three hours researching my contacts for thirteen of the large employers in our business park including making some calls to determine who the best contact person would be.
I followed that with conversations with a potential hookah lounge, tattoo parlor, large industrial user and a couple of residents calling to complain about things.
I had a Commission meeting at night at which I presented a small incentive request for a young man opening an Indian restaurant. That actually went fairly well and the Commission followed my recommendation.
I was edgy on Monday night, had a hard time falling asleep again having not taken Nyquil for the first night in a while.
Tuesday
After another arduous work day that I do not care to recall, my sister and her two daughters stopped by for dinner and hanging out with us.
Just days after my brother left town, my sister, her husband and their two daughters breezed into town.
In my family, I am not supposed to comment on what a large amount of time off teachers get, since they "work so hard" during the school year.
In my sister's case, she travels for six weeks every single summer, some of it with her husband and children, some just with her children, and always a two- or three-day getaway with her girlfriends to some spa or other.
I once commented to my mother that it would take me three or four years to take off as much time as my sister does every summer and, mind you, they get about half the days off the rest of the year due to holidays and random off days. In New Orleans, they get the entire week of Mardi Gras off.
After enduring a harsh lecture by my mother, who was an English teacher for over twenty-five years at the high school and college level, I will never say that again.
No matter that I work full weeks basically every week of spring, summer, fall and winter and have two to three night meetings per month. She works hard. Am I a bit bitter? What do you think?
Anyway, we had a lovely visit. We ordered pizza. Two great ones, Lou Malnati's, for the adults. Domino's for my daughter and my sister's daughters. I made a salad, as I should mention I had been making nearly every evening the past two weeks.
My sister's husband was attending a business meeting selling his start-up educational software firm's software to some school district administrator this past Tuesday night. He does not own the firm, but he is the sales director and the firm is growing exponentially and helping him and my sister's family attain millionaire status. He is one of their eight employees and, having been a charter school founder himself, he knows what school administrators need in order to save time, money and manpower.
Consider my sister's husband one of millions of people whose profession helps eliminate jobs by humans and replace them with software and artificial intelligence.
Why keep track of hours, attendance, test scores, utility bills, grades, salaries and benefits, track goals and milestones, etc., in different departments with different systems, when they can all be rolled into one?
If you, yourself, are a school administrator, you are probably wondering what software system he is selling. Don't worry, sooner or later you'll meet with him and buy it. In the meantime, hold on to those humans who work in the attendance office and keep those human resource people who keep track of the employees.
We went on a nice walk with my baby through the neighborhood and we gave my nieces about twenty articles of clothing that our daughter has outgrown.
It was another night that I did not feel like blogging after they left.
Wednesday
So why not last night?
My wife took our daughter to her summer dance class and left a message for me late in the afternoon that I was responsible for dinner for myself and my son.
No worries. I stopped at Jewel and got some lovely salmon fillets, some fruit, some hummus and pita chips and some broccoli.
I sauteed the broccoli with some hot sauce, which was great. I grilled the salmon to perfection. We ate the other stuff.
Instead of blogging, I went through the classic middle aged suburban white guy ritual of puttering around in the yard. That after visiting with a neighbor friend for a good hour or so, a woman who owns quite a few dogs. Perhaps more than the Village Code allows.
Instead of blogging later that night, I watched four or five Offhand Disney videos with my wife and daughter on the old tube TV downstairs. The videos are from YouTube, but we stream them on the TV all the time. I learned a few interesting things about the Disney parks, but started feeling seriously guilty about consuming so much over the past two weeks while creating nothing.
Before going to sleep, I resumed reading the book about Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe around the turn of the century that I had started reading a few weeks ago before stopping and reading about ten other books.
Today
I just could not go any longer than today, Thursday July 12th, 2018, without writing a blog post, although I admit it is not very money-related, mensch-like or interesting for that matter.
I had an interesting day at work that I do not care to recount besides the fact that I met again with the developer who would like to purchase and redevelop an old shopping center in our community's downtown business district, and he still wants a financial incentive to do so.
Of course, I had many other meetings and calls this week, some of which were mildly interesting and intriguing. Some more intriguing than my personal life, but my personal life is more important to me.
I again helped make dinner, although tonight I went with my wife to pick our daughter up from the dance studio out of town where she is taking classes this summer. It's over a half hour drive from our house and I would have you guess how expensive it is to send your daughter to a higher-end dance school, but I'll just tell you it is about $25 or so per hour so we are paying around $500 for her to take a few classes this month.
The topic of yet another post, we can see where our family's priorities are by reviewing our bank statements, checkbooks and credit card statements. In our family, we pay a lot for our kids. So much so that I know that we vastly exceed the number that has been touted quite a bit around the financial blogs of late, that an average family spends $233,610 raising a child not including college.
I doubt that an average family pays for private music lessons, dance companies, fencing lessons, horse riding lessons, tennis lessons and the many other expenses that we have spent mostly my hard-earned money on.
I am not lamenting it. I am merely stating that you will not ever read about me retiring in my thirties or even forties.
God willing, I will turn the big Five-Oh in twenty-eight more months, around Thanksgiving in 2020.
Even then, I will have a good number of years to go before I hang up the old municipal belt.
Tomorrow
Not that I'm not a nice guy who doesn't play nice with my co-workers, but...
Disclaimer: please skip the next sentence if you are easily offended.
Our weekly meeting is a gigantic, colossal, huge completely asinine shitty fucking waste of an hour of my life every Monday that I have to be at work.
Back to more non-offensive words.
After the staff meeting, I had a conference call with a consultant who we hired to complete a hotel feasibility study. Guess what? Even though we are paying him a good chunk of change, I am the one who has to get him in touch with the large employers in our business park.
Thus, after spending many long hours in conference calls and meetings on Monday, I spent a good two to three hours researching my contacts for thirteen of the large employers in our business park including making some calls to determine who the best contact person would be.
I followed that with conversations with a potential hookah lounge, tattoo parlor, large industrial user and a couple of residents calling to complain about things.
I had a Commission meeting at night at which I presented a small incentive request for a young man opening an Indian restaurant. That actually went fairly well and the Commission followed my recommendation.
I was edgy on Monday night, had a hard time falling asleep again having not taken Nyquil for the first night in a while.
Tuesday
After another arduous work day that I do not care to recall, my sister and her two daughters stopped by for dinner and hanging out with us.
Just days after my brother left town, my sister, her husband and their two daughters breezed into town.
In my family, I am not supposed to comment on what a large amount of time off teachers get, since they "work so hard" during the school year.
In my sister's case, she travels for six weeks every single summer, some of it with her husband and children, some just with her children, and always a two- or three-day getaway with her girlfriends to some spa or other.
I once commented to my mother that it would take me three or four years to take off as much time as my sister does every summer and, mind you, they get about half the days off the rest of the year due to holidays and random off days. In New Orleans, they get the entire week of Mardi Gras off.
After enduring a harsh lecture by my mother, who was an English teacher for over twenty-five years at the high school and college level, I will never say that again.
No matter that I work full weeks basically every week of spring, summer, fall and winter and have two to three night meetings per month. She works hard. Am I a bit bitter? What do you think?
Anyway, we had a lovely visit. We ordered pizza. Two great ones, Lou Malnati's, for the adults. Domino's for my daughter and my sister's daughters. I made a salad, as I should mention I had been making nearly every evening the past two weeks.
My sister's husband was attending a business meeting selling his start-up educational software firm's software to some school district administrator this past Tuesday night. He does not own the firm, but he is the sales director and the firm is growing exponentially and helping him and my sister's family attain millionaire status. He is one of their eight employees and, having been a charter school founder himself, he knows what school administrators need in order to save time, money and manpower.
Consider my sister's husband one of millions of people whose profession helps eliminate jobs by humans and replace them with software and artificial intelligence.
Why keep track of hours, attendance, test scores, utility bills, grades, salaries and benefits, track goals and milestones, etc., in different departments with different systems, when they can all be rolled into one?
If you, yourself, are a school administrator, you are probably wondering what software system he is selling. Don't worry, sooner or later you'll meet with him and buy it. In the meantime, hold on to those humans who work in the attendance office and keep those human resource people who keep track of the employees.
We went on a nice walk with my baby through the neighborhood and we gave my nieces about twenty articles of clothing that our daughter has outgrown.
It was another night that I did not feel like blogging after they left.
Wednesday
So why not last night?
My wife took our daughter to her summer dance class and left a message for me late in the afternoon that I was responsible for dinner for myself and my son.
Instead of blogging, I went through the classic middle aged suburban white guy ritual of puttering around in the yard. That after visiting with a neighbor friend for a good hour or so, a woman who owns quite a few dogs. Perhaps more than the Village Code allows.
Instead of blogging later that night, I watched four or five Offhand Disney videos with my wife and daughter on the old tube TV downstairs. The videos are from YouTube, but we stream them on the TV all the time. I learned a few interesting things about the Disney parks, but started feeling seriously guilty about consuming so much over the past two weeks while creating nothing.
Before going to sleep, I resumed reading the book about Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe around the turn of the century that I had started reading a few weeks ago before stopping and reading about ten other books.
Today
I just could not go any longer than today, Thursday July 12th, 2018, without writing a blog post, although I admit it is not very money-related, mensch-like or interesting for that matter.
I had an interesting day at work that I do not care to recount besides the fact that I met again with the developer who would like to purchase and redevelop an old shopping center in our community's downtown business district, and he still wants a financial incentive to do so.
Of course, I had many other meetings and calls this week, some of which were mildly interesting and intriguing. Some more intriguing than my personal life, but my personal life is more important to me.
I again helped make dinner, although tonight I went with my wife to pick our daughter up from the dance studio out of town where she is taking classes this summer. It's over a half hour drive from our house and I would have you guess how expensive it is to send your daughter to a higher-end dance school, but I'll just tell you it is about $25 or so per hour so we are paying around $500 for her to take a few classes this month.
The topic of yet another post, we can see where our family's priorities are by reviewing our bank statements, checkbooks and credit card statements. In our family, we pay a lot for our kids. So much so that I know that we vastly exceed the number that has been touted quite a bit around the financial blogs of late, that an average family spends $233,610 raising a child not including college.
I doubt that an average family pays for private music lessons, dance companies, fencing lessons, horse riding lessons, tennis lessons and the many other expenses that we have spent mostly my hard-earned money on.
I am not lamenting it. I am merely stating that you will not ever read about me retiring in my thirties or even forties.
God willing, I will turn the big Five-Oh in twenty-eight more months, around Thanksgiving in 2020.
Even then, I will have a good number of years to go before I hang up the old municipal belt.
Tomorrow
One of the websites and blogs that I follow is Project: Time Off. I just read the State of American vacation this past week.
Good news! Vacation time is up a bit. And I want to do my part.
That is why I am taking my ninth vacation day of 2018 tomorrow. I know it is not exactly living a life of leisure taking only my ninth day off, but I have also rented a farmhouse in the Wisconsin Dells next week and will be taking three more vacation days, next Wednesday through Friday.
By July 20th, I would have taken twelve vacation days this year and that's not too bad. It's no six weeks off traveling around the country like my sister does, but it's not bad considering there were many years when I only took that amount or less for the entire year.
We'll be heading to the beach again. This time with my daughter and her BFF and we'll be meeting my sister and her two daughters. I have let my own buddy know that we're going and hope that he can come by, as well. His work schedule is extremely flexible compared with mine, so it is not too presumptuous to assume that he can meet us at the beach any given day instead of going to work.
We have another busy and expensive weekend planned, as always. Next week, we'll be heading to the Wisconsin Dells for the first time for all of us.
It's funny when I think that I am renting a big farmhouse for three nights for around $800 or the same as our monthly rent was when my wife and I rented apartments in the Rogers Park neighborhood and actually about the same amount as our mortgage payment in 2018.
Oh well, living in a small apartment in Rogers Park or spending a winter month working, shoveling, and going to school in the northwest suburbs of Chicago is not nearly as cool as renting a large house near the Dells for three days.
Our lovely daughter has planned out a fun-filled itinerary for us including duck boat tours, laser tag, hiking, swimming at a beach and going to restaurants that will cost at least a hundred bucks a pop.
I plan on bringing around $600 cash with me in addition to utilizing our credit cards. It won't be a cheap trip although it is quite short in duration.
Perhaps I'll blog about the trip, but probably not.
Oh, and come to think of it, I'm really not sorry.
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