Riding the waves, good and bad...

Well, it seems like things come and go in groups. This last week has been mostly bad news all around...

We were informed Friday afternoon that the buyer for our rental house cannot get her loan processed. She was pre-qual'd for a 90% loan to value deal, but the banks tightened up on their lending programs in the last week. She has to come up with another 10% in order to proceed with the financing, and she does not have the $$$$$. So, we are back to square one with selling the rental house.

Even though the sale isn't going through, I still worked on moving the wood shop up to our house. I got rid of 2 1/2 truck loads of stuff from our garage. Tracy and I are both pack rats, so we don't do well with getting rid of things. I finally cleared my mind and tore into the stuff in the garage with a vengeance. The kids were amazed... Josh was impressed that we could actually put a car in the garage! The bad new is I cut my right index finger down to the bone on the knuckle. We had some old rustic tools from Tracy's grandfather's house. They have been around for a couple of years, and we don't really have anything to do with them. They are kind of cool looking old, antique, rustic tools, but they had to go. When I was tossing them in the dumpster, a very large pick axe came loose from the wood handle and slid down and smacked into my finger, splitting it open to the bone (kind of a cool thing to look at, really). I thought about going to get stitches, but decided I don't have time for that. Colorado Springs emergency rooms are overrun with uninsured people on the weekends who use it as free primary medical care (it isn't really free... the hospital is required by law to treat them, and then they just never pay the bills). You can't go to the ER in less than four hours here... I had too much to do to spend that amount of time hanging out with a bunch of sick people. I finished unloading the truck, and took care of it myself at home. I had to flush it with warm-hot water for about 20 minutes to clean it out down deep, and then used almost a whole bottle of hydrogen peroxide flushing it out. I packed it with neosporin and pulled the wound tightly together with bandages. I cleaned it again this morning, kind of afraid of what I might find when I took the bandage off. I was quite surprised to see that it was clean and healthy looking, and the wound already had closed. I'm sure it wouldn't take much to break it open again, but I'm being very careful not to hit it on anything. I thought about covering it with some superglue, but I'll save that in case it does open up again for some reason.

Let's see... oh yeah, all five of us have had the stomach bug during the last couple of weeks. It started with Ethan, then I had it, then Jonah, then Tracy and Josh at the same time, and now I have it again. Bummer...

Sales were slower last week at the shop. It was Spring Break and Intellitec was gone. We had sales about $600 less than break even for the week. Not unexpected, but not welcome either. A publication in Britain has a cover story about the 2008 Great Depression in America. I know the economy is touch and go right now for a lot of people. It seems that the economy always gets beat up in the news prior to every presidential election. I don't know if that is what is going on, or if there are some real fundamental issues. I'm guessing that during a recession or depression is not a good time to be doing a new business start up. On the plus side, we are seeing strong sales and we are hovering near the break even point, even with all the doom and gloom news articles about the economy. We'll keep plugging away, and we'll do fine, God willing...

I had to cancel my business bank card due to some fraudulent Ebay transactions that showed up. We don't do Ebay, and we especially don't do Ebay with our business account. I have no idea how anyone got the card information, but the bank is going to refund the money and issue me a new card.

I guess that is enough bad news for today. The good news is that we are a happy family together. I decided long ago that my definition of a successful life is for Tracy, Josh, Jonah, Ethan, and I to all be together. With all of the things we have going on in our lives, that doesn't sound like much of a criteria. I don't view that as setting the standard low. I see that as setting the standard on what is most important. As long as we are together, then we are successful, regardless of all else...

I hope everyone is doing well. Keep us in your prayers, and pray that my finger does not fall off! :)

JD