What's Going On?

Tracy went to the rental house closing and signed our portion of the paperwork prior to the buyer’s doing their paperwork. Provided the buyer’s portion went smoothly, then we have one less responsibility and stress point in our lives! We authorized our realtor to accept offers as low as us walking away at the break even point. In the end, we walked away with a little over $1800, and we will receive refunds from our escrow account for property taxes and insurance. That will probably amount to another $400 or so. The main goal was to get that headache out of our lives, and to pull even $2000 or so out is a nice bonus.

I can’t even tell you how nice it is to have two reliable vehicles. That is another stress point gone from our lives. I was thinking about rebuilding the engine in my truck and keeping it. To rebuild or replace the engine, clutch, and accessory components (starter, water pump, alternator, etc) would cost around $3000. Instead of doing that, I can sell it for about $750 in its current condition. I am going to put a trailer hitch on the CRV and buy a 4 x 8 trailer. That will give me the functionality of a truck that I occasionally need, and I won’t have another vehicle to maintain and pay insurance on. I love old trucks, and will probably buy another one at some time in the future, but I don’t need to worry about a third vehicle requiring repairs in my life right now.

We have a book club meeting at Nemo’s tomorrow night, as well as a Photoshop class in the studio. We are starting to book more and more events and meetings in the studio. That increases our sales, and also markets our shop to new people who are attending these events and meetings. I don’t know if I will ever have the opportunity to open another business in the future, but conference rooms are a ‘must have’ in the design and development stage of planning!

Now that all of my woodworking equipment is up at our house, I am looking forward to using it. I need to wire the garage for 220v electrical. Unfortunately, our house electrical panel is made by Federal Pacific. They no longer make circuit breakers for that panel. That means I will need to upgrade the entire electrical panel, along with all new breakers. My friend Kevin is a Master Electrician and can perform that work. He is interested in my truck, so I may do an even trade, truck for electrical work. I’ll talk to him about it tonight. I intend to start making high end jewelry boxes, cutting boards, sushi trays, chop sticks, etc, etc out of exotic hardwoods. I can set up a retail section in the shop to sell these kinds of items. I love making things like that…

Upcoming priorities in the shop now that the rental house is gone:

1. Complete 2008 Q1 tax reporting for City Sales Tax, County Sales Tax, State Sales Tax, Federal payroll taxes, etc.
2. Hire a book keeper and get our 2007 QB Pro file tax ready.
3. Build a new computer for the video surveillance system. I keep an eye on www.slickdeals.net for great deals on all kinds of things. If I see a screamin’ deal on computer parts, I go ahead and buy them. I currently have an Antec case and power supply, Asus mother board, AMD processor, MSI video card, various hard drives and DVD burners available to build a machine. Then only thing I am missing is RAM and a copy of Windows. I will get those ordered and get a system built that will support four 30 fps cameras. I actually have a crashed computer that I can gut and get up and running pretty easily. All it needs is a new hard drive, and an upgraded video card. That will be relatively quick and easy. It already has a high end Antec case and power supply, MB, 2GB of RAM, DVD burner x 2, AMD processor, and a copy of Windows XP. I can slap in a new hard drive for the OS, a 500GB hard drive for recording video, and a new video card that I already have! Done deal…
4. The video surveillance system requires an electrical outlet to power the camera at each location. I pre-planned and installed outlets above the drop ceiling in two locations, but need to run a new electrical circuit to the back room, and another to the as yet undecided fourth camera location. Once complete, I can begin installing cameras and get the video up and running.
5. Install a door from the café directly into the kids’ room. Right now, they have to go through the studio to get to their room. We did that on purpose to keep their room private, but it restricts access whenever there is a meeting or event in the studio.

Time to run…
Later,
JD