Where There's Smoke There's Fire

"When lightening struck the plane of newly elected French President Francois Hollande yesterday while he was on his way to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, I had a sudden dark thought that nothing would ever go right in the global economy ever again."  
-Jim Jabak

But Hollande's plane safely returned to Paris and the French President, bundled onto a new plane, arrived in Berlin for his talks with Merkel.

There are so many "good signs" that things are getting better.  

US house sales were higher in April over March by 2.6%... Auto sales were strongest in four years, rising 3.9% in April.

Yet with all the good news the stock market keeps sliding south.

Facebook is about to launch the largest IPO in history...

While some are hearing the band playing "Nearer My God to Thee?"

Is this the beginning of the end, yet again?

Could all the good news in the US save the falling Euro?

Will I have to be struck by lightning before I can see the writing on the wall?

I think it would be easier for Shelby to lift this fallen tree off the path than for the global economy to improve.  But what do I know? I'm just one of the many looking for the EXIT in a burning building.

This photo taken on the Clatsop Loop Trail, Cannon Beach, Oregon... Thanksgiving weekend 2011

Spend Less Than You Earn?

This was my first time to see a Saguaro cactus in bloom... and if you look closely you can see a lot of bees enjoying the blossoms.  I only had my iPhone, so could not zoom in like I wished... but none-the-less it was a glorious sight.

Life is like kind of like catching a fun photo unexpectedly.  This cactus was on the street between our hotel and the airport.  Since we came in too late to pick up our rental car the night before we stayed at a hotel close to the airport, which was only a short walk to the Avis car rental.  Hundreds of people likely walked past this cactus and and several thousand drive by it every day, but I doubt any of them saw this glorious event.  However, if you keep your eyes open you will find opportunities many others totally miss.

It is kind of like another tidbit I discovered that totally changed the way I think about money and mortgages.

I have been thinking about the topic of money more than usual lately... and planning for our future.  If you read this blog regularly you know that one of my goals this year is to learn something new every day.  Most of us learn something new every day, but when we don't write those things down every day we can never recall all of them at the end of the week or the month.

So, to help me remember what new things I learn, I am posting my kernels of wisdom... or worthless dribble... (depending on your perspective,) on my blog.

"Spend less than you earn."

We have no doubt all heard this old adage... but very few of us have figured out how to live by it.

Further more our government has never figured out that it is important, so why should we?

Countries all around the world are pretty consistently over their heads in debt.  The US government now is spending more than 40 percent of every dollar collected in taxes just to pay the interest on the national debt... and like the songwriter has written in Sixteen Tons, "Another day older and deeper in debt."  Every day the problem is worse than the day before.

Are we wrong in thinking we can just spend our way out of debt?

At first glance the answer is "Absolutely Not!"

But what if you could borrow enough money at a low interest rate... say 3%... and then invest it at a higher guaranteed rate of say 6%.  How does that sound?  Pretty good, eh?  Bring it on!

The only problem is where can one find the collateral to put up so that you can borrow some of that current low interest money?  You know how most banks are today... they only want to loan money to those who don't need it.  And the minute it starts to rain, they call and want their umbrella back.

Now if you happen to be fortunate enough have some significant equity in your home... that is one pretty easy way to borrow some money at our current historic low interest rates.

But wait a minute.  All my life I have worked  hard to finally get clear title on our home... why would I want to jeopardize putting a mortgage on it now and possibly lose it?  No way, Jose.

Except my financial planner tells me that he has a product that has consistently given 7 to 10% annual returns, with a guaranteed 5% minimum return for life.  Plus he says that you can write off all the interest on the loan that you use to purchase this product, which sweetens the return even more.

He had a client who borrowed $500,000 against his house 7 years ago... and after paying the interest  costs and with compounding the earnings made his estate worth $3,000,000 more.  Not too bad, eh?

What flower blossoms might you be walking past today?

Construction Update April 8-13

Last Sunday I finished installing the cedar ceiling over the stairs going up to our new studio.  The walls in this stairwell will also be finished in channel cedar, just like the original house... and so I had to purchase some more 8" channel cedar this past week.

On Wednesday we brought home more channel cedar, more 3" V-groove cedar for soffits...

and enough R-28 batts of pink insulation for the portico ceiling.  Since I could not get 12" wide batts, I will have to cut 24" wide batts in half.  Lots of extra work... but what else can I do?

I got started installing the insulation and have one bundle in place already... 14 more to go!

I started putting some soffit and siding on this back wall of the studio... but in order to even work in this area I had to find a creative way to set up a scaffold.  From the scaffold I could then bridge some planks across onto the sloped roof.  It as a little like setting up a scaffold on a double titter totter.  The old tree stump was one fulcrum and the rock wall was another.  The vertical 2x4 helped to minimize the teetering.  It ended up being very stable and safe.

The key to keeping the scaffold from even starting to tip over was interlocking a board behind the concrete post as you can see in the middle top of this picture.

This is not a roof where one can nail anything onto like a cedar shake roof.  So everything I have on the roof is tied into the planks on the scaffolding.

I then built a flat ladder with cleats on a 2x12 that allowed me to work in reasonable comfort on this tricky part of the building.  Shirley pre-painted all the channel cedar in our new colour... Traditional Cape Cod Grey. These boards are all recycled from off the face of our house.  I pre-cut all the boards to fit and got this section completed on Friday afternoon after the plumber left.

We failed to take any photos of Kevin Dean, the plumber... and me roughing in the waste lines for the bathroom shower, toilet and sink on Friday. It was a bit of an ugly job going under the house and working a very cramped, dirty crawl space, but we got the waste line tied into the same line that services our master bathroom.  We only have the water supply lines to do and to complete the plumbing rough in.

Some things are funnier than others...
be sure to watch to the end... they saved the very best to the last!
Don't miss the ending.



Have a great week.

John Deere Edible Combine Sculpture

I saw this photo in March's Homestead, which is John Deere's complimentary monthly magazine. They hope it sets record for food collected for the local food bank.

This Can-Do graphic sculpture contains 312,238 cans of food and 11,268 bags of food... the finished project weighed 170 tons upon completion!

Now that is no small project.

Hats off to 450 John Deere employees, retirees and volunteers. Good for you!

Final days in Tucson

We have been enjoying the weather in Tucson so much we decided to look into real estate and get some education.  We did a couple of afternoons with realtors... and spent parts of a few more days just driving around on our own, getting a feel for the different communities.  Tucson is a huge, very spread out city.

We have not made any decisions yet, except that we came home to rain with an outlook of another week of rain.  When I Skyped Lorne in Tucson this morning and he said they have only sunshine with more of the same next week.  So where do you think we would rather be?

Our realtors Paul and Marlene DenHerder gave us a couple of complimentary passes to the Tucson Museum of Art where we spent an very enjoyable couple of hours.  


The piece above may not seem all that impressive to you, but this was done in Pointillism ... thousands of tiny small points of different colours.  


"I would thank you from the bottom of my heart, but for you my heart has no bottom." -Author Unknown

We probably were not supposed to be taking any photos in the art museum, but my iPhone is small and I caught few pictures when no one else was around.  I loved the colour, contrast, highlights and shadows in this piece by Hal Empie.  


Shirley has posted a bit more on our day at the art museum... about Frida Kahlo, the famous Mexican artist... famous lover... most prolific self portrait painter.  To check out Shirley's blog click here.

Shirley joined us on our last round of golf at Quarry Pines.  We didn't see all this wildlife during our round... we tried to stay out of the rough, as the snakes are said to be out.  I think they just tell us that since they don't want us taking time to look for errant golf balls.  It didn't stop Lorne from coming home with pockets bulging with golf balls. 

Peter  Gleed, another snowbird who lives in the same community as Lorne and Gail joined us for our final round... which was my best of the six rounds I played in Tucson.  In fact we all did pretty good... all under 90.  I had 84 with two OB's.  Our group had 5 birdies.  We all had a great time.

I didn't take any photos of our hotel or the room in the Hilton... which was really nice... but I did take this one interior shot of the front window with the reflection. I took this from the fifth floor upper lobby area.  There is seven stories of glass about 40-50 feet wide... supported by this steel tube geometric pattern.  Pretty cool.

We had our breakfasts in our room... and made several trips to the nearby Sunflower Market for cereal, fresh fruit and rice milk.

The market was close enough that we usually walked... and this sunset was taken from the corner on Broadway and Pantino where we crossed the street.

It was on this corner that I was introduced to talking crossing buttons.  When you push the arrow to  get a change of light there is a voice that says, "WAIT."  The first time I heard it I wondered where that came from?  Pretty cool, eh?

This was a cute 4' x 8' mosaic piece of airport art in San Francisco.  I took this before I realized I had left my MacBook Air in the seat pouch on the plane.  


As soon as I realized my computer was missing I went to the check in counter and they phoned to confirm it had been found.  However it was a horrible 90 minutes of anxious waiting before I finally got it back. First they told me I could get it at Baggage Claim.  After hanging around there for 15-20 minutes they told me I might get it faster if I went up to Check In.  Over an anxious hour there still with nothing.  they took my address and told me to go back to check in.


When I was back with with Shirley I told her that I have never got such a run around in my life... and I was convinced that these guys were never going to give it back.  Then the man named Art showed up with my laptop!  I could hardly believe it.


"Customer Service that doesn't happen in a timely manner is not customer service... it is Customer Aggravation!" Gary Santini, CEO of Parklane Homes. 

Last Wednesday almost all the planes were delayed due to bad weather, high winds.  Our plane was about 3 hours late.  In fact, when we were supposed to be boarding, they announced that our plane had not left Palm Springs due to high winds... and then there was the problem of getting a landing time in San francisco... as so many planes were trying to land at the same time.


This made us late arriving in Victoria... but we just made it to the ferry with absolutely no time waiting... all the cars had already loaded... and when I drove on they dropped the gate.


We are glad to be home and find things much like we left them.  Only a mess of  branches down in the storms... and we cleaned them all up already... about 8 tractor loads!

Fun and Games in Tucson

We were looking at real estate one afternoon.  While Paul was getting into the lock box I took this with my iPhone.... I especially liked the way the light and shadows interacted in this geometric pattern.  Cool eh?  

A family of seven javelinas came thru the Del Lago golf course at Vail... hard to get a closeup with an iPhone.  But it was really great to get as close I could.  Shirley said I was lucky...  they could have charged me... but I told her they let me take their picture for no charge.

Lorne, Dave and Ted golfed with me at Del Lago in Vail... very nice golf course.  And a brand new community here south east of Tucson.

Shirley took a few photos of me and Reilly playing pickle ball with Lorne and Lena.  I have played almost every morning for 2 hours or so.  Good exercise.

Tradition here is at the end of every game we touch our paddle handles with each other and say, "good game."

One of my most favourite golf courses is the Arizona National.   We were teamed with this couple for the round who are also wintering in Tucson.  You can click on the link to see last years flowers and birds on this great golf course.

These orange flowers... aloe saponaria are on several of the tee boxes.

This was the first cactus blossom this spring.

Last year when I play at Arizona National it was a month later... mid to end of April... and the cactus flowers were in abundance.

My good friend Lorne offered to take pictures of me several times... but when it is so bright outside one cannot see that your finger is over part of the lens.  I still love this shot!  There are lots of great valley views from Arizona National.  

On this Par Three hole we have to shoot over several cactus...

But not everyone gets their ball past this big Saguaro.

aloe saponaria 

The Single Best Thing You Can Do

What is the single best thing that you can do for your health?

Is there one thing that stands out in giving you the best Return for your Time invested?

Find out why he called this short video 23 and 1/2 hours.

A wise man said many years ago...

"Those who think they have no time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness."  -Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby (1826-1893)

Spending 9 minutes watching this animated film helped my resolve to be more faithful to take care of myself.  No one else can do it for me.

I like this guy... he makes it seem possible.

Hope you like it too.

Hiking in Sabino Canyon

This morning we were happy to have a warm, sunny day to take a hike up Sabino Canyon.  There is a weather system on the way bringing wind and rain... but today it is still fantastic.

The trams were busy today taking loads of people on a narrated tour of the Canyon.... but we were there for the exercise... and my pedometer said over 12,000 steps after hiking for about two hours.

Today we are pooling our best photos to make a single post on the canyon hike.

There was a pool in the stream where some kids were trying to get up the courage to get into the cold water... which is from melting snow high in the mountains.

It was fun to watch them as they took turns dragging and throwing one another into the water.

This Saguaro cactus has seven children!  We liked her family

Gail is getting ready to take a close-up of this tree bark.

What a difficult place for this cactus to make it's home... in a crack between a couple slabs of granite.

As the seasons change so does the foliage... making this canyon always a new experience every hike.