My absence: Just call me Pat Benetar!

So the reason why I have not managed to make my regular appearances in the blogesphere for the past few month, well really, at least a half a year is because life has just been working me out!

I went from having no job to basically having 3 jobs! My regular full-time job has been going really well. I am really enjoying what I am doing and feel like I am making a contribution that is being valued. I have had two bosses in the past 8 months but that is because the guy who hired me got promoted to his boss' position, which is not a bad thing for me since he thought well enough of me to hire me in the first place and has direct knowledge of my work. And I like my new boss, who is a woman. I was not sure of her when I first started the job and she was in another group within my department. I got a strange vibe from her then but now that I report to her, she has been really great. She was promoted when she came to my group and is very inclusive and treats me very congenially, which is the opposite of what I felt from her before. So things are good!

Additionally, I am still working at The Container Store. A lot of people have asked me why I am still working there and it is not that the money makes a huge difference but I like it and it doesn't really interfere with my schedule that much. I work truck uploads, which is normally one night every 5-7 days (9-midnight on a weeknight/Saturday or 6-9 on Sunday) and I have started picking up store hours on some evenings and on the weekend. I cannot under emphasize how different this company is from regular retail --- and the people I work with are all pretty much very nice, helpful, agreeable people. But of course, that is why they were hired.

And lastly, I have been dealing with some investment properties that I purchased last year. The long and the short of it is that they have not worked out quite as I had originally envisioned. I have ended up renting them out as Section 8 housing, at a loss, and using a property manager (who is also an owner in the subdivision) to manage them. I was very hands off for a little less than a year but then the finances of it all caused me to take a closer look. I had not foreseen not having a job for 6 months when I purchased them and any extra that I could have dedicated to these properties disappeared into living expenses. But honestly, even if I had kept my job, the economics of this endeavor disintegrated as the housing market started going south. So while I am able to collect income on each property every month, it is not enough to cover the mortgage by a sizable amount. So I have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out what to do. And I still haven't gotten it figured out.

What I did figure out was that I could not continue to afford a property manager if I was already losing money so this fall I started the process of managing them myself. And in the process I discovered that a few things were not being managed as I expected. So I had to dive in on my own -- manage the transition in management with the manager and tenants, sign new leases, sort through a whole mess of things with the housing authority including rent increase requests, etc, steering clear of an investigation that they launched against my former property manager, and finding someone to do maintenance for the units. Additionally, one tenant and the former property manager did not get along, for a number of reasons, and while I has trusted his advice in the past with regard to tenant matters, I started to question if the rendition of events he had been telling me was completely accurate.

There have been periods where I worked at least 5 hours a day for 13 days straight plus had to manage stuff with the properties in addition.

I definitely feel like an adult these days.... Got some big ol' adult issues to deal with. Whew!

Bureaucracy - Your Tax Dollars At Work

Today, I did one thing that I have been dreading. No one really wants to go try to get something done at a place where you know you are going to get the run around. But that is what you have to expect when you deal with a government agency. Today, I went to try to dispute the property taxes charged on some properties I purchased last year. I noticed that the amounts are severely out of wack for the value of the properties and their location within the city. I expected that this wouldn't be a simple thing to fix, especially since the county has already gotten their money but I decided today was the day to start trying to unravel the process. After all, it means money back for me which, especially at this time, is sorely needed.

So first, I went to one office that could only help with with disputes for taxes for the current year. The woman was very helpful and told me that I needed to get copies of the deeds for the properties in the courthouse next door and then come back and go to the office next door to hers to speak to the assessor in charge of the area where the property is. Getting the deeds was a relatively simple and quick process. The woman at the records office was very helpful. And then I came back to talk to the assessor. My assessor was actually in court that day so another guy filled in for him. He and I spent 2 hours trying to sort through everything. The end result was that I was told that there were not individual parcel numbers for each property, they were still in larger lots and that the assessments for the properties were not up to date -- last done in February and did not reflect completed construction. So the plan I left with was to do or make sure everything got done to get individual parcel numbers for each property (that included surveys etc.) and also schedule a time for the assessor to come back out and re-assess the property. This would require him having access to the inside of the buildings which are all already occupied -- not very convenient. All this has to be done before I can even talk to the people who set and collect the taxes about getting money back!

After this, I decided, I might as well make a day of it and go to the unemployment office and file for unemployment. It couldn't be worse, right? After all, people file for unemployment every day..... The process was rather streamlined, simple, and non-particularly time consuming. I was out in about an hour and 20 minutes. I was glad to get that off my list.

However, it seems that there will be many more days at the tax assessors office ahead for me. The builder claims that they have already gotten parcel numbers for the individual properties and that they were issued by the City, although the COunty has no record of them. So, I am going to try to go back with the builder to the assessors office for another saga of "Bureaucracy - Your Tax Dollars At Work." Stay tuned!

Breathe.....

So I think I peaked on the stress-o-meter this morning.... And to top it all off I was working on this stupid portal that someone in our company bought and we are trying to repurpose to fit the needs of our group. And right about now I am about sure that the guy who was responsible for purchasing it had to have gotten a kickback because this thing defies logic. Nothing is intuitive. There are so many steps to accomplish a task it is crazy. And I am pretty good at this stuff. Top it off with my current state of mind and I just about went insane this morning!

Luckily there were people around to talk me off the ledge... thank god we are allowed to have IM at work! I talked by IM with a number of folks, including Naturally, Sofia and Brunsli, who gave me calming words of enthusiam and support.

Then, by this afternoon, I had reached this zen sort of calmness.... Stressing is not helping... Just do the stuff that you can do and then you just have to leave it up to the powers that be and wait....... So, I will try not to stress about the job before we find out the word..... I am supposed to find out more about this investment property deal next week and I have appointments lined up to see the apartment for the rest of this week. So, that is all I can do right now. Might as well think about other things...

Up in the air.....

So I am a Libra..... Libras like balance. Our sign is the scales! It has become very obvious to me that August is going to be a transitionary month for me. I was preparing to make a new step this month since things seemed pretty stable for me and since then, everything has been thrown into FLUX! None of the stable stuff is feeling very stable these days....

My job........ Found out there are layoffs imminent and the future of my group is in jeopardy right when we were hitting our stride

My house...... One of the great things about my house is that there is an apartment over the garage that I rent out. I found out that my great, quiet, pay rent on time tenants are not going to renew their lease! :-( So I have to look for new tenants and figure out how to get them in there without losing any rental income.

So then, on top of it, I have this investment property deal...... It is all stressing me out! The thing is, if everything works out well then I will be great. If everything turns out bad, then I will have a lot of challenges ahead of me. If it ends up somewhere in between, hopefully it will be the right combination.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!! (and toes too!)

An unsettling week....

Well, I didnt have to take the bar exam this past week, but it ended up being an unsettling one for me nonetheless. The week started out interestingly. I was presented with an opportunity to purchase some investment property. After much consideration, I decided to take advantage of the oppurtunity. And then.... about an hour after I signed the contract with my agent, I attended a meeting at work where I was told that the new CEO, as he is evaulating the business, has told our group not to do anymore new expansion and that, since we are staffed for expansion, that some employees will likely not be needed..... Ugh!

Now, who knows what this will really mean for me but we are supposed to get more direction at the end of August. It is really unsettling though. I mean, I thought my job was something that I would not have to be worrying about right now. Things were going well, I really like the people I work with and the type of work we are doing. I have a short commute to work. Things were good. Now, I don't want to be premature.... Maybe this won't effect me, but it could. So, i am dusting off my resume and starting to look around. It is just sort of disappointing.

I am also getting this feeling that my renters are not going to renew their lease, which will be another stress to find someone to rent the apartment. They have not really stayed in the apartment in the past couple weeks but I see their cars parked in front of the apartment his mother is renting up the street. (I know, a little weird, huh?) I mean, maybe they are just hanging around there because it is the summer but I don't know. I sort of feel like that is coming too. Well, I will know this week since they have to either renew their lease or give me 30 days notice to vacate. I think I need to change the lease to give me 60 days notice!

So, what I thought would be a relatively mild fall might end up being one full of challenges. Guess I better get my mind right!