Day trip

This morning I'm off on a little day trip. I'm off to visit with my financial adviser. His office is about 30 minutes (except I'll likely hit morning rush hour traffic) north of here. I'll get there way ahead of my 10am appointment so I'll stop at Walmart. I have a list. I need felt squares and pipecleaners.

After my meeting with Tyler, then it's another 30 minutes to The Very Cool Pool. A small town past Tyler's office has a 10 lane indoor salt water pool that open all day. It's beautiful and a great place to swim and, contrary to my gym pool, it's way deeper than 4 feet 6".

It would be wise to get back on the road to home before 1:30 as they flip the lanes to reverse the commute at 2 pm and the traffic into Seattle starts backing up pretty severely. BUT, I have my book to listen to and I have decided to spend as much time as I want in that wonderful pool, fuck the traffic.

So I'll be home when I get home.

And so... I'm off!

Home again...

Nice nice day. I left earlier than necessary this morning. The traffic I expected never turned up. So I had a very leisurely Walmart visit. This was at 8:30 so the shopping crowds were not yet at their stations and I had the store to myself which was lovely.

I tried to kill time but still wound up at my financial guy's a half hour early. He wanted to walk and it was really nice out so we walked up a really nice path into some woods about a half mile or more and then back while we chatted about this and that.

My main agenda was my mortgage and he agreed that now was the right time to pay it off. So, YEAH!!!! I am really more excited about this than is warranted. I'll be selling some investments to pay it off and those investments, could make me more money than the interest I would save but maybe not and the very idea of being totally debt free is just to tasty.

The first thing I did when I got home was get on Chat with CitiMortgage and order a payout. Sept. 30. No more mortgage. Real estate tax and home owners dues still come to about $900 a month but... no more mortgage!!

After Tyler, I went over to the fancy dandy swimming pool. It's so deep and so clear and so nice. It was a wonderful swim. The problem is after. And I'd forgotten about how bad it is. The pool is next door to a kiddy pool/slide/waterfall/walking river/massive kid play area. The pool itself is 10 lap lanes so even if there were 25 kids in it (which there aren't), it would be a quiet and peaceful swim. But the locker room??!! OHMYFUCKINGGOD. Think concrete structure so NO sound absorption and 25 screaming small children with their hassled mothers and everyone talking and screaming. It's horrible with a capital H and a capital ORRIBLE. It very nearly wipes out all of the lovely of the pool. So while I enjoy swimming there, I will be thrilled to get back to my nice, adults only pool and lockeroom tomorrow!

Time now to unpack my Walmart treasures - lots of doll hair (felt) and pipe cleaners and other accoutrements. I'll be tracking tonight's baseball game on my phone or laptop as the asshole announcer who destroys the broadcast will be back. I have a Vera episode to watch instead.

Saved by ESPN?

I ran into the guy who rents the condo next door to mine (aka Hunter, the whacko baker). Apparently his rent just got raised because of the assessment charged Noel (the guy who owns the unit). Hunter asked me if there really was an assessment or if he was being had. I assured him that he was getting the straight poop. He said that he expected a big hike when the waterfront* was finished (which was supposed to be spring of 2015 - no clue what the new date is) and sky rocket once the downtown tunnel was open and the viaduct comes down (which was supposed to be in 2016 but ain't going to happen in this decade and probably not the first half of the next one).

*They tore it up to fix the seawall and other non-glamorous maintenance which they have fucked up beyond imagination.

If/when they do get everything fixed and finished, these condos could really skyrocket in value. But, I'm not sure I know anyone young enough now to be alive when that happens.

My brother told me today that one of his techs is leaving. This time it's not for 4 or 5 months - I'm guessing next February-ish so they have tons of time to plan which is great. But I'll miss Thomas. He's a Jehovah's Witness and he really wants to go down to Panama to Witness. It's very very sweet of him to give my brother such much notice and help in planning how to replace him. My brother and Thomas and Bryant (his other tech) are looking at a bunch of different options - maybe even changing the business. It all sounds very healthy to me.

Twitter says that tonight's Mariner game will be on ESPN and may not be blacked out here which means I can watch it on TV without the asshole announcer. Nice.

The latest bear: