Monday, January 04, 2010

A day of successes and unsuccessfulness

I got a lot done today and hardly got anything done at all. One of those days, really. Sometimes I'm thankful when I can just finish up one or two things. My list of projects this week is fairly long. A video project that carried over from last week, designs for a friend and his game store in Colorado that I haven't been able to devote enough attention to, the normal projects for my church client. It can be overwhelming. I need to be doing a better job of utilizing my project management corkboard.

While professionally I didn't get as much done as I would have liked today I did have at least a couple of minor accomplishments. This afternoon, while my machine was busy rendering, I drove over to our credit union and finished paying off our PT Cruiser. Angela and I try to follow Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover plan and for the most part we've been successful with it but we've strayed once or twice. Once, earlier this spring, we hit a hiccup in finances before my work really started to pick up again. My parents offered us a small loan and it really helped us make ends meet for a month or two. Then, when my church client came on board this summer it became apparent that we really needed a second car. Angela being a courier has meant/means that the Santa Fe was never available when I needed it. That's a problem when there are shoots that need to be attended and clients that have to be visited. We had a system for a while where she would swing home and pick me up in the middle of her route or I would travel with her in the morning until it was time to be dropped off. It SORT of worked but it was causing an increasing level of stress between Ang and I as a couple and Ang and her supervisor. Enter the PT Cruiser.

Being, or at least attempting to be Dave Ramsey-ites, I felt kind of guilty when we opened the loan for it. That said, we got a really great deal on it and we worked to try and pay it off as quickly as possible. I would have held off and waited until we had the cash, but in the crucible of stress and the need for some sort of a second vehicle and the knowledge that I had a new client that was going to be giving me regular hours, we took a gamble.

I love our Hyundai Santa Fe. Because of that, we headed out to try and find some sort of a used Hyundai somewhere in town. We looked up hyundai dealers in Austin and headed off for a showroom that turned out to not exist anymore. Just up the road from where the Hyundai dealership used to be sat the Kia used lot. When we got there we mentioned our absurdly low price range. They didn't really have anything that low but the salesman told us that he had something that was slightly higher. We walked into the lot and he took us over to the little PT Cruiser. A grandma's car that had only been driven 55,000 miles or so since it was purchased new in 2002, it was also in pretty incredible shape... and price wise it was in a range that we could pay off in way less than a year. So, after a test drive and much haggling (along with a text messages between a friend who also has a PT Cruiser and price comparison shopping on Craigslist with our cellphones) I drove our little addition home.

Fast forward a few months... One of my other main clients caught up on my invoices last week so that I could close out my accounts for the year. Being that my outstanding invoices dated back to August we were in a position to pay the car off. I paid off a big chunk of the car last Friday but I wanted to wait to pay the balance off until the rest of my deposit cleared. Seeing that the money was sitting in there today I drove over to the bank and wrote the final check.

Anyway, it felt really good to write that check and get that receipt that says 0.00. It'll feel even better when I get the title in the mail in a couple of weeks.

After going to the bank I finally made it to the gym. I meant to go yesterday evening but failed to get out of the house again. First, dinner took much longer than I thought it would. Then, we had our alternate dining arrangements. After we got home, I needed to let everything settle and we watched Stick It. Post Stick It I had to finish up the cooking that was still incomplete earlier. I never made it out the door again. So today, I rectified it.

I need to put together a workout plan. Right now the main goal is to just get moving again. I ran for a 1/2 hour and got a couple of miles in and lifted some weights. Tomorrow I'll aim to do a fuller weight lifting routine. My goal this month is to get to the gym AT LEAST 15 times. If I can make those gym visits happen I think I'll be back into a routine. It's been too long since I've had any sort of excercise routine and it's something I think I desperately need. It's too easy for me to roll out of bed, head to my office and then not get up again until it's time for lunch. Then, lunch in front of the computer and more work (or the lack thereof) in front of my computer until 5 or 6. Bedroom-->office-->kitchen-->office-->bathroom-->office-->balcony for a minute-->office.... you can get the picture. it's a very exciting life.

Anyway, I made it to the gym. Tomorrow I'll try and make it to the gym and we'll already have two of our fifteen gym engagements checked off. I added a box in the right hand column to keep track of movies, miles and visits. It'll be interesting to see how they add up.

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