Jasper Jones

Kelly was telling me more about her dad and how he has been building this personal portfolio of investment real estate. He started out with a lump sum when she just was a little girl and her grandfather passed away. Her dad inherited enough money to pay off his own house and have some left to invest into a vacation condo down in Florida.

They got in touch with a real estate broker at Bardell Real Estate who helped them buy a condo near Disney World in Orlando, and every summer her dad would take the family to Orlando for a 2 week vacation. They stayed in their own condo, basically for free, and the rest of the year he rented out the condo to other people who were coming to Orlando to visit Disney World or Universal Studios. Because of Florida’s nice weather, the Orlando area has lots of tourists, pretty much year round. The Bardell Real Estate brokers specialize in helping investors buy villas and other properties in the Orlando area.

After a few years her dad decided to get something bigger and they bought a nice villa in Orlando. He decided that buying property in Florida was lucrative, so then they bought another villa. Now he owns 4 rentals in Orlando and also the condo in Chattanooga. The money he gets from renting them out more than pays for the mortgages.

I really like that idea of buying real estate as you can afford it and building a portfolio. It sounds like the perfect way to build a solid future and also have someplace to go and stay for free when you want to take the family on vacation.

Not sure if having a garden district is just a southern thing or if the northern cities have them, too. I know the garden district in New Orleans if really beautiful , with dozens of very upscale homes and old mansions. There are a lot of celebrities and local VIPs with homes there, and it is the subject of bus tours for tourists.

Chattanooga’s garden district is much smaller than the New Orleans one, but is similar in that the homes are large Victorian style houses and other upscale buildings, with large lots and beautiful landscaping. Ours has a nice collection of bed and breakfasts, little cafes, and boutiques. But just a few. Although small in scale, it is a nice feature of our city and one of the prettiest areas along the river.

I’ve lived on campus in the dorms the entire time I’ve been going to school. It is convenient to the classes and a cheap way to have some place to sleep. Sure, it gets a little noisy and there’s not much privacy, but the noise doesn’t both me unless I’m trying to study and I don’t really study that much here in my room.

Today we went over to Kelly’s place for lunch and to work on our group presentation for Economics. Kelly and I have already done the grunt work and just need to get the presentation organized. Pretty sure we’ll be ready in plenty of time.

Kelly has a nice condo over in the Garden District that her dad bought as an investment and he lets her live there for school. After she graduates he’ll probably rent it out to more students. It’s really nice - large rooms, quiet neighborhood, plenty of parking.

She has a nice living room with a sleeper sofa and a really nice entertainment center along one wall. It’s real furniture - nice wood and lots of shelves and cabinet doors. Beats the heck out of my little TV Stand in my dorm room!

She wasn’t shy about showing me around. I even got a peek into her bedroom, which was fixed up really nice with a four poster bed and a large dresser-like piece that had a spot for a small TV in the bedroom. I don’t know much about armoires so I asked her what to call that, because it really is nice. She didn’t even make me feel stupid for asking.

Well, our softball game has been called off due to rain. I don’t mind getting wet, but the idea of standing out in the middle of a field while there’s lightning is just not a good idea.

There are people killed by lightning all the time. It’s a real threat that people must take seriously. Even if a storm has passed, there is a chance of lightning strikes for up to 20 minutes after it stopped raining.

My Auntie Ann lost her husband to a lighting strike about 5 years ago. He was just standing outside on the deck to have a smoke during halftime of a football game. It wasn’t even raining but a bolt came out of nowhere and struck him dead instantly and caught the deck on fire. It was a terrible thing to happen and my aunt has never totally gotten over it - she never goes out on her deck anymore, not even for a minute.

So if we have to postpone our ballgame it is OK with me. I can catch up on some homework and do a little surfing on the internet before I have to go into work.

Gave my dad a call last night just to check in and see what he and mom are doing. They are good and they want to come down here for a visit if I can work out my work schedule to have time with them and maybe go to dinner together for a few hours.

Dad has decided to add on a sun porch to the back of the house and make it into a “man room” so that he has someplace to put his stuff and maybe a game table. Maybe its his mid life crisis to want his own pool table and a poker table, but I guess that’s better than a Corvette like so many old guys buy in their last desperate attempt to feel young and sexy again. Besides, I’d like to shoot some pool with the old man anyway.

He’s going to buy this cool round table that has a top that flips over from a regular table to a poker table. I’ve seen those around and never thought my dad would be getting one. But he’s already found the one he wants on the internet and told me to go look at the web site called DiscountQualityFurniture.com and click on the brand name Powell to see what he’s going to get.

I had never heard of Powell Furniture but what do I know about nice furniture? That’s something my mom has always taken care of at our house and I will admit that she has great taste. She always likes the best quality of everything, even if it means waiting a little longer to afford getting the better brands. I’m surprised my dad is even getting involved in this, but it’s for his man room, so I guess that’s why he picked it out.

So I checked out the web site and I can see the cool table that my dad is talking about. I see this place has a lot of other brands, too, and I was surprised that even I recognize some of the brands, like American Drew and Coaster furniture. I must have picked that up from being around my mom.

The past 10 days or so we have had four major hurricanes headed for the U.S.

First there was Gustav, that bore down on New Orleans and caused massive evacuations as a safeguard against the type of flooding, property damage and loss of life that was caused three years ago by Hurricane Katrina. Thankfully, Gustav hit land to the West of New Orleans and was downgraded quickly from an almost Category 4 hurricane to just a tropical storm. So New Orleans dodged the bullet this time.

The next big hurricane was right on the heels of Katrina, Hannah. Instead of the Gulf Coast, Hannah take a swipe on the East Coast, with most of the wind and rain affecting South Carolina and North Carolina, then faded out as it tore through Virginia.

Now we are all watching the development and projected path of Hurricane Ike. At the moment, most of the damage has been in the Caribbean, but the Florida Keys are on high alert and tourists in Key West have been asked to leave. We will wee which way the hurricane blows after it hits the Keys and I hope that Ike losing its power just as quickly as Gustav and Hannah did. After all, we still need to brace ourselves for Hurricane Josephine.

This probably sound silly but I have a little case of homesickness today. I’ve been back at school only 6 days and I’m thrilled to be rooming with my buddy Alex again. We have a dorm room filled with guy stuff and “boy toys” like my mom says. It’s got a comfortable bed, food, a wall of electronics and room to study. But you know, like they say in the Wizard of Oz movie, “There’s no place like home.”

One of the things I really miss is the quiet of my parents’ house. We live on a nice piece of property, back from the road, and at night all you hear is crickets, frogs, and this year, the desperate mating songs of the locusts. And every fifteen minutes, there is the reassuring chime of my mom’s grandfather clock. I never knew how much I would miss that chime until I got here at school and don’t hear it anymore.

I think everyone in my mom’s family owns grandfather clocks. It was a standard “must have” for each of her sisters back in the day when they first got married and bought their first homes. The tradition started when my mom’s grandmother came over from England and hand carried her own mantel clock. She still has it and it still chimes faithfully throughout the day.

My mom’s grandfather clock was made by one of the most famous clock makers in the world, Howard Miller. There are a couple of other famous clock makers, like Seth Thomas and Bulova, but my mom loves the Howard Miller clocks. She often tells me that my generation doesn’t appreciate the finer things in life and that when I get married that I need to have a grandfather clock in my home, too. she’s shown me the newer, contemporary styles that you can buy, and I think she’s right. That is one family tradition that I’d like to carry one, with my own sense of style, of course.

All the kids want to get together and buy one big present for my dad this year for his birthday. That’s fine with me - sure makes it easy for all of us. My brother will collect the money from each of us and go buy the present. All I have to do is buy a card and sign it.

My brother thinks that buying my dad a grandfather clock will be the perfect birthday gift. I thought they were a little more expensive than what we could afford, even if we all pool our money together. But maybe not. I want to check it out and see what is involved in buying a grandfather clock - does it come already assembled? How much does it cost to ship grandfather clocks? Can we get it delivered in time for the birthday dinner that my mom is fixing?

There’s a great web site called 1-800-4clocks that has all kinds of clocks, and they specialize in grandfather clocks. I liked several of the different models that they sell, and I never realized there were so many things to know about buying the right clock. But I was right about one thing, a grandfather clock is a large investment and with our gift budget we’ll be better off buying a nice mantle clock for dad.

We had a little water emergency at work work today and needed to call a plumber. It was interesting to stand back and watch the warehouse manager and the white collar dudes run around all frantic while water was gushing out of the ladies room. How that even happened I couldn’t tell you, because we only have 2 ladies working here and neither one had even gone into the bathroom yet this morning.

Funny how no one wanted to go into the ladies room to deal with the problem, yet we couldn’t have water pouring out of there and flooding the warehouse floor. Eventually they found a volunteer to go in and turn off the water supply until a plumber could get there to actually fix it.

So I have to wonder how DO people go about finding a plumber? It seems my dad has always known who to call when something happens around the house. Well, now there is a cool website for anyone in the U.K. called “My Hammer” who needs a tradesman to get online and find the right company.

First of all, it’s a cool name for a website and easy to remember. If you need a tradesman, you look up “My Hammer.” Get it? Tradesmen include carpenters, electricians, gardeners, landscapers, painters, plumbers, and even people who come haul off your junk or detail your car. To use the site you post your job on an online bulletin board and the interested tradesmen can send you a bid on the work. You can post your job for free and sit back while the right people come looking for you. You review the bids and pick the Handyman that you want.

If you are a tradesman, this is the perfect site to find work. When you register (for free) with the site, any relevant job postings get emailed to you. Then you can follow up and send them a quote.
If you do the job you pay a small referral fee to the web site. That’s sounds pretty fair to me.