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.

At work last night one of the med techs was telling me that she’s taking classes to become a massage therapist. It started out with a little teasing because my shoulders and neck were really sore from the softball game Wednesday night. She wanted to give me a neck massage but was afraid that if she did that while at work that someone would cause trouble for us. Touching another employee is not a good thing as far as management goes - they don’t want to have a sexual harrassment lawsuit or anything. So I didn’t get the neck massage, but I wanted one!

When she finishes the massage classes she will probably move out of the area and get a job at a resort or large spa. There’s not much of that in Chattanooga.

The closest big city for us is Atlanta. It’s about a two hour drive south of here. I don’t know if there is a lot of demand for massage in Atlanta. We were talking about that possibility and did a search for Atlanta Massage and were surprised to find so many listings. We found these using a special search directory called Clicksmart. This directory lists professional in categories like:

Contractors
Florists
Home & Office Services
Massage Therapists
Mortgage Brokers
Real Estate Agents
Weddings and Events

For my economics class I have to do an analysis of an existing business and try to change it’s business model to an alternative form. The Professor used the example of a Subway Sandwich shop, which is a franchise. So if you look at what makes a Subway Sandwich shop successful and identify the advantages of it being a franchise, can you theoretically operate the same business under a different business model and have it be comparably successful?

He handed out slips of paper with actual businesses to be assigned and examined by each student. By the luck of the draw, I got a Wilmington NC auto repair shop. The business is a family owned and operated, single location repair shop. At least the subject is interesting to me and they have a web site, so I can do a lot of research from my computer in my room. I might also make a couple of telephone calls during the day and see if the owner would be willing to talk to me.

The shop is named Atlantic Car Care and their web site is pretty nice. It has the hours open and their street address on the sidebar, which is probably what most people will be looking for. They also list all the credit cards that they accept for payment. One cool feature they have is that you can schedule your car repair or maintenance on the internet from their site. It’s got enough informaiton on the site to know that this is a successful business and I can start my analysis with this.

With the cost of gas going out of sight we are starting to worry about how this will affect air fares and available flights around Christmas when we want to go home for the winter break. Alex needs to go all the way back to California, so we decided to check out some things on the internet.

Alex likes to use Expedia to make his travel plans, so we checked out the regular fares for a trip home. Then we went to the discount coupon site that I like to use and checked there for coupons and promo codes that we might be able to use for the trip.

He found promo codes to use on the Southwest Airlines flight he wants to take, so we went ahead and booked the flight and saved some money with that.

He won’t need a hotel room while he’s out there, but he will need a rental car since he drove his own car out here to have it for school. So when he goes home he’ll leave his car here and just get a rental out there. The coupon site had travel coupons for car rental companies and we found a good deal on Budget Car Rental so we booked that, too.

Alex is all set for his trip home for the holidays. Now I have to make my own plans, but I actually need to stay here for most of the holiday and work at my new job. It will be nice to have a break from school, but I still need to be earning money and the hospital needs me available for my shifts. So my trip home for Christmas will probably just be a quick 2 day weekend.

Late summer is the time for rodeos all across the country. There are still two rodeos that I haven’t been to yet and I’m hoping to go to one each year after I get out of school.

I’ve alway wanted to go to Canada and the Calgary Stampede rodeo and festival every July is the perfect reason to go across our northern border.

And for the rest old west of America, the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo is 10 days of everything cowboy.

My dad was telling us this morning that his company has a bid on a big new project in San Diego and there is a good chance that they’ll win the award next month. This sounds like a dream job - to live and work in one of America’s most fabulous cities. Everyone says that San Diego has the perfect climate and the most beautiful beaches on the mainland.

The job obviously involves the airport, because that’s what my dad’s company does - airports. But it could be anything from new runways to remodeling the terminals to adding a new parking garage.

If he gets this contract I might even be able to score some summer work with his company when school is out. I can work with tools if I have to, and the money from construction work is a lot better than the other summer jobs out there for kids.

They would have to partner up with local suppliers, like Concrete Contrators Interstate. CCI is a commercial concrete construction that does structural concrete and site concrete - the kind of jobs that my dad’s company subcontracts out.

Dad puts out bids for structural concrete San Diego contractors and negotiates their rates before bidding on the complete job. I’ve helped him in the office with his proposals before and I’m learning the whole process. If I’m running the copier I even read the documents - I figure I might as well learn something while I’m there.

For a lot of the bids my dad already knows some of the major players from past experience, but if it is a new location or his preferred contractors aren’t available, he gets a lot of contacts from the internet. For instance, just searching for concrete street construction San Diego or concrete San Diego will pull up a good list to start checking out, and CCI comes up in the top search results for both.

Had the chance to watch the Cardinals play the Cubs in St. Louis last night. It was an awesome game - up and down with many close plays and at the top of the 9th it looked like the Cubs were going to wind their second game in the Cards series, but hang on to your seats! because at the very last possible minute the Cardinals got the 2 runs they needed for a BIG WIN! Whew! That game was really exciting. I hope they can pull off another win today to send the Cubs home with 2 losses in a row.

We are still hoping to find a way to get to Chicago for one of the games when the Cards come to Wrigley in August. We’ve done that every year since I was a kid and hope that the high price of gas doesn’t ruin all our travel plans this summer.

You may have noticed that I don’t go into a lot of details about my love life here on my blog. That’s on purpose, as I want a little privacy there and I’m sure that the person I am dating wants her privacy, too. So to everyone who’s been wondering, I’m fine, OK.

Would really like to go to the beach for a few days. It seems like all my friends are going to either Destin or Cancun and here I am at work instead of sitting on the sand watching the bikinis go by. It’s making me chafe a little, I have to admit. However, I have responsibilities and one more year of college before I can have all my finances in order and afford to take time off for fun and games.

Instead of driving 8 hours down and back to have a few hours in the sun, I’ve been making the most of the fun things that are around here. We have tons of parks and there is always the lakes and rivers. Lake beaches are not the same as ocean beaches, but they are sand and water and sun, with a few bikinis worth watching, too.

The news has bee full of stories about flooding this past week all along the Mississippi River. The flooding took out millions of acres of farmland and crops. Iowas and Missouri have been the worst hit.

My buddy in St. Louis called this morning to ask if I’m interested in coming up there to work with him the rest of this summer. He has a great job installing carpet and flooring, and with all the damage to homes in businesses from the flooding, there will be a lot of work to do. He’s been in touch with a disaster cleanup company called “Water Restoration 911″ and they are going to be really busy over the next 2-3 months in Missouri.

Water Restoration 911 can respond to emergencies nationwide, 24/7. Their website has a toll free hotline people can call for help, and their team of technicians can be on the scene, often within 30 minutes of the call. There’s going to be a lot of carpet and flooring that needs to be replaced, so there’s lots of work, with almost unlimited overtime, for contractors in the flooded areas. Not sure I want to leave here to go do that, but the money might change my mind.