Last Day
So today was my last day at Check into Cash… I figured I should just do a run through of different thoughts involving the experience.
1st off my co-worker called in sick again, she calls in sick more than anyone else I have ever met, once a pay period pretty much every pay period. It’s pretty annoying, actually I was filling up gas when she sent me the text messages and I was reading them and pretty grumpy about having to work my last day by myself so much that I accidently selected the premium gas and ended up paying an extra 20 cents a gallon blah.
2nd while I didn’t really like the job, it wasn’t that bad. Sure some of the clients where a pain in the butt, but the absolute worst part of the job was how much the profession vilified by my family/friends. I ended up feeling compelled to defend it for what it was. Really folks it’s not a loan shark business, it is a valid service. The people we loan money too, no one else will… If you think our interest rates are too high, why don’t you give them a loan? Because the banks sure won’t… Yes the interest rates are high, but you are paying for those who use the service and never pay us back, just like you have to pay higher rates of auto insurance because a lot of people don’t buy it. Honestly it shouldn’t really matter to me, it’s a mindset that will never change and me putting my full thoughts out there would only hurt people’s feelings. (I’m a lot more cold-hearted in political/economic theory and I am in real life) So yes, trying to stick up for the business was by far the worst aspect of the job.
3rd I’ll miss some of the customers, you actually learn a lot about the people and I knew pretty much 80% of our customers as soon as they walked in the door and could have a conversation about something going on in their life. Which is sort of weird really, like I see these people once every two weeks for a period of four months…. And well I know stuff about their kids and everyday lives. I mean I’m not friends with them, but I was still interested in what was going on in their lives, and now I’ll never know.
4th I kind of felt like I was letting down my job a little bit. I was only there for 4 months, sure my collections where never the best, but I was improving and now that I’m leaving I know the store will go downhill again. As I don’t have a lot of faith things will be taken care of when I’m gone, and stuff will begin to pile up making everything harder for the next new manager they bring in. That and the customers always complained for the first two months I was there that they hated how there was always new people working at the store, and now I have helped continue that cycle right after they got used to me.
5th That said I’m glad I’m making the jump, 1 it’s for a job in the career field I wanted. It has been really hard for me to break into anything History related so while it will be hard this is an awesome opportunity. I may not have taken this opportunity once I got the center bonusing and I was making a lot more money. I think the timing of this was just meant to be, so we will see how it all plays out.
6th I’m very glad my District Manager showed up today, I was worried she wasn’t going to come in, since she works out of Seymour and then I’d have to leave the money and everything without someone to verify funds. It’s just much safer to have everything signed over in someone else’s name and being able to turn over my keys and have my security codes taken out of the system. Just ties everything up nice and neat.
7th How crazy is it that my new job title is “Executive Director” that just sounds fancy… I’m totally going to need some business cards.
8th The Regional Manager called my store today, I’ve totally never met or talked to the guy, so it just felt kind of weird that he wished me good luck and asked about my new job. He oversees stores in 3-4 states so it isn’t weird that I never met him, just kind of strange/nice that he wanted to talk to me before I left I guess.
9th Totally glad to be done with extra driving that I have been doing these last four months. I put 10000 miles on my car… which was about as many miles as I put on it the first year I owned the car. I will probably miss having the good opportunity to listen to as many audio books as I did.
10th To be completely honest, still a little nervous on how my whole money situation will play out now that I’m going from a full time job to a part time position. Sure I’ll have a ton of extra time :D and will be able to pick up some extra money helping my Dad and substitute teaching again, but I worry about money and this is certainly a drop. So even though I have run the numbers multiple times a day ever since I first applied… I’m still a little uneasy.
11th Excited to get the whole new job figured out, totally new experience
12th It is very, very hard to get motivated to do your work when you know you are quitting very shortly. I was pretty motivated today and Saturday, but the days before that drug by very slowly. Actually it has been like that at every job I quit, well except my GECOM job because I was on a line and had to go with the flow.
Well that’s about all I have to say for now, I’m sure I’ll come up with some more thoughts later. But I think this is a good overview of my thoughts for today.
Monday, January 31, 2011
February Series Idea
So this is my formal announcement of my February Blog Series Idea.... 28 things in my room.
Each Day I'm going to post a picture of something in my room, and then post a paragraph or two about what the item/object is, why it is special, where I got it and so forth. I'm excitied to get this series started and I think it will be a lot of fun. I'd love to see some of you other bloggers out there take this on if you feel up to it.
Though I must say due to my limited internet access abilities I probably won't be able to post the first one with the picture until maybe this weekend or whenever I get a chance to run up to the truckstop. In that case I'm probably going to just post the writings as drafts and make them viewable once I get my pictures uploaded. Hopefully once I get access to a place where I can upload I'll go ahead and upload 10-15 items which should stop any other delays in posting from happen. My schedule here at the end of the month just made it so I wasn't able to get a jump start on uploading the pictures for this series.
Each Day I'm going to post a picture of something in my room, and then post a paragraph or two about what the item/object is, why it is special, where I got it and so forth. I'm excitied to get this series started and I think it will be a lot of fun. I'd love to see some of you other bloggers out there take this on if you feel up to it.
Though I must say due to my limited internet access abilities I probably won't be able to post the first one with the picture until maybe this weekend or whenever I get a chance to run up to the truckstop. In that case I'm probably going to just post the writings as drafts and make them viewable once I get my pictures uploaded. Hopefully once I get access to a place where I can upload I'll go ahead and upload 10-15 items which should stop any other delays in posting from happen. My schedule here at the end of the month just made it so I wasn't able to get a jump start on uploading the pictures for this series.
January Reading List
January 2011
I didn’t do that well this month, kinda got tired of listening to audio books on my drive and listened to more music than text lately.
1. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (1847)
A gothic novel, which has some interesting parts but it was a little too much love story for me. How everything came full circle was interesting after it all played out, but wasn’t that impressed overall.
2. Blockade Runner – Jules Verne (1865)
An adventure story about a British captain who has a plan to runner the Union blockade of Charlestown to trade ammo for cotton in order to make a profit and help out his home. Throw in bland love story to get the plot running and there you have it. Overall the story was a disappointment, Verne is much better than this. There is never any real suspense or excitement in the story, no scientific thoughts that you would expect from Verne and the romance is as bland/tacked on as can be. The story left a lot on the table.
I also started reading Fathers and Sons but I believe that one will go unfinished.
I didn’t do that well this month, kinda got tired of listening to audio books on my drive and listened to more music than text lately.
1. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (1847)
A gothic novel, which has some interesting parts but it was a little too much love story for me. How everything came full circle was interesting after it all played out, but wasn’t that impressed overall.
2. Blockade Runner – Jules Verne (1865)
An adventure story about a British captain who has a plan to runner the Union blockade of Charlestown to trade ammo for cotton in order to make a profit and help out his home. Throw in bland love story to get the plot running and there you have it. Overall the story was a disappointment, Verne is much better than this. There is never any real suspense or excitement in the story, no scientific thoughts that you would expect from Verne and the romance is as bland/tacked on as can be. The story left a lot on the table.
I also started reading Fathers and Sons but I believe that one will go unfinished.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Pet Peeve
So I realized the other day that I have a pet peeve of people using hand sanitizer. At my job we have a bottle that sits on the customers side of the glass, and also there is a hand sanitizer station at the bank I go to every morning for work.
I'm not sure why it bothers me, its just something about the smug "I don't mind if I do" look that they get when they notice it, and make a move for it. The annoying "spurt" sound that the pump makes, and finally the way they rub their hands.
So maybe its silly, but it really has been annoying me recently.
I'm not sure why it bothers me, its just something about the smug "I don't mind if I do" look that they get when they notice it, and make a move for it. The annoying "spurt" sound that the pump makes, and finally the way they rub their hands.
So maybe its silly, but it really has been annoying me recently.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Shellacked
Ugh Purdue got the crap beat out of them tonight
Sometimes I care too much about my sports teams, I'm going to be depressed for a week. Sad preformance all around. I had to quit watching with 10 minutes left or I was going to hurt something. I've just so very disappointed in their effort tonight.
Sometimes I care too much about my sports teams, I'm going to be depressed for a week. Sad preformance all around. I had to quit watching with 10 minutes left or I was going to hurt something. I've just so very disappointed in their effort tonight.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
A quick life update
Life Update
So it’s been almost a week since I posted and really I haven’t posted much so I figured I should give a quick update as to what’s going on in my life.
Well the short story is, not much just a lot of work lately to be honest. Working 45 hours a week plus 10 hours a week driving take out a lot of your time to do much else. Last Wednesday was my day off, but I didn’t have much planned since I couldn’t find a storage auction nearby. I got the oil changed in my car, as I had been needing to do that, just hadn’t be able to find time in my schedule to do so. I also tried cleaning my room a little, where I found out that some of my favorite shirts that I had put away due to not being able to fit in them last spring, now fit again which is nice.
Thursday we had a fairly decent snow storm come in, but I was able to make it to work and back without much trouble. Well other than getting stuck in a traffic jam on the way home. The big news for me that day was that my work (which I had put in two weeks’ notice for) had asked me to go to a different store in the morning. So with that knowledge + some other things I took into account I figured they were calling me over there to turn in my keys and what not so it’d be my last day.
Friday however I showed up at the other store (which I call a “ghetto store” because it has a security guard their every day and gets robbed pretty frequently) and found out I was going to be there all day, in fact they sent me so I could cover the store that morning as their manager had something he had to do and had to leave for most of the morning. The security guard was an alright guy and I spent a good part of the day chatting with him as the store was slow. It was like a vacation in comparison to what my store does on a Friday. Add in the fact that I didn’t have collection calls or anything it was a fairly relaxing day.
Saturday was a regular day at work, really, not a lot to say. I worked with a girl who used to work at the store I covered but has since transferred to my store as she didn’t want to work at that one anymore following the robbery she experienced. Also I ended up staying late waiting for a customer to come in, but overall not bad. Saturday night Purdue played Michigan St. in basketball and won, thus all was well.
That brings us to today which was a lazy morning where I played video games, and then went with my Dad and sister to see “The Green Hornet” in Greensburg. I liked the movie; it was good, not great defiantly worth seeing for sure though. Also it was the first movie I saw in theatres this year. None of the previews sparked my eye today, Thor looked the most interesting, the others meh.
I guess the biggest news I have for now is that I have decided on a blog series for February, I’m going to post a picture and then write a bit about a different object in my room every day. It’ll probably just be called “28 things from my room” or something lame like that, but to be honest ever since I thought of it this morning I have been excited about the possibilities. The light fixture in my room actually is the object that inspired it, so it’ll probably get the honor of day one. That said do to my internet bandwidth limits I might not be able to get them all posted on the actual days… My hope is to take a whole bunch of the pictures and upload them in advance, but my truck stop sidekick now has a job so just depends if I want to sit up there by myself or not.
Not that I haven’t sat up there by myself numerous times, it’s just that its more boring I guess. Though I also need to go there to finish posting a March series from last year, so next time I’m there I’ll work on getting those up.
I haven’t been listening to audio books this week, the one I’m working on is rather boring and might just be the first one I give up on. “Fathers and Sons” by Ivan Turgenev. Also it looks like with my job changing, the amount of “reading” I have been doing will sadly be dwindling as my drive time will be seeing a significant drop.
Well that’s all for now.
So it’s been almost a week since I posted and really I haven’t posted much so I figured I should give a quick update as to what’s going on in my life.
Well the short story is, not much just a lot of work lately to be honest. Working 45 hours a week plus 10 hours a week driving take out a lot of your time to do much else. Last Wednesday was my day off, but I didn’t have much planned since I couldn’t find a storage auction nearby. I got the oil changed in my car, as I had been needing to do that, just hadn’t be able to find time in my schedule to do so. I also tried cleaning my room a little, where I found out that some of my favorite shirts that I had put away due to not being able to fit in them last spring, now fit again which is nice.
Thursday we had a fairly decent snow storm come in, but I was able to make it to work and back without much trouble. Well other than getting stuck in a traffic jam on the way home. The big news for me that day was that my work (which I had put in two weeks’ notice for) had asked me to go to a different store in the morning. So with that knowledge + some other things I took into account I figured they were calling me over there to turn in my keys and what not so it’d be my last day.
Friday however I showed up at the other store (which I call a “ghetto store” because it has a security guard their every day and gets robbed pretty frequently) and found out I was going to be there all day, in fact they sent me so I could cover the store that morning as their manager had something he had to do and had to leave for most of the morning. The security guard was an alright guy and I spent a good part of the day chatting with him as the store was slow. It was like a vacation in comparison to what my store does on a Friday. Add in the fact that I didn’t have collection calls or anything it was a fairly relaxing day.
Saturday was a regular day at work, really, not a lot to say. I worked with a girl who used to work at the store I covered but has since transferred to my store as she didn’t want to work at that one anymore following the robbery she experienced. Also I ended up staying late waiting for a customer to come in, but overall not bad. Saturday night Purdue played Michigan St. in basketball and won, thus all was well.
That brings us to today which was a lazy morning where I played video games, and then went with my Dad and sister to see “The Green Hornet” in Greensburg. I liked the movie; it was good, not great defiantly worth seeing for sure though. Also it was the first movie I saw in theatres this year. None of the previews sparked my eye today, Thor looked the most interesting, the others meh.
I guess the biggest news I have for now is that I have decided on a blog series for February, I’m going to post a picture and then write a bit about a different object in my room every day. It’ll probably just be called “28 things from my room” or something lame like that, but to be honest ever since I thought of it this morning I have been excited about the possibilities. The light fixture in my room actually is the object that inspired it, so it’ll probably get the honor of day one. That said do to my internet bandwidth limits I might not be able to get them all posted on the actual days… My hope is to take a whole bunch of the pictures and upload them in advance, but my truck stop sidekick now has a job so just depends if I want to sit up there by myself or not.
Not that I haven’t sat up there by myself numerous times, it’s just that its more boring I guess. Though I also need to go there to finish posting a March series from last year, so next time I’m there I’ll work on getting those up.
I haven’t been listening to audio books this week, the one I’m working on is rather boring and might just be the first one I give up on. “Fathers and Sons” by Ivan Turgenev. Also it looks like with my job changing, the amount of “reading” I have been doing will sadly be dwindling as my drive time will be seeing a significant drop.
Well that’s all for now.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Two Weeks Notice, and a New Opportunity
Two Weeks Notice
So today I put two weeks’ notice in today at work, I was nervous doing so. Which I know sounds weird because it’s like what can they do… fire you? You’re quitting so yeah, nothing happens. But it’s more that I always feel like I’m letting my company/job down by quitting. But yeah, around 1 pm today I phoned my boss (couldn’t do it in person since I only see her 2-3 times a month) and let her know what was up and that my last day would be the 31st. It was a brief conversation, I thought it would be longer but nope, that was it no questions asked. Which I’m glad for, it appears that at least for now I will keep working there until the 31st. Though I suppose that they could call me up and tell me not to come in anymore at some point in time. Actually that wouldn’t surprise me as at some point they will have to take me out of the system and make sure everything is in line security wise since I handle a lot of money on a day to day basis. Honestly I don’t know what their protocol is in this instance so I guess I’ll see in the next two weeks here. The good thing about working these next two weeks is that I won’t miss out on that additional income.
* I hope to post sometime in the next week or so a pro/con review of my last job.
New Opportunity
Also I realize that means I need to say a little something about my new job… as I haven’t mentioned it previously. Reason for that is because I was waiting to see if I got the job before I said anything and maybe jinxed myself by talking about the opportunity.
So in the middle of December my Grandma sent a newspaper article to our house about the Decatur County Historical Society. It sounded interesting and I had interned their one summer while I was in college so I decided to apply for the position, with the expectation that I wouldn’t be close to qualified enough for the job opening.
One of the funny things is I wrote my cover letter and updated my resume while at a training class in Lexington for my current job. Which is kind of sad I guess, but I just happened to be stuck doing that the week after I heard about the opening. I’d also like to give a big thanks to two of my friends Steve and Alex for proof reading and making suggestions on my resume/cover letters.
About two weeks later I was contacted by the search committee who wanted to set up an interview. At this time I was really excited, however they requested to interview me on a Friday… the one day of the week I have no chance of ever getting off at my current job. After speaking to them through some emails and their being very considerate, we were able to change the time so that I was able to get an interview in!
A week later with a lot of hoping, wishing and thinking about it they called me up and offered me the job.
And here we are now, with me putting in my two weeks’ notice. *I also plan on doing a follow up post on my new job either next week or at the very start of February.
So today I put two weeks’ notice in today at work, I was nervous doing so. Which I know sounds weird because it’s like what can they do… fire you? You’re quitting so yeah, nothing happens. But it’s more that I always feel like I’m letting my company/job down by quitting. But yeah, around 1 pm today I phoned my boss (couldn’t do it in person since I only see her 2-3 times a month) and let her know what was up and that my last day would be the 31st. It was a brief conversation, I thought it would be longer but nope, that was it no questions asked. Which I’m glad for, it appears that at least for now I will keep working there until the 31st. Though I suppose that they could call me up and tell me not to come in anymore at some point in time. Actually that wouldn’t surprise me as at some point they will have to take me out of the system and make sure everything is in line security wise since I handle a lot of money on a day to day basis. Honestly I don’t know what their protocol is in this instance so I guess I’ll see in the next two weeks here. The good thing about working these next two weeks is that I won’t miss out on that additional income.
* I hope to post sometime in the next week or so a pro/con review of my last job.
New Opportunity
Also I realize that means I need to say a little something about my new job… as I haven’t mentioned it previously. Reason for that is because I was waiting to see if I got the job before I said anything and maybe jinxed myself by talking about the opportunity.
So in the middle of December my Grandma sent a newspaper article to our house about the Decatur County Historical Society. It sounded interesting and I had interned their one summer while I was in college so I decided to apply for the position, with the expectation that I wouldn’t be close to qualified enough for the job opening.
One of the funny things is I wrote my cover letter and updated my resume while at a training class in Lexington for my current job. Which is kind of sad I guess, but I just happened to be stuck doing that the week after I heard about the opening. I’d also like to give a big thanks to two of my friends Steve and Alex for proof reading and making suggestions on my resume/cover letters.
About two weeks later I was contacted by the search committee who wanted to set up an interview. At this time I was really excited, however they requested to interview me on a Friday… the one day of the week I have no chance of ever getting off at my current job. After speaking to them through some emails and their being very considerate, we were able to change the time so that I was able to get an interview in!
A week later with a lot of hoping, wishing and thinking about it they called me up and offered me the job.
And here we are now, with me putting in my two weeks’ notice. *I also plan on doing a follow up post on my new job either next week or at the very start of February.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Storage Auctions!
Storage Units…
As I’m writing this I realized that it is ending up as a rambling post more so that a well throughout expression, so I went back to put in this disclaimer, that well… this is just a random jumble of me telling my thoughts and experiences of going to Storage Unit Auctions yesterday, and I feel this will work best as me just rambling in the long run rather than going back to clean it up into a more structured post.
So yesterday (Wednesday the 12th) I went to another set of storage unit auctions. This was my 2nd time going, as I went once in the first week of December with my Dad. After going then, we knew we wanted to try it again sometime even if we hadn’t bought anything on that first trip. Well with the holidays, and my work schedule it was determined this Wednesday would be our next chance and we spent the next month or so waiting for it to come up.
Tuesday night we were left with the choice of two storage unit auctions, one series going on in Indianapolis and the other being the same route we took last time, Starting in Franklin and heading south. We ended up opting for the Indianapolis route as it offered more units for sale, and we wanted to check it out. Dad claimed that I would have to drive if it was in Indy, but then he refused to let me drive yesterday anyway so there was no real difference there. We take the old minivan because it gets decent gas mileage and without the back seats in, we can haul a lot of stuff in the back if we were to buy a unit.
Casey wanted to go with us this time, but she wore out pretty early into the day and spent a lot of the auctions sitting in the van sleeping or playing her DS, I didn’t think she’d like it and I doubt she will go again.
How do they work / What are they: What happens is if you own a unit at a U-Store-It place, and you don’t pay your rent… after 90 days they auction off your unit to the highest bidder at a public auction. Often times a storage unit will only have 4-5 units go up for sale each month, so an auctioneer takes people around to various locations and sells a bunch off. Now you don’t really know what you are buying… the open up the door and everyone in the crowded gets about 5 minutes to look and see what they can from the door…. You can’t go in or touch anything, it’s only what you can see from the door… so you never know what’s hiding back there.
The crowd: These auctions were really crowded in the morning, probably at least 150 people at the first auction location. The two TV shows highlighting these auctions “Storage Wars” on A&E and “Auction Hunters” on Spike have really peaked public interest. I mean that is what really got Dad and I interested in these auctions, we knew they went on but had no idea as to how they worked. After watching the shows we decided to go give it a look. (Though Dad does go to 2-3 farm/estate auctions a year, so he isn’t really an auction newbie.) Anyway, a lot of the crowd has been inspired by those shows as you can hear conversations about them pretty much at every stop between various groups. As the day went on though the crowd thinned down, and pretty much only the more serious bidders were there at the last couple we went to.
The People: The people that go to these things are an interesting group in themselves. I’d break it down as such: 1) the Veterans – these are the guys/gals who have been doing this for awhile and know what they are doing. They have their own circle, but some will strike up conversations with newbie’s. 2) The newbies, I’d consider myself in this category, even though we haven’t bought anything we are serious about it and are willing to invest some money into it. 3) The Over-my-head – this is a subdivision of newbies, who jump out there and get something, but after listing to them talk you can tell they haven’t thought through the logistics of selling and profiting on what they have just bought. 4) The looky-loos – people who have come out to see what it’s all about, but aren’t willing to invest any real money in the auctions.
Dad and I have theoretically talked out a lot of the logistics of these storage auctions, really we analyze a lot, which might be why we haven’t got our first unit yet. We are probably over thinking everything too much, which makes us too cautious. Between locations and then later on at home (as you often go to 6-7 different storage places during the course of one days set of auctions) we probably break down every unit 3-4 times trying to spin it different ways as to the pros and cons and where we thought the price should have been. Actually these discussions are one of the best things about going, an exercise in financial theory I guess. I do think us breaking through and buying a unit is the next real step we need to take, even if we only end up breaking even on it, we need to take that risk step.
Actually in a throwback to the types of people at these things, Dad and I must not look too clueless as sometimes the veterans will talk to us about things, so I guess we must not seem like too big of idiots. I actually like standing in the crowd and just trying to pick up on other people’s conversations, you can learn a lot that way. Anyway I view it as a positive that we aren’t looked at as out of our league.
The Weather: The worst part about the day was the weather yesterday, it was cold… and snowy, and since the auction was going slow we stood outside in the cold and snow for probably 4-5 hours yesterday. The snow covered my feet and melted on and off between getting in the van and back out again throughout the day leaving me with cold and wet socks almost all day. Really I remember my toes being numb most of the day, but I guess that’s the cost of doing this. My toes on my right foot hurt all the way through this afternoon, well not hurt, but ached… it was strange but they feel good now. I guess from just being cold and wet all day.
Random Fact: A lot of those storage unit locations, will have a door every so oftern between the big overhead doors, if you enter it, you will find that the middle of those buildings are full of smaller interior storage units. If you wanted to have a haunted hause location.... these would be pefect... a long corridor hallway, industrial looking and with a numbered door every 5-6 feet down the passage. We had to walk down about a 150 foot passage like this in the dark, it was cave like spook... which means really cool!
The Auctioneer: Ok, the weather wouldn’t have been so bad if the auctioneer had run things a little smoother. He loses a few points because he didn’t use auctioneer gibberish, which is cool, but was probably a good idea with all of the new people there, most of them would have got lost. I know there was at least 3-4 times when someone tried to bid lower than what the current price was at. You have to pay attention to these things. Anyway the part that I thought the auctioneer dropped the ball on was that he wasted too much time. Example: Everyone leaves one unit, and he says we will be starting the next location in about 30 minutes… everyone drives to the next place and we wait… for at least 45 minutes before he shows up, and then another 15-20 while he talks to people. If he had moved things along we could have been done with things much quicker. In fact we dropped out and headed home with two locations left as it was 5 pm and we were getting tired.
Next up on my Storage Auction adventures? I’m not sure, there is a series of auctions going on Down south this next Wednesday and I have the day off, but I’m not sure I can talk my dad into Driving that far for another one this soon, and there is no way he will go if it’s that cold again. Hopefully the next one I go to, I'll buy a unit and I can do a blog breaking down the whole process of digging through the unit and hauling it home!
As I’m writing this I realized that it is ending up as a rambling post more so that a well throughout expression, so I went back to put in this disclaimer, that well… this is just a random jumble of me telling my thoughts and experiences of going to Storage Unit Auctions yesterday, and I feel this will work best as me just rambling in the long run rather than going back to clean it up into a more structured post.
So yesterday (Wednesday the 12th) I went to another set of storage unit auctions. This was my 2nd time going, as I went once in the first week of December with my Dad. After going then, we knew we wanted to try it again sometime even if we hadn’t bought anything on that first trip. Well with the holidays, and my work schedule it was determined this Wednesday would be our next chance and we spent the next month or so waiting for it to come up.
Tuesday night we were left with the choice of two storage unit auctions, one series going on in Indianapolis and the other being the same route we took last time, Starting in Franklin and heading south. We ended up opting for the Indianapolis route as it offered more units for sale, and we wanted to check it out. Dad claimed that I would have to drive if it was in Indy, but then he refused to let me drive yesterday anyway so there was no real difference there. We take the old minivan because it gets decent gas mileage and without the back seats in, we can haul a lot of stuff in the back if we were to buy a unit.
Casey wanted to go with us this time, but she wore out pretty early into the day and spent a lot of the auctions sitting in the van sleeping or playing her DS, I didn’t think she’d like it and I doubt she will go again.
How do they work / What are they: What happens is if you own a unit at a U-Store-It place, and you don’t pay your rent… after 90 days they auction off your unit to the highest bidder at a public auction. Often times a storage unit will only have 4-5 units go up for sale each month, so an auctioneer takes people around to various locations and sells a bunch off. Now you don’t really know what you are buying… the open up the door and everyone in the crowded gets about 5 minutes to look and see what they can from the door…. You can’t go in or touch anything, it’s only what you can see from the door… so you never know what’s hiding back there.
The crowd: These auctions were really crowded in the morning, probably at least 150 people at the first auction location. The two TV shows highlighting these auctions “Storage Wars” on A&E and “Auction Hunters” on Spike have really peaked public interest. I mean that is what really got Dad and I interested in these auctions, we knew they went on but had no idea as to how they worked. After watching the shows we decided to go give it a look. (Though Dad does go to 2-3 farm/estate auctions a year, so he isn’t really an auction newbie.) Anyway, a lot of the crowd has been inspired by those shows as you can hear conversations about them pretty much at every stop between various groups. As the day went on though the crowd thinned down, and pretty much only the more serious bidders were there at the last couple we went to.
The People: The people that go to these things are an interesting group in themselves. I’d break it down as such: 1) the Veterans – these are the guys/gals who have been doing this for awhile and know what they are doing. They have their own circle, but some will strike up conversations with newbie’s. 2) The newbies, I’d consider myself in this category, even though we haven’t bought anything we are serious about it and are willing to invest some money into it. 3) The Over-my-head – this is a subdivision of newbies, who jump out there and get something, but after listing to them talk you can tell they haven’t thought through the logistics of selling and profiting on what they have just bought. 4) The looky-loos – people who have come out to see what it’s all about, but aren’t willing to invest any real money in the auctions.
Dad and I have theoretically talked out a lot of the logistics of these storage auctions, really we analyze a lot, which might be why we haven’t got our first unit yet. We are probably over thinking everything too much, which makes us too cautious. Between locations and then later on at home (as you often go to 6-7 different storage places during the course of one days set of auctions) we probably break down every unit 3-4 times trying to spin it different ways as to the pros and cons and where we thought the price should have been. Actually these discussions are one of the best things about going, an exercise in financial theory I guess. I do think us breaking through and buying a unit is the next real step we need to take, even if we only end up breaking even on it, we need to take that risk step.
Actually in a throwback to the types of people at these things, Dad and I must not look too clueless as sometimes the veterans will talk to us about things, so I guess we must not seem like too big of idiots. I actually like standing in the crowd and just trying to pick up on other people’s conversations, you can learn a lot that way. Anyway I view it as a positive that we aren’t looked at as out of our league.
The Weather: The worst part about the day was the weather yesterday, it was cold… and snowy, and since the auction was going slow we stood outside in the cold and snow for probably 4-5 hours yesterday. The snow covered my feet and melted on and off between getting in the van and back out again throughout the day leaving me with cold and wet socks almost all day. Really I remember my toes being numb most of the day, but I guess that’s the cost of doing this. My toes on my right foot hurt all the way through this afternoon, well not hurt, but ached… it was strange but they feel good now. I guess from just being cold and wet all day.
Random Fact: A lot of those storage unit locations, will have a door every so oftern between the big overhead doors, if you enter it, you will find that the middle of those buildings are full of smaller interior storage units. If you wanted to have a haunted hause location.... these would be pefect... a long corridor hallway, industrial looking and with a numbered door every 5-6 feet down the passage. We had to walk down about a 150 foot passage like this in the dark, it was cave like spook... which means really cool!
The Auctioneer: Ok, the weather wouldn’t have been so bad if the auctioneer had run things a little smoother. He loses a few points because he didn’t use auctioneer gibberish, which is cool, but was probably a good idea with all of the new people there, most of them would have got lost. I know there was at least 3-4 times when someone tried to bid lower than what the current price was at. You have to pay attention to these things. Anyway the part that I thought the auctioneer dropped the ball on was that he wasted too much time. Example: Everyone leaves one unit, and he says we will be starting the next location in about 30 minutes… everyone drives to the next place and we wait… for at least 45 minutes before he shows up, and then another 15-20 while he talks to people. If he had moved things along we could have been done with things much quicker. In fact we dropped out and headed home with two locations left as it was 5 pm and we were getting tired.
Next up on my Storage Auction adventures? I’m not sure, there is a series of auctions going on Down south this next Wednesday and I have the day off, but I’m not sure I can talk my dad into Driving that far for another one this soon, and there is no way he will go if it’s that cold again. Hopefully the next one I go to, I'll buy a unit and I can do a blog breaking down the whole process of digging through the unit and hauling it home!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Night Time Mystery
A night time mystery.... solved
So last night I wake up at 4 am, and am surprised to notice my bedroom door is open and the light from the upstairs bathroom is flooding into my room and onto my face. This is what woke me up, and it was suprising because I always close my door most of the way so this doesn't happen.*
Anyway in my sleepiness I see a figure in black standing at the sink and then quickly roll over to sheild myself from the light and go back to sleep. I did check my phone for the time before falling back to sleep, thats how I know what time it was.
Now I figured that it was just Mom in the bathroom, and I remember thinking before I fell asleep that she was up really early that morning. Though low and behold when I got out of bed at 7:25 and head to the bathroom I see her coming out of her room in a hurry because she had over slept. Now this causes some juggling with everyones morning schedules as I wake up at 7:25 because it puts me between Casey when she is on her 8 o'clock word day and Dad's morning routine.
That said I found time in our morning shuffle to tell Mom I thought she was already up and ready, and tell her about what I saw at 4 am, but she denied it was her, as did Dad when I asked him before I left... so dun dun dun we have a mystery.
But the mystery was sloved tonight... when after I got home from work, Mom, Dad and I were discussing it again.... Casey came in and admited to being the culprit, as she had woke up and felt sick in the middle of the night, and was in the bathroom while wearing a black shirt...
Now the only question that remains is why/how my bedroom door got open to begin with? It's possible Kong opened it, but doubtful. Oh well that is a random update for the blog as I don't have any series or anything going to this month.
* I always crack my door because Kong (the cat) doesn't like it if its closed and will meow / attempt to paw his way in at night, whereas if it is just a little bit open he doesn't care and won't even come in.
So last night I wake up at 4 am, and am surprised to notice my bedroom door is open and the light from the upstairs bathroom is flooding into my room and onto my face. This is what woke me up, and it was suprising because I always close my door most of the way so this doesn't happen.*
Anyway in my sleepiness I see a figure in black standing at the sink and then quickly roll over to sheild myself from the light and go back to sleep. I did check my phone for the time before falling back to sleep, thats how I know what time it was.
Now I figured that it was just Mom in the bathroom, and I remember thinking before I fell asleep that she was up really early that morning. Though low and behold when I got out of bed at 7:25 and head to the bathroom I see her coming out of her room in a hurry because she had over slept. Now this causes some juggling with everyones morning schedules as I wake up at 7:25 because it puts me between Casey when she is on her 8 o'clock word day and Dad's morning routine.
That said I found time in our morning shuffle to tell Mom I thought she was already up and ready, and tell her about what I saw at 4 am, but she denied it was her, as did Dad when I asked him before I left... so dun dun dun we have a mystery.
But the mystery was sloved tonight... when after I got home from work, Mom, Dad and I were discussing it again.... Casey came in and admited to being the culprit, as she had woke up and felt sick in the middle of the night, and was in the bathroom while wearing a black shirt...
Now the only question that remains is why/how my bedroom door got open to begin with? It's possible Kong opened it, but doubtful. Oh well that is a random update for the blog as I don't have any series or anything going to this month.
* I always crack my door because Kong (the cat) doesn't like it if its closed and will meow / attempt to paw his way in at night, whereas if it is just a little bit open he doesn't care and won't even come in.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Christmas Tree
So today we took down our Christmas Tree during the Colts game and I was thinking... Isn't it strange that we, (we as in most Americans, religious or not) spend a whole month of the year with a decorated tree in our homes. Thats basically one out of every twelve days of our lives with spend with a decorated (fake or real) tree.
Not sure why but I found that random and thought worthy today.
Not sure why but I found that random and thought worthy today.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Years 2010-2011
Some pictures I snagged from New Years at Joe's with Joe/Chantel/Bruce/Brock/Megan
All I'll say is don't start your night with 3 shots of everclear
Everclear
Playing Wii
Bruce and I
All I'll say is don't start your night with 3 shots of everclear
Everclear
Playing Wii
Bruce and I
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