We posed this question to high school students studying the book of Esther in the Old Testament and put their answers into this video.

I wasnt’ sure what was happening, but I thought death could be an option, so I prayed for my soul in the ER last night.

A routine day – some time at work and then off to clean up after some tenants at a rental.  I thought maybe some dehydration so i stopped at the gas station for a Gatorade.  My wonderful MIL was watching the kids for the afternoon and offered to watch them longer so I could take my wife out for dinner for her birthday.  I thought Flannigans sounded great, but she picked Outback.  My 20 oz Prime Rib arrived at room temp on a sizzling plate.  After sending it back to the kitchen, my dinner was comped.  On our way home I felt wiped out.  Food poisoning?  Nah.

I was in bed at 10 and sleeping by 11.  I went to sleep with a heavy feeling in my gut (lower than my stomach), so when I woke up at 12 feeling like a baseball had been implanted behind my bellybutton, I knew something was wrong.  My temp was 101 and I called the 24/7 nurseline who told me to go to the ER.  Before I left I woke Angie to let her know I was leaving.  That’s when I had the best puke of my life ever.  I know it’s gross, but I got rid of *almost* everything in my stomach with a great projectile vomit including the splashing of toilet water on the walls and in my face – but I didn’t care because it felt good!  I puked so hard and so fast I was spitting blood for the next few minutes, but I could smile.  (In the meantime Angie begins spraying Lysol everywhere from the bathroom to the driveway!)

So, feeling like I could puke again, I took the 24/7 lady’s advice and went to the ER.  I was feeling jovial when I left, but naucious with now a 102.  By the time I got there I didn’t have energy for jokes.  (It had taken me a few extra minutes to get out the door because I realized I was wearing navy sweatpants with black socks – oops, don’t want the nurses to lose focus of what’s important.) 

So they checked me in and the Dr. said he didn’t think I was going to lose my appendix (which I was worried about since Angie and HS BFF Chris Brzezinski both went to the ER much later than they should have with their appendix).  I was being treated for nausea, feaver and vomiting while they were running tests.  I thought it was going to be a slow death, and I was anxious that they couldn’t tell me what it was (the lady who checked me in said “Hernia.  We see it all the time.” but she wasnt’ a nurse.  So I prayed for my soul and made my nurse promise me two things:  (1) Get the number for my mom and dad out of my cell phone.  If I die, I want the hospital to call them – Angie shouldn’t have to do that.  But call Angie first.  (2) Since I’m dying before Angie I want to make sure that “Waiting on a Woman” plays at my funeral.  The viewing can be somber, but the funeral should be fun. 

After that I was out cold.  (Hospital beds suck – especially the ones in the ER.  You’d think with all the cash they get they could get a good Serta or Simmons to keep everyone cumfy.)  They woke me up every so often to see how I was doing and then said my test results were satisfactory and go home and rest for a couple days.  Dehydration and viral were their best guesses.  Whatever.

So I got home at 5, slept until 10.  Slept again from 12-4 and then 5-9.  Now It’s 1AM and I’m thinking about eating for the first time since Outback.  (I made Angie throw away the 16 oz of Prime Rib that I couldn’t eat just in case.)  So far today I’ve eaten a half row of Saltines and two 7ups.  Blah.  I’m sick of being sick, but glad to be alive.  That sucked.

Wow, this was one of my most strenuous days at Rent-A-Center.  Our schedule was light, we’ve had a great week on sales, everyone’s been paying their bills, but today was the day.  By all accounts today was a day where we could coast and take a breather.  I’ve had my resignation letter typed up for a few days as I anticipated my move to Jack’s Wholesale Windows (need a window replaced?), but I’ve kept putting it in my desk drawer for the next day.  It’s been exciting, the possibilities that await me, but as it’s become time to move forward, that’s meant leaving behind something great.  When I took over the store it was under-performing and a less than average Rent-A-Center.  Over the last three years we’ve had excellent growth, received numerous awards and recognition, closed down a competitor (we’re close to shutting down another!), promoted five people into management (big in rent-to-own), won the respect of our customer base, and changed from “the store to steal from” to “the store to rent from.”  I’ve had a LOT of fun doing it!  I’ve sat in my office several times this week with the door closed spending a few solitary moments wondering if leaving all of this is the right thing to do.  It’s taken a lot to build my store.  I’ve had several coworkers comment that I shouldn’t be calling it “my store” or “my merchandise” or “my guys,” but these employees weren’t there when we stripped out the bad customers and replaced them with good customers.  They weren’t there to win customers from competitors one by one.  They weren’t there for the long nights and early mornings as we worked to clean up the store one piece of inventory at a time and sift through countless boxes of paperwork as a result of mergers.  These were the employees that didn’t appreciate the work of the employees that went before them.  These were also the employees that couldn’t hack rent-to-own.  It’s a grueling job.  I’ve met many wonderful people, both customers and coworkers (bosses too!), who pushed me and the business forward.  All of this makes it so tough to leave.  So I do see them as “my employees,” “my customers,” and “my store.”  My wife has said that if I didn’t love my job so much it would be a lot easier to leave Rent-A-Center.  So turning in my resignation today was one of the toughest things I’ve done at Rent-A-Center in the last four years.  Thanks to Rent-A-Center for giving me the opportunity to succeed.  We did it!

As many of you know, I have been a store manager for Rent-A-Center for three years.  Working around retail hours can be very draining and my kids know nothing other than their father working a 55 hour workweek.  Tomorrow I put in my resignation with Rent-A-Center to pursue a sales position with Jack’s Wholesale Windows.  (Need new windows?)  I’ll likely send you a letter at some point once I get settled in with the company, however, the nice part of this job is they provide “hot leads” from individuals who call us.  (AKA, no telemarketing!)  The trick could be insurance.  Eli had pretty serious seizures for 9 months which makes him nearly impossible to insure.  We’re praying for a smooth transition and rates that aren’t outrageous.  If you’re a friend of mine that prays I would appreciate you doing so.  The position is 100% commission based which is scary and intriguing at the same time because my entrepreneurial spirit has challenged me to invest in myself.  This gives me a great opportunity.  Jack’s just opened their fourth store, this one in Fort Wayne, and they have a very successful track record.  It’s a welcomed change since my projected workweek is 32-40 hours.  This gives me time to catch up on our rentals and spend time with the boys, and Angie.  I trust that I will live up to Jack’s expectations and that Jack’s will live up to mine.  With that said…do your windows need replaced?!?

I sold my bike last night on eBay.  I bought the bike a year ago for $1200 and put about $200 into it.  So when I went to sell it this spring I figured $1200 was still a fair price, until I looked at eBay.  People were getting $1300 for bikes like mine that needed work before they could be ridden.  My eyes got big when I saw what working bikes went for.  I did my homework, made a good looking auction and sold my bike on eBay for $2500!  Wow!  I doubled my money on a motorcycle that had a couple thousand more miles than when I bought it!  eBay rocks!  

Some of you know that Angie and I have several rental properties.  Right now we have a triplex, a duplex, and a single family.  We also have a house that we’re flipping (plus our own).  We usually keep everyone on annual leases to minimize surprises and request that people rent summer to summer.  Well, quite often we have tenants renew, however, right now it seems as though everyone is moving out.  We have seven units to maintain and wow is it coming fast. 

The house that we’re flipping is going slowly.  The realtorthat we have is rather good in our community, but even with an assistant she’s swamped.  It seems like she’s not following through as she should be.  We’ve had some interest, but I’m starting to think that she lacks the ability to close the sale, however, she wouldn’t be top in the county if she couldn’t.  Regardless, it’s sitting empty.

With our duplex, the upstairs tenant and downstairs tenant fell in love.  Yeah, I told her not to do it!  Anyway, he’s in the reserves and got called out, so we let him out of his lease to serve our country.  Well, she got ancy to buy a house and her parents discouraged her from buying the duplex (which is also for sale), so they got a place in the country…  The new/replacement tenant upstairs is also moving out to find something different.  So it’s going to be sitting empty.

In our triplex, we have a 3-year tenant on the top who’s mother got laid off of work, so he’s moving in with her to help pay her house note.  The middle tenant is moving in with his brother, and the anchor tenant is moving…somewhere.  The 3-year tenant called back to say that he’s not going to move at this time.  Now we went from 3 vacancies down to two.

We a have a single family house that we sold to a guy last fall on land contract.  He got suprise custody of his two kids and said that there’s all kinds of stuff wrong with the place so he wants out of his contract.  He said that the furnace and sewer don’t work so he’s moving out.  I don’t buy it because he didn’t tell me until April that the furnace had a problem.  Anyway, despite the arguments over who’s responsible for what, he’s moved out to find a bigger place for his new family. 

So, we’re in a big rush to find tenants.  Do you know of anyone who wants to live in a good house near Fort Wayne???  I’ll pay finders fees!  Just kidding!  (Kind of…email me if you know anyone and I’ll pay you cash!)

Yeah…we’re in crunch.  I think we’ll survive just fine.  It’s like investing in the stock market.  If real estate was a sure thing I suppose everyone would play the safe bets.  But like the stock market, you can make quick cash (i.e., Flip This House), or you can make your money over the long term (minimizing the spikes up and down).  The reality is that regardless of the unemployment rate, price of crude oil, or interest rate adjustments by the Feds, people still need a place to live.  The stock market dropped 400 points, oil is at $138 ($2.50/gal for crude oil), and the unemployment rate is spiking.  People still need a place to live.

It’s a balancing act.  Right now we feel like the clown spinning seven plates on seven sticks and it looks like we’re going to drop six plates.  I think we’ll pull it off though.  We haven’t failed yet and even if we do, we’ve had a great run in real estate.  If something tanks we’ll make another shot at it.  I’m looking forward to success over new adventures.  I read a quote the the other day to the effect of, “If you start planning what you’ll say when you fail, you’ve already failed.”  We’re stressing, but we’re executing our plan for success.

I’ve thought about getting an MP3 player for a while, but didn’t want to cough up money for one.  Yeah, I wanted one for free.  Well I ended up picking up a $20 MP3 player at CVS.  What a deal.  It was a pain in the butt and took me 3 hours to figure out how to get a song on it.  I’ve used it a couple times and it’s sat ever since.

Last week we had a contest at Rent-A-Center and my store got 10 deliveries first.  That yielded us a prize of an iPod Nano.  It was determined that drawing names out of a hat would be the best option and the guys had me draw the name.  (I was certain the guy whose idea it was put his name in 6 times so he would win.)  I drew after stirring the names around – it was my name!  (Then I thought he put my name on it 6 times!)  So any respectable store manager would have passed the prize on to his employees, not me!  (They give away Xbox 360’s, stereo systems, etc, but I’ve never won more than a $10 gift card to Walmart in the 4 years I’ve been with the company.)

So I’m working on loading up songs into this gizmo and went to my CD collection to find that I now own 2 CD’s.  I’m not sure where they all went…probably Goodwill.  Now I have no music for my iPod.  So I went to podcasting.  I bet I’m now the biggest subscriber of free podcasts on iTunes.  I just watched 30 minutes of podcasts (including a Dora podcast I put on there for the kids.  Lame I know, but I’m a dad…and a good one at that!)

I can’t believe how great the sound is and how good the picture is.  The pixels are so small I can’t see them.  I love this thing.  It’s a lot more fun than Facebook!  Ha!  I’m going to watch podcast reruns.  Cya!

Ever feel like you just need to sprawl out?  We’ve got bunk beds for the boys, but Angie fell off the top bunk as a kid and broke her collar bone – she doesn’t want that happening to the boys.  In the meantime they like sleeping together in this full size bed.  Every once in a while we have to get them separated because they start kicking each other in the head trying to get comfy.  This was becoming one of those nights.

I’m just going to throw a shoutout to all of the Facebook people who said they wanted to be my friend…I don’t really know how to talk to you on Facebook so to all of you…Whazup?  Yeah, I figured out the little IM thing at the bottom.  I don’t know why I’d use the email thing at the top (I already have email – you already got it, otherwise it’s somewhere in facebook…).  I don’t really get the wall-to-wall thing.  I really don’t understand poking (which I managed to figure out how to gripe about that on the wall-to-wall deal and Brian decided it would be fun to see how many people would poke me.  Thanks for that.  Do I get points?)  Yeah, so I wanted to say HI since I can’t figure out how to do that on Facebook.  Now that I’ve got a blog (I know it’s 2008, but I’ve been busy!) I’ll let you know what’s happening with the fam sometime soon.  And stop asking who I paid to marry me!!!  She did it with her own freewill and she’s HOT…grillin’ hot!

Thanks CJ.  I really like this website.  For this reason I’m hooking my computer up to the SRS in the front room.  Love it!  I was pretty stoked when a buddy at work turned a couple of these songs into ringtones for me.  Here’s a few from my playlist… She’s a Hottie!  Firecracker  I’m Still A Guy  I know it’s country.  Haven’t you seen my truck?  Fullsize chevy with an American flag across the back windshield with some hood rims and oversized tires and just a little body rust.  Yeah, that’s me!