GrumpysMonkey

Well, if you’ve been following along, you know that we put an offer in on a house the other day. Well, we are not buying that house. There was some countering, but there was a pretty big issue. There was lead in the soil. There was so much lead, that the report actually said "soil isn’t suitable for growing any food that will be eaten and should not be used for a play area for children". WHOA!

So no house for us. We’ve seen just about everything on the market currently and nothing. so we’ll see what happens in the next few weeks. I’m not holding my breath. Not too many people put their houses on the market in winter and even fewer put their houses on the market in this economy.

Well, our car has been in the shop for more than 30 days. The dealership and the manufacturer couldn’t fix the problem so they are going to give us a new one. Same model, same features (more or less) and same color. The new one has fog lamps and a tachometer. Otherwise it’s the same. Basically, the only thing that happens to our payment is that the loan gets extended 6 months (since we’ve made 6 months of payments already). We’re basically just getting a brand new car with a brand new loan. Payment stays pretty much the same.

I didn’t want a new car, but I’m glad the dealership was ready to make everything right without us having to invoke the Lemon Law. Customer service for the win.

Oh, and for those of you who didn’t know what was wrong with it, basically, the car forgot how to shift. So if you managed to turn the car on (which wasn’t always possible), it would never actually lock into gear. Apparently they tried to teach it how to shift and were unsuccessful. Our car wasn’t a very good student.

Have I mentioned how much I hate house hunting? Really, really hate house hunting? It was fun for a while. It can be kind of fun to see all the different styles of houses and to walk into a house and try to envision how your furniture will fit or how your lives will be in that house. But after the 30th or 40th house you see, it just becomes tiring.

So there’s another house we’re thinking about. The realtor likes it. John likes it. I like it. But I don’t know that I love it. It’s a bit on the expensive side, and it needs some work. New appliances, a second bathroom, a partial fence before we could get a dog, and some minor paint/refreshing here and there. So why are we even considering it?

It’s big. Over 2200 sq ft. We could walk to just about EVERYTHING. Seriously. Bars, coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, the lake, the trail…

At what point do you say "Screw it, I’m buying this house"?

Advice time again. I think I know what I need to do, but I’m just looking for some confirmation.

Examiner just hasn’t really done much of anything. I’m averaging around 40 hits per day, less on days that I don’t post. While this isn’t necessarily bad, it isn’t great and the numbers have basically stayed the same since I started this whole gig. Compensation is dismal, because the hits aren’t there. If I had a lot more hits, I’d make more money. I’m not convinced that those 40 hits a day don’t all belong to my friends and family either.

I have gotten a few readers to Cook Local from Examiner, and I’ve gotten a few contacts that I didn’t have before, like the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day authors, who have added me to their blogroll and have been a great source of information on baking as well as a lot of fun to interview.

John went to a blogging conference last weekend and came away with a number of ideas for Cook Local. I’ve been getting more commenters and have been putting more effort into the posts. I’ve had ideas like branching out into other cities, doing how-to posts and videos, and giving some history into some of the food we use. I’ve got so many ideas my head is spinning. I’ve even started talking with a local farmer to see if there’s a way we can help each other out.

So basically, what I’m asking is this:

Should I phase out Examiner?

As a background, I write 3 posts a week for them these days. Each post takes me about an hour to deal with. I usually take content from an old Cook Local post and use that, but I still have to reformat it, crop the pictures, upload everything, and massage the wording a bit.

My only concerns with doing so are:

1. If they replace me with someone else, will that hurt Cook Local because of competition?

2. What if they do actually come through on their promises of promotion one of these days and columns do start getting hits? Is this even something I should worry about since they’ve basically not kept their promises thus far?

We’ve started a new workout program. Or rather, we’ve started a new workout schedule. You see, we live a ways from work. With traffic, our commute is over an hour. Without traffic? 30 minutes. Our old workout schedule was something like this:

6:20 – Get up.

6:50 – Leave the house.

7:15 – Arrive at gym in Seattle.

7:45 – Hit the showers.

8:15 – Leave gym for work.

9:00-9:10 – Arrive at the office.

That leaves 30 minutes for working out. In that time, we would do a few weights and a little cardio for John and a little PT for me.

Starting last week, we changed things up. Now our schedule is something like this:

5:30 – Get up.

5:50 – Leave the house.

6:20 – Arrive at gym in Bellevue.

6:40 – Weights

7:00 – Cardio

8:00 – Hit the showers.

8:25 – Leave gym for work.

8:40 – Arrive at the office.

So, we’re getting to work a good 20 minutes earlier. We’re working out for a good solid hour longer than before. We’re getting up about 50 minutes earlier. We seem to manage 3 days a week with this, though the goal is 4. At least one of the "skip" days, I still go to the gym for an hour long cardio session, just later in the day. Plus we’re still running twice a week. Plus we’re still working insane hours.

The benefits of this:

• Burning A LOT more calories
• Drinking coffee before the workout helps wake up
• No traffic in the morning, hopefully better gas mileage
• Lots of CNN watching

The downsides of this:

• Physical exhaustion
• Still not quite into the right sleep routine to handle this
• Still not quite drinking enough to stay hydrated with all that cardio

Hopefully next week will be easier. And a note to my body: I’d really like to see positive results soon.