Update and Goals

It’s been awhile since my first and only post and I apologize. A quick update of my whereabouts: I’ve been in Colorado for about three weeks now, two of which were spent homeless with me moving from couch to couch, and occasionally sleeping in my car or the company truck. As one can imagine, my gumption for blogging (or anything for that matter) goes way down after a night in the passenger’s seat of my POS BMW325i. I’ll go ahead and answer your next question now. I travel around the country in a big truck and trailer and give away stuff at ski resorts from Vermont to California. Don’t ask for more detail because my job description is very nebulous and if I go into too much detail it might start to look like I don’t do much.

If you read my original post you may have gathered that I spend a majority of my time in a coffee shop bullshitting with friends about bullshit. While there may be some truth to this statement, I have come to realize since leaving Montana I haven’t spent near as much time in coffee shops and much more time in the office or on the hill. With most of my friends either in Missoula or traveling around I’ve had some extra time to contemplate life. Here is what I came up with: I’ve decided to set some goals for myself this winter, both personal and blogging related.

As many of you may have witnessed at the grizzly triathlon last year, my speedo didn’t quite fit as it should have. It really was a shame because just a few months earlier I was a member of the infamous 2000 mile bike torture test Giro D’iscovery and came out of it in the best shape of my life. Unfortunately, it’s easier to lose shape than gain it and last winters excessive drinking, rich food, and sedentary lifestyle erased any gains made during the previous summer. It took all year to regain any sort of shape and I have vowed not to do this again. So goal number 1 is to stay in at least mediocre shape. I will have more on this in a later post courtesy of Adam Jensen and his new bible “Good Calories, Bad Calories.”

On a completely different note, our country is in a bad ressession. With millions of adjustable rate mortgages (ARM’s) coming due in the next year, I suspect the next wave of home foreclosures will add insult to injury and dare I say it, possibly be the straw that breaks the camels back and sends us into a depression. For years now we Americans have been living beyond our means (myself included) and now we are going to pay the price. Thankfully my exceptional foresight has fostered a brilliant idea. I’m coining it “Operation Lean Burn.” The objective is simple: Buy what you need not what you want. I feel like the ultimate hypocrite right now because I’m the biggest consumer around, usually buying only what I want and never what I need. I’m asking for you the readers to help me on this one and I’m going to do something a bit unorthodox. Once I figure out how to use this blog, I’m going to post graphs and pie charts of my personal expenditures. I’m going to open my financial life up to you and let you control and regulate my spending. The goal is to spend as little as possible without greatly sacrificing my quality of life. We must succeed on saving money because with the housing market like it is, my company Wild Rockies Landscaping might have a tough couple of years and having a little extra saved away would be nice. So there you have it, goal number 2 is to save money

Last goal: To post entries at least a couple times a week. I don’t have the time to make daily entries but I’ll try to do three times a week, and if things are going well maybe more. Later bitches

DOUG DALE