SPECIMEN

What a weird word. Yeah, it is a bit scientific. Its connotative of a sample of something. I was talking to a friend of mine last night, cos when I came back from the campsite I visited with my family, I saw the PERFECT specimen of the male species. He was just completely beautiful. It doesn't really much matter, I'll never see him again. But for a day, I smiled. When I saw him first, I was at the docks, and he was just hanging out and when he saw me, he smiled back and said, "Hi!"

And again, we spoke a bit for like a sentence or two later that night outside the party room. There was a DJ playing and I was dancing, and when I went outside to get some fresh air, he was there again. Again, still, beautiful, and another smile, with a simple, "Hi!" Each and every time we were talking, my brother or my mom just popped up and distracted me. And so I hoped that we could continue to talk to get to know each other better, but it just didn't happen.

I looked around for him later that night, but I didn't see him. I was standing outside of the main office for the site, and me and my brother were talking for a bit, and then out of nowhere, he came out of the bathroom soaking wet after taking a shower. For the last time, I saw the curls from his auburn hair, now dripping, and the shorts he was wearing, clinging to him, there. He saw me, and for the last time, said the same, "hello," before he walked into the dark road to his campsite. The next thing I knew, I was driving home on the highway, picturing him all day long. And I knew it would probably be the last I saw him, ever.

Today, Aiden is in my mind. And it was a nice thing, being able to think about someone for only one day. One day to not have to worry about all the stuff going on in my life. I did a lot of packing today. I emptied out my car of a bunch of stuff, and made room for moving boxes. I went out and got 20 packing boxes and packing tape for some stuff I have left to pack at home. Tomorrow I have sooo much more to do. I'm REALLY nervous. I saw another blogsecret post today, and it saddened me a bit. I need to just stop following blogsecrets. They are either really stupid or really depressing. Or they remind me of someone. And due to the nature of the posts, they are not always good reminders. Mine are, I would think. I do try to do the right thing. I'm not always perfect, but I never stopped caring for anyone.

Like, I don't do ANYTHING to hurt people. Why do people feel like, its okay to hurt me. I care about people. I would lay down my life for someone in a heartbeat. I don't even need to like them, I would still stand up for anyone who was down. But when all I try to do is good, and all my intentions are good, it's like, nobody sees me for the really good and wholesome I am. My heart is so full of just - ache because I care. I think, "there are fully not enough people in the world like me." And that was a quote... from someone who has since told me that he hates me. I never changed.

I LIKE TO MOVE IT! MOVE IT!

So this Tuesday I will be closing on the restaurant with the bank and the title company. Finally I can move in and start cleaning up before I have all the equipment delivered. I also move in to my house this week. I got my Gyros broiler shipped to me, and I was so excited, I wanted to vertically broil something on the spot!

Gyros company is also giving me like, LOTS of cool posters and signs and stuff with their logo on it for free! I am getting logo t-shirts to give away at the grand opening and I'm also getting logo aprons and hats, and I also have a bunch of embroidered Polo shirts being made for the employees.

I have to switch all the utilities over, and get the equipment, but that is about it! So I don't think it will take all of a month getting open. I also have to work on my garage at the house, because I am making that into my storage for the restaurant. I am putting up some drywall panels, and hooking it up nice.

Nothing is going to be left undone. I am hooking up EVERYTHING I can with this place. I pray I can get people who can cook though. I would hate to have to do all the work in this place. I need good employees. I PRAY for good employees! The good thing is, the economy is poor, so lots of people are looking for jobs! I just hope I can pick the right ones. Pray for the next month to run smoothly!

WAITING NOW - ANXIOUS

The days are coming closer. Everything is going to either happen now, 100% the way I am projecting, or fail miserably. I have gotten my insurance quotes, and I am about $4,000 less than what I budgeted for the year! That is freaking AMAZING! I met with the mayor, no word yet from the city attorney as of yet. But me and my landlord signed my lease for the house. I talked to my Realtor, and it appears that we will close on July 28th for now. Which gives me a few extra days of getting into the restaurant to clean before the equipment starts coming in. Its a good thing, because the earliest I can order the equipment is July 27th. The guy is on vacation until then. But I did order my Gyros Broiler and Knife yesterday. So many loose ends right now, but everything is on track. My menus are like, less than 8 cents a piece! Which is really good for full color 11x17 gloss paper! What else is going on? I'm just anxious now. I have so much packing to do. I have laundry to do. I have lots of driving to do back and forth over the next couple weeks. I also am worried about my budget. It is quickly dwindling. This time around, I have less money than last time because I have a down-payment coming out of my budget that I had before. So it is making me nervous when it comes to food and paper ordering.
*breathes*
*prays*
I will talk to you all soon.

STEP BY STEP

And yeah, it isn't three forward and two back. Not yet anyways. I have been wondering when the good stuff is going to stop happening. I really don't think there are many things left in the way. For the first time, things are really going pretty much right on track. I went to the banks last week and the appointments went really well. I got two commitments in two days from filling out the applications. And they were from the banks I was interested in. I got my building inspection report and nothing major was wrong with the building. I finished working on my menu. I set up an appointment with the liquor control commissioner and then when I went to get these beautiful patio sets, even after the local store sold out of them, I managed to have the manager locate them at another location! So I have these beautiful mosaic patio sets for the front of the restaurant.

I could also get the sign guy to scratch the work on the old sign and do my window glass instead for the money I already paid him (I hope). And I am ready to move into a new THREE BEDROOM HOUSE! The house was sort of a last minute find, on a double lot with a detached garage! So I have a year lease, with an option to buy the place after the year is up. I'm pretty stoked about that. I should be pretty much ready to do that by then. Fortunately, because of my vote this past November, MY President decided to give first time home buyers $8,000 towards the purchase of a new home. Which is almost like, 15% of the purchase price! Which is like, the down payment! Which means, my mortgage and taxes will be really cheap for this AMAZING find! Between all of what I will have to pay in mortgage on the building, mortgage on the house, and my line of credit loan for the equipment, I will pay less than my rent was with the douche bag slumlord I had in Chicago.

So, yeah! I am really excited to move now. I pretty much have been for the past few weeks. I will really miss this city. I won't have much time to come back to visit often. But I want this really bad right now. I hope this is the start of something big. Well, I want it to be the start of something bigger. I want to be able to find myself still looking at the coffee kiosks, across the country, like Starbux, and eventually find myself somewhere in time, sooner than later, when I won't have to worry about work anymore, because my money will be working for me. I will have rental real estate working for me, and the coffee business working, and then I will always have the first place I called home.

It'll be nice when I can fulfill a solitary obligation to someone, and slip a call into Apple for an I-TOUCH to be delivered. Beyond that, I would really like to look forward instead of back. The back looks pretty sad, when it is filled with someone who lied about me to all his friends, making me out to be some creep. He'll never know who I was, because he never got it. I feel bad for him. But all that aside, my life is really, really good! For the first time in a while. Ask me how I feel when I have been working 7 days a week for the past 6-7 months, and I'll tell you then if that has changed at all. My guess is, yeah... It'll be better because I will have a lot more money in the bank! :-)

BANKING!

I would love that word to mean "cha-ching!" But it isn't there yet. I am just about to go back to the town to meet with a bunch of people all day long. Three of those just happen to be bankers for a commercial loan for the property. I have a bit of anxiety about that. It's me presenting what I think will go well, in order to ask them to give me money on the premise that I know what the fuck I am doing, and that I will be able to walk in and make enough to pay all the bills I have.

I would hope that after all this time, I could do that, and I have quite a bit of confidence in myself and my abilities, but at the same time, I am really anxious. If I am wrong, and if I fail, then I have all these bills coming month after month, and I am screwed. So it is really all I can do to just stop stressing about it, and walk in there tomorrow and just do it. I have to say, this is where it is really good for me to have my faith. I know that all the things I have no control over, will just have to work themselves out. And I believe God is ultimately in control if I let Him have that control. It doesn't diminish my responsibility to work hard, it just alleviates a whole lot of stress in the meantime.

Besides that, tomorrow I have the building inspector coming to check the major systems for me. And I have to register the business assumed name. As well, I have to meet with the apartment complex to put down my security and application fee. I was really upset to find out that the apartment I was looking at last week has been taken. I loved that location. It seemed perfect. But I will really look now at this other apartment and then before I put down my security, I am going to look elsewhere if I have to. I am really aggravated that this lady gave that apartment up when I told her I wanted it. She said this lady moved in already, without all the applications and stuff? It takes a good two weeks to get all the paperwork in. So I don't really believe her with all she said on the phone. I dunno.

I'm hoping that I will find a place I feel comfortable with. It isn't forever, but it is going to be the place I call home for a while, until the business gets going.

I went to a store today to look at registers. It was really cool. I feel like a kid in a candy store every time I go there. It is probably the one thing that will make ordering easy or difficult, and therefore, it is like, really important when you are on time constraints to get the food made and dished out. It is for this reason that any cash registers which are more than adding machines are really on the pricey end. Some touch screen point of sale systems are as much as $10-15 thousand dollars each terminal! Fortunately, my little adding machine will not be that high. But it is still an expense. And it sets me apart. My menu board could be cheesy but I chose a nice higher end menu board which cost a grand. So if my register costs 8-9 hundred, I can deal. I was looking at another one which tracks data for customers as well, for deliveries and phone orders, but I am not ready to spend the extra thousand right now. So for now, I will settle with that one. I am completely fine with upgrading later.

It's all the equipment, the small wares, the table stuff, the food, the paper, the everything that I need to get that is all going to cost sooooo much, and I am always afraid that I will run out of money before I open! I can't do that because I need to pay the payroll, the utilities, the insurance, the taxes, and the mortgage. So I am nervous about that. I have one month to get things open and running! And if I have to work from morning to night through the morning, for the next month, I will do it!

I'm so driven right now. I hope this all works. THAT is what I am most anxious about.

I must apologize, over the past couple posts, and probably for the next couple months, I will be writing incoherently because I am up at all kinds of hours, with little to no sleep. So, please bear with me. Love you all!

NOW I KNOW I WAS TIRED!

The last blog I posted was really weird. I mean, I was half asleep when I wrote it, but buy banana's??? What was I on about there? And yeah, I was excited about the whole real estate thing, but I really should have slept instead of talking about bananas???

This weekend has been soooo long. And I went to the site with my brother and sister and their families, and got eaten up by mosquitoes, as well as having fun with friends and family. The holidays are fun. I prefer Halloween to the 4th. I even prefer Thanksgiving or Christmas to the 4th. I just think it is horrible, all that wasted pyrotechnics. It is a complete waste of money on gunpowder and color.

Do we realize how many starving people around the country there are for us to be blowing up millions of dollars nationwide on colorful displays? I can understand flags, and block parties and such, but the rest of it is just a worthless display of 20-30 minutes of pomp. And then it is gone. Up in smoke, literally. And those starving people living below the poverty line are still starving, and probably wondering where the thrill was in looking up to the sky, when they could have had a hot meal instead.

Our country's priorities are so screwed. Independence day? We stole this country from the natives. We are so arrogant. I love this place. Only here can we be as obnoxious as we want, and then ridiculously amazed when people get upset with the way we handle the rest of the world. Oh, to not have to worry about it. I wish I had no conscience.

Anyways, it is again, late, and I have started rambling on again, about our little fairy tale weekend with stars and stripes. And now I have to go to sleep, work on more paperwork for the banks on Tuesday, and finally tie things up for that whole move. I have soooo much work packing up to do. I can't believe I am actually moving. I have only moved in a sudden impact before twice. And I have always moved back after a few years or so. Now I am getting tied into real estate. So it isn't like I can really easily move back if I want without liquidating the real estate.

It's ok. I hope there is more to this move than just the move. On a lighter note, I saw this really beautiful girl this weekend. Wow! I have probably found 2-3 girls in my life who I would flip for! This girl is just that beautiful. But more than any look, she is just fascinating. I mean, something about the girl, or those girls I have liked in my life, that just wowed me. She could talk to me for hours and I would just never get tired of listening to her. Its the passion she has. You can see it in someone.

Almost 5:30 am, I need sleep. Hard to do when you are scratching mosquito bites. Nyte all. And yeah, I will be delayed in sending that gift, but I have like, seriously two more months before I open! So I won't even have time to think about you over the next couple months, let alone send a freakin' gift! So since you aren't even expecting it, you won't miss it, but I won't forget about it. And duh, I won't forget about you either.

CLOSING IS OPENING?

Well, FINALLY! I have a signed contract on the property in that wonderful small town I spoke of in my last blog post. But finally, we got to the point where neither one of us would move, and I hated letting go of that which I saw so much positive in. So, I made the sale, and I signed the contract, and I have LOADS of stuff to do now. I have 3 banks, 2 insurance agencies, 15 vendors, and tons of City and County offices to visit. Everyone is really nice, and the people in the town are ECSTATIC that I am opening there! Apparently, the building and its owners in the distant past were there after the bars close and eating a late night breakfast.

I hope that all the plans I am making will happen. Beer and Wine listed here as one of my BIGGER priorities. Equipment at a low cost, and vendors all in place. I want it to go off without a hitch! And that is going to take a lot of time and hard work. So when I finally get there this coming Tuesday again, I have about 10 hours of back to back meetings with a HUGE amount of people.

It's time, for my chance to make my life, ALL that I had hoped for since I was a kid. And now, for once, I have a building that is both affordable and NOT rat infested, or mold ridden, or with rotted out walls. It is actually REALLY nice inside, and the space requirements I have are greatly diminished by the size of the building, but in my apartment I am renting, I can add a garage unit for dry storage and just use it exclusively for that, and then I can write off the expense. I also have 3 sets of financials, worst case scenario, moderate sales potential, best case scenario. This way I can approach each of the banks I meet with, an accurate as possible expectation that they will give me the financing I need. Because they will be confident in my ability to make the business work.

All those years of experience, and the blood, sweat and tears I shed; I guess it is already coming to a head now, and it is finally MINE! I don't have to pay the mortgage for someone else. The mortgage, the equity I am building, all of it is mine!

If you want to come see the place, drop me a line, and I will talk to you about it, and I am off to sleep. It's about 6 pm, and I have not been to sleep from last night yet. I have had so much paper work to do to apply for the loans, and insurance, and stuff. I am just having a difficult time holding my eyes open. Bye!

Don't forget, JULY IS NATIONAL HOT DOG MONTH! So go buy your banana's!