TheLandlordBlog.com

Sorry to say I’ve been driven over the edge with all of the spam!  I’ve decided to suspend the ability for anyone to write comments on my blog for the time being.  I have been overwhelmed with spam comments and I haven’t been able to figure out an effective way to filter them, reduce them, or make them stop.  I’m guessing it is impossible.  If there was even a way to delete them without having to look at each one, that would be cool, but I don’t think there is.  You can’t imagine what I have to look at!  Apparently sex still sells like hotcakes, and there is big money in drugs too.  Whew!

Tomorrow night I’m hosting a call that I want to invite everyone to join.  This call is going to be a bit different than most that I do, and I’m particularly excited about this topic.  It’s about Hello World, which is a revolutionary new streaming media technology that allows you to communicate with other people over the internet.  Hello World brings video, voice, clickable graphics, and Powerpoint presentations to websites and emails.

Businesses are using Hello World to communicate with clients, vendors, and coworkers.  Families are using it to see and talk with one another.  The great thing I like about Hello World is its simplicity.  It’s very easy to use and the people on the other end don’t need to know anything about the technology underneath.  Hello World is viral like YouTube and has been featured in Time, Fortune, and Wired magazines.

Our call on the evening of Tuesday, January 16th will show you the technology and the business opportunity it creates.  Real estate investors and entrepreneurs will be excited to learn about the new stream of income that can be built with it.  My speaker has a 90-day plan that when followed, can set you up with a residual income stream for years to come. 

Go to my teleseminar site to get more details, as well as the time and phone number for the call.  Click here.

November is a hard month for me to stay focused on the present.  It’s a very tentative month with a slight feeling of waiting.  My mind keeps rushing ahead to the future.  I start to daydream about who I want to visit when I go back for Thanksgiving, all my family that I will see, then I start to think even further ahead about Christmas and New Year’s.

I start to hear people around me putting off projects ’til the new year.  “I’ll start that after the first of the year,” they say without any legitimate reason.  I hear about vacation plans and how “this month is shot” because so and so will not be around to get business done.

It would be easy to lose two months of productivity if these thoughts got the better of me.  So they don’t.  Every day I remind myself that it’s a new day and I’m living in the present.  Simple, yes.  Easy, no.

What can I learn today?  What deal can I go after today?  What project can I start today?  Make that to-do list, check it twice, and let’s start crossing things off.

Last night I came home from a weekend away celebrating my birthday!  We went to Las Vegas to take in a couple of shows and to stop in at the Winning the Real Estate Game bootcamp.  It was great seeing my good friend Tom Kish again and being in an environment of eager REI learners.

My husband and I saw Cirque du Soleil’s O at the Bellagio and Celine Dion’s A New Day concert.  This was my fourth Cirque and if you ever have the chance, I highly recommend any of their shows.  They are incredible!

Being in Vegas this time was such a dichotomy for me.  The best and the worst.  What I want to be and what I don’t want to be.  Where I came from and where I’m going.  All of my prior trips to Vegas have been for business.  This time it was mostly pleasure and being that it was my birthday, it was an opportune time to look around, think, reflect, and plan.  Another year… where am I at now?

There is so much intensity and passion in Vegas.  As I watched the performers at the Cirque, I see individuals living their dream at the prime of their athletic lives.  They are the best of the best.  Celine Dion is first class all the way, and makes her extreme talent appear effortless.  Again, the best of the best.  These artists are doing exactly what they dream to do and have fine tuned their performances to perfection.  The crowds roar with appreciation for what they’ve chosen to do with their lives.

On our walk to and from these shows, we couldn’t help but notice the hope and hopelessness of those so drunk they can hardly stand with no one there to hold them up, and those who feed coin after coin into the slot machine, waiting for that lucky day to come.  Some are waiting for something to happen, some are bummed that nothing is happening, and some are making it happen.

I recalled the times I was in Vegas with one of my former coworkers in corporate America.  I rolled the dice for him at the craps table as he won and lost.  His shirt pocket was packed full of $1 bills that he would tip out everytime a waitress would come by.  I held his place in the taxi line as he quick ran into the boutique to buy a Rolex when no one was looking.  My friend later died of “extreme living” at the age of 33.

My cellphone rang on Sunday night and it was my dad.  He was actually calling for my husband and was complaining that he was not answering his cellphone.  My dad wanted to tell him that his brother heard a media report about home values in Arizona going down and that’s it’s bad to be investing right now.  My dad doesn’t acknowledge that I study real estate markets and that my husband and I invest as an educated team.  When I told my dad we were in Vegas about to go into our show his response was ”What are you doing in Vegas???” followed up by “Are you staying at a hotel that has gambling?” and “How much are you paying for your hotel room?”  He had forgotten it was my birthday but reminded me how I came to be at that place in that exact moment.  It was a choice I made the day I turned 18.

Now that the weather is cooling down I’ve been going for a lot of morning hikes.  It’s a great time to clear my head and make plans for the day.  I’m so excited because my favorite hiking spot is going to be only 3 miles from the new house.

I’ve been watching some changes in the landscape very closely this week.  We’ve had a good monsoon so there’s extra vegetation and lots of green.  On Monday I noticed a lot of lush new low-growing plants (weeds?). 

On Tuesday they were even bigger. 

Wednesday they were covered with thousands of caterpillars munching away!  You had to literally watch every single step for a stretch of the trail or you would squish them.  I’ve never seen so many caterpillars.

Thursday the lush plants looked bare.  The leaves have all been eaten and all that remained were stick looking stems. 

And Friday, there were very few caterpillars left.  They are moving to areas far off the trail from what I can tell.  I’m going to be watching for cocoons soon and need to do some research to figure out what these are.  They’re long and fat - up to 4 inches long.

I took pictures to post but am having trouble getting the pic to show up here.  I’ll work on that and try to get it to work.

This is completely off-topic but just way too funny not to share!

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