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And what a week it was. I decided last Saturday that on top of going to zumba 3-4 times a week, it would be helpful if I also started watching what I eat. Basically the ‘rules’ of my new ‘eating plan’ are as follows: 2,000 calories or less per day, less than 50g fat per day, eat 5-6 times a day (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, optional snack), and at least one piece of fruit and/or veg per day. All in all, it sounds pretty prescriptive, but I’ve found it relatively easy to fit it into my lifestyle. This of course means it’s sustainable, which is important for the medium to long term with anything like this.
Anyhow, I hopped on the scales this morning. What with going to 4x zumba classes and my new ‘eating plan’, I lost two kilos exactly in the first week. This amazed me. I’m only a touch overweight for my height (BMI of 26.6) so it’s not like I had a huge amount to drop off or anything. And yet, I lost 2kgs. This makes me a happy girl! Plus, it’s on top of a blowout last night – we went to our friends’ place (G and V) for dinner, where I ate three pieces of brie with biscuits, just to start with, and had three (alcoholic) drinks. Needless to say, this great result has only encouraged me to stick with it.
In other ‘friends’ news, we caught up with my friend L and her hubby M today for brunch. They brought along their little cutie pie of a daughter, A, who is five months and just completely adorable. She’s obviously a very placid baby and is good as gold. L and M are loving parenthood and are completely enraptured with A. So cute 😀
We had a new tenant move in to one of the properties today. Fortunately the previous tenants moved out on Thursday, which gave me a chance to get it all ready, despite our busy social weekend. He seems very nice and appreciative, which is lovely. Now all he needs to do is pay the rent on time and leave the property neat at the end of the tenancy, and he’ll be a perfect tenant. Fingers crossed 😉
Yet another busy weekend. We had one lot of tenants move out yesterday, and new ones move in today. Even though the place was left very clean, it still takes a fair bit of work to do a turnover. However the new tenants are in and appear to have settled in well, so that’s a relief 🙂
Apart from the property turnover, today was Fathers’ Day. My dad is dead, and my stepdad J is overseas with mum at the moment, but C’s dad is still around so we had him and C’s stepmum over for a cooked breakfast. I did bacon, eggs, mushrooms and toast, followed by buttermilk pancakes with strawberry coulis and maple syrup. It turned out well and was very much appreciated, which is always nice. I was smart this time and had breakfast before they arrived – I can’t eat savoury stuff in the mornings and I knew I was doing all the cooking, so I was prepared! (I’ve done this before but not eaten first, and just about passed out from low blood sugar by the time I do eat something.)
I was particularly happy with the buttermilk pancakes – I’ve made them before, but not with gluten-free flour (C’s dad is a coeliac) and they turned out beautifully, which was great. So many things don’t taste ‘right’ with gluten-free flour, but these were lovely and tasted ‘normal’ so to speak. The only thing was the mix went flat pretty quickly. Still tasted fine, but just very flat, more like pikelets than pancakes. It was also the first time I’d made strawberry coulis and that also worked out well. Very easy – a small punnet of strawberries, three dessertspoons of castor sugar, and juice of half a lemon, whizzed up in the blender. It made HEAPS, easily double of what we used, so I’ll also have to remember that in future.
Yes we are both still alive! It was C’s birthday on the 2nd of August, which took a fair bit of prep, as we had his dad and stepmum over to a three course dinner that I cooked. Yep three courses, plus little coffee meringues for afters. I was shattered by the time it was over, but it was worth it – C had a great night. As the 2nd was a Tuesday, I then had to struggle through the rest of the week at work knackered, but it was a good evening.
On the third, we lost both internet and phone connectivity. Thanks Telstra! We’re iinet naked DSL customers, and it appears one of Telstra’s techs just stole our line for a new customer in the area :O This shit amazes me. It’s anti-competitive behaviour, as far as I’m concerned. Anyhow, we didn’t get a connection back for nearly a week and a half. Pretty stressful as C was on call for a week during that period. Luckily for the first time in forever, he didn’t actually get called on the entire week. This is just about a miracle.
LIfe has been going pretty well generally. We’re finding the properties are all behaving themselves, which is nice. We had people move out on Friday and for some reason, I washed all the linen like I was possessed. Not really sure why, as we didn’t have anyone due to move in to that property. Anyhow, wouldn’t you know it, I got a call and long story short, we did end up with people moving in on Saturday. I’m SO glad I got that linen all sorted out. How’s that for lucky?! They’re there for a minimum of three months, which is great. Next couple of turnovers will be happening at the beginning of September, so no rest for the wicked here.
Work is also going well – my boss P has asked me to put in for a permanent position. This is a good indicator. Mind you, I am pretty good 😉 I know he likes the work I do, plus the fact I can adapt reasonably easily. These two factors definitely count in my favour.
Today’s been a bit of an odd one. Got off to a flying start by doing a property turnover in record time – about two hours, with C’s help. Admittedly it was already pretty clean to start off with, so I didn’t have to do stuff like clean the shower or oven, but even so, two hours is amazingly quick. The need for speed was due to the previous tenants moving out late morning, and the new ones moving in in the early afternoon. Mission accomplished 😉
I maintained the forward momentum when I got home and did several loads of laundry. However I’m sitting here feeling…. well…. flat. Not sure why. I’m happy, I got heaps done, and New York has just legislated to approve same sex marriage. Fantastic! So I’m not quite sure what’s missing in my brain for my mood to be low. Maybe my fluoxetine is getting to it the long way around, who knows.
So, it’s 2011. What wonderful and amazing things will this brave new world present to us? If I had my way, one of them would be an ironing lady or man. I’m not fussy about the gender, just how well they can iron C’s work shirts. 😉
My birthday was on the 30th. It seems hard to believe I’m 34 and still getting pimples. Surely that can’t be right?! C spoiled me by making me breakfast in bed – real coffee and crumpets with golden syrup. Yum, my favourite. 😀 He gave me a fitness program thingy for my wii, which is a lot of fun and very addictive. He also got me a couple of mangoes, my absolute favourite thing in the whole world. There’s been floods recently in mango growing areas of Australia (especially Queensland and the north of Western Australia) so the prices have gone to astronomical heights, so he spared no expense for his middle aged wife. Now that’s true love. Stuff diamonds. You can’t eat jewellery, and besides, I have heaps that I just don’t wear. I’m so not a jewellery or makeup girl, much to my mother’s disappointment.
We spent New Year’s Eve with our friends G and V, who were the only guests we invited to our wedding. We had a thoroughly good time, very sedate (although champagne was drunk), and managed to get home by around 2am. For some bizarre reason I woke up at 6:30am, so I got up, fed the cat and gave her some pats, did a couple of things in the kitchen, then fell back into bed.
When I resurfaced I ended up going to our latest vacant apartment to do some work. There’s some leaking in the shower which is coming through to the hallway wall (the other side) which has made the paint bubble and peel. C has said he’s not doing any more renos this year, so we’re going to get the shower sealed. This is expensive, but worth it. So other than scraping the peeling paint off the wall (and looking horrified at the mould) I scrubbed down the stove and the kitchen cupboard next to the stove. There were four bachelor guys living in the property, and while they did clean it, it’s not in a fit state to just hand over to the next lot of tenants. We will have to paint throughout, for example. Still, it’s all fairly manageable, given our next tenants are due to arrive on 26 January.
One lot of tenants moved out on Thursday. We didn’t have anyone to move in straight away, so C convinced me on Friday evening not to go and do my usual cleanup. After all, there wasn’t any hurry, was there? I allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of security, and spend Friday evening being spoiled by C.
Anyhow, yesterday morning I got a phone call. We had a prospective tenant who wanted to move in ASAP. Guess who had to run around like a mad creature to get the property ready?! Still, I got there in the end, the tenant took the property, and it was all neat and clean to a reasonable standard by the time he moved in. I was knackered by the end of it, but it was definitely the fastest turnover of a property I’ve ever done.
In more news on properties, we had a pest inspection done of one of the others earlier this week. I’d been concerned that we had bedbugs in it, but fortunately we don’t. Not that I care, especially, but it’s an awfully expensive process to get the property sprayed – starts at about $1,000 – and it has to be repeated between 14 and 21 days later, to kill the eggs and break the life cycle. So that was some extremely good news.
Work has been crap. I left a training session on Friday because the officer in charge was being an ignorant pig. I’m extremely patient (and a reasonably good trainer, if I do say so myself) but I’ve had enough of this crap. Two more sessions, and I’m done with training. And in some other work-related news, I have a contract for six months at another agency, starting early January. I can’t wait. I’m overdue for a new workplace. The best part is, there will be no training involved. Yay!!
After a few days’ break, we are renovating again. The timing of the purchase of these two properties hasn’t been ideal – it would have been nice to have more of a break, especially as I only had a day or so where I was off work. This meant we spent a lot of our weekend and after work time doing renos.
And of course the same thing has happened with this one. I can’t take any time off work at the moment, either – I’m heavily involved in a legal case that’s taking up all my time and energy, and I also have not one, but two new people starting who I’ll be directly responsible for. One of them starts this week. So no time off for me.
Plus my mother is getting married on the 15th of October, in a small country town that’s a two-hour drive away. The whole family (Mum, her other half, myself and brother and our partners, plus her other half’s five kids, their partners and the grandkids) have the whole weekend booked in the small town. This will be lovely, but it’s rotten timing.
We had an unfortunate event occur earlier this week. We’d just got home from work when my mobile rang. It was one of the tenants from our new property. He’d called to say he couldn’t get in the kitchen door when he got home from work – as one of the wall cupboards had pulled out from the wall, and everything was blocking the door. C wasn’t happy about it, as he installed those cupboards. As I said to C though, we have had a very good run with our renos, and we’ve had remarkably little go wrong with them, it was bound to happen at some point. He wasn’t convinced though 😉
Oh well, these things are sent to try us I guess! At least it’s keeping me out of trouble.
Work is still going well, if somewhat stressful. I am starting to find that the CEO and the legal guy have different views on stuff. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, but neither of them will call the other, meaning I need to try to explain each of them to the other. This is exhausting and stressful. But we’re getting stuff done, and it’s all going well so far.
I can’t wait until I can actually kick back and relax. Roll on November.
After hours and hours of slaving away, we finished our latest little project today. After our latest property became ours, we basically spent every waking hour there, painting, cleaning, installing stuff, moving in furniture, and generally acting like busy little bees. We had our first proper viewing today at 4pm, and it looks like we have tenants moving in this coming Friday. Whew!
There were, of course, a few hiccups along the way…. such as finding out at 1pm today that the king single bedframe was actually a single bedframe. Luckily, we had a spare single mattress at home, so C and his dad went and got it. I’ve never been so glad to have a formal lounge room that is a furniture dumping ground before.
It all looks good, I think we’ve rented it out, and our hard work has paid off. I’d write more, but am about to pass out from sheer exhaustion. More later in the week.
It’s all been happening here. After lots of delays, I got a phone call today saying that our finance has been approved for both apartments we want to purchase. This is a good thing, especially as I’ve already started buying stuff for them. 😀 What kind of stuff? Beds, dining tables and chairs, towels, a whole assortment of things. It’s one of the most fun parts of property investing, getting all the gear to set them up.
I’m also in the throes of organising tenants for two of our rentals – one a current property, and one that we’re buying (the tenants don’t need to move in until the end of September, by which time we’ll own it). That’s taking up a bit of time also, back and forth with emails and questions. However it looks like we’ll be getting a good rental return, and so it’s all worth it. One thing I’ve learned though is that nothing’s in the bag until it’s confirmed, so we’ll see what eventuates.
In amongst all this, I’ve been busy at work, with lots of stuff happening that needs to be sorted out. It’s keeping me out of trouble anyhow, which my boss would be glad to know. I struggled a bit last week, and ended up having Friday off, as I couldn’t shake the lingering effects of the flu. However I’m feeling a lot better this week, and more able to get on top of things.
C’s birthday last week went well. He got thoroughly spoiled, although we didn’t do anything special on the actual day as I was still very unwell. But he was treated like a king, and got some great birthday presents, so he was happy 🙂
It’s been a good day. Despite my ongoing anxiety issues, I’ve managed to get a few things done, which has been great. We had to inspect one of our properties this morning, which was okay. Not pristine, but okay. Definitely a hell of a lot better than it was two weeks ago, so that’s the main thing I guess. After that, we did the food shopping, together. Without arguments/getting stressed. This sounds minor, but trust me it’s not. Neither of us like crowds, or food shopping for that matter. But we seem to be getting better at it, finally.
I had a great nap (about three hours) and then got up and cooked roast beef and vegies for dinner, which was really good. C was very impressed. He loves it when I cook. Unfortunately that’s about once or twice a week. I work on the premise that the scarcity of my cooking increases its perceived value. C has done nothing so far to disprove this 😉
In other news, we put an offer in on a property this week, which was accepted. We met with our adorable finance broker to look at the finances, and he confirmed that finance won’t be a problem. Yay! All we have to do now is hope our sale goes through okay. Finance is supposed to be approved by Monday, and as of Friday afternoon it hadn’t been, so we may have to do an extension of contract. Not really sure how to do that, but hopefully I’ll work it out, otherwise the contract is null and void.
If tomorrow’s fine, we may get out in the garden. We’ve done a bit of work in it over the last month or so, and now there’s only a couple of garden beds that need weeding. The only thing is, it’s getting COLD out there. This is a major disincentive to doing outside work, I can tell you. Still, if good intentions count for anything, we’ve already earned some brownie points 😉
a life half lived 