9/26/12

I'm not sure how it happened, but the margins on my rant got screwed up way back on the 6^th.  I just fixed them… I think.  Anyhoo, I remembered another thing that happened on Monday.  When I got back home from cashing in that savings bond, I called the real estate agent listing the inconvenience store front on Chapin road that John and I were looking at as Dimlight Racing’s future home.  The lady who answered said that the guy who knows about that property was out of the office but would call me back.  He called as I was driving back from Cabela’s.  Oh, at Cabela’s I found a neat drop-leg holster for the Mare’s Leg “pistol” but didn’t buy it because it was $109.00… nine dollars more than I had on me.  Anyhoo, here’s what the real estate guy had to say: the monthly lease rate is $1,200.00, or for $129,000.00 I could just buy the thing outright.  If the place were perfect, maybe, but since the only thing going for it is convenience, I think we’ll keep looking.  I told John about it and I think we’re going to pursue the Kennedale option again.  2,000 square feet for about what I'm paying now for 1,200 feet?  That is a no-brainer.  It is a little further from home, distance wise, but time-wise it wouldn’t be that much worse.  It just takes too damned long to get to the shop in Beenbroke due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") the surface streets.  Speaking of surface streets taking too damned long, John picked me up at the body shop yesterday and drove me home.  At my urging, we bailed out on I-30 in downtown and cut over to Vickery on Summit/8^th Avenue.  Yeah, I forgot how many lights there are on Vickery and how many other people might want to use it instead of I-30.  We might have been better off sitting in the traffic on the freeway.  I'm pretty sure John feels that way. [ Yes, but I'm nothing if not amenable. - SM ] Oops, sorry.  We discussed building the shop at my house on Burkett and had a look at the layout when we finally got there.  I don’t know.  Making one monthly payment for a mortgage on the shop at the house seems to make more sense than paying rent at an off-site shop.  Of course if I'm not paying a mortgage on a house or shop, renting a place isn’t so bad.  I guess I need to get that driveway built around to the back patio for parking “finished” projects and just plan to keep the shop off-site for a while.  Perhaps once all of the projects, mine and John's, are “finished” I can make the garage into a maintenance shop rather than a fabrication shop.  Ok, I think I may have a new long-term plan in mind.  John and I will rent a shop somewhere until we “finish” our projects, then I will move all of my stuff to the house and work out of the garage with the cars, truck, and trailer parked around back and to the side of the house.  Hmm, if I were to build that deck out from the master bedroom that dad always wanted, I'd even have covered parking for a few vehicles.  Methinks that might be the way to go.  As for the driveway, I'm thinking about something really simple: pavestones.  I'm also thinking I wouldn’t move the sprinkler system but would straddle it with the pavestone drive.  I'd have to be careful how I parked a car on the drive so that the sprinklers shot out frumundah it to water the yard, but I think that is doable.  Oh, I guess I would have to have the sprinkler heads next to the patio and in the area between the patio and pecan tree removed since I'm envisioning that area being solid pavers.  Hell, the grass hasn’t grown there for years anyway, I might as well pave over it.  Yes, I like this idea.  Now I just gotta finger out how to go about doing it.  Therein lies the rub.  I really should have had Pat's friend pour the drive when he quoted it for me a few years ago.  Of course, I should have had Nitro build the shop in Boyd back in 1997 or 2000 or whenever he quoted me $110,000.00 for a building with a finished apartment, ready to move into.  Then again, having dealt with him again recently, and knowing what corners he wanted to cut, I'm probably better off having NOT done business with him back then.  Oh well, them’s the breaks.  Ok, I guess I've said all I have to say today.  I'll talk to y'all again tomorrow.