Small Biz Blues

We still don't have a new truck and I could rant and rave and get into all the particulars about credit being tightened, the problems in trying to finance a new used truck, etc, etc, but it's all frivilous details.

What it really comes down to is that it's hard to be a small business these days. I get so frustrated that in order to get a loan it's easier to have a pay stub for working for someone else than it is to get a loan as a small business owner.

If Joe Cool walked into a bank with a pay stub from a job he just got 2 weeks ago for a company that frequently bounces checks and is about to go under... a bank will approve him in 5 minutes because he is not self employed.

If I walk into a bank, even a bank I've been with for 5+ years, and they know I am self employed, I have to provide 3 years of tax returns and have to have a higher interest rate because I am self employed.

It pisses me off everytime. I can't be fired from my job, and I can't shut down a business with just 2 weeks notice. To me I seem like the more stable risk than Joe Cool.

I cannot stand banks. I just get more and more frustrated with them as the years go by. Where is the bank that is truly out to help small businesses? Why do we small businesses need banks so much? What can be done to make it easier to run a business and get the credit when it is needed?

Arghhh I am frustrated. I just need to start my own bank, or magically get into a situation where I don't need them to run my business.

Summertime

Okay so I know I am seriously slacking on the blog posts lately, but it is summertime and the children are running me ragged. That and we went to LegoLand and Disneyland last week.

Legoland rocked. It was a little rainy in the am, but it cleared up. It was Star Wars weekend. So there were storm troopers and Jedi's roaming the park. The lines were short, and the food is pretty good there, so overall it was a good day although very surreal with all the Star Wars characters.

Disneyland was horrible. When we were leaving the park we noticed on the billboards outside that they were warning people that the park was full and they were not letting anyone else into the park. Needless to say we had never been there when it was this full. We could hardly navigate the stroller thru the crowds. The stores and restaurants had lines as long as the rides. Then to make matters worse all the rides broke. The monorail, Thunder Mountain, the Matterhorn and Space Mountain were shut down. We did the best we could.... going on the carousel, people watching, and doing anything else that had a wait of less than 30 minutes, but still I don't think we went on more than 4 or 5 rides. This wasn't even the weekend. This was on a Monday.
I guess it was the beginning of summer and everyone had the same idea, but I wish we had just gone to the beach instead. I don't think we'll go back unless it's a cold day in November or February.

So anyway we're back home and I'm going to try and post more regualrly again. Lord knows I've got enough to write about with stories of the kids driving me insane and the madness that is going on in both our businesses. I'll try and keep up with it all here.

Consulting Architect

Thsi was the lovely view as the little one and I took our walk this afternoon. It makes it hard to complain about the artic tundra that we live on when it looks like this today....mild winds, sunny and 75, with beautiful bible verse clouds.

Of course the alternative to the winter is the searing sun that will burn you after 10 minutes in it's powerful rays. That is 8000 ft elevation for ya.

My dear hard working husband did not get home until 8:30 pm last night. So he officially worked from 5:15 am when he left the house until he walked in the door at 8:30. That is too long a day no matter what we are getting paid. He called around 6:00 telling me how frustrated he was that he was still working and he was driving past other dads outside playing with their kids, watering their lawns, or sitting on their porches.

Of course it makes me feel bad since I am not working and he is working his little ass off. But is their another way to do it? In my mind I have to be home all summer since the kids are out of school, but it would be nice if I could bring in at least $2000/month while I'm at home. Which brings me to the real question.... is there a way for me to work at home as an architect or in an architect type way without actually being an architect? Would it be possible to dispense all of my architecture knowledge without having clients, stamping drawings and taking things into the city? There has to be a way and I am racking my brain trying to figure it out. No one is hiring architects anyway nowadays, so what good would an at home consulting architect be to people? I don't know, but it sounds like someome somewhere could probably use my talents, but where are they and how much are they willing to pay?

Production Designer

Okay, so this is like my 5th career idea. I always seem to find something more interesting than what I am doing...which right now is absolutely nothing.

Production Designer for movies? How cool does that sound. I'm still investigating, but so far it seems like a good idea for me. I've already got all of the design background and training, I'm excellent with a budget, and I am the queen of lists. So far the only negative about the career is the hours. It's not really a job for someone with kids who needs to be home everynight for dinner, but that is always negotiable. I'm looking into it pretty seriously. I just need to find someone who is already a "PD" so that I can learn the ins and outs of the movie/TV business, oh and I need to move back to LA.

So that makes my dream career list pretty long: architect, writer, rug designer, and movie production designer. It is possible to do all of them at the same time?

Dodge Sprinters

Yeah they suck ass! We've never had one that lasted more than 3 years. Yes we put 300miles a day on them, but it's a commercial truck. It's supposed to take a beating and keep on going.

So far we have replaced everything but the engine....which died last week with no warning whatsoever. The cost of a new engine you ask, .......$14,000 installed. WTF!!!!

Needless to say we will be buying a new truck and trying to find a way to get at least the $10,000 that we still owe on the broken truck on trade-in.

Ordinarilly this would not be a problem, but American Express has ratched down our credit line. It's not a huge tab at all, but since the "economic downturn" it has been standard practice at AmEx and probably most other credit cards to reduce their limits to the ceiling of what is owed so that you can't charge anything new.

Great, fantastic. I think they should do that for most personal lines of credit, but for a commercial shipping business you need that extra cushion for just this kind of situation. Truck repairs on a diesel engine are tres $$$$$. That is what a line of credit is for.

I have yet to call them and beg for a little bit of a cushion, but in the meantime we are trying to decide if it is even worth it to try and repair the truck or just get another truck to finance for longer than it will be driveable. UGGGHHHH!

Slacker

I know, I know. I'm slacking on this whole writing a blog thing. Seriously I have been trying to get some crap done. The kids are done with school in 2 weeks and I need to have all of my architect duties finished up before then so that all summer I can focus on entertaining them, creating my website to sell my rugs and on real writing, not this fake blog writing.

I have lofty goals for the summer. I'm getting thru the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite. Photoshop is truly one of the most amazing programs I have ever worked with. I am still mastering Illustrator, and Dreamweaver is not at all as intuitive as the artsy programs.

I have to have my web site up and running by the end of June. That is my official deadline. After that $$$$$ should just start rolling in. Cross my fingers.

Writing........I love it and I hate it. I just need to take that dive and commit more words to paper. I can only get better.

I am also going to be posting my house on one of those house swap web sites. I'm looking to spend next summer in a beautiful castle in the south of France and knowing what I do of the French....I'm hoping the above mentioned home owners will want to spend a few weeks in my castle in the Southwest US. We'll see how that goes.

Check ya later peeps.

Weekend Recap

The entire weekend kicked ass. Our seats were decent and the road trip was perfect. There is nothing like spending 2 -8 hour drives with the one you love, especially when you don't usually get to spend that much time with each other usually or are spending that time herding children.

NIN was awesome as usual. THey played completely different songs from the Lights tour last fall. They definitely kicked Jane's Addiction's asses. I'd never seen Jane's before and probably would not have enjoyed it at all except for Dave Navarro. He is a sight to behold and he was on the JumboTron the whole time. I was transfixed and he took his shirt off in the second song. That guy is a rock star.

Whenever we go to shows I get that exhiliration from being in a place where music is being made, but it also makes me feel old and I miss the days when I got to be back stage and have laminates with my name on them. I've hit that point where I feel old. Yeah the guys on stage are all 10-20 years older then me, but it makes me feel old to no longer be a part of the rock-n-roll scene. It seems like that part of my life is gone for good and it makes me sad.

I wish I could follow the tour around the rest of the US and see all the shows. It was that awesome.