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March Mad-Awesomeness!

My Goal for the month of March was to ‘Have No Goals and Enjoy Myself.’ Well, it turns out that this was the best month I’ve ever had in a long time. I started this blog a month and a half ago because my life had become a series of Train Wrecks after Train Wrecks. Today I am up to date on all my bills (except the College Loan, I am still 4 months away from being current and am working with them on that), haven’t had an over draft penalty since February, My body is sexier then ever, I have cash in my bank account and every morning I wake up happy. I am happy I took the time to enjoy myself now because the busy Season has started. I’ve learned some things, too; and this blog entry may not be so much for my fans as it is for my fellow brothers in the business, but if you are reading this

#1- “It’s My Life Now. I Have to Live It For Myself” This was a piece of advice given to me last year and I didn’t start taking it to heart until this month. I can’t live my life the way others want me to live it, it has to be the way I want to live it or else I will always be depressed. What a concept! It was 3am, I was coming home from a job and I was mad at myself for staying up too late. I was supposed to make an early phone call to my mom in the morning and I knew that wasn’t going to happen. My mom still wants me to be a Lawyer or a Teacher because of my impressive communication skills. I have no intention of being either of those. That is when I pulled that awesome piece of advice from the file cabinet in my head and when I called her at 2 in the afternoon I told her that I was out until 3 in the morning and didn’t get to bed till 4. That was That.

#2- “If I Don’t Like Doing It, Then I Don’t Do It; Or At Least I Ask For More.” I am not an upseller and pride myself on not being one. But, there is a specific service that I completely dread doing and I usually do it anyways because I am not an upseller. Not anymore. I was speaking with young guy we recently added to the site and him and I were discussing all the crazy things clients ask us to do. He flat out said that he has to ask for more money when it comes to a few specific services. I was always afraid of upselling because I didn’t want to get bad reviews because of it. But, that one service I dread doing could easily be eliminated from the client’s list of needed services if I asked for more money to do it. Sure enough, I started asking for an extra $100 (in a kind and gentle way) and I either did not have to provide the service or I made an extra $100. It’s been a winning scenario.

#3- “Just Look at Previous Months.” Somehow every month, with the exclusion of February, I have pulled through and made substantial financial gains. I never seem to realize that and always think I am behind the ball when Im getting no phone calls. The gains, though, have come in mini-spurts of business that I thought followed no regular pattern. Well, after looking back, I realized that there was a pattern that follows no direct schedule, but rather a form of orderly financial chaos that stretches for 2 months and at the conclusion of a 2 month period, if I save my pennies properly, I end up with a large profit at the end. Its hard to put into words, but here’s an example: This first week of this month I received 3 jobs and 1 agency call; the following week I received only 1 job, 1 Overnight that unfortunately turned into a 5 hour and no agency calls; On week 3 I received 8 jobs (yea… thats a lot) and no agency calls; Last week I received no agency calls and no jobs until the weekend where I received 2 jobs and 1 bad agency call. This week I have no jobs, but a possible overnight on Friday. When looking back, in the long run that is an average of 4 jobs a week. Most calls I get are for over an hour, or they tip properly. So when I put that into prospective, there was a lot of money there. I just got to keep my hands off the cash and it will all be fine.

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The Fun Things You Find

Oh wow, can’t believe all the incredible things on my old hard drive. In the last post I placed a song for you to listen to and I’ve been blasting that song everyday.

I’m only half way through the hard drive and I keep finding more and more exciting old things.

I guess this is the wave of the future. Instead of sifting through a box of old photos, records and family film strips we’re going to sift through an old computer.

I did come across some fun photos that I thought I would share with you.

Here’s a photo of me at a Halloween Party. I’m not going to tell you How Old I am in this picture, you are going to have to guess.

When I owned my Landscape Business, this was the Hauling Truck. We called it “The Beast” because it was old as hell, pieces of the truck were falling off and it could still drive 100 miles while hauling 2 tons of landscape materials.

Here is an Unpaid Invoice from my Landscape Business. No wonder it went under.

These are the  first photos I ever took with my first digital camera.

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Amazing What you can Find

As part of my New Start, #8 on the Energy Blocker List was to go through my old hard drive and Pull Out the files that I need. It was like opening up a time capsule and what a bunch of cool stuff I have. Imagine it’s 2002 and your friend built you a Mega Computer for school. You got this new thing called ‘Cable Internet’ that is 500 times faster than anything else out there and you are a bit devious by nature. Needless to say… there was a lot of porn on that hard drive. Lots and lots of really good porn.

But I want to focus on the music I had. I collect all kinds of interesting music; lots of unique songs and dances, and multiple variations of the songs and dances. One of my favorite Pieces of music is “The Peanut Vendor.” The piece became popular during the  mid 1950’s ‘Mambo’ music movement that was introduced by Desi Arnez (I love Lucy). I have over 40 renditions of “the Peanut Vendor” and one stands out as my Super Favorite! I totally forgot about it until I found the copy on the old hard drive. I used to BLAST this song every morning when I would get ready for school, dancing and bopping around. My friends would get in on the action, too, and before long this song was being played all through our Fraternity House.

Here is a copy of the Greatest ” The Peanut Vendor” Recording ever. Don’t be afraid to crank up the volume:

Harry James, Benny Goodman & Stan Kenton – The Peanut Vendor

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Me the Foodie #2

My cooking fad has moved into high gear. Being in Vegas it is hard to find good ethnic foods and a dish that I miss so much is Weiner Schnitzel. Weiner Schnitzel is an Austrian dish, but has been adopted by most Eastern European countries as national cuisine. I’m Slovak and relate Weiner Schnitzel to my heritage. To put that into perspective, think of Pizza as a purely American food item, which it is even though it has Italian origins, and Corned Beef as an Irish food item, even though it’s Norwegian origins.

Weiner Schnitzel is easy to make, but requires a lot of Mess to make it happen. The primary meat is Pressed Veal, which is a thin slice of Veal that is tenderized. The Veal is then breaded, fried and served with a slice of lemon. The trick to breading the Veal is not to do an egg wash then bread crumbs, you have to coat the Veal in flour, then egg wash and breadcrumbs because the breading and meat should separate from each other when done. It took me 2 tries to make that happen, but I got it done and the meal was incredible.

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Happy Times

I had an awesome client yesterday and lunch at the Wolfgang Puck Bar and Grill was pretty amazing too. It’s been so slow down here that I was happy to just have some company. I realized this weekend that I haven’t been to a UNLV basketball game all season and it got me thinking about the best time of my life.

Most of you know about my trip to Pasadena to watch the Buckeye’s conquer the Rose Bowl, but most of you also didn’t see any proof… so as part of my gratitude in action I decided to post some photos from the greatest day of my life.

Click on the Photo to View Larger

My friend and I arrived in Pasadena at 4:30am. Her flight landed in Vegas at 10:30pm, we did a quick ‘Happy New Year,’ then left immediately after midnight for California. We pulled into the parking area somewhere around 4:45am. There were already a ton of people there, but not mobbed. Walking around the Stadium before the game felt very spiritual.

Of course it’s New Year’s Day in Pasadena and what would New Year’s Day in Pasadena be without a Parade? This Colorado Ave at 5:00am. The Parade doesn’t start till 8:00am. A cop said that the street was packed like that since Noon on New Year’s Eve.

Here’s me happy to find a Starbucks.

When I saw this coming down the hill I started to get real emotional because I’ve never been anywhere in my life but Ohio and Vegas. “Oh My God… I’m at the Rose Bowl!” I kept thinking to myself. This was Awesome!

Talk about a front row seat. This was a true experience.

After the Parade was over it started to Warm Up pretty fast. On the way back down to the Stadium we passed this house that looked familiar to me. I realized that it was Doc Brown’s house from 1955 in Back to the Future. My friend thought I was full of Shit. Then I looked it up on my iPhone and I was right. Then my friend called me a ‘Dork’ for randomly noticing Doc Brown’s house from 1955.

Check for yourself:

http://www.movielocationsguide.com/Back_to_the_Future/filming_locations

Me ready to enter the Game

We got to our seats early because The place fills up quick and I absolutely wasn’t going to miss the Marching Band!
One hour later the place was packed. We were watching the Pre Game Hype Video’s on the JumboTron.

The Pride of the Buckeye’s… The Ohio State University Marching Band!
Script Ohio!

Here’s the Team running onto the field, then winning the whole damn thing.

So there you go. A few pics from over 200 that I had taken from the Greatest Day of my life. Ohio State beat a team that was supposed to demolish them and they broke a 5 year BCS winning slump. By the end of the game I had lost my voice from cheering so much and I had been awake for 26 hours. After the game I had to drive from the stadium into the San Bernideno Mountains to drop my friend of at her friend’s house, then try to find a hotel to crash at. I ended up just driving back to Vegas and crashing at my place. When I got home I was awake for 30 hours with no sleep. I didn’t care, I was still the best time I ever had… Ever!