Over the past couple of weeks, Juneau has been amazingly nice. The weather has been all we can hope for this time of year, hovering in the 60s and 70s during the day and sunny, sunny, sunny. I thought it was a little funny when Oksana took time out of her Saturday to go indoor tanning at Northern Hot Spots, but we are planning a two-week beach vacation next month, so I can appreciate the need to build up a burn-preventing base tan.

What would probably have changed her mind, had she known about it, was that Northern Hot Spots was using Saturday to promote their business with a radio broadcast. When Oksana arrived, she was immediately asked if she would like to participate in a live, on-the-air interview. My wife is the sensible type. She said “Heck no!” and went about the business of darkening her skin.

At the counter, she noticed that there was a “today-only sale” – 15 tans for $47.25. Since she had been stealing my tans of late (purchased to prime me for Cuba), she decided to lay down the cash. Being a full-on promotion day, she also accepted a tanning lotion sample and threw her name in for a prize drawing.

She told me all this, of course, upon her return home. Then we promptly forgot about it.

The next day, after spending more time out in the sun at Eagle Beach, we returned home and decided to take a nap. Strangely exhausted, we both slept like rocks/logs/babies and didn’t even hear the phone ring. That evening I awoke first, stumbled out of the bedroom, and promptly sprawled myself on the couch. Oksana arose a short while later, droopy-eyed and with lines etched into her face from the wrinkles on her pillow.

“Beh,” she said. Could’ve been Russian, but I think she just needed her tea. She noticed the red-flashing button as she passed the answering machine on her way into the kitchen. She pushed it and we heard:

“Hi, Oksana. This is Terry calling from Northern Hot Spots to let you know that you won a year’s supply of free tans in the drawing this afternoon. Congratulations.”

In an instant, Oksana went from slouched and drained to conscious and jubilant, her fists raised to the ceiling in celebration. She’d won the coveted Northern Hot Spots grand prize, sure, but was acting like it was the first time in her entire life that she’d won anything at all. Wait a minute… it was.

Anyway, Oksana’s happy. The next time you see her you may notice a big smile – or, at the very least, a darker epidermis.

Me? I get my Cuba tans back.

Continued from here…

$300,000. That’s the amount that Alaska Pacific Bank was willing to sign over to us at the drop of a hat. During the AHFC homeowner’s class, we were told a simple formula to guesstimate how high our mortgage could reach and our combined incomes topped it out at only $210,000. You can imagine the shock we had when we realized how wrong we were.

We spent that Friday evening going over the large amounts of practically incomprehensible paperwork. The $300,000 loan would be good at 5.5% interest, only 5% down, and the closing costs would be about $10,000. It would have stretched our finances to the limit, but conceivably, we could have taken that loan out on Monday!

The part that gave me the most pause, though, was the schedule of payments. The magnitude of a 30-year loan doesn’t quite sink in until you see the date of the final payment: April 1st, 2036. 2036! I’m picturing the end of fossil fuels, world-changing contact with extra-terrestrials, or at the very least, flying cars! Are we really ready for such a protracted commitment?

We had plenty of time over the weekend to reevaluate our financial lives. Could we afford a waterfront, sunlit house? Would it be possible to build our own home? Should we even consider pushing our limit, or should we look into something we could pay off in a lot more time?

We also started to talk more seriously with other homeowners, and of course, the suggestions started to come in fast and furious. Spend your limit on waterfront – it’s an investment! Get a place with an apartment so that you can rent it out and let someone else pay most of your mortgage! Spend as little as possible so that you have some remaining cash flow for emergencies!

Read the rest of this entry »

So, I checked the stats today on my photoblog site and noticed that I’m right around the same number of visitors as last month. Not bad considering that we’re only 13 days into May. There are a lot of ways that these stats can be interpreted, but I try to focus solely on to the “unique IPs.” Yeah, sure, three of those visitors are definitely just me checking the site from the three computers I use the most, but I’m pretty sure the other 18 are from real people (as opposed to web crawling robots)!

So, yeah. I’m happy. Granted, I could get no additional IPs hits for the rest of the month – in which case I suppose I could conclude that everyone I’m telling this month had already visited it last month (before I had really started advertising.)

Still no orders flooding in, though. Hmmm. Maybe I should check those PayPal links again…!

I put up a new photo today if you’re interested (and yes, this is my way of copping out of writing a real blog entry.) I’ll check the stats again on June 1 and post the results here. After that, I plan to sign my photoblog up with as many blog registries as I can find. Should be interesting to see if that will generate significantly higher numbers.

Almost two years ago, when our families were arriving in Juneau for our marriage, Oksana and I tried very hard to be good hosts. Unfortunately, in planning the wedding, we weren’t able to spare enough time for the task. We were hoping that Alaska would play nice that summer and show our guests what it can be like on a sunny, warm day. That way we could turn them loose and let them make their own fun.

Seeing as we live in Southeast Alaska, though, it was much more likely that it would rain the entire time they were with us. That’s why I was practically ecstatic when the day of their Tracy Arm cruise dawned to clear blue skies – no matter what happened from that point on (including the possibility of a rained-out wedding), they would look back and judge their entire stay on that one, perfect day.

I was hoping for at least one such day during my mom’s visit this last weekend – lucky me; I’m batting 1.000.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I had a bunch of friends over at my place and I was so happy to hear that not a single one of them had watched the series finale of Friends the night before.

Then again, we had come together on a Friday evening to watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, so take that for what it’s worth.