Author: cosmo

Ham

Last week, while I was in Arizona, Zaque was at youth conference with about a dozen other high-schoolers, and on their last day they conquered Mt Cameron, one of Colorado’s 56 Fourteeners.

It looks like there’s some ham at the top of that mountain.

Wedding!

For the past three days, Laralee, Alex, and I were down in Phoenix for our nephew Brandon’s wedding. He’d been Alex’s roommate for a semester at BYU, and during that semester, Brandon was dating Kayla and eventually proposed to her (Alex helped with the proposal and was even there for the Big Moment). When La and I went to pick up Alex, we met her and spent the evening with the two of them. It was a lot of fun, so we were excited to be a part of their big day.

Unbeknownst to Kayla, one of the items on Brandon’s checklist of “the perfect wife” was having a wedding reception that involved a mariachi band. He served his mission in Mexico and loved the Mexican culture. So when he first mentioned the idea and Kayla didn’t immediately veto it, he knew he’d found the perfect wife.

The reception was held at a neighbor’s house; they had a huge yard and big trees that shaded a wide area. In the 106-degree heat of Phoenix in mid-June, it was a good venue. The tables all had sombreros and colorful blankets:

There was indeed a mariachi band:

And there were babies everywhere… sheesh. I think this one is the newest addition, the daughter of Brandon’s sister Danae.

The happy couple was all too happy to see the “third wheel” who’d accompanied them on so many dates.

Here are the two roomies/cousins:

As it happened, there was another reception right across the street. It was a huge Mexican party as well, and since the bride was the sister of the husband of my niece, I felt like I was probably somehow related to her so it would be okay to crash the party. Laralee and I snuck over and I grabbed a snow-cone from the vendor they’d hired for their party.

They also had an enormous (as in, five feet high) swamp cooler blowing across their lawn, making their party literally cooler. Even by 9pm it was still in the upper 90’s, although overall I was surprised how comfortable it felt. We had a great time with all of the relatives, old and new.

Saturday morning was the wedding itself. At first I thought it was a little strange (okay, a lot strange) to have a reception before the wedding, but after talking with Kayla about it, I found myself agreeing that it’s smart. The party takes so much preparation and effort, and then the wedding itself is short and simple by comparison. So instead of being worn out on your wedding night, you can head off on your honeymoon with a ton of energy. We drove over to the Gilbert temple, which of course is beautiful.

Laralee is working on her “Kyra selfie” and is getting a little better at it.

It must run in the family, because Kaleb and Luke both have one:

After the ceremony, the happy couple ran the gauntlet.

They drove off into the sunset… well, in fact it was the early afternoon blazing scorching Arizona sun to start their life together. It was tons of fun, and I wish them all the best.

First car

It’s always a big day when you get your first car.

After some thought, Alex decided he’d really like a car while he’s at BYU. There are only so many times you can bum rides off friends, or hope someone needs groceries at the same time you do. Or, more importantly (according to Alex), it’s simply not cool to ask a woman on a date when you don’t have a car. So clearly a car would open up a lot of possibilities!

Today we spent the afternoon shopping and test driving. He decided he wanted a Honda, because they’re super reliable and relatively cheap. I suppose he’s a little biased because we’re a Honda family with our Civic, Accord, and Odyssey. So he and I poked around Craigslist, he made some calls, and we drove a few. We came back home to talk about which one he liked best, how we might talk down the price a bit, and so on.

After a bit of coaching, he called one seller and did a bit of haggling. To his (and my) surprise, she accepted his lower offer without even countering, and it was a done deal! We headed over to his credit union to get a pile of cash, and then drove home his new (old) car.

It’s a 2007 Honda Civic, just a year older than mine. It’s essentially the same car, minus a few features (mine is the “nicer” model), and it’s a pretty shade of blue. Oh, and it has a manual transmission. So we had a few moments of “How the heck do I do this?” as he figured out how to drive a stick shift.

We went out for dinner and he managed to stutter his way along the city streets, only evoking a single driver honking at him as he killed the car at the stoplight when it turned green. Overall he did really well, and he has that “I have a car!” glow about him now. I remember that feeling with a lot of nostalgia.

You’ll transform into a cow

Late last night I was reading a great article about financial planning (yeah, these are the sorts of things I do sometimes) and the discussion shifted to how to teach our kids how to be fiscally responsible and pick up “good habits” as soon as possible. Since I’m not sure how good my own financial habits are, it’s hard to know whether I’m passing along good things or not.

Nonetheless, there was a great comment that spoke to me because I felt the same way back in the day:

It was only after college that I got hit with the reality of office life, bills, debt, and losing my naive idea that somehow I’d make it big in life if I’d just finish college. I always thought of myself as an interested and curious kid who could learn easily, so I thought after graduation there’d obviously be a place for me in a cool organization with a nice pay package. In reality, there’s literally nothing at all waiting for you– you have to go and get it, and there’s a big grind as you start from scratch.

Going from being a kid to being an adult was like having someone tell me I’d transform into a cow in five years, and it’s really important, and I should learn all about it. So sure, I could read the textbooks and articles and do the exercises about cows, but there’s nothing that prepares you for the actual experience, nor convinces you how life-changing it’ll be.

So true. College was an amazing experience for me: challenging and eye-opening and a ton of work mixed with a ton of fun. And as I hit the end of my college career I sort of figured everything would work out (which may be why I waited until spring break of my senior year to even start looking for jobs). It was quite a shock to find out there was nothing waiting for me unless I made it happen myself. Of course in retrospect it’s easy to think, “Well, duh. Everyone knows that.” But the truth is, a twenty-something who’s known nothing but school for sixteen or so years, with a few low-paying jobs and minor responsibilities mixed in, can’t really fathom that post-college experience until it happens.

I just hope I’m preparing my kids well. They’re great, and I know they’ll be successful in their different ways, but sometimes I don’t even know how I can help them. I guess we’ll see what happens in the next few years…

Lit

A fun thing to do in my seminary class is use words the high-schoolers use, pretending that I’m hip. If I slip something like “I’m going to a lit party” into my conversation, they will literally groan in unison because I’m so uncool they can’t believe I’d use “their words”. So I throw in the occasional “on fleek” reference and other things, just to get a reaction. Good times.

Speaking of lit parties, this meme cracked me the heck up.

Livin’ on the edge

I enjoy Kraft Miracle Whip on various things, which often causes Laralee to roll her eyes because– in her words– “it’s not real mayo”.

As it turns out, I must not actually use it all that much, because we’ve had a bottle of Miracle Whip in our fridge for well over a year and I’m still using it. How do I know? The expiration date is more than a year ago:

She insists I’ll probably get salmonella or something horrible because mayo (and, by extension, Miracle Whip) is quite perishable. But it still tastes fine to me, so I continue living on the edge and taking crazy risks like this.

Where next?

I have three favorite places in the world.

The first is Flathead Lake, Montana. It’s an enormous lake outside Kalispell, with Glacier National Park just to the east. On our epic family trip in September 2001, we stopped by Flathead Lake to look around and enjoy a sunset. Zaque was only weeks old at the time, but Alex and Kyra enjoyed running around on a few docks. Here’s a picture I took with my ancient Sony digital camera:

For a long time, I felt like Flathead Lake– and, by extension, Glacier– was the most beautiful place in the world. Then I went backpacking with Thom and Katie in the Enchantments, which are a tiny part of North Cascades National Park. I’d been there with Thom a couple of times before, but on this particular trip (their wedding), for some reason I was captivated by its true beauty. Although it was October, the weather was absolutely perfect. The larch trees were turning colors, the towering grey granite was inspiring, and the lakes and streams were crisp and cold. It was amazing. Enchanting, I guess, heh.

This was the view from our campsite:

For the next year or so, I kept thinking about making another trip out there; it wouldn’t be difficult to talk Thom into it, as it’s one of his favorite places too. But I worried that the weather wouldn’t be as nice, or the trees wouldn’t be changing, or there would be too many bugs, or whatever, and it would ruin my memory of that breathtaking place.

Then I went to Hawai’i. It left everywhere else I’d ever been in the dust. Again, I wonder if my timing was lucky and the weather was perfect just then, but I suspect the weather in Hawai’i is nearly always perfect. Although I enjoyed the entire trip, it was Maui that really captivated me. The ocean and surf were incredible, the climate was a stunning mix of humid and arid, and the landscape was unbelievable: rain forest, desert, lava formations, waterfalls beyond count, an extinct volcano.

The waves on the north shore were awesome.

The Road to Hana, well-traveled as it is, was certainly the highlight of our trip, and probably one of the highlights of my life. I loved the crazy curves (white knuckles and all) and stopping over and over to hike into the rain forest to another waterfall. I can’t wait to return next summer with the kids.

All this brings me to the point of this post.

As I contemplate my retirement, I often find myself thinking about where I’d like to live. We’ve been in Longmont for sixteen years now, and it’s a fine place, but I can’t help but feel it’s time to move on. Colorado is fantastic, and in a way I’d hate to leave, but there are so many other places we could go. I’ve been hinting to Laralee for years that perhaps we should hop around the country, renting places for a year apiece before moving on to another state. She’s a bit of a homebody, so she’s definitely not thrilled about the prospect, although she’s been warming to the idea, so maybe it’ll happen.

They say everyone has a “dream house”, and I suppose it’s true to some extent. For me, it’s not so much about the house as it is the location. Proof: we’ve lived in our current house for sixteen years but still haven’t painted many of the walls. There aren’t curtains on the windows, and our yard is essentially a huge plot of plain old grass. Neither Laralee nor I are much for decorating– we just enjoy “home” and don’t care too much what’s on the walls. So when I think of a dream house, I think more about what’s around it.

Just for fun, I peek at Zillow now and then to see what sort of houses we might find. To be clear, I’m not looking for rentals– I’m looking for a place for several years at least. And to be even more clear, my searches are quite narrow in focus: I look at Maui and Flathead Lake. (There is, of course, no housing up in the Enchantments, or I’d look there too.)

If I had to choose a dream house, it would be this incredible place in north Kihei, which is the southwest shore of Maui:

It sits on a big plot of land, a few hundred feet from the ocean, looking west. Like many houses I’ve seen in Hawai’i, it’s very open and has more windows than walls. I guess when you have views like those on Maui, you want to drink them in.

So I love this house, but it comes with a hefty six-million-dollar price tag. That led me to look at a few other (less expensive!) places in Kihei, but unfortunately it’s a prime location in Maui and therefore the “affordable” places tend to be (1) not on the beach, and (2) more like oversized shacks. Heading northeast, I found a magnificent place on the north shore, just outside Hana:

It sits atop a cliff overlooking a rocky shore, and even has a guest house. And it’s much more affordable: only half the price of the Kihei house, hah! As I continued thinking about living in Maui, though, it occurred to me that it would be tricky to see our kids (and, eventually, grandkids) very often. And although Kihei is close to shopping and culture, Hana is pretty much a tiny town on the edge of civilization. Living out there would be beautiful, but everything we’d need would be an hour away along one of the craziest roads I’ve ever seen. As they say in real estate, it’s about location, location, location.

And that brings me to Flathead Lake, a much more practical place to retire. Last night as I was surfing Zillow, I found this majestic house:

It’s a good size, sits right above the lake, and has a nice boat dock… which means I may be able to convince Laralee we need a sailboat. And it’s even more affordable than Hana or Kihei. Our kids and grandkids and family and friends could all visit– it’s a bit of a drive to northern Montana, but certainly easier than a cross-Pacific airplane trip.

Laralee isn’t crazy about the prospect of winter in Montana, so I suggested we rent a place in Maui during the winter months. She didn’t shoot me down instantly, so I can hold out hope that plan might work.

Is all of this just fantasy? Maybe. But how cool would it be to retire and live in one of my favorite places in the whole world? I just need to remember my new mantra…

T minus one year

Yesterday was June 1, 2018.

That’s significant because a few years ago I decided my “retirement date” will be June 1, 2019. It means I have one year left to get everything in order so I can completely step back from work and do… whatever.

I remember beginning my retirement journey at the age of 26. At the time, I’d decided to retire on my 40th birthday. That was 14 years away, which seemed like an eternity and certainly enough time to amass a fortune. Well, the years ticked by, but that fortune didn’t amass and 40 came and went. I was still working– in fact, at least as many hours as I’d been working 14 years earlier. The lesson I learned in that fourteen-year exercise was that you can’t just say “I’ll retire on such-and-such a date” and have it magically happen. Instead, once you’ve decided on a date, you have to do some planning. Imagine that!

For the past year or two I’ve been doing that planning. I’ve looked at my investments and portfolio, considered how my businesses will continue running without me, analyzed our spending, and on and on. I have all sorts of spreadsheets; I check my account balances monthly; I watch our credit card spending. It’s not glamorous, but it’s helping me take baby steps toward my goal.

Now here I am, one short year away. Retirement isn’t a sure thing yet, but it’s taking shape. Today I think I’ll build a Monte Carlo simulator to run some tests against my portfolio and see whether Laralee and I can last 60+ years on what we have. Then I’ll tweak a few dials, so to speak, and figure out how to improve my position. Rinse and repeat. Watch the calendar count down the days. And hopefully, 364 days from now, I can breathe a contented sigh of relief.