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Over the course of this last month, stewardship of my apartment complex passed hands from me to Todd, the now full-time maintenance person.  The owner has health issues that wont allow him to take care of a lot of the miscellaneous stuff at his properties, and the only way to provide full-time work for someone to take over such things was to give them my duties as well.  No hard feelings … it was great while it lasted.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been babysitting this place for some time.  It was the perfect arrangement, as I run my business from my home office.  That makes it easy to take complaints, help people locked out of their apartments, and I got to ride around on the lawn mower now and then.  I also painted the occasional apartment — something I actually enjoy doing — and handled a few odds and ends.  It wasn’t a lot of work (usually) but the compensation of rent was more for on-site availability than anything.  I played disaster control a lot of times over the years, and hope Todd wont have to decide what property to save when there’s another October Surprise or seven feet of snow.

The sudden increase in rent is worrying Mer quite a bit, though business is … well … busy.  I can probably swing it, but it’s tough with catching up on taxes and high school tuition coming up.  We talked about getting rid of inessentials, but to be honest, we leave such a humble lifestyle, there’s little money to be saved if you add up all our luxuries.  At least for our upcoming 10th anniversary, we received a gift of a night’s stay at the Mansion on Delaware and a dinner at a nearby restaurant.

This situation has also been incentive to really go out and get new business, and explore more long-term possible ventures as well.  In particular, I really want to start getting published.  We’ll see.  My business can make me a living, but it’s not structured to break through to the next level.