Not supposed to be working on Sunday

Some things I decided to do-

1. Reserved a spot at the Winnipeg Real Estate forum, starts April 20th, sure hope I can find someone to go with me, though it's a bit pricey,
2. E-mailed an account rep with CNW Group to inquire about rates for submitting news releases to their service. Found a release picked up by RENX.COM, which has huge targeted traffic, and it came from CNW. Thought I could submit releases there and if they get picked up, it would send serious traffic my way.
3. Reviewed a condo project in Toronto, wrote some cold-call copy for the developer and sent it along. Site was great, branding was great, only visualizations were artists' renderings, and only 5 or 6. Perfect candidate. If nothing comes of it, at least I finally cracked the cold-call barrier.
4. Wrote to Mike Fast of G&E homes about the possibility of doing interior renderings for the 511 project. I said I could just take the floor plans right off the website and work with his designer for fixtures/finishings/furnishings. Hope he bites. They currently have nothing, not even a show-suite.
5. Going to read for another hour, then hardware store to buy a new lockset, then Young St. to install new knob and deadbolt for the new tenant, and to see what kind of progress he's made with cleaning.
6. Collecting rent from a tenant at Young, going over to Pritchard to see if I can contact the guy that owes me big, delivering a noise complaint letter to Jackie at the same time.
7. Debating whether I should arrange for dinner with Mother. Should call her nonetheless.

For god's sake, I have got to get to the library to return Fashionable Nonsense. They're going to take my first-born son if I don't get that back.

Interesting Day, A Victory of Sorts

So, after an interesting meeting this morning with my friend J.F. Rathe, I had to meet my new tenant at my Young St. property to let him in and collect his first month's rent. I had not been in the unit yet since the former tenant FINALLY moved out (thrown out). I was expecting a mess, of course. He left very reluctantly. But, of course, my keys didn't work.

I went to see the other tenant on the third floor, and asked him if I could try to access his neighbour's unit from the fire-escape, hoping he had not latched the window closed. No luck. So, in true Dan Mulroy fashion, I jumped out the 3rd-story window.

Seriously.

Actually, I decided to exit the front window of the 3rd floor unit, and, hanging from the roof overhang, I climbed my way along the building to the window of the locked unit. Taking care not to plummet to my death, I slid the window open and threw my legs in the window. Then I released myself and fell nicely inside the locked unit.

Victory! (Sort-of).

Attached below is a series of photos I snapped showing the state of the unit after this nightmare finally left. Compare these to photos I posted in the past of when I freshly renovated the whole unit! How I love this business:

It would seem I have a bit of work to do.

Can't wait for the beginning of March

Money's kinda tight these days, can't wait for rent day. Having said that, modesty enforces humility, and I'm always in search of additional modesty. On a related topic, hilarious quote from my sister, half drunk, when I asked her to demonstrate a little more humility towards the server at Joey's Polo the other day:

Dan: "Jill, stop showing off your dumb Coach purse- try being a bit more humble!"

Jill: "I have absolutely nothing to be humble about!"

Followed by ten minutes of laughter before she realized what she said was comic brilliance.

The agenda today-

1. Received a CRDC request for a quotation. I will dig a few more questions from the contact before I can accurately quote his project. He is from New Brunswick, judging by his area code.
2. Planning to draft an entry for Active Rain today. How careful do I need to be? Dunno. I'll give it a shot.
3. Planning on listening to another Richard Dawkins lecture. I like the way his voice sounds.
4. Going to e-mail a few Realtor friends and ask them their opinion about a referral rewards program and how it should be structured.
5. Home for lunch, call Mom about her taxes
6. Start brainstorming the Realtor Referral program copy and creative
7. Attend Toastmasters International meeting tonite and see what it's all about (haha)
8. Retire to my comfy bed early so that I can get up before 8 am tomorrow

Finally redesigned my Accounts Receivable system, now has the ability to continuously monitor running arrears on a per-unit basis. Makes things easier, also shows that I'm not as far behind as I had thought. Nice to know! Also prepared a reporting master system that provides a property-by-property snapshot of charges and receipts. This will make it so much easier to stay on top of things, why, oh why, had I not done this earlier?

The daily goal

Things I am going to do today:

1. Go over ledgers and see who owes me what (Starbucks, <>
2. Drop library book off at the Library (library, 30 minutes)
3. Home for lunch
4. Make arrears calls to deadbeat tenants
5. Start my mother's taxes
6. Finish and file my mother's taxes
7. Research referral program for CRDC and prepare creative
8. Attend COC Annual General Meeting
9. Home

Hopefully a good day

Brainstorming complete

Wow. That was intense. After about 2 hours, I have plan, divided into 10 "Departments" averaging 6 distinct projects per department, and a total of 772 tasks spread across all the projects. What a relief to have these items out of my head and onto paper. The task now is to insert the tasks into my management system, which arranges and insures their individual completion.

Phew. Hope I didn't forget anything.

To get my head straight

After a lazy session at the gym in the morning, I found I could not focus. What should I do next? I don't know that I've ever felt so unsure about what to do. So many things unfinished. So many, I don't know where to start. I left them all hanging half-finished for a while. Before my trip, I'm sure I would have had the priorities straight, but I guess I've been away from it so long that I must re-prioritize. That, I am sure, is all it will take to get my head straight again. I love the feeling of being on top of multiple things- its a rush: projects being completed, new things learned, items checked off the to-do list. The opposite of this feeling is absolutely unbearable. Therefore, I shall now set out on a piece of paper all the things I need to get under control, break down by project, and prioritize. I will then divine from the list all the respective actionables for each project, and order by physical location.

I will report back when finished, to see if there is any improvement in my mood.

Returning to Winnipeg

Well, I drove all the way home from Calgary, got in on Friday at 3:00 am.. Had to take a few naps along the way (Brandon and Portage la Prairie) and I drove 15 minutes after waking up in Brandon before I knew where I was or where I was going.. funny.

Depressing as shit to be back. Every single thing I see reminds me of my old life, and exerts a psychological load on my mind. Baggage, I suppose.

Anyways, had a few good sleeps, feeling less morose. Feeling more excited about getting my shit together.

Things I did:

1. Dropped sister and Abby off at the airport with my brother, then went to Salisbury house on Elice Ave. with Mike and Mom, to meet Andras Egey-Samu for to collect some business things (cheques, documents, rent receipts, etc.)
2. Deposited some much needed money in my Royal business account. Withdrew money sufficient to pay an outstanding water bill, for which the water was disconnected at my Westgrove property. I had assumed the new tenant had switched the utility account into his name, and that I would receive a final bill. Wrong. So I zoomed downtown to get the bill paid before 4, so that his water service could be restored. Did it. Done.
3. Went to 454 Young st. to confirm that Dipshit had indeed moved out. Done. Met with Karim to sign his welfare papers. Government will be paying his rent from now on. Bonus for me, no more chasing him. I like him a lot though.
4. Everything looked good at the Young St. property. Thank Science. I'll be going to Pritchard tomorrow.
5. Went grocery shopping in china town since I was in that neighbourhood. Had to drive by Q's office (twice).. couldn't hold back the tears. Too f*ckin lonely this way. Made it through.
6. Came home and started mad-cleaning main floor of all the shit I left there when I moved all my crap in here.
7. Brother is cooking dinner. We're going to watch the new Woody Allen movie (Whatever Works), and then I'll try to convince him to go to jazz with me.

That's it

While people watching at a Starbucks at the Vancouver Pan-Pacific hotel

• Signed up a profile with the site Crunchbase.com. May have some SEO benefit for Condorenderings.com
• E-mailed Mike Fast of G&E homes about the rendering project we were working on. Want to see if he wants it to go ahead or not.
• Registered the domain Managescam.com. Have an idea that I could collect stories of condo owners who've been screwed by their management companies. Installed a wordpress blog on it. I want to promote the idea that condo corporations are being shafted by their management companies, which is of course true, so that I may be of some possible assistance in providing solutions. Hence, I require incidents beyond my own experience of these "scams"
• Reviewed a whitepaper I was working on about how management screws condo corporations. The idea is to have owners / board members download the whitepaper (either free or for a small fee) to teach them what to look for, and to promote the book about self-management
• Posted a research project on E-lance related to the above
• Reviewed my idea to set up infrastructure for a scalable series of micro-niche online stores (Madefrom and Madefor Network), still thinking it is a good idea, as long as the scalability actually works out. Will put more thought into this when I get back to Winnipeg.
• Saw 4 Fararris parked outside of the new Fairmont.. love Vancouver.
• Walked from Denman & Robson through a zillion people at coal harbor to the Olympic Torch, continued through to the Pan Pacific, heading back now to clean the car and prepare for journey to Calgary tomorrow.
• Ciao!