Firstly, thanks to everyone that expressed concern for The Dog. He appears to be fully recovered and is back to his normal self. Although in accordance with 1N’s very sensible advice, I am going to take him to the vet this weekend anyway for a checkup.

So this blog isn’t necessarily funny, but it is about something that I’m totally excited about (I will write a funny one later tonight that includes pics of my little muscle-man). I have finally decided what I want to do. With my life, that is. See, I have spent the last five years working at the same place, in the same department, doing mostly the same job. Which is, in itself pretty surprising because I’ve never stayed anyplace longer than a couple years. So anyway, the job has been pretty good until recently…I guess it’s just the five-year-itch or something, but everything has been getting a little stale. I’m not really taking on anything new or exciting, and I’m not getting to be very creative, which is important to me in an occupation. I must be entertained. Since I’ve got a pretty strong work ethic, it’s doubly distressing to me that I don’t feel as engaged with my job as I used to.

To illustrate the changes I have been through in that time period, this is what I looked like when I started this job:

Note the happy smile, the hopeful, optimistic look in the eye. It actually makes me choke up to see this.

(Don’t be alarmed that my child looks like I dropped him from some great height – he had fallen on some stairs (my kid, you can tell) at his grandma’s while running up them in the snow. It looks a lot worse than it was.)

Now let’s visit current times:

I don’t think I need to say anything more about that. It’s obvious that in order to keep myself entertained, I have turned to drinks and loose women. Or maybe I became a loose woman? I can’t remember.

So I decided, that I want to start a business. I know what it will be, basically I want to do remodels, but I don’t want to be the investor. That’s terribly shallow of me, I know. The idea of taking a fixer and making it beautiful just turns me on. That’s the whole reason I bought the Casa, because it’s definitely one that will improve with a little TLC. My idea is to approach investors that want to flip houses, and propose that they let me and my (so far non-existent) team do the design and the work for them.

The reason I think this will work well, is that a lot of people who want to buy houses and flip them delude themselves into thinking that because they can fix the kitchen sink, they can handle an entire remod of a house. They end up spending hundreds of thousands more than planned in mortgage payments (because the work takes so long) and almost always go WAY over budget for too little return on the sale of the house. Additionally, a lot of them don’t have any idea what will look original, different, and yet still be neutral enough for your typical color-phobic home-buyer. They buy stuff that’s inexpensive but something no one would want in their house – poor choices abound. Trust me, I’ve seen them. I would also love to re-do rooms for people to actually live in that I could have a little more fun with, but none of my friends seems to trust me enough so far.

So I have another dream in addition to being on the featured blogs list. This one’s a tad more close to my heart, though, and I am so fired up right now, I want to get started right away. I’ve done side jobs before, where I basically design a room or two (or three) for people that just bought a house, are doing the remod themselves, but don’t know really what to do with it. I never really thought seriously about doing it for a living until recently though. So I am and that’s what I’m going to do, and I’m going to make tons of money, retire, and wage war on censoring myspace customer service assholes. That’s my plan.

PS: plus, when I’m working for myself, I won’t have to hear about how tattoos and body piercings plus my personal style of dress may or may not hinder my professional development. And THAT, my friends, will be pure bliss.