done...now I can relax

My day started at 7:00am when a triple axle big rig showed up at my house (1 hour early, by the way) to deliver a massive load of shredded cedar bark/mulch. I planted the remaining 14 plants, now 30 total. My buddy Bill came over and engineered a cool water energy dissipator so all of the tile drain water from my backyard now filters through a subsurface gravel area rather than pouring over the top of my bark and putting muddy water on the sidewalk. The whole area was covered in bark and my yardage calculations came out exactly as hoped--I had enough leftover bark to fill every planter box in my front and backyards.

It doesn't look like much now--the plants are are horribly small but most of them grow to around 1-2 feet in height and 2-3 feet in diameter. I finished today right as the rain started, a perfect ending to a long, tiring project. Best of all, no more mowing that ridiculous slope!



I still have some work to do around the utility box in the foreground. Contrary to any photos you may have seen in the past, the grass that used to be in this location really didn't look very good--there was lots of clover, crabgrass and spotted spurge. If things go to plan then I will likely apply for this program again next year to convert the remainder of the sideyard grass to native vegetation.

There's no going back now...

I jumped both feet first into a huge project. As of last Friday I am participating in the City of Roseville's "Cash for Grass" program where I agreed to rip out 340 square feet of lawn and replace it with low water use native vegetation. I sort of forgot how many weekend commitments I have through the rest of October and November, thus I decided to take this week off work to get a jump on the project before we are hit with six days of rain starting this Saturday.


Last Friday I met with City staff at my home and they took measurements, photos and gave me a run-down of what they would like to see done. They pay $1 for each square foot of grass removed, so I expect I will be able to do this project for a minimal investment. I already had a pretty good idea what I wanted to do but the City staff were very helpful in providing ideas and left me some schwag like some native landscaping books, a really nice plant selection DVD, an adjustable hose nozzle/gun thingy and a soil moisture probe. I've had such pleasant dealings with the City and this experience was no exception.


My home is on a corner lot so I have a lot of grass to mow. There's a strip 10 feet wide and 120-feet long on the outside of my fence that is a real pain to mow. The slope raises six feet in height over 8 feet of horizontal distance, so you can imagine how high the suckage factor is for mowing. I like the slope though, it puts my house well above street level and gives a nice level of privacy in my backyard. The goal is to remove the grass so I don't have to mow it, fertilize and water it and ultimately I hope the native vegetation offers lower maintenance and a nice visual appearance.


I basically chose all UC Davis Arboretum "All Star" plants. These are 100 plants selected by people that know a whole lot more about plants than I will ever know and these plants are either native to California or grow like natives--in other words, they are selected for their hardiness, resistance to our high summer temperatures and our poor soils. I figure my chances of actually keeping these suckers alive for any length of time are much better if I go the All-Stars route. My Aunt is in town from Seattle and she accompanied me on Saturday to pick up a truckload of plants at the UCD Arboretum native plant sale. I had pre-selected the plants and drew up a proposed planting map so the decisions were made prior to the plant sale.


I am sitting here on the computer because a full day of tearing out grass really wore me out. It took two days to remove the old grass and I lined the bottom of the slope with about a half a ton of large river rock boulders. I am having to dig up the old sprinklers and separate irrigation zones and am converting a portion of the system to drip. This part is going slowly. I changed my plans and will start planting tomorrow and will deal with the irrigation later. The plants need to go in the ground now before we are hit with a week of rain.


So here's how it looked when I was half-done.

Tomorrow will be another hard day of digging and planting. Hopefully I'll have good news to share at the end of the week. If you get bored and feel like helping drop plants in the ground, you know where to find me!

The economy and managing finances

I have always enjoyed managing money by moving savings around to the highest yield accounts and purchasing my own stocks and deciding where to invest extra income for retirement. The ‘extra income’ part of the equation isn’t what it used to be, partly due the costs of home ownership and my interest in trying to furnish, landscape and upgrade my first home, and partly because the governor’s office is still playing around with the state’s furlough program. And each time I feel like I am doing a pretty good job of managing it all I meet with my financial planner and my world is turned upside down. Tonight was one of those nights.

A good financial planner will look at all aspects of your financial life. They should evaluate your insurance policies for life, auto and home and make sure you are adequately covered. After all, how much sense does it make for a financial planner to make you money, only to lose it because you had inadequate insurance to cover some sort of accident? He made significant changes to all of my policies a couple of years ago, so no insurance changes this time-around. He is requiring that I photograph or video my possessions and store that media content somewhere other my own home. Three years ago when my home in East Sacramento was robbed, I struggled to determine what I owned and what might (or might not) have been taken. Photos would help jog your memory for filing insurance claims.

Apparently this combination of furlough pay, a full year’s worth of mortgage interest on my home and my contributions to tax-sheltered retirement programs means that by August of this year I had already completely paid my 2010 state and federal income tax obligations. He changed my withholdings to ‘Married’ with 15(!!) dependents and even with that I will still have a sizeable tax return this year. That’s cool, as long as I don’t have to produce 15 dependents. This will increase the size of my monthly income, balance my budget and allow more money to be invested each month. And he’s pretty dead-set on not letting the government collect interest on my tax money each year.

Retirement planning is where the largest and most surprising changes are being made. I have been contributing pretty heavy to a 401(k) since I was 24 years old and he is now recommending I cut that to 1/3 of my current contribution. Not only that but he has changed the deferrals to different asset classes (like a combination of international stocks, small/mid/large cap stocks, etc.) and moved entire balances from one fund to another. I tend to get lazy and let my retirement deferrals stay where they are while he evaluates the performance of each fund for current and future predicted performance and makes changes accordingly. (For you fellow state employees, he says our CalPERS retirement programs is “one of the best run pension programs on the planet.” And we get 2% at age 55 compared to the federal govt that pays only 1% at age 62!) He calculated that I am over-investing in tax-deferred retirement and I need to increase my contribution to post-tax retirement, as well as non-retirement investments.

Earlier this year my planner directed me write a really big check that I didn’t want to write for a Roth IRA and now he set up my account to auto-pay into this Roth each month. At least now I don’t have to write that ugly check each year. Finally, tonight he opened four new non-retirement mutual fund portfolios for me. Each one had a $1,000 minimum opening deposit (x4, OUCH, another big check I had to write!!!) and is allocating money I used to put into 401(k) into these non-retirement portfolios via automatic withdrawal from my checking account. These are all big changes for me. At first I wasn’t sure what to think as we sat down, opened new accounts and money starting pouring out of my savings like blood from a headwound, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. In the middle of 2008 I was making over $100 per month in bank interest alone. At today’s bank interest rate I make less than 1/10th that amount. It makes more sense to invest money at economic times like this (and buy many shares cheaply) than it does to make 0.4% interest in the bank. And unlike my retirement accounts, if a disaster occurred and I had already exhausted my savings account I can still cash-out non-retirement portfolios without penalties, unlike retirement accounts. I am excited about these new changes.

As I thought this all through, I realized this weird economy may have actually helped me. Sure, my income is reduced but it made me evaluate what I truly need and made me purge monthly expenditures that were unnecessary. It allowed me to accumulate retirement and stock shares at a very low price. But most of all it made me realize that I don’t need a large income to be happy. That said, I am certainly hopeful that the economy makes a turn for the better…I have cut everything left to cut and salary increases will be necessary to plan for my future. It’s difficult to justify paying for a financial planner at a time like this, however this might be the time when financial planning is most important.

Happiness is...

• ...eating an entire chicken pot pie from Ikeda’s Produce and Bakery, effectively un-doing tonight’s gym workout.


• a soak in the hottub after said workout


• 3-day weekends


• a weekend visiting with family and some great social gatherings at friend's houses. I’ve been meeting some really fun new people lately and I always enjoy expanding my circle of friends.


• a nice river hike on a hot day with fun company


• a camping and 4wheeling trip with friends in beautiful country.

our camping spot:

the crowded parking lot:

the overlook:

The Nikon is finally starting to pay me back

My quest for interior artwork has come up dry. After a year of searching I was unable to find anything that I liked AND could afford. Sure, I would love to have a Vicky Asp (local artist) vineyard tripytch on my wall, but it costs $2,850. And I found lots of stuff I could afford, but you will notice those were left behind like a bad habit. I finally came to the conclusion that some of my photos are good enough to hang on the wall, so I did it. Here's a canvas triptych that I had printed and is now hanging in my living room. Maybe it's the fact that I took the photo, maybe it simply reminds me of an amazing vacation with amazing friends and family, or maybe it's ugly as sin and I am afflicted with the "face only a mother could love" syndrome, but here it is:



The thing is pretty big at 64x32" plus the spacing between panels. It fills the space nicely between two windows and the yellow colors match another photo I have hanging above the fireplace. I like how the image wraps around the corners and provides dimension. I will be having more canvases made for other rooms of my house and a friend is blowing up my "Shoal Bay in the morning fog" photo posted a few weeks ago from my British Columbia trip to hang in her living room.


The 4Runner just turned 10 years old and just hit 100,000 miles, so it got a bath and a detail. I still like this truck as much as the day I bought it.

Another week of mostly great stuff

This week offered a nice mix of fun and productivity. I'll start with the put-you-to-sleep content--up until now my backyard has been a malaise of dirt and poor choices made by the previous home owners. I spent the better part of a year tearing out a forest of trees, bushes and shrubs, all of which were in sad shape from a four month period where the house was vacant. Earlier this summer I installed a new sprinkler system in the backyard in preparation for a small 150 sqft lawn area. I am not a huge fan of grass but having a little bit in the backyard is nice. After my travels this summer I borrowed a friend's trailer and picked up a load of soil amendment and sod and got finished off another area of the backyard. So the sod is in, the sprinkler system works great and the hammock I brought home from Corsica is now hanging between the backyard redwood and maple trees. Later this year I hope to become involved in a City of Roseville program that will convert my corner lot sideyard from grass to native vegetation. This will cut my water and fertilizer use and the amount of time I spend mowing a sideyard that I do not use. The backyard is far from done but at least it shows signs of progress.

Now the bad. Friday one of my credit card transactions was declined. Turns out someone duplicated my credit card and is trying to use it in North Carolina. Thursday night they charged $3 worth of food on the card (it is typical to start with a small charge to make sure the card works, then move on to the big stuff), then early Friday morning I used my charge card to buy breakfast, then apparently 15 minutes later a $330 charge was requested at Game Stop in North Carolina. The credit card fraud department recognized that two charges thousands of miles apart in less than 15 minutes is suspicious so the card was locked down before they got anything major. I normally run all of my expenses through my credit card and then pay it off every month, so I have my work cut out for me in re-establishing autopayment for virtually everything with my new card.

Labor Day weekend I packed-in the activities. Two bbq's with friends, an overnight "camping" trip with my Dad, sister and Joe and two days of waterskiing on New Melones Lake. Our group had two legitimate tournament ski boats, a Ski Sanger and an MB Sports for you boat people, and it was a real treat to ski behind boats designed specifically for waterskiing.

Here's a not a very flattering picture of me getting up on the ski:


And of course having two ski boats meant we had to have a race. We won. :)


Considering what state I was in this time last year I was simply *elated* to get up on a slalom ski. Seriously, I don't think anything could have made me feel as great as I did at that moment.

Pulled the plug on cable TV

I once made a claim that I wanted to be the last man on earth to 1) get a facebook account and 2) upgrade my 'big box' television. Sometimes life just doesn't work out the way you plan--I somehow ended up with a facebook account and I hear there's a guy in Botswana that still has not joined. Crazy man in Botswana-1; Ken-0.

Let's talk cable TV--I was paying $142/month for phone, internet and cable tv/dvr. Then Comcast reinstated my contract at the rate of $189 per month; this, I believe, is a prelude for their own destruction, particularly when a-la-carte internet TV is finally catching on. I responded by cutting the cord.

So what now? I bought a TV. I held-out long enough that four generations of television sets have been sold in the U.S. since my television rolled off the showroom floor. You know the type, a tiny 27" screen stuck inside a box the size of most cars sold in Europe. My friends brag about the size of their television screens; I, in turn, bragged about my television's girth.

The new one is an LED TV that is connected to the Internet (yes, the Internet that Al Gore invented). Local television channels (like "the Office") come in HD-format via a digital antenna. Free movies are coming from Youtube and Hulu with additional movies coming from a $8.99/month instant streaming Netflix account. All of the programming I was watching through Comcast is available from one or more of the above sources. No PC required, it is all available on a menu built into the TV. Depending on what programs you watch, this setup might not work for you, but it works for me and saves me a huge amount of money every month.

A few other things I like--the TV has USB ports that allows me to view photos, videos or listen to MP3s via flashdrive or external harddrive. (This is great when friends come over and want to share photos.) I can turn on a Yahoo widget bar at the bottom with stock quotes, weather, number of unread emails, etc. I can view my Picasa online photo albums, as well as albums shared by friends, use Skype and it even folds my laundry.

My $142 Comcast bill (renewed at $189/mo.), was replaced with a $42 Surewest Internet and phone bill and an $8.99 Netflix Instant Watch account. My old TV is up for grabs, I will let it go for 80 cents per pound. You carry.