This Old House

Well after 25 years at living at my house a letter came today saying the owners are selling the property. Normally this may not be a problem, however it's a proven fact that the land on my street is being gobbled up by developers eager to tear the old down and erect the new. Could this be the next direction my life?

I've helped manage the property for the last 25 years, showing the apartments when a vacancy happens, taking care of the tenants complaints, alerting the management to any problems on the property, and I even have the side job of the gardener for both properties. I've gotten pretty comfortable living here these last 25 years and even installed a pond in my front yard as well as have a secret garden in the back.

I've been pretty much settled here and now at the age of 52, I'm not real eager to go on the home hunt. But I have learned that the universe makes a lot of choices for you and this one I have to let go of and allow whatever is to be, to happen. Most of the tenants - 9 units - are panicking and not sure what to do as we await our fate. My city is privately operated, no rent control and the landlord or new owner can give us a 30 day notice to leave at any time. I guess that is the uncertainty that has us all on edge. I've just painted my kitchen and bought new curtains, had a new floor put in as well as a new refrigerator. And even though I know change is good and necessary in life, I would prefer to leave things status quo for now. I also have taken care of a feral community of cats in our yard. It would be next to impossible to relocate them and I worry about how they would survive without my feeding them.

So here is my message to the universe...

I know I've gotten comfortable in my surroundings and my job. I'm ten minutes from work, come home for lunch and get home very soon after my work is completed. Am I in my comfort zone, yes! Do I want to make a change in my life right now, NO! But if you feel that this is the new direction my life should be going, I'll accept it gladly as I know you have a way of jolting me from my comfort zone, when I've not had the ability to do it myself. So, I put myself in your hands and will accept whatever change you make for me. Cause after all....

IT IS WHAT IT IS

I'm grateful for being able to have lived here for so long with great neighbors, monthly parties in our yard and being able to pay for a roof over my head. And if your choice is to have the new buyers continue to leave the houses as they are and not bulldoze a new apartment complex, well that will be even better news. None of us living here want to leave each other and it's rare to find a group like ours that balances each other out so well.

A Project is Consuming Me

I collect Olympic pins and have since the Los Angeles games of 1984. Been to most of the trading session in my area but I've not been that active in it lately. Back in the days BEFORE the Internet we known to the public, we used Telenet to connect ourselves together via our home 1200 baud modems and local BBS's (Bulletin Board Services). I ran on of these BBS's "Zola's Pleasure Palace", and used it to trade pins with people all over the world.

Since then, I have gotten many duplicate pins for my collection and have an Olympic pin page section on my web site "Visual Candy", where people can look at the pins I have extras of to either buy or trade with me. Problem with it is, the long list of text to scroll through and then click a hyperlink to view the pin, email me to see availability, and MAINLY me find the pin in the numerous extras I have, well I have not been doing a good job of staying organized and updated.

In the last few weeks, I have gotten a few emails to buy pins and I decided to make my life easier but organizing my extras in the same order I have my text list and also make sure it is current and up to date. After three weeks of working on it, I am proud to say - what you see is what I have. But..... then as I was putting my extra pins in order, I was looking through my 40 cases of pins in my collection and finding a few pins that were duped in my collection too. So I decided that was silly to keep two of the same pins so I set out to look more closely at my collection, making sure there were no more dupes.

Problem is, when I put the pin cases together year after year, I mixed up the years of the games making it really insane to look through 4,000 plus pins to see if something is duplicated. Sort of like playing that card game of memory. But the closer I looked, the more and more I realised just how many pins I had duplicated in my collection that I could put on line for sale or trade. I started to think back to all the times I trade pins with someone only to come home and find I already had it. An example of my collection cases, these are all NOC National Olymipic Committee pins from countries around the world.


The only thing to do is... to take every pin out of the boxes and sort them by the years of the games so I could narrow my search down. I have 10 cases to finish and that task is complete, (two weeks later - hey what else to do on the last few weekends of pouring rain and predictions of this weekend too). Okay and if that is not bad enough, the photos I have had on line - really suck at showing the pin well. Now that I have been blogging for a almost a year, I've learned the benefit of easily searching a "web site" for something.... Blog It..

Before (My old page)

After (Soon to be my new page)

So, here I am now, starting a blog after everything I have been through with my pins and my fingers poked stabbed and scratched by the sharp clasps on the backs, and MAN this is going to be my next major challenge. I've just started it and trying to keep up on three blogs now while working and watching my movies for my movie blog, well let's just say.... HELP!!!! I HAVE NO LIFE and that my folks...

IS WHAT IT IS

But, I'm grateful to have so many pins (which BTW - call me crazy but I really get off on the way they look) and I'm grateful I even know how to put them on line and EXTRA grateful when someone helps support my pin habit by buying some from my list. Hopefully my pins enhance their collections as well.