Unemployment:
The 7 year anniversary of me being unemployed has come and gone. This is a bit of a running joke with me. I guess the correct term is really "self-employed", but that doesn't really describe my state. I'm a business owner and the business is one that employs a handful of people. So, I'm not just a solo craftsman hanging out a shingle. The term I prefer is "entrepreneur".
I cannot state forcefully enough how positive this change was for me. I am a franchisee of the Servpro system and although I have my issues from time to time (I'm not a mindless drone), my experience with them has been so overwhelmingly positive that I have nothing but gratitude towards the folks at Servpro. It is a top flight organization and I'm grateful and honored to be part of it.
I often say to people that folks who go into business for themselves are usually looking for three things:
1. The ability to do something they love every day.
2. More control over their lives (flexible schedules, etc.)
3. More money
That order, frankly, is exactly what I was looking for when I went into business. I really didn't like my job. That, first and foremost is what bothered me.
After 7 years, I've seen highs and lows. I've seen crazy annual paydays that dwarfed what I used to make, and I never felt I was poorly paid, before. I've seen years where I literally didn't make a penny, and on a cash-flow basis, I actually paid to keep the business running. Overall, I think I'm not necessarily ahead, financially, but I'm not behind, either.
However, running a business is an absolute joy, especially when you have employees as awesome as mine.
The thing that is really dramatic, though, is the degree to which I can be part of my son's life. He's ten, now, and I'm acutely aware that he's not going to be in the house forever. This is one of those things where, even if I did much more poorly, financially, it'd be worth it for the improvement of the quality and quantity of the time I spend with him. Life ultimately isn't about the money, it's about the quality of the interactions you have with people along the way. If I died poor, but could look back on a lifetime full of years like the past seven, it'd be all worth it.
So, here's to the past 7 years as an entrepreneur. Hopeful for many, many more, in this business and many others.
Online Shopping:
There are three more things coming from my Christmas Break shopping spree. Today one of them shows up. It's a Fender Standard Jazz Bass. I got it because my son is bass crazy. I'm sorta nudging him to learn a little guitar here and there, but he loves the bass. It's always been what he's been interested in.
It's funny because this was sort of an important lesson to me. I can remember being a little kid and, for instance, begging for Karate lessons or music lessons and the adults in my life deciding that those things were not worth the expense and effort. That's one of the things that sort of sucks about being a kid. Adults romanticize their childhood years, but there's nothing fun, for instance, about having a perspective that everybody automatically dismisses.
I can remember watching concet videos and when the bass player would step forward to do a solo, Logan would say, "I like that! What instrument is that!?"
Later, he heard some friends at school were starting a "band" and needed a bass player. He'd ask if I would teach him to play bass.
Every time he'd bring up the bass, in my adult mind, I automatically translated that into, "guitar". So, when he said he wanted to learn bass, my mind immediately gravitated towards, "oh, good, now I can teach him guitar."
This is just a classic example of an adult who isn't listening to a kid and who thinks he knows what the kid wants more than the kid, himself. It dawned on me in the past few weeks how unfair I was being to Logan. He didn't want to be a guitar player. He wanted to be a bass player.
Now, most bass players can play at least a little, and usually a lot of guitar. So, I'll teach him that, too. But the main emphasis will be the bass. Trouble is, there's only one in the house, which makes it hard to give him lessons on it. Hence, I ordered the Jazz Bass. I made it clear that this bass is his, but conditionally: he only gets it when he shows he's stuck to this for a while and has developed some skill with it. Until then, it's Dad's and will remain Dad's until the conditions are met.
There are two other Hugh Jass things that will arrive in the next few weeks. One is the ping pong robot that's really Logan's large, main Christmas gift. I'm looking forward to having it, too. This thing should be pretty awesome. The other one is my treadmill replacement. I hauled the old one out of the sunroom and now I'm waiting for the new one to arrive. Since I'm making pizza these days, I better start training for a marathon or my ass will be identifiable from the 20,000 foot view on google earth.
Pizza
Which brings us to pizza. Had some really good pizza when I visited my cousins in Tallmadge. My cousin Paul is a manager for Romeo's Pizza and the stuff is really good. Got me to thinking that, honestly, nobody here makes a pizza that good. Also, I buy a lot of pizza. If I could bake it myself, I could probably save myself $100 a month, conservatively. So, I'm doing the pizza thing. Got a Kitchenaid Mixer to mix the dough. Went to a kitchen supply place and bought a ton of stuff. I'm pretty sure I have what I need. Even got the big boat-oar looking thing to move pizzas around with. (It's called a "pizza peel", by the way.)
The only thing I wasn't able to get, because every place was out of them, was a giant pastry board. (Basically just a big flat board that you use to roll out dough.) My grandma used to call them a breadboard. These days, that appears to refer to a cutting board with mitre points to slice bread on it and catch crumbs. So, I ordered a pastry board from Amazon. It'll arrive in a few days.
Oh, and two other things I could use:
1. A bigger oven. Mine is tiny and crappy. I bought a couple of cookie sheets, but they won't fit. Ended up giving them to Tessa since they fit in her oven and not in mine.
2. More counter space. I have this tiny, galley kitchen. It sucks. Not a cook's paradise by any stretch. Of course, I'm not helping myself by the clutter I keep all over the counters, either. I can see I'll need to put that stuff away.
If I keep up with this, I may get an actual oven/range, instead of the electric built-ins I have now.
So, the first pizza adventure actually went better than I had hoped.
First, I bought some actual yeast, but also bought some Fleischman's pizza yeast, which you don't have to let rise. I figured I'd try that.
Mixed the dough and I think I got it roughly right. For those who have never tried this, almost all the ingredients are measured out, but the flour? You literally just add flour until it looks and feels about right. Most recipies will give directions like, "1 and 3/4 cups to 2 and 1/4 cup of flour." Literally, it's up to your judgement.
So, I think I added roughly the right amount of flour.
I was making the pizza on my pizza peel since I don't have a breadboard. The shape wasn't even remotely round. Then, when I went to transfer it to my pizza stone, it stuck to the breadboard.
I panicked and pried it off with a spatula onto a little metal pizza pan I have. Thing is, in my panicked state, I forgot to spray down or oil the pan. I was afraid that once the pizza cooked, it would be welded onto the pan.
In the end, all was well. The pizza, surprisingly, came right off the pan. I used a pizza lifting spatula, specifically. Looked about like a mason's trowel. It only stuck in one or two spots, and that was it.
Logan and I tried the pizza and it was actually pretty good. Way better than, say, Little Ceasar's and Logan thought it was about as good as Papa John's. I think he got that about right. It really was better than most delivery pizza.
So, that was an encouraging first forray into the world of pizza making. We'll keep working on it. Plus, every time we have his friends over and need to make 3 different pizzas with different toppings, I'll save about $25. Although saving money wasn't my primary motivator, all in all, in spite of the rather substantial initial investment, this should save me a lot of money over the long haul.
I also will experiment with some whole wheat flour for the dough. Making pizza is about as far away from my goal of eating low carb as it gets.
The first pizza we made is called the $700 pizza since that's probably what I've forked out, all-told, for various pizza making and baking stuff. Here's a little video I shot on the process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOOsPTCTx_o&feature=g-upl&context=G225012dAUAAAAAAAAAA
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