Limbo Lull

Not much to report except that I am NOT cut out for limbo! It is incredibly difficult for me to make a decision to do something and then wait, and wait, and wait to actually make it happen. It's sort of like that feeling you have when you've decided to leave a job and given notice, but you still have that dreaded two weeks to get through!

Add to that the fact we are living in our house with basically our desks, our bedroom, and kitchen because we've sold or given away most of our belongings and you get the idea. I had no idea how much impact my immediate environment has on me - very humbling to struggle like this with something that I would have considered very superficial. What a growth opportunity!

It's also been tough because of all that has to get done to be ready to go - from a heavy volume of client work, changing contact information for everything, emptying the house, and organizing our lives to be run from abroad. There's good news to report on that front - we are hiring a part time office manager to run things from Sacramento while we travel, so that should help our level of concern and stress while we're away.

We are also filing our taxes for our first full year as a business and wow, it's humbling to see all that we accomplished - quite honestly beyond my wildest dreams. I wrote an article about how much I will actually enjoying writing a large check to the IRS.

So on all fronts, it all seems to be coming together....just way more slowly than this girl would prefer. I am a firm believer though that it all happens in the time that it should. With the extra couple of months we had more opportunity to spend time with family and friends, develop new professional relationships, and set a great foundation for our journey.

I am sooo looking forward to posting more exciting stuff once we get on the road in early May!

The deadline pushed again!

Not sure if this is a law of nature, but it seems now that we are serious about leaving town, now that we are making the necessary plans to change our lives completely, the universe seems to have taken notice. Almost as if we were projecting a marketing message of "get us while you can!" we have been getting business....well, like nobody's business!

We can certainly continue to do the actual work from the road, but in some cases, "onboarding" a new client is better done in person.

Strangely enough, this is all happening around the same time that the two of us are really not all that concerned about getting new business, more concerned with our plans to travel full-time....coincidence? I don't believe in those.

So, for those keeping track, we have made some progress:

• We haves sold or donated nearly everything in our home - of course, this happened BEFORE we decided to postpone our trip, so we are now camping in our home
• We sold our Honda, but thank goodness not our Juke so I still have a vehicle until we leave, which is now estimated at late April/Early May
• We bought  our Guatemala vehicle! We got a great deal on an FJ cruiser that we will be driving down through Mexico
• My dear friends Kate, Trent, and Daniel threw us a going away party which of course devolved into tearful exclamations of love
• We now have some extra family time and am using it to run a "Run or Dye" 5k this weekend and get away to Sea Ranch together
• Lots of folks have pledged to come visit us, and we are seriously looking forward to sharing our paradise with as many people as possible- come visit

Feels like forever since we made the decision to head out, but I know we are taking the wise path in tying up our loose ends before we go and setting ourselves up to travel as long as possible.Sometimes its just hard being a responsible adult. ;-)

Vehicles We're Selling

Hi all,
Once I posted our moving sale on fb, I got a lot of questions about specific items. Figured this would be an easy way to get info about the vehicles we are selling. I'll add the miles in the next couple of days.

2008 Civic Hybrid - Asking Price $10,000

Great mileage, love this little car!
link to general info

2011 Nissan Juke - Asking Price $14,500

love, love love this small sporty SUV and sad to leave it behind
link to general info

2008 Kymco Xciting Scooter - Asking Price $2,500

Very low miles
Garaged much of the time
Link to general info

2008 Kymco Quad - Asking price $1,200 inc trailer

Well used, great work and fun quad, pretty powerful, also comes with a trailer.
Link to general info

Our Pacific Grove Workcation

After scheduling a client meeting near California's Central Coast on a Friday afternoon, Ken and I decided to make it the start of a weekend getaway - a belated birthday trip since I missed Ken's bday earlier in the month while at conference. We both had work we needed to get done for clients over the weekend, but we enjoy doing that work in the most pleasant places possible - hence, workcation!

The district office where the meeting was being held was precious, reminded me so much of my office with the Rio Linda School District - an abandoned wing of an elementary school where I could still hear the sounds of laughter and fun nearby. The meeting was quite honestly way too fun to be what I do for a living. I knew the superintendent was a good guy, and meeting the two board members to go over our project plan for a survey was a blast - super neat people who were smart, articulate, fun.

After a great meeting and agreeing to a bunch of deliverables before the end of the weekend, we set off for the Lighthouse Lodge and Cottages in Pacific Grove, near the top of Point Pinos south of Monterey.


The lodge is about a block away from the Point Pinos Lighthouse, the oldest continuous working lighthouse in the U.S. Even still has it's original lens.

It's even closer to the Port Pinos cememtary, in fact our room balcony looked out onto it. If you look in the distance you can see four deer - apparently they like to hang out there. Didn't bother me too much, except for my usual zombie shelter assessment (every time I go somewhere, I can't help but imagine how I would get away from the zombies.) Depending on the type of zombie - ie, something that brings the long-dead back to life, it could get hairy. ;-)

 

I think the deer coming to our balcony and Ken feeding them popcorn more than made up for the potential zombie risk. See that cutie licking it's lips? They really liked the popcorn.

Friday night we grabbed dinner at Montrio Cafe in Montery. We spent the day Saturday kicking around Pacific Grove, doing some work from a coffee shop and exploring the cute shops and restaurants. The weather, as you can see, was pretty amazing.

And Sunday morning we spent at the beach just down the street - a very cool spot that is a rugged scraggle of rock that extends out into the ocean and you can see the coastline for miles in either direction. Here are some of my favorite photos of the point:

 Very cool groups of crabs hanging out on the sunny rocks.

Here's a link to a video of the crabs and ocean...note to self, don't turn the camera phone sideways...

We drove home Sunday afternoon, stopping for a wonderful farm stand just outside of Monterey, and picked up all kinds of yummy, very inexpensive produce. 

We also stopped to see an old college friend of Ken's who started the Santa Cruz Pasta Factory. He gave a us a private tour of the place and loaded us up with some fantastic pasta and sauces. Needless to say, we won't be hungry any time soon. ;-) 

Gratitude 365 1.4.14

Kaia Girls
Today was the kickoff for the next Kaia workout session,  a gathering of more than a hundred beautiful, determined women, and I got to debut the video I created about the program. Such a great response, very validating! The Kaia girl in this photo was making a "handbag"- a 20 pound kettle bell for use in our class. Too fun!

Gratitude 365 1.3.14

Paper Bags
All it takes for hours of fun with your kitty is a simple paper bag.

Gratitude 365 1.2.14

My Personal IT Department
On day 2 of the new year, my day got infinitely better when my husband and business partner was able to locate a backup Quickbooks file saving me a TON of time.