Well it is official. Today was my last day of class for now at the community college. For a few weeks, I have nothing school wise. However, come June 7th, I will be diving back into American Military University in my Bachelors of Hospitality major. I already have 9 credits completed with them. When I take two rounds of classes, which will be 2 classes each, I will be able to modify my plan. On top of my major, which I intend to keep, I want to minor in English, and complete a certificate of Human Resource Management.
Will the certificate help me? I'm not sure. I'd like to think that it will. More training and all. Basically my plan is to get a good enough education under my belt so that I will be marketable. Through my military background, and security background, the fact that I worked for Schwans, etc, those are all things that make me look good as an employee. But is it enough? My personal feeling is, I don't think so. Plus, my goal is to own at least one business, and my degree will prepare me for that. That reminds me of something.
Today, Lex, Zoe, and I went to Aldi's with a small list that Erin had written. We had about $24.00 left on food stamps and so Aldi's was the perfect place to go. Very good prices. For any of you who don't have aldi's near by, that really sucks! When we go there and have budgeted say $100.00 out of a paycheck for groceries, we come out of there with a ton for what we pay. If you go to a hyvee or wal mart with $100.00, depending on what you get, you might get a lot, but at the same time, you don't get that much. At aldi's, there are a ton of stuff like boxed dinners for 1.99, packs of turkey and regular bacon for 1.99, boxes of cereal for 2.00, etc. When we go there with a budget larger than the girls and I did today, for instance, if we go with $100.00 or even more in cash specifically for groceries, it makes you feel like you did really well.
A side note, which is what I was reminded of when mentioning my hospitality degree and wanting to own a business, right next to Aldi's there is one really big building. It looks like it may have been a grocery store at one point. It is really huge, and has the usual glass automatic doors at the front entrance. It even has a window on the side of the building that may have been for a pharmacy or something. Since we have lived in clinton, the building has been boarded up with a "for sale or lease" sign posted on the front. Being the wanna be business owner that I am, I look at that building every time with the thought going through my head saying "That building would make an excellent bowling and entertainment business. Be it, bowling and arcade, go-carts, lazer tag, etc." Now, the big question, with the assumption that I would ever have the financial means to purchase the building and turn it into something like that is this. Would that kind of business survive the current economy in Clinton? Would many people go out and go bowling or playing at a state-of-the-art arena? Hell! It could even be a large skating rink/gaming place. I would love to buy a good building and open a good roller rink here in Clinton. It doesn't have any kind of roller skating rinks, and if it did, I would so be taking the girls there regularly. I was a big roller skater a while back, and some day, just like soccer refereeing, I plan to get back into it.
Next to the big possible skating rink/bowling alley, etc building, there is another big building. Half of it is one big unit that is a big furniture store. The other half again has the glass automatic doors, appears to have been empty a while, and just like the other building, has a big "for sale or lease" sign on the doors. Alley, at both buildings was like "Lets look in the windows! How much do you think it'd cost for that one daddy?" I was like "I don't know. It'd make a good bowling alley though!" I'm glad lex seems excited about both mine and Erin's individual business dreams. Some day I know we will be able to look back and say "remember when all this was a dream?" Maybe I should try to find a cheap but decent size space and actually give clinton a good affordable skating rink. Being the only one in Clinton, people could skate in clinton without having to drive to davenport. It may be possible. Who knows?
So anyway, back to the original subject I was writing about. =)
I'm the type of person that, if all the money has gone out on bills and we are, for lack of a better word, broke, then how stressed out I am depends on our situation. To be broke, but have gas in our vehicles so we can get to work, and have a good stock of food at home, I'm good. I'm ok with being broke if we are being able to pay the bills for the most part, have gas in the tanks and food in the fridge,freezer, and pantries. There have been a few times in the past where it felt like we were so broke. What I mean by that is this. For whatever reason, we had pennies to our name because of payments we had to make or whatever, and we had not been able to get too much gas and did not have groceries. Those times suck! You find yourself thinking "how are we going to make it to pay day?" Thankfully we have been blessed to the point where even with our income being what it is, God gives us the means to get to work when we need to, and enough money for groceries, not to mention the wisdom of a place like Aldi's to get lots of groceries at very good prices.
For example, when we were there today, I did get one extra thing. We got the stuff on the list Erin wrote out. I walked by the section that had a few kinds of frozen pizzas. they were your usual family size pizzas. For 2 or 3 people, they will fill ya up. So for right now with Zoe only being 2, it works out for us. When she gets bigger and is a bigger eater, we may have to get 2 of the pizzas, but at just over $2.00 each, that's not bad at all! At regular grocery stores, the cheaper pizzas are still around $3.50, and I believe those are red barron, which are still really excellent frozen pizzas. Personally, when I'm able to, I like to buy the packs that have 2 pizza crusts, packs of mushrooms (for people that are mushroom fanatics like myself ;) ) , sliced pepporoni, shredded cheese, plus whatever topping you want to put on it. You could go all out and brown hamburger meat and add that to the pizza. I even fried up bacon one time a long long time ago and added that to it. Knowing my wife, carmelized onions are really good on pizzas too.
So anyway, point is, Aldi's rocks. Enough said. ;) So today, I didn't actually 'go' to class. Nope. What I did was this. Because we were turning in the official final draft of the paper we have been working on for a few weeks, this morning when I got off of work and was watching hercules waiting for Lex, I quickly typed the 'conclusion' and emailed the finished work to my teacher. In the email I told the instructor "I appologize. I do not know if I will be able to make it to class today. If not, I wish you a very happy summer!" My thought was that if given the chance, I was going to try to get maybe an extra hour of so of sleep.
I first came downstairs around noon because the dog was pacing, which means he needs to go outside. I let him out, noticed that Erin was napping on the recliner while Zoe watched Vegitales. She was rubbing her eyes, so I told Erin I would take her up and lay her down for a nap, herebye giving me an excuse to be able to go back to bed. I layed there for half an hour and didn't think I was going to go back to sleep. Next thing I know it was after 4 in the afternoon and Zoe was coming in the room. So, I got up. ;) Mainly watched an episode or 2 of buffy with Erin, did the grocery shopping, then got ready for work. Fun day eh? Yeah.
In closing, I keep thinking about the sheriffs deputy position. I keep wondering to myself "is it still good to go for a good paying position like that when a) i'm happy with my current job as a means to an end while I work on getting my degree, and b) when my real dream is to be a business owner? I don't know. I am still going to turn in the application and do the testing. The thing that bothers me is, I've been working here now for 6 months. I don't want to make another "Schwans" kind of decision. I don't want to decide to switch jobs just because the pay is a lot better, hereby starting over. Just my mind going into hyper drive. I'm not sure what to expect as a sheriffs deputy if I even get hired, but hey, I guess I will have the opportunity to find out eh? So that will be it for tonight. I will write more for you all tomorrow.
Thanks for being here.
CB
