New Hotness

You know how when you buy a house there is always that sense that something is going to go wrong?  In that first five or six months, in the back of your mind there's just that little bit of an inkling that something is going to break.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that you just dropped your life's savings into this new house and you wonder what would happen if something went wrong.  No?  Just me?  Okay then.  Despite the feeling of grandeur in being a new homeowner, there should be that feeling.  That way you can prepare for it when it does eventually happen. 

When we did the home inspection, we did know that the appliances were a little on the old side.  They were all in the ten to fifteen year old range.  Things like the furnace, the air conditioner, the water heater.  All the big fun stuff that makes living in house comfortable.  The home inspector did say that some, if not all, would need to be replaced within five years.  Here's the thing though, when you hear that you might automatically think that you have that five years.  Not always the case.  Also, don't do that.  Be proactive about saving money for a bad situation.  

While we did not have anything go wrong in the first year of home ownership, we did have our first major issue last week.  We woke up to a pretty cold house.  This only happened one other time and it was right after we bought the house.  That was our 'what the hell are we going to do' moment.  Luckily, there was just a disruption of the gas supply to the house, and we were able to relight the furnace and hot water heater.  This time, we were not so lucky.  We called a local heating and air company and found out our furnace was shot.  While they were working on it, they made note that the air conditioner was about as old as the furnace was.  While this is definitely their job to try and make money for their business, it also can and will help us out.  In one fell swoop we had a new furnace and air conditioner.  

On the plus side, this is something that we should only have to do once.  Maybe twice if we live in the house for thirty or forty years.  And it adds to the value of the house.  All you have to do is try to find the positive to a situation that is kinda shitty and it can almost make you feel better about dropping a boat load of money you weren't prepared to drop.  If you look at it as a long term investment, you can almost feel better about the situation.  It's always difficult to think about it, but now that we know that at any moment something can break to the point where they cannot be fixed, we can start really look into setting aside money for that kind of situation.  Even if it is something like fifty dollars every pay period, that will build up over time.

Saturation

The one sport that most of the country seems to get behind is football.  From high school (or younger) to college to professional, there is a cult of football fandom.  I enjoy watching a game or two over the weekend when a team I follow is on television.  I do not find myself clearing my entire weekend schedule to sit and watch games from noon to ten at night.  I am guilty of throwing on a game just because there is nothing else on, if for no other reason than to have background noise and to kinda zone out for a while.  However, there is just too much football.  Even high school football is televised from time to time.  Why?  Why is this happening? 

Looking at this week, there have been games on television from Sunday to today (Wednesday).  Tomorrow as well.  And Friday.  Then again on Saturday.  And we find ourselves back to next Sunday.  Seven days of football.  Granted all these games are not big name professional teams or big conference games but there are still games on television.  And I'm not talking about some local channel that you can get only in the college towns, these are games that are on national television.  Did I watch a little bit of football this week?  Yes I did.  It wasn't more than maybe an hour.  

There are plenty of people that point to things like player protests as to television viewership in the NFL being down this year, but that isn't it.  Those who hate the players for using their platform to protest injustice are more than happy to tell you that they stopped watching and that is the reason viewership is down.  But that isn't the reason.  The reason is that there is too much of it.  It isn't special anymore.  When you saturate the market with your product it no longer has the draw it once had.  One of the main things that people point to as to why they don't watch baseball is that there are so many games.  One hundred and sixty two games is a lot of games to watch.  As an avid baseball fan, I even have trouble keeping my interest up in the middle of July.  Football only has sixteen games so there is less product to consume for your favorite team so when your team is on, you want to tune in.   

Even football players think there are too many games.  There is more and more complaints about the Thursday night games that have become prominent.  It use to be Thanksgiving was really the only Thursday games.  The issue that players are starting to point to is the short week between games.  Instead of Sunday (or Monday) to Sunday, there are times when you go from Sunday to Thursday.  With the physical toll that each game takes on these players they need the rest and recovery.  Especially with the concussion concerns for all the players, why wouldn't those in football want to protect their product?  Remember a few years ago that there was a big push to move the regular season to eighteen games?  Everyone was all for it.  I'm sure if you asked the players, they wouldn't have had the same feelings as the guy sitting on his couch in Pennsylvania eating a bag of chips and getting wasted. 

Manufactured Time Flying

Everyone knows the cliche 'where does the time go?'.  Whether you are talking about the work day, a vacation, or just the calendar months, we have all heard it and used it.  It seems like it is mostly used as either a conversation starter or as a bridge to another conversation, but can we take a moment to discuss time flying being manufactured?  It all is because of retail.

In recent years Christmas merchandise, Christmas commercials, and Christmas in general has shown up quite early.  In my store, we got our first shipment of holiday food the last week of August.  AUGUST!  And slowly, week by week, winter took over the store.  At one time we had Halloween in the front of the store, Christmas in the back half of the store, and I had someone ask where the Thanksgiving/Fall stuff was at.  We didn't have much at the time.  It was kind of funny, but at the same time was a little sad.  I know that Thanksgiving is not a big holiday for retail other than the day after, but people come in looking for that type of stuff.

In years past, we all started to see holiday commercials on television maybe in the middle of November, but this year I started to see commercials just a few days after Halloween.  It has increased over the past two weeks.  More and more commercials about finding that perfect gift or that Jaguar or Mercedes Benz that we all know none of us are getting sitting in the driveway.  Once you see a commercial here and there for Christmas, your brain starts to think about it, right?  I don't know how many times in years past when it wasn't until after Thanksgiving where I started to think about getting presents.  Now, I am keeping an eye out for anything that might work.  I have already asked my wife a few times for gift ideas.  It's starting to become a joke.

Part of the reason that time seems to fly by, especially this time of year, is because companies are disappearing the time between holidays.  I'm not talking about going from Halloween to Thanksgiving.  Plenty of places are skipping right over Thanksgiving and going straight into Christmas.  Basically disappearing the month of November.  So when next week you are rushing around the grocery store gathering all your Thanksgiving Day food stuffs, just remember that it is always the last Thursday of November.  It hasn't ever changed.  When you think to yourself 'where did the time go?' know that we are all subject to suggestion.  When we start seeing commercials in October with snow, and Christmas lights, and presents under the tree we need to keep in mind that we still have two months before the actual holiday.  Time doesn't fly by if you don't want it to.  Keep focused and Thanksgiving, the current forgotten holiday, won't sneak up on you.