Profiting from Hobbies, a MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Happy Moonday!

It’s a hot, sunny, summer day. As is should be.

Back when I was younger and thinner I turned pro as a belly dancer. I didn’t make enough to live on, but most weeks I made about $200. It depended on which company I was dancing for and how much I made in tips.
It was a lot of fun most of the time. It was kind of cool to get paid to do something I would have done for free.

Today is phone call day. I’ve already made three of the four I need to make.

It there any competency in the world today?

First I called to doctor to confirm my appointment tomorrow. I’ve always gotten a text from them in which I had to reply C to confirm, X to cancel, or R to reschedule. No text from them so I think maybe I have the wrong date. Nope, the system is down and they are only calling new patients to remind them.

Then I called the credit union to see why there is no payment scheduled for July. I made my June payment, next payment is scheduled for August. It seems I am a payment ahead, and I have no idea how that happened because the payments are automatic. Well, I have been one payment ahead since May of 2015 because I made a payment before the first payment was due. So why did it take them over a year to make an adjustment? It’s nice to have the extra money this month, I think I’ll just pay it on the principle though. Still it gives me absolutely no confidence in the competency of the credit union.
The same credit union that refinanced my truck and gave me grief about needing the lien release from the previous lender, until i pointed out that they were the previous lender.

Now we get to the gas company.
I signed up for automatic payments, got my confirmation and all. The payment is due today and should have come out already and it hasn’t. I tried to make the payment online and it won’t let me because I have signed up for automatic payments - however the system won’t start taking automatic payments until the next bill.
So HTF am I supposed to pay the current bill? I ask the customer service representative. He says I need to talk to a payment processing person, I ask him to transfer me to one and then he tells me he is a payment processing person and he can take my payment. WTF? Couldn’t he have just said, I can handle that for you. Then he tells me there will be a $2.45 fee for handling the payment over the phone. I said so let me get this right, you block me out of being able to make a payment online, but then you are going to charge me to take it over the phone? Or I can get in my car and drive to where ever they are and make it in person? He said you are supposed to make your payment first and the sign up for automatic payments. I said then that should be noted somewhere in the process. I know it’s only $2.45, but I hate being ripped off. So I cancelled the automatic payments and made my payment online.
Fuck them!

This is why I am so anal about paying bills.
It seems like NOBODY is competent anymore.

One more call to make. I have to call about a hat Sah-son ordered. It was on back order, supposed to be 2-3 weeks. It’s been almost a month and we haven’t heard a thing.

22

I’ve been playing Magic for 20+ years. Over the time, I’ve spent a decent amount of money. But the market for old cards has continued to explode, so my cards are worth quite a lot. In fact, they’re worth several times the total I’ve put into them over the years. I sold a bunch of them 10 years ago to pay for a semester of college (If I still had the ones I sold today, they’d pay for an entire year of college. Oh well).

The return on this hobby has been better than any of the actual investments I’ve bought over the years.

23

[quote=“Spiderman, post:2, topic:759641”]

…I’m still waaay in the red but it’s a start.
<snip>{/QUOTE]

:eek:

Congrats on the video (btw, did it kill the radio star?)

I have a papercraft studio as my current hobby. I sell enough wedding albums and greeting cards to pay for the materials and material for my personal use, so it pays, but poorly.

I’s tahred already. Because of the holiday last weekend, two of my areas came up for reconciliation today, both with contacts who need a babysitter.

24

FCM, I finally got around to downloading my pictures, so I’ll be putting some of them up on Facebook this week (other MMPers, you can PM FCM or I for the address if you are interested).

South Africa is interesting, it has 8-lane freeways and all the Western European look about it you could want, while also having some of the worst areas you could imagine (we walked through part of Soweto, which was…eye-opening). Most of the time was out in Kruger National Park and an adjacent game reserve, doing two ‘game drives’ a day, each about 3 hours long. Saw a lot of elephants close-up, some rhinos, spent an hour tracking a cheetah, lots of Cape buffalo (you do not want to piss them off), baby hippos (and big ones), but only one lion (albeit he was a full-maned male, quite spectacular-looking and one leopard (for a brief moment only-we caught him napping by the road, but he was out of sight shortly after that-Leopards are the hardest of the ‘big 5’ to spot, IMHO.

Zambia was neat; I had heard of Victoria Falls, but did not expect it to have the effect on me that it did. For one it is Huge (much larger than Niagara Falls, IMHO) and you can get quite close to it (close enough to get soaked to the skin). Also took a helicopter flight over the falls, rode an elephant for over an hour, and walked, with my friends, over a bridge and into Zimbabwe (added another country to the passport) for lunch.

About the only irritant (and not as bad as Jamacia) were the folks trying to sell us stuff…some were quite persistent, but I did better than previous trips and only got skinned once. No safety issues and never felt threatened.

It was quite an experience. Cost (trip, air, buying stuff) was around $5,500, which isn’t that bad (ain’t cheap, I know), but you can spread it out over a number of months.

Now I have to work on the &(*^%^& pictures…I’m a lazy old man but I try to do what I say.

25

Watch out for dentists.

26

I enjoy cooking and baking well enough to consider them useful hobbies, and have operated a café, and catered. Didn’t make enough with the restaurant to justify the hours and headaches, but catering is nice.

I also collect vintage kitchen wares and cookbooks - no big investing, just enjoying the thrill of the bargain hunt. I can generally resell enough of the excess to pay for my own acquisitions. I guess I could make a profit if I didn’t keep anything, but where’s the fun in that?

South Africa sounds amazing! (And I’m actually a little surprised - as you say, not a cheap trip, but more reasonable than I’d have thought.)

Speaking of travel, my cousin’s wife just shared a video from their kid’s church mission trip. In general, I’m skeptical of these sorts of things - it’s one thing for Doctors without Borders or similar groups with vital skills to drop in for a week or two. But a dozen kids from some Baptist church in East Nowhere, Georgia? Just donate the travel $$$ to MSF or UNICEF, and volunteer to cut grass for the old lady down the street. But this mission takes the cake: it’s a chiropractic clinic. For Haiti. I have sprained my eyeballs.

27

Howdy Y’all! One down and three to go! WOOHOO!!! My permanent driver’s license came in the mail today. Now I have a plastic coated mug shot. :smiley: Dindin will be poke chops, green beans, corn, and bizkits cause I decided that’s what I want today.

OK off to get that started.

Laterz!

28

Irked hard today. Did not even stop for lunch. I spent over $100K today paying my vendors. Whew! I still have a few left to do but got the vast majority of them done.

So no sooner had my company left than more company arrived. It is just a friend of my hubby who is going to help hubs work for a few days but still. I want my life back. Dammit. This is three sets of company in a month. Too much. Go away folks. Nothing to see here.

29

Well, yes. I crochet, and most of the items I’ve made have been gifts. But I’ve crocheted and sold several christening outfits, a jacket, gown, booties, and a cap, all nice and lacy.

30

Hmmm. I did a lot of theater at one time. I once (woo-hoo) got paid for doing make up for a stage production. They came looking for me and everything! I felt so special. :slight_smile:

Still working on the house. ::sobs::

31

Does this mean I can’t come down next week like I planned?? :eek:

Chill - just kidding. Deep cleansing breaths… :smiley:

We went to Olive Garden because **FCD **wanted soup and salad. I just got salad, and breadsticks, plus we got some calamari, because. They’ve got the pay-at-the-table thingie just like Red Robin, and both of them default to 20% tip. I’ve never had 20%-worthy service at either place, but I do go to the rounded dollar amount over 15%, because I’m nice, dammit! :smiley:

**FCD **has his MRI tomorrow. Then next week, he’s planning to drive to FL to see his folks. His mom is in the hospital because her heart rate has been dropping to 30-ish. She’s got a pacemaker, so obviously it’s not working. They’ll be doing a couple of days of testing to figure out what’s going on. They’re both in their mid-80s and I think they spend more time at doctor appointments than anything else these days. I expect one or both could die very soon. But that’s life, isn’t it? I’m not cold and heartless, just realistic.

And on that happy note, one day down, 4 to go!!!

32

**MetalMouse **- the pics are amazing!!! Especially the aerial view of the falls!

33

For those not on my FB feed: Donald and Hobbes - Album on Imgur

34

Mooom, It could be worse.

My mother and her sister live 2 doors apart in the over 55 community. Mom has dementia, and has utterly NO use for quacks.

Her sister, on the other hand, and her hubby (#2) have an appointment every day, almost. Add in my cousin, who is living with them, and has not one, but two stage IV cancers, and that household is getting poked, prodded and irradiated daily. It’s a 4 way race to see who gets planted first.

I know I’m getting a phone call in the middle of the night soon, one way or another.

35

Dindin got cooked and ingested along with some really good watermelon. Ima be sad after the end of August cause no more watermelon until next year. I lurves me some watermelon!

Now I must needs go check out MetalMouse’s pics.

36

Well OK then, I’ll just talk to myself! :smiley:

We shall retire to the boudoir for the night to watch teevee etc until sleepy time.

Nitey Nite Y’all!

37

There are kits and then there are KITS.

Some of the ones that are offered by commercial makers (Thompson-Center or CVA for example) can be real crap shoots; they are almost done and should only need some simple finishing. But ------- sometimes the parts they put in the kits are parts that didn’t fit right at the factory. So the simple kit becomes a nightmare and what you have in the end isn’t really that great. Its fun for plinking and nice on display but not something that would catch the eye of someone more like me. Not a bad place to start though. For say $200 you get something you could sell for maybe $100 or a bit better. With some skill (say me) you may get something worth $300 in the end but rarely and you are going to have to invest for some better parts to do it.

Some places offer what they call “90% finished” kit options. Log Cabin Shop and Track of the Wolf are my usual go-to’s to recommend. They take some skill and a lot more time but what you have when you are done is a gun with the potential to win any shooting match anywhere. And a real beauty to boot. For say $800 you can make something worth $2000 or better in the end. $3000 plus if I do it maybe. I’ve built a fair number from kits like this.

But ----------- more often I start from scratch. Back then especially, a lot of what I wanted to do (what people paid me to do) were things you can’t find in kit form. But that could just be me and some other folks. With the modern 90% kits, you can get a good start on almost anything you could wish.

Timewise – a CVA kit takes me say 10 hours start to finish. A 90% 40 hours. Full scratch can be say 60 hours and up depending on how funky a firearm you want. A Jeager say 60 hours; a volley-gun say 120 hours.

38

Nitey!!!

39

Some of my hobbies produce food, such as eggs and vegetables, but I suspect it’d be cheaper to just buy them. Otherwise, most of my hobbies are just a giant money-pit, but hey, if I had excess money who knows what kind of trouble I’d get into.

40

None of my hobbies produce a dime - yet.

<wicked cackle> *But one day - !
*