Tuesday, July 26, 2005
The end in sight
Our RV adventure is near its end. We've moved into a rental condo in Henderson and are preparing the RV for sale. Unfortunately, I can't say that any place we visited on our journey offered me much of a health improvement. But, we had a good time and saw things we'd never expected. We're also happy that we've ended up here in the hills south of Las Vegas. It is definitely an interesting new environment for us to spend a year or two enjoying. After that, we'll probably head back East to be near our families. Maybe we'll RV again when we're old and gray. Only if the money allows though. My one recommendation to anyone wanting to travel like this is - be rich! If you can't be that, be prepared for a challenge to your wits. It's also helpful to study RV repair manuals before you go or you'll read them frequently on the journey.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Understanding
A letter and a story. The story of the spoons was written by a woman suffering from Lupus but the concept translates very well for people with FMS/CFS.
Living with FMS
The Spoon Theory
Living with FMS
The Spoon Theory
Friday, March 11, 2005
Lemonade
It’s been a weird New Year. We’ve decided to stay in Vegas because Gera got a great job, ironically with Bank of America. After living in the miserable job market of Brevard County, it’s a welcome change. Unfortunately, my hopes of relocation equaling rehabilitation have been dashed. I feel as bad as ever, with only the occasional respite. I had an unusually long remission prior to our trip back East but several things contributed to a return of my full-on symptoms. I reacquired a parasite from tainted New Jersey water and I had a bad case of food poisoning from a Delaware restaurant. A healthy person would recover from food poisoning in a couple days and the giardia or cryptosporidium infection in a couple weeks. I’m still feeling the effects two and a half months later. When I first acquired the water-borne parasite in New Jersey in December 2002, it took me until August 2004 to get rid of it. When the symptoms started again during our holiday visit, I realized the connection. My immune system is so overtaxed trying to fight off this undefeatable condition I’ve been living with for seven years - it can’t handle the simple stuff when it comes along. I’ll probably end up dying of something mundane like the common cold. So, I’ll live it up in the meantime as best my functionality allows.
Speaking of living it up, my sister was saying how much more of an adventure my life is than hers. I’ve heard some things from other people lately that suggest a mild envy of the way we live our life. I think that’s funny because everything I do comes from necessity, limitations and setbacks. People who think they know me would be shocked to hear me say this out loud, but it’s the absolute truth. Here’s a recent example – Gera had training in San Diego last week. Since the bank was paying the tab for her room, Ed and I drove out to stay and see the area. He and I had never been to California before so we wanted to visit but my real motivation was a day-trip to Tijuana for prescription meds. My broke ass can’t afford the $212 a month it takes to buy my medication without health insurance. So, I hopped the border and bought 2.5 month’s worth for $122. Seems like an exotic adventure but it was all about necessity. I roll wonderful things into “setback solutions” to keep myself sane. After we were forced out of business by the sunglass manufacturers and the State of New Jersey, I gave Jersey the finger and moved to Florida to start fresh. Jersey still holds a grudge for that (hence the parasite in the water). When it turned out I had an incurable disorder that was made worse by humidity (while living in the most humid state in the U.S.) and there wasn’t a decent paying job to be found anywhere in that freaking humid state, I sold my house and traveled the country looking for a healthier place to live. When God squeezes my lemons, I grin with my gritted teeth and say, “Well, now it’s time to sell some fucking lemonade!”
My latest setback has been with eBay. I’ve been selling stuff on eBay (on and off) since just before we closed our optical business in 1998. At first I just sold leftover sunglass inventory and then things I could pick up cheap at yard sales or auctions but, in 2001, I discovered how to make pretty consistent income using rebates. Six or eight times a year, CompUSA, OfficeMax, Staples and a couple other companies would run sales offering many items free after rebate. They did this because statistics showed less than 40% of the people who bought these items would send in or otherwise qualify for the rebates so they made great money. I would drop $1,000 to $2,000 or so each sale weekend then fill out the forms and wait for the rebate money to come in. It always did, even if I had to follow up with a phone call or another letter. In the meantime, I’d either stockpile the freebies or list them on eBay. I’d usually make 90% of my outlay back on eBay and since the rebates would refund all but postage and tax, it was all profit! I kept this little goldmine a secret but it wasn’t long before many people were doing the same thing. Starting in 2002, each rebate sale would start on Sunday (the only day you could hope to actually get any of that merchandise) and on Monday, dozens of those items would be up on eBay. This glut of auctions for the same stuff resulted in less sales and lower prices for everybody. With the decline in sales and the decline in my health, I started stockpiling. I could manage to go out and buy the merchandise but the selling for so little money wasn’t worth the exhaustion it caused since Gera was making decent money at her job. I also knew that holding the items until after everyone else’s supplies had long since sold would mean more money for me. Supply and demand drive prices. This tactic really paid off because even though our garage and spare bedroom were full of “junk”, it was selling all that stuff that carried us for a year after Gera got laid off and couldn’t get a job. So, here we are in 2005 and several things have transpired. Since people bought all that free after rebate stuff specifically to sell on eBay, they were much more diligent about sending in those rebate forms than people were in the “old days” of 2001. I’m sure the stores were seeing more like 80% qualifying rebates and therefore no profit. So, those days are gone and it is now a rare exception for a store to run a free-after-rebate sale. The deals have dried up and so has the little extra-income business that kept me feeling like a productive, worthwhile citizen instead of the useless pile of shit this goddamn disease is determined to make me feel like. But, always the one to smile at the lemon squeezing, I will do something else. I met a guy on the bus back from Mexico who has some expensive paintings he wants to sell and since he doesn’t know how to eBay, he might have me do it for him (for a small fee of course). I met another guy who travels around selling less expensive paintings that people hang on their middle-America walls as decoration. He also knows nothing about eBay and, you guessed it, wants me to help. So, necessity once again moves me to something different. I guess people will think I live the glamorous life of an art dealer after this one. Like always though, I’m just selling the fucking lemonade.
Speaking of living it up, my sister was saying how much more of an adventure my life is than hers. I’ve heard some things from other people lately that suggest a mild envy of the way we live our life. I think that’s funny because everything I do comes from necessity, limitations and setbacks. People who think they know me would be shocked to hear me say this out loud, but it’s the absolute truth. Here’s a recent example – Gera had training in San Diego last week. Since the bank was paying the tab for her room, Ed and I drove out to stay and see the area. He and I had never been to California before so we wanted to visit but my real motivation was a day-trip to Tijuana for prescription meds. My broke ass can’t afford the $212 a month it takes to buy my medication without health insurance. So, I hopped the border and bought 2.5 month’s worth for $122. Seems like an exotic adventure but it was all about necessity. I roll wonderful things into “setback solutions” to keep myself sane. After we were forced out of business by the sunglass manufacturers and the State of New Jersey, I gave Jersey the finger and moved to Florida to start fresh. Jersey still holds a grudge for that (hence the parasite in the water). When it turned out I had an incurable disorder that was made worse by humidity (while living in the most humid state in the U.S.) and there wasn’t a decent paying job to be found anywhere in that freaking humid state, I sold my house and traveled the country looking for a healthier place to live. When God squeezes my lemons, I grin with my gritted teeth and say, “Well, now it’s time to sell some fucking lemonade!”
My latest setback has been with eBay. I’ve been selling stuff on eBay (on and off) since just before we closed our optical business in 1998. At first I just sold leftover sunglass inventory and then things I could pick up cheap at yard sales or auctions but, in 2001, I discovered how to make pretty consistent income using rebates. Six or eight times a year, CompUSA, OfficeMax, Staples and a couple other companies would run sales offering many items free after rebate. They did this because statistics showed less than 40% of the people who bought these items would send in or otherwise qualify for the rebates so they made great money. I would drop $1,000 to $2,000 or so each sale weekend then fill out the forms and wait for the rebate money to come in. It always did, even if I had to follow up with a phone call or another letter. In the meantime, I’d either stockpile the freebies or list them on eBay. I’d usually make 90% of my outlay back on eBay and since the rebates would refund all but postage and tax, it was all profit! I kept this little goldmine a secret but it wasn’t long before many people were doing the same thing. Starting in 2002, each rebate sale would start on Sunday (the only day you could hope to actually get any of that merchandise) and on Monday, dozens of those items would be up on eBay. This glut of auctions for the same stuff resulted in less sales and lower prices for everybody. With the decline in sales and the decline in my health, I started stockpiling. I could manage to go out and buy the merchandise but the selling for so little money wasn’t worth the exhaustion it caused since Gera was making decent money at her job. I also knew that holding the items until after everyone else’s supplies had long since sold would mean more money for me. Supply and demand drive prices. This tactic really paid off because even though our garage and spare bedroom were full of “junk”, it was selling all that stuff that carried us for a year after Gera got laid off and couldn’t get a job. So, here we are in 2005 and several things have transpired. Since people bought all that free after rebate stuff specifically to sell on eBay, they were much more diligent about sending in those rebate forms than people were in the “old days” of 2001. I’m sure the stores were seeing more like 80% qualifying rebates and therefore no profit. So, those days are gone and it is now a rare exception for a store to run a free-after-rebate sale. The deals have dried up and so has the little extra-income business that kept me feeling like a productive, worthwhile citizen instead of the useless pile of shit this goddamn disease is determined to make me feel like. But, always the one to smile at the lemon squeezing, I will do something else. I met a guy on the bus back from Mexico who has some expensive paintings he wants to sell and since he doesn’t know how to eBay, he might have me do it for him (for a small fee of course). I met another guy who travels around selling less expensive paintings that people hang on their middle-America walls as decoration. He also knows nothing about eBay and, you guessed it, wants me to help. So, necessity once again moves me to something different. I guess people will think I live the glamorous life of an art dealer after this one. Like always though, I’m just selling the fucking lemonade.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
New Year, new adventure
We’ve spent three weeks in the New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland area visiting the families and old friends. They are what we miss most being away from here. As much as we’d like to see them all more, living here isn’t an option. My health has steadily declined since arriving and I’m looking forward to being in the Desert Southwest again tomorrow. It’s amazing that the pace of life in a big city like Las Vegas is actually slower than in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Baltimore. People here are stressing themselves into early graves and it seems that they don’t even realize it until their health fails. I’m concerned for the people we care about here.
The New Year promises to hold new adventure. We hope to stay in Henderson awhile and make some money so we can travel again in the summer. We might get to visit California and other areas in the meantime. Letting the tides of life carry us always seems to work best.
The New Year promises to hold new adventure. We hope to stay in Henderson awhile and make some money so we can travel again in the summer. We might get to visit California and other areas in the meantime. Letting the tides of life carry us always seems to work best.
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