How To Decide

It has been a while since I wrote a new blog.  I have had a few things on my mind.  We have been renting out our house back in Indiana for about a year now.  Our rental agreement with our tenants expires at the end of this month so we have to decide (as do our renters) if we should set up another 1 year rental agreement, continue to rent month to month (as outlined in the existing rental agreement) or do something else.  The “something else” would be in the vein of taking out a home equity loan and making some updates to the house so we can rent it out for a higher amount.  Another option is to sell the house (with our without a home equity loan and updates).  One final option is to move back to Indiana (which may or may not also involve a home equity loan).  Our lease here in Texas ends in January so there is a 4 month gap between the ends of the agreements (though with some potential financial penalty we could get out of this lease early).  At any rate, the wife and I have been talking about what we should do and entertaining the thought of returning once again to our native state of Indiana.

This is not the first time we have thought about Texas and Indiana and where we should live.  If you know me at all, you know I make decisions almost solely on numbers and spreadsheets.  If you know my wife at all, her thought process is best outlined by the below picture.

I often make a rocking / wave motion whenever we discuss the Texas / Indiana subject.  She goes back and forth on where would be the best place to live and oscillates between the two choices (represented here by the Crest and Trough) quite often.  I note also the Length and Height references on the picture.  The Length indicates how quickly she changes her mind back and forth (and back again) and the Height could indicate the level of passion for whichever section of the Crest / Trough cycle she is on in her mind at any given moment.  I give her a lot of grief over this but lately I too have been going back an forth on this decision.  However, since I do not want to paint myself as a Crest / Trough kind of person, I had to find an alternative description of my thought process.

At first I thought that I could explain my thoughts by a simple teeter totter.

You can put Indiana on one side and Texas on the other and whichever way the teeter totter teetered would be the decision.  This is not how I think however.  The problem here is knowing what the blue boxes represent (or even the two sides).  Are the sides here Texas and Indiana?  Do the boxes represent reasons to live in one place versus the other?  What about reasons NOT to live in Indiana or Texas?  Where do they go exactly?  Once I decided that this is not how I decide, I decided to make it more complicated.

Here I added some purple shapes to indicate the reasons NOT to move to Indiana or Texas.  They would go to the opposite side of the teeter totter.  I also added a heart to indicate where I would really want to live if money were not taken into consideration.  This last thought (ignoring the money factor) is something that does not fit into a column or row of a spreadsheet (trust me, I have tried).  This really does not fully describe how my mind works either.  Let’s try this…

Here we have a teeter totter for both places along with good and bad reasons to live there.  There are 2 hearts (my heart is split really).  In this scenario I am comparing the angles that the teeter totter teeters as it goes up and down as I throw things on it.  As time goes on, I think of more and more things to throw on one side of the teeter totter or the other.  Over time the up and down motion can be plotted.  If you graphed the height of the sides of the teeter totter over time it would look something like this…

Hey, wait a minute!  Maybe the wife is not as crazy as I make her out to be!

Jon

The Listening Project–Supplemental Blog 4

It has been 2 months or so since my last blog about my CDs.  I bought 5 CDs about a month ago and dutifully listened to them.  It was not until I bought one last week that I remembered again this project.

#	Artist	Album	Date Listened	Again?
1096	FM Static	Critically Ashamed	7/25/2012	Yes
1097	The Cars	Greatest Hits	7/25/2012	Yes
1098	Harry Connick, Jr	Only You	7/25/2012	Yes
1099	Paul Baloche	Open The Eyes Of My Heart	7/24/2012	Yes
1100	Connie Francis	Side By Side Disc 1	7/24/2012	Yes
1101	Brenda Lee	Side By Side Disc 2	7/24/2012	No
1102	Mychildren Mybride	Unbreakable	8/24/2012	Yes

• FM Static “Critically Ashamed”: I recalled that this group is a side project of the lead singer from Thousand Foot Krutch.  Other than the obvious similarities in vocals, this band it quite different but still listenable.
• The Cars “Greatest Hits”: Just fun to listen to, all of the time.
• Harry Connick Jr. “Only You”: This is Harry’s take on some popular songs from the 20’s to the 60’s.  Nice and relaxing.
• Paul Baloche “Open The Eyes Of My Heart”: If you have not heard of this artist before just visit any modern worship service at a church.  Paul will have likely written or co-written half of the songs that you hear.
• Connie Francis / Brenda Lee “Side by Side”: If I were honest with myself I would have to admit that I still have a crush on Connie Francis.  I used to listen to a Connie Francis LP that my dad had when I was growing up.  I never got tired of it.  Of course my crush is on the young Miss Francis on the album cover of that LP but that is what I immediately reverted back to when I popped this CD into my player.  This CD does not contain all of her hits (it is missing Stupid Cupid and Lipstick on Your Collar for starters) but for $1 I cannot be picky.  The other CD of Brenda Lee music is mostly live recordings of sounds that I do not recognize so it gets a rare NO in the Again? column.
• Mychildren Mybride “Unbreakable”: There is no way the drummer on this CD makes it through more than 2 or 3 songs in a concert without taking a break.  The drumming and guitars are so fast and so in synch that I can forgive the grovel vocals that almost always goes with this style of music.  I popped this into the car’s CD player after buying it and the wife complained about the vocals.  I asked her what other type of “singing” could possibly go with the overall sound and we both couldn’t think of any.

I have slowed way down in building my collection (6 CDs in 2 months).  Amazingly I do not even have the desire to head to the clearance rack or garage sales to look for more music.  Maybe I have enough CDs now (I don’t believe so either).

Jon