Now that my hustling has kicked into high gear, my calendars are starting to look a bit unruly. I have so many appointments, trainings, and events in there that I now use timeblocks to show my open lunch and dinner slots. I know, this sounds like a humblebrag. It’s not, but you know how I am about my Google calendars. I’m subscribed to two feeds for the office, so there’s a ton of shit that auto populates. Thankfully, I don’t go to everything single office activity… I go to A LOT, but not all.

For  MLK I took some time out to chill. I spent most of the day with my bud M in her neck of the woods. We grabbed lunch (she found a delicious Mexican taqueria via a walk-by– I know, I can’t even recall the last time I did that! I’m all OCD with using Yelp!). Afterwards, we hit up a Chinese foot spa… a decent spot with good ambiance and only $25!! We’ll need to patronize both businesses again.

I enjoy learning things from my friends. Even though I’m constantly researching shit for myself (J calls me the Tea Researcher– the name of a tea shop from back in the day in Shanghai) and now I also do it for my job (vetting contractors and vendors and such), I like discovering new spots from other people. I mean, sometimes people have different standards or criteria (esp with restaurants), but these two places were solid. MK also turned me on to voice-activated Phillips Hue lights, which I thought were interesting in their technological advancement…

On learning about them, I made the mistake of mentioning to Bubbey and shit, Bubs isn’t about to get behind on the home automation trend… So now we have the Hue lights, controlled by our Alexa. Sheesh. How extraneous can we be!?!?! Ah well, live it up while we can, I suppose.

Bubbey is doing well. He’s really getting into that leatherworking intensive course he’s taking in SF. He came home last week with a leather wallet he made, all hand-stitched. I was impressed. Since he started the class though, Amazon has been to the house nearly every. damn. day, dropping off leatherworking tools, materials, and supplies. The Houseboat is running out of space!

In other news, we are still meeting with contractors for the bathroom remodel, bc the job kinda takes us down the rabbit hole. The bathroom work will involve plumbing work, potentially all new gas lines for the house, and then possibly a new roof (gas lines puncture through the roof). Yup, 2017 might just be the year of the Houseboat Money Pit. And with all this torrential rain we’ve been getting, we’re lucky the drought is over but shit, I need to be reminded (really soon) of the reasons why we’re paying a premium to live here! In other words, bring on the sunshine!!

What else. My animal shelter drive is going well. It’s been great too for reconnecting with my old Rover clients. Last weekend, I made two house calls to pick up gifted goods. I reunited with Bubble Boy (Sparky) as well as Cody. In both cases, it was really nice to catch up with their mommies too. That’s the cool thing about Rover: I’ve met some really nice people. Speaking of which, my current daycare client is a legit regular. I think his parents are seriously seeking 20 days/month for daycare. If I continue with this doggie and also resume daycare with my former (whippet) client, that’s a decent small stream of “passive” income! Yup, I’ve been attending a lot of networking events lately, and shit, I want a better handle over my finances. That’s what the experts say: too often women just obsess about saving, but they don’t really think about growing their money and about passive income streams… that’s how you really build a cushion and generate wealth. More goals. More to dos!