So I recently got my eyes laser corrected. It’s pretty BA. I keep thinking I need to take out my contacts, but I don’t, and then I think “Sweet!” I can just go to sleep. Then I think, maybe I should brush my teeth. Then I think, well my Uncle has no cavities and he only brushes his teeth in the morning. Then I think about what my mouth tastes like in the morning if I don’t brush my teeth, and then I brush my teeth. What the hell was I talking about?
Anyway, the Del Mar Fair was pretty cool. Anthony and I partied a little too hard, but it was fun.
I also spent a little time rereading some stuff I wrote earlier in the year. It was pretty cynical, albeit funny, but right now life is good. You know that’ll pass, but it’s good to make note of it when it is, so next time I am sitting here in a cynical mood rereading what I wrote, I’ll remember oh yeah, there was that one time that life was good and most likely I’ll be thinking at that time, I know that’ll never happen again… And then next time that I am happy again rereading earlier posts, I’ll think oh yeah, I was wrong then.
So I had this professor that had a teaching method he called the “Impossible to take notes method” It was when he would be doing calculations on the board instead of from his notes, he would either make a mistake and have to go back, or he would, mid-solve, realize there was a better way, and then he’d erase everything and start again. Hence impossible to take notes. I thought that was hysterical, but I was the only one. Anyway, I am pretty sure this entry will be known as the impossible to follow entry. Good Luck.
Well I know it’s a little bit late, but I just read this article about Jim Cramer investing in real estate, Cramer on BloggingStocks: I’m practicing what I preach on housing. It sort of begs the question what hell is he doing with all the suggestions in his books, and on his show? I guess making money on you listening to him. But I can’t help but agree with him on the housing market being near the bottom. Several people that I’ve talked to in various real estate markets including Saratoga Springs, NY, San Diego, CA, and Atlanta, GA have all said that the market seems to be picking back up. I don’t want to give you the impression that you have to buy something tomorrow, but I think that it wouldn’t be a bad move. Just thought I’d share.
One of the books I’m reading now is Twitter Power. It’s a pretty fantastic book so far, and I really think everyone should read it if you are using Twitter for business. My biggest complaint recently with Twitter is spam. I’ve been on Twitter for quite a while now, and recently I get a lot of spam, and people trying to sell me everything under the sun. I can only imagine this is effective on some level or else no one would be doing it, but seriously people, you need to contribute, don’t just sell me stuff. There’s another book that I’ve read called Under the Radar that talks about advertising to today’s cynical audience. I really think that if you want to be effective you need to be genuine. The majority of people today won’t even click on things that look like advertising, let alone straight in your face sales pitches. How many people enjoy a car dealership? Be my friend, literally, and the money will come. Don’t try to sell me! I don’t want it! I look for reviews from real people that I trust, not the people who are looking to directly gain. This is a great book. Notice I’m not selling it or gaining anything from this, I just want people on Twitter to stop spamming! Bring back the old Twitter, where it was dominated by real people. I’d hate for Twitter to turn into the ad mania that is today’s Myspace. The businesses ruin good stuff by not understanding the real nature of this resource. Please stop!
So like my friend always says, “you can never have too much new stuff.” Of course, he was referring to a new sound his 1968 Opel Kadett started making. Actually that sound turned out to be a pin hole leak in his radiator that was shooting into the cooling fan, but what are you gonna do with an Incurable Optimist
In the couple of places that I have real estate connections I’ve been excited to hear that real estate transactions are picking up. Now it just so happens that May also marks the month in which real estate ALWAYS picks up, so it’s hard to say if it has to do with a recovery, or just the cyclical real estate market.
My personal feeling is the cycles may be a little more wavy then usual. Right now interest rates are historically low, tons of houses are owned by banks, and there’s been a huge price reduction across the board. I think I heard on average 19% less across the US. That’s a pretty big sale, considering real estate appreciates long term! I personally think it is time to buy all you can!
So that’s where things are, and with a new market becomes a new business model, and I like to begin business models with marketing models. And with marketing comes brand recognition, which leads me to logos. So that’s what I’m working on too. Zamonis Properties is going a little more global, and since I have family also licensed in real estate I am trying to keep the national options open.
So where does that leave us? No where! Just remember, if you need help with real estate ANYWHERE! I can help. A couple of recent questions that I have been asked:
Should I use a VA loan to buy a house?
YES! If you are eligible for the VA loan. Now is a perfect time to use it! You can finance 100% of the cost. You can use up to 6% in closing costs, it has the buyer’s best interest at heart, and it’s assumable. Of course you should use it!
Is a real estate agent due a commission after the listing expires and I sell my house?
Maybe. It depends on what the source of the sale is. If the buyer of the home is interested in because of the work the agent did, i.e. saw a sign in the front yard, or an ad run by the company, then the real estate company may be due their commission. Each contract is different and the laws vary state to state. But it’s definitely possible.
Well I’ve been back and forth between texting while writing. And I feel the quality of the writing is going to suffer. If you have real estate questions, ASK! You can leave a comment, and I’ll use it as a topic in the future. If you need the name of a good agent in your area, ASK!
So a while ago I mentioned that I am going to be updating the Zamonis Properties blog on my experiment to become a real estate Tycoon. And then I did… nothing. So I’ve done some updating to my Nick Zamonis blog, and added the Real Estate link in the header. So if you are only here to see what’s going on with the real estate experiment, you can click that menu item and it’ll show you all my real estate posts.
So what have I been doing. Well I am currently exploring a handful of options in the real estate investing world. Lots has happened since the last time I posted, and thinking about my future is one of them. Right now, interest rates are ridiculously low, and foreclosures and REOs are ridiculously high, so if you have the time to wait, there are deals EVERYWHERE! I will be leaving the country for 6 months in the not too distant future, so which thing makes the most sense is going to be mostly determined by the fact that I am not personally going to be here.
Options I am exploring right now are Condo Hotels in locations like Las Vegas, which has recently become a place I visit on about a monthly basis, bare land in places like Vermont, where there is plenty of undeveloped land, with amazing Montana-like vistas at 5+ acres for under $100,000, and studio condo’s in cities like Atlanta, and San Diego.
Why condo hotels? Well like everything else there are deals everywhere. They generally have on-site property management, and are located in resort locations. So instead of something like a timeshare, where you own time, you actually own a condo in a resort hotel. You can live in it, if that’s your thing, for as long or as short as you like. So in a place like Vegas where everything is expensive, being in your own condo where you can cook for yourself will allow you to spend all your money where you should, booze and gambling. And when you aren’t there the property is actively managed by the hotel staff.
Bare land is cheap. That’s the biggest thing it has going for it. Several acres for under $100,000 is pretty damn cheap. Obviously land has a lot more risk involved with it. Things like utility installations and zoning codes, can create large expenses for development, if that’s your plan. However, of course, with proper planning, you could potentially sit on it, and wait for the developers to show up. For me it’s the small amount of money, and the minimal amount of continued overhead or maintenance. Basically I’ll only be paying taxes on it, up until I am ready to do the next thing with it.
And since living in the city I’ve grown really fond of studios. The high ceilings and open space are fun to hang out in, and when I get back next year, I’ll need a place to call home. So obviously owning a place, vice renting is always a smart move.
So that’s the thoughts. Any experience or ideas you might have are always welcome. COMMENT!
Where do I begin, but the beginning. I love the Feedjit thing on the right side of the page, to see where people are from that are reading my posts. Most recently San Diego, Virginia Beach, Rensselaer, which is interesting since I just so happened to have at one point or another found myself in these locations, which begs the question who is out there reading my blog? I assume it’s someone I know, because I’ve lived there, and they searched for me by name in order to arrive on this page. I wonder if there is a voyeuristic type quality of all social networks and blogs. Maybe I blog for my 15 minutes of fame and some people read my blog in order to be nosy but anonymous. Which of course makes you wonder how many crazies are out there reading about you? How internet savvy are they? How safe is publicly talking all kinds of shit on the internet?
So my parents own a couple of finches, and they told me a funny story about them. Of course, if you’re not a fan of birds, which quite surprisingly happens to be more common than I expected, you will not find this shit funny at all. On top of that, you have to have a fairly reliable imagination, since you have to picture this in order to understand it, and I’m not about to claim my writing will be detailed enough for you to truly “see” it, so you may in fact need an amazing imagination. Anyway, my parents own a male and female finch, which they quite domineeringly keep in a cage. I mean we are the superior species, God put everything on earth to please us, so why shouldn’t we trap everything and keep it in a cage near us. God forbid we get up and go outside and see something in nature, or rather what’s left of it after clear cutting it in order to put in a subdivision.
Ultimately this makes me think of two other things. The movie Battle for Terra, and Living the G.I. (Glycemic Index) Diet
So they bought this box of string for the birds and put it in the cage. The idea is that the male bird will layer the nest that is already in the cage with the string. Basically preparing the nest for his girl. So this bird having not bought a box of string himself, and therefore not realizing it’s to be lining, not to mention finding the pure quantity of string available to him daunting, has decided to completely empty the box of string and attempt to build another nest made entirely of string, next to the man made one. I personally think he’s trying to weave a throw rug, or a welcome mat, but my parents think he’s trying to build another nest. What is funny is that the female bird stands on the ground and chirps at the male the whole time he is attempting to build his nest. His nest looks like shit, and not like a nest at all, and I can only imagine it’s due to his inability to concentrate because of the nagging going the entire time.
It was probably the female bird’s idea to make the nest entirely out of string in the first place, but you know she couldn’t be happy with just that, she also has to explain the exact way in which he is to fashion the nest, and now that the nest looks like ass, she is most likely claiming if he would have only listened to what she was saying it would have worked.
So some of you may know that I’m a real estate agent licensed in NY. And some of you don’t. And some of you don’t give a crap. Well, due to some huge lifestyle changes (No, I’m not gay now.), I’ve decided to revamp a lot of things. Right now one of my focuses is setting up to buy more property. So along with this blog I am going to be working on my Zamonis Properties blog. However, instead of focusing on the agency part of my business I am going to focus on the investment part of the business.
Over the next several weeks I am going to revamp the blog to focus on my progress in real estate investing. I’ll document everything I’m doing and you can use it as a guide on what works and what doesn’t work. Hopefully we’ll all be able to learn from it, and become wildly successful. Once wildly successful we can all either figure out how to teleport, or start chartering a plane to party in different cities each week. Well… You can do whatever you want, but that’s what I want to do. Really I want to teleport, because figuring that out would also be wildly successful.
Anyway, just wanted to give some heads up and a shout out to my other blog.
So I enjoy drinking. I would say drinking in excess, but that can be defined in a lot of different ways. How much is excess? You could say when you start to get a buzz, loosen up a little, when you start speaking too loudly, lose control of bodily fluids, lose consciousness, and they would all be good choices. I ‘m going to say that biting off the tip of my tongue is when I should start slowing down. Now it’s not like I haven’t bit my tongue before completely sober, but never the tip. And to think that was after 2 drinks. God only knows how much tongue would have been left had I decided to keep trying to eat, and drink. Typing and body language could have ended up as my only viable methods of communication.
Needless to say I stopped eating at that point and focused on drinking. After all, you’ll die from lack of fluid much quicker than from lack of food, so drinking is a lot more important. And you may argue that they are talking about water, and not alcohol, but as a staunch supporter of the bible, I think Jesus is a little smarter than all of us and he turned water into wine. Of course you could also say that was for a wedding celebration and not for surviving, but I would just say to you, the whole damn book is a metaphor for life and the wedding represents an end to happiness, sex, dreams, and goals, and for anyone to survive that, Jesus is teaching us, they must drink!
So I went for a walk today to try to find myself. I followed my shadow around for miles but never seemed to catch up with myself. The faster I went, the faster I went. I didn’t want anyone to think that I had gone missing officially, so I thought I would take a minute to write you. I know that I am just in front of where I am now, so it won’t be long before I get there.
Officially since I know where I am, I am not lost, but because I’m not there yet, I can’t rightly say that I am here. Really I’m over there. Anyway, don’t worry, if you were, it won’t be but a little while longer. Just try to be patient, and eventually I’ll get there. And there is where I want here to be. Or maybe I want there to be here. Either way I think I am going to sneak up on me. Even though there is always the anxious anticipation of arriving, we really need to find patients. Patients, so I can create a practice of people trying to find themselves, and maybe then if we help each other, find each other, we can keep ourselves where we find ourselves, and then we’ll have time to catch up to ourselves.
Inspired by:
It’s amazing how much crap you need in a house. I keep realizing how understocked my house is. Every time I try to do something I realize the tool that I need is no longer available and I need to buy it. Things like a toilet brush, a plunger, a broom, garbage cans, coffee makers, and a closet. I didn’t realize how much crap I’ve accumulated and taken for granted until now. Occasionally I walk by a guy on the street with a homeless sign, and I think maybe I am too needy… I find a lot of my posts I’m ripping on the homeless, which can’t be very good for my karma. It’s not nice to kick a guy when he’s down, but then I think well it’s not like he’ll ever read this…. Seriously though I’m going to stop, I don’t really want to sound like that big of an asshole.
So I watched a bum the other day ask a guy for change. The guy said, I can help you out if you can tell me where such and such restaurant is. The guy yells, “I DON’T KNOW!” Like the guy asking for directions was asking too much, or like he didn’t have time for that. I didn’t know what to think. At first I thought it was messed up that the begger would be pissed, but then I thought some more. Basically I think it’s okay to ask someone for change that looks like they might have change, but as a person with change to ask someone who looks familiar with the “streets” for directions is unethical. Maybe it’s unreasonable to ask someone in that situation for anything. I mean he already has nothing. I don’t know. I can’t imagine what that life must be like. I have a hard enough time not having people to hang with all day, but if I didn’t have a place to stay, money for food, or a place to shower, I’d probably be pretty freakin’ unreasonable too.
I think my most popular blog post currently is about the six women every guy should date. I’m thinking about writing about the six women every guy shouldn’t date. Although, I can’t think of too many types of women that I would suggest not giving a try. That also assumes like Men’s Health, that there is a way to thoroughly and wholly define a woman with two adjectives. Not to mention everyone needs love sometime, right? I read that there about 3.2 billion women and 3.3 billion men on the planet. That means there are about 100,000,000 men on the planet that aren’t getting any love at all, or a lot of women with multiple partners. Of course you have to figure some percentage of each of those are gay. So maybe it all works out. Maybe homosexuality is a necessity in order for the numbers of people being loved to be even between the sexes. Not sure if there are more lesbians or more gay men. It would have to be a lot more gay men for the numbers to work out. Then there are prostitutes too, which I would think satisfy a significant amount of men. I don’t know. There’s a huge amount of very lonely, very unfulfilled people out there. How shitty is that?
Well I’m in a dimly lit place in my mind right now, and I don’t really want to turn on the lights out of fear of something crazy being written on the wall with bodily fluids. Yikes!
So in an effort to get someone punched in the face by my friend Jimmy Pennington (see comment on previous post) and a free drink on Sunday January 11th at 8pm, I thought I would write a quick blog about Chicago’s Improv Comedy. Of course I personally have never been to any improv comedy club in Chicago, but in an effort to have this post higher then the Chicago’s IO theater on Google’s search results page, I am going to fill this thing up with info on improv comedy and facts about Chicago.
So what do I know about Chicago? I only know a few things about Chicago and they involve politics. For instance, I hear politics are pretty cut-throat in Chicago, which puts people in some funny situations. For instance, I hear that if you’re not careful you can lose your seat in the Senate by forging a bunch of petitions to get on the ballot, and then running against Barack Obama. Of course, with enough money you could probably buy that seat back, but only if you know the right guy.
In other news, what do I know about Improv. Basically if you’re a witty smart ass you’re pretty much good at improv. That is improv. You basically take queues from someone else for material and then quickly and comedically use it in a skit, or if your a smart ass, to belittle and humiliate a person. The comedy improv at the iO, “Chicago’s Best Improv Comedy,” may be completely different since I’ve never been, but let me know.
Seriously though, Jimmy Pennington is wicked funny. So funny in fact he made my top 10 list of funniest people I know and I know like at least a hundred people. So he’s in the top 10% of the funniest people I know! Which means he’s pretty funny… Actually, that’s not impressive at all. That’s like saying hey I know you 2 people and you are the smartest people I know. Not to mention, who the hell am I? What gives me any authority? “Yeah, I know I’m funny because this one guy said I was funny.”
Please, if you go this weekend mention you read about his comedy show here, and then tell him what you like to drink, and then leave a comment about it.
In the interest of Digg turning into a bunch of top 10 lists, and me not having any of my own, I thought I would write one. Since I love to laugh, and this site is all about me I thought I would satisfy my narcissistic tendencies and write a top ten list about the funniest people I know. I know there are a lot of people who won’t know everyone on here. Actually, there probably isn’t anyone but me that knows all the people on here. How unique is that? Anyway, I still thought it would be fun to think of everyone that I think is hilarious. So in no particular order, since not everyone on here has the same sort of humor, here it is, my first top ten list. Feel free to submit it to Digg. Maybe I should say top 10 funniest people I know, that you should try to meet… unless you’re like a crazy stalker then you shouldn’t try to meet them. So I’m not talking to you crazies, just normal people who like to laugh.
- Greg Huether
- Doug Just
- Jimmy Pennington
- Felix Martinez
- Megan Hahn
- Eric Yurgartis
- Wynn Everett Albanese
- Jason Homan
- Rob Czyzewski
- Wil Nocon
Feel free to add to the list. It’s not really all about me. It’s all about the people, people… and the glasses, but mostly the people, and even more specifically the funny people.