Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

Playstation 2K (basketball game) against my son where I shot an abysmal 17% and lost by 6, Homeschool, few phone calls, did some work, Toy Story 4, nap, AND ITS ONLY 3:30!!!.

I'm on this new weird food fetish - crackers with jam on them, but the jam is out of this ketchup-like container that had been in the deep recesses of my pantry, discovered anew with all the time I have on my hands.

Tomorrow, we knock out the 3rd home in our 6 home sales sprint.  A farmhouse in kerhonkson on 5 acres that we've been working on for 6 months.

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Luckily, when this Virus hit, we were on the tail end of a slew of homes.  With us, we have production cycles where our balance sheet puffs up with a build out of our assets (homes under construction) and a ballooning of our liabilities (debt used to buy materials and labor to build the homes), and then an airing out of said ballooning as we sell the houses and then it starts all over again.  it's a cycle, buy a bunch of land, build a bunch of homes, sell a bunch of homes, repeat.

Just so happened we were at the near end of one these cycles with 2 homes in Narrowsburg and 3 homes in Kerhonkson nearing completion as the virus confinement hit.  Far enough along that we could keep pushing them forward through the punchlists, etc...  Fortunately, they were in the woods so even a nit-picky building inspector who was taking the Governors lockdown at face value would have to come looking for us.  I have a big problem with closing down non-urban, residential, single family construction - it makes no sense, especially when compared with the horror of fast food - where a single team of low paid workers prepare and hand out thousands of meals a day, so if there was someone infected it would spread relentlessly.

So here you have an industry with high wage bread winner/earners, many times outdoors, low density with the employment and health of literally millions of people - and they aren't supposed to work, but then McDonalds, Burger Kings and Roy Rogers can stay open because they have a drive through window.   It's just illogical, and makes me feel fine about decisions to keep our show moving forward.

What's happening on a business front is we are concentrating on the homes we need to close, so I can get paid and the clients can have their homes.  What we aren't doing is working much on homes that weren't that far along, say sheetrock or prior, so that leaves 6 homes sitting out there waiting for us.

Work out routine.
But, making lemonade out of this lemon is what I'm doing, and finding ways to pivot our energies.  One, to rest since I've been driving my team hard for over a year now.  Two, to let the cash flow catch and the dust settle, so we can for once actually see what we have - it's always in one door, out the other.  3, we are moving our offices, so this takes the pressure of everything having to happen precisely on one or two days since, hey, tomorrow is just like today anymore.

There's a bunch of things I'm doing, and it should all position us well for the future.  Mostly, I'm thinking, thinking about neglected projects, thinking about what the next 6 months look like, thinking about what I want this business to look like over the next 5 years.

postscript - you know you are skating on thin ice when you go to shoot some hoops at 4pm with your kid, and you can't get the door open because you haven't been outside at all yet!

I think I have a crush on

Alisyn Camerota from CNN.

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Few observations -

I'm wearing a mask when I go out.  I'll probably paint lips and a tongue on it, just for kicks.  One has to wonder how long it will be till the NYTimes runs a fashion article about different mask makeups.

For some reason, while my grocery store's shelve are alarmingly getting less filled across a broad array of items, clam chowder this week seemed to be holding it's own.  Whereas, Campbells Tomato soup, which i was listing as strangely available, was gone this week, and lord have mercy, I had to go off-brand, which I have never done.

A lot of people are walking their dogs.  Dogs are getting more walks, getting more attention, than ever before as people stay home and look for something to do.  I noticed while walking my little 1 mile loop, which is typically solitary, all sorts of new dogs and people.  Happy days are here again for the canines.

I feel retired, trying to fill my days, which I'm doing pretty well.  The key seems to be to acknowledge a few realities.  1, you aren't going to be as productive, so accept it.  2, because of the lack of travel, commuting, errands, sports, kids activities, etc..., the days are longer, and take more 'effort' to fill. 3, to survive the time, you have to reinvent, with an acceptance of downtime, acceptance of a slowdown and redefine the auto-response of 'busy' to define a successful life to something unAmerican like 'satisfied, bored, and sitting quietly'.  It's as much as a mental pivot as a physical one, and for Americans, not necessarily the worst thing ever for a gogo culture.

Noted a very strange and counterintuitive development, that being a real halt to my online shopping.  For months or longer I've been annoyed at the frequent one click shopping, with little or no real budget or thought of real necessity.  I mean, it's a continuation of the day to day bounce from 100 other activities that the purchases while not unnecessary or desired, happened as a 'check that off the list' routine among 100 others, but when you got the credit card statement it was an 'ugh' moment with half the things hardly touched (like my 32 piece sketch and drawing portfolio set or my 8' extension arm to hang Christmas lights on trees in my yard, to unfairly single out two).  But low and behold, since I've been hangin' at home, you'd think the shopping would fill some of the void, but it seems that reducing consumerism in one direction (physical), sort of reduces it across the board.  Sure, I'm still buying stuff (like my new toaster, which resulted in eating a lot more bread), but not big ticket items, and not at the rate one would guess with all the time I have on my hands.

Which makes me wonder how many people and families will take away from this isolation a new set of priorities and realizations about what they thought they needed in their lives and what they actually do need.  I'm just wondering if for some people, the awareness of 'buying whatever, whenever' was bringing less joy than may appear, may pivot and just consume less for the foreseeable future once this is over - like once off the roller coaster of 'buy this, buy this now amazon culture', it's easier to stay off.

I find my days go 1 of two ways - they are either lightly structured, moving through breakfast, tasks, dog walks, kitchen cleanups, work tasks, exercise, etc... or they aren't, and I barely shower, do my hair and accomplish much of anything.  Even the former is done at a slow pace, but like a retiree, it has the form of structure, so what I'm finding is while you have to give yourself a break in comparing it in anyway to what was being done prior to the outbreak, a semblance of structure and routine goes a long way.

Otherwise, you get caught in the loop I did the other day, when I finally turned off CNN and found myself somewhat entertained watching daytime TV shows like Ellen, PD Live (Cops spinoff) and a few others too shameful to mention.

Even if you do fill your days, there is too much day to fill, so I'm getting a lot of movies in - Lately "Lord of the Flies", 1963 version, 'Of Mice and Men', John Malkovich, 1992, "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Favourite", "Dumb and Dumber', "Dumb and Dumber To", "Ground Hog Day", you get the picture.  It's embarrassing in a vague way to know my bookkeeper is seeing all these purchases.

I call this picture below "Dog sitting on a new stone wall on a Friday evening c. Happy Hour"

I'm doing a lot of watching and waiting.  Waiting for my wildflowers to grow I planted last fall, waiting for the leaves to bud, waiting for grass to grow.  No rush though, I got nothing planned or pressing.

So Says Wesley Clair Mitchell, economist, in his 1913 book, Business Cycles - "In that organic cycle, entrepreneurs who think business conditions will improve become 'centers of infection and start an epidemic of optimism'.  That optimism leads to a 'flood tide of prosperity' which washes away caution, creating euphoria that culminates in a crash, which, in turn, clears the way for recovery.  Lather, rinse, repeat"

Or said another way, when the tide goes we see who is not wearing shorts.  So while the current virus is the cause, the pain is acutely felt since optimism abundant, and business owners were forgetting that all economies have cycles, defined mostly by thinking that either 'this time was different' or that you will be the one that finds the chair when the music stops, like the Bob Dylan song from the early '60's where everyone thinks they will be the one that survives the nuclear holocaust and will be roaming the earth alone.

You know things have changed when you discover your ex-wife trying to smuggle two rolls of toilet paper out of your house disguised as fake boobs while picking up her kid.  Busted, she then shamelessly offered cooking/hosting a modern family Sunday night dinner, which I accepted, for one roll, not two.

And when you go to the grocery store - where the shortages were supposed to be because of the initial run on food goods - but each time you go the shelves are a little more bare.  The journey to the grocery store brings all sorts of thoughts to mind.  1, super interesting what is, and isn't being bought.  I'm glad Campbell's tomato soup, one of my favorite meals with a sandwich since I was 10, seems to be not a widely shared soup fetish, for while the soup area was mostly barren, the tomato soup was fully stocked - so I did what you do in those situations - I bought 3x more than I was going to.

In fact, even though I'm worried about shortages, and only have to feed me, my son and my dog, the scarcity caused an almost instinctual desire to hoard.  Why buy one, when you can buy 3?

Paper products - paper towels and toilet paper - have been gone for weeks.  Are they available on Amazon, I'm not sure?  But I'm self rationing, and trading my stock for valued goods and services.  I probably won't do it, but I could - since i buy the thickest 4ply offered in the marketplace, I could self-separate the layers, reroll them, and sell them off.  I'm sure there would be howls of protest, but a simple replay, beggars can't be choosey, should do the trick.

Interestingly, all this sitting at home has reduced my urge to spend money.  When things are rolling and I'm busy all day, I don't think twice about 1 stop shopping on Amazon, for items large and small.  And it's not really for budgeting reasons, it just seems like slowing down and staying put had an impact on my desire to binge buy, that random consumerism lost its glow for now.  I mean, truth be told, I really don't need much at this point, so it's just gluttonous anyway.

I haven't had a toaster in years - but this time at home has really driven home the point that using the broiler in the oven is a waste of time, and I end up over toasting most things, had an oven fire the other night when I forget to take out the Naan bread while talking to my sister, and I end up burning my hand on the cotton-picking broiler coils which hurts like a son of bitch.

I picked a retro model, with a top heating grill and cool gauge.

NY State ordered all construction sites to close.  They didn't put a date on it, so I guess it might immediately.  That's an interesting development for sure and we will see what it means this week for small residential projects.  I'm really interested to understand how enforcement will work.

Not telling us something we don't know.

https://www.curbed.com/2020/3/10/21168519/homes-for-sale-american-home-suburbs