August 2024 mid-month review
Here’s a (belated) review for first half of August.
We’re still working on some “dad death” tasks. I’m really struggling to find the energy to make progress on a bunch of the plans I had, including just arranging a memorial service or buying a permanent urn. Yep, still avoiding all that, for now.
But one thing we got done was filing a claim under the Camp Legeune water contamination settlement the day before the deadline, as my dad seemed to have all the necessary health ailments and had spent three entire years at the base during the period in question. Given the staggering number of claims and our place “in line” in the process, I presume that it’s a pretty long shot. But we spent quite a bit of time pulling together all the legal and medical documentation to support the claim.
Instead, much of the month has been spent counseling my mom on a car purchase. We’ve visited a number of far too many dealerships, done a bunch of research, and what feels like endless hour-long phone calls. The main goal here, besides replacing her old Rav4 that was totaled in June, is to find the right mix of driver safety features that can help extend her driving years as long as possible. Oh, and something in her limited budget. It’s been…a larger task than expected. In the end, we’re getting her a used 2024 Nissan Kicks SR from Carvana. I despise car buying, for all the reasons, and this endeavor reiterated that fact.
The other big focus has been planning out our epic 100-day “antipode” trip that’s coming up in November. We now have a full itinerary (a total of 27 countries!), and we’re working to book the necessary flights, lodging, tours, and vehicles. We successfully negotiated being able to use oversize luggage during our 24-day African safari tour, which was the first big hurdle we’ve encountered. We’ll be posting updates at adventuresaroundthe.world, where you can subscribe to weekly email digests if you’d like.
I launched a new website project this month: blogprompts.fyi. As you might discern, it’s a simple site aimed at offering up topic ideas you can write about for blog posts. Just click a button and you’ll get a random prompt. Click again if you want a different one. There are currently 370 unique prompts, and I’ll continue to add more.
Speaking of blogging, I published a number of posts:
- A visit to Cabinetlandia
- You can opt out of stuff you hate
- My rules for car buying
- Books as a beer flight
- Return to Paradise (Lounge)
- A runway that changed the world
- Owning your music. Again.
- A recap of July 2024
- A personal introduction for Blaugust 2024
- Choosing where to go when you can go anywhere
I’ve been participating in Blaugust, but intentionally didn’t give myself a particular goal. Similarly, I’ve been doing #100DaystoOffload since May, though I also intentionally stopped keeping track of my number. Perhaps I’ll finally put together an archive page for both endeavors and see how far along I am.
I also started work on a new social community site project, which I’m hoping to launch in the next 2-3 weeks. I’ve successfully validated the basic idea, but still need to write it all up and that might take a bit given my other commitments.
A big milestone this half-month: we paid off our mortgage! Which means that we are officially fully debt free. Zero, zilch, nada. With our existing savings and our plans to delay replacing our Outback and the bedroom windows for another year, we may be in a position to never borrow money again—we’ll simply “borrow” against our own savings and pay ourselves back instead of the bank. Pretty dang cool; I’m really proud of ourselves.
That's all for now.