Scott’s bear blog

End of August 2024 recap

It's the last day of August, and unlike my mid-month recap, this one is actually on time!

HAHAHA EDIT: no surprise, it's late. I thought that'd I be able to hit the publish button before kickoff on Saturday, but never got around to it after we left the house. And, well, here we are on Tuesday. Oh well. So any relative dates refer to that original post.

The last big news is that we finally got a car for my mom. It's a 2024 Nissan Kicks SR, which has lots of fancy driver assist features in a size and price that she could afford. At age 82, that was the most important facet of picking a vehicle—we want her to remain as independent as possible for as long as possible. We ended up buying a used 2024 (which is still the current "new" model year at dealerships) via Carvana. The process wasn't without some setbacks, but all in all, it was a much better deal than buying new and we didn't have to deal with the traditional car sales process, which is infuriating. We just picked it up yesterday. I cannot believe how long this process took.

Another big piece of news was that we're now debt-free! We paid off the mortgage for the house we live in. And coupled with our existing savings and our frugal nature when it comes to big expenditures, we likely won't need to borrow money from a bank ever again. We'll just pay cash from our savings, and then repay it back into the account, sorta as a loan to ourselves. I think I reported this in my last recap, but it took a bit more work than expected so it didn’t actually happen until earlier this week. Pretty friggin' cool, especially reaching this in our 40s.

We've also been busy booking things for our upcoming 100-day overseas trip. We have all the major stuff booked through day 88, so we're closing in on having all transportation, lodging, and major tours secured. But there is still a ton of stuff to prep for, so we'll remain busy until we leave (about three months from now). I’ll be honest: I’m a bit in freak out mode about it all. This is going to greatly stretch our comfort zone. I also just discovered that some of my RX medications aren't allowed in several of the countries we're visiting, so...🤷‍♂️🫠

My wife spent much of the last two work weeks in Tucson training some new staff, something she’ll do a lot of in the next couple of months. I spent three nights down there to keep her company, and we went out for a few of the nights. I had hoped to post about that already, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

We're leaving in a few minutes for some pregaming before ASU football’s season opener. This is my 38th year as a season ticket holder. We usually do a big tailgate before the game, except for the first couple which are too hot to spend five hours grilling in the sun (it’s 105° today), followed by 4 hours in the stadium, followed by 60-90 minutes back at the tailgate before heading home. Also, I’m completely uninterested in what college football has quickly become. I'm just not feeling it anymore, so we'll see how tonight goes. It's...a weird feeling; this has been a big part of my year since I was in the 4th grade. I'll write more about this soon.

I haven't counted up how I did in Blaugust, but here are the posts from the second half of the month:

I've also continued to post quite a few "On This Day" travel photos on my site at rsjon.es. I use it as a daily gratitude and remembering practice for the various trips I've done over the years.

September seems poised to be a month focused on the logistical details of our upcoming trip—of which there seem to be countless things to research or figure out. We're visiting 22 countries on the trip, so that means 22x in terms of research. And we still have a bunch of other decisions to make. Besides the RX issue, the next one we've been contemplating is how we want to deal with photography on the trip. The photographic highlight will obviously be the African safari, which means long lenses—which we really don't have. But we also need to bring underwater cameras for the snorkeling stops, which includes the Great Barrier Reef. And since we're packing all of this stuff into a single bag each, it's a tough question. Anyway, more on that stuff in the September recaps.