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Category Archives: Our Team

We Had Us a Meeting

The unit on the left will hold shoes, not wine. But there are three wine racks (one next to the red chair), a wine fridge next to the cabinet, and spirits in the cabinet. Ahh.

Our directors (and Anita, since she lives there) had a meeting at the Bobcat Lair house last night. Carol brought us some Mexican food, and we had a nice time eating and talking about stuff that is not work! Russell also got to go inspect our “wine cellar,” which he helped put together. My son had just come by and finished building the big cabinet, so it was looking much more together. This morning I put the wine in the racks and the spirits in the cabinet, and it looks good. I even organized the wine by varietal. Fancy.

Carol plays with Vlassic, who actually appeared to enjoy it.

Back to the Meeting

Eventually, after coconut pie, feats of mental gymnastics by Russell, and a celebratory and lovely bubbly, we got down to business.

Lee called the meeting to talk about how our processes were causing us to miss out on deals in the hot Austin market. By the time we get them analyzed, they are gone. And Carol doesn’t have time to leap on them sooner.

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What Can You Do?

Looking at others in black and white just doesn’t work for me.

Since I’m having a hard time thinking about real estate, here’s something else. Here in the US, many of us are finding it hard to concentrate on mundane things like work or the usual social media distractions. Now, I’ve pointed out elsewhere that I have friends from all walks of life and ways of thinking (please read my thoughts if you have a moment). We work with people from all socio-economic groups, races, and countries of origin. Real estate is a business where you need to work with people you may not agree with in other areas. We do it. Do you?

Whenever something really bad happens in this country, people feel an urge to lash out, and people who aren’t like themselves are a very convenient target. Well, let’s make that groups of people, nameless, faceless groups of people you don’t know, who you firmly believe hate you back and want to take something away from you. You get quite worked up calling these groups all kinds of nasty names, especially if you like to share things on social media.

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Paying Attention. Is It Worth The Money?

Yeah, it really is! No doors or doorknobs were injured in the making of this blog.

This is how it should look!

We have some sensitive materials here at the office, as one would expect. Not money or anything like that, but other things that need to stay private. Now that we will soon be having more people coming in, we need to protect the sensitive information.

Our solution is that every few weeks lately, Lee has been buying a couple of the keypad doorknobs for the outside doors and office doors. So far we have three done. We need a few more. The most sensitive areas have them.

I Know What I’m Doing. Honest.

I like how this picture seems to not show just how messy it is!

Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve dealt with the removal, installation, and repairs of many doorknobs and deadbolts in my time. That being the case, I told Lee and Sue Ann I would gladly install these new doorknobs at the office. I’m here anyway, and it will save the company a few bucks. I installed the one for the back door some weeks ago, and Lee bought two more. One is for Kathleen’s office and one for my office.

The one for my office is mostly so that someone doesn’t stumble in and hurt themselves. I’ll include a picture, and believe it or not, I know where everything is! Unless Lee asks me where it is. When that happens my mind usually goes blank.

Anyway, I have always thought it a good idea to just glance over the instructions again, even if I have done a thing multiple times. Just in case. I try to always do that. I did that this time before I installed Kathleen’s new lock. I told myself, “Mandi,” and I knew it was me talking, because I recognized my voice, “Don’t forget to turn the knobs around on your lock. Your doorknob is on the opposite side from the back door and Kathleen’s door.”

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What’s Going On?

It’s always a good idea to give an update on our doings every so often. Sometimes you forget that everyone is off doing their bits for their business when you don’t see any big projects going on. So!

Cameron Office

Over in Cameron, now that the last few repairs are finished on the Washington house, we expect to actually close on it soon. That will make us all happy, including the new buyers!

18 Sarita RD

We may have a buyer for this one!

And the house on Travis, where Mandi used to live, should also close pretty soon, make that really soon. I’m looking forward to meeting the new owners and seeing what their plans are. I also wish I knew the schedule for things, but my job is social media, not the buying and selling!

Lee has been working to sell his brother’s house in the Brazosport area, and met with an investor on that yesterday. I’ll let him write up something, but he did tell me that he really liked the people, since their model was a lot like ours. That makes them easy to work with, since they also want a better life for everybody.

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Mandi’s Vacation and Back to Work

Merlin really likes to swim! He only had a grasshopper in this picture. As you can imagine, the cats don’t stay in long enough to get a picture.

I had a successful vacation, in my opinion. I cooked and froze a lot, I went fishing, went swimming with the boys in the back yard, made homemade ice cream and milk shakes a few times, baked some, I took photos of a precious wee one, took naps, slept late (once), stayed up too late (every night), played with my boys and my dogs, I watched our newest addition, Merlin Padfoot WonderPup drag kittens into the dog’s swimming pool (which went over like a lead balloon), watched A LOT of TV, and just did whatever tickled my fancy that moment. It was pretty awesome!

While I sure enjoyed all of that, I am happy to be back at work. It was nice to have a week “away,” but that couldn’t be my routine. Going off schedule with no real structure can be a great change, but it couldn’t be normal for me.

Before the vacation, I was at that burn-out place again and was really just miserable and tired. It wasn’t work, it was life period. Sometimes you WANT some time off, and sometimes you NEED it. Even if you really enjoy what you do, it can get the better of you. I do have a temper, but it takes a good bit to activate it. I can get annoyed easily, but I get over being annoyed easy as well.

The reality that I wasn’t being “short fused,” but actually became “no fused” sort of slapped me and I realized that I was not doing the most good anymore. A pen falling on the floor sent the whole day crashing down. Then bottle that back up and move on, until the bottle is full and needs to be thrown out of the window like a Molotov cocktail that’s been lit for five minutes. Who needs that kind of negativity in their life? I ain’t got no time for that. Sorry for that last sentence, Sue Ann :).

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