I Lose: Beaten by The Boss

I like Chicken Wings. I like Things That Are Hot. Doing a little addition, you might correctly conclude that I like Chicken Wings That Are Hot. Today, however, I discovered I don’t like all Chicken Wings That Are Hot.

For years, I’ve been proud of my ability to tolerate hot (spicy) foods. It’s not just that I’m Tough, but that others are Wimps. When I hear my friends complain about how spicy a certain salsa might be for example, I silently heap Scorn upon them. “Spicy? Hah!” I think. “I don’t detect even a bit of heat.” Yes, many of my friends are Wimps. They are not Tough like me. (Note: Jeremy is Tough. Jeff has some Toughness in him.)

So, it has become my habit to order my meals Hot (or Extra Hot, if the option is available) when I go to restaurants. My Thai curry? Hot! My Indian curry? Hot! Anything else that I could possibly get spicy? Hot! Please, very Hot!

Twice in the past, I’ve come close to defeat. Once while dining at the Bombay Cricket Club with Nick and Kris, I had a a dish that was really very Hot. But it was Tasty, and I was Tough. I emerged victorious. On another occasion, Andrew and I had Thai food at a little place north of Lloyd Center. My Mussman curry was almost too Hot. Almost. My gut burned inside for days, but I won. I won.

Today I went thrift-shopping with Kris and Tiffany. We started at the big Goodwill on 99E, just north of Powell. I picked up three books:

Watership Down, to loan to Rhonda and Mike
How Green Was My Valley, for book group
The Modern Library edition of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, which I’d never heard of before today

While the Gates women shopped, I sat on a couch and read about Bunnies. I was there a long time.

Interlude: I sat in a fuzzy easy chair in the Goodwill furniture department. Across from me was a set of almost Nice, almost Antique furniture: an ornate chair with a wooden frame (for lack of a better word), a matching settee, and a coffee table. The set was unusual in that the sittable items were labeled with signs that read: DO NOT SIT. Perhaps as a result of this (or perhaps because the items were almost Antique), nearly every adult (except the Gates women) and many children stopped to look at the price. It was an interesting social Experiment. My hypothesis was that if one were to remove the signs, nobody would have paid attention to the Ugly things, but because they were labeled DO NOT SIT, everyone stopped to look at the price. Or maybe everyone else just has Bad Taste.

“Would you like to go to lunch?” Kris asked as we paid for our purchases. She spent $41. Tiffany spent $41. I spent $6.

“Yes,” I said. I was hungry.

“Let’s go to Sully’s,” she said.

“No,” I said. “I’ll pay for lunch, but I’m picking.”

“Where are we going?” Kris said, but I did not answer. I was Mysterious.

“Where are we going to lunch?” asked Tiffany.

“I don’t know,” Kris said. “J.D. is being Mysterious.” And then she said, out of some Wifely Instinct, “I’ll bet we’re going to Fire on the Mountain.”

Ah, indeed we were. A restaurant devoted to Chicken Wings — could anything be more Lovely? Tiffany ordered Wings. I ordered Wings. Kris ordered Fish and Chips. For her sauce, Tiffany chose Sweet BBQ. For half of my Wings, I chose a delicious Lemon Pepper sauce. But for the other half, I chose El Jefe, a “Crazy Hot” sauce. I wasn’t worried. I sampled the latter before I ordered. I could handle it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!

From the first bite, I knew that El Jefe was going to kick my Ass. My lips were on fire. The inside of my mouth burned like a Televangelist in the Afterlife. My eyes began to water. I gasped for air. Tiffany laughed.

“Do you want some ranch dressing?” she asked.

“No,” I gasped.

“He hates ranch dressing,” Kris said.

“I know,” said Tiffany, “but he looks like he’s going to cry.”

I felt like I was going to cry.

I ate one Crazy Hot Wing. I ate two. I ate three. On the fourth, I cut corners. I avoided much of the skin. My heart wasn’t in it. I picked up a fifth — and then I put it down.

“I lose,” I said. “El Jefe wins.”

It was a sad moment for me. All my life, I have been the victor. I have been Tough. I have not been a Wimp. But today? Today El Jefe kicked my Ass.

p.s. I paid for lunch. It cost $35. So, my total for the day was also $41.

Live Radio, Take Two

In February 2007, I did my first radio interview. It was a disaster. I was a nervous wreck. I swore I’d never do another interview on live radio again.

In the past eighteen months, I’ve held true to that promise. I’ve given probably a dozen interviews for newspaper and magazines, given several recorded radio interviews, and even done one recorded television interview. But I’ve avoided live interviews like the plague.

Last week, I was contacted by a producer from “On Point”, an NPR program I’ve never heard before. He asked if I’d be willing to speak about credit cards and credit card debt. Despite my vow of radio silence, I agreed. I felt like the topic would stick to themes with which I was familiar, and that I could do okay even if nervous.

And I was nervous. “We need you to use a landline,” the producer told me, so I drove out this morning to Custom Box Service. I sat by the phone for a half an hour, working myself into knots. Having learned from my previous disaster, I had just a few notes instead of pages and pages.

When the show called, the connection was lousy, as if we were talking over a garbled cell phone. They called back. This time I could hear them fine. I stayed on the line for a few minutes while Professor Elizabeth Warren, one of the Good Guys, described slimy credit card tactics. Then it was my turn.

The host asked questions I could answer. (Part of the problem with the previous poor radio interview was that the host wanted me to answer questions for which I was unqualified to give an opinion.) I felt that, although nervous, I was doing a decent job on the interview. I even remembered to smile at some points.

Then, all of a sudden, the interview was cut short. “I’m sorry, J.D.,” she said, “but we’ve got a poor connection. Thanks for being on.” When the producer came back on the line, he told me it sounded like I was on a cell phone.

Argh!

At least I was undone this time by a technical glitch and not by personal stupidity. I don’t think I came off sounding like a fool. But perhaps I sounded like I was underwater. I don’t know.

Maybe the third time’s the charm?

She Rules a Crowded Nation

It’s one o’clock when we reach the house. Neither Mom nor I have eaten all day. She took her meds sometime before I picked her up at nine; I ate half a bag of peanut M&Ms on the drive to Salem. When we walk into the kitchen, she sets her purse down and says, “I’m hungry.”

“What would you like to eat?” I ask.

“Peanut butter,” she says.

“Just peanut butter?” I ask.

“And bread,” she says.

“A peanut butter sandwich?” I ask.

She thinks about it. “Yes,” she says. She shuffles her feet and looks down.

“Would you like me to make the sandwich?” I ask, pulling the bread and peanut butter from the fridge.

“No,” she says. “I can make it.” I watch as she slathers the bread with thick gobs of peanut butter. “And milk,” she says. I pour her a glass of milk.

While she works, I prepare a place for her at the kitchen table. “Why don’t you sit down,” I say.

“I’m fine,” she says. She stands at the counter and devours the sandwich in great gulps. She chases it with the milk.

When she’s finished, I show Mom the computer at the kitchen table. She sits down and types in a URL. She clicks the button. She clicks the button. She clicks the button. “It’s not working,” she says. I look. She’s not actually clicking the button.

“You’re pressing the space bar,” I say. “You need to click the button.” She presses the space bar again. And again. She looks at me, and I know that I’m making her uncomfortable, so I leave.

Moments later, she’s up again. I can see her pacing. She’s pacing, as if she can’t make up her mind where to go or what to do. I hear her walk into the next room and begin rummaging on the bookshelf. She comes in to my room. “You said I could borrow books,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “What would you like to read?”

“How long will I be gone?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “A few days.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Anything.”

I giver her My Antonia by Willa Cather, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and a couple of others. She sits down at the kitchen table again, in front of the computer. She opens her e-mail program. I go back to my chair.

Moments later, she’s up again, pacing. “I don’t like it here,” she says. “Can’t we just go someplace and drive around?”

“Yes,” I say. “I have to go upstairs for a minute first.”

“Is the car unlocked?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. I go up upstairs to send e-mail so the family knows where we are. When I get in the car, Mom is sitting at attention in the passenger seat. She has everything with her: her purse, the pile of books. I start driving.

Tony and Kamie pass us going the other way. They turn their truck around to follow. Tony calls me on my cell phone. “We’re behind you,” he says.

“I’m scared,” Mom says. Her hands are fidgeting uncontrollably. She’s sweating.

“Yes,” I say. “I am too. But it will be okay. It will be fine.” We drive in silence for a few minutes. Mom fidgets.

“Can we go to the hospital now?” she asks at last.

“Yes,” I say. “We’re almost there.”

A Lovely Secluded Spot

Last summer on our drive across England, we stopped at Jane Austen’s house. The inside was okay, but mostly I found it a little boring. A house is not a house when there’s nobody living there. It’s an empty shell of a thing — a museum.

But I found I loved the gardens.

In the U.K., what we call a yard is called a garden, and it comprises not just shrubs and flowers, but the lawn as well. In the case of Jane Austen’s house, the garden included a large carefully-maintained lawn, a variety of old trees, and lovely secluded spots. I was entranced by these lovely secluded spots.

“You know,” I said to Kris. “I think we could create a spot like that at Rosings Park.”

“Where?” she said.

“In the front border bed,” I said. She was skeptical.

When we returned in early August, I fought my way through the laurel and azalea to see if I could indeed create a lovely secluded spot. To my surprise, there was a relatively large opening in the midst of the front border bed. Or there could be. When I first looked at it, it was covered with English ivy, and crowded in by laurel, lilac, and holly. The ivy itself was covered with a couple decades of twigs and branches.

Last autumn, I made a half-hearted effort to clear the space. Mostly, I just pruned the big holly by the sidewalk. Then I let the idea lie dormant.

After gestating for nine months, the idea has finally, well…that’s a metaphor that’s been stretched too far. Let’s just say that over the weekend, Kris and I did a lot of yardwork. One of our top tasks was to weed the front border bed, and to do that, I had to climb back into my secluded spot. This time, the possibilities were much clearer.

This afternoon I grabbed a rake and a hoe and my pruners. I spent an hour raking twigs, pulling up ivy, and clearing debris. When I’d finished, my secluded spot had begun to take shape.

The space is roughly circular, maybe fifteen feet in diameter. It is completely enclosed by shrubs and trees. Dappled sunlight filters through the leaves overhead, and all around is a wall of trunks and limbs. At two locations one can see clearly outside The Grove (as I have come to call it):

We pulled down a laurel limb, granting a view of the house.
Because I pruned the holly tree last fall, there’s a screened view of the street. (It seemed like a good idea at the time, but how I now regret having pruned those branches!)

I’ve been sitting in The Grove for the past half an hour. It’s wonderful. People pass by on the street, and they do not notice I’m here. Though it’s a warm day, it’s cool beneath the trees. It’s peaceful. The only drawback so far are the goddamn mosquitoes.

Now I have to decide what I want to do with this lovely secluded spot. My first idea was to put down a layer of pea gravel and then install some wrought iron furniture. That seems like the proper English thing to do. But after further thought, I wonder if there might not be other possibilities.

Should I install a fire pit? Should I find some sort of soft surface? (I can imagine how awesome it would be to do daily yoga in The Grove.) Should we opt for a picnic table? Is it best to level the space? (There’s a slight slope.) How can I screen the road from view?

There are many possibilities. I’m not sure where to even begin looking. All I know is that this idea, which seemed a little crazy at first, will come to fruition, and soon. Of all my pipe dreams — Mini Cooper, Stickley furniture — this is the one that will be most satisfying to achieve, and the cheapest to do.

I can’t wait to have a lovely secluded spot to call my own.

Bonus! As I was editing this post, Sammy (or friendly blue jay) fluttered into The Grove and came hopping up beside me. I could have reached out and touched him! He was apparently after a peanut I had unearthed while clearing the space.

In the News

Yesterday morning a crew from KGW (Portland’s channel 8 ) stopped by Rosings Park to interview me about my personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly. Both Amy Troy (the reporter) and Rod Stevens (the cameraman) were awesome. They were interesting and fun to talk to. Most of all, they were very understanding when I explained how irrationally nervous I become when dealing with radio or television. They did their best to put me at ease.

The strange thing was that I was perfectly relaxed when I knew the camera wasn’t on. I could chat and carry on a normal conversation. But as soon as I knew Rod was filming, I became self-conscious. I could feel myself trying to analyze my words as I spoke them, could feel myself garbling what I wanted to say. But I was powerless to stop it! Craziness.

Amy and Rod were at our house for 90 minutes to produce a 90 second segment for the evening news. About 20 of those minutes were spent doing a formal interview on the couch in the parlor. The rest of the time was spent in my office and in the yard.

The final cut of the interview that aired is okay, though I wince at some portions. I think I look like a big dork. “No you don’t,” Kris told me. “I thought it was nice.” I do think it’s hilarious that they kept my ad-libbed pea-munching. I was just goofing around.

The KGW web site also has a couple minutes of me in my office talking with Amy about money saving tips. This part is less successful. Kris doesn’t like it. I had cleaned my desk before the crew arrived, but Rod said, “Don’t you have anything you can put up there? Stuff to make it look like you’re working?” I laughed and pointed at the stacks of paper on the floor. “Yeah,” he said, smiling. “That’s more like it.”

So I put some stuff on my desk, including the notebook I’d taken with me to England and Ireland last summer. While Rod began filming, I flipped through the book and randomly stumbled upon a page listing a bunch of money-saving ideas that I’d brainstormed while on a train out of Dublin. I read them aloud to Amy. I knew Rod was filming, but I never imagined the footage would appear uncut on the web site!

There’s nothing really wrong with it, I suppose. I just look like an even bigger dork. Heh. My friend Stephen comforted me via e-mail: “I often thought I was a dork on television interviews until I got used to em.”

Anyhow, I’m glad I did it. And I’m glad that Amy and Rod were the crew dispatched to film me. The best part of the experience was spending time talking with each of them about their own experiences with money. It’s those sorts of interactions that make what I do exciting.

“If you really do get nervous, you should join Toastmasters,” Kris said after we watched the interview.

“I want to do the Dale Carnegie course,” I said.

“Yeah. But why spend thousands of dollars when Toastmasters is free?” she asked. She has a good point. Time to talk with Dave about Toastmasters again, I think.

Age of Consent

Sometimes when I was a boy, my father would hear a song on the radio and go all crazy on me. “I remember this song,” he’d say. “I used to love it.” When the movie Stand By Me came out in 1985, the soundtrack threw him into a nostalgic reverie. It never really made much sense to me.

As I’ve grown older, it’s made more sense, of course. I understand now what might have made him misty over the songs of his youth. But until today I never fully understood.

Just now “Age of Consent” by New Order came on XM44. This is a song that I used to love when I was in high school. But it may actually have been 20 years since I heard it. Listening to it (it’s still playing) gives me a visceral reaction — it feels like 1985 again, and I can feel the emotions I felt then. Mentally, I’ve been transported in time. I can feel myself working out in the box factory, sulking, listening to this song. (I had two New Order LPs that I would play over and over again while making boxes.)

I wonder if that’s what happened to Dad. Remember: back in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, music was not so ubiquitous. It wasn’t as easy to hear the songs you used to love. I’ve spent my adult life with Tears for Fears and U2 and Duran Duran. But my father didn’t have that luxury. When the radio stopped playing the Del Vikings and the Chordettes, he was forced to move on.

Me? I can go to YouTube and watch “Age of Consent” over and over and over again. (No official video exists that I can find.)

Bonus trivia: I’m the same age now, listening to “Age of Consent”, as my father was in 1985 when he heard the Stand by Me soundtrack.

Least Complicated

Today was the beginning of the rest of my life. It was my first official day away from the box factory as an actual writer. From here forward, I’ll be taking every Tuesday off. Starting in April, I’ll add another day off (probably Mondays), and so on. By this time next year, I’ll be working from home full-time.

Though this move comes with some trepidation, I’m pleased to report that one of my fears seems unfounded.

I had worried that by staying home, I’d simply free time for goofing off. The primary reason I want to write full-time is that I feel thwarted by the constant (justified) interruptions at the box factory, and from Kris when she’s home. But would I stay on task when on my own? It appears I will.

Over the past couple days, I’ve managed to reply to about 20% of my e-mail backlog, write ahead for the next week at Get Rich Slowly, and even bank three or four articles in case of emergency.

I’ve also managed to read a couple personal finance books and watch several episodes of Star Trek. What I’m trying to say is: this is going to work just fine. I’m going to stay on task. The quality and quantity of my writing should improve.

I still have some apprehension regarding the financial side of things. Yes, I’m earning enough from my web income to support me, but now that I’ve had a brief taste of earning two incomes, I have stars in my eyes. Two incomes is a lot of money.

But two incomes is also a lot of work, and that’s one thing I’m trying to escape. I want to focus on just the one job, the writing. The writing is what I love.

The Devil in the Dark

When I was a boy, I loved Star Trek. For nearly twenty years, Portland’s KPTV (channel 12) broadcast the series at 4pm every Sunday afternoon. We didn’t have a television for much of my childhood, but most of my friends did. Whenever possible, I would watch Star Trek.

When the series was released on DVD a few years ago, I bought the first season, but I never watched it. It’s been gathering dust.

A few weeks ago, I decided to make some clam chowder. This is a laborious process. Though I enjoy it, the work takes a couple hours, and much of it is mindless. “I should watch something on the computer,” I thought. “I should watch Star Trek.” And so I did. I’ve been watching one episode a night ever since.

Many of the early episodes are truly awful — there are good reasons the show struggled to stay on the air. But by the middle of the first season, things began to click. The writers and producers discovered their characters and figured out how to tell their stories.

I plan to do a full review of season in about a week, but I want to take the time to mention one of my favorite episodes: The Devil in the Dark. On an important mining colony, a mysterious creature is terrorizing the workers. This mysterious beast can move through solid rock, and it dissolves anyone it touches. Fifty men have died in just a few months. The Enterprise is summoned to eliminate the problem.

Initially, Kirk and company intend to destroy the creature. But, as he is wont to do, Spock begins to suspect that there’s something deeper to the problem. He’s right, of course. First of all, the life form is silicon-based, something that is seemingly impossible. Second, it is highly intelligent. And finally, it is merely defending its nest, which has been disrupted by the mining activities.

Watching the episode tonight, it was shockingly obvious that this is where my appreciation of inter-species friendship and communication originated. It was from watching this episode of Star Trek when I was a boy that I developed an appreciation for other animals, and began to suspect that other species might harbor intelligence that we, as humans, could barely comprehend. From there, it was only a small jump to similar philosophical positions.

Many of these Star Trek episodes don’t stand up well upon re-viewing. I haven’t seen them in twenty (or thirty!) years, and what I loved as a boy is sometimes almost unwatchable as an adult. (The Corbomite Maneuver is mind-numbingly bad.) But The Devil in the Dark is as good as I remembered. Amazing that much of the framework of the adult J.D.’s belief system can be traced to one hour of television made in 1965…

The Princess and the Pea

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. — Tolstoy

Nick and I just had a conversation about those incidents that scarred us in our youth. The crazy thing is that to adults — even to us as adults — these things seem trivial. Yet they’re the kind of things that shape our lives.

Fear of success

When Nick was in third grade, the church camp (Drift Creek) began to offer a week for kids his age. Nick wanted to go more than anything. At Bible school that summer, kids could earn a sort of scholarship to Drift Creek for accumulating points by memorizing Bible verses, etc.

Nick worked like crazy. He needed 1500 points to earn the scholarship, but he wanted to be sure. He earned more than 3000 points, far more than any other kid in Bible school. He was excited — he’d get to go to Drift Creek Camp!

But on the last day of Bible school, he found out that no scholarships were being offered to third graders. He’d done all that work for nothing. He was devastated.

As a result, Nick says, to this day he finds that he’s afraid to put all his effort into something. Somewhere in the back of his mind is the expectation that there won’t be any reward for the effort.

Dazed and confused

When I was about ten or twelve, our family made a visit to one of Mom’s aunts or uncles or cousins in Beaverton. We didn’t see Mom’s family very often, and both my parents were on edge. I think Dad always felt inadequate around them, as if he were being judged.

The house seemed like a mansion to me. I grew up in a run-down trailer house, and this place was enormous, filled with all sorts of expensive furniture. Jeff, Tony, and I ran around with the other kids while the adults sat in the living room, talking about adult stuff.

Because I was beginning to feel older, at some point I decided to join the adult conversation. In my memory, I went into the living room and sat down on the couch. I’m sure, however, that as most kids do, I plopped down on the couch. In any case, when I sat down, I dislodged an enormous painting that had been resting on the back of the sofa, causing it to fall to the floor.

Dad was livid. He took me outside and spanked me, probably one of the last times he ever did so. He was irate because I had embarrassed him in front of these people around whom he felt uncomfortable anyhow. I was dazed and confused. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong. In my mind, I had just tried to sit down on the couch. I had tried to do something good: join an adult conversation.

“I think about that incident several times a month,” I told Nick. He was shocked. “I’m serious,” I said. “All my life, I’ve thought about that incident several times a month. It is a deep part of who I am.”

Lie down on the couch

As an adult, it’s a challenge to cope with all of this baggage from my youth. Looking back, it seems so inconsequential. I know that Mom, too, fights some of this. She has often shared stories about the things that happened to her as a girl, the things that messed her up. When I hear the stories, I tend to dismiss them as trivial, just as you’re probably dismissing my story above as trivial. But they’re not trivial. These little things do lasting damage.

But how can a parent or teacher actually know which trivial things are going to do the lasting damage? Is it possible for a person to grow up without any sort of psychological scarring?

“People are strange,” I’m fond of saying. “They’re no such thing as normal. Every person is strange. But we’re each strange in different ways.” It’s not just my family that’s messed up — Kris’ family is messed up, too. So is every family. So is every person.

As of this moment, I am technically debt-free except for my mortgage. I haven’t actually paid the final debt, but I have the money in the bank to do so. This is an enormous step for me. Defeating my debt is akin to defeating the demons from my youth. It’s a sign that the adult J.D. is asserting himself, is denying that the things that happened to the young J.D. will actually control his life.

I’m not out of the woods yet, of course. I may have my financial life under control, but I’m still a fat middle-aged man who eats like shit and who never exercises. I have some very real social anxieties. For some time, I’ve considered seeing a psychologist to discuss some of my poor behavior patterns. Maybe it’s time to actually do so.

Becoming Professional

“You know how you feel overwhelmed some days?” Kris asked last night.

“What do you mean?” I said, because the question was a sort of non-sequitur.

“You know,” she said. “You often complain that you’re getting too much e-mail and that there’s too much you have to do for the blog. You tell me that you’re overwhlemed.”

“Oh. That. Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Well,” she said, “today I feel overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed for you. I can’t believe how much stuff you got today. How can you possibly reply to it all?”

“I can’t,” I said. “In fact, I’m afraid that I didn’t even notice today. I’ve been ignoring e-mail all day. I’m near e-mail bankruptcy again, anyhow. My inbox has grown from 30 messages to 300, and I don’t have time to answer them.”

“Yeah,” Kris said. “It’s overwhelming.”

It is overwhelming, but mostly I love it. I love it so much, in fact, that I’m going to make it my full-time job. As I recently shared at Get Rich Slowly, beginning in January, I’m going to reduce my hours at Custom Box Service. I’ll be cutting back one day at the start of every quarter so that by the start of 2009, I’ll be writing from home full-time.

I’m actually making more from blogging now than I am from the box factory, so there’s no worries about where I’m going to get the money to do this. I do have an enormous tax liability that I need to prepare for, and then I need to save a significant “rainy day fund”, but aside from those two things, I’m ready to make this move.

At first, I’ll be focused on the blogging, but I hope to shift to other sources of income, too. For example, I believe I’m finally ready to write a book. I’ve been getting one or two e-mails every month from publishers interested in discussing a deal with me. That’s flattering, no doubt, but I’ve talked with enough writers to know that there’s very little money in going that route. I have three goals in writing about personal finance. They are, in order of importance:

To help other people take control of their financial lives.
To earn money for myself.
To achieve some sort of fame.

That last goal isn’t very important to me, and it seems to be the only advantage a big-name publishing house offers. Yes, if my book were to be successful, I could make a lot of money. But the odds are stacked against me, even if the book is good. (I read a lot of personal finance books. Some of the best books are those that nobody has ever heard of.) As a result, I’m likely to do some sort of self-publishing.

Anyhow, I’d also like to pursue other sources of income from writing: magazine articles, short fiction, etc. Get Rich Slowly is keen, but I’d like to diversify.

Most of you are already aware that I’ve been meaning to move away from the box factory. I just thought I’d make it official.