Amy and I just returned from 8 sun filled days in St. Lucia… And we got engaged! She is the love of my life and we are looking forward to a wonderful lifetime together. The tentative date is late march ‘07 and the location is along the shores of San Diego.

What an island! Like Barbados, we met so many locals who were born on the island, have never left, and either have no interest or means to travel abroad. The island is only a marathon 27miles long! Its a total Truman Show. Amazing. In a 2 hour flight, we were in San Juan… Further than most will ever go in their lifetime…. Yet we continued on and 5 hours later were back in Chicago. The opportunities we have should never be taken for granted.

I just arrived in Santa Barbara CA for a few days of consulting at UC Santa Barbara… Its almost 8pm PDT and I am sitting outside at the hotel patio thumb typing during the sunset. My bet is California will be home for some time to come….

Did I forget to mention that I was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean yesterday morning and flying in a 30-seat prop plane over the Pacific Ocean a mere 36 hours later! Nuts….

Owning a car… growing up it used to be the “thing to do.” Now, I think it is a complete waste of money. Don’t get me wrong, transportation is an important part of daily living and there is a cost associated with it.

I bought a new car 2 days ago - One factory built, black 4×4 Toyota Tacoma 4-door with offroad options. Ok, I splurged. And the vehicle is gorgeous! I only live once. Fact of the matter is that I have a hard time justifying the hours I spend each month just to pay for a hunk of steel parked in a garage. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hand-selected vehicle — but after living for 13 years downtown Chicago without a car, I like the idea of not spending unecessary money. Though, I’m moving to California (Santa Cruz) and it is a driving community so I was forced to make the decision.

I don’t agree with the de-pave Chicago folks of criticalmass.org (but I LOVE their bike rides)… I also don’t like the dependence on Oil… somewhere there is a happy medium and I am forced to live in the middle.. just some thoughts…

The eBay experience. I once heard an anonymous quote that “everyone has $1,000 of sellable goods in their closets.” Well, I proved it. And then some.

In preparation for my move to Santa Cruz from Chicago, I decided to sell a bunch of valuable goods in great condition that I simply didn’t need anymore… XBox games, CD’s, DVD’s, networking hardware, computer hardware, books, etc. Why haul it if you don’t use it? After 4 months of eBay’ing, I have a profit of $1,250 ! And I’m now I have a community score of 68.

Overall I had smooth transactions. Though, there were a few bumps along the way. On one occasion, someone tore a DVD out of the box enroute via USPS. On another occasion, I shipped a -well packed- glass frame that still arrived shattered — oops! I only had one item never arrive at its destination - some books - and I did the fair thing by giving a $12 refund to the buyer — Something I considered as the “cost” of getting a positive eBay score.

The scary part about all this is that most of the stuff sold for 10-40 cents on the dollar. Great for profit, but for overall annual spending, that’s leads to a ton of money spent on “stuff.” Lets just say it has made me more fiscally aware than ever…