BACK TO THE GRIND

The Christmas Holidays are over and I'm back to the grind tomorrow. It will be a bit strange actually going into the office after spending the last two weeks "working from home". I have to put that in quotes because I found myself very easily distracted these last two weeks. Sure I attended conference calls, worked on reports, spoke with service delivery teams and attended to client needs as they arose... but I also took lots of breaks to watch movies, play video games, and work on some odd projects around the house.

One thing I've learned is that if I am going to be working from home more frequently I need a dedicated office space. I've got the laptop and wireless, so I'm not exactly tethered to the desktop PC that just happens to be in the same room as the TV and the Wii. More then a few times I was sitting on a conference call muted and had to turn around to my two daughters (8 and 3) and ask them to take it down a notch. I'm thinking that we will convert one of the spare bedrooms into a dedicated office space for me. That way I can head upstairs, close the door, and actually get some work done. I can also get a tax deduction on the square footage of the room if it is in fact a dedicated office space.

Space isn't an issue, as technically we have a 5-bedroom house and have two spare bedrooms. One is currently converted into a play-room and homework room for the girls. Its complete with TV, a huge selection of movies, all their toys, shelves of books, and a homework desk. I love having that room because it keeps the rest of the house free of "kid clutter" (mostly). The other spare bedroom is actually functioning as a spare bedroom. I'm thinking a small desk and swapping the double bed for a sofa-bed would be perfect. That way we still have somewhere for company but I get the dedicated office space. The room is on the small side, so adding a desk to the current setup may not be very practical... unless I can find a really cool small desk.

We did some shopping on boxing day, and at some point this week two large, matching, 100% leather sofas will be delivered my living room. The wife and I finally broke down and bought some new furniture. Frankly I should have done it a long time ago. We have two very beat up (as in they wouldn't look out of place in a frat house) old second hand sofas that I got about 5 years ago in the living room. These are the kind of sofas you see on garbage day outside someones house and think "WTF... someone was sitting on that yesterday?"

I make good money in the day job, have zero consumer debt (pay off credit cards every month), own both my vehicles, etc. Really the only debt we have is the mortgage, and I can count myself lucky that unlike many people in the current economy, my house is still worth much more then I owe on it. That all being said, I am still far from where I would consider myself comfortable. I'd rather have more $ set aside for retirement for starters. My "portfolio" is non-existent but one resolution for 2010 is to change that. One thing I was not going to do was buy a couple cheap-ass sofas that will look like crap in a few years. Instead we dropped several thousand on some very nice sofas that will still look great in 20 years.

Pulled down all the decorations outside today and had packed up the interior stuff on Saturday so the house is back to as normal as it gets. Winter has finally arrived with a vengeance and before spring I have a few house projects to work on (finish restoring and painting the banister and baseboards being the largest). I like indoor projects like that to keep me busy until things get nice again outside and I can get back in into gardening, landscaping, and having the nicest lawn on the block.

Not much of a "neighbour themed" post today, I'll do some research for funny stories later this week.