Archive for the ‘Ramblings’ Category

Finally got back out on the trails this weekend after two weeks away due to Gaian Mind. I was still a little sick from a terrible cold that had been bringing me down all week, but I finally seemed to have the energy to pull it together and hit it hard. I got up at 6am Sunday, changed a flat tube and headed out to Star Pass. So beautiful out there. I took this picture with my phone before descending into the valley ahead. At some point I came up on a couple out for a morning hike. As I passed they asked me “how many?”. I replied, “just me”. Yeah, the desert + a bike + just me. It’s like medicine for the soul.

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Stef and I tried out eating vegan for Lent this year. It’s definitely a lot harder to eat vegan than it is vegetarian. This is especially true when you don’t cook much. And who’s got time to cook? Nearly every restaurant has vegetarian options, but it’s very difficult to get something that’s completely vegan. It seems like everything has either milk, butter, egg, or honey in it.

Thank goodness for Lovin’ Spoonfuls [http://lovinspoonfuls.com]! We ate there often. We also found a good Vegan pizza place that’s just around the corner from our place. We also found vegan options at:
*Rocco’s Little Chicago Pizza
*Magpies Pizza
*Pei Wei
*Chipotle
*Chopped (the hot Thai peanut dressing is vegan!)
*sandwiches at The Co-Op on 4th and the Shop Natural Market on Tool Ave
*Zivaz (after highly modifying how the tofu fajitas come)
*Jamba Juice (try the vegan apple cinnamon pretzel)
*Xoom Juice (all their drinks can be made non-dairy)
*Epic Cafe (lots of vegan pastries)
*Bentley’s (by the UofA. fantastic veggie burger, get it with the garlic spread in place of the mayonnaise)
*The Cup at Hotel Congress (Awesome vegan French toast, but why do they serve it with a side of butter?!)
*Govinda’s (great Sunday brunch buffet. All vegetarian with many vegan options)
*Casbah on 4th

Now that Lent is over it’s nice to be a less limited on food options. We’re going out for Mexican tonight. We really missed it. It’s hard to eat Mexican without cheese. It was a good experience and I am going to try to limit my egg and dairy consumption, but I don’t foresee completely eliminating it again anytime soon.

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Last weekend, without notice, eBay closed all 400 some of my auctions. They sent me some vague canned email stating that my listing were closed because I was trying to circumvent eBay fees. Everyone who was bidding on one of the auctions as well as customers that recently won and paid for one of my eBay auctions received a notice from eBay stating that I was in violation of an eBay policy and my listings were removed. WTF? I had customers contacting me freaking out thinking I just ripped them off. I later found out what the problem was. I had the URL to my website built into the banner image I used in my auctions. eBay didn’t like that. Once I knew this it took me all of 3 minutes to remove the URL from the image in Photoshop and re-upload it to my webserver. It would have been nice if they would have just told me to fix it to begin with instead of trying to wreck my business.

I lost a ton of sales from this and my reputation with my customers was tainted. I had to do something. And I did. I marked all the items on my website half off and email thousands of my past customers to announce my “eBay sucks” sale. The response was fantastic. I had so many customers email me back to give me their support and in some cases their own story about how eBay screwed them over that it took me days to read all of them. The sale was also a big hit. I made enough sales from it to cover my loss of eBay sales from the closed auctions.

But wait there’s more. Since eBay closed all my auctions, including my store items, they had to credit me back the eBay fees for them. They not only had to credit back my listing fees, but also my final value fees because they emailed customers who had won auctions to tell them I was bad and they didn’t have to pay me. They emailed customers that had won auctions and paid for them months and months and months ago. The end result, I received a credit of over $800. So this all started with them thinking that I was trying to circumvent fees and it ends with them crediting me back for eight hundred buck of the fees. That sure makes a lot of sense, don’t it? Thanks eBay!

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Last night was the Club Crawl here in Tucson. They shut down downtown and for $10 you could bounce around to all the clubs and hear all kinds of different music (as long as it was rock music). They even had stages setup in the streets. We ended up staying until 2am when everything closed down. Great fun.

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It’s been a busy last few weeks. For those keeping track, here’s a summary of the latest happenings around the Nolletti house.

The House
The house sale is a done deal. Hope the new owners are enjoying it. I’m definitely enjoying not having a house to have to keep up. We’d like to buy a place around here, but housing prices have gotten insane. I really wanted a downtown loft, and there are lots of new ones going it. But they are all around $250/sqft! So unless they are selling just a closet, we’re going to have to do some lookin.

Transportation
One of my goals in moving was to live lighter. To help facilitate that Stef and I are getting scooters. We’re going to keep her car, but I think I’m going to sell mine. I picked up her scooter at a dealer last night, but am having trouble finding the one I want.

Summer Fun
Plans are coming together for this summer. We have 4 friends coming to visit with us next month, and we have airline tickets and admission tickets for Cochlea, Gaian Mind, and also a weekend back home to go to a cousin’s wedding.

DJ
After a short bit of playing with our friend, Jeremy’s new CDJ’s, Stef and I decided that we had to get some too! I just ordered a gently used pair that I hope to be getting next week. Who know’s, we might become superstar DJ’s. (Yeah right). We also picked up a 3 channel mixer for them so we can mix in the notebook computer. Stef has been having fun playing with a program called Tracktor.

Work
Work has been keeping me really busy. I love it though (most of the time). I suppose I should be getting back to it now.

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I’m finally getting started on my taxes. Filling out tax forms isn’t that hard, but getting all my junk from the previous year together is a nightmare. You can see stacks of papers everywhere on the webcam. So I’m working on setting up a document management system to scan everything into. This way I’ll never lose an important document again. Just having some problems with the computer that I’m serving it on going too slow. I’m going to have to blow some cash on some new hardware pretty soon.

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Took my parents back to the airport last night. Got back about midnight then worked on getting caught up on some eBay stuff. I enjoyed the visit from Nicole and Shawn and my Mom and Larry, but I really need to get caught up with some things now. I decided that I really want to get this new business idea off the ground. I’m making it my goal to work on it a little each day once I get caught up in with some other things.

I talked with Jenn, Erik, and Jamie on the phone last night. If you guys are reading this, I really miss you all. Come visit us! :). Stef and I are working on plans to go to Gaian Mind this summer. That would be a lot of fun. I hope we can pull it together.

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You Are a Hunter Soul

You are driven and ambitious - totally self motiviated to succeed Actively working to acheive what you want, you are skillful in many areas. You are a natural predator with strong instincts … and more than a little demanding. You are creative, energetic, and an extremely powerful force. An outdoors person, you like animals and relate to them better than people. You tend to have an explosive personality, but also a good sense of humor. People sometimes see you as arrogant or a know it all. You tend to be a bit of a loner, though you hate to be alone. Souls you are most compatible with: Seeker Soul and Peacemaker Soul

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Gem Show
It’s that time of the year again here in good olde Tuxon. The gem show has come to town for the next 3 weeks and people are everywhere. I have been riding my bike as much as possible to avoid sitting in all the out of town traffic.

eBay Crazy
I’m been going a little eBay crazy lately. I shipped 61 orders today.

House Offer?
We’re supposed to be getting an offer on the house tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how that goes. I’m not willing to come down at this point since it is still fresh on the market. So if they want it then hopefully they are willing to pay up.

Settling In
I guess you could say that we are getting settled in to our new town. I can’t seem to go anywhere around downtown without running into someone I know. I’ve never been much of a people person but working for the city I’m already met hundreds of people.

Our First Visitors
Nicole and Shawn are coming out to visit next week. That should be a lot of fun. It will be so nice to spend time with old friends. Then later this month my parents are coming out too.

Mexican Food
I Love Mexican Food! Yum yum yum. And when we’re not eating Mexican there is this very good Sushi place here. Best sushi ever.

My Desk
I’ve only been on the job for about 6 weeks and they are already planning to move my desk. Kinda a bummer since i have a wall and a window. I’m doing my best to avoid ‘The Maze’ area as it’s called here. Guess well see what happens. They just better not go near my stapler!

That’s all for now.

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