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You are here: Home / Life / Fighting giraffes, surreal landscapes, dancing with unicorns and restoring a Vanagon

Fighting giraffes, surreal landscapes, dancing with unicorns and restoring a Vanagon

by jlcollinsnh 22 Comments

eat ice cream daily

What better advice than this?

As I mentioned last time, this whole retirement thing has turned out to be a bunch busier than I would have guessed. Or have planned for.  Like a kid dishing out his own ice cream, I’ve heaped far too much stuff into my bowl.  At least for the first part of the year.  Net result?  My planned post for today on Social Security is still under construction.

I am please to report I have passed the various exams and am now fully VITA certified by the IRS in Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Tax Preparation, along with Ethics.  Hmmm.  Seems I can’t have client refunds directed into my personal account after all.  I can’t even put out a tip jar!

This past Tuesday I attended the second of our French classes.  I am reminded as to why I struggled so with it in college. What makes it challenging for me is looking at how the words are spelled and then hearing how they are pronounced. Big difference. Hopefully, with time, it will become more obvious. With Spanish, I can look at a word and be pretty close at guessing the pronunciation. With French, I’ve a lot to learn!

Ordinarily, I save these collections of cool stuff for you for when I slip away for a few weeks or months.  But, why wait?

Let’s start with these…

tree Dancer920.jpg.CROP.article920-large

surreal landscapes

There’s ways of looking and then there are ways of seeing.

giraffes

Who knew giraffes were fighters?

Image

These guys look pretty beat up, right?

Three Princeton students pose after the Freshman, Sophomore snowball fight.

Snow ball fight??  Seems college guys were tougher in….

1893. Princeton, NJ.

Image 1

The only known photograph of an African American Union soldier with his family.

c1863-65

No question, in places like Spain these are hard days.  This brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye:  Here Comes the Sun.

And this guy is just incredible.  Just wait til he goes up the lamp post.

Here’s FemmeFrugality on…..

unicorn mask

….what to do when you have all the money in the world.

Here’s James Altucher on….

spaceship

 ….the Six People You Must Find Today.

and….

leia-with-chain-around-neck

10 Reasons You Have to Quit Your Job This Year

Glenn writes a blog called To Simplify about living and traveling in his van.  Recently he decided to downsize even further.  He picked up an old Vanagon, gutted it and has begun rebuilding it.  His posts on the project have fascinated me.  Maybe you, too:

Vanagon

Simple Living thru Insane Projects

There’s finally some ambition lacking going on over at Lacking Ambition.

lacking ambition

a moment of ambition lacking

Meanwhile, Paula had trouble renting this beautiful house:

rental house

$2700 lesson learned

Mr. Money Mustache presents his annual review of not-so-much money spent:

MMM revealed-134x180

Living the high life on low bucks

101 Centavos tells us what we really already know:

burger

Bacon is way better than New Year’s Resolutions

You’ll find my tale of a vanilla/bacon milkshake in the comments.

My pal Sean is back posting in a big way.  Learn how to…

Go Broke with Self Storage

and

fool-and-courtesan

What We’re Up Against

Finally, if Monday will see you returning to the daily grind, here’s…

Tap-dance-to-work

How to Tap Dance to Work

Until then, have a wonderful weekend!

Related

Important Resources

  • Talent Stacker is a resource that I learned about through my work with Jonathan and Brad at ChooseFI, and first heard about Salesforce as a career option in an episode where we featured Bradley Rice on the Podcast. In that episode, Bradley shared how he reached FI quickly thanks to his huge paychecks and discipline in keeping his expenses low. Jonathan teamed up with Bradley to build Talent Stacker, and they have helped more than 1,000 students from all walks of life complete the program and land jobs like clockwork, earning double or even triple their old salaries using a Salesforce certification to break into a no-code tech career.
  • Credit Cards are like chain saws. Incredibly useful. Incredibly dangerous. Resolve to pay in full each month and never carry a balance. Do that and they can be great tools. Here are some of the very best for travel hacking, cash back and small business rewards.
  • Personal Capital is a free tool to manage and evaluate your investments. With great visuals you can track your net worth, asset allocation, and portfolio performance, including costs. At a glance you'll see what's working and what you might want to change. Here's my full review.
  • Betterment is my recommendation for hands-off investors who prefer a DIFM (Do It For Me) approach. It is also a great tool for reaching short-term savings goals. Here is my Betterment Review
  • NewRetirement offers cool tools to help guide you in answering the question: Do I have enough money to retire? And getting started is free. Sign up and you will be offered two paths into their retirement planner. I was also on their podcast and you can check that out here:Video version, Podcast version.
  • Tuft & Needle (T&N) helps me sleep at night. They are a very cool company with a great product. Here’s my review of what we are currently sleeping on: Our Walnut Frame and Mint Mattress.
  • Vanguard.com

Filed Under: Life

« My plan for 2013
Social Security: How secure and when to take it »

Comments

  1. Michael Crosby says

    January 25, 2013 at 5:05 pm

    Jim, interesting that we gravitate to the same blogs. Lacking Ambition, MMM, To Simplify, yours and ERE are my favorite blogs. Though ERE is pretty much on hold, I still enjoy reading his old stuff, just lots of wisdom as far as I’m concerned.

    This Lacking Ambition fellow is a very interesting character to me and inspiring. He is so young and has personal finance figured out so early in life.

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 26, 2013 at 12:02 am

      He is all that and even more in person.

      Since he’s only about an hour motorbike ride from me we had a chance to meet for coffee last summer. Good guy and a good time.

      Reply
      • RobDiesel says

        January 28, 2013 at 11:15 am

        That’s pretty cool. I stumbled across his blog many moons ago and was struck by his simple statement that he just doesn’t want to work. That was an honest proclamation that is 10% me. People look shocked when I say I don’t. The thing is after retirement I am sure there will be plenty of things to fill my time (with joy) but it won’t be actual work-for-money.

        I have to make a (motorcycle?) trip up to the Norfeast (pronounciation joke) and visit you, . (lackingambition) and Bart Centre (the guy behind eternal-earthbound-pets.com).
        I’m not sure what it is with the Northeast, but it does collect some interesting characters.

        BTW, I never found English all that hard to learn. I did start learning it in 3rd grade, but when I moved here as not-quite-a-legal-adult, I realized school learning wasn’t even half the battle. Yet, six months of total immersion and I started dreaming and thinking in English and then it was all just working on my pronunciation. French and German were never my strong points. I am proud to say I could probably get to where I need to go if you dropped me off in the middle of each country, but I’d have to speak Italian (wave my hands a lot) to augment my butchering of their languages. 🙂

        Reply
        • jlcollinsnh says

          January 28, 2013 at 2:17 pm

          Hi Rob….

          If you make it up to NH, I’ll buy the coffee. We’ll speak English. 🙂
          Where are you coming from?

          I’d also be interested in meeting Bart. The link to his site in your comment didn’t work, so here it is for those interested: http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/Home_Page.html

          It reminds me of my standing bet offered to those who know when the world will end:

          all of mine/all of yours. you pick the date the world ends. if you’re right, you get all of mine. if the world’s still here, I get all of yours.

          For some reason I’ve yet to have a taker…..

          Reply
          • RobDiesel says

            January 28, 2013 at 5:07 pm

            Thank you, and English will be your reward for treating me to a coffee. 🙂 I’m currently residing in Texas, but can’t wait to trade that in to return to the West Coast.

            Bart is a hoot (thanks for sorting the link) and was gracious enough to autograph his two books for my girlfriend. His site was actually “for real” for about two years if I remember right, and he did interviews and news coverage about it. Hilarity ensued. He came out later and admitted it was a gag, which was very clever and lead to even more laughs.

            The world ending was interesting – not only did it spawn religions (7th Day Adventists/Millerites were waiting for the 2nd coming of Christ, he didn’t show, Miller misread, they waited again, Christ didn’t show, etc but they still exist) and interesting behavior in people, but the later ones don’t get publicly shamed forever and ever (he nutters about May 21st, then oh, June, no wait.. Mayans about December 21st) as they should.

            I was curious, of course, so I watched the markets and didn’t see a single blip indicating that people feared the end. Of civilization, that is. The fiscal cliff was feared, mostly because it was real.

            My money didn’t do anything different. The stocks increased, my 401(k) from the old job rolled into VTSAX, most everything is on autopilot that way. Netflix has been a boon to my portfolio as one of my earliest “smart” investments, Sirius Radio and 3D Printing as well.

            The markets go up. You just have to be in them. 🙂

  2. 101 Centavos says

    January 25, 2013 at 10:55 pm

    a nonpareil selection, as always. Delighted to be included, especially in such august company.

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 26, 2013 at 12:03 am

      an august group indeed, and it wouldn’t be the same without you.

      Reply
  3. The Keichi One says

    January 26, 2013 at 1:12 am

    French sounds difficult! One thing I can say about Japanese is that there is no trick to learn about pronunciation. Now if there just weren’t so many kanji!

    Your link to Glenn’s blog about the Vanagon found me reading nearly all of his posts from the last four months. What a great project! I can’t wait to see how it turns out. His music isn’t half bad either!

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 26, 2013 at 7:52 pm

      A number of years training in Shotokan taught me, if nothing else, to count to ten in Japanese. Usually while in pain. Other than a few commands I don’t remember but would likely respond to, that’s it. 🙂

      Glad you’re enjoying To Simplify. Great vicarious fun!

      Reply
  4. spaarolifantje says

    January 26, 2013 at 3:20 am

    In the defense of French: you English also have a really weird way of writing down your words. Only we Dutch know how to pronounce words in the right way. Everybody else is just ignoring some letters here, adding some unnecessary sounds there and abusing the beautiful ou, au and ui combinations…

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 26, 2013 at 7:47 pm

      no need to defend French, the shortcomings in the learning process are entirely mine. As for English, I’m eternally grateful it is my native language. From what I hear, I wouldn’t want to have to learn it as an adult.

      Some one told me that Dutch and English are very similar. True?

      Reply
      • spaarolifantje says

        January 27, 2013 at 2:21 am

        I should have added a 😉 to that previous post. 🙂

        English and Dutch share some things, like paying little attention as to whether a word is male or female, the way we make verbs past or future tense, and how we don’t change a word depending on its role in a sentence (genetiv and dativ in German, things like “the postman did something, the postman’s dog, talk to the postman, hit the postman”, where in German this would ask for different endings of “the” and of “postman”).
        We also share words, especially a lot of words about the sea, like sea/zee, boat/boot, fish/vis, keel/kiel and scurbuk/scheurbuik . You can sit on a stool and we will sit on a stoel, but our stoel is actually your chair and your stool is a krukje here.

        But I find the “th”-sound impossible to pronounce, at least I understand the real “th”-sound should be with a special movement of your tongue, mine comes out as “d”. And you would find our “ui” sound difficult. And yes, that is one sound, not a sequence of two sounds like ui as in intuitive.

        So yes, some similarities (=overeenkomsten) but also some differences (=verschillen).

        Reply
        • jlcollinsnh says

          January 27, 2013 at 8:54 am

          Mmmm…..

          I just might take up Dutch next!

          Reply
  5. femmefrugality says

    January 26, 2013 at 11:27 pm

    I was so shocked when I originally learned about giraffe fights! I guess those necks were designed for more than just spotting predators and eating off trees! These are some really cool articles/pics. I’m honored to be among them…thanks so much!

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 27, 2013 at 9:05 am

      always a pleasure having you, FF, on this otherwise hyper manly site!*

      *see comment above. 😉

      Reply
  6. chenzhaowei says

    January 27, 2013 at 2:00 am

    I actually really liked French because there were a lot of words that looked like English ones. The rules on which letters get pronounced are pretty fixed so once you get the hang of it, you should be fine.

    Thanks for posting all those neat articles. A few of those are blogs I have not seen before.

    By the way, it does seem like guys are not as tough these days… http://artofmanliness.com/2013/01/13/testosterone-week-intro/

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 27, 2013 at 9:03 am

      Ha! No surer sign of a general lack of manliness than the existence of a site titled: “The Art of Manliness.” Especially when one of the manly skills taught there is “How to dial 911″*

      *for my international readers, 911 is the emergency number you call for police and/or fire help.

      Reply
      • renewablewealth says

        January 27, 2013 at 1:31 pm

        Not to get depressing or anything, but many men of our generation grew up without fathers. I’m glad there’s someone out there at least trying to teach the sorts of things you were supposed to learn from dad.

        Reply
  7. renewablewealth says

    January 27, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    Honored to be on this list, seeing as it includes several of my very favorites – thanks!

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 28, 2013 at 12:48 am

      Well, who wouldn’t be honored to be associated with Fighting Giraffes???

      Good to have you posting again!

      Reply
  8. Shilpan says

    January 28, 2013 at 10:18 pm

    I really like the way you’ve included images with article links. Way to go, my friend! Thanks for the mention.

    Reply
    • jlcollinsnh says

      January 30, 2013 at 6:36 am

      Thanks!

      This time it was easy. I lifted most from the blogs, like yours, I linked to. 🙂

      Reply

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      • roundup: Some random cool things
      • Stocks — Part XXI: Investing with Vanguard for Europeans
      • Case Study #7: What it looks like when everything financial goes wrong
      • 1st Annual Louis Rukeyser Memorial Market Prediction Contest 2013 results, and my forecast for 2014
  • ► 2013 (41)
    • ► December (4)
      • Closing up for the Holidays, see you in 2014
      • Betterment: a simpler path to wealth
      • Case Study 6: Helping an ill and elderly parent
      • Stocks -- Part XX: Early Retirement Withdrawal Strategies and Roth Conversion Ladders from a Mad Fientist
    • ► November (3)
      • Death, Taxes, Estate Plans, Probate and Prob8
      • Case Study #5: Zero to 2.6 million in 25 years
      • Case Study #4: Using the 4% rule and asset allocations.
    • ► October (3)
      • Republic Wireless and my $19 per month phone plan
      • Case Study #3: Let's get Tom to Latin America!
      • The Stock Series gets its own page
    • ► September (2)
      • Case Study #2: Joe -- off to a fast start!
      • Chautauqua 2013: A Week of Dreams
    • ► August (1)
      • Closing up shop plus an opening at Chautauqua, my new podcast, phone, book and other random cool stuff
    • ► July (1)
      • They Will Kill You For Your Shoes!
    • ► June (4)
      • Stocks -- Part VIII-b: Should you avoid your company's 401k?
      • Shilpan's Seven Habits to Live More with Less
      • Stocks -- Part XIX: How to think about money
      • My path for my kid -- the first 10 years
    • ► May (5)
      • Why your house is a terrible investment
      • Stocks — Part XVIII: Investing in a raging bull
      • Dining with the Ghosts of Sarah Bernhardt and Alfons Mucha
      • How we finally got the house sold
      • Stocks — Part XVII: What if you can't buy VTSAX? Or even Vanguard?
    • ► April (4)
      • Greetings from Prague & a computer question
      • Swimming with Tigers, a 2nd chance on the Chautauqua, a financial article gets it wrong and I'm off to Prague
      • Storage, Moving and Movers
      • Homeless, and a bit on the strategy of dollar cost averaging
    • ► March (4)
      • Wild Turkeys, Motorcycles, Dining Room Sets & Greed
      • Roots v. Wings: considering home ownership
      • How about that stock market?!
      • The Blog has New Clothes
    • ► February (5)
      • Meet Mr. Money Mustache, JD Roth, Cheryl Reed & me for a Chautauqua in Ecuador
      • High School Poetry, Carnival, cool ads and random pictures that caught my eye
      • Consignment Shops: Best business model ever?
      • Cafes
      • Stocks -- Part XVI: Index Funds are really just for lazy people, right?
    • ► January (5)
      • Social Security: How secure and when to take it
      • Fighting giraffes, surreal landscapes, dancing with unicorns and restoring a Vanagon
      • My plan for 2013
      • VITA, income taxes and the IRS
      • How to be a stock market guru and get on MSNBC
  • ► 2012 (53)
    • ► December (6)
      • See you next year....until then: The Origin of Life, Life on Other Worlds, Mechanical Graveyards, Great Art, Alternative Lifestyles and Finding Freedom
      • Stocks -- Part XV: Target Retirement Funds, the simplest path to wealth of all
      • Stocks -- Part XIV: Deflation, the ugly escort of Depressions.
      • Stocks Part XIV: Deflation, the ugly escort of Depressions.
      • Stocks -- Part XIII: The 4% rule, withdrawal rates and how much can I spend anyway?
      • How I learned to stop worrying about the Fiscal Cliff and you can too.
    • ► November (2)
      • Rent v. owning: A couple of case studies in Ecuador
      • So, what does a month in Ecuador cost anyway?
    • ► October (4)
      • See you in December....
      • Meet me in Ecuador?
      • The Podcast: You can hear me now.
      • Stocks -- Part XII: Bonds
    • ► September (6)
      • Stocks -- Part XI: International Funds
      • The Smoother Path to Wealth
      • Case Study #I: Putting the Simple Path to Wealth into Action
      • Tales of Bolivia: Calle de las Brujas
      • Stocks -- Part X: What if Vanguard gets Nuked?
      • Travels in South America: It was the best of times....
    • ► August (1)
      • Home again
    • ► June (4)
      • Yellow Fever, closing up shop for the summer and heading to Peru y Bolivia
      • I could not have said it better myself...
      • Stocks -- Part IX: Why I don't like investment advisors
      • Happy Birthday, jlcollinsnh; and thanks for the gift Mr. MM!
    • ► May (6)
      • Stocks -- Part VIII: The 401K, 403b, TSP, IRA & Roth Buckets
      • Mr. Money Mustache
      • The College Conundrum
      • Stocks -- Part VII: Can everyone really retire a millionaire?
      • Stocks -- Part VI: Portfolio ideas to build and keep your wealth
      • Stocks -- Part V: Keeping it simple, considerations and tools
    • ► April (6)
      • Stocks -- Part IV: The Big Ugly Event, Deflation and a bit on Inflation
      • Stocks -- Part III: Most people lose money in the market.
      • Stocks -- Part II: The Market Always Goes Up
      • Stocks -- Part 1: There's a major market crash coming!!!! and Dr. Lo can't save you.
      • You can eat my Vindaloo, mega lottery, Blondie, Noa, Israel Kamakawiwo 'Ole, art, film and a ride on the Space Shuttle
      • Where in the world are you?
    • ► March (7)
      • How I lost money in real estate before it was fashionable, Part V: Sold! and the taxman cometh.
      • How I lost money in real estate before it was fashionable, Part IV: I become a Landlord.
      • How I lost money in real estate before it was fashionable, Part III: The Battle is Joined.
      • How I lost money in real estate before it was fashionable, Part II: The Limits of the Law.
      • How I lost money in real estate before it was fashionable, Part I: Impossibly Naive.
      • You, too, can be conned
      • Armageddon and the value of practical skills
    • ► February (6)
      • Rent v. Owning Your Home, opportunity cost and running some numbers
      • The Casanova Kid, a Shit Knife, a Good Book, Having No Regrets, Dark Matter and a bit of Magic
      • What Poker, Basketball and Mike Whitaker taught me about Luck
      • How to Give like a Billionaire
      • Go ahead, make my day
      • Muk Finds Success in Tahiti
    • ► January (5)
      • Travels with "Esperando un Camino"
      • Beanie Babies, Naked Barbie, American Pickers and Old Coots
      • Selling the House and Adventures in Staging
      • The bashing of Index Funds, Jack Bogle and a Jedi dog trick
      • Magic Beans
  • ► 2011 (22)
    • ► December (1)
      • Dividend Growth Investing
    • ► November (2)
      • The Mummy's head, Particle Physics and "Knocking on Heaven's Door"
      • "It's Better in the Wind" or why I ride a motorcycle
    • ► October (1)
      • Lazy Days and School Days
    • ► July (2)
      • The road to Zanzibar sometimes goes thru Ecuador...
      • Johnny wins the lotto and heads to Paris
    • ► June (16)
      • Chainsaws, Elm Trees and paying for College
      • Stuff I’ve failed at: the early years
      • Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat
      • The. Worst. Used. Car. Ever.
      • Top Ten reasons your future is so bright it hurts my eyes to look at it
      • The Most Dangerous Words Your Customer Can Say
      • How not to drown in The Sea of Assholes
      • What we own and why we own it
      • The Ten Sales Commandments
      • My ever so formal and oh so dry CV
      • How I failed my daughter and a simple path to wealth
      • The Myth of Motivation
      • Why you need F-you money
      • My short attention span
      • Why I can’t pick winning stocks, and you can’t either
      • The Monk and the Minister

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