I’ve found a neat little trick for always having something to write about when I want to update my blog. Whenever I think of a new topic, but don’t have time to write a full blown post and copy-edit it, I can just write up a quick draft and save it to use later as the starting point for a post. I have started to use the tagging feature along with this trick to accumulate a lot of topics I want to eventually post on but need to do research or more thinking on. Just a little thing, but I think over the long time it will lead to higher quality entries in my blog and hopefully more interesting topics as well.

The author of the book Marley and Me, John Grogan, is definitely a kindred spirit. I started reading this book last night while winding down from hosting a BBQ at our house and before I knew it I was 160 pages in. I am a lover of dogs, and grew up with a succession of crazy labs, one bipolar sharpei, and blind and insane hound/mutt. Although the subtitle of the book is “Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog” it is clearly said with affection. Grogan and his wife, Jenny, start out very much like Kevin and I – newly married and ready to take on their first dependent. After reading about their adventures I feel less worried that we might accidentally kill off our “son” – they went through all sorts of nightmarish situations with their dog, many related to his fear of thunderstorms (which doesn’t work out well in Florida).

Our dog, Rafe, is doing well. We have to exhaust him daily with long walks, wrestling, kicking around the soccer ball, and fetching at least a dozen different toys. Yesterday he met a bunch of other dogs in the neighborhood and also my nephew, Matthew, who is almost two years old.

To see more of my book recommendations, friend me at GoodReads

I have been renting out our condo for almost a year now on short term leases, with great success. I feel like there are a few things that I do that make my job much easier and make my tenants very happy as well. There is nothing like word-of-mouth to bring in the next tenant, and I genuinely care about give good “customer service” as a landlord. Here are some things that I do that I think have been part of my success:

Getting the Place Rented Out

• Don’t just rent to the first person who contacts you. You don’t have to honor first-come, first-served, pick the tenant who you think you will like working with since you might end up seeing them a lot.
• Use a standard contract for your state on Google Docs to collaborate with your tenant on the lease agreement. Each tenant will add more new stipulations, but you don’t have to agree to them – just point out it is a standard contract and that you aren’t interested in hangling over legalese.
• Create a binder with all the information you went over in the walk through, down to the most detailed thing. Include the homeowner’s association rules, any contact info, and a list of all amenities and how to they can take advantage of them. Include the building’s emergency plan. Show this to all potential tenants.
• If you have furniture in your place and you’re moving out, consider renting furnished. Furnished places rent fast, and odds are good that your current furniture will not look as good in your new place.

Signing the Lease

• Opt for people who are willing to pay both first and last month’s rent up front, you know they can afford rent if they can part with this much money at one time.
• Make the security deposit fully refundable. People always feel like deposits are a scam. If you want to make more money build it into the rent price, not the deposit.

Move In Day

• Meet your tenant in person and do another walk through, especially if it has been more than a week since they signed the lease and took the tour.
• Introduce your tenant to the concierge and any other staff and help them get set up with any orientation they might need, and arrange for the freight elevator on their behalf.
• Leave the binder, a bottle of wine, extra keys and a handwritten note thanking them for being your tenant in the rental unit the night before they move in.
• One week later send them $50 in fresh groceries using a delivery service like Safeway.com or Amazon Fresh.

Maintaining the Relationship

• Always respond to their calls, messages, and emails within 4 hours and never make them wait 24 hours for you to take care of the problem.
• Stop worrying about your place, it will be fine and if it isn’t homeowner’s insurance and will covere the damage and their deposit will cover your deductible.
• Leave them in peace and quiet, to enjoy the space.

For the past six weeks I have been living without a mobile phone, as I await my purchase of the 3G iPhone. When I tell people this, they react like I’ve been sleeping under a bridge – they can’t believe I’ve lived without a device to keep me in touch with the world. The most common question I hear is, “Aren’t you missing out on doing fun things with friends?” and the truth is that my social life has been excellent this entire time. Thanks to Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook it’s still easy to coordinate.

I work for a company that builds software for mobile phones, so it really is a bit strange that I don’t have one. Pelago released the new version of the mobile application Whrrl on Tuesday, and I can’t wait to have it with me 24/7. At the same time, I am relishing these last few weeks before I go back to 24/7 connectivity. When I return to having a phone it will be vastly different than before, a huge upgrade from a Chocolate phone with Verizon… to basically a computer in my pocket all the time.

Even when I do have the phone I am not going to spend much money on a voice plan, all I really care about is data. I hate to answer my phone and I hate even more processing voicemail.

I am seriously considering attending BarCamp and I imagine I could get away with going and not presenting, but I kind of want to. I want to put that pressure on myself to actual talk to people about the things I’m passionate about. It’s a bit intimidating though, since I don’t feel like I’m an expert in these things – but the website says I don’t have to be, so I’m going to go with that.

Some ideas:

Things That Shape Us: Why Enterprise Software Matters

The New “Blue Collar” Worker – Defining the Future of Customer Service

Creative Uses for Call Centers & Outsourced Operations

Info Addicts: Share How You Get Your Info (blogs, news sources, forums, etc)

Personas: Who Uses My Stuff Anyway?

Hmmm, I could find a way to weave in location aware mobile tech… I’ll have to think on that.

As you might have noticed, since I blogged that the dog was coming home, over a week ago, there hasn’t been another peep out of me. That’s because this little ball of chocolaty goodness is a total time suck! I was expecting that, but I’ve got to drag myself kicking and screaming (well, not quite) back to the adult (and human) world. In this pic he’s running around in our back yard with one of his many toys, keeping us very busy with his high-energy demands for pretty much constant play time.

I’m looking forward to eating at Branzino tonight, a new restaurant opening Belltown. Maybe in addition to scoring the first review on Whrrl, I’ll get the first on Y*lp. We’ll see.

I am so excited, because I am finally getting a puppy. He is 8 weeks old and I will be bringing him home on Saturday. He is a chocolate lab, and I’m naming him Rafe. Kevin has been out of town, which has left we with plenty of time to shop for pet supplies without him complaining. I am actually surprised by how stressed out I am about whether I will be a good Mom to this tiny little dog. I’m sure it will be fine, and I mainly just can’t wait to get him and snuggle with him and pet him for hours on end. That’s probably what I’ll do all weekend, while I work with my Dad on building the gates in the backyard.

In other news, I just signed up for the Six Hour Startup Conference on May 31st. I’m looking forward to it on multiple levels. I haven’t really gone to any kind of networking anything since I started working at Pelago, mostly because I’ve been so busy and when so much was under wraps it wasn’t much fun not being able to talk to people about what we’re doing. This conference will undoubtedly be more fun than the stuffy talks I attended for the Transportation Alliance, Port Authority, Seattle Chamber of Commerce, etc in previous work experiences. The speakers including Tony Wright, co-founder of RescueTime – who I have blogged about here, and whose product I still use daily. Most importantly, I am looking forward to meeting new people. I don’t have a business idea to pitch, I am really more in information gathering and learning mode, so it will be interesting to soak as much in as possible and look to make meaningful contact with people that might be resources in the learning process or just interesting to befriend in general.

I promise, puppy pictures soon.

Last night I finally got all of our household accounts updating in my Mint.com account and it was so easy!

I had been procrastinating really getting myself set up with Mint.com because, in my past experiences with Quicken and MS Money, the process could literally take days. Time spent digging up statements and account numbers and old balances, all in an effort to get everything organized enough to actually pull useful data. Then even more time spent categorizing all my transactions so that my trending and budgets would work.

There are many features that make Mint a joy to use, such as the ability to load multiple accounts at the same time. It is very accurate with the categorization of my expenses so I don’t have to do much fixing, unless the credit card company or the vendor have something strange on my statement. My one complaint is the navigation of the site. When I deep dive into the details of a transaction from the trending graphs I can’t use the back button to go back to the graph I was using before, which is usually a drill-down pie chart into one of the main categories. I have to go back through the “Trends” tab and drill down again. I find this to be time consuming and wasted clicks for me.

I got an email today from Mint.com offering me an RSVP for a private beta they will be doing soon that includes 401k, IRA, and other investment and savings accounts that they don’t include right now. I’m looking forward to that. I also hope they will soon have more trending tools for the income side of the equation and not just the expenses. I’d like to be able to look at how our household income is trending over time.

Today is mother’s day and we gave my mom-in-law gift cards – and, as usual, she was thrilled! She has a very interesting gift-giving policy, which it has taken me about three years to finally begin to appreciate. Today I saw the light.

For every holiday, my mom-in-law tells all of us exactly what she wants as a gift. Not just an idea or a suggestion; no, she is expecting to get exactly the gift she has asked for no more, no less. If she doesn’t get it, she isn’t even that nice about it, and I’ve come to realize that this policy has existed in my husband’s family for a long time and is seen as a rule. At first, I disliked it because I felt like it took everything that was personal and heartfelt out of selecting and giving gifts, not to mention fun. I mean, how many different ways are there to dress up an envelope containing a few pieces of symbolic plastic? Now, as I begin to accumulate well-intended clutter, I am beginning to see things from the other side more clearly.

Take Easter for example, where people often give cute bunny rabbit stuffed animals. Easter comes every year, without fail, and if someone gives me a stuffed bunny every year and I’m on of those insane people who feels like they can’t throw anything away (read: my mom-in-law) then I am going to end up storing a lot of bunnies in my guest bedroom closet.

We’ve come into a culture of choice – where people like me can afford to buy their own luxury items and would prefer to do so. The best gifts I can think of are ones that are perishable like flowers, chocolates, food, and drink. Another great gift is experiences (movie/concert tickets, bed and breakfast gift certificates). These are the things that I don’t tend to splurge on as much as I should with my hectic schedule.

So what does this mean? Why have we changed so much?