Two weeks ago at Sugar Mountain, my daughter’s boyfriend would disappear.

They’d get off the lift together.

Thirty seconds later, he’d be carving turns halfway down the mountain while she was still cautiously working her way through the top section.

Totally normal. He’s a good skier, and gravity favors confidence. .

But it did make for a funny dynamic: boyfriend waiting at the bottom while she worked her way down the hill.

Fast forward to this week.

We were in Utah, and she spent two days taking lessons at Brighton.

Real coaching…

That’s what the pilot said halfway through our flight to Utah.

Oh, shit.

Julia jumped up immediately. But by the time she reached the front of the plane, a doctor who had been seated closer was already working on a man laid out in the aisle.

Chest compressions.

For the next 45 minutes.

When we landed, we waited for a while and then exited down a set of stairs at the rear of the plane.

The ambulance was there on the tarmac.

Lights no longer flashing.

The urgency had passed.

The man had died…

Remember the house where the lady got mad at me?

The one where she signed another contract with someone else?

That’s the one on Raccoon Run.

We’re now in full-swing on the renovation.

Wallpaper is gone.

Popcorn ceiling scraped.

Bathrooms gutted.

And the kitchen cabinet doors are off, getting ready for what should be a pretty cool two-tone retro-mod paint job.

But the whole conflict — the reason the seller got mad — was the crawlspace…

There’s a house we want in Lincolnton.

But there’s a problem.

At $240k, the owner’s asking price is too high for us to buy and fully renovate.

Still, we tried.

$190k offer.

Rejected.

There was a time when I would have said, “Oh well, next,” and moved on.

But not anymore…

Ever since part 1, many of you have been asking WHY an investor would want to sign a contract to buy a house when the Seller is already under contract to sell it.  

Sometimes, it’s trying to steal the deal.

Sometimes, it’s EXTORTION.

I didn’t have time to write it all down today, so here’s a 3-minute video about it.

Hit me up if you have questions.

OK — so there’s a second contract on the Sunset house.

We found out about it three days after we closed.

One house. Two contracts.

The obvious questions are how and why.

There’s nothing physically stopping a seller from signing more than one contract.

But is the second one valid?

Usually not…

My buddy Jason — owner of Dumpster Dudez — texted me last night.

“You know a lady named Tanya?”

“Nope.”

“She says she has a contract on the Sunset house. Thanked me for cleaning it out.”

That got my attention.

Jason had been at the property picking up dumpsters. Five of them. The house came with 6.2 tons of trash…

The demo is done on the Sunset property - the one where I hired a new crew and wondered if they would try to screw me.

Remember, I sent them to another job without getting a price. 

Well, predictably, they billed me too much. 

About $200 too much…

You guys know me, and you know I keep a lot of irons in the fire.

And I’m easily distracted.

They call me “The Squirrel,” and I can’t much argue.

Anyway, I met with a banker last week. One of many - I don’t know why, lately, there's a bunch of them chasing me. 

That’s not a bad problem, though, since buckets of other people's cash always lead to buckets of my own cash.

I’m sure not complaining. 

I like debt…

One of our current projects is infill development, meaning we’re building houses in an existing neighborhood.  

Imagine a donut.  

On the outside, there are a couple of dozen houses that were built back in the 60’s and 70’s.  

On the inside, where the hole would be, there’s a park.

Kind of…

Financially, my father is a train wreck. 

At 77, his net worth is somewhere between zero and negative $120, depending on what he has in the pawn shop.

He just never figured out money. 

Which is how he wound up homeless, and how I ended up renting a house for him. 

That’s a big expense, of course, so to mitigate it, I bought a house for him to live in…

Let me tell you about my friend Nick.

Actually, I’m not sure how to label him.

Friend? Acquaintance? Sales Rep? Buddy? Dude that I know?

None of these quite seems to fit. Or, if they do, they don’t fit all the way…

Normally, I write a story for my birthday, making some attempt to share whatever wisdom I’ve managed to glean over the course of my most recent trip around the sun.

Yesterday, I found myself reaching back to lessons I’d learned in my twenties, pulling them forward and describing how they applied to my life today.

As a natural-born adventurer (I swear I was Meriwether Lewis or Ernest Shackleton in a former life), most of the story was about taking chances and trying new things.

To the extent I was managing a theme, it was “you’re never too old.”…

Years ago I lived in Carrboro which is a small town right outside of Chapel Hill. It was a great place to live and I enjoyed it, despite getting off to a rough start. Right after I moved there the company I’d been working for since I graduated college laid off a bunch of people, including me…

When she was little, I told Lu the sky was the limit and that she could do or be anything she wanted.

Like most parents, I repeated this mantra to all five kids.

For Christmas this year, if I could have anything I wanted, it would be for them to understand that those words are more than cliche.

Lu and Sam (my youngest son) have been watching Mr. Beast for the last couple of days. If you don't know, Mr. Beast has the world's #1 most-subscribed YouTube channel.

He is, by definition, the world's biggest YouTube sensation…

When Bitcoin came out in 2009, I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of.

"Internet money?”

Sure, right after I buy oceanfront property in Nebraska," I remember saying.

It was for nerds with too much time on their hands, not serious people like me.

Back then, when you could buy a Bitcoin for $0.00076, I dismissed it entirely and moved on with my life.

By 2022, I was paying attention…

The main floor of the hotel where we're staying for Julia's conference is a large casino.

At this hotel, there is but one coffee shop.

Dunkin', which is not my favorite, but it was my only option at 5:30 this morning; down the elevator I went.

Sleepy-eyed, hair a mess, and halfway dressed in the same clothes I wore yesterday.

And here's where it gets interesting…

In my twenties, for one of my jobs, I traveled.

It was a good gig. Fly out on Monday mornings, back on Thursday nights, and get paid for the entire week.

Plus expenses covered, including meals.

The drawback?

I got fat...