The Plastic Evil

I will be proud to say by this time next week I will be debt free, with the exception of my mortgage,4.75% fixed and in another year my equity will equal loan value. Don't ever fall into the credit card trap, I have escaped the jaws a few times now and expect myself to stay well clear. I was tought to save for what I wanted and need to return to that regimen. I have to add my use of credit wisely through the years enabled me to get a top rate mortgage with zero down, it has become the necessary evil of modern life, credit.
This is a great feeling, I encourage all to seek it plus planned home improvements will lead to at least 2/3s off utilities. It is about time to continue my' explore California' adventure. Its like a deep haze has lifted and the sun is shining once again. Time to rejoin a gym and hire a trainer to replace some of this soft winter tissue build up with muscle, I have big dreams for this summer. I want to add Shasta to my peaks list, it will be my highest yet at a little over 14,000 ft. Mt. Winchell in the Palisades is my highest so far at 13,775, a few summit pics have been published here.
The golf course awaits as well, I love the game and every aspect of it from the first tee to the nineteenth hole. It is a game of chances and options, personalities and egos, your very self will be revealed on the course, in every nuanced extreme, that is why so many business deals take place on the course and many lasting friendships. I am good enough to recognize a championship course and appreciate it and to have a blast at the local "hardhat" course. The thing about golf is the personal challenge, noone can swing that club but you and the rules are honor bound by centuries, committing both the athlete, the soul and the intellect in the negligible journey of placing a little white ball in a hole in the ground by means of fancy sticks. It combines the best of intellectual gamesmanship and physical talent in a unique way and teaches a gentleman's/ladie's etiquette along the way. I love the game, can you tell? It drove reconcilliation between me Pops and myself, we played in rain and snow and eventually refound each other. I miss those days as Pops has moved on. He taught geometry and vector trig and he approached a golf course the same analytical way, the money making way, keep the ball in play, quiet and conservatively. I am sure other golfers would agree, the analogy works for most anything in life, the risk/reward factor. I am always more than happy to discuss the philosophies, tenents and nuances of this great game.