My friend Tom has offered him a spot on his work crew building decks on new homes. It’s good money and relatively easy to learn. The only drawback is he can’t work if it’s raining and we’ll need to spot him some money to buy a pair of good workboots.

There’s a website called Work Boots USA that gives a quick overview of the different types of boots and it carries all the major brands. You can easily tell from the short description under each photo if the boot has a soft toe, hard toe or steel toe – the type of toe you need depends upon the type of work you’ll be doing and what kind of workplace hazards you have to protect your feet from.

Most of my friends that left the medspa company have accepted positions with a new franchise that is based in New York. Sadly, that means most of them have had to pack up and move from here to New York. So now I don’t have the chance for the occasional lunch or cocktails to stay in touch with most of my friends. It’s down to a few emails and occasional phone calls.

Alexa is the last of the old crew to take a job with the new company. We had lunch today at our favorite Sushi place to say goodbye. She is excited about the move and I’m thrilled for her! She’s going to stay with one of our friends already there, sleeping on the futon while she looks for place of her own. To help with that I put her in touch with one of the best real estate agents in Manhattan, Dottie Herman.

Dottie is a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the largest real estate company in New York. I had met Dottie years ago at a real estate function in Las Vegas and kept her business card just in case I would have the opportunity to move to New York. Alas, it is Alexa who is getting that opportunity and I’m happy to share the contact information with her.

I can’t do that. I’ll drive to work a different way at least 2 or 3 times each week. I really don’t like to do the same thing over and over. I like variety and I like to enjoy my drive to work – not just endure it. Every morning I see new flowers blooming, new pets in the yards, and new cars sharing the road with me. I love starting each day as a new adventure!

If I could make my dream come true, I would start a new business someplace where I want to live, pack up and leave here. One of the things stopping me is getting all the financing I would need. Banks are harder to deal with every day and I’m not interested in taking on partners. For one thing I want autonomy in making the business decisions and for another I don’t want to share the profits from my own hard work with people who don’t do anything except put in the start up money.

I was distressed to find that someone robbed her store last week. Thank goodness she was not working that night and the person running the store was not hurt, but it is disconcerting to think they my friend is truly in danger of being robbed or shot at any time. The thieves took a van and rammed the front doors with the van, then hauled the ATM machine and cash register into the back of the van and drove off.

This morning they are traffic bollards across the front of the store to prevent anyone from ramming the front doors again. Bollards are the tall round posts that re installed in the pavement and spaced a few feet apart to restrict traffic.

It’s a shame we have to resort to obvious crime deterrents like bollards in front of your place of business, even in the nicer neighborhoods.

Our Human Resources Manager ordered a collection of all occasion cards from gallerycollection.com and had them custom imprinted, but we also pass them them around to the rest of the staff for personal notes and signatures before presenting them with a flourish or small ceremony to the recipient. The Business Birthday Cards are a nice way to help celebrate employee and client birthdays. I also like that the envelopes are a classy, deckle-edged heavy stock, and they are made of recycled paper.

Casio has several atomic watches in their G-Force line, which is another strong selling point in my book. G-Force means it is super tough, and lots of guys need a tough watch – especially guys who work in construction or the military, and guys who go hunting and camping need a watch that is rugged. If you need a great birthday gift or even a going away gift for an active, outdoorsy guy in the office, you should take a look at the website www.bluedial.com and consider a casio watch. I would certainly get one for my boss on a special occasion.

She’ll be turning the extra bedroom into a home office so she can do more work from home and not have to pay for child care, plus she’ll be saving cash by not having to commute. Of course, setting up the home office will take a bit of cash, but you can’t make money if you don’t spend money.

We’ll be underwriting some of the home office equipment to help her out. Since we are on a tight budget, we are looking for ways to save as much money as we can, yet we can’t always get the cheapest products – there are some quality and reliability issues to consider as well as price.

A great source for money saving coupons is a website I found online. There are a variety of coupons to save significant money on Dell small business computers. We are also going to need some home office furniture, at the very least a computer desk and task chair.

I’m not sure which way to advise her on a printer for her new home office. I haven’t had much luck with the last ones I’ve bought. At the moment I’m using a cheap laser printer that only prints black and white, but it is a workhorse and I can use refilled toner cartridges, which saves a lot of money. I think for the sake of just getting started, she should probably have one like what I’m using, and when she starts making money she can upgrade to a color printer later.