A little bit softer now...

Here's a what a typical day in our lives looks like:

7:30AM Della wakes up and starts getting ready for her day. She might watch the news, or if she's really feeling good get rid of some of the stuff on her to do list whilst Krammy slumbers.

9... or 10... Krammy crawls from his badger hole and prepares for consciousness, just before Della heads to her job at the Merrell store down the street.

11:00AM Krammy achieves consciousness, or something like it. Krammy heads to campus.

Noon Della and Krammy eat lunch separately. :(

4:00PM Krammy heads home just before Della to play with the dog, etc.

6:00PM After our brief chill session, we eat dinner, watch a movie, and/or play a game.

11:00PM Della sleeps. These are Krammy's most productive hours of the day. He gets a solid two hours of work in before going to bed.

1:00AM Krammy slumbers.

That's a sort of typical day.

-Krammy and Della

I'm an ideas man, Michael!

So, after writing a few posts, I'm noticing a pattern. The subtitle to our blog is "kramily life behind the bluebird cafe," but I don't write too much about our life here. I don't have any desire to change that either. Were this blog devoted to keeping up communication my streak of inquiries would be intolerable. Much to the contrary, I've decided to roll with John Stewart's advice and write about what pleases me... with a little daily life thrown in. 

Many of my thoughts begin with, "Wouldn't it be great if...?" Lacking any direction of utter and total conviction that one might call a "career path," these notions are often followed by "I could do that." Oh, if only that were so. Let me give an example.

Nashville is pleasantly separated into lots of little neighborhoods much like San Francisco, but not so distinctly. There is 12th South, Hillsboro Village, Five Points, Nipper's Corner, Sylvan Park, etc. etc.  North Nashville, which is more like a huge chunk of the city is one of these "neighborhoods." Ghetto is probably more like it. Edgehill, Lafayette, and parts of East Nashville fall in the same category. 

Several days ago Della and I got curious about house prices in Nashville. A real estate agent friend of ours told us we could probably still find a really great deal. So it was. Dozens of houses between $60k and $100k popped up in the first search. After filing through the obvious dumps, we noticed a fair number of decent looking houses gathered together in clumps. North Nashville. 

You travel through just about every part of a town when you work in delivery, especially delivery of medical equipment. You get to know places. I've been to North Nashville more times than I cared to. It's the area immediately north and west of Downtown, extending almost all the way to 440 north of West end, stopping shy of the delightful Sylvan Park. It's a memorial to white flight, a testament to urban decay, and a rundown part of town. Not the safest place to live or work. 

This place's houses are so cheap because no one wants to live there. There are no grocery stores, no banks, no shopping centers, poor schools, hard drugs, and rough gangs. So much of this has to do with the people's poverty, and the financial institutions with the know-how of increasing wealth are going to be the last ones to head into that part of town.

"Wouldn't it be great if someone started a bank and financial service center at ridiculously low cost to patrons just to lift areas like this out of poverty?" It would have to be in the midst of it. It would have to offer financial planning to an entirely new demographic. It would have to be run terribly well... I could do that!

That's what I spend most of my time doing around here, folks. I get visions of how to help, but don't have the patience or know-how to follow through. Are any of you financial planners or bankers with a heart for the urban poor? 

I'll come up with some more ideas soon. 

Grace and Peace,

Krammy

That Uncreative?

I don't know how many people actually read this thing. I don't track hits on this page or any other page for that matter. Not that I feign any grand philosophical argument against such things, but, for those of you (if you, the reader, do indeed exist and I am not writing to no one) who don't know me so well, my participation in the electronica nation has been lower than a snake's belly in a rut. Which is to say that the blogosphere is quite foreign to me. So, dear imagined reader, let me ask you a few questions.
Does one ask non-rhetorical questions in a post?
Do people post to be read or to foster community? Why do we post?
Should I aim for getting people to comment on this thing? And if so, what usually makes people comment?
Just wondering. I've never asked and who better to tell me than you?

Three Challenges

Austin Bauman and Graham Lea, two of my closest friends here in Nashville, have already changed the course of 2008 for the Kramedjians. Although they followed closely on the heels of all the New Years resolutions, let me be clear that the following are not resolutions that I came up with for myself. A few nights ago, over drinks at the Flying Saucer, Austin had the great idea that, rather than critiquing ourselves and reformulating a course of action on our own, the people who know us ought to be the ones who guide our efforts. We each spent some time thinking up three challenges for the others. Lots of great ideas out there. Reducing carbon footprint, biking a century, reading the whole Bible, etc. This is how my dear friends have challenged me:

1. I must journal or blog everyday, at least three sentences until 2009.
2. I gotta get in serious shape. Not just lose some weight, but get in serious shape. And hold it through to 2009.
3. Della and I have to save $6,000 by 1/1/2009.

Hard challenges, but Della is super supportive and thinks we can definitely do it. Look forward to a lot of three sentence blog entries!

Disney Land

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Yosimite

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Yosimite