SWCAMBORNE

“Bankers are bullfrogs;

lawyers are lizards.”

Paul Theroux

The London Embassy

We all know what Sticker Shock is.  It is the stunned feeling you get when you see how much something is going to cost versus how much you expected it to cost.

So you already know what Effort Shock is.  It is the stunned feeling you get when it dawns on you how much effort and time it is going to take to accomplish a goal.

This applies to all types of efforts:

• Weight loss
• Physical training
• Getting your advanced degree
• Learning  a new skill (painting)
• Writing your book

Thanks to Jim Geraghty of National Review Online for this eye opening revelation.

Adelaide Inn 

One of the nicer places in Paso Robles

I send postcards.  Both electronic and actual.  In this day of email, Facebook and Twitter I think that the Post Office (USPS) is a charming but expensive anachronism.  It will be a financial burden to our children and to their children and there is very little we can do about it. Click here to see how many times I’ve written about the problem of the Post Office’s failed business model.

But today I want to tell you about an opportunity.  Look at these two pictures.  The first is what every corner and intersection in rural America used to look like:

The second is what they are starting to look like now:

This makes perfect sense for the USPS it is much more efficient to deliver mail to the combined boxes.  But you ask: Where is the entrepreneurial  opportunity?  The answer is easy: Be the person who buys or just retrieves all of the old battered rural mailboxes, becomes an expert in mailboxes and sells them and knowledge about them on places like eBay.  Mailboxes are going to be a great collectible and you can be in it early.  Will it work? The doors of old urban PO boxes are already a collectible.

Going back to the Post Offices problem for another rant:  The USPS should admit that their business model has changed and that they are in end game.  They should raise the price of First Class Mail (currently $0.46) to a dollar and all of their other prices proportionally.  Additionally they should drop to once a week delivery of all mail that is not paid priority.  These changes would finance the orderly shut down of the service and the financing of the employees pensions and benefits.  All other changes are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Unfortunately it won’t happen because the Congress is an extremely conservative body and opposes all change.

I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded the dough.

My advise: Don’t go to the right.  Take the stairs.

Four great sunsets from our upstairs patio in Santa Fe

“What would life be if we had

no courage to attempt anything?”

Vincent Van Gogh

This is my favorite of the photos I took in Santa Fe.

It needs to be painted.  The picture not the truck.

Feel free to “borrow” it.  Click on the image to see a larger version.

I had to wait for the sun to go behind a cloud to get the light just right.

“Rainbows” the worlds

 best flip flops are

 still made in

California.  If

China is a city

in California.