In the realm of Murphy, this week was beyond belief. To begin with, seven of my classes were cancelled due to a lack of registrations. (Thankfully only 4 of the 42 on my schedule for the next six weeks are in jeopardy.) Then Wednesday, half of the officers registered for that day’s class cancelled at the last minute.

School is starting up next week which means books for me and Amy (about $400 together); supplies for Jeremiah and Sarah ($82.94 at Wal-Mart tonight) and an upfront payment on Amy’s tuition ($370). She usually gets that money back in the form of a Chaplaincy scholarship although it is not guaranteed. My school is totally paid with Army Federal Tuition Assistance (working on my Masters this fall) with the exception of books; additionally I received a new GI Bill with my deployment; chapter 1607 which will pay me $792.68 per month while I am in school the next two years…of course none of that money came in this week.

Earlier in the week my laser printer again quit on me; this time refusing to work until I replaced the cyan cartridge, even though I only wanted to print in black and white. I ordered it Wednesday…another $105 out of my business account that is supposed to be supporting me.  Even with that expense, I finally would have enough money to send out my next set of flyers after this morning’s class in McDonald County…which brings me to this morning. When I began setting up at the Sheriff’s Department in Pineville I noticed the screen on my computer was on a DOS prompt instead of the normal Windows blue. After several minutes of attempting to troubleshoot the problem I was finally able to open in safe mode and run my power point.

Fearing the worst for my computer, I quickly found the cheapest external hard drive in Springfield. Thankfully I had some extra walk ins at my class earlier in the morning which meant I still had enough money to send out my flyers…until I got home that is. Upon arriving home, my new cyan cartridge was waiting. Once I installed it, my printer decided it still wouldn’t work because I needed to replace my magenta and yellow cartridges as well. After $211 for those, I no longer have the money to send out the flyers until I get more money next week.

It was so crazy this week at one point I said to myself what next, is the car going to break too! I immediately went out to the car and it wouldn’t turn over at all. I was in a state of shock. I got out and checked the battery cables, wiggled them a little, and then tried again with surprising success. All my radio presets were gone and the clock was showing 12:00, so I wasn’t imagining the fact it had lost power; I think God was trying to tell me He is still in control!

Next week Amy and I are planning to give plasma twice each which will give us just enough to pay our rent and utilities. We still have enough grocery money to get by, and my mom sent us a gift card for Chili’s Our emergency fund is depleted, but we are still around to fight another day. September has never looked so good!

Oh yeah, did I mention Amy found out she is allergic to milk. Do you know how many things have milk in it?

It is hard to believe, but yesterday marked eight years since I was run over (read about it here) and three years ago tomorrow I opened the Lazy Susan. As time passes, actual anniversary dates mean less and less as my focus shifts to the future.

My new business is progressing well…with a few exceptions. August is very slow; so far I have cancelled 7 courses due to a lack of registrations. September is looking better with enough registrations for all except a couple of the 30 classes on the schedule. I continue to receive about 10 registrations per day, and I have four agency contracts pending payment and two more awaiting city council approvals. My accounts receivable will likely break $4,000 by lunch tomorrow…the future looks great, but the present still feels broke!

This morning Pastor Bradford spoke on the four lepers at the gate of Samaria (II Kings 7). The central theme of his message was to share the good news. This hit home with me; last Christmas I talked of my desire to share my testimony, yet in six months of being home I have yet to do anything. Now that Amy has completed the process of gaining her credentials through the Assemblies of God, I am at ease with the process. It is time for me to take action, get my credentials and begin pro-actively seeking speaking opportunities…so if you know of a venue let me know!

I put in many late nights over the past week. In the middle of sending out my flyers for some upcoming courses and updating my web site I found out about a state contract to put on “Response to an Active Shooter” classes. With only four days to prepare my bid and many other ongoing projects, I wasn’t fully pleased with the proposal I submitted. There are seven other proposals I am up against; hopefully mine was good enough.

Because of the short notice, the only way to get the proposal in on time was to hand carry it to Jefferson City. I decided to give Amy a little break and take the kids. After finishing our business we headed over to the state Capitol. Surprisingly, the normally camera shy Jeremiah was the only one willing to pose for a photo on the Capitol steps; Sarah refused.

Back at the office, I think it is easy to understand why I have to put in so many late nights…ah, won’t life be grand when school starts again

With our accomplishment pictured above, the good news is Amy and I with some occasional help from the kids were able to complete this four piece mailing to 716 law enforcement agencies prior to midnight. That is the good news…it was a long weekend getting there.

The fun started Friday evening approximately 339 pages into my 2,862 page print job…I ran out of toner. Saturday morning I quickly discovered no one in Springfield carried a Lexmark C5220KS cartridge, so I ordered one online and set out to print my remaining flyers.

I negotiated a nice deal at FedEx Kinkos and by Saturday night had all the flyers waiting to be collated, folded, sealed and labeled. We started around 2:00 pm and within ten hours, were done.

The real problem is the cost…I was hoping the cartridge could have survived until the 18th when I have classes again and hopefully money. The cartridge was $100 and the printing ran $128; all expenses I did not wish to incur until later this month. All in the cost of doing business I suppose!

The test project is underway…Amy added Google Adsense to my sidebar this morning…then spent much of the day filtering out rip off loan ads, which was our primary concern in placing advertising on this site.

The good news is I will be writing more often and expanding the material I comment on in order to draw new readers. I will continue my series of updates on my start up business and track my debt elimination progress even more vigorously. I will even throw in some helpful consumer commentary. Let me know what you think of it all.