Ed Icionsub

The past couple of days I’ve discovered photoblogs. There are a bunch of web sites and blogs by people who are photographers – amateur and professional – who publish their photos on the web. Some of these phtos are absolutely stunning and many are fantastic chronicles of every day life somewhere in the world.

One of my favorite sites is by a guy in Berlin. I have never had the opportunity to travel to Germany and to be able to see little glimpses of street life in a big city with such tremendous history and world impact is a thrill.

Most of these photo blogs give credits to their camera and the settings used. It looks like there is a huge fan base for the Nikon D300. If that is the camera used to take all these stunning photos then that is what I want for Christmas – plus some lessons.

Fighting with the maintenance budget and vendors at work all day did not leave me in a very good mood to come home and deal with the same thing here. I just got my insurance renewal notice and I am going to have to shop around for a better price on that for my home.

To be fair, I will let the current insurance broker have a chance to come down on the price, but I will also check the internet for a home insurance quote and try to get at least bids.

I know that home insurance is important and if you ever have a loss, you will appreciate having the best coverage that you can afford.

We have been digging into all these property management issues today. I was surprised how many different vendors we need to keep a property maintained.

There are some parts of the country that never need snow removal, but around here there is always a chance that we will have a few measurable snows each year. It is really hard to budget for those.

Right now we have a landscaping crew that comes every Wednesday. I plan to be there at the site on Wednesday and talk to them about doing more work for us if they can give us a good price.

Part of our cost cutting plans are probably very similar to what other companies have to do – make do with less or have less people do more. It sounds simple, but when you are already a lean staff, it gets hard to find people who can take on any more work and still do a good job.

We used to have a property management company handle most of our portfolio, but the CEO told us today that we have to terminate that contract and do that in-house. Of course, that puts more work on my and my team.

I had my assistant check into finding companies that will contract with us to provide some of the maintenance and repair services, such as snow removal and window cleaning. We plan to get three competitive bids for each service and then pick one vendor, such as windowgang.com, to handle all our properties in each region.

Congrats to this newly married couple for being fun and not afraid to break the rules with this awesome wedding processional. I bet you two were meant for each other. (In case you are wondering, the song played is by Chris Brown, titled, “Forever,” which makes perfect sense to be in a wedding!)