What to do with those you love (after they are dead)…
I found this article by Norma Love at the AP on the web today concerning a new alternative of dealing with bodies of our loved ones. The following description was offered up in the article:
“The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.”
They are claming this revolutionary technology, developed 16 years ago used on animals, is a game changer for the industry.
Since Gail and I are relatively young, we have not talked very much about what we done with our bodies after we die, but this certainly has peaked my interest in the subject and I will tell you why.
The alternatives have always been either bury or burn. I hate getting burned and I think that option doesn’t work for me just because of my hatred for the feeling of getting burned. Will I feel it when I die, I don’t think so, but why take the chance? Then, what do J.D. and Gail (I am certain she will outlive me) do with the ashes. I mean, I thought it silly to have ashes buried, put out sea, or placed in some remote place on the Earth, “because he always loved that…” How messed up is that thinking? Nope, that option stinks.
The other option is to bury me. Not much better than the first option. What if I wake up and find out that I am 6 feet under. I know that there is a very remote chance of that happening, that’s why they call it death, but still, what if? How horrible the thought. Who would hear me and I simply don’t have the time to learn the amazing put my fingers through wood trick that Uma Thurman’s character “The Bride” was forced to learn in Kill Bill. So, if I am buried and not quite dead yet, I would be very upset.
Finally, and this is not really an option (at least for me), dedicate my body to science. What the heck does that mean? In my mind, there would be a bunch of punks looking over my torn apart liver from all the beer I drink at my favorite watering holes. Not to mention the years of sipping cocktails with friends on the weekends. Those same punks might then decide to use me in some weird experiment to see what happens to the human body when put under severe duress or something like that. Ouch…again, what if I can actually feel that on the other side…not a good thing.
This new alternative means that I have face the music with the whole burn thing, but they know for certain that I am gone and there is no coming back. The best of all it is “green” for the environment. No worm food jokes or sprinkling the Bush-man over Lake Michigan while everyone toasts…”remember when” or “he always liked the Chicago skyline and now he will get to see it forever.” Just fry me up, turn me into some powder that can simply go down the drain and move on. I am liking this alternative already…
ROI of Replacing Light Bulbs
This is one of my favorite posts from the other site. I am in the never-ending quest to save money, lower the household expenses and become financially free at some point. This is just one of the wonderful ways to save money. It had some good banter between Gail and I as she loves that lamp in the corner of our living room. I, on the other hand, am planning a very unfortunate “incident” for our little energy hog lamp friend…
—————-
Try to calculate the Return on Investment (or Internal Rate of Return) of doing this…good luck. Today, I spent several hours doing household chores. My wife went back to Detroit for a business trip and left me a little honey-do list. So today, like the good robot husband I am sometimes, I did my thing and went through that list. I spent every agonizing, errr enlightening, moment on checking off every task and achieved the whole thing – save some last minute cleaning she wanted done right before she comes home on Tuesday.
One thing that wasn’t on her list but was on mine, was replace every dinosaur light bulb we have in the house with those new fandangled bulbs that look like a bowl of spaghetti. 
Since I am all about saving money and doing my own financial analysis to justify my actions, I had to look at this based on my return on my investment (or Internal Rate of Return). It took the idea of saving money bigtime for me to actually do the right thing – what kind of person am I???
I thought this process would have taken me about 20 minutes, but after spending roughly 2 full hours on this little project, I was felling pretty good about myself. I replaced nearly 40 light bulbs and did a variety of equivalent 60 watts, 75 watts and 100 watts.
What is cool about this is the learning process. What I learned was the following:
- the old 60 watt version uses only 14 watts in the new version
- the old 75 watt version uses only 18 watts in the new version
- the old 100 watt version uses only 23 watts in the new version
These new light bulbs use 1/5 of the electricity as the old version. HUGE savings when it comes to paying my those really nice folks at the utility company. The package says I can save, under normal uses, the following:
- the 14 watt version saves $46/year
- the 18 watt version saves $56/year
- the 23 watt version saves $77/year
Since I replaced nearly 40 light bulbs today, I know the savings could very well be huge. If the average savings per yer is $50 per bulb (on average since most of them were the small kind) and I replaced 40 of them (I need my calculator), but I think that is roughly $2,000 per year in energy savings. I am not that optimistic and I know that it simply can’t be true, but lets say I was off by 50% and it only saves me a cool grand each year.
Time to crack out one of my best friends (Microsoft Excel) and do a little investment return. The total investment in light bulbs was $33. My time is free since I was working around the house and my wife gets a special discount – for barter of course… 
The internal rate of return on this investment is silly to discuss. It is off the charts, so let’s not even discuss it.
What is truly neat to look at is how these 10 C-notes are going to multiply over time, invested VERY mildly at 8% return. To see what this means to me in 30 years time – saving the $1000 every year; invested at 8% annual return – simply use the following formula in excel “=FV(.08,-1000,30)”.
(BTW, I am writing this with The Matrix on in the background…killer flick)
This silly little bulb replacement exercise just netted me an additional $113,283.21 for our retirement. If my adjustment down to $1000 per year is wrong and I actually save the $2000 per year, my take at the end of all of this (just replace the 1000 with 2000 in Excel) is an unbelievable $226,556. I am besides myself right now. Somebody needs to come on over my pad and punch me in the face a bunch of times for not doing this sooner. If not in the face, then at least a couple swift kicks in the beans. What the heck was I thinking?
Oh yeah, one more thing, I of course put all my dinosaur bulbs on craigslist to try to offset my $33 initial investment. For some reason, spending the initial scratch still gets to me. Those light bulbs seem perfectly fine, but in the in long run, those things were eating me out of house and home. Taking food off my table sort of speak. And the Financial Analysis Guy can never have that!
One more thing, the Financial Analysis Gal has this amazingly beautiful floor lamp in the corner of our living room. It is artwork – I will give it that. She loves it and we can’t craigslist it quite yet, but the time is coming. Why? That halogen lamp uses 300 watts (that’s 21 FREAKING times more energy than my little spaghetti style friend). That lamp is now officially put on notice!!!
Best of Las Vegas Results
The Best of Las Vegas 2008…what a great tagline. I wrote this as soon as the list came out. It makes nice writing and nice press for the local Las Vegas newspaper, but it is really not all that important to us locals. Try to keep in mind my two favorite Las Vegas restaurants – Gordon Biersh and The Crown and Anchor. I need to add several others to this list, but since both of these are really close to my house…they are in this post.
————–
The local rag here in Las Vegas called The Las Vegas Review Journalis an “OK” paper. They are definitely right leaning and do a pretty good job on reporting the news – regardless of their political viewpoints.
Every year, like most local papers, they do an online poll for “The Best Of” in that metropolitan. The LVRJ does a descent job of this but sometimes they miss the mark completely. If you are local like me, you have your own hotspots you like to frequent. I strongly encourage anyone coming to visit Vegas or who has just moved here to read this Review Journal article.
They even do a Razzie-type thing of the Best of the Worst. This is actually really cool. In this town, the press is part of the show and when you see someones face over and over again for the same things, you know that this list was needed. Our good friend Oscar Goodman, Las Vegas’ Mayor, made the list once again, but I don’t fault him for it. He is so freaking good for this city it is amazing. I love what he has done and what he brings.
Now, on the list itself, they have some celebrity type folks that give their favorite places. This is OK, but take their information with a grain of salt. They are just one person’s opinion and some of these folks are transient in nature due to their jobs.
I was really bummed not to see my two favorite pubs in Vegas. One is a chain and you have all heard of it – Gordon Biersch. I have been to almost every GB in the nation and this one takes the cake. This one is not like any of the others. If you are a local, or a visitor, go see Kala and Billy “The A-Team” on Wednesday or Thursday nights. They are the absolute BEST in town. They have the most amazing Southwestern Egg Rolls. Enjoy a Heff with lemon or skip it and go straight for their flagship beer, Marzen. Can’t go wrong with any of em.
The other is a genuine British Pub that made the list some time ago – The Crown and Anchor. This place is rough around the edges – just like a British Pub ought to be. They have all the soccer (or football everywhere else) matches and have genuine English food. They make some of the best Yorkshire Pudding around. Enjoy your favorite beer (Guinness, Bass or Boddington’s for me), take in a football match, and maybe even try some of the famous Snake Bite. Great stuff. And yes, if you are Brit coming to town, you will feel right at home. Almost every British native in town ends up here at some point during the week.
On all of the other stuff on their list, you can’t go wrong with it. There is always something to do in Vegas. From world-class clubbing on The Strip, to outdoor activities, to top-notch shows for every genre – this place never sleeps and you can get pretty much anything you want here, literally.
Inaugural Post…Welcome to the Bushbaker Blog!!!
Welcome to the new personal weblog by Kevin Bushbaker. It is officially www.bushbaker.com. Simple, quick and very easy to remember. This is my first post of which I hope to have thousands more. This site will be a personal blog that focuses on the Bushbaker household here in Las Vegas. Yes, that’s right; we live in Sin City and I am still married! Can you believe it?
I joke about this, but living here with so much temptation all around is tough. My wife, Gail, and I are completely faithful and love each other to the max. However, there are tons of little things around Las Vegas that remind you that temptation is not far. We are not holy-rollers or have any extreme moral conviction, so don’t take this the wrong way. But we both abhor some of the stuff we see around the City. Both Gail and I like to drink; neither of us smoke or do any drugs; but we do like to have fun and go out on the town with friends when they are here.
Enough about that for the moment…I want to introduce you to this new blog. It is a personal account of our living in Las Vegas. We have been here for 3 years now and love it. The weather is great, we have several new friends, and the people (for the most part) are friendly and trying to get by with their life like AnywhereElse Town, USA.
I can’t wait to chat on all kinds of topics ranging from the living here in Vegas to everyday mundane stuff to my brand new baby boy. We love him to death and as of the timing of this first post, he is officially 5 weeks old. I will have tons of posts relating to the adoption process here in Nevada and how it so awesome.
Some of the main areas of my blogging focus will be:
1. Our amazing new little boy recently adopted April 2, 2008
2. Our thriving Craigslist business and eBay business
3. What is happening around the household
4. Personal finance and increasing our net worth
5. Kevin’s undying efforts to de-clutter his life
6. What it is like to live in Las Vegas
7. Hopefully visiting with as many of you as we can while you are in town
8. Running, biking and hiking around the southwest
9. Road trips to Southern California to visit the beach (I am water and wind – Gail is Earth and Fire and I need, not want, but NEED to visit the ocean several times a year)
10. What it was like growing up, living, loving, having all my friends and family, back in my hometown, Detroit, Michigan – I love Detroit, but what a mess right now!!!
11. Whatever else comes to mind
The Bushbaker blog site is selfish…no doubt. I want to learn as much as I can about myself and where I am going in life by reflecting on my observations and writings. I want to learn to write better and get feedback on it. If I can get readers to read and comment, I will learn and hopefully provide better content. It is all about having an open discussion on topics. I WANT everyone’s feedback and comments on things. If I am all wet on a topic and you need to correct me…do it. If you completely agree and want to comment…do that too. If you want a chance to be a guest writer, then send me an email…I want you there. I need to learn and be educated so I can teach the prodigy all about what to do in life and what not to do.
If you would like to know more about my profession and investing in the Las Vegas real estate market, feel free to contact me or visit my other incredible blog site Vegas Real Estate Guy. This site is so fun and so productive, I intend to keep all professional stuff away from personal blog and focus my real estate investment stuff (in the Las Vegas real estate market and real estate in general) to that site.
So, feel free to visit our two new blogs, read away, comment, criticize me (but not others on the site) and just have fun with it. I know I will.
Kevin