Yesterday, I spent the day at an advanced pistol training course near Dayton. With all that has been going on lately (with the felon that has threatened me), I thought an advanced pistol training course would be a good idea. I was not disappointed. The course included a lot of close quarters gunfighting techniques; shooting from behind baracades; and shooting while moving. It was a very good advanced course taught by a couple of very experienced self-defense instructors. One of the instructors just got back from IRAQ where he was working as a security contractor.

While at the training yesterday, I got a call from one of my tenants who reported that someone had damaged the door frame when they tried to break-in to the house. I also got a call from the police who wanted to discuss the incident. This is a SFH house that is located in a blue-collar neighborhood. There typically isn't a lot of crime in this area, but there have been several home invasions recently throughout the city. The really troubling thing about the incident was that it occurred between 11am and 1pm on Sunday, right in the middle of the day. These home invasions have been quite serious, with the perpetrators brandishing guns and in some cases injuring the inhabitants of the homes. Fortunately, in this case, no one was home and no one was injured.

As a result of the attempted break-in, I spent a few minutes today repairing the door jam. Fortunately, the door itself wasn't badly damaged, so the repair wasn't a big deal. I also had a discussion with the tenant about safety and security issues, so hopefully they can prevent a repeat of this incident.

In addition to repairing the door, I also bought and installed a new blade for the push-mower that I use to mow the lawns at the apartment buildings. I'm planning to do some mowing tomorrow.

Many of you have been wondering why I haven't posted to my blog in the last week. I've been extremely busy this week with my family and have really debated whether I wanted to discuss what happened with my family this week on my blog.

When I last posted, I was about to leave on a 3 day camping weekend. We went to Deer Creek State Park this weekend and had a great time camping with friends from Church. We had a wonderful weekend and a great start to the week.

That suddenly changed Tuesday evening. My wife and I were sitting at home. I was watching some stupid movie and my wife was checking her e-mail. I made a comment about how stupid the movie was and my wife didn't respond. I glanced over at her and noticed that the laptop had slipped off her lap and was laying at an odd angle. She also had an odd look on her face. I asked her if everything was alright, and she responded in a slurred speech that she was 'having trouble thinking'. She stood up and it was immediately obvious that she was having trouble standing and balancing. As a former paramedic, the altered level of consicousness and difficulty speaking immediately made me think that she was having a stroke. She was trying to walk to the bathroom and I assisted her in doing so. As soon as we arrived at the bathroom, she began vomiting. I grabbed a trash bag and immediately put my wife in the car.

Within a few short minutes, we were at the hospital. My wife was still vomiting and could no longer walk. I found a wheelchair and rushed her to the emergency room. I told the triage nurse that I believed my wife was having a stroke and she immediately signed her in and cleared an ER bed for her. By this time, my wife could no longer talk and appeared to be quite confused. The staff immediately began to work on her, starting an IV; putting her on a heart monitor; starting oxygen; drawing blood; and checking her sugar level (which was normal). A couple of minutes later, an ER doctor came into the room and evaluated her. It had only been 25 minutes from my wife's first symptom occurring, but at this point she had lost the ability to speak and couldn't move her arms or legs. I was trying to think of what could cause paralysis in all four limbs (other than an injury) and the only thing I could think of was a stroke near the brain stem. The ER doctor immediately ordered a stroke protocol and they took her for a Cat Scan. The result of the Cat Scan was negative for bleeding in the brain, but the neurologist thought he saw something in the lower part of the back of the brain. He consulted with another neurologist at Riverside Hospital and decided that the only reasonable explanation was a blood clot in the lower part of her brain. He started TPA (a clot busting drug) and ordered a medical helicopter to transfer my wife to Riverside. Needless to say, this entire episode was very scary!

The helicopter flew my wife to Riverside and I began driving. By the time I arrived at the Riverside emergency room, my wife could talk and her level of consciousness had improved, although she still couldn't move her arms or legs. Over the next several hours, she slowly regained movement in all her extremities and over the next 18 hours, she basically returned to normal. The hospital performed 3 more cat scans; an MRI and numerous other tests. All the tests pointed to a stroke that had been repaired by the prompt application of TPA. She was in intensive care until Thursday, when she was released.

As the title of my post indicates, I believe that a miracle was certainly present in this incident. The sequence of events that led to a successful outcome was astounding. First, I was with my wife at the time of her stroke and immediately recognized what was happening. Next, the right people were on duty at our local hospital to rapidly evaluate my wife. The doctor that was on duty aggressively treated my wife with TPA even though her relative young age (40's) and complete paralysis were not a typical presentation for a stroke victim. If the neurologist had hesitated on the treatment to be 100% sure on the diagnosis, the outcome would likely have been quite different. TPA can only be administered within 3 hours of the initial onset of symtpoms. Moreover, the TPA (clot busting drug) worked perfectly and my wife regained complete movement. It was apparent from my interaction witht the hospital staff at Riverside that this is the exception as opposed to the rule. In fact, the ICU nurse said that she had only ever seen one other patient released directly from the ICU.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this incident, that lesson is to know the symptoms of a stroke and immediately get the victim to the hospital. My wife is living proof that rapid treatment can make all the difference! I am very thankful that my wife is back home and healthy!!!

After feeling guilty all week (or not) about not working, I did work about 2 hours yesterday. My project for the day was to repair a soft spot in a floor where the previous owner of the building had covered an old stairwell with some particle board that was too thin. Fortunately, there was access to the underneath side of the floor from the basement, so the repair was quite easy. While in town, I also showed an apartment to a couple who were....well.... LIARS! As it turned out, he was a violent criminal and she was a deadbeat who doesn't pay her bills. Application DENIED!

While I was home yesterday, I glanced at the computer, which had my security cameras up at the Pink Elephant and noticed that there were many people on the sidewalk all looking across the street. I knew that something was going on, so I called one of the tenants and asked what was happening. There was a fight occurring across the street and one person pulled a knife. Five or six people were involved in the fight (all young punks) and another person broke it up before anyone was stabbed. There was some blood from the fight, but no one was seriously injured. Fortunately, none of this occurred on my property (probably due to the criminals knowing about my security cameras). I'm seeing a major increase in violence this summer and am not sure what the cause is. It could be the lack of summer jobs for kids or it could just be a general deterioration of our society. Low income people are breeding at an alarming rate and it's inevitable that society will fall apart as all these lazy kids grow up feeling entitled. Most of these kids are growing up to be worse than their parents. They are lazy. They are criminals. They are on drugs. They have absolutely no intention of ever getting a job. It's a mess!

Since there is nothing I can do to correct the world's problems, I'm taking a 3 day weekend to go camping!!! Have a good weekend.

I took another day off today. I didn't really have anything pressing to do in the rental property business, so I did some things around the house and then went to the city to pick up a part for my wife's car. While in town, I went to 3 Walmarts and then the largest gunshop in the city looking for handgun ammo. All 3 Walmarts were out. The gunshop didn't have any self-defense ammo, but they did have some target ammo. I bought 3 boxes, which is the limit due to the ammo shortage. I'm trying to buy ammo because I need at least 750 rounds for the two trainings I'm going to - one in June and one in July.

It seems like it rains every single day anymore and today was no exception. However, today's rain occurred this morning and we had a break in the weather this evening. So, I got my mountain bike ride in, without incident!

I finally got the court date for my eviction and it is July 1st. The delay in getting the court date was because the court is so far behind due to the shear number of evictions in the area. Fortunately, I only have one eviction going this month!

That's about it for today. Tomorrow, I'm planning to do a little work and then I'll be taking a 3-day weekend to go camping.

I wish that I could give you an interesting update regarding my rental business, but I just haven't done much the last week or so. Late last week, I did work a couple of hours building shelves in my storage unit. I was off all weekend and then mowed grass for a couple hours yesterday. I took the entire day off today.

The rental business isn't 24 hour excitement. In fact, there can be relatively long periods of time when there really isn't much to do at all. I currently don't have any current maintenance to do. There are a few projects I could do (such as trimming some trees or doing some painting), but I don't have any pressing projects. So, instead of inventing work, I've just been taking a lot of time off.

The big excitement of the weekend all revolved around birds. I bought an "upside down finch feeder" which is a really cool cylindrical bird feeder that finches hang on upside down while they feed. I put it up late one evening and by the early the next morning, there were 3 finches hanging upside down feeding. It was absolutely amazing to me that these birds found this feeder so quickly.

I also bought a bird feeder, which sits on top of the pole from which the upside down finch feeder hangs. I sealed the feeder with spar varnish over the weekend and then installed it today. In no time, there were a bunch of birds feeding. Most interesting to me was the number of doves that decided to sit on the ground right under the bird feeder. They didn't seem to have any interest in feeding, just sitting on the ground. That was quite interesting to me.

My wife and I finally got the swimming pool open over the weekend and we had some relatives come to swim almost as quickly as we finished. The temperature has been averaging about 12 degrees below normal this spring (despite global warming), so the water was quite cool. We haven't run the pool heater yet, so they must have wanted to swim pretty badly to brave that cool water!

My wife and I went to the shooting range on Saturday and I got the chance to run some ammo through my new handgun. You could really tell that a LOT of new people have been buying guns, because the people on both sides of me had bullets all over their targets (and I'm sure many missed the targets). I wanted to buy some more self-defense ammo while we were out, but neither the range nor the gunshop we went to had what I wanted. Ammo is still in very short supply, thanks to the increased number of people buying guns and people concerned that Obama wants to take their guns and ammo. I went to Walmart and Dunham Sports tonight and neither of them had any .40 Smith and Wesson ammo either. If that's not a sign of the times, I don't know what is!

That's it - we're up to date.

After eight months of not having an eviction, it looks like I'm not going to be so lucky this month. One of my tenants, who always pays a couple of days late (during the 3 day notice period), announced on the last day that she was moving. I explained to her that she still owed June rent and she wanted me to use her deposit as her last month's rent - which I absolutely will not do. I told her that if she didn't pay immediately, she would be evicted. She hasn't paid and she is being evicted.

Believe it or not, the attorney that I've used for my evictions these past 6 years was indicted by the grand jury on felony drug charges, so I now have a new attorney. My new attorney is a young lawyer who has very little court experience, but I think she'll be fine. I had a phone conversation with her this morning about the eviction and then took the paperwork to her this afternoon.

Once again, I didn't do any maintenance today. However, I did spend a couple of hours trying to make paperwork disappear (by paying bills, filing, etc).

This evening, the police were at the Pink Elephant for at least the 3rd time in the past few weeks. This is what happens when you have low income rentals and the weather gets hot. Tensions run high and trouble erupts. The same thing happens every year and in my experience, it takes a firm hand to get it stopped before problems set in for the entire summer. So, I drove down to the Pink Elephant to take care of business. I had the police legally bar 2 scumbag neighbors from the property (one is a convicted felon who is on parole) and the police are looking for another convicted felon (also on parole). These two guys were the same ones I wrote about a few months ago. The terms of their parole don't allow convicted felons to associate with each other, but their parole officer won't do anything about it. I will be talking to the police captain about the issue tomorrow and will try to exert some more political pressure to get the situation resolved. These criminals were on my property this evening visiting some of my tenants. I had a stern conversation with my tenants, letting them know that if they invited this scum onto my property again, their month-to-month leases would be terminated. They've seen me evict many other people and they know that I'm not bluffing!

I just couldn't get motivated to do much work today. I don't have any deferred maintenance to do and I don't have a lot of other tasks that need to be accomplished. So, I took the morning off. It was an absolutely beautiful day and I decided to do a little work around the yard, including cleaning the hummingbird feeder and making some new hummingbird nectar for it. It wasn't long until two hummingbirds were literally fighting over the feeder. For those of you that don't know about hummingbirds, they are not good at sharing!

I also worked on the swimming pool some this morning. It is nearly full of water and I did a little more work toward getting it clean.

By early afternoon, I was thinking about taking a bike ride - so I did. After the bike ride, I did accomplish some work, when I mowed the grass at one of my buildings. I also stopped by the Pink Elephant to see if anyone had any news about the convicted felon that has been stalking me. None of the tenants had seen him and one tenant heard that he was in jail. I'll try to follow up on that tomorrow.

That was it for today. I might try to get more done tomorrow, if I can remember what I was thinking about doing. I can't think of it right now (it's getting late).

NOT GUILTY! That's right, the convicted felon that has been stalking me was found not guilty at the conclusion of a trial by the court (judge without jury). Ironically, the facts were not in dispute and the prosecutor and defense stipulated that the felon did indeed come within 20 feet of me in direct violation of the restraining order. There were 3 witnesses for the prosecution and the entire incident was on our security camera system, so there simply could be no denying of the facts. The not guilty finding came as the result of a legal technicality. It seems that when the defendant was served by the sheriff's deputy, he was in jail. Testimony showed that the deputy knew that the felon had a difficult time reading (nearly illiterate) and that the deputy didn't read the contents of the restraining order to the felon. So, the defense attorney argued that the felon was not "recklessly negligent" in violating the order. There was a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo about the definition of "recklessly negligent" as opposed to simple "negligence". The judge even read the exact definitions of these terms out of a law book. The judge ruled that the felon was simply "negligent" and therefore he was not guilty of violating the restraining order. The gist of this is that the felon claimed that he didn't know what the restraining order said and the judge found that to be the case (even though everyone in the room knew that wasn't the truth).

After finding the felon not guilty, the judge read the entire restraining order word by word to the felon and after each sentence asked him if he understood. He did that so that it is on the record that the felon now knows exactly what the terms of the restraining order are and won't be able to use this defense next time.

The other twist on the situation is that while the felon was in jail, the grand jury handed down felony drug charges against him for a drug incident that occurred in December. He went before a judge in common pleas court (felony court) in the last few days and he may continue to be held in jail on that charge. I looked at the court records myself and my interpretation is that his bond was revoked, but I'm not sure which bond that is talking about and what the implications of today's verdict will be on that situation. I discussed that with the assistant prosecutor, but she wasn't able to definitively say whether he would be held or not.

If he's released, he will almost certainly be stalking me again tomorrow and I will need to exercise extra caution while working. I bought a magazine pouch so that I can carry an extra clip for my handgun, just to be on the safe side. Apparently, the courts simply can not keep this felon in jail even though they know that he is a serious threat to me; to the police; and to the public in general. You might have heard the old saying: "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away"!!! So true.

The good thing about this situation is that it is allowing me to assess my defensive situation. I've upgraded my carry handgun from a .32 caliber to my .40 caliber. I bought the magazine pouch so that I can carry an extra clip. Finally, I signed up for an advanced tactical shooting class later in the month. Hopefully, I won't need any of this to deal with this felon, but at least I'll be prepared.

The court hearing screwed up my day, because it was scheduled in the middle of the afternoon. I did collect a couple of late rents; did a minor floor repair at an apartment, and mowed the grass at one apartment building.

My wife and I also finally got our pool opened up.

That's it for today. I'm planning to do a little mowing tomorrow.

In my experience, there is very little justice in this country. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that our criminal justice system is completely broken! Today was my latest contact with the criminal justice system and I'll have to wait until Friday to judge the outcome. My mission today was to attend the pre-trial hearing for a violent convicted felon whose latest crime was to violate the restraining order I have against him (I received a subpeona for both the pre-trial and trial). To make a long story short, he was staying in the Pink Elephant when I took it over and I promptly kicked him out. He's been homeless every since and certainly blames me for that situation. In addition, I have had him arrested several times for criminal tresspass and I'm the main witness in a felony arson/attempted murder case that is pending. He has been stalking me every time he gets out of jail and has made numerous threats.

The last time this criminal got out of jail was about 60 days ago. At that time, he had spent the previous 48 days in jail for attempting to break into several apartments in two of my buildings. I had the entire thing on our security cameras and that got him convicted of the crime. On the same day that he got out of jail, he came looking for me. My restraining order prohibits him from being within 300 feet of me or my two apartment buildings that were involved with the attempted breaking and entering conviction. He certainly violated that when he came onto my property and got within a few feet of me. There were several witnesses and the entire thing is on the security camera footage. I called the police and he was arrested. He's been in jail on that charge since that incident 2 months ago. Today was the pre-trial hearing. I spoke with the assistant prosecutor before the case and reminded her how dangerous this felon is. I reminded her that he had been arrested more than 200 times. I reminded her that he had a conviction for assaulting a police officer (breaking his leg). I reminded her that he attempted to kill several people in January by setting their apartment on fire while they were sleeping. I also reminded her that it is very dangerous when he is out of jail. He stalks me and threatens me and I carry a handgun and am fully prepared to defend myself if I feel an immediate threat of serious bodily harm or death. I told her that she needed to do her job to prevent a serious situation from developing. I reminded her that I am doing everything I can possibly do to prevent a tragedy from occurring and I need the court system to do their part!

With my very low opinion of our criminal justice system, I was expecting him to be released for time served, but was pleasantly surprised when the prosecutor did not plea bargain the case (although every other case in court this morning was plead out). The trial is scheduled for Friday at 3pm! So, we'll see what happens. In a perfect world, he'll get 6 months and before he is released from that sentence, he'll be tried on the arson/attempted murder charge. At this point, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll let you know what happens.

In more cheery news, today was day three of rent collection. I collected a bunch of rents today during the time that I wasn't in court. I also managed to change the electrical receptical (for a stove) that was burned after a lightning strike last evening, and also installed a new gas stove in another apartment.

It's time for me to get caught up with my blog. There's not a lot of real estate stuff to talk about, because I just haven't been working very much. After taking 5 days off for Memorial Day, last week was an extremely short week. I basically worked 3 days, then took another 3 day weekend off. I have already posted through last Thursday, so I'll start today's post with Friday.

Friday morning started with a knock on the door. We rarely have people unexpectedly knock on the door, especially early in the morning. As I approached the door, I could see the Sheriff's car in the driveway. A deputy had come to serve me with a subpoena for the criminal trial of the convicted felon who has been stalking me. This convicted felon is currently in jail awaiting trial for violating the restraining order I have against him. That was about as exciting as the weekend got!

To be quite honest, I don't really remember what I did on Friday. I just basically took it easy (although I did mow the grass at my home). The one good thing for Friday was that the weather was finally good enough for a bicycle ride.

Saturday, my wife wanted to go shopping for new table and chairs for our deck. You might think that we could have found these at just about any store, but we wanted an all-metal table and all-metal chairs. That turned out to be a difficult task and we ended up going to stores in three different cities before we found what we were looking for! I'm not much for shopping, but the good thing for me is that I was finally able to find several boxes of .40 cal S & W (Smith and Wesson) Ammo. If you weren't aware of it, there is a severe shortage of ammo in this country because people believe that socialism will be very bad for gun rights and people are stockpiling guns and ammo. It is very difficult to find ammo. Even gun stores are low on guns and frequently completely out of ammo!

Sunday was my day to run projection at Church and that kept me busy til after noon. Then, my wife and I just took it easy - doing just about nothing. We watched a movie and then I did get in a good bike ride.

My main project for today was to take care of paperwork. I started by going to the post office to pickup my Section 8 rent checks. I then checked the money off the rent roll and made up deposit tickets for the bank. In addition, I attempted to make as much paperwork disappear as possible, by paying bills; filing receipts away; putting check stubs into the respective checkbooks; calling to straighten out a couple of bills that were incorrect, etc.

About 1pm, I was finished with the paperwork and went to the bank. Then, I collected several more rents from tenants and even spent a little time cutting up a small tree that had fallen during a storm.

Tomorrow, I'll be working on some rentals. I have the court trial on Wednesday and Thursday, but hopefully that won't last all day.