[blink:33swf71u]Warning, Blog Post Incoming.[/blink:33swf71u]
I honestly don't know whether this belongs here or in the Epic Win thread, and that kind of concerns me. As most of you will know by now (especially those of you on facebook and/or twitter) I absolutely loathe my job. I work for a company that provides outsourced customer service to a German company that provides outsourced customer service and eCommerce solutions to other companies around the world. We're not only a third party, we're a fourth party. And we get shit on all day long, every day. Now, some of that comes from asshole customers, but honestly at least 90% if not 95% of the people who are calling to bitch have legitimate gripes, and we're just stuck in the middle between a customer who needs help and a company that doesn't give a rat's ass.
Well, the company that we work for, our client, has canceled their contract with us effective the end of September this year. My job goes away at least the end of September, but possibly sooner, depending on whether it's more cost effective to pay me $18.36 an hour 40 hours a week and my employee $14.00 an hour 18 hours a week, or cut me and pay him $14.00 an hour 40 hours a week (I think it's pretty obvious which is more cost effective).
Now, on the other hand, I hate this place with a passion some days. I drive close to 79 miles a day round trip through horrible traffic (it takes me 45 minutes to get to work because I start work at 6:00am 39.5 miles from my house, but it takes me 1.5 hours to get home on a normal day and up to 3 hours every Friday). Plus, the whole city life thing is really starting to get me down; and my fiance agrees. I was born in a small town in Iowa, I've lived my whole life in small towns, and city life is crushing my will to live out of me.
So, for the past few weeks we have been planning (fairly seriously) to work on getting some savings put together and move to the country, where we plan to start farming for produce, dairy, and some meat production. Enough to provide almost all of the food that we need for ourselves as well as enough to sell to the public. We've gone so far as studying EPA and USDA rules and regulations, looked into how much land we would need, checked into solar power, wind power, and steam power (I plan to run a smoke house and figure while I'm burning wood to create smoke I may as well get everything out of it I can); we know how much money we're allowed to earn from selling excess power to the state per year.
We know how many cows we would need (milk), how many goats (milk), how many pigs (bacon, ham, etc.), how many sheep (wool), how many chickens (eggs), how much square footage of produce growing garden space, how many acres of hay, and how many acres of wood lot it would take to sustain us. We know how large and deep a pond would have to be to support trout (for smoking). We know that any moron with ground to call his own can grow vegetables and that if we want to make money doing it we'll need to be willing to put in more effort than others are willing to put in, which is where my love of pickling and jam making comes in.
Also, we know how much money we can get from the state and federal governments for starting a) a small business which is b) powered by green energy and which c) produces organic meats, cheeses, butters, milk, eggs, vegetables, and various products which can be made from those organic products.
Oh yeah, and about half of my family is involved in farming; dairy, beef and swine, and grain farming, so I have a lot of experience around the farm.
So really, while having both my fiance and I out of work and living on the dole may be a tight squeeze financially; this may be the golden opportunity we need to get the hell out of this gods-forsaken city and into a comfortable country life where we work like mad from before sun-up to after sun-down and are still happier than we are in the city working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
So I really don't know if this is a bad thing or not, but I'm really thinking it's not.
Jumpy much?
rly: 
