Carrie Underwood DID NOT Skip Leg Day Heading Into Thanksgiving, Kamala Thanksgiving Memes & MEAT!
Plus: What happens when your family gets into the turkey trot world
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you
I got up at 5 a.m. this morning for this edition. Why so early? Earlier this week, Screencaps Jr. came to us asking if he could run the Toledo Turkey Trot, or whatever they call it, with a cross country friend of his.
In a moment of weakness, I said, sure, sounds like a plan.
Little did I know that the race required an 8 a.m. lineup. Mrs. Screencaps reminded me that we'd need to be out of the house at 7:30. So here I am busting out the column earlier than normal so my son can join the turkey trot world.
As a bonus, the wind chill this morning is 18 degrees, but, we're not going to complain. We're going to suck it up and go watch Jr. run his first 5k for charity or whatever they do with the sign-up money.
Today's NFL picks:
Packers +3
Cowboys-Chiefs UNDER 52.5
Ravens -7.5 (watch Derrick Henry rush for 300 yards; the UNDER 51.5 is also tasty since the Ravens will sustain long drives)
Now, let's get to an email from Keith that I've been holding for 10 days. Keith is a longtime emailer who used the power of the community to get into the Tennessee real estate world.
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— Keith writes:
I just wanted to give you a quick disclaimer that this is a longer email, and it's one that I've been thinking about writing you for a long time, but also I think you'll find it pretty fulfilling as it shows the power of the Screencaps Community and what good hard-working people (I feel like is a majority of the community you've fostered) can still do out there. It feels as though you're taking Screencaps through some evolution.. and maybe you've felt as though it has been more of a grind lately compared to before, and I just wanted you to know that what you've built this in to is really amazing. The foundation of Screencaps and this community that's been laid will never change. Hopefully you have a few minutes and enjoy this long email.
I've been a daily reader of Outkick and Screencaps specifically for the past 5+ years, and I really enjoy the content you and the readers create. I don't contribute all the time as I don't want to flood your email, but you may remember me through the years. Anyway, there is always something interesting, or eye-catching, or some sort of normal life topic that fires off dopamine in my brain as a mid-40s father of two (mowing, running irrigation systems, garage beer fridges, etc.) in Screencaps and the TNML. I think the foundational pillars of the screencaps community is really that in a world of crazy people and influences that seem to push society to a bad place, we're red-blooded, sane, kind Americans that help each other as needed, and we work hard and can "do hard things". My entire past year has been a testament to this...
The Cliffs-Notes version is that I sold a rental house I owned, and bought another one that we're going to short-term rent (airbnb style), but it was really a long and winding road full of great referrals from the screencaps community and a whole year of "doing hard things".
First, we owned a long-term rental house (was previously my wife and my primary residence, where we brought our first born child home from the hospital too), that was located in the central Phoenix area. It was great for 20 and 30 somethings, but then became a hipster and wacko lib haven, especially in the past 10 years. We moved away about 8-9 years ago and kept the house as a rental. In the past year or two, after all that has happened in the world and is happening in "blue" stronghold areas, I was tired of having the anchor of the old house in an area I didn't think had a great future, and wanted to find something better.
After months and months and months of thinking about where I wanted to reinvest really my life's equity, while keeping it generally in real estate, Tennessee ultimately was a place I couldn't stop imagining and thinking about (my kids are younger and in school, I have too many roots in the PHX area so we're not officially planning on moving to TN, but you never know what the future holds). Only problem was I had never been to Tennessee and I knew almost nothing in detail about the place, I just had a general idea of what I wanted based on doing my own research of the whole eastern TN area. I felt like it was a place that I could buy some legacy land or real estate for my family as well as enjoy it in the mean-time. But, I knew I needed some good guidance...
[this is where the power of the Screencaps Community starts]: In steps one Mr. Joe Kinsey with the first help of getting me connected to the Johnson City TN gang back in 2024... I sent them an email with just a general idea of my thoughts and "wish list". They provided a lot of great input, and one of them gave me a referral to a realtor in the general Knoxville area. That realtor helped me refine my search for a property over the next few months, and we landed on the area in the vicinity of the Great Smoky Mountains. The realtor also helped me realize I needed to purchase a place that I could rent out when I wasn't using it, as well as helped me understand I needed to do a 1031 exchange (for tax purposes). And we have since purchased a great cabin that we now have listed on Airbnb (it just so happens that your vacation to the Smokies last year was very close to where we ultimately ended up). Further, since I'm not living in the area, we got another referral by our realtor to a "boutique" Property Manager, who is a great person and has a great team and is so far doing a great job. Basically, the Screencaps referrals are now several layers deep and they've all been spot on perfect.
[this is where "do hard things" comes in to play]: Buying and selling real estate itself definitely falls into "do hard things", especially for normal (not loaded) people. My whole year has been about 6 steps of doing hard things:
Do Hard Things Step 1: I spent about 6-7 straight weekends at my old rental house (literally a 100 year old house) getting it ready to sell.
After working my full time job all week, and having two kids in school on top of it, the weekends were even harder work. My punchlist was like 75 items deep, all of them do-it-yourself homeowner type things. Like painting, window and door and hardware fixes, minor plumbing, general yard work, etc.etc. All the stuff that gets talked about on Screencaps, and you can imagine an old house needs.
Do Hard Things Step 2: The actual house selling.
I had a realtor and didn't go the "for sale by owner" route, but i'm hands-on, and the sale process of a home is itself a giant headache. Finally after about 2 months including one sale that fell through, we finally got our house sold (just at the right time, IMO, as far as the market goes).
Do Hard Things Step 3: Finding a new property in Tennessee to buy in 45 days.
So, mixed-in to all of this, I had to figure out what all went in to a 1031 Property Exchange. Basically, you exchange a rental-type property (sell and then buy) via 1031 exchange and escrow company to avoid having to pay Uncle Sam taxes on any capital gains. Since I had purchased the house I sold about 16 years ago, capital gains taxes would have been a silly chunk of change to part with. As part of the exchange, you need to buy a like-kind property, which means I had to buy another rental property (not just a piece of land or vacation home), which is where the Airbnb comes in... Also, this purchase property had to be identified within 45 days, and then closed on within 180 days, or the 1031 falls through and I'm stuck paying the taxes. After the prior months during the sale of the home of looking at property listings from the new realtor in TN and on zillow, my wife and I narrowed potential properties down to about 8. Again, I had never been to TN before, but we planned a trip right at the beginning of my kids Summer Vacation to check out the area, as well as find the property we wanted to buy. We only had 1 entire day in TN with the realtor to look at all of the properties, and luckily, one stood out...
Do Hard Things Step 4: Buying the new property.
At this point we really were pigeon-holed into buying this one property that really checked all the boxes, or else we'd either bust the 1031 exchange, or just frantically search nearer to home in AZ and let the whole TN dream die. We really leaned on our realtor to be our eyes out there through the entire process, since we didn't make any more trips back to TN. Again, I'm pretty hands on, so through the whole process I was reviewing all of the documents, talking with the realtor about the negotiations, doing the virtual walk-through, etc. But finally, we purchased the new property. It is a great cabin in the vicinity of Wears Valley.. on the quiet side of the Smoky Mountains. Close enough to the crazy-ness of Dollywood, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge (hillbilly Vegas my wife says), but also far enough away from all of that to enjoy the serenity and beauty of the Smokies and Appalachian American in general. Wears Valley really spoke to us and is a perfect location (for us, and for that whole area, in my opinion).
Do Hard Things Step 5: We now have this property, and now we need to plan how to get it right.
We got a referral to the Property Manager since it's going to be a short-term rental property when we aren't using it for family vacations, and we're no where near the area to manage it ourselves. We spent a few weeks talking with the PM and letting him provide his input on what needed to be done to the place to spruce it up to be successful as a great short-term rental property. We had literally only spent 30 minutes in the house before we ended up buying it, and obviously we over-looked many things that the place needed, like some new furniture, general maintenance stuff, and many other things we never realized an Airbnb property needed. So the next few weeks were spent pricing out things we had to buy, figuring out decor, and making a new punchlist in collab with the PM. And now at this point, we planned a trip back to our new house to get the punchlist taken care of.
Do Hard Things Step 6: Sweat equity and working on the new house we bought.
We then planned another trip out to TN during my kids Fall Break from school and spent 10 days working on the house to get it ready for the listing. We could have just hired someone to do everything for us, but again, we're not loaded and we went the sweat equity route. While there made multiple trips out to Home Depot, bought new furniture and furnishings as needed, and got the place permitted and ready for listing. Some of the "Hard Things" included pressure washing and prepping and painting both decks of the house; cutting down multiple large trees in the woods to open up a beautiful view (hired a guy via another referral for the actual lumberjacking), but I did spend my own hours cleaning up some of the trees and side areas to make it look nice; gutter and drainage work; installing new interconnected fire/smoke alarms; and a million other little things.
So after over an entire year of planning and hard work, we finally have a piece of property, a nice family cabin, that we're extremely proud of. Here's the Airbnb listing with some pics for reference. We'll eventually have it able to be reserved for family/friends/etc. privately without having to go through Airbnb and all their fees (I know, Airbnb is really kind of a rip-off lately, but it is what it is for what we ended up doing, I think in my life I've only stayed at one Airbnb, so I didn't know much about it until now).
I guarantee none of this would have happened without Screencaps in general, and without you 1st connecting me to the JCTN gang. It took a lot of fortitude and hard work on my family's part, but without the connection and the trustworthy referrals, I would have never followed through with this whole thing! So thank you and thanks Screencaps!!
Show us your meat on Thanksgiving
— Brian B. knew how to get the weekend started:
love reading. been awhile. figured id send a couple meat pics
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That is it this morning. I have to get moving so Screencaps Jr. gets to the trot starting line. Have an incredible Thanksgiving break. Enjoy that big meal, the nap, the football, the cocktails, the family and everything else that comes with the greatest holiday week on the calendar.
Yes, Screencaps will be here all weekend. Stop by and visit.
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