I don’t see what all the fuss is about here. It’s not like the resturaunt is making every batch of every soup at every location. They probably have a few large kitchen around the country where they can make them so they have a consistant flavor no matter what Panera location you stop into.
Then they package up the soup in the plastic bags, freeze them to keep them fresh, and then ship them out. That way all the individual resturaunt has to do is heat up the product, add a little garnish, and serve.
I happen to LOVE the Panera French Onion Soup. And I don’t mind paying $6 for a healthy sized bowl of it. It’s still a lot better than the canned versions of French Onion that can be typically found at grocery stores.
What dumbfounds me is the fact that there are people who think that large, nationwide, resturaunts actually make all of their dishes onsite. How do you think you can go to one in California, and then get the same great tasting thing when you’re on a trip to Florida?
If you want locally prepaired dishes you’ll need to find a resturaunt that has only one or two locations. For instance, there is this one resturaunt that I like to go to a few mornings a week for breakfast. It’s not like they can screw up eggs, bacon, and toast, but they flavor they are able to give to them is just delicious. Just as long as you don’t look into the kitchen. In the five years I’ve been going there, I don’t think they have ever cleaned the grill. lol. But that’s what makes them unique.
Do I think that the person should get fired for TikTok’ing this Big Reveal? Probably not since it wasn’t that big of a reveal in the first place. And it’s not like any corporate secrets were revealed. But maybe a nice sized repremand should be placed in their file.
So if you like the food at Panera, and feel like it’s worth the money, then go on ordering and eating up, like I do. Just because it is shipped in in plastic bags just to be heated up and garnished doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth the $6 to $9 that you pay to be served.
Well, I know I’m going to get screwed when my parents find out what I went and did this afternoon. After beating myself up for the last few days, I went and put a cash offer on a 4 bedroom, 3.5bath, 3,600 sq ft, on a quarter acre lot in Santa Monica. It’s in NorthEast Santa Monica, just south of Brentwood.
Before I did it, I called up my younger brother, who is 14, and told him I had a surprize and that I’m come pick him up for it. He was a little confused when I didn’t start going back to my apartment, which is only five miles from Mom and Dad’s house, but started to drive into the city.
Since I’ve taken him on little surprize trips before, he figured that this was just one of them. And as we got closer to Santa Monica he thought we’d end up at the Pier. But then I got off the freeway and a few minutes later I was pulling into the driveway of this cute little house.
As we were getting out of the car, his first question was “who lives here?”. I didn’t say anything. The realtor that I’ve been working with since finding the property was already there and she came out of the house just all full of energy and saying it was good to see me again. I’d seen the property before a few times before going into the hospital for my surgery and figured that it had been snapped up by then. I was a bit shocked when I looked the other day and saw that is was still on the market with a small price reduction.
My brother shook hands with the Realtor when she introduced herself to him and he asked “is this your house?”, still a bit confused as to what was going on.
She looked back at him with an “oh, isn’t he adorable” look and said: “Honey, in a few days this is going to be your brothers house.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman shreek like he did when that got past his ears. Then he looked at me and said “No way. You’re kidding, right?” And after I assured him that I wasn’t, I told him to go in and take a look.
By this time the house was empty so I only had the pictures the previous owners had taken for the showing to show him what it looked like before. It only took a few minutes for him to meet us in the kitchen yelling, “there’s a freaking pool in the backyard.” Then I added that there is also a bedroom downstairs that is going to be just for him when he visits.
It is an amazing property that I can’t believe has been on the market for almost 100 days now. I am very willing to take it off. There are both city and ocean views and a private second story office with panoramic views that I’m planning on turning into a photo studio. With that studio, and the pool, I bet I’ll be able to make some great photographs and videos.
I’ll have the master bedroom of course, and one bedroom I’ll do up for Mom and Dad when they want to have a Beach Weekend Getaway, with the last one for models that may have to drive or fly in so they don’t have to stay at a hotel while they’re in the city.
After my brother came back from checking out every nook and cranny in the place, he met up with the Realtor and I as we were in the kitchen at the counter filling out the paperwork to officially make the offer. Fortunatly, the Realtor had already talked to the Seller who assured her that as soon as they got the official offer, they would accept it.
Since the Seller had already moved out, the Realtor had been nice enough to go out and buy three cheap barstools for us to sit at the counter on while filling out the paperwork. Talk about a stack, and I wasn’t even going to be getting a loan. All I needed was the cashiers check. It was in the middle of the offer than my brother finally asked the question I knew he was dying to ask: “So, how much are you buying this place for? This is Santa Monica.” I told him I was offering $4.5Million.
I thought he was going to have a heart attack. “What!?” was all he could get out. “How do you have five million dollars?”, was his next question. “You’re not some drug dealer are you?”, he asked with a joke.
“Well, you know those “Little Investments” that you hear me talk about now and then, and that’s why I don’t have to have a full time job? Let’s just say that they are a little bit bigger than I tend to let on so it doesn’t freak Mom and Dad out, and then have family members coming out of the woodwork asking to borrow money.
It was the Realtor who asked the next question: “What were your little investments in?” I thought I’d freak out when the first person asked me that. But to tell you the truth, it was like a weight lifting off my chest that I didn’t have to hold on to the secret anymore. The Realtor was going to know, my brother was going to know, and eventually so would Mom and Dad.
So while popping a bottle of champaign (yes, bro got to drink too), I told the story of how I started my investing.
My first investment was an inheireted one. My Grandfather on my Dad’s side had died when I was 11. Grandma had passed a few years before, and Grandpa had then pretty much stayed to himself. I wasn’t told that he had left me his shares of WalMart until I was 18 and about to graduate high school. In a letter that he left, that I still have, he said that he was splitting the shares between his three grandkids in the hopes that we’d each learn the value of investing, and have a good life. We each ended up getting 150 shares that value about $85,000 today.
The second investment was the largest and most daring that I’ve done, and I don’t think that any will come nearly as close in the future. Now I may not be a Wall Street Investor, and probably couldn’t be a Day Trader, I’m not stupid, and I can tend to see the way things are going to go if I take the time to look back on the way things have been in the past.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the future of banking was moving more and more online. I remember when I was 10 and got a check for my first paid modeling gig, my mom taking me to the bank to open my first savings account. Though I was excited at the time, I also didn’t want to hand over my check because I was so happy to have it. The teller gave me a little record book and showed me where she had written that I now had $XX in an account. But it didn’t feel quite the same as having that paper check in my hand.
When I turned 13, and had build up a couple thousand dollars from the gigs, my mom let me get a debit card so I could buy things and deposit my pay without having to haul her around with me. And by the time I was 15, and making some pretty good money hustling as well, a friend of mine had told me about the new “prepaid” debit cards that you could get and not have to worry about hiding loads of cash from your parents. I thought they were great, but never had all my cash on one card just in case I lost it or got mugged or something. Better to lose a few hundred than a few thousand.
By the time I graduated high school, I was hardly carrying any cash at all. I usually had enough to catch the public transportation if I needed to, and enough to buy soda and snacks out of the vending machines. Anything else at stores, gas stations, and such I was using my debt card.
Then one afternoon after school a group of us were sitting around McDonalds when we got to talking about the new thing money related called BitCoin. What I heard then got me very interested, and for the next few weeks I was going all over the internet reading everything I could about the subject. From what I read, I could tell that the people who were behind it, who nobody knew who it was, were on to something big.
It took me quite a while to figure out how to buy the BitCoin as you couldn’t just go to a bank, and it wasn’t sold on Amazon. I was going to use some of the money that I’d made hustling, and legit jobs like working at an ice cream store and lawn maintenance, as well as life guarding. It took about six months of work, but by the time I started college I had about $10,000 in BitCoin.
Sure, it was chancy, but like they say, if you can’t afford to lose your investment, you shouldn’t invest. Once college started I pretty much forgot about the BitCoin. When I checked on it at the end of my freshman yeare of collage, I was shocked to see that my account had grown to over $1Million. I’d made a million dollars on a ten thousand dollar investment, letting it sit there while I as doing college classes that had nothing to do with finance.
I’d bought all my BTC in Coinbase so I didn’t have to do much to keep an eye on it. Before Coinbase went public in 2021, the last time I’d looked at the price of my BTC was in June of 2016 when the price was about $530/ea. That means that my investment had grown to about $5.3Million.
Once Coinbase went public Bitcoin went into the mainstream a bit more. I was being floored by the fact that at first they were talking about Bitcoin crossing $30,000, then $40,000. I went banannas when I saw it cross $50,000 for the first time. All because we had that little sitdown at McDonald’s. I wonder how many of them are kicking themselves in the ass about now. I was now halfway to being a billionaire.
My Realtors reaction wasn’t one. She just stood there with her mouth open in disbelief. My brother’s jaw had dropped through the floor and was now in his new visiting bedroom.
I was reading about the price changes this weekend. I read that though they are predicting a selloff to about $30,000, they are also talking about the possibility of increasing to $100K in the next five years. Me? A billionair by the time I’m 35? What am I going to do with myself?
Now when my parents hear about the story from my brother, I expect them to have a lot of questions. If you know some of my story with them, at first my dad was not at all happy when he found out I was gay. It’s taken him since I was 15 to finally come around to the idea. He still has hesitations, but at least he hasn’t totally shut me out. He will just initially think that I made all the money doing porn. Which, I can assure him, is not the case. I don’t think anyone makes that much in porn. At least none that I’ve met yet. Rich yes, billionairs no.
So buy the time I finished the story, we had drank the bottle of champaign, and the Realtor had scanned the documents with her phone and sent them to the selling Realtor to get the Seller’s signatures. She said that she would get the appraisal ordered to confirm the value, the title report ordered to make sure there are no property issues, and the home inspection to be sure that the house is up to code and doesn’t have any unseen infestations.
Altogher, she said that we were going to be about three weeks from closing, and that she would make the anticipated closing date of February 1, 2022. I am so excited I don’t know if I can stand it. I’m going to nearly quadruple my living space. I’ll have this cute kitchen overlooking an open dining and living area where I can start my secret desire to start baking. I’ll be able to get a theater sized plasma TV with a Bose surround system to have scary movie night with my brother.
I’ll be able to go outside swimming whenever I want to, and buck naked if I want to too. I know my bro will get a kick out of being able to skinnydip. I don’t think he ever has yet.
I’ll be able to host parties as long as they don’t get too wild. I’ve never been much of a partier, but I do enjoy going out to a good dance club every now and then.
I’m not buying the property to endulge myself. Just the opposite actually. It is a decent priced house for the area it’s in and the ammenities that it has. I’d call it a modest extravagance. Now my brother will have to help me out to furnish the thing. I don’t have much at all in my current 1,000sqft apartment.
My major fixtures are my Queen sized IKEA bed; My futon sofa (that my brother hates); My L-Shaped Office Desk; My 48″ HDTV with it’s media center; and my night stands and dressor. Once I know that the closing is going to go through for sure, I’ll probably end up just selling that stuff so I have all new things at the house. I do not want to bring these ratty looking things to a brand new $5M house. That would be a disgrace to the house.
Once it happens, I’ll let you know how the talk with Mom and Dad went about the new house, and where the money came from. I might just have to take them out to a very expensive dinner to explain it. What do you think?
Who doesnt like a little Weird Al? I think we need more music like this to bring back some humor into this damn crazy world.
Plus, I thought this was a good song to start the blog with since I do like to talk about anything and everything. And if you have a comment about something I posted, please reply back. I’d love to hear from you.
A Little Bit of This and That 