Tomorrow it’s time for our sales meeting, and I’m working on having an announcement quite soon about a new hire in our Amador County Office.

We’re also hiring in our El Dorado County office, and if our luck holds we may have an announcement there in a few days as well.

I hope our new Amador County hire likes to blog. Lately it seems the day gets completely taken up by working on client files, training, and other things that, taken together, probably mean that my business is on exactly the right track. However I do miss the leisure time I used to enjoy for spinning sense and or nonsense. I can see only one solution: more caffeine.

It’s really great to see the Realtors® in the company doing so well, not only directly with clients, but interacting so smoothly with one another. The dark side of real estate offices is that there sometimes seems to be too much infighting and competitiveness, a la Glengarry Glen Ross. I really don’t get a sense of any of that from anyone on the team, just good friendly cooperation.

I’m also impressed again and again by the level of effort and professionalism everyone puts out, a situation that allows me to be able to say with confidence that we’re offering an excellent service to our clients. Yeah, I know — I’m a salesman, so I’m supposed to say that. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

On the plus side, most of them contain little or no trans fat.

Click for detailed contents.

John’s House, more or less. What happens when you click on it?

Well, I’m just giving Live Writer a whirl.  Live Writer is a free blog editing desktop software by those unknown developers at Microsoft®.

Oh wait, you’ve heard of those guys?

Free software from them violates a sort of law of nature or something.

Hey, that’s not half bad.  I wonder if there’s a google maps plugin.  No doubt there is.

What’d be really slick was if I dusted off my developer fingers and created a Metrolist plugin or a Paragon plugin, so we could drop a listing in there without further ado.

My nerdly powers are on the wane, however.  Soon I won’t even be able to find my pen pocket protector or tape for my glasses.

A call for help is going out in El Dorado County for a Cameron Park baby who is in need of a bone marrow transplant in order to survive. 

Trevor Austin Kott (a 6-month old Cameron Park baby) has been battling congenital acute myeloid leukemia or AML since his birth last October. The disease is rare and affects blood cells in the bone marrow. He is undergoing a fifth round of chemotherapy in his fight to beat a deadly disease.

Trevor is critically ill and needs a marrow transplant to survive. His life depends on finding a match immediately. Doctors say he has about 6-8 weeks to live unless a match can be found. So far  there hasn’t been a match.

BloodSource is coordinating a number of bone marrow match drives over the next few weeks. Trevor’s family hopes that one of these drives will find the one match to save him. A list of days and times for the bone marrow drives to benefit Trevor can be found at this link: http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=26100.

There will be one in Cameron Park on Saturday, April 14 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Blue Oak School, 2391 Merrychase Drive. 

Potential bone marrow donors must be between the ages of 18 and 60, and in general good health. The test only requires a swab from the inside of your cheek with a Q-tip. The test costs $52 and is tax deductible. The fee goes to the National Marrow Donor Program. The program maintains a registry of bone marrow donors which doctors use to find possible donors for other patients.

The following links have more information on the plight of this infant.
http://www.news10.net/video/player_news10.aspx?sid=26100&aid=37806
http://www.news10.net/video/player_news10.aspx?sid=26347&aid=38037
http://home.comcast.net/~trevorkottinformation/Help_Trevor.rtf and http://www.trevorkott.com/index.html

We welcome comments, especially those that relate to the purposes of this blog, which is to educate consumers about the benefits of living and owning real estate in Amador or El Dorado County.

All comments are moderated.

Although we try to exercise a fairly wide latitude as far as what sort of things may inform or educate our readers, we reserve the right to remove any comments, any time, for any reason.

April 2, 2007, “Two Counties — No Waiting”
March 6, 2007, “Voted Amador County’s best real estate blog by people who know it’s the only one.”
January 27, 2007, finally gave in to the underlying urge to blatant self-promotion with “Goll danged great agents”
December 3rd, 2006, began the fine tradition that is this post, changing our motto in keeping with our hunger blogathon theme to “Practice Random Acts of Residential Sales”.
November 9th, 2006, launched the blog with “We can’t quit now, we still have gas money”.

I have high hopes for a sort of Amador County Renaissance here soon. Elite Properties began in Amador County, as the brainchild of Hal Fishler and Bridget Felmley-Gay. Later, as Hal Fishler became somewhat less active in the area, Elite took on a new broker, me, and that’s how I come to be blogging about Amador County, even though, from an Amador perspective, I live way up heck and gone in western El Dorado County.

In my own defense, however, I live in the foothills. I say this because those of us who live in the foothills are sometimes inclined to call those of you who don’t “flatlanders”. That’s not to say that they live in Flatland, necessarily. Actually I’m not sure what we’re trying to say, other than we live on a hill and you don’t.

If you’re not sure how perjorative a word is, it’s probably not too bad. When teenagers are punished for using the “F” word, it turns out that “Flatland” is not the offender.

But whatever, I’m not a flatlander. Route 50 goes up two or three respectable hills to get to my house. Try it.

Even though Elite Properties began in the also not flat land of Amador County, a lot of our growth lately has been in working with our Sacramento clients. We have a lot of them. But now we’re poised for growth in Amador County as well, and we may well be hiring our first talented but somewhat newer agent soon. (Most of our agents have from four to twenty-six year’s of experience, whereas our newer agent has one year under her belt). But we haven’t hired her yet. We’re just putting on our happy faces, hoping she’ll come play with us, because of how nice and professional we are and how nice and professional she is.

I hope she likes to write. I could go on all day, but either the Sacramento blog or a client or someone pretending to be a client usually cuts a hole in my whole day. So I don’t go on all day on this blog very often, except when we’re poised for growth or we’re having an open house or something.

It turns out both are true right now.

I should write about the open house separately.

Well, this is interesting. I recently came across the following disclaimer:

This post may not be published, linked to or reproduced in any manner without the written permission, of the author …

I don’t know. That seemed to work OK.

I am not a lawyer, but it it seems to me that who I link to is up to me.

Oh, and don’t leave any comments here without my permission. (To not leave comments here without my permission, click the comments link.)

The Sacramento Bee today released an article about a law suit filed by Amador County against a proposed Casino in Plymouth.

Amador County officials, fearful of the impact of another casino in the Plymouth area, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging whether the group planning the casino actually is a legitimate tribe.

The county’s suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, challenges the U. S. Department of Interior’s acceptance of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians as a federally recognized tribe.

The department decided in September that 228 acres in and around the town of Plymouth qualify under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act as “Indian lands” on which the Miwoks may conduct gaming. But that decision “constitutes an abuse of discretion and is arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law,” Amador County alleges in the lawsuit.

Read the full story in the Bee.

We’ve put together a slide show that highlights the beauty of Bridget’s gorgeous listing on Boondock Trail. Bridget tells me that to really appreciate it, however, you should probably get out there and take a look for yourself.

In fact, we’re all so proud of this one that I was all set to make checking out this listing the featured stop on my second Amador County adventure. Then I realized that Fairplay was in El Dorado County, and I’m already living an El Dorado County Adventure each and every day.

To check out the slide show, click the picture!

And yes, you do get a copy of the slideshow burned onto a nice CD as one of our closing gifts when you move into the home…