This is that gawdawful ugly sign at the east entrance to the casino. It is on the wrong side of the road for northbound traffic, and behind some trees (you can’t see them but they are there) blocking the view for the southbound. The sign has the moving LED display to announce jackpots and such. It must have LED “bulbs” because there are always some of them burnt out.
It is so nice to have people on whom you can rely. I was on the cell phone for 73 minutes with my west coast people and got more done than your average month around here. Sure enough, my mutual fund investments fell 10% ($3.50 per share) in the last month. How did they know I needed to sell? It just seems to me I am paying the fund managers to prevent that kind of thing from happening by diversifying my money. As it stands, if I sell now, I’ve lost all the dividends I’ve paid taxes on in the previous 20 quarters, or five years. If I don’t sell, I can’t get affordable primary care. How do they know? However, let this be a lesson to any one who invests. I have followed the rules for decades and never came out ahead in the end, either losing outright or barely getting my money back. Before you laugh, remember, I never made any mistakes. I just never got lucky, either.
My strategy has always been to buy while the market is falling. This is exactly what the pros do. However, they seem to know when to sell. Buying is easy, selling is hard. I judge my gain by the amount my stocks gain after a huge plummet, called a bear market. I’ve noticed that each recovery since 1980 is less profitable by this scale (although the numbers get bigger every time). Note that I said judge my gain, not realize it, as I do not buy and sell the shares of my mutual funds. This is merely a mechanism I use to gauge the performance and the performance is getting weaker despite I am with the oldest and most trusted mutual fund in existence.
It was one of the rare days I did not step out of the house. It seems both my printers are out of ink at exactly tax time. That does it, I’m pulling the printer at the shop off the network until some method is discovered to bill in advance. Because of the delays with these printers, I will be one day late with my taxes and I will never buy anything from the Brother Corporation again. In the end, their “printer” has let me down every time I relied on it, if it wasn’t one thing it was another.
Around a week ago there was a fly I could not swat. One of those Florida flies that always circles in front of something you can’t hit, like your coffee cup. These flies are also too smart to land on flypaper, but sometimes you get lucky. So I strung up a strip by the window behind the computer. Now I look at it and ask myself what kind of rodeo is going on around here when I’m not at home. You should see the number and variety of things I’ve caught. Make no mistake, insects like warm climates just as much as people do.
There are 53 small bugs and 2 medium sized. Since none of these are in evidence when I’m around, and they are all flying insects, these antics carry on while I’m out. Soon the termite swarms will begin. They migrate every spring to form new colonies. They get in here occasionally but there is nothing for them to munch on. Pudding-Tat is useless except she hates roaches. We do get the odd large one but she bats them to death. Good kitty.
Oh, and Marion says, contrary to what the SPCA web site says, the cat can be spayed after being a year old. Since Marion used to work with a vet, I’ll have to reconsider the status of Pudding-Tat. I mean, folks, Pudding is never going to be allowed to have kittens intentionally. And that is that. I’m just tired of having to keep the doors always closed and nobody would ever cat-sit under those circumstances.
I also got the 2007 taxes done. Looks like I’ll get the $300 incentive, whoop-de-do. I can hardly wait, considering after reading the law on disability, if Donald Trump had my condition, he could apply and have the same chances of getting it. I haven’t seen that much equality since I left the farm.
Later. I got the revisions done for 2006 and 2005. Now to begin the most serious calculation I’ve done in years. The trade-off and breakeven points to my own demise. That has got to be the ultimate in planning ahead. Actually, it does already go beyond that because after the fact, my estate is to pass seamlessly to Marion with one or two small exceptions.
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