Thursday, 01/26/06
Coffee with Piper yesterday, and he explained why it was a good idea to sell the IBM stock now, and not wait for it to go up. He convinced me, what he said made sense at the time, but durn if I can reproduce his argument now. If I try I just end up back where I started. So - I submitted a sell order for all but the jointly owned shares last night. No turning back now. And no stomach clenching on that one. I even went ahead and sold more than he had recommended.
When I get the checks we'll buy short-term tax-free municipal bonds. The bonds won't grow in principle like stock does, but the interest income will be higher than the stock dividends, and we'll reinvest the excess income. The plan is that over the next three years, I'll be selling old stock, and some will go to bonds, some to indexed mutual finds, and some to individual stocks. He says I should have no more than 8% in any one company, and no more than 15% in any one industry (unlike the 55% I have now in oil!). That way if anything crashes, I don't get hurt too badly.
At the spa today, the last day of my free trial, I signed up for a month-to-month membership. So I'm sorta committed, at least until it warms up and dries up outside and I can walk again. Those machines are making a noticeable difference in tone (my bat-wings are already firming up!), but they don't seem to be helping with the weight loss, not like walking does. I've been very pleased that my pulse rate has been right on target.
You know what's weird? My behind is losing padding and getting firmer - and sitting is actually not as comfortable as before! I have to keep shifting my weight to get comfortable. It's like the chair got harder.
As evidence that my eating habits have changed, I got a handful of potato chips out of the pantry this evening, and they were stale! I'd never tasted a stale potato chip before....
I bought the external hard drive, 200 GB worth. It will probably be next Monday or Tuesday before I can try it.
Roman called last night, very late (yes, Daughter, as per that article you sent me, it does seem to average every two days), and we had an extremely satisfying 90 minute conversation. I don't mind the way things seem to be going now, and I am content with it. I think part of my problem is that the past few months he had seen a bad side of me, what with the jealousy and anger and all, and it seemed very unfair. Now he is seeing a better me, and that kind of makes it all ok. Just so he knows the better me. That's fair.
One of the dumbest things: When I shut down AOL last night, I shut it down under an alternate screen name (id) instead of the main screen name (id). When I connected to the internet this morning (BizOnline), I hadn't started AOL yet, McAfee (which is not supposed to be running at all - even the icon says it's disabled) put up a little window saying that there were updates available. So I answered ok, go get'em, thinking it was just virus definitions. McAfee went to its site, and proceeded to download a whole new McAfee, and it kept addressing me in its messages by the alternate AOL id. Duh?
Now, let me get this straight. McAfee is sitting there mulling the universe, it concludes that the current AOL id has never downloaded McAfee, so it concludes that it itself does not exist? "I think therefore I'm not"?
After that finished, I tried running a scan, just to make sure McAfee was ok, I mean nobody said they were replacing files with the same name or anything (although if they are stored under different AOL id folders, would they notice?) and apparently something must have got doubled, McAfee-1 and McAfee-2 got into a pissing contest, and I lost.
I can't run it from the toolbar icon any more. It hangs the system. But if I click on Start -> Programs -> McAfee, then it runs just fine.
Just more stuff I don't understand. That pile seems to be growing lately.
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