pickles

A post about pickles??? Why? well because I have like 4 topics that I have been jotting notes about, they are good topics but they way have some political flair which may rub some readers the wrong way. In a quasi-redonk way this may help you understand me. So on to the pickles, which should explain what I am talking about.... I think.
So, most people in America eat pickles but do most pickle-eaters know where they come from???

I don't mean what town they were jarred in.  Or, which store they are from.  I mean what is the history of the pickle?  Well its actually been around for about 4,000 years when ancient people were preserving cucumbers.  Both Napoleon and Washington were obsessed with them.  And they are a pretty healthy snack.  But what difference does it make if you like the way they taste. Well..... to you it may not matter, but to me it does.  I never have liked pickles, for most of my life I thought they were pretty gross (which is a shame b/c my granny makes fantastic homemade pickles and I waited all these years to enjoy them).  I never did mind a little pickle juice, I always ordered my chickfila sandwiches "as-is" and took the pickles off later so I could get a little pickle nectar on my sandwich.

 

So, I was always OK with the flavor, I just didn't want to stick those weird looking things in my mouth.  But a year and a half ago we were having a big meal with the wife's family and I just decided to eat one.  And.... I didn't really like it all that much, but that didn't matter, I had cleared the hurdle of eating one, my first one at age 26 (I know sad).  So did I eat another one??? of course not, not until I could get home and google the history of pickles and find out if any historical figures had eaten them.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find out they were such an old food stuff.  Once I knew that, I went out of my way to eat as many different kinds, at as many different places as possible...... how else would you learn to like something?????

I did this same sort of thing with most seafood and with sushi.

Yes, I have eaten all the above creatures.  Why? Well to make it short. My first sushi(just raw fish, I still don't like the rolls) I ate b/c my friend Matt ordered some.  So, after trying it and finding out people had been eating it for 1000's of years I decided to like it. The lobster b/c my wife likes it and we travel to Maine every year, but mostly I just respect the claws(the only part of the lobster I actually like is claw meat, I give the tail to whoever wants it). The sea urchin???? well we were in L.A. for a long weekend and why the heck not??? The Uni will not be a repeat.
So what am I saying? Well to be honest it has changed since this post started.  At first it was more of a "I need to know the background of something before I can get behind it" which seems like it would make any view I have more substantive.  But as I write this out I realized something about myself, the above quoted words are a load of butt shark.  I don't really think everything out to the extreme. In fact what I realized is that I have changed quite a bit since I was a younger. I have gotten a little older and I got married.  Here is what this post helped me realize:
1. I am really open minded about things/people/whatever and I want to like it so I will give just about anything a try.
2. I need to find a reason to like this thing in my life.  Most things I like cause it is quirky or relaxing or they help people or it's fun or....... insert good thing about life here (it doesn't have to be logical).
3. Once I find a good enough reason I will choose to like/dislike something regardless of criticism unless you/it can appeal to my open-mindedness.
Here is the dirty little secret.... this is how we all are.  But, sometimes as we get older or have other priorities in life we loose touch with being open to new things.  If you notice the 3 things above, they are meant to be cyclical.  I think this is how we are supposed to be.  The funny thing about the pickle is.... I hate, I mean it, I can't stand cucumber, just everything about it tastes wrong.  So what is it that I really like??? The flavor, which is just a little marinade and a little time.

GeDubs V Snow for the heavy weight championship of the whurrrrrrld!

So the weather has been interesting in the ATX of late.  On Saturday it was nearly 80* and sunny.  I wore shorts and a t-shirt(and rode around Martindale on my BIL's bike, which had a small battery powered radio tied to the handle bars with a shoe string, fortunately for the neighborhood it had plenty of power to blast out some tejano music while the wife and I rode around the town, did I mention I was wearing a pair of large lady shades b/c mine were stranded in P'ville).  So back to the weather, on Tuesday it decided to snow, not barely snow, but snow for 6-7 hrs.  We are talking several inches of snow and it stuck to the ground.

Pics are from in and around the park by my office.
So it has never snowed this much in ATX in my memory.  So of course I needed to go for a walk in it during my break.  It was great.  I just kept thinking to myself how lucky I was to be able to see this park covered in snow, and how I wanted to take a mental picture so I wouldn't forget what a great scene was unfolding in front of me.  Then I got caught up in the moment.  I decided to walk out to the perfect spot and make a snow angel.  Of course the perfect spot was a good 1/4 mile or so from my office out in this snowy park meadow.

Now I have had my fun and unknowingly challenged snow's authority.  I forgot that my car keys were in my jacket pocket, and when I flopped back to make my angel, they found wings of their own.  So I made my angelic likeness, sprang up, snapped my pic, and marched through the snow, back to work so proud of myself.  Only 15 min later did I realize I had no car keys.  So I checked every pocket 3 times and told myself surely they are not out there somewhere.  But of course that's where they are.  So I explain to my boss how my keys are in the park. "I think I lost my keys in the park over break" "Are you serious""Yep, I really think they are out there, they must fallen out of my pocket somewhere""What like on a bench, were you sitting on a bench in the snow?""No... I didn't sit on a bench""Are you messing with me? This sounds made up?""No, I wish, I wish I had my keys, but I don't, I feel like I should go look for them""How will you know where to find them?".......long pause..... "I was making a snow angel and stuff falls out of the pockets of this jacket pretty easy"........another long pause....."alright then, do what you have to do"  So now I look like a complete idiot.  So I trudge out there, a little more urgency in my step.  The snow doesn't look quite as charming as before.  I find where the angel was.  The snow is coming down pretty hard.  And I am on my hands and knees digging around for car keys.  I finally found them and my hands are freezing(which makes it easier to make snow balls once your hands go a little numb) so I walk back to work making snowballs along the way and throwing them at light posts, trash cans, the occasional tree that I pretend is some NFL wide receiver and I am throwing a winning TD pass.  Just when I feel victory over the snow..... I feel it.  My feet. My feet are soaked to the bone.  They are cold really cold.  And my shoes are so wet.  My jeans are too, mid-way up the calf.  I hurry back to work, but the damage is done.  Now I squeak and squish with every step through the hall ways.  I keep taking my shoes off under my cube desk, but everyone wants me to answer some dumb question.  So I have to pull them back on with one hand while I pretend to be finishing an email and "I will be right with you"(similar thing happened last week when my boss caught me putting on deodorant in my cube, I quickly tried to hide it between my legs but when I turned to answer his question it spun out of my chair and fell to the floor by his feet, yeah..... um......right.... let me just kick that under the desk real quick while you look at me and forget your question).  This goes on for almost 2 hrs I can't take it anymore, so I go out to the car, dig out some old socks from the trunk.  At least I have dry socks in my wet shoes (T always warned me of this in Chicago, "it seems fun to play in the snow, but your tennis shoes will get wet, and then there is no going back")  I make it trough the day OK, minus the pounding migraine from 12.30 - 5.45.

The next day, I decided that I needed to make peace with the snow.

 

The only real way to do this is to make a man out of snow to pay homage for being defeated.  So I built my snow man and took a picture with my phone.  I gave the snow further respect by emailing the pic to my wife with the customary "Greetings From the North Pole" subject line.  She seemed to like it.  I took it to the final level by making this guy my desktop screen on my office computer.  What can I say, I was over-matched by a better fighter, I had all the gumption but snow had the endurance to take me down in the later in the rounds.  Maybe in a few more years I'll get another shot at the belt.

Women's Curling anyone???

Ok, I have to admit that I am borderline obsessed with the Olympics.  But today I am taking it to a new level.  Not only am I watching women's curling, I have watched enough curling today to realize what's going on.  Nothing like hearing U-S-A being yelled out at two women frantically sweeping ice.

 

The Winter Olympics have been getting huge ratings this year. They have just been doing everything right.  I can watch all the highlights when I get home from work and unlike the summer games, I fell like I can relate more to the winter athletes. They have day jobs and they look more like us.  Throw that in with the feeling that watching the Olympics makes you feel "smarter."  Yes, I have reached a sophisticated level, I watch international sports, umm yes.  (said with a terrible French accent)  It's really the only sport that makes you feel that way.  It's why I want the news to be on when I know someone is coming over to the house.  "Did you see who got kicked off the island?" or "Did you see CSI Las Vegas last night?" then I look at my TV that's tuned to the news and look back at you and say "No sorry didn't catch that" In all truth I didn't see your prime-time show because I was watching Jersey Shore episode 6 for the 3rd time.  So the real question is, would I watch the Olympics if no one else would ever know if I watched it or not?

The answer is yeah, I think so

 

If we want to get right down to it. I love the winter Olympics because I watched Cool Runnings about 60-70 times growing up(I tried to give an honest number). Huh, well, we liked it. We memorized the little songs. Idk. It was fun.

What's on my investing radar

I have 2 different sectors on my radar this month.

Basic Materials

ProShares Ultra Basic Materials (ETF) UYM
This fund invests in the basic materials that go into most products in our lives.  So paper, wood, aluminum, steel, …….  It is also geared towards a 2x performance of these goods.  So, if you see that things are heading up in the economy this is a great across the board play.
Up 15.35% since being added to my watch list on 2-11-10
The inverse play is ProShares UltraShort Basic Materials (ETF) SMN
Which is down -14.57% in the same time frame.

The other sector that is catching my eye is shipping.

Companies like Nordic American Tanker NAT are set up to take advantage of the turning economy and the rapid Chinese expansion.  Probably the most overlooked thing about these companies is the fantastic dividends that some of them pay.  That being said, watch out for Greece.  The country is home to about 1/4 of the worlds shipping companies, so I would pic individual stocks and not invest in a shipping ETF.
Shipping rates are going up.
And shipping companies are finding interesting ways to cut costs.

I am currently long on technology.

Can't find my journal so fresh stuff coming up

I mentioned last time that I was going to post a few things I had already written down in my journal…. and I would have done that, but after many hours of searching over the last few days, I cannot find it anywhere.  So, it looks like a clean slate for now.

why this? why now?

Well...... the truth is I have been wanting to do one of these for a while.  I put it off because I didn't think I had any real interesting things to say.  Nothing that would change any lives anyway.  But I realized that’s OK.  I do have lots of opinions on things and this is a good place to put them down.  I already started keeping a journal last year and I keep telling myself, “you need to type this out” so this seems like a 2 bird 1 stone kind of deal.  I also want to have some online interaction with people but I can’t stand facebook.  I mean it.  It’s ok if you only have a few “friends” but eventually you end up with all kinds of weird stuff that just overwhelms you all the time.  I do want to share pictures and stories about what’s going on, the places we go, and the projects I have with my wife.  However, I do not want to accept your gang war invitation; yes, I would like to learn my hidden vampire power, but not if its going to post on the wall of hundreds of other people; and no, I honestly don’t care that someone I went to class with in 9th grade had a bad day at work and decided to status update from their mobile which led to their friends sending an ismile cartoon to make their day better.  So, what I needed was a place to write down some thoughts and not get bombarded.  I am thinking of posting a few things that I already have written down.  In order to kind of dip my toe in the blog water.  I like to read, so there will be a book review here or there.  I like following sports (stay tuned for the perfect bcs playoff system, jk…. well maybe not).  I listen to financial talk and current events on the radio a few hours a day, so those topics might pop up too.  I really like to travel, especially to dense urban areas.  I love the buildings and all the people.  Extra homage to a city that is fun and unique.  Most of the design stuff will be left to my much more talented family but I am a sucker for anything that is different.  I doubt I would be able to really stay focused on any one thing for too long.  I’m a pendulum.  Thanks for reading. G