December 31, 2006

In the midst of my usual frenzy of activity I was straightening up in my office, and on the bookshelf I spied my travel journals from college. During that time in my life I was the prodigal child, always off somewhere thousands of miles from home, returning briefly to get some home-cooked food and one of two billion lectures from my mother (hence the avoidance of home for those years). For those summers I took off with whatever would fit inside a suitcase or a backpack, not knowing what in the world I was about to get myself into.

My travel journals are a composite between scrapbook and diary; my writing surrounds notes, photos, receipts, and ticket stubs. And I think that my summer in Montana was the most beautiful journey, the one where I learned the most about myself and the one where I put everything on the line. The year 1997 was the the both the best and the most heartbreaking in my memory, because I had built two idyllic lives, one in New Orleans and on in Montana, that had to be abruptly left behind.

Yesterday I read the Montana book, looked at the photos, and cried. What makes me sad about it was that there I felt so fulfilled, yet had almost nothing. Most of my life has entailed the struggle between what I am prescribed to do and my inclination towards an anti-establishment lifestyle. Both New Orleans and Montana are perfect places to escape feelings of societal obligation.

God, it was beautiful. Breathtaking, overwhelming, unreal, fantastic beauty. I want to digitize the photos so I can post some of them here.

Since that summer, I have been wanting to return for a pilgrimage, and I think that is a realistic goal for 2007.

So there is my single New Year's resolution.

Happy New Year!

Posted by megabeth at 02:09 PM | Comments (5)

December 30, 2006

This year's Lexus commercials represent everything that is wrong with suburban America. I cringe every time I hear that woman say, "I did ask for something... shiny!" Someone please assure me that people like that don't really exist: people who will do whatever it takes to outdo their neighbors.

I'm not the only one who thinks the Lexus commercials are disgusting.

It is pathetic to try to persuade consumers that they will feel better about themselves if they own a luxury vehicle.

I think a more effective campaign would be to focus on the aspects of the car that differentiate it from other brands. Lexus is good enough to sell cars without resorting to desperate measures of persuasion.

Garmin is also using a similar message this year.

Implications that you will end up in a bad neighborhood with a strange white man with no teeth wearing clothes from the late 1800s leering at you. Haven't YOU found yourself lost and threatened by Mozart's cousins on a snowy night? This happens to me all the time!

This one takes the cake as the lamest attack ever on the insecurity of middle class females. A woman driving a large SUV (why is she not talking on her cell phone like all the other women driving huge SUVs?) is using a Garmin to find a salon so that she can wax her unibrow. Just think what would happen if you couldn't find the salon and didn't have your unibrow waxed in time for the holidays? OH, THE TRAGEDY!!! NEVER LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU!!!

Posted by megabeth at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, five hundred... cough cough.... gag.

Ha. I'm not going to get sappy or make a bunch of lists of the best music, movies, sports moments, news stories, blah blah blahbity blaaaaaah.

Wrapping up this year: I'm just happy that I am happy. Kasey Chambers sings (in Living in the Circle), "Today is a turn of the coin... heads, you win, tails, you win again." I learned how to live by that attitude during the latter part of this year. There was a turning point this year when I was tired of making choices that made me feel miserable. All I needed to do was change the way I look at ordinary things. So, every day in 4Q 2006 (there's the financial analyst in me, separating life by Qs) has been a joy, except for that one Sunday when I had to study for a final exam. (Blegh.) My three year old niece taught me something good over Christmas. Every day of this Christmas holiday, she would declare, "Today is the BEST day of my life!!!" I can't always say that this day is the best day of my life, but I do find something every day that makes me happy. Such as today: I ate a pomegranate, and I have not had one in years, and DAMN that fruit tastes like candy, like juice with high fructose corn syrup. How can anything straight from nature taste like candy and still be good for you?

I still have a lot to learn, but I'm sure that getting excited about a pomegranate is a step in the right direction.

Posted by megabeth at 07:03 PM | Comments (2)

In six days I have my laser eye surgery and I feel like an impatient little kid because the time could not go ANY slower. Today my eye doctor gave me the final go-ahead for the surgery. My eyes are dilated and I just watched a movie since I am useless until the dilation drops wear off.

This is so exciting. This is a life-changing event I am about to experience. I used to joke around that I got the short end of the genetic stick in two areas: being totally blind (since fourth grade I have needed vision correction) and not being able to sing worth a dern. I am going to fix the first genetic mishap, and I'm wondering when someone is going to invent vocal chord sculpting so I can have that surgery too?

A week from today I am going to have a spaz and run around like crazy screaming like my dog does when I come home from work.

Posted by megabeth at 06:58 PM | Comments (1)

December 28, 2006

Is Hardee's trying to make people barf?

This commercial reminds me of various bodily functions that involve the expulsion of matter.

There's another ad I've seen that pictures a person's hand hastily grabbing the entire stock of napkins from a restuarant napkin container. This, also, reminds me of what really happens if one were to eat at Hardee's.

Someone at an advertising agency got paid to make disgusting crap like that.

Posted by megabeth at 10:34 PM | Comments (2)

December 27, 2006

I hired some movers to get my mother's piano over to my house. There was a spot for it in the fireplace room and it is a perfect fit for the room.

The first pieces I played this afternoon were Schubert's Waltz in A Minor, which is a rather stormy, melancholy piece, and Mozart's Sonata, K.545. I stumbled through both of them since I am very rusty, but it is evident that I can still read music! Hooray! I am so excited!

I thumbed through the stack of books and sheet music that my mother had kept, and I found a John Denver book. Mmmm. Lovely.

Posted by megabeth at 03:43 PM | Comments (3)

December 26, 2006

I'm not motivated unless there is a figurative carrot dangling in front of me, just out of reach. I think about why I have enjoyed the sport of cycling so much since I've always preferred sports in which there is a moving object that is chased, hit or thrown. Playing the game takes my mind off feeling any physical pain from pushing the body to its limits.

In triathlon or time trial, definitive time goals can be set. "X miles in X minutes". Nevertheless, there are environmental factors that can affect one's performance. If I raced a triathlon two years in a row, perhaps one year the weather was rainy and cold, and the following year it was brutally hot.

Bike racing isn't particularly measurable in terms of individual performance except for time trialing. Cycling is a team sport, so most team members sacrifice their individual goals in order to help a teammate win the race (think Floyd Landis working for Lance Armstrong). I'm competitive by nature, but I like the idea of being a helper. I especially like the notion that a team can devise a race strategy based on strengths that should be leveraged.

I don't think winning as an individual is what motivates me in this sport. At one point in time I wanted to excel in sports because it contributed to my self worth. I no longer feel compelled to prove anything to anyone. What motivates me now is thinking of my body as a science experiment. There is a general hypothesis of improved performance, but what are the inputs? What combination of inputs works best? There are millions of possibilities.

And how do I measure those inputs? By following a regimented training plan and keeping diligent notes in my training diary, then following up with periodic testing to see if my fitness has improved.

This sport is perfect for a detail-oriented numbers freak like me!

(And perhaps I *am* crazy, but it is a healthy endeavor. It has motivated me to improve my diet and it wears me out so I sleep like a rock.)

Posted by megabeth at 08:11 PM | Comments (2)

Last week I stopped by the Sterne Library at UAB and checked out some fiction books since I like to read fiction when I am not currently in the midst of classes. They aren't due back until late February.

In one day I finished Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. It was an easy read and completely purposeless, which is exactly the reason for reading fiction.

I am going to miss being a grad student after I finish the degree. I only have one year left to take advantage of the perks. My favorite perks are the gym, the library and free access to online databases (such as Harvard Business Journal and Morningstar).

I do think, however, that I will make it through life without the 10% Quiznos discount. ;)

Maybe I can find some way to extend my student status without really being a committed student.

Posted by megabeth at 10:38 AM | Comments (3)

Earlier this year, I busted my little sister doing something that I still think (six months later) is really bad. She knew where my spare key was hidden, so she was bringing her boyfriend over to my house while I was at work. She's almost 25, so I think that any day now she might try to treat other people the way that she would like to be treated. To add insult to injury, when I informed her that I knew what she was doing, she threw a fit in response and never apologized. An apology would have helped me to overlook how I was treated and then we could move on with our relationship as sisters.

So I chose to cool off our relationship in order to protect myself from further abuse.

This Christmas, she wanted me to suggest some gift ideas in OCTOBER so that she could go ahead and get her shopping done. She told me she didn't have much money and wanted to spend the money she had at the time to ensure that she would be able to buy gifts for everyone on her list.

We spend the holidays at my parents' house and I hadn't seen her in a while, but it was evident to myself and everyone else (and everyone in my family lacks the tact to keep our mouths shut) that she has been making sweet, sweet love to the tanning bed. Frequently.

I guess that when you are hard up for cash and life is SUCH as travesty as a poor person (who lives with her parents rent free and they pay her bills including tuition and car insurance), there's always money for the tanning bed.

In a generally health-conscious family, a crispy-fried tan person sticks out like a sore thumb. She looks like a cracker that fell out of a casserole onto the bottom of the oven, and was left there for a dozen or so subsequent bakings of other dishes.

Anyhow, it isn't my position to care about what she does as long as it doesn't involve me.

I do think it's ironic, though, that the only person who has broken into my house is my own fucking sister.

I like Christmas, but as you can see, it gets me a little ticked off, so I am glad that it's over until next year.

Related, from Running with Scissors:

In the opening sequence to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary's in a supermarket, hurrying through the aisles. She pauses at the meat case, picks up a steak and checks the price. Then she rolls her eyes, shrugs and tosses it in the cart.

That's kind of how I felt. Sure, I would have liked for things to be different. But, roll of the eyes, what can you do? Shrug.

I threw the meat in my cart. And moved on.

Posted by megabeth at 09:16 AM | Comments (5)

December 24, 2006

My three-year-old niece eats ony foods made with white flour and/or sugar, so she was very excited about getting a meal of decorated Christmas cookies. She has been talking about making cookies with her aunties for weeks.

She doesn't have good hand coordination yet so when she said, "Help me, Aunt Beff. This is hard," I wanted to squeeze her and give her chubby cheeks lots of kisses.

I have not spent significant amounts of time around little kids until my niece was born, and I find it highly entertaining and hilarious.

When my brother-in-law walked in the kitchen, he asked my niece if she needed to go poo-poo in the potty. She is not having an easy time of potty training because she wants her mother to treat her like a baby and change her diapers since her infant sister is getting a lot of attention. She responded to him, "NO, Dad! YOU go away and go poo-poo in the potty!!!"

The cookies that she decorated look like Jackson Pollack paid us a special visit from the grave. She covered one cookie completely with multi-colored sprinkles, rending it inedible to all but those with guts of steel.

She would draw from the icing bowl, but the little plastic kiddie spoon wouldn't make it to the cookie. Somehow it managed to work its way to her mouth instead.

After eating about a cup of icing, she started dancing crazily to the Christmas music playing on the stereo. She pulled her pants down just enough to reveal her bottom, and then shook her butt from side to side to the beat of the music. Four adults were in the kitchen laughing so hard that we couldn't breathe. The response from us was inappropriate since now she will try that again at school to see if she can evoke a similar response from her peers.

She has recently discovered the use of superlatives, so she declared the day to be the best day of her life. I suppose it isn't yet difficult to achieve that honor, since she has only been in this world around 1200 days.

Hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Posted by megabeth at 07:51 AM | Comments (7)

December 22, 2006

I have dreams sometimes that "Nole" is a personal insult and I go around calling people "Noles". And some of you probably would say that it is an insult, but since I am oblivious to the world of college football, it has no meaning to me. However, I started thinking about it (you know, those deep thoughts one has in the shower), and "nole" sounds like "null". And "Semin" sounds like "semen". So, does that mean Florida State people are sterile?

The above paragraph was brought to you by Jack Handey.

Last night at weigh-in, my weight dropped under 120 lbs for the first time in ten years. Maybe I have a tapeworm. I'm eating a lot of food, drinking lots of milk and whey protein shakes, lifting weights twice a week... and I have been losing weight for three months. Go figure.

Posted by megabeth at 08:38 AM | Comments (2)

December 21, 2006

I'm a bit testy lately. I mow down any obstacles that prevent me from completing my goals by the end of the month.

I've been in Base 2 training for a week and have been doing some sub-LT intervals. Training in Base 1 was 'whee-fun' and training in Base 2 is 'when is this interval going to be over?'. Zone 3 is at 165ish for me and that is fairly tolerable but is hard enough work to cause a pool of sweat on the floor beneath my trainer. Zone 4 is right at sub-LT (173-175) and it hurts real bad to sustain for ten minutes. My focus from here on out is going to be strength and muscular endurance. I have one more week of hypertrophy in weight training and the next week starts the strength cycle. I totally can wait. It hurts just thinking about it.

Posted by megabeth at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2006

One thing I've learned from driving a car for nearly 100,000 miles is that the tires wear out at the same rate regardless of the "quality" of the tire. I think the original factory tires (typically of middle to low quality so the manufacturer saves some money) lasted the longest of my tire purchases (all of which were Michelin 75,000 mile tires). Part of this is my fault because the roads in Alabama are full of potholes and I did not take my car in for regular front-end alignments.

So my tires needed replacing recently and my latest purchase was a mid-range tire. The guy at the tire place was an excellent salesman because he talked me into paying $20 to fill the tires with nitrogen. I left the tire store feeling like an idiot, as if I had just bought twenty bucks worth of air. But after driving on the nitrogen-filled tires, I can see what my money paid for. The ride is smoother. The air inside the tires does not expand and contract with temperature changes, and the tires do not need rebalancing because the nitrogen doesn't leak out. This means I don't have to worry about stopping at a service station to fill my tires with air, the tires won't wear unevenly, and the properly inflated tires will improve my car's gas mileage.

Of course this led me to wonder if anyone in the world of pro cycling uses nitrogen to inflate bicycle tires.

Posted by megabeth at 08:34 AM | Comments (5)

December 19, 2006

I'm building a website and needed a logo; so I emailed someone to get the logo, and the woman in charge of the logo nearly went nuts on me for asking. I am doing this project because I want to (it's not about money) and I thought it would be a fun project! Instead I am the recipient of frustration from someone's bad day.

Anyhow, I have spent the evening doing damage control. The issues have been resolved. Being overly gracious seems to disarm people.

The people I work with are very pleasant to one another, so I'm not used to people being harsh. Does this happen a lot in your work environment? Perhaps I have been rendered naive by working with nice people.

On that note, Jack Welch makes a good point that jerks need to be sent packing. "They're just rotten for business," he says. Click below for the entire article.

Send The Jerks Packing
Employees who make the numbers but undermine trust and morale must go--publicly

How do you weed out the bad apples in an organization? -- David, Bartlett, Ill.

Start by putting down the pruning shears and picking up a buzz saw.

Look, nothing hurts a company more than when the bosses ignore, indulge, or otherwise tolerate a jerk--or two or three--in the house. Such latitude undermines organizational trust and morale, and without those, the competitive linchpins of collaboration and speed are just plain harder. Not to mention the fact that jerks take the fun out of work.

But before we talk about how to get rid of jerks--or bad apples, as you call them--let's be clear about who these people are. In business you can divide employees into four categories by looking at them along two dimensions: how well they perform--that is, how often they make the numbers--and how well they demonstrate company values. Now, "values" is a lofty and somewhat vague word, but all it really means is "behaviors." Values are how companies want their employees to act, which is why most lists include virtues like integrity and fairness. Those are necessary, but any list of values can, and should, also be linked to strategic goals. A company could, for instance, add values that say: We think and act globally, celebrate teamwork, show a strong bias for speed, or approach problems with urgency.

Back to the four types of employees. The first are people with good performance and good values. With these winners, management's job is easy--nurture, reward, and push onward and upward. The second are employees who have neither good results nor good behaviors. Again, the job is easy: Show them the door. A third kind of employee may deliver weak results for a year but still exhibit all the behaviors you want, so managers should give these well-intentioned people a second or third chance. Type 3 employees may have a particular performance issue, but they're not jerks.

Then there's a fourth kind of employee, the one who delivers the numbers but doesn't live the values. You know the type--who doesn't? They exist at every level in almost every organization. These high performers can be mean, secretive, or arrogant. Very often they kiss up and kick down. Some are stone-cold loners, while others are moody, keeping those around them in a kind of terrorized thrall.

And yet, too often Type 4s remain unscathed. Sure, their bosses might rebuke them, but things usually don't change after that. There's been no sting. Indeed, most of us have probably been guilty somewhere along the way of letting the burning desire for good results cover up the sins of an employee's poisonous behavior. We've squirmed and looked away.

You can't do that!

If you have a jerk problem, you have to stare it in the face. And that process can only start with a transformative eureka. Company leaders must come to believe that jerks hurt the organization more than they help. While their results are great, their collateral damage to the culture and overall competitiveness is far greater.

ONCE THE LEADERSHIP BUYS INTO that line of reasoning--and really feels it in their bones--getting rid of jerks is pretty straightforward. Managers have to make sure everyone in the company knows the values; they have to demonstrate them themselves, lavishly praise and reward them in others, and basically talk about the values ad nauseam. In fact, the values have to be so blindingly apparent to people in the organization that if someone doesn't live them, the interloper would be spotted immediately, like a player in a Yankees uniform showing up in the Red Sox dugout.

But the real clincher in ridding an organization of jerks is removing the ones you have and doing so with public fanfare. It's just wrong to can a person for a values violation and then soft-pedal the event with the line: "Joe left to spend more time with his family." Leaders need to say: "Joe had to go because he did not think globally," or if diversity is a value, "Joe was asked to leave because he was not gender and race blind in hiring." Every time you get rid of a jerk, don't miss the opportunity to make it a teaching moment. Pretty soon people will learn that jerk behavior has a steep price indeed.

No organization will ever weed out all its jerks. Some will slip by because their performance is so terribly good or their bad behaviors are so frighteningly subtle.

But you can never stop trying to weed out bad apples. They're just rotten for business.

Posted by megabeth at 04:01 PM | Comments (4)

I have two career goals:

1. Liberation.
2. Retirement.

Of course these are not the kind of answers I would give to management when they ask what my career goals are. In that case, I throw out some corporate lingo-bingo interim goals such as "career broadening" or "growth in project management".

Liberation is defined as the point in which one's investment income equals or exceeds one's salary or a stated numerical goal. This is when I have the freedom to change careers regardless of income as long as my health benefits are covered. I expect that I will achieve Liberation from The Man between the age of 40 and 42 year old. That's less than ten years!!

Retirement is defined as the point in which one's investment income can cover living expenses for the remainder of one's life. Retirees choose to work rather than work to make ends meet. I don't have a set goal for this but hope for the mid-fifties.

Working in the corporate world isn't all that bad. But I will tell you what is bad: doing things that are useless or not meaningful. And that is what has happened in the corporate world since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002. A classic argument between the compliance personnel in my department and the internal/external auditors is that they want us to do something that is completely useless, wastes resources and increases expenses which ultimately trickle down to company shareholders. But the actions they want us to take will fulfill some ridiculous requirement as stated by law. Msot of the time these actions involve printing out large quantities of paper, putting them in a binder, and placing them in a shelving unit. To defend ourselves from doing useless work, we argue our position with the auditors. Sometimes we are successful and other times we aren't.

If someone asks me what it is that I do for a living and I think they can humor me, my answer is "I take a pair of tweezers and pick up a grain of sand in a cup. Then I move the grain of sand over to the second cup. I continue to do this until the sand in the first cup is gone. Then I repeat the process by moving the sand one grain at a time to the empty cup."

So. The general consensus among investment analysts is that large cap company stocks are undervalued. And why would anyone in their right mind want to invest in large caps while they are spending BILLIONS of dollars for employees to move grains of sand from one cup to another? The REAL corruption in corporate environments exists in the upper echelons of management. We pee-ons can't afford to take risks with our jobs by acting unethically. On the other hand, a CEO can do whatever he wants, since he will receive a $20 million exit package if he gets fired.

Perhaps that explains why I call the next phase of my career "Liberation".

My biggest fear regarding my career is the fact that I don't know if I have any career skills since the work I do doesn't appear to be meaningful. Any corporate manager will say that yes, indeed it IS meaningful because my work prevents the company from negative news coverage and a subsequent hurricane sale of company stock. But it's of little reassurance to me when the work that I do isn't fixing the real problem.

I haven't learned much from my incarceration in the compliance area of my organization, other than that if I were the CEO of a small company, I would recommend that the board NEVER take the company public, unless SOX were repealed. That is, if you want to actually have a company that gets anything done without spending billions to do it.

Posted by megabeth at 11:04 AM | Comments (2)

December 18, 2006

My cycling team won the state cyclocross series trophy yesterday. I didn't have anything to do with that since I don't do cross. We have some more exciting things coming up soon that I do have something to do with. :)

Posted by megabeth at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2006

Kashi GoLean Instant Hot Cereal

I read an article in Runner's World about certain bad foods to avoid. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was listed, but sugar wasn't, so I can have all the candy I want unless it's made with HFCS. Hahaha. Anyhow, it did get me looking at ingredients in the grocery store before I buy things. I like to have a hot cup of coffee and some hot cereal for breakfast before a bike ride on a cold day. The instant oatmeal products like Quaker contain HFCS solids and little to no protein. When I ate Quaker instant oatmeal, I would throw out about half the sugar inside the envelope before adding the hot water. Then I found the Kashi GoLean hot cereal, flavor Truly Vanilla. It's just a little bit sweet and has 9 gms of protein per serving, 7 gms of fiber, and is sweetened with cane juice. It also contains whole flax seeds, which doesn't make much sense considering that those things, er, pass through undigested. Oh well. It tastes good and is good for you - that's a major fait accompli for a manufactured food.

Megachef

This time of year I always get the cooking bug, and I managed to score a precious ham bone for making soup. I can never find those at the grocery store. And it reminds me of my college days when I spent afternoons watching cooking shows on pilfered cable TV. Then I would make what I learned in an old kitchen that I think had the original gas oven from the 1920s. It's a wonder we didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

So the ham bone is cooking in the stock pot right now, and my house smells marvelous. In college, I would pick off the scant meat remaining on the bone and put it back in the soup. Meat was a luxury on my slim budget. And I can't say that I spent my food money on beer, because women in New Orleans drink free.

I think I had a healthier diet in college, because my budget (and the extra free time I had for cooking), allowed for the purchase of low cost whole foods, especially beans and rice. For a short period of time, my roommates allowed a hippie chick with dreads who worked at a local whole foods market to crash at our 1920s rental duplex in exchange for the food and meals she provided for us. We ate well. The flavors of New Orleans inspired me in the kitchen, and I preserved what I learned during that time in a recipe scrapbook that I didn't lose in transit to the adult world. I'm glad I learned how to cook in college, but wish I had more time to use those skills.

Posted by megabeth at 03:55 PM | Comments (3)

December 15, 2006

Since Base 1 is over, I did my second lactate threshold test at the shop. The first one over a month ago was wrong - we discovered that the HR sensor is not correctly picking up my heart rate (it said my LT was 140). Obviously it's wrong if you are about to pass out and your heart rate is only 110. I had my own HRM turned on, so we used that to determine my lactate threshold.

I don't have a good understanding of the LT, but from what I do understand it is the point where your breathing goes from labored to gasping for breath like a chain smoker. The change in breathing is an interesting event because there is a definite point where you can tell that it changes. That happened for me around 175 bpm at 230 watts of power. I managed to hang on for the 250 watts interval of two minutes, which is an improvement over a month ago when I couldn't hang on for long at 230 watts. My HR went up to 187 before I blew to pieces.

I'm not sure if this number is correct, but the test did at least provide me with a baseline for future comparisons. The goal is to be able to last 30 minutes at my LT.

Since the weather was so good and I had some vacation time to burn, I took the afternoon off and rode for about an hour before my LT test. Hooray for the warm December.

Afterwards I found myself without a recovery drink. It's good to put something down immediately after a workout. The best emergency recovery drink substitute is chocolate milk, readily available at most service stations.

Posted by megabeth at 05:41 PM | Comments (1)

I am a busybody during the last half of December because I like to update/renew/discard/clean things before the year turns over. I made a list since I love to make lists and perhaps it will remind you to take of some things, too.

• Clean out filing drawers - bank statements, utility bills, medical receipts, etc. I keep a folder in my filing cabinet for any current year tax-related papers, so that when it's time to do my tax returns, everything is all there in one place.
• Update your will, durable power of attorney, and living will, if needed.
• Yardwork - clean out gutters, rake leaves, clean up invasive species growth in backyard.
• Fire safety - a fire extinguisher is only good for six years. Update if needed ($20 will buy a good one). Replace batteries in smoke detectors.
• Back up data on laptop.
• Make tax-deductible donations for the current tax year.
• Sell any losing investments if you want to write them off on the current tax year.
• Clean out the attic - items can be donated.
• Rebalance IRA and 401K - sell overweighted sectors and buy underweighted sectors.
• Meet with your financial advisor to create a plan for the upcoming year.
• 2007's Roth IRA max contribution is $4000; get that check ready to invest the first week of January.
• Evaluate career accomplishments for the past year and think about career goals for the upcoming year.

I am going to get all of these done by the end of the year. This week I have been intensely focused; thus enabling me to get superhuman amounts of tasks completed. This morning I was awake at FIVE THIRTY AM!! Wide awake. Ready to rumble. This behavior! Coming from a girl who is usually in a stupor until eight am!!! Who is this person?? Ha ha.

Posted by megabeth at 08:07 AM | Comments (1)

December 13, 2006

I found this site about a man-razor in a holiday product guide. After you watch the intro, try out the Optical Inch and Test Drive links. Do you shave your [censored]?

Posted by megabeth at 06:29 PM | Comments (6)

December 12, 2006

The 'recent visitor map' for my site at StatCounter shows that my visitors mostly hail from the Eastern seaboard. And there seems to be growing numbers of you, and most of you are quiet and do not leave comments, and I'm probably going to scare some of you away with this post.

I think there is something wrong with the visitor map because it says that Terry's hits are coming from San Rafael, California, and I know for a fact that he is merely two blocks away, gazing over Birmingham's Linn Park.

My hit counter only keeps track of the last 100 hits since it's a freebie account.

Anyhow, here are some of the places that visitors come from in the last hundred hits, and if it's in bold, then I've been there.

San Diego, CA
Houston, TX
Minneapolis, MN
Fenton, Missouri
Chicago, IL
Ontario, Windsor, Canada
London, United Kingdom
Singapore
Portland, ME
Brooklyn, NY
New Haven, CT
Elizabethtown, KY
Murfreesboro, TN
Atlanta, GA, and various suburbs
Raleigh, NC
Fairfax, VA
Lake Mary, FL
Cape Coral, FL
Feasterville Trevose, PA
New York, NY
Cumming, GA
Newark, NJ
Antioch, CA
Burlington, VT
Boston, MA
Carson, CA
Mission Viejo, CA
Springfield, Missouri
Bloomfield, Nebraska
Alberta, Calgary, Canada
Nashville, TN
San Jose, CA
Ontario, Toronto, CA
Jackson, MS
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
St. Catharines, Ontario, CA
Potsdam, NY
Schaumberg, IL
Quebec, Montreal, CA
Birmingham, AL (natch)

Hi, everyone! Hi, Canadians!

Does anyone know where Feasterville Trevose, PA is?

I'm sure the Singapore hit is a spammer.

Is it cold in MN? Warm in FL?

Can I come visit you?

Posted by megabeth at 01:57 PM | Comments (5)

Now that school is out, I have more time to get REALLY productive. Mailing Christmas cards, redoing my will and power of attorney, investment research and trading, the annual Filing Cabinet Clean-up, cleaning out closets and donating unwanted items, fixing things that broke, the annual Backyard Chainsaw Massacre (invasive species only), and oh, yeah... the blasted contract work that is still waiting to be completed.

Anyone want to help?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Posted by megabeth at 01:37 PM | Comments (2)

December 11, 2006

I just spent 2.5 hours writing (by hand, on notepaper) ten pages of essay answers for a marketing exam. Doesn't it seem silly to have an essay-based marketing exam? Is this preparation for when I present a business proposal to angel investors and they ask me to write an essay about it on the spot? Not likely.

Also, he didn't reserve the computer lab for us. Who takes exams by hand any more? I had a flashback that I was taking an exam in undergrad in the mid-90s, in the day of four-eighty-sixes.

My semester is done - what a relief! I am 75% done with my MBA.

Next semester I am taking courses on risk analysis and real estate. I am looking forward to learning about REITs. I want to invest in a commercial real estate REIT but don't feel confident about making a choice until I am better informed.

This week is my fourth week of a base building cycle so this week I can catch up on some other things. I am sore, so the rest and recovery will be good for me.

Posted by megabeth at 07:20 PM | Comments (1)

Today is the last day of the mock portfolio investing game. I started investing on October 9, 2006. How did I do? Let's see.

The Sharpe Ratio of my portfolio is 4.81. The ratio is a measure of the risk-adjusted return of an investment, and values over 3.0 are considered to be good. The higher, the better.

The graph of returns:

Total value as of market close on December 8, 2006: $105,814.37

Amount leveraged: 48% (this is very high, and probably stupid if it were real money)

Return of portfolio during investing period: 5.8%
Return of S&P 500 during investing period: 4.2%

Big winners: iShares MCSI Spain Index, The India Fund, iShares Latin America 40**
Big loser: Amazon
Most volatility (hang on!): Gilead Sciences, Google

So, if the goal were to beat the S&P 500 Index, then I met that goal by beating the index by 1.6%. However, let's say, hypothetically, that expenses for managing the fund are 1.4%, which is the average fee ratio for actively managed mutual funds. That leaves the account with a gain of only 0.2%.

There's a pretty strong argument for index-style investing.

Posted by megabeth at 09:42 AM | Comments (2)

December 09, 2006

Last night I went to a holiday party with the most random people; it was interesting to see all of these types in one room together: a frou frou mountain brook couple, a few computer geeks who haven't seen the light of day in 20 years, a group of big, buff black dudes, a couple of gay guys with weird facial hair patterns and lots of head jewelry, and a couple of guys who could have played the banjo in the movie Deliverance. And there were lots of other people who didn't stand out quite as much. The one common thread holding us together is that we are pee-ons at work or know a pee-on who works in my department.

Everyone got along splendidly and my fellow pee-ons are pretty interesting people once you get them to talk about something other than hardware or software.

It was BYOB so I brought one beer for myself (yeah I'm a wild one) and I brought butterscotch schnapps and made shots with Bailey's. I was hoping to see people get drunk and then do stuff we could talk about on Monday, but these folks aren't that dumb.

Posted by megabeth at 06:22 PM | Comments (3)

December 07, 2006

Since my Christmas decorating skill is a little on the green side, I got creative and turned an old cassette into Christmas tree ornaments.

Most of my ornaments are over at my parents' house and I haven't had time to stop by lately. My tree was looking a little sad with its ten hand-me-down (the word to make this look better is "vintage") ornaments and nondescript gold and red balls. If I have time (HA HA HAAA) I will think of something crafty to do with the cassette rings to make them look like real Christmas ornaments instead of some random items I found around the house and threw on the tree in an act of last minute desperation.

Something I have taken notice of during recent weeks when the sky is clear is that November and December brings us some amazing sunsets. When I leave work and do my usual round-and-round-and-round the parking deck, the western sky is ablaze with hues of orange and red. There's a positive for going to work late (which for my company is 8 am) and having to park on the top level of the deck. So now it's round-wow-and-round-aaah-and-round-ooooh-and round...

Posted by megabeth at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting that you have a problem. But that first step is not enough. So I've known that I've been acting like a workaholic lately... does that make me a workaholic? I knew late this past summer that this fall would be a hell of a time with all of the commitments I made. There were so many things I was to be done with by the end of December, particularly in my freelance work. Both contract jobs I accepted aren't complete, so yesterday I started looking for a vbscript programmer to help me. It is rather challenging to find someone available for work who knows vbscript. Why don't programmers keep up with outdated languages? (Heh heh.)

I was able to handle working a lot for the past few months, but it's getting pretty old. I want more free time so I can do some home improvement projects and play the piano.

Posted by megabeth at 08:37 AM | Comments (2)

December 05, 2006

My goal this year is to cat up from 4 to 3. Really the issue is not "IF" but rather "WHEN". The obstacle at this point is not speed; I can keep up with the cat 3s on my team. I just don't have enough race experience to justify making the request to USCF.

My team's head honcho is in favor of catting up as soon as possible rather than staying back and being a sandbagger. You aren't going to become a better cyclist if you race against people who aren't as fast as you are. Also, if you continue to dominate your field over and over again, you end up looking like a weenie and your team ends up looking lame.

If I race only in Alabama and Mississippi, it doesn't really matter what category I am in because there aren't enough women participating in the sport***, so all cats are grouped together for one race. This is why I have to keep up with the cat 3s: I don't have a choice. (And in the end, it benefits me because racing and training with 3s has made me stronger.) In other states where the sport is more popular for women, such as Tennessee and Georgia, they divide the women into two groups: Cats 1/2/3 and Cat 4.

Thus, Cat 3 is a difficult place for a female cyclist to be, and it's also a difficult place for a male cyclist, because in the men's section, they often divide them up into three groups: Cat 1/2/3, Cat 4 and Cat 5. I think the Cat 3 men on my team do pretty well. It's better to stay out of the beginner categories (Cat 4 women, Cat 4/5 men). The beginners are more dangerous because they have less developed bike handling skills (which equates to more crashes), and they tend to be divas who do not know much about effective team race tactics.

So, my general plan is to head over to either Georgia or Tennessee as soon as I am ready to peak in my periodization cycle, and try out a Cat 4 only criterium. This will be a good indicator if I am ready to cat up. If I do well, then I am going to send in my request to cat up.

Note to non-cyclists: Road cyclists are grouped by categories of speed; men's categories (aka 'cats') go from 1 (fastest/pro)) to 5 (beginner), and women's cats go from 1 (fastest/pro) to 4 (beginner).

*** This non-participation thing with women really sucks. I would like to see more local women get into road racing.

Posted by megabeth at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2006

A cycling friend sent me this "Christmas card" link from Specialized.

And there is a story behind it. The music was made entirely from the noises that bicycle parts make.

Cool.

Posted by megabeth at 09:51 PM | Comments (2)

December 03, 2006

I like lights. I wish I could leave my tree up year-round.

Get into the holiday spirit by listening to SomaFM's xmasinfrisko internet radio station.

Posted by megabeth at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)

Yesterday my HRM clocked 4.5 hours of time in which the pedals were moving on my bike. (2000 calories burned)

I was delirious by the time I got home.

At the under armour outlet I bought a cold-weather base layer shirt for twenty bucks, and it is perfect for keeping me warm in the 35-50 degree range.

Recently I read a post on someone's cycling blog about how they must use a trashmobile or old mountain bike for road riding in the winter due to the salt on the roads. How weird and foreign that sounds to me!

The boys at the shop have hot cider ready when we stop by for a break. So good!

I recently started converting my Favorites in IE and Firefox to del.icio.us. Here's the link if you want to browse.

Posted by megabeth at 09:42 AM | Comments (1)

December 01, 2006

This weekend Farmboy and I are putting up my Christmas tree. This is exciting because I made some excuses the last three years about not putting it up. One excuse is: I am too busy cause I am in school. I can't use that one since the majority of my work will be done by this Monday. Another excuse is: I need big strong man like Farmboy to put it up for me. So we will decorate the tree naked* and we will listen to Christmas music and Ruby will fart a lot (as usual). I also can't say that I don't have a tree because the previous owners left their artificial tree in the attic. And I have lights and garlands and some really old ornaments from the 1970s that my parents gave me, and they crack me up because they are so ugly. I have some nice ornaments too but I must display the tacky stuff as a measure of irreverance to the people who have trees with perfectly matching everything. I also have a worn-out cassette so that will probably become a set of tree ornaments. Photos forthcoming after the weekend.

*just kidding about that part.

Posted by megabeth at 08:57 AM | Comments (4)