December 29, 2007

Happy New Year!

Posted by megabeth at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2007

Tomorrow is my last day of work for December - I had some use-or-lose vacation time to burn. I'm excited about my time off. I will be doing some home improvement projects and some fishing at the lake. Also the annual Christmas get-togethers, this year with two families. I will definitely have some opportunities to hone my cooking skills.

I will have more time to ride my bike next week. And maybe I will. This winter I have been very unmotivated about training and can't bring myself to care enough to do anything about it. I like having this hobby, but I want to have other hobbies, too. I don't feel up for juggling a full training schedule, if I want to have a balanced life and do other things I enjoy, in addition to cycling. I will just ride my bikes for fun.

Hope you enjoy your holidays!

Posted by megabeth at 03:14 PM | Comments (2)

December 19, 2007

This is a dumb idea. What I see when driving every day is a bunch of people who don't follow traffic laws, and no police enforcement. In fact, this morning I saw a car fail to merge properly (using the median instead) right in front of a City of Birmingham squad car. The policeman did nothing. Most municipal police departments can't be everywhere at the same time, so the few instances in which they can enforce the law, perhaps they should do that.

The only time I see a traffic law enforced in the state of Alabama is during a "Take Back our Highways" campaign, which happens once or twice a year. If this is as good as they can do, I think we should do away with traffic laws entirely. Nobody follows them, anyway. Then the role of the police department would change from driving around and doing nothing, to becoming crime detectives. Alabama's two state troopers could continue to patrol the highways for the occasional car doing 150 mph. The minimum speed on I-65 from Birmingham to Montgomery is 80 mph, unless you want your doors blown off by passing cars, or if you're in the left hand lane doing 80, you want to be tailgated by an insane soccer mom talking on the phone and driving a 4-ton SUV.

In Asian countries such as Vietnam, there appears to be no traffic laws. It works pretty well because nobody can drive faster than 15 mph, since nobody stops for anyone and the roads are clogged with bicycles and mopeds. Sounds great! Let's sign up for that plan.

Posted by megabeth at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2007

Time to pay the piper. I weighed myself on three different doctors' scales this week and what has happened isn't pretty. I don't have any willpower around food, so I handle that problem by keeping healthy food in the kitchen and exercising all the time. However, a lot of exercise isn't going to hold back weight gain in the situation I'm currently dealing with. I'm now working in a department that makes purchasing decisions in the latitude of tens to hundreds of millions. So, the gift baskets and towers of treats started arriving at the beginning of December. Candy, cookies, popcorn, candy, cookies, chocolate, cookies, candy, etc. Then came the visiting vendors taking us out to dinner. A decadent five-course, four hour meal at Ocean (I can't turn down the lobster!) probably resulted in a three-lb gain. And then the various holiday lunches, and lunches brought in for meetings in order to use the last of the 2007 annual lunch budget. Every day at work there is a complimentary lunch for some purpose.

This situation is disgustingly excessive. As a result of being spoiled, I have become picky about food. Some gift basket food is not that tasty. Like the "chocolate covered toffee with peppermint chips". A fruit basket would be better. Or Dean & Deluca. I'll take quality over quantity. Actually, I'll take the joy of watching everyone else eat the goodies.

Posted by megabeth at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2007

My motivation for training outdoors slumps this time of year (same thing happened last year) due to the increase in highly aggressive and angry motorists during the month of December. I have no problems with the weather being cold, but I struggle with wanting to be on the roads. I've been told numerous times, "Don't let the drivers win. You have a right to be on the roads." Okay. That doesn't help me if I am hit by a car, because the car always wins. Though if I am not riding outdoors, there will be another five new cyclists to take my place and be a target for people who are angry about life in general. So I'll just keep riding outdoors and hope that someday, somehow, the 9 out of 10 drivers in Birmingham, AL who have no ethics, morals or character somehow find a way to develop at least one of those three virtues.

Two incidents this weekend:

I was buzzed by someone in a nice, new Ford sedan in Mountain Brook, and he stopped at the light in front of me, so I pulled up next to his car and asked him to roll down the window. He reluctantly did, but after I calmly (but nervously, as I had been scared to death) explained to him a safe distance between his car and my bike, he said, "You people need to get off the road" and rolled up the window. Black guy with his wife and kids in the car. Great way to teach your kids how to be an asshole.

Waiting on Lakeshore for the light to turn so I can turn left on Lakeshore and then immediately right onto a neighborhood road. It is about 30 feet I have to ride on Lakeshore, which I can do safely if the light stops traffic and I'm off the road before the stopped traffic catches up. Unless you are one of those drivers who feels that red lights are optional for you. This time: white guy driving a full size pickup. I stopped in the median before the guy went through the light. He slammed on his brakes when he saw us (he was only going to run the light if there was no traffic, even though there were other cars stopped in the other lane waiting). THEN he motioned me to come on over. HA HA. Like I am going to trust a mentally retarded idiot who should not be driving a motorized vehicle. Once the light turned and traffic went on (including Dumbbubba), I waited for a safe lull to cross the road and turn onto the side street. Since some of the worst accidents are caused by drivers who run red lights, I highly suggest stopping for them.

Then there was a point of light from the weekend: This sweet old black lady rolled down her window at a stop light and asked us where we were going, and then said, "Well thank the Lawd that you will be home safely!" So there's about one in a million who are actually nice.

This season turns me into a misanthropist. The driver/cyclist incidents are at an all-time high every December. Then I start mistrusting and disliking every stranger I come across because I suspect they all want to kill me, since most of them have already tried to.

And I have a hard time empathizing, because even on the worst day, I don't feel like killing anything. People take guns and kill deer and birds, or they play video games and kill fake things. But I've never had a bad day when I wanted to hurt a living thing, and I am not sure how anyone else could possibly want to do that. Cue the sixties. Give peace a chance.

Posted by megabeth at 10:17 AM | Comments (3)

December 14, 2007

I'm doing a year-end portfolio review of my retirement investments this week. Since international stocks have been on a nice run for the past few years, my portfolio is heavily overweighted in international equities.

If you look at the typical asset allocation for aggressive style investing that is recommended by brokerage firms and advisors, they usually recommend 40-50% in U.S. large caps and only 15-20% in international stocks. Historically, this allocation may have worked well, but I believe it should be changed to reflect overseas growth. Due to the devaluation of the U.S. dollar and the growth of foreign markets, I predict continued growth in the international sector. And the U.S. may not regain market dominance for the long term, barring a meltdown in an influential overseas market such as China.

For investors with more than 20 years to retirement, I would drop the U.S. large cap allocation to 30% and raise international to 30-40%, depending on one's stomach for volatility. But that's just my two cents. SmartMoney Magazine, however, agrees with this strategy.

Posted by megabeth at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

I have a Delta Skymiles card and I don't know why, since it is difficult to use airline rewards nowadays, unless you book a flight ten years in advance. This site helps you shop for a new card based on your spending habits.

Posted by megabeth at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2007

As a graduation present I received The Professional Chef to help fuel my cooking hobby. Getting back into cooking is one good thing that came out of being sidelined from cycling by an injury this past spring. I decided I want to take my cooking skills to the next level and try out some more challenging dishes. The book has some very nice illustrative photos. I'll start reading it over the holidays when I'm at the lake.

I'm also reading Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when the stakes are high. Part of my job requires negotiation skills, and I don't have much experience with negotiating contract rates. I don't think that "This is what I want. So there." is going to work. ;)

Posted by megabeth at 08:30 AM | Comments (1)

December 10, 2007

Something tripped off this memory from high school. I took an Algebra II class my sophomore year and the teacher was an old lady with a strong Southern accent. She said "maished" instead of "mashed", when describing potatoes. Also she spoke my name as "Bayuth" instead of the monosyllabic "Beth". Her class was not fun because she did not have a sense of humor. She would work problems each day on an overhead projector, and was really uptight about keeping the overhead film clean. The clear film was kept on a roll instead of by individual sheets. So, one day she was out of the room for a long period of time, and I took a marker and placed the tip down on the overhead film, then rolled the film out until there was a single line from start to finish. This cracked me and several other students up.

When she returned, she was not happy. Nobody ratted me out, though. This still makes me chuckle.

Posted by megabeth at 01:02 PM | Comments (2)

December 06, 2007

I'm already itching to do something new after finishing my MBA. (I'm done now. All assignments are completed and turned in.) So I decided to join the Toastmasters chapter at work.

The main professional weakness I have coming out of my master's degree is that my presentation skills still aren't where I want them to be. I want to be an interesting, dynamic speaker. I have a few speaking assignments coming up next spring at work and probably at my sister's wedding rehearsal dinner, so I'd like to hone my skills before then.

An MBA program should focus more on teaching presentation skills, but I saw more bad presentations in school than anywhere else, and the professors rewarded those students with good grades. Reading from slides, reading from notes, never looking up at the audience, using a monotonous tone of voice, groups that did not practice beforehand and thus had layers of overlapping content, low talkers, going 15 minutes past the allotted time, no involvement with the audience. Not once did any professor or visitor speak to any of my classes about giving effective presentations. It seems awfully strange for an MBA program to completely ignore this.

Fortunately I have this opportunity available to me at work. The meetings are held in the building during lunch hour. I think I would enjoy public speaking if I could overcome the nervousness I feel when I first begin to speak in front of a group.

Posted by megabeth at 08:47 AM | Comments (4)

December 05, 2007

I have always hated UPS. This is the crappiest delivery company on the planet. Brown = poop. Never had a good experience with this company. This time I have a delivery that requires a signature. But I'm not home from 8 to 5 on weekdays, and they only deliver from 8 to 5 on weekdays.

I can't choose a time in which the package is delivered, only the date. So they are going to waste a trip to my house because they won't work with me to schedule a time in which I will be able to provide a signature. I wonder how many trips UPS wastes every year because they are inflexible. Of course they won't deliver on weekends. Who in the hell would want to receive a package on a Saturday?

I tried changing the mailing address for delivery and I was told that they have to make an attempt again before I can change the delivery address.

Very inflexible.

Very stupid.

Pea-brains in charge at UPS.

Posted by megabeth at 01:42 PM | Comments (1)

December 04, 2007

If you put a tiger tail hanging out of your trunk, doesn't that look like you kidnapped the school mascot (a tiger) and threw it in your trunk? I would think, as a football outsider, that this is a display that you are against the college football team that you are, in actuality, rooting for.

I don't see elephant trunks hanging out of people's trunks. I guess elephants are too big to stow away in the trunk of a car.

Posted by megabeth at 03:14 PM | Comments (1)

December 03, 2007

I'm selling some darkroom equipment on craigslist. It's probably not cost-effective to ship it anywhere. Drop me a line if you're interested in taking this stuff out of my living room. My house is too small to keep extraneous things.

Posted by megabeth at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

This weekend I did a lot of cooking for various events. Since getting back into cooking this year, I have greatly expanded my repertoire of recipes. While I prefer to stay with the tried-and-true, I have been making myself try out new recipes in order to learn new cooking skills.

This was the birthday boy's treat (click for larger photo). I have made tarts in the past, but these were different. Instead of making custard, I made a baked cream-cheese filling. They turned out well, although I used store-bought pastry crusts for the sake of saving time.

For a potluck I made a spinach artichoke dip based off this recipe which uses Swiss chard. I haven't tried any of her recipes yet but will try others since this one turned out very well. I used frozen spinach instead of chard and since mayonnaise is illegal in my kitchen, subbed sour cream for mayo. Also, the dip will be baked instead of heated via stove top. I usually don't stick with any recipe verbatim.

Last, I made cookies for a holiday cookie exchange. The lesson I learned is not to go about something without a plan. I made some small round sugar cookies with the intent to put icing on them. What kind of icing, I didn't know. I decided to use a decorating tip to put a dollop of white or chocolate cream cheese icing on top of the cookies. The icing was not thick enough to hold its shape, so I ended up making half moon cookies. They look good. Do they taste good? Well, yes, but I am not as much of a fan of the cream cheese icing as I initially anticipated. Does cream cheese icing even go with sugar cookies? I dunno. I think I went cream-cheese crazy this weekend.

Posted by megabeth at 09:22 AM | Comments (2)