We win

I don't celebrate football as much as I used to, but it was nice to watch my alma mater win the Champs 2nd Rater Bowl tonight. It was played in Orlando but Bri and I got together with the Triangle Seminole Alumni club at Buckhead Saloon in Raleigh to catch all the action.

We had a great time at Aunt Heather and Uncle Sean's house in Chesapeake. Bri and I checked out a new park on the VA-N border, called Northwest River Park. It had some nice running/hiking trails. We also got a run in on the Virginia Beach boardwalk (a cement run next to the beach). I also logged 16 hours on Call of Duty 4.


Then we watched Marley and Me and everyone cried. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, Marley is a lovable yellow lab, who terrorizes his owners, goes through lots of zany antics, lives a long, great life with a loving family, and then dies in a long, drawn out scene designed to make hardened criminals, stone cold Special Forces, and evil silicon trophy wives cry like babies. The end.

Investment advisory coaching

I've decided that Bri and I will open up an investment advisory firm, or hedge fund, or unregulated security pool, sometime in the near future. This whole personal coaching thing is great but it's time to take things One Step Beyond. Ha ha. We'll take the money and do wonderful magical things with it, until people start to ask for it back, in which case I will tell them all about the early redemption fees and penalties for leaving our fund. Our fund name will be called Phoenix & Ash Returns Wealth Advisory Management. It's like a clever play on words, if you're an @sshole.

The great thing is, since all these supposed qualifications and letters and fancy schmancy diplomas don't mean anything anymore, we're not going to get any of them. We'll just make you sign a document that states you trust us completely and we can do whatever we want with your money.

Our minimum account requirement is $100,000. We accept gold coins and small unmarked bills. A check will work if necessary but then add a 10% handling fee for check and bank stuff.

Here's our return since 2001:
2001: 12%
2002: 11%
2003: 12%
2004: 10% (a bad year)
2005: 13%
2006: 14%
2007: 12%
2008: 7%

As you can see, we totally kick ass at investing shizzle. Throw me your dollars, quick.

survey results

1. Did you miss the surveys?

47.4% Yes
10.5% what is a survey
31.6% I don't even know how I got here

2. Interests rates may go down to 4.5% for a 30-year fixed mortgage but only for home purchases, not refinancing. If they do, what will you do?

31.6% Buy a new house
21.1% Put some more newspaper in my clothes to keep me warm while I wander the streets
21.1% Shoot a banker
21.1% Refinance, because I don't have good reading comprehension skills

3. I am in danger of losing my job.

47.4% No
47.4% It is scary out here

4. My savings and investments these days are concentrated in:

5.3% Booze and hookers, like Eliot Spitzer, who now writes for Slate Magazine, so he must know something
26.3% I am too young/too poor to have things like investments and asset allocations, ha ha, you said assets
26.3% Stocks/ETFs - they always go up in the long run

5. In 2009, I will (triathlon related):

36.8% Race and travel as much as usual
15.8% Reduce my consumption in order to make my carbon footprint smaller, and smoke dope hippie

6. Next summer my big trip will be:

52.6% Somewhere close but nice with family/friends
36.8% No big trip for us

Have a nice weekend!

Tinnitus

I've had tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, consistently for longer than I can remember. It was not something I paid attention to until a few months ago, when it kicked up a notch in volume. Imagine a subtle high pitched tone in your ear, that never goes off, ever. That's tinnitus.

It's not loud enough to make me stone deaf, but if you've ever sat with me in a crowded restaurant, you may notice that I have to turn my head or cup my ear to hear what you're saying. I literally can't make out words in those situations. You might say "So what did you do yesterday?" And I would hear something like "Sas vassid suyou sterday?"


This is great when people insult me, because I just nod my head and give them an idiotic smile. Which sort of takes the punch out of an insult. But if you're going to insult me, go &@^* yourself, really. (I just like writing that to you, oh dear reader).

Anyway, we picked up a product called Ring Relief from the local drug store. It is a homeopathic remedy, but thank God, it actually works. It doesn't completely stop the ringing, but reduces it significantly. The downside is that it is short term relief. The upside is that I'm not always going "Huh? Whaaa?" to Bri all the time.

The point is, don't go to 50 rock and roll concerts in your teens and 20s. Also, don't do drugs. And stay in school. And don't stay up late. And stop picking at that.

Bond Park 5k

I ran the Bond Park Jolly Elf 5k this morning. The race is part of the Second Empire series so there were plenty of competitors out. Bond Park has a mixture of singletrack, paved trails and dirt trails. A lot of people took it out really fast so I had to fight my way through a bunch on the first mile. During the second mile I was with a group of 3 others and we missed a sharp right turn that was not well marked, and wound up adding about 15-20 seconds to our times. Fortunately since this is our local training run, I was able to get us back onto the correct course.

I felt solid and ran 19:30 despite being out late at a Christmas party last night.

Tassie and Bri cheered me on.

Updates

On Monday I bought a few shares of SKF, an ultrashort financial ETF. This is basically a bet that financial news will be bad. We got it at 104.5 and yesterday and today sold half at 118 and another half at 116. I had to go to lunch so put a sell stop order in on the half that sold today. It proceeded to close at 130 but I didn't want to give up the gains. It might go to 200 but you never know.

Bri and I will be running in the Bond Park 5k this weekend, just down the street from our house. Looking forward to it.

I played poker last night and came home up 130%, but was out later than planned and Bri wasn't happy with me. :( But I have to practice for the world series of poker.

My race plans for 09:
Dec-Jan: local runs
Feb - Coach Bubba 20k and Gasparilla 15k
March - Azalea Sprint tri
April - Virginia Smithfield Sprint
April 26 - St Anthonys
May 2 - White Lake Half 1
May 9 - White Lake Half 2
May 30 - King of the Mountain
June 28 - Philly Tri
July - ?
August - USAT Nationals
September - VA Beach Tri
September - Wilmington
September - Duke Half

New open water swim series in town

We bring you the Triangle Open Water Swim Series:

April 18 - The 5280 Swim at Beaver Dam (Falls Lake)
June 7 - Jordan Lake Open Water Challenge (Jordan Lake)
August 30 - The Nuclear Swim at Harris Reservoir (Harris Lake)

Proceeds will benefit the Triangle Aquatic Center, where we swim.

Since Bri and I started the master's group, we'd been discussing starting an annual open water race in the area. I used to do tons of these and we have all these great lakes around. So last month I started the process of organizing a swimming race in Jordan Lake.

After looking around a bit, I found out that Jason and the gang at FS Series were planning a one mile race in conjunction with a triathlon at Beaver Dam in April. I got in touch with him, we sat down, and decided to join forces. We came up with three events. So next year, you'll have ample opportunity to jump in an organized open water race here in the Triangle area.

We're still finalizing sanctioning, but it'll either be USA Triathlon or US Masters swimming. Unfortunately, USA Swimming (age group) has a tremendous amount of hoops to jump through, and if you haven't figured it out, I don't jump hoops.

We'll have all the details for each event up by mid-January.