Voted

Since I will be out of town next Tuesday, I went over to the Municipal Building today and voted. It was a pretty easy process and I got the fun sticker to the left well ahead of all of my friends.

Official

It's official. I've cancelled my entry in the NYC Marathon.

I don't know why I held out this long even though I've known for two months that it wasn't going to happen.

I went for a 5k run Tuesday for the first time in weeks and my legs are still hurting. The foot feels OK though, so that is a plus. The four miler with my daughter tomorrow should be interesting.

Maybe next year...

Slosh

I'm one of the world's worst swimmers. Despite my long limbs and reasonable aerobic capacity, I'm the anti-Phelps. Since I can't run, I've been swimming a lot more and I'm making slow, painful progress. Once in a while, I get something right and I start to think about other stuff while I'm swimming and it feels easy. Then I get tired and start thinking about my stroke again and it all falls apart.

My goal this winter is to be able to swim a mile without stopping. It doesn't have to be fast (and it won't be), but that would put me in a sort of swimming elite - if I were a Boy Scout, I'd even be able to earn a badge.

Wii

I bought my daughter a Wii for her birthday last month. We've just been sticking to the simple Wii Sports game that comes with the console and it is a whole lot of fun. The games are simple enough for younger kids, but have enough challenge for adults. I like it because it is a chance for us all to play together in the evenings before bed after the homework is done. Plus, where else can you get a sports injury playing a video game.

VFINX

This chart shows the S&P 500 for my working career from late 1993 to now. I've been putting money in VFINX, which is a mutual fund that tracks this index as long as I've been earning it.

It's been a rough ride recently and I didn't even bother to open the last statement from Vanguard and it is even worse now since the statement was from the end of September.

I do feel for those who are getting ready to retire now, but for those of us with 30 years to go, it's an opportunity to buy low (and maybe even lower as it all pans out). I'm going to try to worry about something else now.

Decent

I got the latest Okkervil River CD, The Stand Ins, last month. I pre-ordered it and it arrived (with a couple of fun bonus posters) when it was released on line on the 9/9. Initially, I wasn't a big fan. There aren't any songs that just jumped out and grabbed me like Westfall or Plus Ones.

Now that I've had it for a while, I enjoy it and a few songs are standouts (I particularly like Long Coastlines and Singer Songwriter). But, it isn't as strong as The Stage Names or Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See. I really do like the spooky cover - perfect for the Halloween season.

Outage

Yesterday at lunch I went over to Ukrops on Franklin Road. They have an interesting and varied selection of foods available for lunch and a nice cafe with Wifi to sit in and eat. I was planning on calling my wife when I got there to see if she wanted to stop by and join there.

However, when I arrived, I noticed that half the lights in the store were off and there was a note that said they were unable to sell perishable goods because of a power failure. This is the second time in a few months that I've seen this happen at this store. The grocery business has notoriously small margins and I would imagine that not being able to sell high profit ready-made foods on a Friday would ruin their week. I wonder what is going on over there?

Response

I did get a response from all of our Congressional representation on the note opposing the bailout bill passed the other week. Basically, they thought the bill was good enough and needed to be done. I agree with the latter, but strongly disagree with the former. The bill was, and is, a joke. Correction: Congressman Goodlatte voted against the revised bill - I misread the roll call. He send a letter explaining his position which was basically that the bill wasn't missing a few key provisions on creating an insurance pool and wasn't guaranteed to work. There are no guarantees on this sort of thing, but I agree with his basic position.

At least Paulson has seen the sense of going the capitalization route instead of merely buying bad debt. I guess with the powers granted in the legislation, he could pretty much do anything he wants. We will see if the measures work to revive confidence in the banking system and at what ultimate cost. If the TED spread is any indicator, it hasn't done much yet to calm nerves about interbank lending.

Sleep

I can't believe the Red Sox won that game last night. I love playoff baseball and usually watch most of each game, but these aren't my teams, so I decided to go to bed after the Rays 7th in which they scored 2 runs to make it 7-zip. Nobody comes back from 7-0 with 9 outs to go. I guess I missed a good game, but I did have a good night's sleep.

I was good luck for the Phillies though. I've been in Philadelphia the past two weeks and the Phils looked pretty good in their series with LA. Or, maybe it was that Furcal looked bad. Either way, all of my Philly friends are happy with it. Bully for them!