Friday, May 7, 2010

Day 143

Life has gotten way too confusing for my taste. The person I was supposed to interview in Brazil for my upcoming petrochemical project has now become a totally different person in Sweden. I think the whole focus of the article that I'm supposed to write has changed as well. That's OK, because I haven't written anything yet. I used to be an eager beaver and begin every project as soon as it landed on my desk. Now I wait until the last possible minute. I've learned over the years that if you start too soon, you'll just end up doing the job over and over again as facts and objectives change. Even worse, you'll do the entire project and then it gets canceled and you don't even get paid. I wish people could make up their mind, but I'm pretty resigned to the fact that it is always easier to change your mind than to make a decision.

My broker called today trying to explain the chaos in the market yesterday. I asked if anything I currently owned had been adversely affected and it turns out that I actually had been stopped out of one of my positions during that sudden spike where the market dropped nearly 1000 points in just a few minutes. I've been hearing on television that a lot of these trades yesterday were going to be canceled because the whole sudden drop was just a computer glitch. "Well, were my shares really traded or not?" I asked my broker. "I don't know," he said. "Nobody knows right now." I smell a class action lawsuit that will take ten years to resolve. The people who got a great deal during the dip are going to want to keep their winnings and the people who got screwed are going to want their money back. I don't know why they even bother to call it investing any more. Betting on basketball games in Vegas is a lot more rational than this.

Tomorrow is the Mother's Day photo shoot at Unleashed. I've got the strobe lights and backdrop packed and ready to go. All I need to do now is finish charging all the batteries. I hope we have a good crowd of people who order a lot of pictures of their dogs. This is the time of year that Dalmatian Rescue is always low on money. We're right in-between our big Christmas fundraisers and the Fall golf tournament, but we've still got vet bills to pay and dogs to care for. If we do real well tomorrow, we can probably pay for heartworm treatments for three dogs. That's all. It's also why we'll be doing these fundraisers forever.

Dalmatian of the Day

    Watch of the Day