Category Archives: stock market

Christianity, creativity, stock market, The Teachings, Writing

Grinding Away

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Will I ever complete the 4th book in this series (3rd book chronologically)? I’m sure I will, but right now the way is not clear.

This week I got back to work on The Teachings , re-reading in the last three chapters and looking at comments on Chapter 7 by a member of my critique group. I made sure my manuscript notebook was correct and carried it with me wherever I was in the house. It went with me to The Dungeon, to the sun room, to the living room, even to the kitchen table. I barely looked at it, just two times I think.

Alas, all my good plans were only partially realized. I’ve spent a fair amount of time on stock trading this week. Monday through Wednesday I didn’t make any trades. I mainly did research. Actually, I think I made two small trades on Monday and one on Tuesday, testing a new strategy with a very small toe dipped in the trading pool.

Then, in the drive to continue to declutter and reduce our possessions, I took yet another box of old correspondence out a couple of days ago and began ordering and inventorying it—letters, postcards, and greeting cards from my juvenile days through the first five years of marriage; to my dad and a few to my grandparents, I finished that box yesterday, sort of. The main batch of correspondence is done, but I pulled from the box all the things that don’t fit. These include letters to Dad from his uncles in England, a few letters and cards to him from his siblings, a few to my grandmother from her friends, and some of ours from other years. I found six pieces of correspondence that are part of our Saudi years, so I’ll have to put them in another place. Having more or less finished with this box (a box of keepers for now), I think I’m down to two or three boxes of things to go through and inventory.

Other downsizing tasks included getting rid of four old bicycles, and preparing to mail books and magazines that have sold on Facebook Marketplace. Then, of course, there were two dentist appointments for me. One was supposed to be for Lynda, but as she’s slightly under the weather I went ahead and took it, cancelling a second one I had for later in the month.

Yet another box of old correspondence pulls me away from other tasks I’d like to do, the unnecessary but enjoyable interrupting the important.

Now, having gotten all those tasks out of the way, I should be ready to work continuously on my book, right? Not quite. I’m reading in five different books right now, and try to do some in each every day. I won’t list them here, as they may be the subject for my next blog post. Suffice to say that I’m making a little progress in all five.

Saturday will find me blowing leaves and hauling them into the woods, picking up recently fallen brush, and maybe finishing the border of wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. I think I have about 6 feet to go, a twenty minute task. I want to get that done before our next visitors come, which will be a week from Saturday. And, of course, there’s always preparation needed to teach Life Group, even when I’m just a substitute. Oh, wait, Saturday is the Rhode Island Author Expo. Since it’s a virtual event this year I signed up to attend it—as a participant, not as an author. That pulls me away from other things from 9 to 4, if I decide to attend all sessions. I’m not really a Rhode Island author, having lived away from my home state for 46 years, but I still want to keep a little of Little Rhody in me.

So, while I can be thankful that the desire to work on the book has finally happened, I can also rue that other tasks continue to get in the way. I’ll somehow get the book done, but it’s sure taking much, much longer than planned.

books, Health, letters, memories, miscellaneous, stock market

A Strange but Good Day

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020. A most interesting day, and perhaps typical of the jumbled life I live right now.

You’d think life would be simple, being retired and mostly staying at home due to the corona virus pandemic. You’d be wrong, however. I suppose the reason is in part that I have too many interests. Let me catalog some events from the day.

So far I’ve transcribed 2/3 of the letters in this box, and they run to 31 typed pages (the box is not full).

I woke around 6:15 to see my digital alarm clock flashing. Must have been a power failure in the night, probably momentary but enough to reset the clock. I got up and weighed and checked my blood sugar. No change in weight (still at the lower end of the range I’ve been bouncing around in). My blood sugar was 81, a good number. The day before my new doctor’s nurse called to convey the doctor’s follow-up comments on recent blood work. All was normal, except iron, which is a little low. Since the nurse didn’t mention the reduction in insulin dose that the doctor said, and since that reduction wasn’t in the printed office visit summary they gave me, I told the nurse what my blood sugars had been with the lower dose—the same as they had been with the higher dose. She said she would tell the doctor. Fifteen minutes later the nurse called back and said the doctor wanted me to reduce my sugar further by a couple of units.

But that happened on Monday. I’m talking about Tuesday. It was raining at 6:15, which meant I wouldn’t be able to go outside for my morning yardwork. Instead, I went into the sunroom and just rested for 30 minutes. I then got up, dressed, got my morning coffee, and went down to The Dungeon for my normal work. Everything seemed very normal. I read devotions, prayed, recorded my health info, checked my book sales, opened my stock trading programs, then checked my e-mail. And the first surprise came.

I had an overnight e-mail from a man with Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. They wanted to use a photograph from this blog for training purposes; would I let them know how to acquire the rights to do so. Wow, this was strange. I spent 15-20 minutes trying to figure out if this was legit. I found web pages for that organization and it all looks legit, except the man’s name was nowhere on it. He’s in an administrative position, however, and they don’t list any administrators on the site. So I sent him an e-mail to try to verify that it’s a legitimate claim.

Shortly after this an e-mail came from Amazon, confirming my order for $543 and change. Except I have no orders outstanding with Amazon. I compared the e-mail with the one from my last order. They looked much the same but there were telltale differences. So I contacted Amazon, confirmed it was most likely a phishing attack, forwarded the e-mail to them for investigation, and went back to my normal business.

Normal business on a weekday includes stock trading. I placed a trade and it filled. Good work. Then, instead of working on one of my books, I began transcribing letters from our Kuwait years. Have I discussed this before on the blog? I can’t remember. I won’t go into it much now except to say that morning I transcribed three letters. That brings the total transcribed to sixteen. In the Word file they run to 24 pages. I have ten more to go in this box, and dozens more in the main box. These are just some I found lately going through my mother-in-law’s things as part of our decluttering effort. They will be added to the large plastic bin (30 x 24 x 6) full of other letters from our Kuwait and Saudi years, all waiting to be transcribed. I also managed to do a little over a half mile on the elliptical.

That got me to lunch time. From that point on the day seemed more or less normal. I made a quick run to the nearby Wal-Mart pharmacy for a couple of prescriptions, had some reading time in the sunroom since the day was cool enough. The wife and I did our evening reading in an Agatha Christie mystery. Normal seemed good.

Throughout the day I was careful of what I ate, though I wouldn’t say I dieted. Yet, when I weighed Wednesday morning I was at my lowest weight in over two months. I followed a similar eating regimen on Wednesday and we even lower on Thursday. This was while reducing my insulin dose (per doctor’s orders) and seeing only a small increase in my blood sugar. Maybe my health is improving.

As I finish this post on Thursday afternoon, I have a generally good feeling about where things stand. A good felling and outlook is…well… good. Bring on Friday. Bring on the isolated weekend. I might even get some time to work on a book or two.

self-publishing, stock market, Writing

Rainy Days and Mondays

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The Carpenters had a major hit with their song “Rainy Days and Monday“, the lyrics saying that they “always get me down.”  As I look out The Dungeon window, through an opening in my computer desk, through the vertical blind slats, through the glass and the screen, I see a cloudy day. When I awoke at 6:30 a.m., a gentle rain was falling. The rain has mostly ended now.

Exactly what I see out The Dungeon windows as I type at my computer.

Yet, I’m not depressed by the dark day. Nor am I depressed by this Monday, or any Monday. Being retired helps with that, but I was never one to rue the end of the weekend and start of the workweek. And I do have my work to do. Monday through Friday I work on our stock trading business. Since nowadays I’m mainly trading for income rather than wealth building, it’s less intensive than it used to be.

But seeing as how I mostly liked my engineering career, and was enjoying the work I did those last few years of that, Mondays were never a drudgery. Nor were the weekends necessarily better than the workweeks. So much work to do at home in just a few hours, I never felt like I was on top of things.

Now, that all has changed. I spend a lot of time at the computer between stock trading and writing and promoting my writing, but I’m not chained to it. Any day I can go outside for an hour of yard work. Any day I can work on de-cluttering. I’m able to exercise on the elliptical (strategically placed in The Dungeon) several times, as I do most weekdays and some on the weekends. Any day I can go outside and walk. Any time my mind gets weary I can take a break, perhaps go to the sunroom and read.

So, I sit at my computer, look through the desk and the slats, and am encouraged. This morning, after my Bible reading and prayer time, rather than write I decided to update my writing income and expense spreadsheet. I had last done this in early to mid-May, so I wasn’t too far behind. My mileage is entered; my inventory purchases are entered both in expenses and on the inventory sheet; my sales amounts are entered. I have an exact picture of where I am profit and loss wise. And, since the spreadsheet sums everything and auto-fills lines for Schedule C, may taxes due next April are mostly calculated—so long as the IRS doesn’t change the form.

I have a few more writing related business tasks to do, which I’ll do as soon as I finish this blog post. Tomorrow I’ll do the same thing with the stock trading. That is mostly up to date on a spreadsheet, but I need to transfer it to my income tax spreadsheet. That will only take 30 minutes, and I’ll be way ahead of where I typically am come January.

So, time to get back to other work. I have two books—one finished, one nearly so—that are begging for my attention. I hope everyone will be able to find today productive and enjoyable.

Dateline: July 29, 2019, for posting on August 5, 2019

construction, Documenting America, Engineering, reading, self-publishing, stock market, Writing

Random Friday Thoughts

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Can a graphics duffer create the print-book cover to go with this? Enquiring minds want to know.

As I look out from The Dungeon windows at 06:47 a.m., the sun is hidden by the tall trees at the rear of our backyard. But enough sun gets through I can tell it will be a sunny day, at least to start. Storms are predicted for tomorrow, and might start in a small way sometime today.

Yesterday was a busy day. In addition to stock trading in the morning, I did a few writer things. I’m trying to create the print book cover for my friend’s book. I made a good start on it despite the fact that it’s been a year since I created a cover. Using G.I.M.P., a no-cost alternative to Photoshop, I managed to get the overall sizes of each part of the cover in place. I found some good notes I wrote on that. Alas, I’ve forgotten enough that I didn’t get it done in the time I had. Hopefully I will this morning.

I then at a quick lunch, hopped in the van, and went to do some engineering work, final inspection of one site and monthly inspections on three other sites. I completed the final inspection, with a little arguing with the contractor thrown in. Not bad arguing, just them obviously not appreciating the things I found. I got a little testy at one point when they gave new information about a structure I’ve been trying to get them to modify. Why they didn’t give me that info months ago is a mystery.

I went to the first monthly inspection, walked the site, saw only one or two things out of the ordinary. This has been a problem site, with me constantly finding things they are doing in violation of City codes. They’ve started to get much better. They had installed almost all the handicapped ramps incorrectly. I decided to let the first few go, but I found a new one wrongly constructed. They will have to change that. They also had one where they attempted to construct it correctly, but came up short. Fortunately the correction is inexpensive.

The engineering work to that point took me from 12:30 p.m. to about 3:30 p.m., with two more sites to go. I was beat and dehydrated, as I hadn’t taken water with me. I decided not to do the other two inspections, leaving them to the employee of my former company who joined me yesterday for training purposes. I came home, rested an hour, then wrote the reports for the two inspections.

Then I took it easy in the evening. We had plenty of leftover chili to use for taco salad, so had that for supper, and a slice of turtle pie for dessert. I spent much of the evening on the computer working on the reports as well as trying to find some photos in the company files to prove the point I tried to make on site.

I’ll soon be creating a cover for “Documenting America: Making the Constitution Edition”. It will be a simple re-creation of this one.

I wrote an e-mail to the CEI project manager, telling her my inability to do the two other inspections was “most likely a combination of too much sun, frustration with [the other] engineer and developer and contractor, age, and perhaps a creeping retirement-starting-to-care-a-little-less each month.” I haven’t heard back from her yet. I have trained the other man to do these inspections and had no doubt he could do the remaining two and write acceptable reports.

I spent no time in the sunroom, didn’t work on my own books at all, didn’t make much progress on my to-do list. My wife and I did a little reading aloud, and we took a very pleasant call from our oldest grandson and had evening devotions with him. Our reading carried us after normal bed time.

So, up this morning after sleeping through the night, ready to “awaken the dawn” that I see unfolding out the window. It’s fully light out, though the trees still obscure direct rays. On to other things for a couple of hours, then back to the book cover work.

miscellaneous, stock market, The Gutter Chronicles, Writing

The Monday Report

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I had intended to write a book review today, but circumstances have worked against me. I got to the office this morning to find the workmen not done, and I won’t be working in my office today—at least not at the beginning.

You see, the outside wall of my office is under duress. Shortly after I moved in there, about a year ago following major remodeling throughout our building, the outer wall began to crack. It seemed to be just the stucco finish on the wall, not the drywall behind it. That would mean no major problem. About three months later, the contractor returned to take care of various punch-list items, and repaired it. They cut out the parts that were cracking, back to undamaged stucco, and re-did it. Excepting a slight change in the texture, you would never know it had been a problem.

Then, about a month after that, it started again. Same exact thing, same exact place. Only this time it progressed faster and was a little more extensive. Last week the contractor finally got back to try to figure out what’s going on. Clearly, this was not just cosmetic. They decided to tear the drywall out, see what’s behind it. They scheduled the work for 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning, and advised me they were unlikely to be finished on Monday.

Sure enough, they weren’t. New drywall was in place, but not yet mudded. So I found an empty cubicle nearby, set up my laptop, and here I am. It appears to me that I will have limited access to my office for the next three days. That’s the bad new. The good news is: maybe, at last, I’ll become more proficient at using a laptop keyboard. Something’s going on in my office; I hear their machines behind the closed door.

The morning routine was also changed in my taking a different route to the office. Coming home yesterday afternoon, I went a certain way to check out my morning commute route in the daylight. As I expected, the route is littered with potholes. Enough so that you can’t always dodge them if there is on-coming traffic. So this morning I went a different way. It had almost no potholes. The drive was easy, traffic heavy but moving. I had to put gasoline in the pickup, and arrived at the work only five to seven minutes behind my target arrival time.

I was coming home yesterday afternoon from an afternoon writer’s event, not from church (which did fill my Sunday morning). Yes, a real writer’s event, the first one I’ve been to in about a year. It was a book event held by the Village on the Lakes Writers and Poets, a local organization in Bella Vista. Bentonville author J.C. Crumpton . He has several books published. His talk was about his writing process, how he came up with ideas for these books. A total of nineteen people were there. I had a chance to talk at length with the head of the organization, and briefly with J.C. Hopefully, I’ll interview him on this blog before long.

Saturday was an interesting day. Rain graced the early morning, or the promise of rain at the time I got up. I made some coffee and headed to The Dungeon, not to write, but to do whatever indoor chores I could. First, I went on-line to my bank to update the checkbook. Then, I entered income and expense into my budget spreadsheet, getting that up-to-date and double-checked. Then, I tackled mountains of receipts that I hadn’t yet dealt with. For the Wal-Mart receipts, that mean checking them against budget entries to make sure I had them in the right expense categories, then filing. For others, it meant filing or moving to the shred pile.

After that, I filed financial papers. This took some time. I got mine done, but not my mother-in-law’s. Hers are in a big pile, which I will get to probably next weekend.

Then, I went back to income taxes, which I had started last week. First is our trading partnership tax return, which is due March 15. I had made all the trade entries, along with miscellaneous income and most expenses. Saturday I finished the expenses, and looked for a $100 discrepancy between my records and those of my brokers. It took me fifteen minutes to find my mistake, a simple typo, and get that correct. That meant I had everything I needed to actually fill out the return. I hadn’t planned on that for Saturday, but I thought, it’s pouring rain; I can’t work outside; might as well stick to it and get ’em done.

So I did. In about an hour I had the forms filled out, ready to print and proofread. That will be a Monday-Tuesday task. I feel great getting to this point, which is way ahead of where I was last year.

As a result of all of this, I did no writing on the weekend. None. I had hoped to write several thousand words in The Gutter Chronicles – Volume 2, but it was not to be. Maybe tonight. I did get a lot of reading done, research for a future, maybe-this-year, publication. Maybe I could have written instead of read, but both are necessary tasks.

So, I post this from Cubicleville, commending you all the grace of God this Monday morning.

miscellaneous, stock market, Writing

Taxes Almost Done

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Yes, I’m very, very close to having my taxes done. Normally I do them much earlier than this, around the end of February and first of March. But, this year at that time I was working on Preserve The Revelation and “Growing Up Too Fast”, either editing, writing, or publishing. They were done toward the end of March. I needed a break, so didn’t begin them for a few days, maybe around April 3.

I won’t take a long time explaining this. Our taxes are complicated. Our stock trading partnership, my writing sole proprietorship, my work, Lynda’s social security. It makes for lots of forms, and worksheets from the instructions. I have Excel spreadsheets built to do the calculations. All I have to do is come with the W-2, the 1099s, and deductions statements. This year my paperwork was well organized. I also have to check my spreadsheets against the forms and instructions for the tax year, in case something has changed.

I had the Federal done, and began working on the State. My spreadsheet links the State to the Federal, and rounds the Federal amounts to 00 cents, as Arkansas requires. Everything flows quickly from the Federal to the State. But, at the last minute, the State wanted me to attach Federal form 8889. I scrambled, and found that form 8889 is REQUIRED if you have an active Health Savings Account, as I do. I’d never heard of this before, but apparently I should have filed it every year since I had the HSA, about six or seven years. Since my HSA is funded with pre-tax dollars, I have no tax consequences. However, I still have to file it. I had two stressful days learning about and then completing Form 8889. But it’s done.

The status is: My Federal and State forms are done, printed, signed, copies, and mailed. My partnership calcs are done, the forms printed, and signed. All except for one form that I forgot about printing. I couldn’t do it at work today, so I’ll do it at home this evening and mail it all Monday. I also do taxes for my mother-in-law. I did the calcs on them last night, concluded she didn’t owe any taxes, and so decided to set them aside for a couple of days and take a break.

During these last two weeks, engrossed in taxes as I’ve been, I’ve done almost nothing for writing. That should change this weekend.

miscellaneous, self-publishing, stock market

Back to Normal?

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Yesterday we took our three grandchildren back to their parents in Oklahoma City. We took them to our house to spend Spring Break, intending to bring them back today. However, having a 7 year old, 5 year old, and almost 3 year old proved to be a bit much on the nerves and constitution. So back they went, a day early. That means today we were back to normal.

But what is normal? Is there such a thing? My “normal” I mean usual routines. I am a creature of routine, I must admit. Yet, for the last year or more I have not been able to find or establish a routine. My work at the office is somewhat routine. Leave the house the same time each day; work till lunch; eat lunch at my desk; walk a mile if weather and energy permit; work the afternoon; leave each day about the same time and drive home. The activities on any individual day could shift, but they rotate among predictable tasks.

Evening has become a little routine. I’m hot and heavy into stock trading right now, trying to come upon a winning formula that will allow us to recover from prior losses. Alas, that takes up all of the evening. Or, more correctly, it takes up all the remaining brain energy. By the time I spend an hour or two figuring out what to do with stock trading, I have no mental energy left for much else. I might be able to file papers or update the family budget records. But creative writing? No, won’t happen.

So, I’ve written nothing since October last, other than the Blizzard of 1948 story for the Meade County Historical Society webpage (which they have yet to post; not sure why). Things continue to float through my head, and I continue to suppress them. I have three works that need revision. On is a very minor revision on one page, and applies only to a print version and Kindle version. That should be easy. The other two require a number of typos to be fixed in each, and each having two different e-book versions and no print version. Those are three discreet tasks. They aren’t exactly creative writing, but they will further my writing “career,” so I should knuckle down and do them.

Perhaps I will this week. Before starting this blog post I finished my income taxes. I had them almost all done two weeks ago, or maybe three, but then the non-routine got in the way of the non-routine, and I had to lay tax preparation aside. But I just got them done, now needing only printing, signing, copying, and mailing. That’s the last non-routine item out of the way, which should allow me to concentrate more on writing.

May it be so.

family, goals, stock market, Writing

Hard to Return to Routine

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On June 11 our three grandchildren (ages 7, 4, and 2) came to stay with us while their parents went on a sabbatical trip: business mixed with pleasure. I immediately shifted my routines and established a new routine. I delayed coming in to work until around 10:00 a.m. I got the kids up, fed them breakfast, got them dressed, had the two older ones make their beds, saw that their teeth were brushed, then headed out for work. My wife took the day shift. In the evening we worked together on supper and jointly got them ready for bed. Afterwards I spent a little time in The Dungeon, working on writing and stock trading tasks.

Then, on June 23 their parents arrived, and the routines were shot. They all left two days later on the next leg of their trip, returned on July 6, and left for home on July 8.

So it’s July 9, and time to get back to our usual routines. Actually, I should have begun that on June 25. I tried, really I did, but there were things working against me. One was the Independence Day holiday, which gave my a 3-day weekend Friday-Sunday. The other was lack of a major writing project at home and delay of a certain project at work. So I was without a focus at each location. Consequently I floundered at both. I got stuff done at both, but my productivity was nowhere near what it should have been.

Also working against the routine is being the organizer/planner of my wife’s family’s reunion the last weekend in July/first in August. It’s going well, but it’s a one time thing, not a routine thing. What writing tasks I had were minor corrections to on-line listing of my books, again not routine. At work I had a series of one-off things to do. I also have non-routine things coming up the end of August, end of September, and end of October.  Planning for those has already begun—another thing to draw me out of my routine.

I don’t do well with the non-routine. I’ve long noticed that, but it was certainly confirmed this month. Last night I found myself at home, the kids and grandkids gone, and the evidence that they’d been there mostly cleared away. So I went to The Dungeon in the evening, was confronted with some non-routine tasks, and almost got nothing done. I finally concentrated on my stock trading routine, and was able to enter one trade with my broker, which filled today. Yea! Back to routine.

We’ll see what happens over the next four months. I hope I can be productive, but I’m afraid I will be only marginally so. I have most of the non-routine things on my to-do list (the non-work ones, that is). If I just work that list I’ll be okay.

stock market, Writing

No Writing Tasks Yesterday

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I’m in the midst of the Time Crunch (which I may re-label the Great Time Crunch), as I reported before.  My time is being consumed with normal gotta-do-it-to-live activities, as well as this new stock trading education program we’re in. That especially is taking up a lot of time, more even than I expected when we started.

Saturday I did nothing at all on writing, except maybe look at a writing blog or two. Well, thinking back and trying to remember, I may have found time to look at a few a Thomas Carlyle’s letters, researching for a future book. So maybe I can’t say I didn’t get to do anything that day.

Sunday I know for sure that my only writing tasks was research into those letters. I did that while watching Sunday night football, and think I may have gone through almost two dozen of them. But as far as putting words on paper, words of my own, nothing.

Yesterday was a null day as far as writing was concerned. I checked in on a couple of writing blogs, and was able to hurry a post on to my other blog, but as far as preparing new works, nothing. No research. No writing. Nothing. That may be the first weekday in a long, long time where I haven’t done something to further my writing career. Since blogging doesn’t seem to be doing anything for that, I don’t think I can count it.

Today doesn’t look any better. Lynda will be coming home with Elise, our granddaughter, who we’ll watch for a few days. The stock trading educational activities continue, including a webinar tonight, as well as homework assignments.

I don’t know when writing will resume. Right now it’s not in the foreseeable future.

stock market, Writing

A Time Crunch is Here

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Time has always been a factor in how much writing I can accomplish. The day job sure gets in the way of writing production! Still, I’ve been able to manage, and think I’ve published quite a lot the last (almost) four years.

But, I think I’m heading into a very dry six-month period right now. Lynda and I have signed up for some intensive training in stock trading, in an attempt to figure out what we’ve been doing wrong and, as a result, get to the point where we will be more consistently profitable. We are paying for this training, of course. Upon starting it we learned it is much more intense and time consuming than expected. It consumed parts of the last two evenings, enough of them that I had no time for anything else; or at least the time chunks left over were not long enough to entice me to pick up my pen, or read for research.

This will last for the next six months, possibly longer. I don’t foresee being able to give more than a couple of hours a week to writing before that’s over, i.e. before April 2015. That means I probably won’t have any new items published much before June-July 2015.  That’s an unfortunate side effect, one I’m not real happy with, but, as they say now a days, it is what it is.

I’ll still try to post here twice a week, but for sure a minimum of once a week. I don’t know what I’ll have to report, but I’ll figure something out.