Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

The former Washington Mutual Building, photographed from the Bainbridge ferry, Seattle, WA, 9/27/2008

Well, I really can’t let a historic week like this go by without posting.

I’m a child of children of the Depression, and I’ve always adhered to the ethos of conservative conduct in my financial affairs that my dad and grandparents ingrained into me, even if my politics became more progressive as I swung further from their genetic orbit.  I’m lucky, of course, to have been their child, raised in a cocoon of relative comfort.  But that comfort was the result of careful spending and investing, blue-collar midwestern people who distrusted fads and stuck to their fucking knitting, even if that meant that I drove a 60 Chevy station wagon on my 65 - 67 high school dates, and I didn’t hit a golf ball until I was well over 30.

I’ve cleaved to their cautious approach, even when, through the 80’s and 90’s, a smarter person would have bought as much Seattle real estate as the (now evidently stupid) banks would have allowed.

So, I arrive at this pivotal moment in our civic life sort of conflicted.  The prudent child-of-children-of-the-Depression is totally disgusted at the calamitous result of the profligacy of the Wall Street money-jocks, aided and abetted as they have been by the Reagan-induced paucity of regulatory oversight.  I really buy into the whole revenge thing that the populist rhetoric is espousing.

And then, there’s the retirement investor side of me, worrying about my portfolio.  I’m sure I have a lot of company here.  Our guts are telling us to scream, “let the fuckers stew in their own foul juices!”, while we realize that our own nest eggs are redolent with those same juices.

I’m not so worried about the part of my paltry portfolio that’s managed by Warren Buffett.  It may rise and decline with the market, but it’s invested in diverse and proven businesses.  It’s kind of cool to see my stock price jump every time he’s quoted in the Wall Street Journal.  This quote from last week epitomizes why I cling to my BRK investment even in the face of Warren’s imminent demise.  Berkshire has been sitting on an inordinate amount of cash for several years, with Warren being frustrated that prices were too high for him to make many major acquisitions.  Then, these Wall Street firms feeling the Arctic breeze on their naked asses started calling him:

Mr. Buffett received a call at 4:30 p.m. that Saturday from a private investment firm trying to assemble a group to buy the embattled financial giant. “I’m calling about Bear Stearns,’” the private investor began, according to Mr. Buffett. “Should I go on?’”

Mr. Buffett recalls thinking: “It’s like a woman taking off half her clothes and asking, ‘Should I continue?’ Even if you’re a 90-year-old eunuch, you let ‘em finish.” Mr. Buffett says he passed on the proposed deal. Bear Stearns was bought by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. the following day.

So now he’s made a couple of adroit investments in Constellation (an energy company that was teetering) and Goldman Sachs.  Presumably, he got the full frontal, but we’ll have to wait for his next quarterly SEC filing to know for sure.  Even in today’s bloodbath, BRKA only got a scratch.  While that’s not guaranteed to continue if things continue to deteriorate, I’m in for the long term.

So I’m torn between emotion and pragmatism regarding this taxpayer bailout.  I don’t want to take it in the shorts as a taxpayer while Wall Street geniuses skate on their golden parachutes, and I don’t want to take it in the shorts as an investor while the Wall Street geniuses still skate on their golden parachutes.

I’m glad I can still earn a living by working and can take a (not-as-much-as-previously) long-term view, but I still cleave to my 1983-vintage feeling that “the “Reagan Revolution” was built by invading all of society’s safety margins.”  Environmental, financial, social.  Line ‘em up and mug-shot ‘em: Social Security, mentally-ill homeless people, savings & loans, a coordinated energy policy, the coddling of a DOA auto industry that should have been left to die, Lehmann-style, in the mid-80s.

Who knows what happens tomorrow.  I’ll still get up and do work for clients that seem to be able to pay me, I’ll still watch in gob-smacked horror at the stock market, wondering if it’s a once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunity, or a ruinous armageddon.

The good thing is, I’ll probably still get up tomorrow.

So, my mom had a birthday last weekend, another one of those that can only be expressed in logarithmic notation, but I’m delighted to have her every day, let alone every year.

And she’s squeezing everything she can out of these years of sentience and energy.  She plays bridge at least 2 times a week (and wins with a suspicious frequency), participates in a book group at her community library, attends plays, operas and zoo concerts.

But when I saw this bumper sticker:

I knew she was underachieving.  Mom, you need to go downtown and get kicked out of one or more bars if you want me to still respect you.   I know you’re up to it.

Perspective! (Click to enlarge):

I’m attending a sea kayaking “symposium” in Port Townsend, west of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula. “Symposium” seems a little over the top, but it’s a fairly large event, with classes on & off the water, and, of course, lots of gear vendors hoping to snag some of our dollars.   (Click photos to enlarge)

I took a short class on advanced paddle strokes yesterday and actually learned a few techniques I hadn’t known about before.  During the class, one of the women capsized and was rescued by our instructor.  He was something of a hunk, and I couldn’t shake the suspicion that she did it on purpose.

These “Jesus boats” are gaining in popularity, though I can’t imagine spending more than half an hour on one.  They’re basically a surfboard:

I paddled out into the Strait (of Juan de Fuca) to get a larger view of the coast and to look over this lighthouse.  It had been drizzling for a lot of the day, and I was surprised, as I turned the corner, to actually see some sun.

OK, I’m headed out to the water again.

Harvest moon, taken last weekend on a neighborhood stroll.

Did I ever come back from Columbus?  I’m looking for me because the bastard owes me money, and he’s hiding.

I found a bit of evidence on the memory chip of his camera - he apparently went kayaking last Saturday:

A barnacle-encrusted necklace adorned this prosaic fishing boat.

Lake Union is festooned with “floating homes”, which have become increasingly elaborate. These two present a stark contrast - on the left, a full-on suburban experience, while on the right, and just a few paddle-strokes away, is a hippie-pad melange festooned with parasitic willow and situational art.

A commercial float-plane airline, Kenmore Air, makes its home in Lake Union, ferrying people to the San Juan Islands and other water-related destinations. I fastidiously maintain my distance from this departing aircraft, nd enjoy getting sprayed by its propwash.

After circumnavigating Lake Union, I paddled west through the ship canal. As I returned, I took this pic of the Fremont and Aurora bridges forming a tunnel to paddle through.

There was a fair breeze that day, and this sailboat seemed particularly picturesque as it glided in front of the skyscraper backdrop.

OK, I’m back in town after a couple weeks of traveling.  Watch this space.

 Hectic and compressed week.  I mean, it’s always a gong show after I’ve been  out of town, but this is a 3-day work week for me, as I depart tomorrow morning on my annual haj to Columbus, there to pray at Mecca on Saturday.  I will again play and march with my Ohio State alumni band, and mingle with my mom and brothers and their wives.

I’m not sure if I actually have a new reader or two since the last iteration, but just in case: I was in the Ohio State marching band while slouching towards my accounting degree, as was my youngest (10 years younger) brother.  The alumni band celebrates a reunion each year, and the athletic department allows us to either cavort or waddle through pregame and halftime shows at an early-season football game.  My family has been using this occasion as a family reunion as well, and we have a fine old time.

Something like 700 of us alumni bandsmen return each year for this event, and that’s about 100 too many to be able to participate in our signature formation, the venerable Script Ohio.  So, they conduct a lottery to see who gets the coveted marching spots for the halftime extravaganza.  I had to sit out last year, but I’m on the field this year.  Here’s a nice video of what we do:

The game itself is a snooze to contemplate - against Youngstown State, ferchrissakes.  It annoys me that teams like Ohio State pack their schedule with cupcakes like this.  And it’s not like you can’t lose one of these (see Michigan vs. Appalachian State last year).  But, whatever, the weather is supposed to be good and it’ll be a fine way to spend an afternoon.

On the way, I’ll be finishing A Heartbreaking of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.  I’ve had the book around for a year or two, but it only made the traveling team because it was on top of a pile, and I grabbed it as I ran out the door to the airport a couple weeks ago.  It’s a strange book, a rambling memoir that details a young person’s launch into adult life in the 90s.  What would have been a fairly unremarkable journey of a suburban Chicago kid graduating from college and dipping his toe into the world is complicated immeasurably by the unlikely deaths of both of his parents from cancer within a month of each other, and the consequent need to care for his middle-school brother.  Not the usual path to becoming a single parent.  I’ll say more about it when I finish.

My ride home was on schedule and uneventful.  The recent DC9/MD80 crash in Madrid was a reminder that these things still occur, and was part of my awareness as I boarded a DC9 for my Milwaukee-Minneapolis flight.  As we rolled for takeoff, it seemed they were “babying” it into the air instead of the brash “rotate up and leap into the air” that I always anticipate and even now sort of thrill to.  I fancied FAA airworthiness directives, dialogue in the pilots’ lounge, lots drawn, losers getting the DC9 assignments.  Probably my imagination.

On the MSP-SEA leg, I was #3 on the upgrade standby list, but there’s no bronze medal in that event.  All of them showed up, and I trudged back to my seat in coach.  Not a bad seat, exit-row aisle, but still.

The woman seated next to me - petite, thankfully, eschewing the arm-rest - noted to her daughter that we were taking off at 9:30 and arriving in Seattle at 11:00, “an hour-and-a-half flight”.  In her 50s, reading a Ken Follett book that, OK, it’s thriller-stuff, but there are a lot of words and pages and you might presume that a person with an interest in such world-ranging, technology-intensive material would be at least dimly aware of the existence of time zones.

It’s one thing for your airplane seatmate to be geographically stunted, it’s another for your airport shuttle-driver to lack basic knowledge of your city’s layout.  There were 5 of us in the shuttle making four stops.  We had chatted amongst ourselves and with the driver about our addresses, etc, before we left and were having a lively conversation about our various neighborhoods.  We were arrayed in a fairly straight line northbound from SeaTac, and we passengers had settled the sequence of our drop-offs.

Then the driver consults his onboard computer and named the first stop.  It happened to be a guy who lived somewhere in the middle of that northbound line, and would have required passing right by two others of us who were further south.  One of us, turned out, worked for the Postal Service (and was returning from a work-related gathering in Las Vegas?  Just for that event, I can imagine, chips came in multiples of 42 cents, with the option to buy 1- and 2-cent chips if the house announced an increase), and I’m completely certain that he could hear your address and accurately spit back at you your zip+4.

With him as our bulwark, we performed an intellectual hijack of the shuttle from the computer and the driver, and verbally instructed the reluctant driver on required lane changes, exits, etc.  Through a combination of steely insistence cloaked in a tone of cheery helpfulness, we got at least as far as Chez Perils, where I grabbed my bags and wished them well.

I’m chillin’ at the Northwest Worldclub at the Minneapolis airport, waiting for my 9:30 flight home to Seattle. A hectic Friday, as usual for these expeditions.

The last couple of times I’ve gone to Milwaukee, I’ve been checking Craigslist to see if anyone’s selling a bicycle for a reasonable price. The area where I work and stay (Glendale/Fox Point/Whitefish Bay), north of town, seemed to be a great place to bicycle, and I often see serious training going on there.

So, last Saturday, I saw a likely candidate on Craigslist.  I stopped at the seller’s place on my way to my hotel from the airport, test rode it, and plunked down my money and drove away with it!

It’s a little bit bigger than I would ride if I had been shopping for a main squeeze sort of bike, but I had a great time cruising around on it this week.  It’s my first “modern” bike, with brake-lever index shifters and a 9-speed cassette in the back, triple-chainwheel in front.  I locked it up at my client’s when I left tonight, but kind of hated to leave it behind.  I’ll get good use out of it through the fall, and it adds some zest to the humdrum life of the road warrior.

Have a good weekend, everyone!  I’m glad to be headed west.

I thought I had things sealed up pretty well, but summer’s leaking away through fissures I never knew existed. I’m spending another precious week of it in Milwaukee, where I’m watching helplessly as the days noticeably shorten.

Last week in Seattle, we got out into the ‘hood for some quintessential summer walks. One night, we walked down to Greenlake and, on our way back, turned a corner and found a Night Out Against Crime block party in progress. Now, we’d had our own Night Out the week before, when the rest of the country had theirs. We asked a woman how they managed to stage their event a week or so later, and she said, “bad planning”.

Well, it might have been late, but it seemed to have been impeccably planned. There was, to our delight, a band, Six of One, playing some vintage rock on a parking strip, while kids rode trikes and skateboards and harassed each other with light sabers.

I had the S3 IS along, which takes pretty good video with stereo pickup. Here’s a rendition of the Allman Brothers’ tune One Way Out, with a bunch of cute kid-action shots:

This one is Del Shannon’s My Little Runaway.  At the beginning, you can hear me and Mrs. Perils guessing cluelessly at both the artist and the song.  Mrs. Perils, however, could probably get a degree in 60s musicology.  She partially saves her reputation by nailing the song title before the first word is sung, but we both strike out on the artist - we’re sure it’s The Ventures.  Some nice vocal cameos from Mrs. Perils here:

And this last number is CSN&Y’s Long Time Gone, with some delicious guitar work and, again, (possibly reluctant) vocal cameos from Mrs. Perils.  I think they’re darling:

We’re glad we discovered this little gathering, and we’ll look for the band whenever they’re giggin’.