All I can say is that I love Anthony Bourdain. What’s not to like about a guy who puts duck, sausage, bacon and beans all into one dish? Or serves duck confit with foie gras sausage and another blood sausage? AND STILL puts rabbit on the menu?
Now that I’ve grossed out my vegan and vegetarian readers, I shall get on to my dinner review.
WARNING: The restaurant websites listed herein all seem to play loud accordian music, so turn it down before you click.
Someone asked me recently about investing in renewable energy stocks, but asked if there were any special mutual funds for them. Knowing that there are socially responsible investment vehicles out there, all it took was a simple Google search for “alternative energy mutual fund” to turn up two solid articles from CNN and from Altenergystocks.com. Neither article is moldy oldy. They’re within the last 2 years and the Altenergystocks.com article has a follow up link from October 2007.
Personally, I’m holding Applied Materials (AMAT). Not because they are some special renewable energy stock, but because they are the leader in semiconductor manufacturing. However, as a leader in chemical-vapor-deposition products, their machines are also used to make photovoltaic products, i.e. solar energy collectors. I bought it a little too high, but it pays a dividend and generally moves cyclically, so you can always buy more on the dip. I plan to hold these shares forever because computers are never going to go away. I’m just putting it out there since apparently their stock jumps on press releases about their solar product line. I doubt it makes much money for them, but easily every single chip in the electronic device you are using to read this post was made on one of their machines. (FWIW, Lam Research (LRCX) and Novellus (NVLS) are probably their two biggest competitors and I’d buy those too, but they don’t have dividends.)
A few of my friends have made money off of Evergreen Solar, but I’m not interested in it myself. At any rate, the person who inspired this post isn’t interested in single-stock investments for various reasons, high risk being one of them.
Since I’m not posting a lot of new stuff, at least I can put up the monthly ‘maintenance’ post on my goals and net worth.
Goal #1
Specific - Contribute to my 401k plan
I got squared away with contributions in February. I did have to bump up my contributions, to 10% for the last 11 months of 2008. That’s more than I need to get the full match over the course of the year, but just barely. Because I also have a Roth 401k available, I decided to kick in a little money into that account just to get it started. Frankly, it’s kind of dumb for me to have one until I can get my credit card debt squared away.
Grade: Pass!
Goal #2
Specific - Reduce my credit card debt
Measurable - By 50% or $9,137 (rounded up to $10K)
Achievable - Monthly payments of $762
I had to put my Lasik surgery on a credit card, but I sent in the paper work for my Medical/Health Care Spending Account (HCSA) reimbursement. Hopefully that won’t be too delayed.
I’m still stagnating on this goal however since I don’t seem to be able to stop charging onto my cards. I usually leave them at home, but I’m slowly ballooning in weight and planning wedding travel so that any progress I made was negated by new charges. Even if I leave them at home, inevitably, I need them to make a purchase online later. Reviewing my charges again, I forgot, I gave lots of baby gifts too.
Grade: Fail. I need to do some more thinking about this and how to make it happen. More than anything, I’ve tried moving to carrying a lot more cash and that does seem to help a little.
Goal #3
Specific - Reduce my credit card debt on my highest balance card ~$10K
Measurable - By 50%
Achievable - ~$450 a month
Grade: Pass. I’m paying $500 a month which meets the goal. But honestly, this still feels like a pyrrhic victory.
As for Lent, I am getting accustomed to diet soda, and yet, I’m getting quite fat. I’m not sure where the correlation is, but I think some of it is from my altered dining habits. I tend to eat heavier meals with my new boyfriend. Usually I will skip dinner or just have a light snack, but lately I’ve been eating a lot more food. Not just with my boyfriend, but also at the office. This new job is making me quite fat. I am looking for a used treadmill. Hopefully, I can find one on Freecycle soon so I don’t have to join a gym.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not perfect here when it comes to Lent. I did have a few sugar sodas last month. There are days when the stress gets so bad at work that I need a kick of sugar to get through the day. I’m not really sorry though.
Also, I decided to eat less red meat during Lent this year. I’ve been eating more tofu and chicken. But I did have bison (making a market for an alternative meat!), a few burgers and a grilled steak taco, or three. But given my penchant to make roast beef in the winter, I’m doing a lot better. I’ve gone a whole week without red meat this Lent. (Crap. I just realized that I have a wedding rehearsal dinner/party for a wedding on Good Friday. Merde. I might as well hide in my hotel room that night or else wait till midnight to drink. Oy vey.)
It’s up just a tiny bit. Liabilities down, assets up. But the credit card number remains fairly static.
I know part of it is that I bought my mother some swimsuits from Lands’ End. The modest cuts are good for old ladies. They even have little skirts, so my mom was happy with her present.
I also know part of the reason my credit cards are up are due to some early purchases for weddings this year. I had to put flights onto my credit card.
My credit card balance being up by only $73 means that the $1000 I usually throw in that direction was negated by about $1000 in charges. Sounds about right, but still a bummer.
Well, it’s going to be $755.00 to fix my laptop. And of course, that’s actually no kind of guarantee that it will be fixed perfectly. It will just be refurbished and parts replaced. I am skeptical having repaired laptops myself for work. It’s never quite the same again. Ever.
Guess what? Per Dealnews.com, I could have bought a refurbed Macbook for $749 plus free shipping this morning. Too bad they were sold out by 4pm EST.
Sounds like I’m getting ripped off here for a simple repair. Steve Jobs can go pound sand. Oh, and another thing, I really hate you Apple for making a 2:40pm appointment and making me wait 15 minutes for one of your silly ‘geniuses’ to help me. When I make an appointment, I expect you to keep it. Sorry, your service sucks. It sucks worse than any other business I’ve visited in the last 3 months. Oops, no. Maybe that was Ann Taylor and their dumb price adjustment limit of only 14-days instead of 30. (Funny thing, I could have returned them in the 30-day window, and then turned around and bought them the next morning. Stupid stupid stupid)
There are some alternative Mac repair places in DC, so I’m getting a listing from someone whose roommate tried out one of them. Cross your fingers.
At any rate, my boyfriend did offer to replace my laptop. I don’t want you to think that he didn’t. But I don’t know if that’s what I really want.
The machine I bought is overkill. It’s yet another purchase of electronics that was way more than I needed. (I hate my stupid KRZR cellphone as well.) I was doing my friend a favor by buying it from her for $200 more than I wanted to spend, which was $200 less than what she wanted. However, for $400 I can buy a refurbished PC and still use Quicken 2008 on it, so really, I think I’m better off making my boyfriend buy me a refurbished PC and forgetting about Macs altogether.
eh. I have to say, I don’t really miss blogging. I’ve been working a lot and have a lot on my mind. Some of it is personal finance related and I should give you all the little reports of restaurants and trips to Boston, etc. But short of re-routing my entire life right now, I’m staying off the computers at home unless I really need to be billing some hours.