Its a Nou Day!

Today was what I call a typical Nouday in the comic called, ‘Our Life’…

It all started promptly at 7am when Coco politely let us know that it was time for her to go outside for the first of her 20 plus daily visits to “go potty”. Since Noushas mom’s flight was scheduled for today, we needed to get the house in order…not too much cleaning is needed since we tend to keep a clean house but it did need a little refreshing. With the dog barking at us to prepare her breakfast, Nousha was busy cooking one of her world famous Persian dishes while I made sure Noushi’s room was in order. Coco was then ‘reminded’ (again) to ‘go outside’ so as to prevent our newly cleaned carpets from becoming used as her personal dumping ground. We scrambled to get out of the house by 11am so we could walk her for 3 miles around the Lafayette Reservoir. This, by the way, is generally no easy task! Although she is a fantastic walker and minds what we tell her, she is so cute that we cant go more than 100 feet before being repeatedly stopped and asked if “we can pet your dog?”. We can typically hear it coming a mile away and it usually starts off with, “awww, what a cute boxer!”. By the way, she is a PUGGLE (1/2 Pug, 1/2 Beagle!)…yes, she is a puppy…and she is 4 months old! As soon as we get our shirts printed with the answers to these common questions, it may be a long time before we can walk her without interruption!

At the Reservoir we discover that its a Persian Holiday. Well, Nousha knew this and of course I forgot that she had told me about this last week. Forgetting is not one of better qualities but I think its understood that I’m allowed to do this from time to time :)

Since Noushi’s plane was scheduled to arrive at 1pm, we drove to pick up flowers (typical Persian event upon airplane landing :) as we sped to the airport. Yes, we were late but, as I said above, I attribute that to all the distractions we get while trying to walk our dog. Never the less, we arrived at the airport 30 minutes after the plane arrived. Noushi wasn’t there so we waited, and waited, and waited… After 3 hours I began to think there was something wrong, although Nousha assured me that its typical for Persians to get a LOT of questions at Immigration. Since it took her cousin about 2 hours to get through the line last month I didn’t question this. I did, however, ask Nousha if her phone was on and got a quick assurance that it was! At this point there was nobody else waiting at the gate so as I went up to the ticket booths to get some answers, Nousha realized that her phone was “stuck”. After a quick reboot she received a message from her mom that was sent BEFORE we drove to the airport that which infomed us she was still in Amsterdam and will be in on Monday NOT Sunday! Needless to say, I did my best to not think about the fact that we just sat at the San Francisco airport for the better part of a beautiful day! (Luckly Coco slept the whole time and didn’t get harrased as usual!)

So, tomorrow we do it all over again…

Its all over the news right now, in case you haven’t heard, Bear Stearns is in serious financial troubles. Just a few weeks ago their stock price was hoovering around $100/share…today it closed at $4.81 after 2 HUGE drops. As a former stock broker, Ive had a few friends asking me what is going on. One friend in particular is very nervous due to a substantial position in one of their funds. The reason for this huge disaster has to do with their risky investing in sub-prime loans. Essentially they took a huge gamble that didn’t pay off. For those of you that are not familiar with ‘Sub-Prime’, its a term that refers to the credit status of the borrower (being less than ideal), not the interest rate on the loan itself. Investors purchase these sub-prime loans because they tend to have a higher yield (interest rate). The higher yield is compensation for the added risk. Unfortunately Bear Stearns decided to place too much of their portfolio in these loans and since they are defaulting, their value is going down.

Not only has their stock value declined, I just read that they are not allowing their investors to pull their funds from their accounts so even if you have money with them, you may be forced to watch it dissappear before your eyes. On top of the already depressed economy, this type of poor business decision does NOT bode well with the investment community!

Although this is just one opinion, I predict that the worst is not over for the United States. Inspite of the bogus “economic stimulus package” that was talked about by our fearless leader, the combination of high oil prices and low consumer confidence are leading me to believe that we will be seeing more defaulting loans before the the economy finds a balance.

What should you do in times like these? I suggest that you take a serious look at your current investment portfolio and consider what is called a “flight to quality”. This is where you shift your investment dollars to vehicles that offer greater safety at the expense of yield. Instead of investing in the latest and greatest high-flying stock or high-yielding bonds, consider moving to investment that have been proven to withstand recessionary periods.

Although I dont get paid to give out financial advice (anymore). I would recommend lower yielding (and possibly insured) bonds and money markets at this time. If you like the stock market and feel that you are still at the age where you can financially withstand the ups and downs, then consider the core companies that can weather these bad times. Food and alcohol companies have always done a good job of getting through the financial storms because, lets face it, people still need to eat AND during bad times Americans tend to drink more alcohol…as funny as it sounds! Two example of this would be Costco (COST) and Anheuser-Busch (BUD). They have both fallen from their highs along with the rest of the market but they have great business models that cater to the current market conditions. Also, during times like these, be sure that your portfolio is well balanced and you don’t put all your “eggs in one basket”.

Disclaimer: Once again, I do not get paid to be a financial advisor but I did spend many years analyzing the market and did at one point manage almost $50 million dollars of my clients money…so please do your own due diligence before doing anything, especially during this type of market!

Sunday was supposed to be a “Napa” day but due to the weather we decided to do something exciting BUT not in the rain. Since Reza was in town and it was Gaelles last day in the United States for awhile, I thought it would be fun to do a little racing! I surprised everyone with a trip to GoKart Racer in Burlingame. Yep, I won the race but then again Ive done this a LOT more times than they have. By the way, these aren’t just “go karts”, they are VERY fast, 270cc Honda powered mini cars. All the governers have been removed on the carts which allows you to accelerate to speeds of up to 40 MPH! The G forces that you encounter in the turns are enough to give you sore muscles the next day, even if you happen to be in good shape. I didnt get many pictures since I left the good camera at home but I highly recommend you visit them when you are in San Francisco!

The microphones may be the cause of the widespread illness that has plagued the American Idol contestants this year. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the common Influenza virus is spread by the respiratory droplets of coughs and sneezes.

The main way that influenza viruses are spread is from person to person in respiratory droplets of coughs and sneezes. (This is called “droplet spread.”) This can happen when droplets from a cough or sneeze of an infected person are propelled through the air and deposited on the mouth or nose of people nearby. Influenza viruses may also be spread when a person touches respiratory droplets on another person or an object and then touches their own mouth or nose (or someone else’s mouth or nose) before washing their hands.   

- CDC Website - Influenza | The Disease

If you look at the pictures of the contestants in Season 7 (2008), they all appear to be using similar microphones. Being that the American Idol production company is well equipped, they are surely rotating between several different mics during the daily performances. During rotation among the sick and the healthy contestants, the virus is free to roam. Stopping the spread could easily be promoted if they would use a low cost wind screen. This will act like a surgeons mask by slowing the spread of the virus. The wind screen can also be easily replaced between uses or sets.

As we all know, the goal of American Idol is to entertain however they still need to make money if they are going to be able to pay their heafty expenses. It would behoove them to not invest in such simple devices if they can help maintain the health of the contestants, at such a low cost.

Its been quite a delay since the last post…over a week. Given this time frame its probably a good idea to let you know what the reason has been. Well…

It all started last Saturday in Las Vegas. Nousha and I went to see her brother’s family and, for some reason, we ended up at a pet store. Staring at us from a 2 puppy cage was an 8 week old ‘calm’ puppy that had “take me home” written all over her face. Long story short, this is exactly what we did. Her name is Coconut (as named by Nousha) because when she is nice, its Coco but when she is crazy her name is Nut!
The first week has been a little rough with a few sleepless nights, a couple trips to the vet and more puncture holes on our arms (and now one on my nose) than I care to even discuss. Although she is technically supposed to be sheltered in the house until she is 4 months old, we have been given the clearance to take her out but with the strict advice to avoid other dogs. Yesterday we decided to take her to wine country (or as she would call it whine country). Nestled in a little bag on Noushas hip, Coconut did a great job of staying out of trouble for the day. Actually, the hardest part about taking her out is that she is so cute that she draws a lot of attention, especially when Nousha holds her :) We have come to the conclusion that we need hold a sign along with the dog that says:

• 1/2 Pug
• 1/2 Beagle
• 3/4 trouble
• 2/3 biting
• 1/4 potty trained
• 9 weeks old

If you haven’t already done so, take a look at the latest photos. Before we went to Sonoma we stopped in Berkeley and introduced her to the chipmunks at the pier. She was so impressed with them walking up to us and feeding out of our hands that she fell asleep. Im pretty sure that if the chipmunks could have spoken, they would have asked, “what is that?!”

So, we are now puppy owners and if you stop by unannounced don’t be alarmed if a short-haired, 4-legged, razor-sharp teethed, 5 lb. puppy decides to latch on to your big toe!