What You Really Mean

As most / all of you know I'm starting a new job on Monday. The marketing genius's at NiMA sent me clever packet of notices I can display on my desk to let my co-workers know my status. Now granted, I have no issues letting them know where I'm at, but it's rare that any of these statuses would convey what I actually want to say.

So for my new co-workers, when you see the status on the left, know I'm actually thinking what is on the right.

And finally my personal favorite...

Note:  no bunnies were hurt during the production of the photographs except Oscar, the bunny pictured in the photos above.  Sorry about that Oscar...

The Greatest Day Ever

Today is my birthday, or so my mother tells me. I don't have reason to not believe her, but I also don't have any actual proof or recollection of the actual event. Don't get me wrong... there's nothing wrong with March 25th. I share something with many of the great people in history including Howard Cosell, Julius Ceaser (the famous cricketer from the 1850s, not the Roman emperor or inventor of the best salad ever), and of course who could forget that Henry II. Ah yes - Henry II, the first king to call himself King of England as opposed to King of the English.  Sure he was born in France, but that's a detail which I'm sure any good person who calls themselves British ignores.

There have been calls... well emails... okay okay, a comment in one of my posts below from my sister who apparently can't spell, to write a post for today. I can't be bothered though, as I'm spending today thinking about myself, reflecting on my accomplishments and generally basking in the light of "myselfness" (copyright me, 2010).  Oh, and enjoying the Calphalon sauce pan that very same sister sent me as a present.

And I might add that today, in celebration of myself, I decided to reward myself by following my own blog.  Grats me!

Today, after all, is the greatest day ever.

New Beginnings

My sister Jill sent me an email letting me know I broke my promise of daily blog posts. I don't recall even hinting at that, but we both know I have the world’s worst memory. She could tell me I promised to babysit the twins for the next year while she and her husband travelled the world and I'd have choice but to accept that I probably did say that and go to the grocery store to stock up on Lucky Charms and peanut butter for the long haul.

I have a big break-out post, the post that will be renown throughout the interwebs as the blog post for which all other posts will be judged. Unfortunately I haven't started it yet. To bridge the gap and at least make it a weekly blog I present you with big news about me - as the blog Narcissistic Musings should.

As all three or four of you who read my blog (I have to artificially pump up the numbers for the advertisers) already know, I'm switching jobs starting next Monday. I'll be working at BP, a large energy company (4th largest in the world to be precise) in their trading division. They are starting an IT team in the Financial Products trading group which trades derivatives to hedge against existing trades made by other trading groups.

As many of you may recall, derivatives are what made the world go boom last year, however the types of trades this group does are not the "boom" type. A derivative, in simple terms, is the selling or buying the risk of the underlying instrument for a fixed payment. The underlying instrument can be anything from a bond to a mortgage to interest rates. I’m sure one or two of my friends or family would correct me on some technicality, but I’m also sure they’re too smart to waste their time reading this (or at least bothering to tell me). And it’s too bad my good friend Marc does not read this since he asks me every three months what a derivative is; then again, I might just reply back in the email with a link to this blog…

As an easy example, when you buy a house the bank loans you a lot of money (unless it’s a mobile home, but will forget that for the moment). If you refuse to pay them after the second month they get the house back, but as we all know the house might have damage to it or be worth less than you paid for it, and the bank will also incur costs trying to resell it – they will lose money in almost all circumstances.

To reduce that risk, or hedge against you not paying, they could create a derivative whereby they sell the “risk” of you not paying your mortgage to some fool (and the world has plenty of them – points at AIG, Iceland, and Freddie Mac) for $50 a month. In the event you stop paying and the bank forecloses, the buyer of the derivative has to pay the bank the difference between what the house is finally resold at and what was outstanding on the mortgage. In essence, the maximum amount of money the bank can lose is the $50 a month payment which was built into your interest rate anyway.  The house never loses unless your Bank of America and loved holding those subprime mortgages.

Why would anyone buy the risk aka derivative from the bank? They are gambling that the chance you do not pay your mortgage is small and they will buy enough derivatives to cover those that do go into foreclosure that they will come out making money.  In affect, they are betting that the same company that issued the mortgages somehow miscalcuated the risk of foreclosure and is paying more in fixed payments than they should.  Yeah right!

Clear as mud right?

All About Me

I have to come clean - this is not the first time I have written a blog. About a year ago I had a fantastic idea: write a blog that was so narcissisticly over the top that it would be funny. I added pictures of myself with my family and friends, but would black out all the faces except mine. I referred to myself in the third person. I never strayed from anything but myself and how I felt about anything. I even added a poll where the list of answers all basically said "me". I thought it was absolutely hilarious and giggled while I wrote it.

I admit I was apprehensive since it was a little edgy. To ensure that it would indeed be received as I had planned, I showed it to a friend. The look of horror on their face was enough; the blog was shut down after only three posts. Turns out "edgy" was the wrong word to describe it.

That said I refuse to believe that the name of that blog, Narcissistic Musings, is anything short of a brilliant name for a blog. I'm so confident in that belief that I have kept it for this blog too. After all, lets me intellectually honest with ourselves (or me in this case)... blogs are intended to be about the beliefs, travels, trials, and travesties of ourselves. In the end who can't admit wondering if the short period we are here if it isn't all about me?

Don't Get Cornered

Russell, my brother in law, writes the blog Corner Pieces about the random events in his life.  Most of his posts are about his daughters (not coincidentally my nieces) which itself lends itself to humorous topics, however he has a real knack adding hilarious bits and pieces into each post.  If you met him in real life you'd see that he is as funny in person as on the blog.

My goals for this blog are two fold: create an outlet for my creativity that, lets be honest here, very few will read and to give those readers a smile or two in each post.  You might be asking what happens when you bottle up all that creativity.  After many years - first grade in my case - of doing just that I can convincingly say not much. However releasing it in many alternative ways (did I mention the bad paintings in the prior post) has allowed me to channel any ill emotions I might have to something constructive.  Not that those emotions would go to anything destructive, but it releases them much more quickly.

Making others smile is much trickier.  I'm a firm believer that you either have it or you don't when it comes to humor.  Putting it to paper (or my screen in this case) is much harder since the reader doesn't get to hear my voice inflections or see me grin to know when it's time laugh; it might end up being one of those polite smiles, but in my own mind's eye I know they are curling up laughing on the inside.

I hope and plan on keeping most of the posts here less serious and more light-hearted so that a bit of humor can seep into them.  After all, I don't want to put myself into a corner where that smile can't be sought after.

Phone Home

I had another post already written for today, but a friend called me last night almost in tears that her cat Frisky had been missing for several days.

Many years ago my sister gave me two kittens for Christmas, a brother and sister. I let my young niece help name them; she saw an M and a W on their foreheads so we settled on Molly and Walter. I had every intention of letting her have all the honors, but as I recall her first choice for M was Matilda and I decided I needed to step in to help with the naming process since no cat of mine was going to be named after a witch. Apologies to all the humans out there named Matilda - it's a perfectly nice name, but cats and witches have a long history that I needed to break.

Fast forward a few years and Molly somehow escaped the house. At that time I was living in a townhome that looked out onto a heavily forested land with a bayou running down the middle. For northerners out there, a bayou is essentially a slow-moving creek found mostly in the Gulf region. While it is a fantastic area to live in it's not conducive to indoor cats since the wildlife is not exactly cat-friendly.

I was devastated and tried all the usual tricks to find her; I called her name (because every cat owner knows how well cats respond to you calling their names), searched under the surrounding townhome decks, and even went as far as to set up a trap. I don't recall the exact details of the trap which involved a pet cage, cat food and a trip wire, but amazingly it worked on day four of five.

I was elated... Molly managed to scratch me as I took her into the house but that didn’t matter. Walter also wasn't very pleased to see her, probably due her smelling like the place he had always yearned to go to but never managed to get to. A few days went by and she was still hesitant of me and Walter still shunned her, but one can understand that; she had been through quite an ordeal. On day ten or so I got home from work and was flabbergasted to see Molly staring at me from the outside on the deck! I had no idea how she had managed to get outside again, but I rushed out and she was much more compliant about coming inside this time. But I had a problem.

I had three cats in the house. I was so blinded by wanting my Molly back that I had ignored the obvious. The cat I had trapped was not only bigger and had a bad replica of an M on her forehead, but had scratched me that day I had brought her in with her front claws. You see, I had declawed the front claws of both my cats since they could retract them fully.

That experience taught me many things - one being check for front claws. But it also taught me love can cause so much tunnel vision to the point of blindness that you overlook what’s right in front of you; and if you want something too badly you’ll ignore the warning signs that everyone else sees.  Love isn't something to be shunned, just don't forget to keep looking left and right when crossing the street.

Oh, and Frisky if your out there reading this it’s time to phone home.  Your mother misses you.

A Short Trip to the Moon

When I was in first grade I wrote my first short novel "A Trip to the Moon". It was a riveting tale of a boy travelling to the moon and his experiences there among the giant plants that populated it. My mom still has a copy of it somewhere; it's either on the premise that you don't throw away any work from Picasso or that it's just something moms do. Unfortunately none of the major publishing houses picked it up and my career as writer was short lived. It might have helped if I had sent it to those publishing houses and maybe fleshed it out beyond the two pages, double spaced, handwritten copy.

I didn't give up writing though; today I write project plans, financial forecasts and business requirements that are pieces of art in the own right. Unfortunately my audience, the "business", doesn't seem to appreciate these classics of mine and I almost get the impression they think of them as... project plans, financial forecasts and business requirements.

One of the things I love about writing is that it allows you formulate sentences over the course of a hour but only takes five seconds to say out loud. It is incredible how expressive you can get when you float the same group of words in your mind until it feels just right. When talking I tend to not give the slightest consideration of how the words come out. After that crushing blow by the publishers on my first novel and giving up writing as an art form, I talk much more than I write which can get a guy into trouble.

Recent events, however, have unleashed the creative and introspective side in me and led to some pretty bad paintings along with the occasional keeper. A friend of mine, Summer from NiMA, an integrated marketed boutique (I have no idea what that means but it sounds impressive; my exposure to marketing is slightly less than nil other than how to throw out a blatant plug), started her own blog. After my sending of a congratulatory email about her blog she responded that I should start my own.

So today I am returning to the moon. It doesn't have the giant plants of my childhood fantasy, but Summer was right that the view is beautiful.