Madi Christmas

Madi got a FlipVideo for Christmas - she's a budding filmmaker. She made this short in the car yesterday and has now gone through one set of batteries rewatching it and giggling to her heart's content. I don't think it's quite ready for Sundance, though it is better than a few movies I've seen with significantly higher budgets.

Tall Enough

Does Mom look a bit concerned that son's caught up to her height?

My favorite things about Christmas

We get quite a few Christmas cards since we have shown ourselves so adept at moving as soon as we get on people's Christmas lists. All of them are great, so don't take offense, but two of them are now my favorite holiday traditions - Eric and Dennis take the cake. They should blog. Daily. I just read Eric's - Emmy nomination worthy. As soon as Dennis' arrives I'll go ahead and put the tree out on the curb because the season's over.

One side note - Eric and Dennis are both lawyers. Who knew that the best thing about law school is that they teach you to write incredibly funny Christmas letters? I'm glad they teach you something you can take with you and make you a useful part of society. Word of warning to the rest of you lawyers - the bar is set and it is high.

Last side note - I can be particularly saucy toward my lawyerly brethren these days since my consulting days are numbered. Consultants generally don't engage in lawyer jokes since most of them can easily be made less funny and hit too close to home by simply replacing the word "lawyer" with "consultant". Or someone can simply call you Bob.

Suburban for sale

We're 95% likely to get Katie a new car in the next week or two to upgrade her Suburban. We're planning on trading in her Suburban on her new car. I don't want to deal with the hassle of selling it. That said, trade-in value's pretty low on cars so if anyone's interested in a 2003 Suburban (4x4) with 73K miles, I'd be happy to give it to you for whatever the assessed trade-in value turns out to be. I'd rather a friend is the beneficiary of the trade-in/retail gap that some nameless/faceless car dealer. Just send us an email if you're interested. KBB's like $8-9K, but I suspect they'll offer far less.

Mormon videos to catch

I have to admit that I have not been a consumer of much Mormon media, particularly movies. I haven't seen any of the mission, home teacher, single adult or whatever comedies. I did see Sons of Provo, hoping it would be a Mormon Christopher Guest flick (it wasn't - but not horrible either). However, there's one show I'd like to see - New York Doll. Apparently it was good enough that it is creating a new genre - documentaries of people you would never expect to see at the ward dinner. The newest one of these sounds like it was fairly well done and I may have to see it - Mario's Conviction - about a member of the mob that converts and leaves the mob without losing his life.

I don't mind watching these sorts of documentaries (even better if they are mockumentaries), but harbor a deep and irrational fear that they'll find themselves all the way down the list of candidates and decide to do "John's Mullet". I've been pretty energetically hiding all evidence of this blockbuster story.

Merry Christmas

Truth in advertising

This is generally a profanity-free zone, so apologies for the PG-13 post. Don't read this while drinking milk unless you want to buy a new keyboard.

Oh my aching 401k

Mankiw had this graph on his blog. This is a histogram of stock returns by year. The black box on the left is this year. Gives you a sense of the historic nature of the current economic environment. I'd sure hate to be trying to sell a house in this market...

I love my job

Secret of my job revealed

Happy Holidays, fellas

Now I know where I'm supposed to shop for Katie's gift? Too funny.

Cars

My conscience is working overtime right now.

My car, as I've stated here before, needs replacing (I'd say it's a piece but since my brother's talking about buying it I shouldn't say that). It has 150K miles, is limited to NPR, and needs new brakes and power steering hoses. I've got to upgrade before the next NPR pledge drive.

This is the first time in my life that I'm in a position to consider buying a new car. Dean, Mason and I drove a bunch of them on Black Friday. Then I fell in love with a slightly used car that's much nicer but has 20K miles on it. Either way, it's a lot of coin compared to the $7K I spent on my current car six years ago.

Aside: I had a $10K budget, but spent $3K on a mtn bike, figuring that the impact of that $3K was going to be much more meaningful on the bike than the marginal value on the car.

Now I'm having guilt. With the economy in the gutter; protectionists, regulators, plaintiff's attorneys and union organizers moving into the White House; people losing their jobs left and right; our pets heads falling off; etc., should I really splurge and get a big boy car, or should I just buy another modest car? If I go modest, do I spend the savings on a new mountain bike, a real-live Texas smoker, new lenses for my camera, and board games that I'm sorely lacking (spend it anyway); give it to my dear wife to spend on new flip flops, cool shirts with large buttons and scrapbook supplies (spend it anyway); put it in our rainy day fund (lose it along with the rest of my invested capital); or give it to the poor and needy?

Wait a minute. The fact that I considered doing something good with this money instead of spending it on myself makes me feel good enough that maybe I don't actually have to do so. I feel better. Definitely get the car. Right?

If you comment, relieve my guilt. If you increase my guilt, I'll delete your comment. LOL.

Food storage and brimstone

If you think you or someone you know might need to have more than an afternoon's supply of Dorito's in the pantry in preparation for potential and pending doom, and if you or someone you know just haven't gotten around to it despite decades of admonishments and exhortations, you or someone you know might want to read The Road.

If I was brighter and more literary, I might have gotten a lot more out of this book than I did. The writing is fantastic and unique, but mostly I just got the bajeebers scared out of me. I bought a "survival handbook" sort of book a few years ago that I've never really picked up. Katie noticed that I seemed suddenly interested in it after finishing The Road. Fortunately I don't go load up on guns and ammo after every Patricia Cornwell book...

The Road also made me want to hug my boys and take them camping (with LOTS of food). So The Road inspired me to do things I should already do - maybe it should be bundled with Nudge, a sort of practicum to go with your theory.

Obama's economic team

Interesting set of quotes from Mankiw.