The Real Charlie

Learning to Fly

A postscript to my sea gull eviction post from last month. Today the building manager sent out a notice that gulls had nested on the roof of our building, and were teaching their babies how to fly, and we should be aware of any clumsy new fliers banging around outside our windows. My assistant saw them taking wing this afternoon. I'm sorry that I didn't get to see the little birds next door grow up. I wonder what happened to them.

On a not unrelated note, I watched Roxanne having a swimming lesson yesterday. The teacher looked like his patience was being tested; she seemed to be veering between tolerating the lesson and wanting out immediately. I so feel for her. I hated swimming lessons as a kid, found the required coordination hard to manage (kick and pull and breath and not swallow water?) and many of my teachers less than sympathetic. I hated, and still hate, getting my face in the water. I can tread water for a long time and out dog paddle most canines, but I am just a lousy swimmer. With luck Roxanne will take after her mother or my sister, both virtually amphibious. I just hope she can learn to enjoy it a least a little bit.

End of May?

It is hard to believe that May is almost over. The month didn't even fly by, it just vanished, in a flash. So, a few late spring updates and thoughts:

1) No, I still haven't gotten my 403(b) money emancipated yet. Yes, it has been two months. And yes, the nasty letter is coming. Should I start it out "Dear Thief" or "Dear Loser?"

2) Today I was walking home from the train, about 3/4 of the way home, and I heard some familiar squeaking from up ahead of me. My girls, all three of them were coming down the street. I waved, and the two little ones broke into a run (more of a gallop, actually) and caught up with me, and gave me a hug. My boss, whose daughters are 11 and 14, keeps telling me to enjoy this stuff, as the little girls get big fast.  With a welcome home like that after along (but fun, and productive) day, how can I not enjoy it?

3) This morning, my train got in fifteen minutes late. Yesterday, my line was disrupted by a lightning strike. This afternoon, two trains on another line collided. One of my favorite conductors retired and another switched lines. Why do I have the funny feeling that my mass transit honeymoon is over?

Thus Spake Stella, and Open Studios Results

So we drove into Brookline today for Brookline Artists' Open Studios, during which I got four great collages by the very cool and very hospitable (as in he let my children eat most of his corn chips and mess up his son's magnetic art board) Fred Free. Specifically I got this piece, this smaller piece, and two others. I have a cool new office with huge, bare walls in need of some interesting things. Combined with some work that I have at home, and an old picture of my father in the loading dock of the warehouse my grandfather built, I can get a nice little office gallery going. Oh, and Abby Whileshenaps, the award-winning artist who happens to be the love of my life, whose studio is located two feet away from my side of the bed and who is the mother of my children, is supposed to make me a bird. Someday. Ahem.

Anyway, on the way there Roxanne dozed off after Daddy sang some Passover songs, and Stella (who will answer inquiries as to her age with a hearty "Two In April!" and queries as to her mission with an emphatic "destruction!") held forth with the following story:

"Once, there was a dragon, who ate one hundred waffles. The people all went down the hill to see daddy get off the train. Um, the end."

Abby and I listened respectfully, and did not laugh out loud. We are still trying to understand the subtext obviously embedded somewhere in all of this.

On A First Name Basis?

So I took Roxanne to "Early Arrival" at nursery school on Monday (really called Early Drop Off, but we re-branded it Early Arrival in our house after it became apparent that Roxanne thought we were going to simply drop her off on the corner and speed off), a task that I enjoy, as we get some nice daddy-daughter time together, and that I will soon miss, as my new commute will not allow me to drop her off. She had on a new all black ensemble (thanks to my Mom and Dad) on which she was effusively complimented by her teachers. I chatted with the teacher and then shouted goodbye to Roxanne, who was already ensconced in some drawing. "Bye, Charlie!," she shouted back. The teachers cracked up and I gave her a kiss, and a gentle reminder that, hipster wardrobe or not, I am still daddy to her.

I am winding things up at the old job now, among them my retirement savings accounts (a 401k and a 403b). The fund choices at my current gig are just adequate, at the new job not much better, so I am rolling the nice little pile of cash that I've accumulated, and in which I am fully vested, into an IRA that I established previously with rollovers from prior accounts. Right now that small IRA is 10% in cash and 90% in Blackrock Global Allocation (MDLOX), a nice fund in the "tactical asset allocation" model that has done well in recent years. MDLOX has a nice track record going back a decade or more and I'll keep it.

But for the new money, I am actually going to pick up a new asset class - Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, TIPS. These are US Treasury bonds that pay a lower coupon but adjust the principal value up each year to keep pace with CPI inflation. The breakeven CPI rate is around 2.5% -  an easy hurdle to beat, especially at this point in the economic cycle.  The problem with TIPS is that the principal adjustment is taxed as ordinary "phantom income," which is not great in a taxable account. But in an IRA, that is no problem. So this is step one in my process of picking up some "alternative assets" - some real return securities, in a tax sheltered account. The next step is picking how the TIPS exposure will be executed - ETF, fund, etc. Stay tuned, if you care.

Speaking of retirement funds at work, here is a neat trick, not original to me. Every year, increase your deferral rate by at least 1% until you hit the maximum dollar deferral ($15,500 in 2008 if you are under 50), especially if you get a raise. I've been doing this for a few years. I don't miss the 1% of my salary, and it helps that retirement fund grow a little quicker. And yes, when I start the new job I'll bump the rate up 1%, just as if I'd stayed put, regardless of how much of a raise I am getting.

I Have A Family To Feed

I actually used that cliche last week in the final chapter of a strange, scotch scented, oddly retrograde, transitional moment in my life, one that came quickly in the end, but has been months in the making.

The end result of which is: I am leaving my current job for another one with almost exactly the same title (delete "of," replace with ",") but very different responsibilities. At an employer I last worked for in the Clinton era, when I was single and foolish and brown haired. Ground Rule #2 remains in effect for both my new and soon to be former employers, so forgive my discretion. But yes, I did throw fatherhood out there as a justification for not accepting a job offer on the spot, rather wanting to know the salary first (they gave me 90% of what I actually wanted, so Roxanne doesn't need to get a night job yet). So an end of one era, a beginning of another. There'll be some good posts out of this new world, I wager, especially as I plan to give up the car commute for the commuter rail. And, as always, I blessed to have Abby along for the journey. Thanks for the support, my love.

In unrelated news, Roxanne came and voted with me in the primary election today. Oh, trying to explain American electoral politics to a nearly four year old. She was nervous about coming, but did a good job. I always get a little anxious voting, too, thinking of my grandfather, who left his home in Minsk and worked so hard so I could, as Roxanne understands it, pick the grown ups in charge of the other grown ups. And I think of my friend Evan, on his way to Iraq soon, of my father, alone in his watchtower in the ruins of Yokohama in 1946, and of the hundreds of graves of African-American Civil War dead ("US Colored Troops," as their stones said) that I saw on Memorial Day a few years ago in Arlington National Cemetery.

I voted for John McCain, with pride and confidence, as I did in 2000. I won't suggest how you should vote, but if Republican primaries are open to you, please give Senator McCain a look.

XM Fun

Back in college I was a DJ for three and a half years at the college radio station, a typical sort of 80s/90s "indie rock" sort of place, cool in a very self conscious, very elitist way. It was great fun and my main extracurricular activity, behind drinking beer of course. Since college I have steadily drifted into a sad sort of Rip Van Winkle-like state musically, listening to  mostly the same set of CDs that I owned a year after I graduated, not accessing many new bands much.

Getting XM two years ago (thanks to Abby, who wanted to spare herself listening to my reenactments of the idiocy on WEEI after my commute each evening) changed that, and now I actually get to hear some new music as well as some much older 60s and 70s rock, along with two stations full of the old school indie rock I love, plus another one full of great punk and hardcore from across the decades (that sounds like a K-Tel ad). I also love to play around jumping from station to station, playing at being a DJ again. I had a great moment of this on the way home Friday, switching from the final chords of "Day In The Life" by the Beatles on XM 46 to the opening chords of "Holiday In Cambodia" by the Dead Kennedys on XM 44 almost perfectly. Damn, I wish I had tried that with actual vinyl and a mixing board back in the day.

I have fun with my XM and Roxanne during our morning nursery school and work commutes. Lately she has been enjoying some jazz, and seems to favor Coltrane, Seriously. I did have one awkward moment when the radio went on as soon as I turned on the car to reveal "God Save The Queen" by the Sex Pistols. Anyone interested in explaining that song, and punk rock in general, to a nearly four year old is welcome to try.

Less I damage my no longer so indie cred too much, I will note that Roxanne reminds me to "check the markets" at a certain landmark in our commute (Boston area drivers: the big hill going into Newton on Route 9 eastbound), at which point in time we listen to four minutes of Bloomberg Radio. After I switch back to music Roxanne asks "how are the markets?" If I tell her that they "look good," she cheers. If I tell her they look bad (as I have a lot lately) she tells me "they'll be okay, Daddy, don't worry." What a kid.

The Most Frightening Day of My Life

I don't think that I am exaggerating as I title my blog tonight. As you may know, we had a rather dramatic snowstorm today in Boston that hit mid afternoon, right around the time that everyone was sent home from work and school early, getting those people stuck in traffic, in freezing temperatures, amidst car wrecks and chaos. I was one of those people, but that isn't the scary part.

I left my office around 4, later than I would have liked because of office policies related to the need to make sure that there were enough people in the building to take care of our patients. Meanwhile, Abby had picked up the Roxanne from nursery school at 1:30, with Stella in the car. They were in bad traffic moving very, very slowly toward home.

By around 4:30 I was in deep trouble, stuck in a parking lot on Route 9 in Newton, barely creeping forward. I traveled a mile or so in an hour and a half. At 6 PM I got a call from Abby. She was just about to enter Wellesley. A few minutes later she called again: her car had broken down and totally died.
She was stuck on the side of a busy street, cars swerving all around her, two scared, tired little children crying in the back seat, no heat. She called 911, but they were overwhelmed and couldn't help her. Meanwhile I called a nearby (to her) wine shop called Lower Falls Wine to see if they were open, and I asked if she could shelter there. They agreed, and she got the kids out of the car and went to Lower Falls Wine, where they gave them food, access to the bathroom and looked after my girls very well.

Meanwhile I consulted with my boss Marsha and got off Route 9, wending my way through the snow clogged and car packed streets of Newton until I got to a more open stretch of roads. I got into another traffic jam, took another detour, then got into another jam. It was now 6:45. Not too far away, past the broken down and wrecked cars, the blinking lights and the blowing snow, I could see the distinctive red building of Lower Falls Wine Co. As I got close, I saw Abby's car on the side of the road, covered in snow, dark and dead. I fought my way into the parking lot and accosted a customer. "Inside that store there is a woman with two little children. Whisper to her that Charlie is in the parking lot." I went to Abby's car and failed to start it, but got Stella's car seat (Roxanne has a seat in my car) and a few other things. I installed the seat and then marched in to the store. I have never been so happy to see anyone in my life. I said "sorry I'm late, some fool left a Subaru Forrester parked in the middle of the road." Roxanne cried, Stella told me my hat was "pretty," and we got everyone into my car.

Twenty minutes of treacherous but unobstructed driving later, we were home. Abby's car is  abandoned in Newton, they'll probably tow it and I'll spend the day tomorrow finding it and getting the battery charged. My driveway is impassable and my car is getting plowed in on the road. I am going to miss work tomorrow.

But my little girls are asleep in their beds, my wife is safe and I am home. I truly worried that I would never see them again. Today was the most frightening day of my life

Wintry Mix

A few things for an icy evening:

1) This was my first real nasty wintry drive in to nursery school with Roxanne today. We managed to skid off the road while trying to avoid colliding with an oil truck, skid into our parking spot while avoiding a nimrod standing in the middle of the road in Newton chatting with a friend and skid into the door of the temple. That last skid only involved Roxanne's head and not the car. In all accidents, no cars, children or daddies were harmed.

2) I am still pondering my next moves investment-wise. Now I am tossing the idea of re-evaluating my basic investment manager decision into the mix. I use a stockbroker with whom I have a "fee-based" relationship - he charges me an asset under management fee, but part of it is commission-based. He provides good but spare advice, access to good research to back up my own decisions and excellent customer service. Someone else I know uses a father & son team of all asset money managers. They charge a fixed fee, use a discount brokerage for custody, make all the investment decisions based on their own underlying strategy (which involves a lot of cash and treasury STRIPs, covered call writing on consumer staples, financial and technology stocks, little international exposure and some shorting), generate superb returns even in down and choppy markets, but offer weak customer service (due to the discount broker, which stinks) and some limited options on certain things (like smaller sub-accounts for IRA rollovers, etc.).  I feel like I am at a crossroads where I need to either get way more involved in day to day management of this money or just dump it all on somebody else.

3) Hanukkah is winding down. One more night of gelt, candles and gift-mania. It has been fun to watch Roxanne enjoy it, singing the songs and prayers and getting mesmerized by the candles, and watching Stella start to learn that something special is going on.

Hope your holiday has been, or will be, as much fun.

Biting of the Bullet, Running of the Tots and Winning of the Game

1) Remember this post, where I bemoaned the poor performance of my unnamed CTA account? I bit the bullet and began the process of selling it. The process, I say, because it takes three months. In October I filed to sell my LP stake. In November, my stake is liquidated and I am no longer a holder. In December, I get my net proceeds. I expect to almost exactly  break even on a net basis, before taxes. I'm still researching alternatives, and won't be reinvesting the proceeds until January or February of next year. My guess is that it will be a mix of a 1X0/X0 mutual fund (Diamond Hill Long/Short, or something like it), long commodity exposure through an ETF or the like, and maybe some foreign exchange exposure, probably in the context of a fund that tries to do that and some other useful things. Stay tuned, if you care.

2) So now we know that Roxanne does not need to run the bases at the playground for the Sox to win a World Series game. Just to be safe, I took both girls to the park today for some playtime, some fresh air and some base running drills. The real field was in use (by a real youth team, in October no less!) so we made our own mini-field, Daddy served as roving base and everyone got to tag him. It was fun and good exercise, but substantiated in my mind my nagging suspicion that I am going deaf in one ear, because between the kids at the park, the wind and the leaf blowers down the block I could hear about half of what Roxanne and Stella were saying to me. I need to see the ear doctor.

3) I'll have my Dice K shirt on tonight, and I'll be hoping for the best. The Sox have looked so strong thus far, but Lester is a distinctly weaker and younger pitcher than the other starters, and the bullpen worked pretty hard last night. I wouldn't be shocked to see us playing again tomorrow night. But I'd love a sweep, and to see Papelbon dancing again.

The Glorious Fourth

A beautiful Fourth of July (at least until around 4:30 this afternoon when it got all drizzly) here in the Boston area. We enjoyed the Needham parade this morning. It is very small town, very friendly and a short drive away. Last year it was very hot, Stella was an infant and Roxanne was a bit overwhelmed by the noise and the crowds. Stella did well this year, mostly playing with some gravel in the gutter (ah, the life of a second child) and only getting fussy as we stayed out deep into her nap time. Roxanne had a ball -  she liked the clowns, the bagpipers, the "big bell" on one float (of course), the soldiers, the flags and the street sweeper that had trouble cleaning up the leavings of a passing horse. Nothing entertains a toddler more than large animal feces and related problems. Actually, most of the adults were amused by the street sweeper and the pooping horse as well. This adult, at least.

I hope you all enjoyed the 4th as well.