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2006-02-06 - 9:44 p.m.

...Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume (Warren Buffett)...

Well, it's already quarter 'til ten and I am still sitting at my computer wasting time, feeling a bit boring.

I got home at about 5:30pm today - Lately I've been taking the bus home with Techy - it's become such a pattern that I've grown to rely on it as our 30 minutes of quality time...Usually we spend the time bitching about whatever irritating thing happened - today was no exception. But we usually joke and have fun. I knew today was going to be a particularly good day when, at 3:30pm he pulled me into to his office to have a shot of Glenlivet with him. (Hey, you really shouldn't drink alone). When a guy needs a shot of Glenlivet out of dixie cup at 3:30pm, you can be pretty damn well sure that he's going to have a good story on the bus.

Anyway, after getting home I swung into boring kitchen mode - fixing,eating, cleaning, feeding - before calling my mother about financial stuff. For those of you who remember my Bag System for filing things...okay, I do pay my bills on time (mostly - except for that little teeny tiny slip-up last Spring when they almost shut off the electricity..that slip-up that we are NEVER telling mom about), but I have to confess that I simply cannot get my brain to focus on finances. There *was* that time that I actually tied myself to a chair until I decided which retirement options I was going to choose...but apart from that I am hopeless.

I can sit and listen to all the advising in the world. But the minute the person chimes in with the words "mutual funds" or "index fund" or "capital gains" or "exchange-traded" whatever, all substance evacuates from my brain, except for something like, "I wonder if I need to clean the litter box again.." I have to force all litter box issues out of my brain so that I can focus on mutual funds. Oops. There. See just mentioning the phrase "mutual funds" makes me think about regular scented or the highly absorbing kind...

And you know why I find this particularly weird? Because it takes a lot to get me bored. I clocked thousands of hours in front of a microscope and counted and species-identified more than 100,000 sand-grain sized shells for my thesis. And LIKED it. Years ago, one of my references wrote a letter for me that said, "Long after most people would have moved on to something more interesting, Teranika has the ability to concentrate and focus on a tedious task until all the details have been addressed." (I believe that was meant to sound like a good thing - and not as though I suffer from a not-so-mild form of autism).

So how is it that someone who spent seven years counting SAND could find money so boring?? I mean, it isn't that I DISLIKE the stuff...and I KNOW I KNOW that investing money is, like, an important thing. I would like to be able to retire someday. But the minute I try to focus on how I might actually achieve that retirement goal...BOING! The litterbox question reappears. diatomite or new silicon-absorbing with blue crystals? Yes, yes, I need help.

Anyway, the point to this story is that I've needed to deal with some investments recently, and so this evening I got out the rope and tied myself to a chair and called my mother (business mogul of the family). I asked her if she had a few minutes to help me open a new mutual funds account. She, knowing me as she would her own daughter, because I *am* her own daughter, asked, "Are you strapped in securely?" Because she knew that there was a chance that at any moment I would go bounding off screaming into the streets in search of a Quik-E-Mart to buy kitty litter, and she would be left holding the other end of the phone.

To add to the warm and wonderful feeling I was having, I heard my stepfather in the background..."She's never going to do this." Yea, thanks for the voice of support.

Anyway, we got through the first few steps before I needed a printer. I stopped my mother before we were finished, because, quite honestly, the restraining ropes were beginning to break. Nevertheless, I have achieved some success, and I will soon be able to finish my transaction, as soon as I overcome the next hurdle. THE POST OFFICE. ugh. I'll safe my postal challenges for another time.

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