What the market will bear

For everyone who’s panicking about the Wall Street tango today, relax. Here’s a key little detail about your portfolio. What it’s worth today does not matter unless you’re selling. Remember that, have a glass of wine, and watch some hockey. It’s good for the soul.

No one can safely assume that the financial crisis is over. Drive down any street and notice the vacancies. That can’t be reversed in short order.

I feel like the worst luck investor in history. I was there during the Web bubble pop. I’ve been damaged by post 9/11 stock fluctuations and the latest financial meltdown was no party. Undeterred, I investigated six stocks and purchased them right before a market nose dive. You can lose a lot of money in a hurry. It’s not quite Vegas, but it feels like a cold streak at the blackjack tables sometime. I’m going to hold and try not to panic.

Can two "Days" coexist?

Tomorrow is an opportunity for America. It's not an opportunity to discover new and exotic hangover cures for those of us who partook in the very American holiday called Cinco De Mayo, which is more like Cinco de Queso or Cinco de Tequila. Tomorrow is an opportunity for unity.

That's because tomorrow isn't a day. It's a Day.

There are two distinct Days tomorrow. It is the National Day of Prayer. It is also the National Day of Reason. They aren't mutually exclusive although I can guess that most of the coverage will make it seem so. The National Day of Prayer shouldn't be a big deal for the religious, as they have the right to pray whenever they want. This is merely a public reminder, and I'm a big fan of reminders. I'd love the President to proclaim National Empty the Dishwasher Day, as an example.

The National Day of Reason sprung up as an alternative. It's a reminder that while the majority of Americans worship some kind of deity, there are others who do not. While I like the sentiment, it does come off as a bit of a "participation trophy" so that people don't feel left out.

The history: Harry Truman signed the bill proclaiming the National Day of Prayer, back when news wasn't mined for controversy. Recently a federal judge ruled that a National Day of Prayer, so deemed by a President, is unconstitutional. President Bush held a service in honor of this day although President Obama has not done so. The current administration was a defendant in the lawsuit, so don't automatically paint the Prez as anti religion.

Should this day be divisive? I don't think so. I think that people who would normally pray should continue to pray. They are free to pray for people who do not pray. Most of the time prayer is a form of wish fulfillment and the wish is usually a positive change in life. Who could be against that? Reason is something we use every day whether we consciously think of it or not. I used reason to determine that I'm picking up a pizza tonight instead of making dinner because my wife has a late flight and making dinner would be a hassle. I can also pray that there are no problems with her flight.

The fight to ensure that the separation of church and state continues to have legal backing is important. It allows for every kind of prayer tomorrow, and the absence of it. This in a nutshell is our country. As corny as it sounds, the name United States has a deeper meaning when it is comprised of a diverse populace. We should celebrate that every day of the year.

Saturday Morning

I woke up this morning and had a typical Saturday Zach experience. I like to do a lot of things at the same time. It starts with breakfast. We haven't been to the store all week so I find a bag of frozen biscuits and throw 'em in the oven. I start a load of laundry. I give the dishes in the sink the eye. The garbage needs to be taken out, so I get the trash cans in the bedroom and bathroom and dump them into the one in the kitchen. It's all about the timing. I complete the latter task while the biscuits take the extra couple of minutes to finish.

I adore mindless multitasking. I am rarely happier, or more content, then when I'm cooking dinner, tending to laundry, and emptying the dishwasher while listening to a podcast. It's very likely that if, one hour later, you asked me one sentence spoken from the podcast, I wouldn't be able to do it. This is my "happy place" after work. Doing things and being productive in a trivial way is my wheelhouse.
Now I have my biscuits with peanut butter and some cranberry juice to ward off the sore throat that the wife has. I'm going to finish my morning words and decide what to do next. I have a consultation with an Emory professor about a project that I have yet to start. There are countless distractions on the Internet waiting for me.

The biscuits are still so hot that the peanut butter probably will melt onto the keyboard if I try to eat one. Alison hates that I eat biscuits on peanut butter. She says that it's not a southern thing, although the rest of her family doesn't agree. Maybe they're just sucking up to me. In any case, I like peanut butter anything, and it's my default meal when nothing else is available.
In a few minutes the laundry will be through the cycle and I get to rotate the moist clothes into the dryer. On the way back, I could empty the dishwasher. Yep, it's Saturday morning indeed.

For deeper thoughts, read my previous post, Zach Goes to Church.

Mr. Law Goes to Church

On Sunday I did a lot of things that I usually do on Sunday. I watched football. I watched the Titans lose, which has become a strangely familiar habit. I had a few adult beverages and watched more football. I quite possibly consumed more food than was prudent. This is not unusual. I did one unusual thing.

I went to church.

I was not raised in any particular religion, and it wasn't until I was of college age that I was aware of my parents' faith growing up. They were both Catholics, albeit different brands of Catholics back when that used to mean something.
The closest I ever came to a discussion on the subject was with my mom one day in the car. I brought up the lack of religion and she said that just because we didn't go to church did not mean that we lacked belief. I didn't press, because when it comes to confrontation I run like the wind when I get the faintest whiff of controversy.

My parents are deeply involved in a Catholic church now. They joined about five years ago. I like that they now have a community. I don't understand their beliefs and to date have not pressed them on it. It's not my way.

For the past year or so I've considered myself an Atheist. I'll put it with a capital A for now. There are two types of atheists. The first kind are not unlike people who dislike hot dogs. They share a belief but that in of itself does not constitute a group. The second kind is almost as fundamentalist as some of the religious folks. They are certain they are right and that all religions are the same. I thought I might be one of the second kind, but there were more important issues, you know, like the NFL draft, and I let it slide.

Then a podcast happened. The guest on NPR's Fresh Air was Karen Armstrong, a former nun who had given up the church and later became a religious scholar. Her new book is called The Case for God. I felt a personal challenge.

I would read a book that gives a history of religion, which I always find fascinating. I like her discussion of the Greek terms mythos and logos. Mythos is myth or mystery, and comprises most of the Bible. The stories were not meant to be taken literally and follow stories written so long ago that they existed for thousands of years before there was such a thing as writing things down. We've lost myth in today's society. Everything has to be tangible and literal. Don't tell us a fable or parable, we have to tweet it or recount it on Facebook. I'm not very far in the book so I can't say what her case is. I doubt there is a case at all. It's just Armstrong's way of saying that the current version of a personal God who might Tweet you back doesn't exist. But there could be something godlike in every one of us.

At a very early hour on that Sunday morning I ended up at a beachside church in Jacksonville. I wore shorts and I wasn't the only one. Not everyone dresses up for church anymore, apparently. It was a nice service and I felt the community aspect of church. I also felt, as I normally do in such situations, that someone would spot me, point and scream like one of the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When everyone sings the same songs and recites the same responses and I of course don't have any idea what they're talking about, I don't think that there's a deeper spiritual connection in the room. People just go because they've gone for years and they know the chants because they've been saying them for years. There is no meaning. I don't know that of course, I'm just speculating. The church is probably a little more mainline Catholic than my dad's since there are signs on the wall proclaiming "Pray for the end of abortion" and the sermon was about divorce and how it's destroying our society. The world probably would be a better place without abortion, but are the people fundamentally against it adopting unwanted kids or supporting unwed moms? I see the potential for negativity and shudder. That's how it goes when you have a bit of a collective mind.

Everyone but me went up for communion, which I still find a bit creepy in concept. I know Jesus didn't mean them to take his comments literally. OK, maybe he did, but since the Good Book is just a 2000-year-old version of the telephone game, he might have just asked someone to pass the salt and got misquoted.

The bottom line is I want to understand religion better. I need a better foundation of knowledge. Instead of using this knowledge to create the latest Dan Brown-esque thriller, I'll just try to get to know my parents better. That is, if I ever have the guts.

Tax Free and Loving It

Let's talk about me, shall we? I have an unusual physique. My waist is slightly below average and my backside is, well, not so much. Because of this, pants shopping is seven circles of hell instead of a mildly annoying experience. Today I put my marriage to the test, as I always do when it's shopping time.

Georgia has one tax-free shopping weekend in early August. It was time. I knew, with football season upcoming and the many me-centric moments to come that it was a perfect opportunity to do something together. We started the day at the Gap in Atlantic Station. Is that where Obama shops for his jeans? I forget.

Jeans have changed in the year or two since I last purchased them. They're darker. Maybe I notice that since mine have faded to an old or at least middle aged level. They're also patterned, either with a splotch of lighter color in the front or a kind of horizontal line. I have to say, there's a little of the early 90s stonewashed look going on. Some jeans are even pre-ripped. Really?

We hit the Gap, and surprisingly it's not too busy. The token gay man assists us. I give him a once over since Alison's looking for a gay boyfriend. I think this could be the next big reality show. It's not meant to be. I try on the "easy fit" jeans, which basically means for people with ample proportions. I get two pair of 36/32. The first fits not at all. It's tight in the front and back. Lovely. The second pair, which is theoretically the exact same size, fits almost perfectly.

When I go back to the shelves there are no more in that size. I move on to the "standard". Hoping that the standard will fit is like believing that an NFL wide receiver who always drops the ball will suddenly learn how to catch. As luck would have it, I get a fit.

The shopping theory for me is if I find a pair of pants that fit, I need to sell the store out of their stock. It's that bad. I tried on four more pair in the same size. None of them fit. I still consider it a success, because most of our shopping experiences end in one of us getting a bit too grrr. We even had a nice lunch at Boneheads where I put the hot piri-piri sauce on my chicken to the point where I was sweating profusely. This is how I usually get when I shop. I needed the experience to complete the day.

Alison got home and found the coupon that we should have brought earlier. I'll say it, when it comes to coupons, we have a problem. We have a manila folder full of Sunday inserts. It's rare that we'll go out to eat without a coupon. Grocery store check-out folks and waiters hate us. I love shopping like Alison loves a football tripleheader, so when she suggested that we go to another mall (two malls in one day?), I kind of laughed it off.

Speaking of coupons, we finished the weekly grocery store list and were ready to go. When it's time to shop, we have become a well-oiled machine. The oil sometimes drips all over the parking lot, causing a mess. We sometimes go to as many as four stores to complete our shopping. One weekend we discovered that the most efficient method is to go together and split the list. Then we look at the receipts and see how much we really saved with coupons (and fake saved with the Kroger Plus card aka marketing brilliance). We were on the way to Publix when Alison mentioned to her mom on the phone that she had a coupon to the Gap if we wanted to brave the Lennox Mall traffic.

I am a man who doesn't like to back down from a challenge. Yes, I am an idiot. I went back to a second mall in one day. It was crowded. The line at this store was ten deep. I was not flustered. I tried on a pair of jeans. That was fine. We had a 30% off coupon, but we also had a card from the first store that gave us one free pair if I bought three. I had to find two more pairs to complete the day. I tried on six pairs of jeans as my increasingly flustered wife watched. I finally succeeded and left the mall, hopefully for a long time. And as a bonus, the final three pair of jeans cost less than $80, after the first pair was a heart-attack-inducing $55. For me, anyway.

After that shopping torment, we made our way through Publix, Trader Joe's, and Kroger. We used a total of 14 coupons, including one for an item that we did not purchase. Take that, America.

On the beach, part four

I have neglected my vacation diary because I, like many current politicians, have been carrying on an affair. It's with Dreamweaver. Last night I spent three hours putting a Lightbox gallery on a site that maybe 15 people will see. If only I could have done so while traveling to South America.

Don Funk is the self-professed master of the roundhouse kick. On the final evening of first year of beach vacation, Don introduced this technique. It could not be performed on our porch, which was probably a good thing since he was drunk. No, this graceful athletic movement needed to be completed in the pool.

We went to the pool. Don showed off his moves, many times. Small children were frightened. OK, no kids were at the pool, which is good since Don is a first-grade teacher.

In the subsequent three years, we talked about the roundhouse kick but there was no actual kicking. It could have been because Don hadn't made it back to the Florabama club to drink a bushwacker, which tastes like milk mixed with turpentine. In any case, we missed out. Don promised not only to display the kick, but to give lessons on the half hour.

It was Wednesday night. On most beach vacations, we would have headed home by then. We usually stayed four nights but this year we had a buy-four, get three free deal. We had worn Don down. He was going to display his might. My wife had her mini video camera, so we were going to get a Youtube-quality production for sure.

A friend had insulted Don, stating that he would not be able to break a piece of toilet paper with his kick. Don moved into action. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper and wrote messages. They called our friends many names. Now I was part of roundhouse kick lore. I would have to hold up the paper.

We went down to the indoor pool, strangely located on the 7th floor. The view was across the street, not of the gulf. Don got in the water and I held the paper up outside the pool. It was apparent, not at all due to Don being a short man, that I would have to get in the water. I would be in the line of fire.

I imagined Don firing through a kick and breaking my nose, or missing the paper and injuring himself, a more likely result. I held the paper a couple of feet above the top of the four-foot level. Don's first attempt was low. He is not easily swayed. His second kick went through. There was jubilation.

I've heard that one of the problems with society today is that people don't know when to say "enough". This is true of eating, spending, some distant unmentionable relationships, and very rarely for me, football obsession. I brought my circular Titan inflatables to the pool, and decided that it would be cool to try to jump from the side of the pool and land on the inflatable so that I would be sitting. My attempts were laughable.

Don wanted a turn.

I assumed that he would follow my example. Do the butt flop and call it a day. Don went for another tact. He dove.

The hole was at most a foot across. It was probably designed for a pre-teen. Don's entire furry body went through the opening. If he tried it again a hundred times he wouldn't be able to do it again. Did I mention the pool was four feet deep? Don came up, and I laughed (it's all on video that could be used for many lawsuits if ever published online) as Don held his head. He had cut his scalp. When you're with kids, the fun is over when someone starts crying. With adults, it's over when someone starts bleeding.

Don survived, because he's he tough kind of guy who's allegedly never had a hangover. We were on concussion watch for a day. The offending inflatables were used once more in the ocean and left behind with leaks. I do not at all consider it a metaphor for the 2008 season.

The best part of a vacation is detaching from the world and your troubles. A week seems like the perfect amount of time to be away. I wouldn't mind finding out if two would be better.

On the beach, part three

This is less of a narrative than a discussion on one facet of the beach trip. It's a big facet. It's drinking.

Drinking and the beach go together like salt and water. Don and I celebrated putting up the tent by cracking a beer. In fact, we celebrated every tent reopening with a beer. If we went into the water, usually due to consuming a solid quantity of beer, we had a beer. When it was time to eat lunch, we had a beer. At the end of the beach day, when we went to the room, we had blender drinks. Then we took either a blender drink or more beer to the grill as we cooked. It was one person's responsibility to watch the meat and the other's to go back upstairs and get more beer. After dinner, and maybe one more blender drink, we had one or two more beers. It's not surprising that we were asleep by ten o'clock on most nights.

If I drank this much at home, I'd be in some kind of 12-step program within a month. On the beach, it's par for the course. I invested well in my beer. Naturally I'm too much of a beer snob to buy Miller Lite. Once I'm on the beach, well, what happens on the beach stays on the beach. Except that I'm writing about it now. The reason why we drink Miller Lite during the day is that it's available in acceptable can format. This year, Don brought bottles. No one really cared as long as the bottles ended up in the trash and not ground into the sand.

My beach beer is Abita Strawberry. It's basically a lager with strawberry flavor. Does drinking flavored beer make me less of a man? Not if I drink a case of it. Yeah, that's the ticket. I also brought some of my favorite Corsendonk, but I didn't get around to it. Between the blender and the Miller Lite and the Abita and some Shiner I bought on a whim, we drank away the week.

I did a test tonight. I drank a beer with dinner. Yep, it's not the same as sitting on a reclining chair, listening to the surf.