Happy __________________!!!!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, and all the other holidays in the next two weeks. Well I'm done volunteering at the toy drive and I'm heading home for a week tomorrow for the weekend. The top two pictures above are from the inside of the Toy Room. That wasn't even at the peak of our toy inventory. By the time I finished last Friday the floor was mostly empty. Still no progress on the work front but I plan to sign up for two more classes next semester in addition to my spanish class. Plus I'm study financial planning material outside of school so that should keep me occupied for the next couple months. I'm targeting a potential second quarter roll-out for PAM. However, I don't want the firm to be called Phelan Asset Management ("PAM") so I need some ideas for my financial planning / investment management firm. I would prefer not to use my own name in the title. Please post or email me with any suggestions you may have. If I go with your idea I'll give you a discount on management fees. ;o) I have a name in mind but I'd like to get more ideas.

In other news, I dragged Dragan to a concert last Friday night at the Aragon Brawlroom up on Lawrence here in the city. The first two acts (Red Jumpsuit Apparatus & Rise Against) were okay but nothing to write home (or online) about. I only knew one song from each so I couldn't understand a word and it was mostly noise. But I thought the headline, My Chemical Romance, was outstanding. I even liked the handful of songs I didn't know. They played 7 or 8 songs off their new album (The Black Parade), which are the ones I knew so that was cool. I highly recommend the album to anyone who likes hard rock music with pop hooks and dark lyrics. You can get the concept of the album from a few of the song titles, Black Parade, Blood, Cancer, Dead. Very uplifting stuff. I don't know, my brother and I really like it. But I guess we're a little off.

No comments from the last post. I guess my material is getting boring or no one is reading. I'd like someone to comment about how stupid I am once in a while. Like, "MCR is shit for kids." That would be cool. Maybe I need to write about why I will vote Green in the next presidential election if Hillary gets the nod over Barack or Newt gets in over Rudy. I'll try to get a little edgier for the new year. Happy holidays.

Nothing new.

How is everyone doing out there? Haven't written anything in awhile so I thought I put something up. The most exciting thing that's happened since the last post is that I scored a life time high 11 points in my rec basketball game two Sunday's ago. Unfortunately we were unable to get out of the first round of the playoffs. But I accomplished my goal of getting a good amount of exercise without major injury. I don't think a stress fracture is a major injury. It was never officially diagnosed anyway. I've been doing some volunteer work at a toy drive. It is pretty amazing to see the volume of toys they move through this little warehouse. Thousands of toys, clothes, bikes, games, jewelry, whatever. Cars, trucks, vans just keep showing up to drop off new toys, we unload them, sort them by age and gender, repack them for kids, and reload them back into cars, trucks, and vans for delivery. They get a lot of work done with relatively few people. Really quite efficient. And I'm sure the full time workers don't get paid much either. I've been there twice and plan to go a couple more times this week.

No call back yet from the interview I did a couple weeks ago. She said that I should find out if I get a second interview early this week. I'm still not sure if I will take it even if offered but I will definitely go to a second interview if offered. I'm leaning toward starting my own investment advisory/financial planning business. I think my grandpa was about my age when he start Tee-Pee and he already had a bunch of rugrats to feed. I only need to feed myself and pay the rent. I'll keep you posted on any progress here.

I'm almost finished reading The Devil in the White City. I would highly recommend it to my Chicago readers and even out of staters. I think it will become the longest non-textbook I've ever read, almost 400 pages. I hope Dragan gets home soon so we can go bowling. That's all folks.