Month: January 2023

I logged into my main stock trading account today for the first time in many months, probably at least six months. I haven’t looked at the account for a while because 2022 just wasn’t a great year for most investments and I just didn’t want to look at all the red in my account. Sure enough, despite some of my investments still showing a profit, enough of the bad ones have me in the negative overall. There’s nothing for me to do but just sit tight and hope they all rebound.

The other thing I noticed is that I have about $10k in cash just sitting in one of these accounts. I believe I dumped all that cash in there about two years ago so I could easily invest quickly without having to wait to fund an account if I needed to act quickly. When I saw that cash in there tonight, my first feeling was some disappointment that I hadn’t actually invested in anything with that money. Then I quickly realized that if I had, especially if I had done it in late 2021 or early 2022, that $10k in cash would be worth less than $10k right now. I had inadvertently done the right thing by just letting it sit there.

The question is now is it still the right thing to do to let it sit there? Lots of stocks and ETFs are down (by many measures), so is it time to get back into it? Or have we yet to see the bottom? Obviously, if I knew how to answer questions like that, I’d already be rich.

It’s mid-January and across the traditional winter wonderlands of the Prairies, Ontario, and Quebec, the temperatures are well below freezing and snow is on the ground in most of those areas. In Vancouver, for the last several weeks, it’s been rainy with highs in near or at the double digits. The lows are well above freezing. Tomorrow, the low is supposed to be 10 degrees Celsius. Amazing.

This is the traditional Vancouver winter everyone is used to and is ok with having. The weather is really mild. A light jacket is all you need to go out, day or night. Sure, the rain kinda sucks but at least rain doesn’t cripple the transportation network in this city.

I could deal with this weather until the spring comes.

In a Zoom meeting, with a comment that was said so quickly, most people might have missed it, it was announced that the new studio that we’ve been waiting for more than a year would be ready for occupancy in February of 2023, as in, next month.

I am skeptical of the comment and I really don’t believe the new studio location will be ready in less than four weeks as of this writing. First, the last time we got an official update, we were told that because of supply chain issues, the earliest the studio would be ready was sometime in the spring of 2023. I seriously doubt the global shortage of everything has improved recently. Second, we’ve received no official emails about what to expect if indeed the location was going to be ready for occupancy in February. Third, in a contradictory message, someone who actually is helping with the studio opening re-affirmed that spring is the realistic timeline, not February.

Of course, the point is kinda moot for me. Most of the people I work with are located outside of Vancouver. So does it really matter if I take my Zoom meetings from home or at this new studio? To most of my co-workers, they won’t even notice the difference.

One of my goals in 2023 is to finally eat an Uncrustable. This snack, hailing from America (of course it would be), is essentially a crustless sandwich filled with sweet ingredients. They don’t sell these damn things in Canada, so my only options are to either visit the crazy United States or have someone bring them back to Canada for me. Neither option seems likely to happen in the next little while unfortunately.

There doesn’t exist another “option”, which is to buy this contraption on the Internet, so that I can make my own Uncrustables. The issue is that I don’t normally have peanut butter and jam in my home and I don’t want to buy a whole jars of peanut butter and jam just to make this homemade Uncrustable. In the best case scenario, even if I enjoy a homemade Uncrustable, I’d have to make a ton more to finish off a whole jar of peanut butter and jam.

I just want to try two or three authentic Uncrustables.

It’s been a long week and I am tempted to eat an entire pizza for dinner tomorrow.

So it turns out that the expectations of people at work this week are pretty low. No one bothered me too much today and everyone is very low key. The rust of the holidays seems to be very thick on people. I can only imagine that holiday eating has slowed everyone’s brains, including mine. Several people expressed that they forgot how to do their jobs today, which is awesome.

It should be an ok, short, and easy week. Is it Friday yet?

Well, since I didn’t take any extra time off, I’m headed back to the old digital coal mines tomorrow to try to carve out an honest living. If there is one consolation for returning to work this week, it’s that a ton of people decided to take the rest of the week off. With so many people still on break, many of the weekly meetings that I’m part of have been cancelled for this week. I checked my calendar and my whole week is essentially devoid of meetings. Another great thing is that, as far as I know, there aren’t any important tasks that I need to do for this week. All signs point towards this week being a light and easy one, mirroring the week before the holiday break started. Not that I would do such things, but if one wanted to say, start later in the morning and perhaps end a bit earlier in the afternoon, one could possibly do that without penalty.

Well, it’s time for bed.

Unfortunately, I have to go back to work on Tuesday. I’m glad New Year’s Day landed on a Sunday because I have the Monday as the one last day of the holidays.

I can’t complain about the last week and a half. I slept in almost all of the days. Things got extreme on some nights where I didn’t sleep until 5am. One day, I didn’t wake up until 1:30pm. That was common when I was younger but as a senior citizen now, it’s really difficult for me to sleep that late now. I played a lot of video games, finishing two and starting two new ones. I tried really hard to eat somewhat decently but it’s the holidays and that’s not really a time known for healthy eating. One evening I ate almost an entire medium pizza by myself. I left two slices for the next day. In terms of sweets, I was doing awesome until I got a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts for Christmas. Those are my favourite nuts and they’re just like crack cocaine. I ate about 400g of that chocolate and nuts before my willpower kicked in and stopped myself.

I am proud to say that I did some exercise throughout the holidays. I went on some long walks and at home, I still managed to do some cardio and weight lifting. It’s so much easier to get exercise when you don’t have a job to worry about. Just another reason that working sucks.

Well, I’m looking forward to my last day of the holidays tomorrow. I think I’ll go buy a lottery ticket as part of my day tomorrow.