stocks, loons and yellow flowers

I think it astonishes Ed how much I do not get the American way of making money. I tell him that I am not exactly economics-challenged -- indeed, I was, for nearly three years, an econometrics major at the University of Warsaw before I moved (as it turned out) permanently to the States. He’ll shake his head and attribute my ignorance to learning economics over there, under that regime. People raised under communism are without entrepreneurial grit and savvy.

Today, I made (yet again) one of those errors in dealing with my accounts that shows how I just haven't yet grasped the details.  [In case you’re curious, I thought that merely having a brokerage account meant that I was riding the stock market -- with its downs, sure, but also primed to make a killing in the months ahead. That is, insofar as a $1000 investment - that's all that is at stake in this story - can make any kind of a killing. I thought it might. I didn't know you had to buy something with it first. Like stocks or funds. Such a complicated system you have going here...]

Ed’s reaction? He looks at me, stunned, then offers the gentle comment – your grasp of capitalism is rather modest.

So now I know. And I quickly purchase stuff -- stocks, I think, but who can really tell what it all means, and, with great excitement, I monitor my modest account for the rest of the day.

It sustains a loss. What a surprise.


In other news – I’m still biking to and from work. I have no interest in taking the bus. How can you not bike when, on the ride back, you witness sights like this -- a loon, doing a water walk?





Otherwise, please know that it is a supremely busy work week for me. I take note of small pleasures. The lake shore bike path, always that...





...and, at home, looking up from my work, I appreciate what's in front of me: flowers, in harmony with the the surroundings.





Small pleasures.