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H*R's Strong Bad has an excellent rant on trading cards:

"Trading cards are the biggest waste of not a video game on the planet! In fact, I thought trading cards were outlawed the day they invented good graphics."

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I slept in pretty late Saturday after having woken up from another angsty dream starring my subconscious' favorite emotional club at 5am. After something like ten hours of sleep, I still wanted to crawl back under the covers and never get out. I decided to make a fairly elaborate breakfast rather than go out, figuring I had spent a stunning amount of money on my kitchen so I better get some use out of it. Biscuits, sausage, and an omelet that turned out more like a scramble, but were all tasty. The mess reminded me of my dad's 'leave no dish unused' style, and once I cleaned up breakfast I kept on going and did a serious bout of house cleaning. I used to clean house like clockwork every two weeks, but these days I usually just sweep and dust occasionally since I'm just not that messy living on my own save for Koshka's contribution.

After a cathartic few hours of cooking and cleaning, I went to the OLOTEAS Spring Picnic, and then headed over to jeliza et al's house to hang out with drakemonger, loree, kaligrrrl, and jeliza. rubylou is off with relatives for the weekend, so everyone was over to help entertain and wrangle the small ones and keep the adults company.

Today I slept in again, only this time sans stupid dreams. Did a bit of shopping at REI, came home and pulled up/chopped-down some weeds to prove to my neighbors I'm capable of caring about the appearance of my lawn, and that's pretty much it. With the flooring project on hold until mid-week, I'm trying to decide if I want to start back up with my network wiring project. It was stalled by some rather tight spaces in the attic where I would need to work, but at this point I think I'll postpone it another day.

I completed my first stock trade of my life a few weeks back, and just set up the transfer back to my bank. Thanks to the ESPP program and a few stock grants, I was a bit heavy in my portfolio with Microsoft and figured I should at least sell the stock that won't require short-term capital gains tax. It was hardly huge money, but I did manage to sell it near the 52 week high. I figured out one of the reasons why MSFT's stock price doesn't go anywhere: BillG is wanting to retire and has to sell off his controlling interest, and that means he is selling three million shares a day for three years. He's got two more years to go. Another good reason not to hang on to the stock for long periods of time. I guess I could've put the proceeds from my 48 shares of Microsoft into Google stock, which would've netted me something like 3 shares. Honestly, where the hell can their stock price go from nearly $500 each!? Both companies were solid growth bets years ago, but nowadays not so much. Frankly the stock market has lost it's mind thanks to widespread daytrading--which sadly I was involved with in my part-time job back in college--, and the whole thing makes me feel dirty. Sadly the same thing could be said about real estate. Hence why I leave most my money in mutual funds for someone else to manage.