February 26, 2021 Lunch – Roast Chicken, Tomato Couscous, and fresh salad Dinner – PPI Chili Relleno and beans and tortilla and Clementine Cake

February 26, 2021 Lunch – Roast Chicken, Tomato Couscous, and fresh salad   Dinner – PPI Chili Relleno and beans and tortilla and Clementine Cake

Today was a fun day because Linda and T.R. drove down from Santa Fe and we drove together to Los Lunas and ate lunch with Suzette and then she gave us a tour of her exhibit of women artists of NM.

I ate granola, yogurt, milk, and blueberries and slice banana for breakfast and worked a little while until they arrived around 11:15.  TR and Linda wanted to see the new art I had bought so we toured the art in the house for a few minutes before leaving for Los Lunas.

When we arrived, Suzette met us and we all went to the Spa where a table was set for lunch by a fireplace with a fire on the patio in the pool area.  Soon the chef and a helper brought a platter on which was a sliced roasted chicken on a bed of couscous and fresh tomato and a large bowl of fresh salad picked in the morning in the Center’s garden accompanied by a simple balsamic and olive oil dressing.

T.R. and Linda brought an Italian pinot grigio del Venezie and a six pack of Italian Peroni beer.  We ate and talked and enjoyed the warm sunlight for quite a while.  It became clear almost immediately that they were just as starved for human interaction as we were.  They had driven to Amarillo, Texas for their first shot of vaccine and it was apparent that they were feeling the urge to break their 1 year period of isolation.

After lunch we toured Suzette’s art exhibit.  Suzette studied art curation in college, so she had expertly hung and framed the art and made labels for each work, so it was a very professional exhibit.  We toured a few of the outdoor areas of the Center after the art tour and then said goodbye to TR and Linda and drove back to Albuquerque with the leftover food and beverages.

We were not very hungry for dinner after our big lunch, so Suzette ate leftover chicken and a piece of Clementine cake and I ate the leftover Chili Relleno and beans with a corn tortilla from yesterday’s lunch and a piece of Clementine Cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it.

My portfolio was up over 1.4% when I left for lunch but when I returned after the close I found that it had gained only .75% for the day because there was a sell off at the end of the day and that cut my potential profit in half.  What a tough market we are going through these days.

 

My Dad, who was a serious horse racing bettor, would characterize this as a market not running true to form.  He could always make money when the horses were running true to form because he would pick the best horse and put most of his bet on the horse to run third because the best horse will almost always run 1^st or 2^nd when the horses are running true to form, but it became a far less predictable result when they were not running true to form. 

Dad also had a special betting technique he employed. He would bet $5.00 or $10 on the horse to win, $2-.00 to $50 to run second, and $250 to $350 to run third depending upon how certain he was that the horse was a potential winner.   Since most any horse will pay $2.20 to $2.40 or $.10 to $.20 per dollar for 3^rd, If he either lost a little or won a little if it ran 3^rd and made more if it ran 1^st or 2^nd.

In pari-mutual betting the track aggregates all bets for each position and takes a 10% commission off the top and then the pool of money left that bet on horses who finished that position or better is divided into equal parts for that position among those who hold winning tickets for each of 1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd. The winning horse’s ticket holders receive all of the money bet on first.  For second place the pool of money is divided equally and each group holding a 2^nd place horse’s ticket will share pro rata ½ of the total bet on 2^nd. The same technique is applied to 3^rd, except the pool of money bet on the 3^rd place is divided among the total dollars bet on horses that placed 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd. divided into three equal parts.

The reason why some horses pay more for the same finish position is because there are fewer dollars bet on longshot horses to share their amount of the pool, so each dollar bet will be allocated a greater portion of the pool allocated to that horse.

After our big day, we were tired and went to bed shortly after 8:00.

Bon Appetit