This was an interesting day. I watched the impeachment testimony in the morning and met Roland at the building to obtain a proposal for alarming the upstairs apartment because it has been broken into several times.
I talked to Billy and he said he was “Following the hearings”. Billy is the student of history in our family, so his statement reinforced the historical significance of the impeachment proceedings to me.
At noon I heated the PPI chicken and dumpling soup for lunch. After lunch I ate a couple of small Iberico cheese tapas.
I saw the opening statements for the afternoon hearings and checked my portfolio. Today three stocks in my portfolio had negative announcements. The worst was Home Depot that dropped $13.00/share. I have 300 shares for a loss of $3,900. My portfolio dropped about .4%, but from its all time high.
I was trying to explain to a client today that often the most courageous investment strategy is to do nothing, especially when all the doomsayers are spouting doom and gloom. If you do nothing the odds are pretty good that the market will churn at a 8 to 10% per year growth rate over years. Some years less, some years more. At 8% your principal will double in 10 years. At 10% your principle will double in 8 years. The time value of money is the strongest and easiest investment strategy I know. And you do not need to take my word for it. Benjamin Franklin proved it. He deposited $5.00 into an interest bearing account in the 1790’s with instructions that in 200 years the resulting balance should be used to celebrate the 200th anniversary of America. I was visiting Philadelphia on July 4th in 1997 with mother and Luke. We were staying at a historic Inn near the palisades overlooking the Delaware River. At the designated time we saw the best fireworks display I have ever seen set off from platforms in the River celebrating the 200th year of America funded by the accumulation Franklin’s $5.00.
I met Roland at the building at 3:00. Roland was able to install the security system today, so hopefully there will be no more break-ins upstairs.
When I returned home around 5:30 Suzette was there. We decided to make Pasta Primavera with lots of PPIs and the fresh vegetables I bought yesterday. I diced two green onions, four cloves of garlic, about ¼ of a sweet onion, 1 zucchini, all the 4 types of mushrooms we brought back from Pa., ¼ cup of fresh basil leaves, and two tomatoes.
After Suzette sautéed these ingredients she added the PPI spaghetti to the large skillet in which she was cooking the sauce while I shaved about about ¼ cup of Peccorino-Romano cheese.
At 7:00 I decided to make brownies. I combined 1/3 cup each of oil and water and 1 egg and then added a bag of Ghirardelli brownie mix as the recipe directed. It took about three minutes to make the brownies. I greased a Pyrex baking pan and poured the completed mix into it.
The brownies baked into a lovely glistening sheet of gooey textured brownies in 37 minutes when I stopped the bake 7 minutes short of the prescribed 45 minutes because the oven was set to the convection setting.
We did not sleep well, perhaps due to the chocolate brownies according to Suzette.
But I have a different theory; that our democracy is riding on Ambassador Sonland’s testimony today and I am anxious about his testimony, since he has been less than truthful in his previous testimony. I am hoping for a thunderbolt of evidence or testimony, such as the judge’s ruling by Monday regarding President Trump’s assertion of Executive Privilege in the Don McGahan case in the DC Court of Appeals or Sondland telling all he knows about the President and Rudy Guiliani’s plan to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation of the Bidens to help Trump’s re-election.
I prefer the latter reason, but know both could be correct.
Oh Democracy! Oh chocolate!
Bon Appetit
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