May 13, 2024 Lunch - Breakfast Ramen. Dinner - PPI Korean Short Ribs with Rice
Suzette awakened me at 7:15 to carry the box of Edible New Mexico Magazines to her SUV.
I then watched the market open and listened to some of the live transcript of Michael Cohen’s testimony. Apparently both CNN and MSNBC have court reporters sitting in the courtroom transcribing Cohen’s testimony.
Something interesting happened today in the Market. Apple announced that it would add AI to its smart phone and the stock responded by going up over $3.00 per share. Nvidia also went up $5.00. Even though the Dow and S&P and Meta went down, my portfolio was up marginally by .6%.
A day like this when large portions of the market are down but a couple of stocks will swing a portfolio to a gain are rare but welcome. My portfolio is 1.5% from its all time high, which probably means the Market is due for a major pull back.
After a while I ate a bowl of granola, milk, yogurt and blueberries and started transcribing the discussion notes from our last book club meeting.
I worked on the book club notes for an hour or two, but was diverted by a recipe I received in my email for Breakfast Ramen and a call from Luke.
Luke and I discuss philosophy sometimes and today was one of those times.
I told him that I had recently seen a axiom: Luck = Preparedness + Opportunity and that I had often been rewarded when I helped others, which seemed to fit that formula.
Luke responded with a quote by Emerson, the Transcendental philosopher, that seemed more on point that went something like, “Success is the reward for helping others breath easier.”
I immediately recognized that the Emerson quote was linked or perhaps the analogy to my Luck axiom.
I am not completely philanthropic and usually will request a benefit or am offered a benefit that is usually given willingly because my help is usually a quantifiable financial benefit. I usually do not render a bill or try to collect a fee unless requested.
For example, a company I am involved with recently needed interim working capital, so I loaned it $200,00 and it structured a loan with me and another lender for interim financing that paid interest on the loan principal and added compensation in the form of shares.
My willingness to loan garnered the support of the other lender on a reasonable basis and provided the company what I hope will be the cash cushion to reach positive revenue.
More oddly, I once helped a client sue a contractor who took her money but then failed to build the promised house. We succeeded in obtaining a non-dischargeable judgment in U.S. Bankruptcy Court and ultimately collected the debt. The client could not pay me but made me beneficiary of her estate and one of the assets was a painting worth approximately $100,000. A dealer friend called that good karma and perhaps it is. I love working at that level, where I seem to be rewarded by helping others resolve their legal and financial problems.
I feel satisfaction, which is perhaps Emerson’s feeling of success when I can use my legal and financial preparedness/capacity to help others and find that the help I provide is often rewarded with both a feeling of success and financial benefit.
I enjoyed cooking the new Ramen Breakfast recipe for lunch, especially since I had all the ingredients except I substituted a bundle of rice vermicelli and a bundle of wheat noodles for the ramen plus I added two stalks of diced asparagus, two sprigs of parsley minced, and a sliced portobello mushroom and a little extra water so the result was rice vermicelli and wheat noodles plus an extra bowl of egg, asparagus, noodle, and mushroom soup. It was delicious, but a little greasy from the fried bacon.
I finally finished work when Suzette arrived home at 4:00 and we lay down until 5:00 and then I joined Suzette in the garden where we cultivated a raised bed and repotted our new dwarf Mugi pine tree into a larger pot and potted a new plant into the empty pot from which we had removed the mugi pine to fill the area beside our new Japanese Maple tree with foliage.
Then at 7:00 Suzette decided we had enough PPI beef short fibs and rice for dinner so she heated up the leftover beef, rice and green beans in the microwave and I heated up the Korean BBQ sauce that was made with the recipe and a couple of slices of baguette and spread Port Salut cheese on them and opened the bottle of Faustino V, I recently bought and Suzette fetched the jar of her homemade mango chutney from the fridge and we had a lovely dinner of a pile of rice and short ribs soaked with Korean BBQ sauce and flavored with mango chutney.
The wine seemed young and did not have much character. The real indication that the wine did not meet Suzette’s standard was her refusal to drink any more wine after she finished her meal. If I buy more I will put it down to age.
After dinner we googled the name of the carver, Eulid Martinez, who was featured in the PBS short documentary on Patricimiento Barela and his grand son and discovered that the picture of Eulid Martinez in Google shows him holding his wood carving I purchased.
What a surprise!
We watched the Antiques Roadshow and then some of the Avalanche v. Dallas Stars hockey play-off game and the Oklahoma City v. Dallas Mavericks NBA play-off game that OKC Thunder came from behind to win in the last couple of minutes.
Suzette went to bed at 9:00 and I went to bed at 10:30 after the games and a cup of chai, several chocolate truffles, and a sip of Calvados.
I awakened at 12:30 to blog and drink a glass of water after a day of too much food.
Bon Appetit
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