Taking stock

I haven’t posted recently, due to a lack of enthusiasm towards, well anything at this point. December was not exactly a banner month for me, my investment portfolio took a beating, and I've not felt well physically either. Here in Maryland, we missed a white Christmas - which I think I've only experienced once or twice anyway - but the decidedly spring weather has made me uneasy.

My big Christmas present was a Stihl BR340 backpack leaf blower, which I used to collect leaves on our acre of lawn. It worked very well, and I'm happy I bought a backpack blower, waving a hand held blower around for three days would have been very tiring. Still, as far as big Christmas presents go, it was a bit depressing. We ended up bagging over a hundred 35 gallon leaf bags, which we are still trying to get rid of. Yipee.

On a better note, I did get Katy a Cannon PowerShot A540 camera. Small package, large LCD screen, very portable, I think she likes it.

We ended up having friends over for Christmas, who brought their dog, Thomas. Thomas is a beagle, and was the center of attention that day - Katy wants a dog of her own now, and I'd like one as well. We'll have to wait until we buy our own home to get a dog.

Investment wise, I'm taking a new direction for the coming year. For 4Q06, I had a very aggressive portfolio, which ended up biting me in the rear. Instead of large positions in five stocks, I may move to six or eight positions, spread over many sectors and cap sizes. I'm thinking three big cap, three mid cap, one gold stock, and one speculative stock. At this point, I have no idea which company’s I'll invest in, but I'm coming up with some ideas.

Other than that, blah. Lets get this year over with already.