Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett.  It is an excellent book. I just finished it, and it almost brought tearrs to my eyes.  It was highly recommended to me, and now I highly recommend it to others. 

It is a tale of people living in their own world, blinded by the temporary happiness of their improbable surroundings. knowing deep in their hearts that it would end, but they chose to forget it. 

Wow, I haven't touched this in four months!  Well, I'm back.

Tonight I met up with my American Express Financial Advisor.  They basically charged me an up-front fee to take a look at my financial status and then tell me what changes to make.  I got my report today.  There were a couple of points he made (verbally) to me:

1. Change Asset Allocation to include 25% International Equities. 

  My thoughts: more risk, more aggressive.  Do I really wanna do this?

2. Buy some Variable Universal Life Insurance

  My thoughts: I've heard about this before, and my question is, "what's the catch?"  Anyone know anything about this, please let me know. It makes sense, then again he was telling me so I would use his services.

3. Move some individual stocks from Roth IRA to a taxable account, and more importantly, move some mutual (index) funds from taxable to Roth IRA account.

  My thoughts: Reasoning is sound - mutual funds incur capital gains fees that would hit me in a taxable account. And especially now that we're not taxed on dividends anymore (right?) it makes sense to move the individual stocks to a taxable account. Opinions anyone?

Now, what I've also decided, and what I might tell my advisor next time I speak with him, is that I will probably not buy anything through him. I'm especially aware of the potential conflict of interest that an advisor can have in selling services - whilst I trust him as a person, I can't help but see him not being influenced by the prospect of helping himself via commission and future business.  In fact, I feel like I should have told him this before he did the report for me, but now it's too late.  I haven't read his report yet, but if it's good, I'll use him in the future to update the report.

If anyone wants his info, let me know. He's a good guy, and there's a 90 day money-back guarantee if you don't like the report.

Anyway, anyone have any opinions about Variable Universal Life Insurance? fool.com doesn't really tell me much, and google.com only points to commercial sites (at least the first few links did - i'll look further) :)

Today I decided I would be a manly man and chop wood.  After all, I have leftover wood in the backyard from various projects, either taking down a fence, pruning trees, or just leftovers from the previous owners of the house. My supply was running down for the upcoming Russian-like Seattle winter.

Stopped by the Depot and picked up an axe.  Strength is my virtue, I kid you not.  Chopping wood would harken me back to them olden days of yore, and would warm me up for my sets of 15 pullups later on in the evening.

With a thin beam before me, ready to be trisected, I took one huge swing and whacked it.  Then again. Then again. This was maybe two inches and it DID NOT SPLIT.  Dexterity is not my virtue, and I could not hit the same spot twice.  It became an exercise in frustration, not one of the body. I was chopping, missing, sometimes hitting the same spot, but often not. 

Despondently, I have now decided to use a saw with a clamp.  A manual saw. I have a chainsaw that I fear using, but that's another story. Masculinity and He-Man antics are not as effortless as they seem.