Soup Is Not A Finger Food

Here's to you, Mr. Investment Fund Annual Report Formatter

In the spirit of Budweiser's "Real Men of Genius" series, I'd like to salute the team who probably spent the past ten weeks compiling and formatting the data in the Annual Report my client just received. It's a Principal Funds document for the Institutional J & R Share Classes (and right there is where your eyes started to cross, I could see it, but stay with me here), dated October 31, 2009. It arrived in my work mailbox, wrapped in plastic emblazoned with words designed to entice me to open it:

 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ENCLOSED

 

So, I did! How could I not? I was going to trash it immediately, but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything really important beneath the wrapper.

 

At first, I was all, oh great, another impossible-to-read document from the 401(k) people. But then I thought about the weeks of tedious work that must have gone into its creation.

 

Now, it's not much to look at - it's in black and white with a flimsy cover and newsprint pages. But the size of the document is stunning - it's 850 pages long, one inch thick, and contains detailed information that frankly, no one is going to read. At least not without a magnifying glass. And that's why I am saluting the team who was tasked with pulling this information together into one giant document: Have you ever tried to format columns of numbers in Word? Or generate a table of contents? It's daunting even for the simplest of documents. But this puppy is page after page of balance sheets and schedules and dollars and percent returns and realized gain/loss and all of the minutiae that matters little to the Average Investor but matters much to Financial Types.

 

Gawd help the poor entry-level typist who misspells MannKind Corp on the 15th page of Common Stocks, under Therapeutics, which comprise a piddly 0.75% of the holdings in the SmallCap Growth Fund II (Not to be confused with the SmallCap Growth Fund I). Because the fund managers and the good folks over at MannKind Corp will not look kindly on such an egregious error, even if it's nestled halfway down page 600 of an 849-page book. These people are all about the details!

 

I have been on the issuing end of what I often call my "exercises in futility" in HR. Government Regulations require me to send out annual notices that nobody reads. I actually fear that employees might read some of the things I send out, because many of them, in their government legalese, raise more questions than they answer.

 

So, because I know what it's like to fret over formatting and send out things that nobody reads, today I salute you, Mr. Investment Fund Annual Report Formatter. Because you agonized over the details and begged to receive all the content you knew you needed to include so you could make the deadline for the printers to publish this 850-page document and wrap it in plastic and send it out to HR managers whose companies have 401(k) plans that offer these funds. You know we're not actually reading this stuff, but you make sure every column ticks and ties and foots and aligns. Just in case.

 

Now, that's what I call dedication!

 

 

Hazleton, PA

Yesterday, I told you about our weekend frolicking in the slush drizzle winter weather last weekend in the greater Hazleton area.  I saved two photos to share today.  One is of the pretty bandstand located in the Hazle Township Community Park:

I can just picture the crowd on a warm June evening. Gray-haired bespectacled couples parked in lawn chairs. Dads wearing wife-beaters and sporting mullets. Moms trying to shush their children as the Elvis impersonator community band performs.

The other photo is of the sign that so warmly greeted us as we parked our car in the lot:

WELCOME TO OUR PARK! HERE'S A LIST OF STUFF YOU CAN'T DO! ENJOY YOUR VISIT AND PLEASE, COME AGAIN SOON!

What kind of welcome is that? A big list of NO's, with a bonus threat of a $300 fine OR JAIL? Do I get to choose which one?

We started calling this the Park of NO. Apparently, some of the Township's youth felt similarly scolded as they took aim at the sign with their paintball guns.

Dear Hazle Township: How about trying to sell your park's finer features first, like all those nice pavilions and the nifty band shell and that cool playground, too - and then including a gentle list of no-no's?

As I was composing this post, I looked up the Township's website so that I could link it to the bandstand photo. I will simply say this about the website: Go here and read the "Notices" printed in green, and tell me, do you think they were written by the same person?

It's all in the presentation, people.

Maybe January isn't so bad after all.

We're just back from having spent a long weekend at Eagle Rock Resort located just outside of gray dirty scenic Hazleton, Pennsylvania. (Thanks, Aunt Anne & Uncle Bob!) The Resort's main selling point in winter is skiing and tubing, and that's exactly what we did on Saturday, and again on Monday. I'll let the photos do most of the talking (hover over each for a quick caption):

Peezer in the lift line.

 

Peezer riding up on the lift.

 

The tubing hill, where Peezer and I spent most of Saturday.

Daddy and Peezer.

On Sunday, the weather forecast promised cold rain, and delivered exactly as promised. Not ones to be deterred by such abysmal hideous adverse conditions, we all piled into the Suburban and set off to explore the greater Hazleton area, via a geocaching expedition. And it was all

...and all

...and all

...and is this reminding you of any other Soup Family Vacations that involved outdoor activities during torrential rain? Oh, yes, that's right -

 

click here to read about crabbing in the rain in North Carolina last year.

...but the Best Trooper Award goes to Peezer, who marched through slush and mud and weeds and moss to locate all the geocaches -

...because he scored some sweet swag for his efforts.

After the cold and wet excursion, we settled back into our comfy digs, built a fire, poured some wine, watched some football, and played Qwirkle, which the kids really liked:

Come back tomorrow for two bonus photos from our Coal Country Weekend.

A girl's view from her room

Many of you know I grew up on a farm in rural south-central Pennsylvania. When I was but two years old, my parents left the nice suburban home they had built near Harrisburg and moved to what my mother often characterized as her "Green Acres" move. (Kids, click the link, or just ask your parents. It was a sitcom on television, produced in the late 1960s until 1971, featuring a city couple who move from NYC to a farm in Hooterville [yes, way] into a run-down farmhouse.)

My parents bought a farm that featured a pre-Civil war Georgian-style brick house of a type common in the region. The front door (which we rarely used; who really uses their front door?) had a central hallway with two rooms to the left and two to the right.  As part of the necessary, massive renovations, they changed the floorplan to combine the two rooms to the right into one large living room, ripping out a kitchen in the process.

The central staircase led upstairs to four big bedrooms and one bathroom in the center of the hallway.  My parents spent lots of time and energy redecorating the bedrooms, adding a closet to mine and, in my sister's room, blocking off the back stairwell in order to add an enclosed closet.

My sister and I each had our own big bedrooms, and in that way I was luckier than my older boys are now, for they share one of our three bedrooms. My room was on the road side of the house in a corner, so I had two windows facing the road and one facing in the direction of our barn.

At one point, my parents redid the full front porch and added a separate one at the other entrance, which was an addition to the original farm house. Thus, below my bedroom windows was a tin roof that made the rain sound lovely. Here's a photo of the front of the house when the porch was ripped off, mid-construction. Note, I shot this with my Kodak instamatic and attempted a panorama effect by taking two shots and lining them up in my photo album:

So as you're facing the house, the top two windows to the left of center? That was my room.

I was combing through an old album and noticed these shots, taken on different days but at around the same time.  I was around 10 years olad, I think. I guess I spent a fair amount of time in my room and wasn't opposed to aiming my camera out the windows to capture the view.

The upper left one is looking towards our barn. Our driveway was newly paved. You can see a low, cinderblock structure as you start out the driveway; that was our "incinerator." At my mom's request, it replaced our burn barrel. (In PA they still burn their trash.)

Upper right is looking out the windows on the road side, across to one of our fields (the few rows adjacent to the road was where we grew our sweet corn). I was enthralled by the snow, apparently.

Lower left, I'm looking out towards the barn again. This was probably the same snow storm. You can see our swingset (which we had outgrown by the time this photo was taken) and our giant Buick Limited in the driveway.

Lower right, there's that same Buick (we called it "Mommy's Magic Car" because it had electric everything) parked in the garage across the road from the house. Beyond that? Fields and more fields. It looks like it was late Fall; there's dry corn waiting to be harvested and the trees on the ridges are without leaves.

These are not stunning examples of photography. The colors have long since faded (I attempted to rejeuvenate them with Picnik). But because these pictures represent my view when I was young, I wanted to preserve them.

Area McDonalds Causes Harried Mom to Lose her Shit

If I were to tally all the time I've spent idling and inching in fast food drive-thru lanes, I would probably be ashamed to disclose the total. Suffice it to say, I'm a frequent flyer. I have the menus of several franchises completely memorized. I've conducted more than my share of transactions without ever leaving my car. I am a French fry addict.

There, I said it.

But that's not the story I want to tell.

Tonight, Bubta and I were waiting our turn in the McDonalds queue. We placed our order and advanced one car length while the car in front of us paid at the first window. The car in front of that one was retrieving bags of food at the second window. As we were waiting to pay, we witnessed something neither of us has ever seen: The car that had just left the second window and had started to drive away stopped, backed up, and did a 3-point turn. We could see the driver, who resembled Julia Roberts, talking and gesturing in an agitated manner to what we assumed were children in the back seat. She then attempted to cut into the line so she could approach the second window. Before the car in front of me. And me.

I was prepared to be totally pissed off. I mean, what makes her think her time is more valuable than mine? Didn't we all learn the rules of queuing up in kindergarten? But, as an experienced mother and victim of numerous botched orders, I reconsidered. After all, it was the dinner hour. Traffic was terrible. Maybe there's a sick kid in the back seat, or a tantrum-throwing toddler who would be more wisely confined to his/her safety seat than dragged into the restaurant. Maybe there was a sleeping infant, or worse, a screaming one. A poopy one. A hungry one. For whatever reason, she didn't want to go into the restaurant and was set on having the drive-thru clerk fix their error. OK; fine.

The clerk handed Angry Mom the Happy Meal they'd forgotten (oops!), hopefully with a profuse apology. Then she drove away, and order was restored. We advanced to the window and collected our order like lemmings. And you'd think it would end there, but you would be wrong!

As we exited the driveway, Angry Mom whipped her SUV back into the driveway. Apparently, something was still amiss! We were able to stop and watch as she threw her car into park right there in the driveway, left the car running, got out and stormed over to the second window, preventing the next car in line from moving, and BANG-BANG-BANGED on the window.

Did the clerk forget the Happy Meal toy, or mistakenly include a girl toy instead of a boy one? (It happens!) Did they put pickles on the cheeseburger when she clearly had asked for only ketchup? Did they give her poor children fries instead of the healthier apple slices? We could only speculate, because we had to drive away.

If I could have talked to Angry Mom, I would have told her this. Anyone who frequents McDonalds drive-thru knows that in the grand cosmos, sometimes McDonalds will forget to give you your fries, but other times they give you extra. Sometimes the throw in extra sweet 'n' sour sauce; other times, they give you barbeque instead. It all evens out in the course of time. Sure, if they totally forgot your kid's meal, they need to fix it, especially if you paid for it. But butting into line is a pretty big breach of the fast food social code. Getting all angry and bitchy isn't going to win you any favors, either, and it sets a pretty bad example for your kids... even if they're strapped in the back seat, zombie-ing out to a Disney movie. Adjust your expections downward. It's McDonalds, not Ruths Chris.

And it doesn't set a great example for my kids, either, thank you very much.

Take a deep breath, honey. It's only fast food.

For her sake, I hope her kids fell asleep in the car and she was able to peacefully transfer them into bed without waking them. (And I hope they don't pee themselves tonight.) I hope her husband was home when she arrived. I hope he poured her a glass of wine and rubbed her shoulders and told her to relax. And I hope she realized what a ridiculous display she was making in the McDonalds parking lot.