Category: where I come from

Viva Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Mi Vida.

Ah Las Vegas, I return home to you once more.

That sparkling town, Las Vegas, has been an integral part of pretty much all of my life.

Yes, Vegas and I are irrevocably entwined.

Sure, everyone likes Vegas, right? Well…right?

For me, it’s a lot different than it might be for you.

Let’s flip the toggle switch on the WayBack Machine. Let’s go back, oh, say a bit over forty years.

It was the swinging sixties, baybee, and my dad, a hardcore engineer, was working at the Nevada Test Site.

That’s the place you might of heard of…you know, where they blow up nuclear devices underground?

Yup.

Oh, also…waaaaaay over in the back corner of the Nevada Test Site is a little place called Area 54. (In later years I asked the old man about it, but got no answers)

So while Dad went to work out in the middle of the freaking Nevada desert, mom stayed home at their place in Las Vegas and tended to her three kids.

Yes folks, I have actually lived in Las Vegas.

It was only for only a brief time and I have only vague memories, like that you could see the Landmark Casino from where we lived. I used to love to stand in the backyard and watch the lighted elevators go up and down.

My folks really liked living in Las Vegas. And they liked visiting the town too. They made an at least once a year visit, seeing friends and family, a couple shows and they would gamble a bit. It was their favorite vacation destination.

Sometimes they would go just the two of them. Sometimes we kids got to go along for the fun.

It sucked to be a kid in Vegas prior to the construction of Circus Circus. There was little to do other than swim in the hotel pool and follow mom around when she hit the slots.

By law I had to stand at least six feet away from any gaming device. Stand there. With nothing to do other than whine at my mother that I wanted to go swimming.

But all of those years spent in Las Vegas and I find I have a deep history with this town that not many people have. I can remember, “oh that used to be the ____” when I pass the current kitschy themed hotels and casinos.

I am kind of ticked off at Las Vegas for demolishing all of the old and rather fabulous casinos and replacing them with these new garish harpies.

It’s just not the same.

Coming to Vegas is, for me, like coming home. I was remarking to The Good Man on the plane ride over that for me, going to Vegas is a bit like going to Albuquerque. It’s a get away, but it’s also a going home. A nice trip but also so comfortable and easy.

I don’t know Vegas quite as well as I do Albuquerque, as I lived in Vegas only a couple years and I lived a lifetime in ABQ.

But it’s a part of me. And it is an even deeper part of the history of my parents.

Vegas and me, we belong together. And it’s not about the casinos or the neon or the obnoxious part of it.

I see this painted showgirl for what she is. Behind the mask of makeup and face paint, she’s a thirsty and tired old desert town that has grown too fast, aching from the growing pains.

You get two blocks off the strip, and you see behind the curtain. The streets are dirty and grim people look both tired and sad. There is an ugly dark side to all that glitz and show.

There are real people with real jobs trying to make a living. The casinos are but one facet of Vegas.

It’s been a couple years since I came to see this charming old lady of a town. On my last trip, I got into an intense conversation with the cab driver who had been raised here in Vegas. He was so happy to find someone who knew, who remembered, and that made me happy too.

Today, I’m looking out over the Spring Mountains to the west and plotting how to spend my day. The Neon Museum is closed for construction, so that will have to be another time.

I’ll probably find myself downtown where places like the Four Queens and the Golden Gate harken back to another time. My time.

Maybe I’ll pull the handle of a one armed jack and I’ll remember….

Set My Mascot Free!

Source: Pistol Pete holstered for Utah game

Ugh! They are making the NMSU mascot sit a game.

For what they are calling “a mustache-ripping incident”

Um, oh…

*chuckle, giggle, snort*

Ahem.

The incident occurred with Utah’s State’s mascot, “Big Blue” the bull.

I’m wondering why Pistol Pete didn’t up and rip something off the bull, eh? We *are* and Agricultural college after all! We know how to do such things.

*giggle, snort, wipe eyes*

Yes, well. This is all very serious and, *guffaw*, ahem, disciplinary.

The bull has already served his sentence, the same one game suspension.

And I suppose after all of this, Pistol Pete will have learned his lesson.

Despite the mustache violence, we’ve still come a long way since my days at NMSU where, when the opposing team made a basket, we’d shout “nice shot, assh–e!”

Hee!

Go NMSU!

Sometimes, the cranky old man is the smartest man in the room

Back in the good ol’ days, that wild time known at the 1980’s, I was full of youthful optimism, and I was attending New Mexico State University.

My undergraduate major was Finance.

Ooh, those were heady days when I wanted to be a stockbroker when I grew up. This was back before I realized that “stockbroker” and “salesman willing to sell underperforming securities to your family in order to make commission” were synonymous.

While the dream was still alive, I took courses at NMSU from some really fine professors with a lot of experience.

Among them, several courses with Dr. Lowell Catlett, now the Dean of the College Of Agriculture, and a noted experts on futures trading.

There was also Dr. Clark Hawkins, a man who had actually worked as a commodities trader on the NYSE floor. In his words, he had tried pretty much every investment vehicle out there…and lost money ’em all.

Dr. Hawkins was a strange little man. Wiry, small of frame and nasally of voice. He referred to himself as “Uncle Hawkey.” He often told us that, as Finance students, we should have our Wall Street Journal under one arm and our financial calculator under the other.

And this was to be done while wearing a tshirt imprinted with “Uncle Hawkey’s Ten Investment Rules”.

At the end of each semester, he gifted us with a copy of the ten rules.

Recently, I was searching around in all the old boxes under my house, picking through my crap looking for things I can sell on eBay.

How ironic, then, that I should come across my framed copy of Uncle Hawkey’s Ten Investment Rules in my search for something to sell for money.

Well, I sat down and read the rules.

Goddamn if Uncle Hawkey wasn’t right. He was right then. He’s right now. Right is right.

Now…snap your Wall Street Journal in place, place your finger over the “future value” button on your calculator and get set.

Here are the rules:

1. Don’t invest in things you don’t understand.

Ah, every single customer of Bernie Madoff…take note!

2. Remember the fundamental mathematical rule of finance.

You know what? I don’t.

I suspect this was about future value and present value of money. He was a stickler on that.

Because I understood and could calculate time value of money, I kicked the salesman’s ass when I bought my first car.

I got that salesguy demoted because he was such a dunce. Thank you Uncle Hawkey.

3. Know the difference between investment and speculation.

Oh I remember this one. I rant about this one. A lot.

Let me just say his own words, with the same shouting nasal tone…

INVESTING IN THE STOCK MARKET IS THE SAME AS GAMBLING!

If you do not think putting your money in the stock market is gambling, then you need to re-examine yourself and your money.

Sure, it may return better odds than Vegas, but not always.

For those of you wailing and gnashing your teeth in the current economic downturn because you had all your money in the stock market, I suggest you get this rule tattooed on your arm and look at it daily.

4. Don’t invest or speculate in financial securities that you can’t easily find quotes on.

Dangling participle notwithstanding….Uncle Hawkey was right.

Once again, I’m calling friends of Mr. Madoff….paging investors of Mr. Madoff….

5. Don’t buy a closed end fund on initial offering.

Oh yes, everyone gets oh so very excited about IPO’s. Especially during the dot com boom of the early 2000’s.

Look how well that worked out for most people.

Right.

But Uuuuuncle Haaaawwwkkkey, people in his class would wail…what about _____ and they’d name some company.

And by tracking the history of the stock price, he’d show them how they were wrong. How the price would be driven up on IPO and would, over time, settle back down.

He recommended waiting out an IPO for a company you liked, and buying the shares after you the initial flurry of IPO wore off.

6. Be skeptical of people who say they can forecast the future.

Well, if more folks did this, then people like Jim Cramer would be a lot less interesting, wouldn’t they?

7. Don’t do business with a man you can’t trust.

Too true. I would also substitute “man” with “company.”

And yet…how many of us do anyway? (*coff* AT&T *coff* Comcast *coff*)

Honestly…it’s getting a lot harder to find honesty these days.

8. If the brokers are pushing it hard, it probably should be avoided.

So simple. So true. Yet….

Paging followers of Mr. Madoff!

(seeing a trend here?)

9. Long range planning gives the dangerous notion that the future is under control.

Oooh, this one hurts.

Remember how great things felt in, oh, say mid-2008? When we all had some money and maybe a big mortgage on a great house and the financial future looked, well…bright?

Yeah.

I broke this one. Uncle Hawkey, wherever in the world you are now, I give it up to you.

You knew. You always knew.

10. Don’t lose money.

Well sh*t. I broke this one too.

However. Slowly but surely, it’s coming back.

Because Uncle Hawkey warned us about short term and long term.

My wise investments will, eventually, find their way home.

And finally….

11. (Bonus rule) Remember Rule 10

Fair enough.

And so…as we now dive headlong into a financially muddled 2010…

May we all remember Rule #10

Thank you Uncle Hawkey.

As a post script…

In my senior year of undergrad, Uncle Hawkey decided to go on a sabbatical from teaching.

He invited us, the students that he had so tortured, to join him for happy hour at El Patio. Ah, that venerable old bar (former home office of the Butterfield Stage).

Uncle Hawkey slapped down a credit card and said we could have all the beer we wanted. Nothing else. Only beer.

Oh, the pitchers flowed that day, and Uncle Hawkey paid for it all.

Maybe all of us college students were, on that day, a good investment.

Christmas Redux

I think it’s time to re-run what has to be THE most popular post ever in the three years on this blog.

Going back to December 2007.

It’s all still true.

Top ten things I miss about Christmas in New Mexico

1) Annual shopping trip to Old Town. A mom and me tradition. Every year I’d get to pick out an ornament that was mine. I now have all those ornaments in a Thom McAnn shoebox that, yes, Sunday night I opened and hung them all on my tree. They are like a history of my life. I remember buying most of them and it gives me a good sense of continuity to have them on my tree.

2) Luminarias. I always made them at my house. My mom would drive me to an empty lot to dig up two buckets worth of dirt and I’d fold bags, place candles and light them. It was my job and I loved every second of it, every folded bag, every candle that caught the bag on fire. I miss them.

3) The Bugg House, which, sadly, is no more. My sister lived over on Prospect and we’d go for a Christmas Eve walk in the evening to take a look at the outstanding display of holiday spirit. When I would go to Winrock Mall to shop, I’d always swing by the Bugg house to take a look. I miss it.

4) Neighbors bringing a plate of fresh made tamales as your Christmas gift. When you get three generations of Hispanic women in a kitchen with some masa and some shredded pork, magic happens. Yum! I also miss that people would come to work with tamales in a cooler and sell them to coworkers. I was always good for a half dozen or more.

5) A ristra makes a good Christmas gift. I’ve given. I’ve received. I love ’em. They’d become a moldy mess here…and that makes me sad.

6) Biscochitos. My love for these is well documented.

7) Sixty-five degrees and warm on Christmas Day. I think one year there was actually snow on the ground for the 25th. But it was melted by the end of the day. Oh Fair New Mexico, how I love your weather.

8) Christmas Eve midnight Mass in Spanish with the overpowering scent of frankincense filling up the overly warm church. Pure torture for a small child, but oh how I’d belt out the carols… And when we came home we could pick one present and open it. Gah! The torture of picking just one!

9) New Mexico piñon, gappy, scrawny Christmas trees that cost $15 at the Flea Market and were cut from the top of a larger tree just that morning. Look, to my mind, it ain’t a tree unless you are using low hanging ornaments to fill the obvious gaps. These fluffy overly full trees just ain’t my bag. If you ain’t turning the ‘bad spot’ to the wall, you paid too much for your tree.

10) Green chile stew for Christmas Eve dinner and posole for New Year’s. My mouth waters. It’s weep worthy. I can taste the nice soft potatoes in the stew, the chicken broth flavored just right…ouch! And posole to bring you luck with red chile and hunks of pork. Yeah……

Which is not to say I don’t have happy holidays where I live now…but sometimes I feel melancholy. And that’s what the holidays are for, right?

Image via.

Oh, here we go again

So the weather has turned a little frosty here in the Bay Area.

And I really do mean frosty, temps dipped into the low 30’s overnight (unusual for us). We had some freezing rain and snow as low as 500 feet.

Fer crimeny’s sakes, you’d think it was winter or something!

Oh. Nevermind.

Anyhoo, you’ll recall in February of this year, I was beset upon by menopausal coworker harpies screeching to me about my lack of a jacket.

This seems to be an *issue* for people. The fact that I don’t like to wear jackets.

So it cropped up again yesterday. Less screeching, less menopausal.

It was the kind concern of my husband. He wasn’t being a harpy, he was looking out for me, which I appreciate. However…

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

And then later.

“Really? You aren’t cold?”

Well, to be honest, yes, I was a skosh cold. For the aggregate of exactly two minutes we were not in the warm car and not yet inside an often too hot building.

For the remaining twenty-three hours and fifty eight minutes of my day, I was in a climate controlled environment with plenty of heaters to keep me toasty. Actually, way too toasty.

So, what I have here, feeling momentary cold, is but a small problem. The big problem, staying warm, is solved.

I can tolerate being cold for about two minutes. (it’s not like I live somewhere where it is SERIOUSLY cold like Canada or Alaska or Switzerland or something!)

I really, truly dislike being inside and dressed too warm and then I have to take layers off and then I’m schlepping around my stuff and worried about leaving a hat or scarf or something somewhere.

I’m forgetful enough with the stuff I do have to carry around, why add to my misery?

I guess I’m the kind of person that will focus on the 98% problem, not the 2% problem.

Or…in this case, two minutes equals .1% of a problem.

So I’m a 99.9% girl, I suppose.

I have no problem with others wearing jackets. I don’t ask people wearing a heavy coat on a summer day “aren’t you hot?”

I suppose if I’m dumb enough to get caught out without a jacket in a really cold situation…well, then my dad was right when he said (only sometimes, when I misbehaved) that I was too dumb to come in out of a rainstorm.

Then again, have you ever frolicked in a really nice New Mexico summer rainstorm? A bit of heaven, I assure you…

But I digress…..

Oh…and as a final thought…the radio stations last night were all warning about outdoor plants freezing and to take precautions. They talked about going to a garden center to buy plant coverings….

I’m sorry, have these people NOT heard of using your sheets and blankets and garbage bags? Do you *really* need to pay big bucks to buy a plant center approved “plant cover”???

What do I expect from a metropolitan area filled with people who will pay someone $100 to put chains on their car when they go skiing.

I believe if you aren’t smart enough to put chains on your car, you shouldn’t be driving in snow.

There. I said it.

This, from the girl who isn’t smart enough to come in out of the rain.