Friday, September 07, 2007


Are you ready for some football?

Ok, so far I am 0 - 1 on my football picks. I took the Saints over the Colts on the Thursday opening night game. This pick is reflective of a problem I have with my pool selections - letting my like or dislike for a team interfere with picking the most likely to win.


I am a in winner's pool and a loser's pool. For these, you have to pick a team each week that will win, or lose. Any week you are wrong, you are knocked out. And you can only pick each team once. There is a 10 or 20 dollar buy in at the beginning of the season, but with a lot of participants, the pay out can be pretty substantial. My winner for this week is New England; my loser is Tampa Bay.


This weekend is also the local chili cook-off. 10 to 15 local bars, restaurants, businesses, or just groups of friends, enter their special recipe into the competition. There is a live band and raffle drawings and it is generally a good time. The fact that each group tries to buy your vote by offering up an alcoholic beverage of some sort doesn't hurt the festive atmosphere.

I don't have a lot of money in the stock market, but I did actually stumble onto one good move. The first stock I ever bought was a few shares of Walmart - purchased at probably its highest price in the last 50 years. About 2 years ago, I decided to bail out on Walmart and invest the money in Wild Oats instead. Some of the reason was financial - the growth potential was better, and some of the reason was political - that I'd rather have my money in a company promoting organic foods, than in, well, Walmart.

Anywhoo, the deal for Whole Foods to purchase Wild Oats recently went through, and all the shares were purchased at $18.50/share - a nice profit from the $8.00/share I paid! The money remains in my IRA, and I need to find another stock to invest in now . . . too bad Target is priced too high as well . . .



6 Comments:

Blogger Jonathon Morgan said...

so pumped for this sunday! i've been watching all the team previews on nfl.com. i am such a dork for football season.

3:52 PM  
Blogger NY KAT said...

I'm excited for the NFL season to start but sad, yet again, that I won't be able to watch the Bills on TV.

I could go for some Chili right now! YUM

Have a great wknd and congrats on the stock..

3:57 PM  
Blogger sage said...

Darn it! Blogger ate my post!

I use to enjoy competing in chili contests when I lived out west and actually took first place one year (and first in the Hottest category another year). The $'s raised went to child abuse prevention.

6:34 AM  
Blogger EditThis said...

I don't own any stocks, but I was considering buying some Apple stock earlier this week when the price dropped after the iPhone price cut announcement. The profit on the stocks would be the only way I'd get my $200 in cash back.

8:52 PM  
Blogger LA said...

Eons ago, I used to be in a weekly NFL pool. Now, I don't follow at all, though I can still sit down and watch football. It remains my favorite sport.

BTW, I was in Michigan when they got their asses handed to them last week by Appalachian State. Most of my cousins are Michigan State fans, so they were actually pretty happy.

8:16 PM  
Blogger THN said...

It's not even week 2 and I'm sick of the Patriots.

6:51 PM  

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