Yeah! I’m feeling much better!
Today I made several phone calls, cleaned my home office, and began the work of unpacking 10 boxes (8 accumulated years!) of stuff from my now former corporate window office. I’m really going to miss the view of the valley and the hills from my old office on the 5th floor. From that vantage point, I could see for miles; and on rainy days, I used to enjoy watching the rain slowly travel along; dumping rain on some city. But today, I unpacked my binoculars from box #1 and put them away in my closet. I may never use them again, but I sure enjoyed looking through them on occasion with my commanding view. Right up until someone put a building in my way, I used to be able to see my church’s steeple from about eight miles away. My new home office view (with the blinds open) is a partial view of my driveway; mostly obscured by a really big plant. This view is hardly as commanding as my old view, and so the blinds remain shut. Still, as much as I enjoyed the view from my old office, there is an office view that I like even better: the view from my dad’s home office which looks down a lake. Now that’s a view!
With four boxes unpacked, I moved on to fixing a laptop for a friend. All kinds of drivers were needed to make it work – I’m sort of surprised that it ever worked! After five hours of trying, one driver/device (USB) still doesn’t work – I can’t find the correct driver, and Dell keeps giving me the wrong one. I’ll try again tomorrow.
I don’t know if I mentioned this or not (I checked – I did not), but FedEx delivered my final check yesterday – my severance check. No more money will be coming my way from my former company. I guess I’ll now need to think about where my future funds will be coming from! The severance should keep us in cash until April 1; after that, we start eating into our savings. Maybe I’ll need to sign up for unemployment in April… naah!
Motley Fool put a sell recommendation on Atheros (ATHR) today because they will likely be bought by a larger company. This is truly a shame because it’s been a good stock for me. I did sell today, and I made a tidy 60% profit. With some of my earnings from that sale, I bought a 1% stake in SuperValu (SVU); another Motley Fool recommendation. Since Atheros represented 3.5% of my portfolio, I now have 2.5% in cash to do something with.
I also got four books in the mail today – all “must read” recommendations. I’m already a third of the way through one of the two books my dad recommended: The Noticer by Andy Andrews.
Day 12 mood: Mostly satisfied with my progress, but finding that last USB driver would have made my day.