Investing in my future, X-mas, my gut, bad grades, etc.

I got all my Christmas shopping done yesterday afternoon. The highlight of the day... well, there were two highlights of the day. First off, I had a Big Mac for the first time in years. Years. Despite the fact that this guy says they're bad for me, there is definitely a reason why America eats 400 trillion every year. Yeah, that's right. There's more Big Macs produced every year than there are slices of available cow in the world. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The other highlight was sitting in Brookstone with Louie and deciding, simultaneously, that we would buy the same gift for one another. I'll show you what we got sometime, but first I have to wrap his.

Today's as good a day as any to make a semi-bi-monthly report on how my stocks are doing. As you might or might not remember me gloating about in a blanket of smug, I threw about $3800 in the stock market back in late July. I'm happy to report that both of my investments (the 2900 in mutual funds and the 900 in Raytheon) are both up over 10% since July, meaning I have netted about $450 in five months.

Yeah, put that in your pipe and smoke it. I'm making money for no good reason.

The problem is that now the money is tied up in stocks and funds. When I first threw my bowler into the market I was under the impression that in, oh, six months or so I would pull the money back out and reap a nice little $500. But that's totally not the plan anymore. I don't want it to stop growing. In fact, after I make a little more scratch this upcoming summer I'm sure I'll be throwing even more money.

I guess in my quest of greed and my get rich quick mentality, I actually did a good thing for myself and started planning for my future. If I could get out of college like, a few thousand dollars richer through the market it would be a good way towards paying my mom off for all this tuition nonsense. Or buying an apartment. The possibilities are endless, but it's so damn easy that I don't understand why everyone else doesn't invest their money.

On the other hand, though, I'm never going to learn my lesson about putting things off until the last minute. I have an economics exam tomorrow that will probably pull my pants over my head, but that's not the worst part of it. The worst part is that I have three other exams to take on my own time.

See, Rice has these wonderful things called take-home exams where the administration & co. trusts us to take our exams home, find a quiet spot, and spend the time allotted without using outside sources. It's a pretty noble concept but it sure as hell doesn't help me. I need things scheduled for me.

I haven't been studying for anything all week. Criminology isn't going to be hard and multi is open book and open note for (get this) four hours. But I should have been studying for intro to EE this entire time because that test is going to fuck me in ways banned by the Geneva convention-- a real waterboard of a test.

So I'm fucked. But at least I have great ways to waste my time. If you don't already have one, I suggest everyone reading this sign up for last.fm and start using it to track their tunes. It's seriously my favorite way to waste time besides Facebook. So yeah, get last.fm then FRIEND ME. I need more people to track using this thing, and you all need to realize how great my taste in music is.