Of course I spoke too soon -- both of my trains were slow, and then I was in a scary elevator that not only didn't stop, the door almost didn't open when we got back to 1. Another woman in there with me forced it open while we held onto "Door open." Yuck.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEARA AND JEN!

Ugh, Tom. I'm glad it was not so bad.

Short day for us today--YAY.

I cannot describe how much I wish I had taken today off or something, mostly because it's a short day! Is it even worthwhile to have come in? Barely.

At least the free newspaper guy appreciates me.

How many of you guys have life insurance outside of work? Especially if you don't have kids? It occurred to me I've never had a constant one. Can't work out if there's a point.

I do, ita. But it's mostly for the kids (or for replacing childcare/housework, etc. in case I'm gone). If you think there will be expenses that you don't want your family to be responsible for, term life insurance is dirt cheap and good for that purpose. Whole life insurance is much more expensive but can be used as an investment vehicle.

Some finacial advisers (Ramsey, included, I think) say if you're shopping for insurance, skip the whole life and go with term. You can invest the difference yourself. But honestly, the company I bought my policy from has a 7-8% of steady returns for a long time. At that rate, it's a decent dividend which will start paying the premiums for me after five years or so. If the policy isn't needed, when we retire, I can always cash out and take the money that has built up.

I have a mixture--a whole life policy and a term life policy. I've skipped paying for some extras (like a monthly fee for a disability waiver--it converts the term insurance to whole life and pays the premium if I become disabled). There are lots of bells and whistles that the insurance compnany will try to sell you--but they are basically money makers for them, not you.

It certainly doesn't hurt to talk to a representative and see what you think you need (NOT what THEY think you need because to insurance salesmen, you're always underinsured).

I'm assuming today is short for me. It would be nice. I really have to go to the ER. I'm not sure how much I slept. And now I have to head off to breakfast with someone I'd meant to see all summer and today is the last possible day to do that.

It's earlier than I want it to be, even though I set the time.

Happy birthdays meara and JenK!

Thanks, Cash!

Cheerios:

Happy Birthday, meara and Jen!

And I'm officially an Obamazon now.

Obama said in his speech that he wanted the US to be independent of MIDDLE EASTERN oil in 10 years.

That doesn't really make sense to me, oil is fungible. I suppose we could cut our oil dependency enough to make us less impacted by OPEC policy.

I suppose we could cut our oil dependency enough to make us less impacted by OPEC policy.

Well, I think that's the gist of it really. It's not that we'll stop using oil, or even that we'll stop using Middle Eastern oil. It's that, if consumption is scaled back and other fuels improved and in more use, shocks in the world oil market won't affect us as severely, OPEC production manipulation won't be such a big deal, etc. So we'll be able to a) turn to other sources if the Middle East gets untenable or b) absorb the cost impact with less pain.

All of which has the bottom line impact of making us less hostage to the politics of the region, so that we could do crazy things like acknowledge in public that the Saudis are maybe not our bestest friends forever, etc.

Not to mention just being a good thing all around on a host of other levels.

I'm hoping the candidates will address science at some point. I expect that Obama will have a better science policy, but I'd like to hear something about it. Being a bit of a high energy physics nut, I've been very dismayed at how the U.S. is totally squandering leadership in that area. We've pulled out of the ITER fusion project in France. We have nothing to compare with Japan's planned DEMO fusion reactor (an actual commercial fusion reactor albeit an experimental prototype). CERN's LHC collider has moved to focus of particle physics to Europe. The Tevatron collider is being defunded, and I believe we have pulled out of the ILC linear collider project that was going to be built here. High energy physics is now all about Europe and Japan and that is where the great scientific minds will gather and the additional technology surrounding these projects will be developed.

A bit of a pet subject of mine that is probably far off the radar of the average American I admit.

I think the key word is "independent," in that we could do without it if we need to.

I have term insurance just to make sure my family wouldn't end up out of pocket if something happened to me. Term is very cheap. It wouldn't be cheap for me now, mind you, but I got it when I was relatively healthy.