March 18, 2008 - Today was a pretty good day. I worked in the office in the first half of the day, then went on the road visiting ALF's in the afternoon. In the evening Ellie "cooked" french bread pizzas for dinner, and then she went to Brenda's house. While she was out I did some shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond for some new pillows, and then went to Lowes for some plants for our yard. I'm pretty certain that the dogs are going to eat the ones I put in pots by the back door, but I'm willing to give them a chance since it has been a while since we've had any new plants in the back yard. Today was another interesting day on the stock market. Visa had its IPO. There was lots of speculation about if it was priced too high, and lots of comparisons to MasterCard which made its IPO less than 2 years ago. I was so close to selling my ETFC for some V but the timing didn't work out so I ended up holding. It was a generally good decision anyway because V didn't do much today. It would have been nice to get out of ETFC, though, because it ended up going down. It's amazing how much volatility there has been in the stock market lately. If only it were easy to start up a new stock trading company and make money on the transactions rather than trying to make money on the actual trades. My cousin Mike and I talk about this all the time. The person who owns the building makes more money than the guy trying to start a new business. If you own the underlying method that people are required to use for their business, you make money every month regardless of whether the business makes a lot or a little money. The only thing you have to worry about is making sure that the businesses that rent from you are going to stick around for a while so you don't have occupancy issues. I know I'm over simplifying, but the bottom line is that there are a million ways to make money, I just need to grab onto one and ride it.