Another Crazy Couple of Days

It's been a busy few days. On Saturday, Unknown Son and I took part in his Cub Scout troop's annual popcorn sale outside a local supermarket.

I gave him a little coaching on the way over (i.e. make sure you ask everyone that comes out, look them in the eye, don;t take the first "no" without asking again, and so on). The kid absolutely hung the moon. He sold about 50% more than the other two kids that were there, and the grownups standing around really got a kick out of watching him. It's hard to say no to a determined, charming, and extremely cute 9-year old (of course, I'm completely unbiased).

Sunday was mostly used for prepping for my week's classes (I teach MBAs on Monday evenings, and other classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays). Unfortunately, U.S. started getting a fever Sunday night. We took him into the oncology clinic Monday morning (he had a regular appointment set up anyway), and they sent us home, feeling that it was likely a virus of some kind (no evidence of anything on his scans, and no signs of a bacterial infection). But, by the time I got out of class at 9:00, his fever was spiking to 103.

The doctor didn't seem to feel like he needed to come back in (it's about a 30 mile drive), so we gave him Tylenol, Motrin, and a cool bath, and his fever eventually broke around 1:00 in the morning.

So, I guess I start the week sleep deprived. What else is new.

ed: I had previously written that Unknown Son was 19. That's only in his ability to argue. Chronologically, he's only 9.

Last Minute Fun With The CFA Exam

T'was the night before the CFA exam, and of course the Unknown Son starts complaining loudly of severe stomach pains. Of course, this ended all possibility of any last-minute reviewing. He started vomiting repeatedly, and ended up sleeping in our bed with the Unknown Wife, and I went to the guest bedroom (no way I'd get to sleep with a sick kid in the bed).

I got up early the next morning and went to the exam. Just before heading in, I called home to find out that unknown Son was on his way to the hospital. He was admitted in the morning after tests revealed elevated liver enzymes, which typically indicates some kind of viral thingy in the liver.

Despite concerns in the back of my mind about Unknown Son, the morning session of the exam went surprisingly well - or at least I thought so. The afternoon session, on the other hand, was a different story. The best way to describe it is "They didn't call, they didn't send flowers, and they didn't respect me in the morning." So, I have no clue if I made it over the hump or not.

Ah well, done is done. I headed home, changed, and went to the hospital to relieve U.W. and sleep overnight in Unknown Son's room. At least, I slept from 12 until about 6 - he was more interested in reading me sections of his latest book selection (Diary of A Wimpy Kid). His liver results were more normal today, so he got discharged this afternoon, with follow-up tests for later in the week.

With this behind me, I'm eager to put the books down and get back to research tomorrow. For tonight, it's SLEEP (I already took at two-hour nap this afternoon, and should get a good 10-12 hours in).

A Mister Mom Weekend

The Unknown Wife has flown the coop for a Girl's Weekend in Chicago. She left Friday to meet up with four of the friends - she's kept in touch with them since we left the the small college town we lived in back when I was just out of grad school.

The last two days the Unknown Kids and I have been biking, watching cartoons, and eating ice cream. Tomorrow, it's the annual Memorial Day parade and the zoo, followed by a quick trip to the airport to pick up Mom.


Somewhere in there, I even got some CFA studying done.

Boys Day and Night

The Unknown Daughter is going for a sleepover tonight at her cousin's house (about 80 milkes away in an adjoining state). So, Unknown Wife is using the opportunity to take an overnight herself at her sister's house (she lives near where the sleepover is, and this'll save an additional trip).

That means Unknown Son and I temporarily have the house to ourselves. He gets to watch Pink Panther Cartoons most of the day (he got the 6 Disk complete set for Christmas) while I spend my time going over material for CFA level 2. I teach in a prep program starting in about four weeks, and I'm taking the exam myself this June (assuming I passed level 1), so it's a good opportunity to get a bit ahead.

He's been having intermittent fevers (on one day, off the next) for the last couple of weeks. We know he had pneumonia, and is almost done with his antibiotics. But maybe he caught another virus. Either way, he's content to sit around and watch classic cartoons.

I'll probably watch some too.

Plus, this means I get to watch the buildup tonight to tomorrow night's big UFC fight between Hughes and St. Pierre.

Head Wounds Are Always Bleeders

Growing up in a family of boys, you quickly learn that any cut above the neck (no matter how small) bleeds far out of proportion to the seriousness of the injury. After all, there're a lot of blood vessels in the skin in the face and head. Yesterday, Unknown Son and Unknown Daughter found out too.

Since it snowed two days ago, he went sliding with the neighborhood kids, and promptly slipped on an icy patch - right into a classic face plant. So, Unknown Daughter comes running in, and when I look out the bedroom window, I see U.S. lying on the snow on his back with a large red spot staining the snow beside him and several kids standing over him with worried looks.

I ran out with a handful of paper towels (rule #1 - always swab the blood away to see how bad it really is before panicking). Luckily, it was only a bloody nose. So, I picked up U.S. and carried him back to the house (he could walk, but if you can't get carried when you're covered in blood, you can't get caried any time), and we watched Tom and Jerry for a while. Bloody noses DO go better with slapstick old-school cartoons.

He was extremley impressed a few hours later when he pulled a huge clotted bloody booger from his nose. Of course, he just HAD to show it to Unknown Wife and Unknown Daughter - he is a boy child, after all.

More snow today - just spent an hour shoveling it off the driveway and drove to Dunkin Donuts for the traditional Unknown Household Snow Day Breakfast: powdered sugar for the kids and chocolate covered for She Who Must Be Obeyed. As for me, I'm not picky as long as I have coffee to wash it down with.

Winter wonder Land - feh.

More Good News On the Cancer Front

As I've mentioned previously, the Unknown Son was diagnosed with neuroblastoma shortly after his 4th birthday. He was successfully treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City, and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We believe he went into remission about 3 1/2 years ago (see this previous post for more details, and an explanation why we can't say exactly when). But, since there was still one spot on his leg that showed up faintly on the scans , we continued to go to back to CHOP for quarterly checkups. We were fairly sure that it was a ganglioneuroma rather than active cancer, but we still had to play it safe.

We just got back from the latest checkup. This time around, U.S. had his first totally clean scan. So, we can be a lot more confident now that he's in remission.

Nice to get an early Christmas present, eh?

Happy Thanksgiving

We're off to the Unknown Wife's sister-in-law's house for the family get together - it's great finally being close enough to spend the holidays with family without having to drive 300 miles.

I should emerge from my turkey and football-induced stupor tomorrow. Until then, here's wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

I Made It Through The Week!

I survived the week. And everything went well:

• My trip to my former school went well - my student successfully defended her proposal, and won't have to do much more empirical work to finish her dissertation. She does, however, have to do a better job of fleshing out her literature review, hypothesis development, and discussion of results.
• The class I taught on SAS programming was well received - the students were pretty engaged, asked a lot of questions, and seemed to get a lot out of the material.
• My coauthor and I did a lot of work on our paper.
• I survived the CFA class - it's the same modules I taught last year, so there was minimal prep.
• My graduate assistant is working on the project I assigned (the one he was trying to duck earlier). He seems to have actually made some progress.
• My students blew off class again today. So, those who showed up got another bonus. And in addition, they actually got to see the problem set that's due on Wednesday. And since there's no class on Monday, those that were absent pretty much gave themselves an auto-screwing.
  

And last but not least, I just got another revise-and-resubmit from a journal today. Now it's off to the Unknown Wife's Homecoming at her former school. We're spending a couple of days with a college friend of hers and touring the Big City on the way back.

A Crazy Week Ahead

It's yet another week where I've bitten off more than I should have:

• I taught my regular classes yesterday (Monday). After my last class I met with my grad assistant to give him his first assignment for the semester. I'm starting a project on the effect of dividends on firm risk, and he's putting together the initial data set. So, I spent an hour with him going over the steps needed to be done, the layout of the CRSP data files, and a few SAS tips he might need to know (or research further). Right after that, another grad student stopped by with some "simple" questions on how SAS handles date variables (ironically, some of the same stuff I'd just gone over with grad student #1). One hour later, I finished with him and left to meet Unknown Family at Unknown Son's new dojo (karate school) for his first "group" class. He looked pretty sharp in his new gi (the uniform). But it was all I could do to keep from laughing as he repeatedly spaced out in class and started posing in front of the mirror (I think he's still more excited about the idea of learning Karate than he is about the actual learning itself). He's also completely smitten with the 12 year-old brown belt who was helping out with the class (I guess he didn't realize that it's always dangerous to go after older women who can kick your butt).
  
• Once home, Unknown Wife went off to a parent's meeting for Unknown Daughter's Girl Scout troop while Unknown Son and I wrestled with his homework. After Unknown Wife got back and we got the kids to sleep, I ended up writing SAS code until midnight to put together a small data set for a short tutorial I'm giving to doctoral students at my former school (more on that in a minute)
• Today I take the train to the nearby big city for the day. I'll spend the day in the library at a large research university gathering data (they have resources we don't, but graciously allow access to nearby faculty), and then teach a CFA prep class in the evening. After all this is done, I'll end up back at the Unknown House at around 11.
• Wednesday, I teach classes until about 2, and then immediately rush to the airport for a short (1 hour) plane ride back to my old haunts. After landing, I'll work until the wee hours Wednesday night on a paper with a colleague (I'm staying at her family's place).
• Thursday morning, I attend the dissertation proposal defense of one of my former students (I sit on her committee, and the colleague mentioned previously is her dissertation chair). Then in the afternoon, I give a two-hour tutorialto the grad students at the same school on basic SAS procedures used often in financial/accounting research .
  
• After that, it's back on the plane and back to the Unknown Household for a few hours sleep.
  
• Friday, it's back in the classroom, followed by a meeting with my grad assistant to check on his progress (he's tried to weasel out of a previous assignment, s0 this time he gets tight controls put on him - after all, if a corporate finance guy doesn't understand agency problems, he doesn't understand much).
  

Somehow, in the midst of all this I have to put up slides for the following week's classes and put together a problem set for my investments class (they have an exam next week, and I always give a pretty tough problem set the week prior to the exam as a form of "enforced" practice). And then there are the matters of the revise and resubmit that's sitting on my desk and the new project that my coauthors are breathing down my neck on.

But griping aside, I'll get it all done somehow. Even with all this, academia is still the best job in the world. I should know - I've had a number of "real" jobs, and there's no comparison.

A Good Day, and A Good Ride

This was a good day - I went into the office around 11:00, finished a paper to send to a conference and then finished my PowerPoint slides for the next week's classes.

Then I went on a 22 mile bike ride. It was a bit windy, but other than that,conditions were just about perfect for a long ride - mostly flat terrain with just enough gently rolling hills to make it interesting, and a temperature of 64 degrees. It was so nice that I actually ended up holding a faster pace for the 22 mile ride than I usually do for my 16 mile course. I even passed one of my students on the road. I wonder how he felt getting smoked by a teacher more than twice his age?

Hey - I may be carrying about 15 extra pounds, but my legs and cardio are both in pretty good shape. O.K - enough bragging...

Now, it's time to read a bit to the Unknown Son before bed (Unknown Daughter is at a friend's house). The kids just watched Lemony Snicketts, so now he's reading the books (he just got the first two from the library). I particularly like them because they use some pretty complicated words, but follow them with an explanation in an aside). So, they're great not just for the story itself but also for feeding the lad's inner nerd.

Posting Will Be Light

Posting has been light for the last few days (and probably will be for the next few) because of a death in the family. One of my nephews (my younger sister's son) passed away this last week. He was diagnosed at age 4 with neuroblastoma, a relatively rare form of childhood cancer (there are only a couple hundred cases a year in the U.S.). He went into remission after a year or so, but the cancer recurred about 2 1/2 years ago. He put up an amazing fight, but unfortunately, there is no known cure for recurrent neuroblastoma.

So, we will be at the wake and funeral for the next couple of days. Please keep my sister's family in your prayers as they go through this terrible time.

A Waterlogged Family Weekend

T'was a good weekend at the Unknown Household. Saturday, the Unknown Wife and I celebrated our 17th anniversary. It's kind of humbling to realize that our friend's daughter (who just graduated high school) wasn't born until about a month after our wedding.

Sunday we went to a nearby place that has a small hill for skiing & snowboarding during the winter. But during the summer, they have a water slide that's about 5 stories high (built onto the side of the hill) with some great twists and turns. Our kids must have gone down it about 25 times. Since walking up the hill got to be a bit much for the Unknown Wife and I after about the 15th time, we mostly waited at the bottom near the pool and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the kids coming down. We could always tell when it was our daughtergoing down the slide, because her screams made a nice Doppler effect as she got closer.

By this morning, I still had about half the water in my sinuses, and a nice sunburn on the top of my head (it seems like the "ground cover" has gotten a bit sparse). But at least my legs felt o.k - all that biking I've been doing this summer seems to have been good for something.

Wednesday (Birthday) Link Dump

Sometimes having kids can be hazardous to your health. Today's my 49th birthday (in another year I suppose I'll start getting those AARP mailings), and I faked being asleep this morning when the kids came up to wake me up. So, the 8 year-old Unknown Son puts his mouth to my ear and shouts "WAKE UP". This was followed by the classic:

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
You Look Like a Monkey
And Smell Like A Zoo

Now that my ears have stopped ringing, I figure it's time for a Link Dump (it's been a while, and I've been taking a bit of a slacker's vacation from blogging). So, in no particular order:

Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture has been finding and posting some pretty cool visuals (thanks - they'll be used in my classes this fall) on the slicing and dicing of mortgages, here and here.

Businessweek.com highlights a new study by Westphal and Clement that finds that top executives try to temper analysts negative reports by currying favor. Not surprising, really, but still a good read.

According to a study by Christopher Clifford of Arizona State university, large block (> 5%) investments by activist hedge funds result in significant operational improvements by target companies.

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost lists and explains Five Logical Fallacies
in part 3 of his "How Not To Argue" series.

Here's a very cool YouTube video of a guy repairing high voltage wires from a helicopter. I'll take my current job, thank you very much.

The Wall Street Journal (online subscription required) reports on the sub-par performance of long-short and market-neutral funds.

Enough blogging - back to work.

Lyme Disease

The Unknown Daughter had a rash for the last few days. Today we went to the doctor, and it turns out she has Lyme Disease. For those of you in parts of the country where it's not common, it's a spirochete that gets spread by deer tick, and usually manifests as a bulls eye-shaped rash.

If it's not caught early, it can result in a lot of serious and long-ranging problems. But luckily, we did catch it, so it merely means a three-week course of amoxicillin.

But I can;'t let this go without a link to this.

Still On The Road

So far we're 7 days into a 12 day road trip, and it's been pretty good:

• We've been to the Unknown Wife's family reunion in West Virginia (Unknown Son and Unknown Daughter both lost front teeth this week, so we told U.W's relatives it was so they'd fit in better in WV).
• Following the reunion, we drove an additional 600 miles or so further south to visit friends we haven't seen in 4 years. While there, Unknown Wife visited quite a few old friends during the day. Since most of my friends from that time are either academics or work during the day, I spent the days at my alma mater. They were nice enough to give me an empty office to hang out in (thanks, guys), and I got a lot done -- finished edits on one paper (it's now back to my coauthors) and sent another paper out to a journal (it got rejected a month ago, and it just needed a few minor changes). I also saw a number of folks I hadn't seen in person for four years.
  
• Last night, we visited some friends and while the adults hung out, our friends' kids treated ours to a viewing of The Princess Bride. Unknown Son is now quoting Inigo Montoya, and Unknown Daughter keeps mentioning the Rodents of Unusual Size.
• We're now 600 miles back up the East Coast. Tomorrow we drive a few more hours to stay with an old neighbor (Unknown Wife's best friend from that time) and to visit friends from our old church. We'll stay there until Sunday afternoon when we head back home.
  

I may actually post some stuff tomorrow, but we'll see.

Leaving on Vacation

The Unknown Family is going on the road. We're leaving tomorrow and driving to West Virginia for a family get together, then to Atlanta for a few days, then to Baltimore, and then home. So, between tomorrow and the 22nd, we'll put in some 2500 miles of traveling. I'll try to update a few times, but blogging will be spotty at best (at least one of the places we'll be at has no wireless).

Since I'm not bringing my bike, I put in a longer ride today - my first 25 miler in a couple of years. It went pretty well - I was averaging almost 16 miles an hour over a pretty hilly course until I turned onto a road that was in the process of being paved. Somehow, bike tires don't roll nearly as well with a quarter inch of tar and dirt around them (imagine that). So, it's off to the bike shop for some new tires and a thorough cleaning and tune up (if the tires look like that, I can only imagine what's in the gears). The shop said I'll have my bike back on the 22nd, which works out just fine. But for now, my legs are surely beat.

update: I guess I went harder than I thought - going up stairs is no fun!

Some July 4th Links

We're off to a family cookout, so no heavy posting today. But here are a few links for your Independence Day reading:

The Declaration of Independence most people have never read it through. So take a few minutes and do so before going about your day.

Our Sacred Honor - a piece that recounts what happened to the signers of the Declaration

The Pledge of Allegiance - 'nuff said.

The Star Spangled Banner - the words to our national anthem and a video of Whitney Houston singing it.

Now go grill some meat, light some fireworks, and have a happy 4th of July.

The Pursuit of Happyness

At the Unknown Household we've been enjoying our subscription to Blockbuster's DVD-by-mail service. Last night we saw The Pursuit of Happyness (appropriately enough, what with today being the 4th of July). I'd rate it the best movie I've seen in the past year, and one of the top ten on my all time favorites. The themes of the movie really hit home - it's a classic Horation Alger story. I always like movies about "stand-up" guys, and Wil Smith did a phenomenal job in portraying a man who rolled the dice with everything he had to work towards a better life. And the character he played (the real-life Chris Gardner), was determined to be there for his son even through it all.

I'd definitely recommend it - it's a good pick for the whole family, and the lessons it shows are worth repeating to any children in the vicinity.

There's No Free Lunch

And as a corporate person would say, reorganizations are extremely costly...

Compliments of PHDcomics.com

So far, seventeen years and no "reorganizations" in the Unknown Household.

Not a Smart Move

For those of you who are A) writing a thesis, B) married, and C) want to stay that way, here's a good tip for your dissertation:



Compliments of phdcomics.com.