Wow the end of the year is upon us. I am using the artificial startline of the New Year to start a bunch of new stuff, which should be interesting. Among my goals:

Focused Poker: Short sessions, all NL Hold' Em ring games, starting at $1-$2. Strict stop loss of a half buy-in, and usually stopping once I double up or after 30 minutes. My goal is play 300 sessions with an average of $50 per session minimum for a total of $15,000. If I am on schedule, however, I will increase my goals since I'll be moving up limits at $4,000 and probably $8,000.

Another Year of Stock Gains: It looks like we'll end up right at about 40% for the year. Last year we did 60%. I'll aim for another year over 30%, but I don't think I'll be following a daily investment strategy. I hate to disappoint my many followers, but I don't think the Daily Del Ru will be a daily event, either. I do plan to post my investment thoughts, actions, and results, though.

Working Out: My workout goal is to average 1 hour per day for the entire year. This will be a major shock to my schedule, as I am very bad about missing workouts. But I plan to establish the habit and make it part of my daily routine. I want to add a lot of mass. I saw Christian Bale in Batman Begins the other day - very impressive. I also know that he used to be not much bigger than me. I probably can't go that far in one year, but there is ample room for improvement.

Home Finances: We still carry a lot of credit card debt from our travels, home purchase, and from starting Chabah. This year, my 401K loan will be paid off, and I am not taking another one. We are cleared to refinance if necessary. So, the goal is to eliminate all credit card debt. We did it two years ago, then bought this house and did a bunch of stuff and got buried. Time to dig out again.

Chabah: We have over $20k of shoe inventory - time to sell some shoes. We'll be advertising much earlier this year, as the website wasn't up until June last year. Selling from April to September we should be able to sell an average of 5 per day, or 900 pair. If things go well, we could get up to 10 per day for 1800 or nearly $40,000. We would need to restock a couple times, but that's not a problem and we would be clearly profitable.

That's a lot to do, but I think it all makes sense. Our home life is good and Artemis is growing better than I could have ever imagined. Yin is at home, holding down the fort, providing superb care for Artemis, super tasty and healthy meals, and generally being the love of my life. If you couldn't tell, I'm extremely optimistic (shocker!). 2006 will be a great year for Casa Del Russo and hopefully all my readers and, with any luck, the country as a whole.

Happy New Year!

PS: In a perfect world I would also learn a language and how to play piano or guitar - but that's not very realistic given the other goals. If the other goals are all met, I'll have ample time for music and languages in the future.

More PS: For some healthy perspective on our military, security, and political status, check out Victor Davis Hanson's article The Plague of Success.

Christmas was a lot of fun, hanging with Artemis and Yin and just playing with our new toys. My dad and Barbara came over to open presents, which was nice. I try to recreate my childhood Christmases, and they followed the pattern of a group gift opening followed by some play time and a good meal. We don't wake up early (yet), and we do the meals a little differently now (dry-aged strip steaks and Cabernet), but the structure and feeling are the same. Once we add another child and Artemis starts to vibrate with excitement we'll have it down.

My gifts included a new pair of Johnston & Murphy shoes (sweet), some wool socks from the Gap (sweet), and some Clinique products to keep be beautiful. Yin's gifts included a new camera bag, a memory card, some pink stuff (sweet), and a super duper lens for her camera (sweet). Artemis got a BUNCH of stuff, lots of toys and some money (invested in Apple stock, of course).

Speaking of money - I still get monetary gifts from some of my relatives, and it makes me feel a bit funny. I think the rule should be, you only get money if you are less than 1/2 the age of the relative. That way, it's still fine for my grandparents and "great" aunts and uncles to give me some, but I just feel a bit old to be getting checks from people in my dad's generation. I mean, I appreciate it, but I feel kind of funny about it since I am no longer a kid. Rather than refuse a gift (which I think is rude) or do an even more awkward equal-value exchange (I can't get gifts for all my relatives!), we're passing along such gifts to Artemis. Since she qualifies under the 1/2 age rule, it's a good solution.

In other news, I won BOTH of my fantasy football leagues. This is a great accomplishment! I am SO PROUD of myself. I have to be, as literally nobody else gives a damn :) So, for $200 in entry fees, I won about $1200. I made deals worth $220, so that's about $1000. Since I run a league, I already had collected (and spent!) most of that money, so I'll actually be receiving about $400 after making payouts to other winners, etc. That money, we're sending to Thailand to pay for Yin's grandmothers dialysis treatment. So, it's going to a good cause. We're also buying a nice bottle of wine ($25 round these parts) in celebration, so that's two good causes!

Whew, major update. And I didn't even ge to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Napoleon Dynamite, TRY! by the John Mayer Trio, or the Greenbelt World Poker Championship! Looks like I have some catching up to do.

And another one bites the dust - CEDC stopped out at my ratcheted-up price of 40.15. Oh well, so much for my "Decade Performers" strategy - all we have left is PMTI. I used the proceeds from CEDC to...wait for it...buy more AAPL. Why not? They're the best performer for me, and I love their holiday sales of iPods. So, my account is back over 30% Apple - shocker there.

Positions:

AAPL, Price: $73.35, Stop: $68
YHOO, Price: $40.63, Stop: $38
PMTI, Price: $38.27, Stop: 35.96
GOOG, Price: $430.93, Stop: 415
SBUX, Price: $30.56, Stop: 29.90

Year-to-date Performance: +41.5%
Artemis YTD Performance: +50% (including Christmas contributions)