February 1st and Brittany WHO?

Happy Friday Lovely Ladies (and gents ha)

I swear yesterday and today I worked 11 hour days both days, so exhausted!
I didn't even know today was Friday until around 10am today! All my days have just run together this week!

With it being February 1st ... before I get started with today's post I wanted to share something I saw on Pinterest that Chris and I actually did for the kids last year ...

I think I shared this last year ... but starting on the first day of February and going until Valentine's Day, I had cut out all different color hearts on just card stock paper from Hobby Lobby, and each day we wrote each of the kids a little note or kind words, and taped it to their bedroom door! Some days Chris wrote one, some days I wrote them ... we took turns and wrote individual things we love about the kids. They loved reading them :) and we loved writing them.

So thought I would pass along for ya'll also!

Don't have kids? 

Do some for your husband, or boyfriend!!! 

Who am I kidding, I would do them for Frankie if he could read ha

Love his sweet face <3

Ok, so last night was the FIFTH TIME that someone said I look like an actress that I had never even heard of before who I have now of course googled and looked at all her pictures. 

Have you heard of Brittany Snow?

Last week when I was at TJ Maxx I was checking out and these people were staring at me majorly ... to the point I was like do I have something on my face? Did I accidentally knock something over? Are they readers of the blog and think I look familiar? Or the worst ... did I sell them a house and forget who they are (my worst nightmare ha)???? No .. the answer was none of those. As I walk out the door they come up to me and say "Are you an actress?" to which I am trying to not laugh in their face, because let's face it, an actress I am most definitely not ha. I of course said no, and they said "We thought you were Brittany Snow, the actress!" 

I was so busy I didn't even think twice about it. Just smiled and said "Oh ok thank you I guess!" lol ???

A couple more people mentioned it and I ignored it. 

Yesterday I was getting my hair done and another sweet girl said it as soon as I walked in ... "You look just like Brittany Snow, oh my gosh!" ... 

Then last night, I put a pic on Instgram and someone said it AGAIN! 

So enough is enough...

Ok ya'll ... so who the H is Brittany Snow? 

She is 26 years old (I am 3 years her elder ha) ... 5'4" ... I am 5'3" on a good day lol ... 

She's been in several movies, sadly to say none of which I think I have seen but I am not a huge movie guru so that doens't mean a thing! 

What do you think?

I mean I guess I can kinda see a resemblance ... ha when I look at our pictures side by side of course.

Chris says he kinda sees it...

Kelly, my BFF,

says she sees it a little but not really hahaha... she is just so sweet she says she sees more Blake Lively which I think is the most hysterical thing I have ever heard ... love you Kel lol ;) <3 

Anywho,

I will take it as a compliment because regardless of if little miss Brittany and I look alike, I do think she is gorgeous and hope to look as pretty as she does! :) True story. 

That's all I've got for today friends! 

Busy day again tomorrow but hoping to finish a little early so I can get some things done around our house. 

This 9 degree weather, I told you it was coming :(  is really cramping my style ... showing houses in the freezing cold is no fun, take my word for it! 

Have a great weekend!!

XO,

Will smart phones be the end of built in automobile NAV systems?

Four years ago, my wife bought me car for my birthday.  She reasoned that as a newly minted Angeleno, I would be spending more time in my car than ever before (she was right), and so that I might tire of my slightly beat-up Corolla.

She got me a Honda Accord with all the trimmings, including a NAV device, which I enjoyed very much.  And four years later, I continue to love the car.  But I recently downloaded WAZE to my phone.  WAZE provides crowd-sourced information on traffic, and allows one to find the fastest route from place to place with remarkable dependability.  It provides turn by turn directions, but will change the directions on the fly when traffic conditions change, a regular feature of life in LA.

WAZE is, by the way, a free app.  It also takes us one small step closer to self-driving cars.  By guess is the built-in NAV system, as it currently exists, is a dinosaur.

Bankers and tail events

I participated in a panel last note hosted by the German American Business Association.  Overall, I had a nice time.

But before the panel, a managing director from a very large bank gave a speech, and he was trying to make some sort of point about tail risk.  The example he used is going to jail in Monopoly, an event for which the average probability is four percent.

Maybe I am being picky here, but two points.  One: four percent is not that far out on the tail.  I suppose it would be good if banks tried to avoid things that happen four percent of the time or less.  Two, and more important: random events in Monopoly come from a finite state space, so risk can be completely characterized.  We know with a great deal of certainly the probabilities of particular events happening in Monopoly.

Banks have to deal with uncertainty--random shocks that are not easily characterized by well defined distributions of outcomes.  The Monopoly metaphor is thus a bad one.

Constuction Spending: December 2012

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released their latest read of construction spending showing notably better results in December with total construction spending, the residential component and the non-residential component improving since November. 

On a month-to-month basis, total residential spending increased 2.16% from November climbing 24.99% above the level seen in December 2011 while still remaining a whopping 54.44% below the peak level seen in 2006.

Single family construction spending climbed 0.77% since November rising 30.75% since December 2011 but remained a whopping 69.22% below it's peak in 2006.

Non-residential construction spending increased 1.83% since November climbing 5.04% above the level seen in December 2011 and remained a whopping 28.05% below the peak level reached in October 2008.

The following charts (click for larger dynamic versions) show private residential construction spending, private residential single family construction spending and private non-residential construction spending broken out and plotted since 1993 along with the year-over-year, month-to-month and peak percent change to each since 1994 and 2000 – 2005.

Envisioning Employment: Employment Situation January 2013

Today’s Employment Situation Report indicated that in January, net non-farm payrolls increased adding 157,000 jobs overall with the private non-farm payrolls sub-component adding 166,000 jobs while the civilian unemployment rate increased slightly to 7.9% over the same period.

Net private sector jobs increased 0.15% since last month climbing 1.89% above the level seen a year ago but remained 2.29% below the peak level of employment seen in December 2007.

Recovery-less Recovery: Unemployment Duration January 2013

Today's employment situation report showed that conditions for the long term unemployed improved notably in January while still remaining distressed by historic standards.

Workers unemployed 27 weeks or more decreased to 4.708 million or 38.1% of all unemployed workers (the lowest level seen since November 2009) while the median term of unemployment dropped to 16.0 weeks and the average stay on unemployment declined to 35.3 weeks.

Looking at the charts below (click for super interactive versions) you can see that today’s sorry situation far exceeds even the conditions seen during the double-dip recessionary period of the early 1980s, long considered by economists to be the worst period of unemployment since the Great Depression.

On The Margin: Total Unemployment January 2013

Today’s Employment Situation report showed that in January “total unemployment” including all marginally attached workers went flat at 14.4% while the traditionally reported unemployment rate also ticked up slightly to 7.9%.

The traditional unemployment rate is calculated from the monthly household survey results using a fairly explicit definition of “unemployed” (essentially unemployed and currently looking for full time employment) leaving many workers to be considered effectively “on the margin” either employed in part time work when full time is preferred or simply unemployed and no longer looking for work.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics considers “marginally attached” workers (including discouraged workers) and persons who have settled for part time employment to be “underutilized” labor.

The broadest view of unemployment would include both traditionally unemployed workers and all other underutilized workers.

To calculate the “total” rate of unemployment we would simply use this larger group rather than the smaller and more restrictive “unemployed” group used in the traditional unemployment rate calculation.