Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Greetings!

Picked up a piece of American Greetings (AM) at 21.97. The company has a number of domestic greeting card brands (Papyrus, Carlton Cards, ...) as well as a few internet-based brands (BlueMountain, Egreetings, ...). What got me interested was the 2.5% dividend yield and what looks to be reasonably good value on an earnings basis. The company announces its quarterly earnings tomorrow, and I figured I'd pick some up ahead of it. Adding this to the long-term portfolio... it's not intended to be a pure trade.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Quick Update

Purely a trade following yesterday's sell-off... grabbed a block of Form Factor (FORM) at 8.90. Will exit on any significant pop. The company is sitting on a lot of cash without debt, so despite its problems, I am willing to sit on it for a little bit. Time will tell if this is a boneheaded trade or not.

Friday, December 10, 2010

All Swell That End Swell

Earlier this week, I had an excellent dinner at Swell in San Francisco. It's a really small place, but it had nice ambience, and more importantly, I thought the food was really good. I don't think we would have found this place on our own... we ended up there as Open Table had spotlighted the restaurant. For $25, we obtained a $50 credit, which definitely made the meal seem really inexpensive.

The food was great in my opinion. I'm too lazy to write more about it, but everything we had was really good. I have to say that I wasn't particularly fond of the ginger flavored crème brulée, though I thought the miso flavored and espresso flavored versions were quite good. Anyway, it's a seafood restaurant, and I believe it is worth checking out. It is unlikely to disappoint in my opinion.

Here are some pics from our meal... about half the menu was raw and the other half was cooked. We basically followed that ratio, and ordered two raw dishes and two cooked dishes. This was followed up with a set of three differently flavored crème brulée servings.

Scallops Roulade

Fort Bragg Sea Urchin

Risotto with Prawns

Seafood Vol-Au-Vent
Ginger, Miso, and Espresso Flavored Crème Brulée
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