TGIF! School is over, exams are done, and a bunch of my friends and I were having a celebratory lunch at Big Julie’s. Summer had finally arrived, and everyone was excited. The summer camp people had to leave on Sunday for their councillor orientation, so we made plans to get together tonight and Josh announced that he’d be having a party at his house on Saturday.
I was starting work on Monday morning, with dad’s “Introduction to Blacksmithing” course. On Wednesday, James and Eva were leaving with their families on a five-week cross country RV trip. They were driving all the way to L.A and back, taking a kind of oval shaped track around the country. They had a travel guidebook all marked up with every interesting attraction along the way. They were even going to stop at a basket shaped building in Ohio.
With so little time together, Eva and James came over to my house to plan for the summer. We usually go to one of their houses, but they didn’t want to be exposed to all the last-minute packing stress that was going on there. We set up our chairs outside in the backyard, with Eva and I in the sun, starting on our summer tans, and James in the shade. James is an indoor person, and when forced to leave the comforts of his air conditioning, he insists that he not be subjected to ‘harmful solar radiation’. I didn’t know how he’ll survive their trip. Once we were all comfortable, our discussion focused on our tasks for the competition.
“Mr. Chandler gave me a copy of the software that we’ll be using for all the trading. I’ve already installed it on my computer, and I’ll be playing around with it on trip.”, James began, “I’ve also gone over the rules for the competition and found that we’re not limited to simple stock trades. I’m going to start learning all about the different financial instruments that we’re allowed to use. We can short stock and buy bonds and ETF’s and derivatives. What’s your plan, Abby?”
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“Well, I checked out a few basic books on stock-picking from the university library last Sunday morning. I’ll start on those. Then I guess I’ll start looking up information on various local publicly traded companies. I figure that I’ll have more access to information on those companies and maybe I’ll even be able to get a tour of their offices or facilities and talk to their managers to get a feel for how they’re doing. I can also use my dad’s University Lexis-Nexis account to look up information on any company that we plan on investing in.”
“What’s Lexis-Nexis?”, Eva asked.
“It’s a service that has tons of articles on different industries and companies. It’s great for research.”
“Can I use it too? I was planning on learning more about a bunch of industries first and then trying to figure out which companies are dominant in those industries.”, Eva explained.
“Sure. I don’t think that dad has ever really used his access. I only found out about it because he brought home an employee brochure for me when he got me the summer job. As a part-time teaching assistant, I don’t have access, but dad does, so it all works out.”
Eva and James left at around four to get ready for tonight and maybe do a little packing. I went inside and read my book for awhile and practiced with my field some more. Using the field to go through things was really strengthening my ability to hold the field on for longer amounts of time. I was over the 30 second mark already and I didn’t feel nearly as drained as I used to get when I first started. Was the ‘bus incident’ less than a week ago? It felt like much longer. So much had changed from me. Anyone looking at my life wouldn’t see any real difference, but my perspective on everything had been heavily skewed. Using the field would change my life. I didn’t know how, but I knew that it would. Whatever plans I had before from my future would have to make room for this ability.