Blessed by the Potato

Yeah, you can probably skip this post. Self-evident word game.

First 3 random words to make a post from: banana, lawnmower, turtle

haiku banana
no need for a lawnmower
turtle can do it

On many gas-powered lawn mowers there are usually two speed settings: turtle, and rabbit. Even on turtle though, you don’t want to slip on a banana: that would be most unpleasant.

If you want to blend a large number of bananas for banana bread, I don’t recommend putting them out in the yard in a big pile and trying to run the lawnmower over them: you’ll have little chunks of bananas flying everywhere, and before you know it you’ll have a turtle infestation. Though I suppose if they’re trained in the ninja arts, they might help you patrol the neighbourhood and keep down crime and/or super-villainy.

Of course you’d be just as likely to get monkeys… but with enough bananas and patience, you could perhaps get your monkeys to mow the lawn for you, if you locked the lawnmower into turtle mode — the last thing monkeys need is speed and (for them) heavy machinery, given their propensity towards mischief. And if we throw in actual turtles into the mix, well, let’s just say the expression “to be turtled” is a hilarious game to monkeys high on bananas and lawnmower fumes.

Next 3 random words: shipmate, tallow, gyre

months in a gyre
a hold full of tallow but
shipmates don’t use soap

I would have thought tallow to be mostly produced and consumed locally, not normally the thing that would fit with the other two nautical words for a haiku, but the spill in the Houston ship channel recently seems to indicate otherwise. I had to wonder though whether shipmates caught in an ocean gyre for an extended period of time could make tallow from what they had on hand, and it looks like they probably could if they had some lye (which I guess sailors would?).

One more set for tonight: personification, why, magic

winter is magic
cold personification
why hello snowman

Now with words like these, a blog post on who is the very personification of magic and why practically writes itself.

Here, I’ll get you started: NPH is the very personification of magic. Why? […]

Unrelated to the above: I <3 Molly Lewis. (and check out her haiku shirt in this one — I have that now ;)

The Prius V was unveiled recently, and I’m sorry for not blogging about it to you all. Here are some pictures from PriusChat.

It’s basically just a bigger Prius. If it was available at the time I got my Prius, it might have been in tough competition, because my Wayfare, she loves her some cargo space. I don’t want to comment too negatively just yet on the performance and fuel consumption figures since they’re very preliminary, but I don’t like the how much of a fuel economy hit this very marginal increase in size (and aerodynamics with the changed roofline) is rumoured to have cost. It’s also rumoured that the Prius V will be slower to get up to speed (which makes sense: it’s the same engine, motors, and I think batteries as the regular Prius). I find the Prius is quite reasonably powered: it’s no sports car, but if I need to accelerate, I can. But I don’t think I’d opt for much less power.

There is definitely an air of disappointment about this release: it was widely speculated that Toyota would be bringing in a 6- or 7- seater, either a minivan based on the Prius, or a station-wagon (or “MPV”) with fold-out jump seats for kids in the rear, like a Mazda 5, Ford Taurus X, Volvo XC90, etc. The new Prius V is still a 5-seater, just bigger. Though the rear seats do recline now, like a boss.

Note: I’ll be updating this post through the night and next few days as I try to process the transaction…

It was almost exactly a year ago that I called Canexus my “ace in the hole”. With a ~28% return, it wasn’t too shabby, but others have outperformed it. Part of that was based on the business itself, and part was on the theory that if Nexen was trying to sell its ~65% stake, it might lead to a buyer taking out the whole thing for a tidy return.

Now though, it’s been announced that Nexen has sold it’s portion of Canexus to a group of underwriters in a bought deal for a secondary offering. What that means is that the risk of selling all those shares (way more than is currently in the public’s hands) lies with the banks now. Because of that, they usually get a sweetheart price, in this case $6.40 (it closed at $7 yesterday, but was down to $6.80 today — with the trading volume, it looks like there was a leak of the news).

So, I had figured instead of a secondary offering to the public, one big company (or pension fund) would try to take over the whole of Canexus. I figured it was worth at least $8 in such a scenario (and given the cash they spin off, probably still worth that in a few years).

Now I have to ask myself, even though I already own a fair bit of Canexus (it’s something like 10% of my portfolio), do I want to take the opportunity to buy more in this offering at $6.40-ish? The cashflow and yield are still there, though part of me does feel cheated that the offering price is “so low”.

Update: Well, the take-up went well, with Canexus almost immediately trading above the offering price. I still think it offers good value, and the latest results indicated that it is going to convert to a corporation, so that distribution will become an even more tax-efficient dividend, without any cut!

First up, the 5th edition of the Canadian Real Estate Blog Carnival is up on Landlord Rescue.

In the news today, the government tweaked mortgage lending rules slightly, reducing the maximum insured amortization to 30 years, maximum refinance LTV to 85%, and removed government insurance for HELOCs.

The various financial forums are still discussing the HELOC issue — I’m not sure myself how many HELOCs were actually insured, so it’s probably a minor issue. Refinances should likewise be a small piece of the pie. So that leaves the reduction in amortization. On the one hand, this is something that will influence almost every first-time buyer, as huge swaths of that section of the population have been opting for the maximum amortization to grab as much RE as they could. I myself would have preferred an increase to the minimum down-payment at the same time, but we’ll take what we can get. What’s the impact? Very briefly, if someone had a maximum mortgage budget of $1000, then:

At 35 years, they could get a $260k mortgage at 3%, or $198k at 5%. With the new 30 year maximum amortization, that same $1000 monthly budget gets $237k at 3%, and $187k at 5%. The effect is interest-rate dependent, but it means that for someone at the very edge of affordability, their maximum house price just went down something like 5-9%. Not a huge effect, but hopefully something to get the ball rolling.

Nikki made a dangerous gamble, going for a healthy oatmeal pumpkin cookie with raisins (blech) against my tried-and-true brownie cookie with peanut butter chips. Both were soft-textured cookies, so no one could get the upper-hand based purely on texture.

The judges were impressed with both cookies, and smiles were to be found all around. Several people independently reported that Nikki’s cookie was “like a muffin”, and mine had an “incredible brownie quality while still being a cookie.” I have to say, for a healthy cookie with pumpkin no less, Nikki put up a fierce fight. While I picked out the raisins, I was nonetheless pleased with the taste and texture of her cookie. Surprisingly this was her first cookie battle — but no mercy is shown upon the newblars purely for being new. If there was, well… this might have turned out to be a very different match-up.

In the end, experience prevailed and I got to keep my title, with two of three judges picking my cookie. It was by the skin of my teeth though: though the judge that voted for Nikki’s cookie admitted that it was the health benefits that gave her the edge, the other two judges said that on purely taste merits alone it was a tough call to make. I can’t rest on my laurels any more, assuming my best cookie ever title is unassailable.

I think the lesson we learned here today is that in a cookie showdown, everyone is a winner.