SheSue Experience

What do you get when you cross an egg beater, a swimming pool, jello and fancy swimsuits? A synchronized swim team! Ginger Jordan spent 3 high school years competing for a private club synchronized swim team. She was on the team with Candy Costi and Tracy Ruiz who were on the first Olympic synchronized swim team in 1984. The photo below is of a 1956 Wisconsin team. Below that is a 2006 team from Canada.

A typical day of practice on the team included:

• Stretching
• Swimming laps on top of the water
• Swimming laps under the water (no coming up for air)
• Doing the routines out of the water on the pool deck
• Doing the routines in the water

Each practice lasted 2 ½ – 3 hours and she practiced 5 days per week. That’s a lot of swimming. Ginger says that she used to sit on the bottom of the pool and talk in sign language thinking she was getting out of doing work. In reality, she was training herself to hold her breath for long periods of time. Ginger said that training was an on-going learning process; always learning new routines and technical stuff.

I asked her if she ever got kicked. “Getting kicked is just part of the game,” Ginger told me. “Even in warm up, watch out for those who are ticklish when you have to grab onto them. They’re like a wild horse.” Then she added with a giggle, “Me kick anyone, oh yeah!”

“Not much without goggles,” Ginger returned when I asked her what she saw while underwater. “You are always looking to position yourself correctly with the other teammates and where you were in the pool. You used lane markers to help.” I asked her how she manages to shoot up out of the water. That’s where the egg beater comes in. When you are upright, you do what’s called an egg beater to life you up out of the water. When you’re upside down, you use your arms to propel you upwards.

Time for a meet. Ginger competed once or twice a month all year. Her club did a big show in winter and again in the spring as fund-raisers. A competition consisted of solo, duo and team competition. At the solo level you did tricks in the water like walk-overs. Then it was time for the team competition. Some of the things you had to deal with were:

• Can’t touch the bottom of the pool, ever.
• Your hair had to be up in a bun.
• To keep your hair up in a bun, you put knox gelatin in your hair.
• You wore elaborate head pieces.
• You have to change your costume between rounds (try putting a dry suit on a wet body).
• You can’t wear goggles in the competition.
• Your eyes have to be open all the time.
• Different pools had different strengths of chlorine.
• You wore nose clips to keep water out of your nose.

During the competition, music plays to the routine. Ginger said that people always wanted to know how she could hear the music underwater. “Underwater speakers,” she says with an implied “Duh,” which is quickly followed by a giggle.

Below is a video of the team USA 2007 World Championship.

I was brought up in the world of 4-H.  I can bake a mean butter cake or perfectly rounded and crossed peanut butter cookies, but 4-H of years past didn’t teach you how to make fried

The chef, Jack Campbell

chicken or beef stew.  In my later years, I did prepare a full course luncheon.  It had to be nutritious and look nice, the table setting was also important as well as how I prepared the meal.  Unless I married into a wealthy family where I prepared dinner parties, my training wasn’t that useful.  I do admit, however, that I do reap some of the lessons at holidays.

So when the community class schedule came out and there were a few cooking classes on exotic foods, I jumped at the chance to try it out.  I chose Ethiopian cooking.  It sounded more interesting than the Mexican one.  I had never taken a cooking class before, so had no idea what to expect.  There was a class size limit so I figured we’d all be sharing in the cooking duties.  I was in for a surprise.

The mirror set-up

I arrived and in front of the room was a counter set up with a huge mirror over it.  Kinda like what you see at the county fair where they are demonstrating the latest slice and dice gadget.  The teacher is walking around in full chef gear.  He hands out a recipe booklet, a pancake looking thing on a plate and a bottle of water.

The class begins by him introducing himself.  He is a chef full time and teaches the class for fun.  He says it gives him a chance to try out new recipes.  All his classes are taught on different types of food and he claims that even if he teaches two classes on German, for example, the recipes will be different.  I can tell by his bantor that some of the students have been to his classes before.  In fact some, it turns out, have been taking his classes for 5 of the 6 years he’s been teaching.  That’s a good sign, right.

Next he introduces Ethiopian cooking.  It’s mostly very spicy, thus the water.  The Ethiopians don’t use eating utensils, instead they use the bread that is in front of us to scoop up their food.  The bread is made with Teff flour and is a mainstay of their diet.  Alone, it is not terribly good, the texture is more like a pancake then bread, it has a sour taste like sourdough, but it also has an earthy flavor.

The chicken and beef stews

Instead of inviting us up to cook, it is obvious that he will be doing all the cooking.  He will be preparing a beef stew, a chicken stew, lentils and collard greens.  All with lots of onions, clarified butter and spices.   As he cooks he tells more about reasons for using particular foods.  For example, clarified butter, which has all the dairy taken out, can be bottled and does not have to be refrigerated.  Africans don’t have many refrigerators.  Also, when a chicken is soaked in lime juice, it isn’t for flavor, it’s to kill the parasites.  Once again, with no refrigeration, a chicken is just sitting out in the warm air until time to cook it.

As he cooked, he also talked about some good Ethiopian restaurants in the Portland area.  Of course, the best is some whole in a basement where the owners are Ethiopian and speak little English.  There are also a couple of Ethiopian grocery stores, but the spices are hard to come by.  The cook had to send away to Washington DC to find some of them.  Speaking of spices, apparently everyone has their own special spice mixture and this is how you make it or break it as a cook.

The collard greens and lentils were finished first.  He set them out for us all to sample.  The people who had taken class before were jumping up as soon as he started setting it out.  They were here to eat.  The collards greens were okay, the lentils were very tasty.  Next came the beef and chicken stews.  Once again, tasty, but the lentils were the best.  Some used the pancake bread to scoop up everything.  Others, like myself, used a fork to scoop stuff onto the bread.  The lentils on the bread was even better.

Finally he put all our names in a bucket and drew out one name.  That person got the Ethiopian cookbook he had used.  Apparently this book give-away is a tradition in all his classes.  I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to cook, but I did learn a lot.  The only recipe that didn’t call for his special spice mix was the lentils, so here is the recipe.

The collard greens and lentils

Ethiopian Split Lentil Sauce

• 2 cups split lentils, red or yellow
• 6 cups water
• 2 cups red onions, chopped
• 1 cup oil or clarified butter
• 1 Tablespoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon garlic
• 4 fresh green Anaheim chili petters, de-seeded and chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• salt to taste

Wash the lentils and boil for 5 minutes.  Cook onions adding oil and stirring gently so the onions won’t turn brown.  Remove lentils from the heat, drain and reserve water for later use.  Add the lentils to the onions.  Add reserved water, stirring to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Add spices and salt to taste.  Simmer for another 20 minutes.  Keep cooking if you like very soft lentils.

Serves 6.

During a massage session, it was suggested I try Bio Feedback therapy. This is a technique in which people are trained to improve their health by learning to control certain internal bodily processes that normally

My stress release.

occur involuntarily, such as heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and skin temperature. It was explained to me that bio feedback is used to treat high blood pressure, headache and chronic pain all of which I suffer. When a body is repeatedly stressed, internal processes like blood pressure become overactive. Most people who benefit from biofeedback have conditions that are brought on or made worse by stress. For this reason, many scientists believe that relaxation is key to successful biofeedback therapy. I decided to give it a try.

When I called to make the appointment, I was asked to not tell her any of my symptoms. Okay. Not knowing what to expect, I was a little nervous. When I arrived, I was asked to sit on a couch and relax. Sure. The therapist attached straps around my wrists, ankles and my head. These straps were all plugged into her computer. She explained that her program would begin reading the electrical energy in my body. This took several minutes.

At this point, she explained that she was getting my readings. She began to ask questions. Did I have joint issues, was I tired often, did I have intestinal issues, did I often feel sad. All the readings I answered yes to. She said she could ‘treat’ some of my symptoms through electrical impulses. She said I would feel a light electrical zap for each such treatment. It felt like a massage wand touching my wrist. That was the only place I felt anything. After the treatment was over, she explained that she could make some suggestions, but because she was not a physician, she could not tell me what to take. She suggested some supplements.

Synopsis: I really didn’t feel any different when I was done. But it did make a good diagnostic tool. For more information, check out Naturally Healthy You With Bio Feedback Therapy

My third week of investment class discussed mutual funds. She likened it to pizza. They are both made up of separate ‘ingredients’ which get put together to make up the final product. While a pizza is made up of cheese, sauce and toppings; a mutual fund is made up of a selection of individual stocks, bonds or other investments that a professional money manager selects and puts together. When you buy a share of a mutual fund, you get a little piece of every stock or bond just like in a pizza, you get a little bit of cheese, sauce and toppings.

But what kind of pizza or mutual fund to you buy? That depends on your objectives, risk and time frame. If you don’t have the time, knowledge or interest to make your own pizza or mutual funds, there are thousands to choose from. Just like pizza, there are funds for everybody including: growth and income, growth, aggressive growth, international, global growth, corporate bond, money market, government bond, tax free municipal bond, balanced and sector or specialty funds.

We talked a lot about how mutual funds should be used for the long term. There are always ups and downs, just like the stock market, but in the long run, a good mutual fund will do you well. Our instructor suggested investing about 25% of your money in international funds which have historically done well.

We compared mutual funds to treasury bonds. Remember from my previous class, bonds should be used for income. They are loaned money. You put in $200,000 for 20 years and you get $200,000 back. Now you do collect interest each month during those 20 years. The example showed $464,000 total interest income at $23,000 each year. However, after 20 years, the interest rates on bonds had dropped by 7% and the value of $200,000 had been cut in half.

The same $200,000 was invested in mutual funds for the same time period. Instead of earning interest each month, a 6% withdrawal was taken out of the fund each year. The first year, only $12,000 was taken out. But by 10 years, $27,000 equaled the 6% and by 20 years, $50,000 equaled the 6%. And the fund was now valued at over $850,000 and would continue to grow.

Finally we talked about load vs. no-load funds. Basically, no-load means you make all the decisions on what to buy and sell within your fund. Bad idea if you don’t know what you’re doing. Load funds means you pay a manager to make the decisions.

Mutual funds are the way to go for me. I can deposit as little as $25 per month and have it set up automatically. And I will go for load funds. Pizza I can manage, but I will definitely be paying a manger for my mutual fund

The second class of my Investing Fundamentals course was on investing for income.  If you find that you need additional monthly income, there are investments that will satisfy this need, but they will not create any growth over time.  These types of investments include money market accounts, CD’s, savings bonds and tax-free bonds.  These are also called fixed income securities or loanership investments.  The basic traits of these investments are:

1. You loan your money
2. The borrower pays you interest on the borrowed money
3. The interest rate is fixed for the entire time of the loan
4. The length of the loan is fixed
5. The borrower repays you your money when the loan ends

You can buy these types of investments individually, or they can be packaged into: Bond Unit Trusts, Mutual Funds or Variable Annuities. Investment managers group together similar individual investments and you invest in the package. This allows you to invest smaller amounts. But you are still loaning your money for a fixed rate and a fixed period of time.

Money Market funds are similar to the above packages, but they group together a variety of securities. You do have to come up with a higher deposit, usually $1,000, but your interest rate is usually higher and you can draw the money out at any time.

Certificates of Deposit, or CD’s are loans you make to a bank or savings and loan. The longer you loan the money, the more interest you earn. Typically CD’s have maturity dates of 3 months – 10 years. They are considered to be very safe because they are federally insured. But once again, they offer no growth on principal. You loan your money and get it back with interest.

For the rest of the class, we discussed bonds. There are a variety of bonds such as savings bonds, treasury bonds, utility bonds and junk bonds. Once again, you are loaning your money for a fixed period of time, but this time, the interest rates can fluctuate which can affect the final value of your bond. We also discussed bond ratings. Between A and D, just like a grade, you should go for the A or B bonds.

Finally we talked about laddering which can be used for bonds or CD’s. Laddering is a strategy of owing bonds or CD’s with different maturity dates that will provide an on-going income. To begin, you purchase short term, intermediate term and long term investments. Example:

Short term—expires, purchase long term——————– long term

Intermediate term———expires, purchase long term———————– long term

Long term———————————-expires, purchase long term——————————– long term

The final thoughts were about figuring how much money you need, and then investing the rest in growth securities.

NEVER!  A small inheritance was coming my way, so I decided it was time to learn more about investing my money. I admit, that I have always lived pretty much from paycheck to paycheck. My husband has a nowhere job and I spent the past 20 years taking care of and homeschooling my children.

I signed up for a community ed class on investing. This is a 5-part class. This post is week one: Foundations of Investing. We started with pretty basic stuff such as 5 reasons why investing should be a top priority:

• Inflation rises faster than your paycheck
• Be prepared for emergencies
• Your dreams always cost more than you expect
• Government programs may not be solvent (like Social Security)
  
• You may decide to make a life change that will require extra money

We learned about setting goals. Even though I know I’m starting way too late, I still need to get in writing an idea of how much money I need to be putting away. Some great financial calculators can be found at www.lpl.com/rebecca.horn. My goals need to be SMART:

Specific

Measurable

Actionable

Realistic

Time-line

She gave us a great sheet on tips for how to save money on every day things. Some examples: cut back on eating out, rent a video instead of going to a movie theater, buy things in bulk, combine errands to save on gas, cancel unused subscriptions like to magazines or gym dues, buy store brands, cancel the premium cable channel and take advantage of free entertainment.

Next we went over several charts reinforcing my guilt at not having started saving sooner. These charts showed how much more money you will have if you start investing earlier. Finally we began a discussion of types of investments. Three things to remember are diversity, quality and long term.

There are 2 major types of investments:

Loan Investments are money loaned to a bank, institution or company. In return, the investor expects timely payment of principal and interest over a fixed time period. These could include cash accounts such as checking, savings, money market and IRA accounts. OR income accounts such as CD’s, bonds, Treasure notes and bills, Corporate bonds, Municipal Bonds, Fixed annuities and 401(k) accounts.

Owner Investments are when you take partial ownership of the company or group of companies through the purchase of shares. The investor participates in the gains or losses of the investment. There is no fixed rate or fixed time period. These include: your home, business, growth and income stocks, variable annuities, 401(k), or Mutual funds.

We learned that we should only use loan investments as holding places for money we aren’t sure what we are going to do with. To make the most money, you need to put most of your money in the owner investments. The instructor was Rebecca Horn who is a local investment adviser.   She was a bit disorganized, but boy did she know her stuff.  She was also great at explaining things both in words and charts she drew on the board.

Some books she recommended:

Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach

One Up On Wall Street by Peter Lycnh

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Ordinary People, Extra-Ordinary Wealth by Ric Edelman

Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley

Aflenza by David Wann and others

Anything by Suze Orman