TBW Daily Diary

A cool damp day with snow flurries kissing the evergreens in front of the store. Nothing depresses Bob faster than a flake or two . . . Started to inventory and box the Santas that failed to find a home this year. Sad little fellas . . . Closed a tad early for tonight's get-together. A couple of us have been meeting every year to pick over the leftovers from Bob's family holiday party. There is a lot to choose from this year . . . If you are a free-checking customer of Sovereign Bank you will have to make some adjustments to your account in the next few weeks; otherwise you will be charged a monthly fee of five dollars. You have several options to avoid that . . . I made my adjustments today and surprised the manager who discovered I had been a customer of the institution since 1981. It all started with First Federal which became Harris Savings which morphed into Waypoint which was bought up by Sovereign. I have one little problem with all this hocus-pocus. I owned 100 shares of the First Federal operation but every time the business changed hands my shares became fewer and fewer. Those 100 shares are now 30 or so and certainly not what they were worth years and years ago. Not everything on the market goes up regardless of what Wall Street wants us to believe. I could name one or two that went worthless while in my possession . . .