Unfortunately, the investment fund that I manage on behalf of Rachelle and I, has not been doing as well as I would like.
Normally, my fantasy sports team– A Fury of Pigeons– finishes in the money, but for the last little while my teams have been underachieving, and the revenues I had hoped to be pulling in from merchandizing has not been realized. Typically, I’d offset these loses by wagering on TV shows like Jeopardy, The Apprentice and America’s Next Top Model, but for a variety of reasons, Goran, my bookie, has stopped taking bets on TV shows and will only accept wagers on either the Russian Soccer League, or the Russian Hockey League, and so far I’ve had positively tragic luck in this regard. (Vasiliy Berezutsky has been inexplicably missing an awful lot of penalty kicks!)
Further, the research that I’ve been putting in at Jilly’s Gentleman’s Club, for my work-in-progress graphic novel—Strippers and Swans—has been much more expensive than initially anticipated. To make a long story short, this unexpected downturn in the market has been casting a bit of a pall over Christmas.
As it would crush me to disappoint Rachelle, I have been working on the side to make a little bit more money to replenish our portfolio. Twice a week, I set up a stand between the St. John’s Mission and a primary school located near Queen and Broadview. At this table, I sell a variety of goods that Rachelle doesn’t seem to use anymore.
I take Heidi—our miniature Dachshund– with me whenever I open up my stand. She looks adorable as she sits there shivering with her sad eyes, and really increases the amount of pedestrian traffic I receive. ( I sold Rachelle’s hair dryer to a stripper– who said she needed it for her routine–the other day after she spotted Heidi! ) I have also started to charge the children at the school fifty cents each to pet the dog, and two dollars to dress her up.
At any rate, while Heidi was chasing down one of the children, a man came out of the strip club to have a smoke. He watched the whole scene, and then told me that I had a really fast animal, and that maybe I’d like to run her in a race or two. As I think this would be good exercise for Heidi, and a really great way for her to meet and socialize with other dogs, I said yes, and so, Ricky and I and Heidi will being training next week, hopeful that a Christmas miracle is about to reveal itself to us.