Get the lead out.

Last Thursday was my 10th wedding anniversary. Upon learning of the milestone, Madan burst into tears. Clearly a misunderstanding on his part. (Hopefully.) But, now he knows how his Dad feels after living with me for a decade. So, what did I do for Mike on the big day?

I left him. Seriously. I did. No shiz.

After all, what can you give the guy who's got everything including an obnoxious wife and seriously noisy kids? Peace and quiet. So, on Friday, I took the kids and left for Cleveland while poor Mike hit the books in hopes of passing his CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) exam next weekend. The libraries were closed for the holiday weekend so we surrendered the house to the hubby in hopes he would master all that is holy for fixed income, derivatives and alternate investments.

Standardized test taking suck ass.

Let me give you an example of the crap poor Mike has been subjected to almost every single night for many hours since January. I pulled a book from the stack and randomly selected a page:

"Because of convexity, the duration measure is a poor approximation of price sensitivity for yield changes that are not absolutely small. The convexity adjustment accounts for the curvature of the price-yield relationship. Incorporating both duration and convexity, we can estimate the percentage change in price in response to a change in yield of (triangle y) as:
{[(-duration)(change y)] + [(convexity)(change y)2]}x100

Sentences like that, my friends, is precisely why I went into advertising as opposed to finance or law or medicine or any of those professions that require you to really know really knowledgeable stuff. Sentences like that make me want to cry, throw rocks and drive my car off a cliff. Thank god there are other people in the world who get a woody off words like that and can actually make sense of that sheer nonsense. I, on the other hand, am content with my stupidity.

Even worse, there's a woman on the cover of Mike's study materials. She looks Indian. She looks like a banker. She looks happy. Probably because she aced the fucking CFA. More likely, though, she's a model who is happy that she got some work and gets to keep her outfit. I drew a moustache on her. And that's as far as I can take a No. 2 pencil.

Good luck, Mike!