My wife and I got up at 3:3oam MST Thursday morning to make the 180 mile drive to the ABQ airport to fly to DC to fly to La Guardia airport in NYC. David Burtka was throwing a surprise 40th birthday party for my very first friend in life and one of my very best friends in the world, Neil Patrick Harris on Saturday night and I set up a lot of interviews and meetings for Friday-Sunday.

But whether it’s psychosomatic or not, I once again became violently ill and my wonderful wife, Lori, decided we were not going to make our trip to NYC after all. That makes the third time out of the last four times I was supposed to go to NYC that I canceled at the last minute. I’ve been in therapy and I’ve worked hard on the terrors from my own 9/11 and other traumas in my life, but like anybody else, I’ve got my issues. Our own personalities, traumas, issues, patterns, cycles, and emotions do impact our own approach to the market and recognizing that reality is a good thing.

So anyway for the last four days, other than turning around after getting to the ABQ airport sick as a dog and then going to the doctor, I laid in bed or on the couch and slept 80% of the time.

I’m back and ready to rock and roll though.

The markets have continued to pull back from their recent all-time highs, and I continue to think that the near-term risk/reward of being aggressively long isn’t an ideal trade.

That said, I’ve been patiently waiting to nibble on a second tranche of my CIEN and JNPR investments and I’m doing so today. Just a second tranche, leaving plenty of room for more common and/or calls in both CIEN and JNPR in coming weeks or months.

And don’t forget that we’ve got earnings season starting this week. AA after the market close today and then over the next few weeks, most of the major companies in the US will report their latest 90 day results as measured by their accountants according to both Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and non-GAAP too, both of which have huge amounts of leeway in the way these companies get to mark their assets and earnings assumptions.

At any rate, earnings season is likely to be a catalyst for a lot of individual stocks, and we’re likely to see some wheat separated from the chaff here as the market will likely reward strong earnings reports and crush bad ones.

Remember you’re trying to stay in this game for the next 10,000 days, not the next 10 days.