Since this is my first post, I'm going to start by introducing myself. My name is Lou Dornbach, I live in South Jersey, I'm married almost 40 years with 2 daughters, I'll be 62 on Saturday and I'm retired.

My wife is a registered nurse and works in a nursing home. She has been doing nursing home nursing since she went back to work after our youngest was born. Before that, she did a lot of different types, including working on the hospital floor, emergency room and even drug rehab.

My daughters both graduated college and are both working. My oldest works for the state corrections department and plans to get married in December. My youngest, who has a degree in Psychology with a minor in Sociology, is going back to college for a nursing degree and plans to follow in her mother's footsteps.

As I say in my profile, I have 3 main hobbies: playing the piano, investing and shooting.

I started playing the piano when I retired about 2 1/2 years ago. I'm not very good and I'm not really trying to be. I took guitar lessons from when I was 7 until I graduated high school and I made my spending money playing in a group all through high school. I've always wanted to play the piano so I started taking lessons as soon as I retired.

Prior to retiring, I did not have a lot of time to spend on investing, so I used a lot of newsletters. I did well when the market did well and poorly when the market turned down. I found out the hard way that newsletters don't sell when the market turns down, or they sell one thing and buy another. So now I'm using Investor's Business Daily and it's tools. Instead of having 50 stocks, I have 5. I'm too new at it to say how things will go, but at least, you sell when the market turns down.

I'm a firm believer in the right to defend yourself. The first time I shot a rifle was in Boy Scout Camp and the first time I shot seriously was at Parris Island. I didn't keep weapons in the house when my girls were little but now I have 2 pistols and am buying 2 more, (any thoughts?) I try to go shooting about once per week but sometimes I miss, so we'll call it 40-45 times per year. I shoot about 250 rounds per week so after about 3 years, I'm pretty good. I have out of state concealed carry permits that will let me carry in over 30 states. Unfortunately, New Jersey is not one of them.

I plan to post quotations that I've collected also. Short ones will go on Twitter; longer ones will go here.

So that's me. I wanted to tell you about myself in a nutshell, but later posts shouldn't be this long.

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Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill. - Muhammad Ali