All that and classy, too!

Because I’m environmentally responsible, I resell my old books online when I’m done with them.

Because I’m environmentally responsible, I package all of my used books in used brown bags.

Because I’m environmentally responsible, I typically use canvas bags when I grocery shop.

Because of all that, I just mailed a book of religious essays that analyze the Torah in a brown bag that has a huge advertisement for a liquor store on its front.

L’Chaim!

How a Computer Sees you as Seeing Yourself...

If you click on myAmazon while logged in, it gives you a listing of the different categories that it thinks applies to you based on what you’ve viewed and purchased. At first I thought the larger fonts meant items you would more likely be interested in. In reality, the more suggestions in an area, the bigger the font.

So here are mine…(broken out by font size from largest to smallest)

New & Used Textbooks (thank law school for this one)
Singer-Songwriters

Adult Alternative (the catch-all phrase for music not easily categorized)

Literature & Fiction

Humanities

Philosophy
Modern

Short Stories
Contemporary Folk
Literature
Law

Social Sciences
Folk Rock
Existentialism

Alt-Country & Americana

Science Fiction (this must be what happens when you combine purchases of Vonnegut and Borges)
Procedures & Litigation
Fiction
Camus, Albert (I love that he got his own category.)
German (This one really confused me until I clicked on it, and it was all books by Kafka and Nietzsche.)
Formats
Criticism
Phenomenology

Consciousness & Thought
Arts & Literature
Comic (movies)
Courts
Europe
History & Surveys
Holocaust
Movie Tie-Ins
Music
Psychology
Russian
Turkey
Action & Adventure (again, movies)
Drama (and movies)
Essays
Fantasy
Jurisprudence
Kafka, Franz
Politics
Metaphysics

Epistemoliogy
Lo-fi


So what do you think? Is it accurate? How does Amazon see you?

Compartmentalizing has never been my thing...

This whole unexpected move thing has sent me into a tizzy. Random bills are piling up in various areas of my apartment and a few are stashed in my purse. The house feels like an obstacle course because even though I’ve probably packed less than a quarter of my things, the few boxes I do have are taking up all my extra floor space. The little area where I usually drop my keys, mail, and everything else of importance has been replaced with a dishpak, and I can’t seem to pick a new place to put it all – which is how I end up hunting for my keys every time I want to leave the house.

I’ve got a million things running through my mind – I still need to call movers, set up new utilities, ask the new landlord for last minute modifications to the apartment. The other day I absent-mindedly knocked over a glass of water…right onto the keyboard of my laptop. Because I’ve done this before and know that an electric current mixed with water will fry the motherboard, I quickly turned off the computer, flipped it over, and happily went about my evening, proud of myself for responding so quickly and efficiently. At 1:30 in the morning I realized that I’d forgotten something. In all of my swooshing movements, I failed to do one key thing – I didn’t unplug the computer from the A/C adapter. Frantically, I pushed the power button. Nothing. RIP, little laptop.

Normally, I think I would have flipped out, but instead, I just tossed the laptop into a corner, one more thing that would have to be dealt with after the move. There was no point in crying. I don’t have the money for a new laptop right now, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ll just think about it tomorrow. No doubt I’ll just be thrilled if it turns out that I can retrieve some semblance of the hard drive.

What I hate the most about this is the stress. At work I think about all of things that need to be done at home. When I come home, I remember all the things that I didn’t do at work. And then there's the new guy. I feel like I should be spending time with him, but then get angry at myself after an evening together when I return home to a ransacked house and a yelping dog. I said to hell with everything this week, started smoking again, and picked up a Wine Cube at Target. Stress has the weird effect of making me super tired, combined with the inability to fall asleep at night because for some reason, the wee hours of the morning are when everything needing to be done in every aspect of my life comes rushing to my brain.

This morning I was running late, and got dressed while I was waiting for my rollers to heat up and my coffee to brew. I ran the dog outside and smartly, thinking ahead, put on a pair of flip-flops so that my heels wouldn’t sink into the grass and get muddy. I was literally inside my office building before I realized that I never took the flip-flops off.

Once the move has been made, I know that mentally I feel just fine. Everything will be complete. Sure, stuff will need to be unpacked, bills will be rolling in, and I’ll probably be running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but I think getting everything over to this new house will just make me *feel* more relaxed. And even though as each day gets marked off the calendar and the anxiety grows that I will never get everything done that needs to be done in the next two weeks, it can’t get here fast enough.

Drives home, Greek Letters, and Nostalgia...

Back when I lived in Austin, every other car had a three-inch high sticker of Greek letters on the back window announcing the driver’s fraternal affiliation. Here in Houston, I don’t see them so often, so when the car of front of me on the way home from work today had them I took notice. It was a few seconds before I made out the letters Mu Alpha Theta and proceeded to laugh out loud.

Mu Alpha Theta, for those whose memories are groggy, is a high school math honors group.

I was not in Mu Alpha Theta in high school. I was in National Honor’s Society, but even then, it wasn’t on my own merit.

You see, at my high school NHS made up the highest X% (I don’t remember the exact percentage) of the class. Year after year, the cut-off always turned out to be a 3.67 GPA. My Junior year I missed the cut by a slice and worked hard to get my average up. When induction time came around my Senior year, I’d reached 3.67, but for the first time ever that GPA wasn’t good enough. It was close. Four slots in the class away to be exact.

I remember moaning to my BFF (ok crying, who am I kidding) about barely missing the mark and how this would effect my college admissions because even though NHS wouldn’t be a big deal to the person reading my application, they might notice its auspicious absence. And not only that, but it was SO UNFAIR. My high school had only recently begun to give extra weight to honors classes, and there were people above me in rank who’d only ever enrolled in level two’s. PLUS (!), with the exception of our class valedictorian, I was the only person in our class to enroll in all (honors) Sophomore classes my Freshman year. I’d been ripped off. I was screwed. Life hated me!

The morning that NHS invitations were being handed out in homeroom, I came to class feeling slightly nauseous. I even considered skipping that day. You can imagine my surprise when I found an invitation on my desk. After receiving it I tracked down the NHS president because, honest to a fault at that stage in life, I was sure a mistake had been made.

No, there was no mistake, she assured me with a wink. A 3.67 was always in the top X%, right?

This is the part where I tell you that the president of NHS was none other than my high school BFF.

Yes, even back then, much of your success in life depended on who you knew.

That year, I kicked butt, graduated well within the top X% and nobody was ever any wiser. After invitation day, the BFF and I never spoke of the incident again.

As it turns out, my entry into NHS was unnecessary for undergrad. The school I ended up attending asked for only my transcript and my SAT score. Actually, to be perfectly honest, they sent me a pre-filled out admission form and all I had to do was sign my name. (Remember that the next time you see the U.S. News ranking of the UTexas undergrad business program (which was similarly ranked when I enrolled)…along with the fact that I applied as an out-of-state student…in the last rolling admission cycle. Highly selective, my tushy. The U.S. News rankings are such baloney.)

Despite all of this, I’m still probably the proudest member of NHS, if only for the story of kindness behind it.

And what of the BFF? She now practices BigLaw in New York, has a really nice husband and a super-cute kid, and sends me wonderful photos of her trips to Europe.

My "high-powered" career...

Often when I tell people that my line of work is International Trade they ooh and aah. Frequently, this is followed by the glowing question of, “Will you ever get to travel for work?”

I will shrug and say that it’s probably inevitable, but in reality my answer is, “DEAR GOD, I HOPE NOT!”

International Trade, though it sounds glamorous…is not. I think when people hear the word international they think of Paris and London and I don’t know, Brussels? International Trade, to be economically efficient, occurs in areas of the world where things are either cheap or unindustrialized with an abundance of natural resources. To be honest, it usually involves both.

(Let's just simmer on that thought for a moment.)

Working in International Trade involves spending three hours on a conference call or five days of emails discussing in item that would normally take ten minutes – if you and the person you were conversing with spoke the same language. Any attorney who works in International Trade and uses polysyllabic words between 8-5 (or 3 am or 8 pm or whenever the other side of the world is awake) is just asking for trouble.

To sum it up, it ain’t pretty.

The other day I received a proposal for a shipping company, not uncommon in my line of work. However, unlike the basic written proposal describing services, this one involved pictures, and can I tell you, it revealed International Trade in a way that words just can’t.


Sexy, isn’t it?
So yeah, think about that the next time someone tells you that they've got a conference call in Asia or Russia or some other 'exotic' location.

This is what a study abroad program in law school will do for your career.

PS - And for those of you who were wondering, I’m doing the dirty hippie portion of International Trade - believe it or not...which is to say, I'm doing work that is actually good and allows me to a) sleep at night, and b) look myself in the mirror the next morning.

PPS - All that being said, I love my job. Dude, when was the last time you had a conference call with a country you can't even pronounce?

Times are changing; get with the program…

Someone on my friend list for Facebook posted this article tonight.

In it, the woman author whines about not being to have it all, all being career and kid. She drones on about having to wait until you find the right husband, work your way up the corporate ladder, and gain a comfortable lifestyle, along the unfairness of taking years off without being unable to jump right back into a career and the fact that a woman’s fertility dictates that we should have children in our twenties.

Hello? Time to think outside the box, my friend.

This woman seems to want all of the liberation, but none of the trade-offs. She wants to be corporate powered career woman along with traditional stay at home mom. I know as a single, childless person I’ll probably get slammed for this, but hey, I’m an old lady now (at least fertility-wise) and here’s my opinion.

Women can work now. We have a ton more options than forty years ago. So take advantage of that...

First, the author refers to finding Mr. Right Enough – the man she marries. Who says that the guy who ultimately ends up being your lifelong companion also needs to be the father of your children? While I haven’t found Mr. Right Enough, there are plenty of guys I’ve known and dated that I wouldn’t mind splicing genes with. Newsflash: you can have children out of wedlock now. You won’t be stoned or have to wear a scarlet letter. You can make a choice.

Second, who says that you have to be making a ton of money and pay off all of your debt before you have a kid? My parents were dirt poor when they had me and my brother. They made certain sacrifices in regards to location, cars, and other material objects, but they survived, and today they’re just fine financially. Sure, my siblings and I didn’t attend private schools or receive a Mercedes on our sixteenth birthdays, but we were pretty comfortable, and we’ve all turned out to be productive members of society.

In conjunction with one and two, there were plenty of times where I honestly considered having a kid with someone I knew I didn’t want to be with over the long haul. As it turns out, I wanted to be a goof-off during my twenties. I didn’t want the responsibility of raising a child, but I never thought that I wouldn’t be able to do it if I did, and if I’d applied myself just a little bit more and cleared $60k a year at all during my 20’s, I might have done it. As soon as I came to law school I started lining up babysitters, surrogate fathers, and stand-in daddies – just in case. (This is where I admit to seriously considering becoming pregnant at the end of my first year in law school.)

Third, who says that you have to stay at home in order to raise a well-adjusted kid? If you’re me, then your child is probably better off being introduced to a wide variety of caretakers other than their parent. It takes a village. Daycare will not kill your child. A nanny will not ruin your child. Don't be selfish. Want to keep moving towards that career? Don’t quit your job! When have you ever heard of a guy taking five years off and then being affronted to find that he can’t jump right back into his career field of choice? There are options. Many jobs today allow for telecommuting – at least to a certain extent. You can be home part of the time, hire someone to help around the house and with the kids and still get things done. Or you can *gasp!* send your child to daycare, after-school programs, etc.

There are ways to get it done, but you have to take the good with (societal) bad. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if I should have done it differently. I don’t just admire ladies like New Duck, PBB, LagLiv, or Magic Cookie (and PT-Law Mom, Zuska, and Butterflyfish to some extent (in this respect; of course I admire all of these women in general(!))). I think they’re smart for doing things the way they did. And I feel a little better knowing that they’re raising the next generation AND steering the legal/corporate/career realm.

Now buck up little campers and go kick some ass while you change the world.

Comments?

Perhaps I should make a little bit more of an effort...

The other day I was at a business lunch and an associate asked what my hobbies and interests were. I shrugged. Normally I respond that I'm a voracious reader, but as of late, I haven't even been able to finish an article in the New Yorker.

Never fear, my Senior Counsel piped up to save the day.

"Ana really likes red wine," she said with a smile.

It's true, but maybe it's time to find a few more conversationally acceptable interests instead of remarking that I've shifted from Pinots to Syrahs.