Market

On the floor where I work is a wealth management company. Today I got on the elevator with a man who pressed "6" and asked me what floor. I told him I was going to 6 too. He said, "Ah! A fellow investor!" I said, "No, actually I work on that floor." He said, "Oh." [pause] "I kind of wish I wasn't an investor right now..."

Poor guy. He sounded so down.

A Facebook friend put as his status yesterday that he's glad he converted his 401(k) into cash on Friday. Smart.

I feel kind of guilty because Jason, who has been investing for about a year now and is good at profiting when the market goes down, was traipsing around an apple orchard with me, Brandon and Sarah yesterday while the market was collapsing. He told me not to worry about it, but I know he's been waiting for this moment. We left the house just before it was announced that the bailout didn't go through. It's kind of funny that we're excited in our home when the market goes south. I don't really understand all of what Jason does, but he's getting pretty good at it, and my not-so-secret plan is for him to get really good and for us to both be able to quit our jobs. I can dream.

Tina Fey is a Rock Star

Tina Fey's response to the bailout question is eerily close to what Sarah Palin actually said.

What?

Watch CBS Videos Online

Oooookay...

Alternatively,

Not So Fresh Feeling

I need tips. See, I like to eat veggies throughout the week, but do not like to take the time in the morning or at night to prepare for the next day. So over the weekend, I do my prep work for the week. I'll wash some celery, which I can then just grab in the morning along with some peanut butter in a tiny little container for a great snack. Or like on Sunday I had a bag of romaine and a bag of spinach. I washed them, I spun them in my salad spinner and I divided them up into a couple of containers for a lovely mixed greens medley. I let them sit with the lids off for awhile to let any extra moisture evaporate AND I folded a paper towel and put it on top inside the container to soak up excess humidity.

I had a salad Monday and Tuesday, but by this morning the majority of the romaine was brown and I was picking out several spinach leaves that had turned that slimy dark green that rotten spinach does.

So what do I do? I have tried buying the greens and then prepping them the day I'm going to eat them, but more often than not I won't have the time in the morning to wash and dry and pack and I'll end up leaving the bags in the veggie drawer until they take on a life of their own. Is there anything I'm missing in my prep work, or will I just have to accept that salad greens only make it a couple of days?

On a side note, I'm very excited that my prior navel-gazing post brought some delurkers out of the woodwork. I admit to lurking on a bunch of blogs, maybe commenting once in a blue moon. It's fun to see who all is out there reading.

Blogging Times

Sometimes I think about quitting this whole blogging business. I still enjoy it, but my ego is tied to my site meter, which has spiraled steadily downward since I got married. I know. Married people are boring. I know! I was much more entertaining when the blog was full of single-girl angst - at least that's what I'm assuming. Who wants to read about the married girl and her cooking and gardening and crafting adventures. Major yawn.

However, sometimes I remember all of the things that I now have because of my blog and I appreciate it a little more. Seriously, it's quite the list.

First, a husband. Does anyone remember how back in 2005 I was all in strong single girl mode and I took the Bar and I was moving to DC and I was going to make it after all? Well, while I was on my post-Bar trip to California I may have written a late-night single girl rant in which I said I figured I was never going to wind up with a Mormon guy because they didn't ask me out. The next day I had a comment left really, really late at night from a guy who said that was a shame and he had seen me and thought I was cute and did I want to go out during the 6 days between coming back to Boston and moving to DC.* I thought, "Heck, I'm moving to DC. Even if this guy is a total freakshow, I'm moving to DC. Free dinner. Woo!" Then we emailed for the rest of the time I was in California and I started getting a little concerned because, over email at least, we were really clicking. And now we're married.

Second, a job. Not my current job, but my last job that gave me some of my selling points to get my current job. I was up from DC visiting Jason (because of the blog, see above) and went to a choir rehearsal with him at my old church building. I went to the bathroom and as I was washing my hands a woman who was also standing there gave me a sideways glance and asked if I was Kelly. Turned out, she read my blog. Also turned out that her husband was a health care attorney. A couple months later when I moved back, I worked that networking** magic and he wound up giving me some occasional work, which then became part-time work that wound up continuing for over a year and a half and ended just last month.

Third, an awesome bag. This is the latest amazing thing I got from my blog. Kelley in DC, who is also an attorney and has been reading and commenting and emailing with me for the last few years, was irate when I told her that the Coach outlet in Leesburg, Virginia, which was selling the bag I coveted for $300 less than retail, refused to ship it to me***. Kelley is apparently something of a bag afficionado and is already looking forward to next season's bags. So she offered to send me her beautiful Coach bag. I protested and she said it was her pleasure. Yesterday I got the package and opened it up. The bag was wrapped prettily in tissue with a ribbon. I told her it felt like an early birthday present! Seriously, how amazing is that? I am still kind of floored. I loaded it up this morning and carried it to work, feeling all posh and professional. AndI honestly thought as I was dressing myself, "Hmm, is that nice enough to be seen with the Coach bag?"

So when I remember these things I feel really bad for not giving my blog its proper due, and I apologize and pet it and ask it to please just keep doing its good work.

*As I found out later, Jason almost immediately regretted that comment.
**By the way, I hate networking. There is nothing more painful to an introvert. I went to a conference yesterday wherein I was charged by my boss to be sure to take business cards. I managed to hand out two and felt incredibly awkward while doing so. The conference was good though.
*** Hi, stupid people at the Leesburg Coach outlet. Way to lose a guaranteed sale.

New Calling

Just to keep you all in the loop, Jason and I are no longer teaching the 10 and 11 year olds in Primary. Instead I'm now the 2nd Counselor in the Primary presidency. And Jason received a mysterious call from the Stake presidency a couple of days ago requesting a meeting with both of us. Would anyone like to take a guess at Jason's mystery calling? We can't meet with them for a couple of weeks at least so I'll let you know when we do.

We were actually still teaching up until last week. Today was the first day the new teachers taught and they are awesome! Although the kids asked me to stay in the room when I poked my head in to make sure everything was transitioning smoothly. How cute is that? I told them I would see them in Sharing Time. I conducted today so I asked them how their class was and they said good, but they wanted us back. I said, "Hmm, well if I remember correctly you guys didn't want us to be your teachers in the beginning either..." They all said "Nuh-uh!" and one kid said, "For the first 30 seconds I thought, I don't like these teachers, but after 30 seconds I liked you guys." Hee.

I know they'll love the new teachers soon (especially since they're awesome), but it's nice to know that even when it was tough and they were being big pains in our keisters, they did like us. One of the kids always wants to sit next to me in Sharing Time. He can be a total pill, but I know in reality he is anxious to please. One day he was being especially bad and I got mad, and he could tell I was mad, and it really upset him. In fact, since then, he's been much better at listening. I found out today that he has a church music CD that he listens to almost every day, which I would never have guessed of him.

I really do feel a calling with these kids. Some of them have such tough backgrounds and those couple hours we have them may be the one time in the week that they have really positive influences around them. This past week I went with the Primary president to visit a couple of kids who haven't been there in awhile. We managed to see both of them, which was good, and kind of surprising since we just dropped by randomly. At one house we got an earful about some Church politics that I would rather not know about, but other than that it was good. One boy showed us his new hamster.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a Stake Primary meeting and it really showed me how different our ward is from the rest of the stake. The other wards are in Newport and Narragansett and other posh areas. I actually laughed out loud a couple of times, which probably wasn't very good, but we operate at a very basic level in our ward.

And in other news, I'm completely ticked off that the names of two of my favorite characters have been co-opted for what looks like a really crappy movie.

Spooky

I've been doing research at work on regulations for laser hair removal facilities. Seems that one of our physicians wants to buy a big laser and start removing hair. I asked my boss if we would get a discount.

Well, just now I was on Facebook and their special tailored-just-for-me ad was about laser hair removal. And I haven't even worked on that project on my home computer. My MacBook is psychic!

Either that or Facebook thinks I'm hairy.

Happy Little Homemaker - Who Also Practices Law

I've taken up knitting. I taught myself to crochet years ago and kind of learned to knit at a Relief Society activity a few years ago, but completely forgot all the knitting because I made one baby blanket and haven't done anything since. A couple of weeks ago at our weekly crafty night, one of the ladies taught me how to cast on and the basic stitches. This past weekend I went to Wal-Mart and bought some needles and a knitting basics book. I also bought this pretty yarn called Earth and Sky that combines browns and aqua, which is one of my favorite color combinations. I'm making myself a scarf to go with a nonexistent coat in either brown or aqua that I hope to own in the future. In the meantime, I'll have a kickin' scarf.

So instead of getting a lot done with the house cleaning and organizing, I've been sitting on the couch watching Veronica Mars and knitting a couple of projects. Never mind the 47 unfinished crocheting projects sitting in the guest room. I'm all excited about the bright and shiny new thing I'm doing. And never mind about the house. It's still tidier than when Jason left.

I'm kind of concerned that my tomatoes are not going to ripen before it gets too cold in the apartment. The plants are huge, and last night I noticed that one of them has officially reached the ceiling. There are some baby tomatoes, but mostly there are blossoms all over. Apparently they grow much more slowly inside, which I will take into consideration when planting next year. So while people are talking about all the fresh tomatoes everywhere, my tomatoes are still mostly in the flowering stage.

Once it gets cold, I think it will be too cold in the apartment for tomatoes to grow into healthy red fruit. See, we don't believe it heat in our home. Actually, it's more that we don't want to pay for heat. It's going to be pricey this year, in case you hadn't heard. We have a lot of blankets and a fireplace and a vast assortment of candles. Surprisingly, a bunch of tealights and a big jar candle will raise the temperature in a room by a couple degrees. However, since I'm getting up early to go to the gym in the mornings I may have to get a little space heater to give me the will to drag myself out of the toasty warm bed.

Last year, while we were in India the cold almost killed my diffenbachia plant. I brought it back from the brink and it's doing very well now. I'll be bringing it into the office this winter because I don't think it will survive two Rhode Island winters in our apartment. In the meantime, it's cooler and the tomatoes haven't fruited yet. Oh well. It would be a shame to only get the 6 I've already eaten from those two giant plants, but since this was my first foray into gardening, I can't expect everything to work perfectly.

The herbs we're growing are doing great. I love to run my fingers through the lavender because it smells so good. I transplanted the purple basil and the Italian basil from the Aerogrow into pots several weeks ago and the purple basil is going absolutely crazy. I wanted to transplant the dill too, but I didn't get to it before it completely died, which is sad since the dill was my go-to herb for easy fancy fish dishes. I bought some at the store a week or so ago and used it a couple of times before it rotted in the fridge. The Aerogrow plants are only supposed to last for 3 or 4 months, but we got a good 6 months out of them, so I'm pleased. We'll definitely plant the Aerogrow pods again next year.

Time Time Time

I don't know how this works exactly, but this has been a really long, yet really short week. I feel like the week has lasted forever, but the individual days have been going pretty fast since I've been so busy at work. Today we went to court, which was interesting. I took a trial practice class in law school, which only served to solidify what I had pretty much always known: I am NOT a litigator. But I like to go to court and watch, especially when I've worked on the case. Our co-counsel even presented a chart I made to the judge and opposing counsel to emphasize some statutory fine points.

Woo hoo! Regulatory lawyers are party animals.

Today was busy with me finishing up two rushed projects, only to have another one land on my desk. My Outlook Task list currently has about 20 things on it in various stages of completion. Plus, yesterday the health care partner in Boston requested that I do a presentation at our health care department meeting tomorrow morning. Yes, I got about a day and a half of notice. I thought I might be able to work on that some this afternoon, but instead I was doing this new rushed project. So I brought home a big stack of papers on my presentation topic that I printed off the web, and just finished my presentation. It doesn't have to be too involved, but I'm just hoping no one asks me any in-depth questions. Because I didn't really have a chance to go in-depth with this.

I'm nearing the end of the first of two weeks of being home alone. Jason and Marissa are driving across the country to take Marissa to grad school and then Jason is going to hang out with her in Seattle for a bit. Although it's always nice to have Jason rattling around here with me, I have kind of enjoyed being alone. I've been able to get a bunch of cleaning done, although there is still a lot to organize. I figure we should have this apartment looking perfect just about the time we're ready to move out. It feels like a never ending process. My goal is to get done with all of this mess by the time it gets really cold.

Speaking of which, it's been chillier at night. I know by the middle of winter I'll be aching for some warmth, but right now I love the fact that I can feel Autumn coming. Last night some friends came over for our weekly craft night and I burned a clove-scented candle, which filled the whole house with a lovely spicy scent. I also switched the bedding, which is always a sign of new seasons for me. I pulled the down comforter out of the rubbermaid it's been sitting in for several months. The bed now has my cozy red sheets (with the high thread count) and the down comforter covered in my velvety brown duvet. I love it. All summer I've been all about aquas and yellows and light, airy colors. As I start looking forward to Autumn I start wanting everything to be red and brown and deep green and other dark colors.

Another perk of it getting cooler is that Tiny starts sleeping with us again. For the past two mornings I've woken up with him curled up on my feet. Of course as soon as I stir he walks up me and stands on my chest, meowing at me to feed him, but it's nice to have those first few moments of cozy kitty time before he notices I'm awake.

I Heart Blogs

Not to be all cheesy, but blogs are actually pretty awesome. Last week I was able to have dinner with a couple of friends who I hadn't seen in a few years while they were visiting in Boston. We were supposed to spend a couple of hours together, but sadly, due to circumstances beyond our control*, we only got about 45 minutes to have dinner and catch up. But since they both have blogs, I kind of felt like I already knew what was going on in their lives and we could just chat like it hadn't been 4 or 5 years since we had seen each other.

Then earlier this week I found the blog of another friend. It's funny because this friend and I have never actually met. Years and years ago we were both part of a small listserv and struck up an email and IM friendship off the listserv, but a couple of years ago we lost touch. I commented on her blog and emailed her and now we're chatting again. Maybe someday we'll actually meet.

Blogs also allow me to keep up with completely random people who I might have completely lost track of over time. As I learned while filling out the RI Bar application, I've lived in 6 states since I turned 18 and in each of those places there have been close friends and not-so-close friends who I've recently connected with through blogs. Although we're all so spread out now, we have the capacity to stay close through words and pictures on the computer.

I should do ads for Blogger.

* A car was on FIRE on 93. So they closed the whole thing down. Thankfully, Jason's brother and sister-in-law lived in Southie for a year so when we finally got off the completely closed and backed-up highway, we knew how to drive the backstreets and get back on 93 north of the car fire.

Tiny's Tail

Tiny has a tail awareness problem. He walks delicately along a table or the back of the couch or just through a room and, after his body passes, his tail whips out and knocks over whatever isn't nailed down in the general vicinity. Then he whirls around as something crashes to the ground and looks at us like, "What was that?! Did you guys see that?"

There have been many times when we've had to lock him in the guest room while we're eating because, even though he's being good and not poking his nose in our food, he keeps pacing next to the coffee table where our plates sit, completely oblivious to the fact the the end of his tail has curled over the edge of the table and is dragging through our food. He looks at us like we're insane when we exclaim and shout because our dinner now has cat fur deposits in it. We always feel guilty when we lock him up because he has no idea why.

Yesterday I glued together a broken lampshade and set it on a box to dry. Tiny came prancing along, passed the lampshade and then, Whack!, his tail flicked to one side and knocked the lampshade off the box with a spectacular clatter. Tiny jumped and turned to look at where the lampshade was still rocking back and forth on its side. Then he looked at me as if to say, "There is some crazy stuff going on around here..."

Bailout

Is it too simplistic to be angry because the taxpayers are going to be bailing out all the people who took on mortgages they couldn't afford?*

I highly recommend This American Life's program "The Giant Pool of Money" for a surprisingly balanced*** primer about the mortgage crisis.


* I realize there are circumstances where people lost jobs and thus couldn't pay their mortgage. However, there were also a lot of people who got into mortgages with adjustable rates and no money down and no background check or employment verification that they would in no way have qualified for when lenders were showing some sense. There were also brokers who were making a lot of money off of telling uninformed** people that they could afford this mortgage.

** Although if I was going to borrow several hundred thousand dollars, I would make darn sure that I was informed about the terms of the loan and what could happen.

***Because I realize it's a very liberal show generally, but this particular episode appealed more to facts than emotion. Jason is more conservative in a lot of ways than I am (particularly fiscally) and he thought it was a good analysis.

Brain Trust

There's a link to an article on Yahoo about avoiding an email scam and the subheading says, "Even Paris Hilton has fallen prey to this hacker's scheme to steal passwords."

Because, you know, when I'm thinking of someone who would have the smarts to avoid a hacker scam, Paris Hilton is the first person who pops into my head.

Job

So I don't think I ever made this announcement officially here, but I thought you would like to know that I'm now employed full-time at the firm in Providence.

Pros:

• I have a real job like a real grown-up.
• No more compartmentalizing my brain into two different jobs with two different sets of responsibilities and two different piles of papers on two different desks. After doing that for over a year, it was starting to get old.
  
• I work 2 miles from my house and on nice days I like to walk home.
• No more commuting 40 miles each way to get to work.
• Much, much, much lower chances of my commute ever taking 8 hours again.

Cons:

• There's really only one. It used to be relatively easy to meet up with Boston friends on the days I was working up in Boston. Now it's more of an effort, especially since I usually don't leave work until 6:30 or 7.

The day I returned to work after taking the Bar, my boss offered me the full-time position. I think he realized in the 2 weeks I took off to study how very, very busy this office was becoming. I thought he would wait until I got my Bar results, but he didn't and I've been here full-time since August 18th. It's a good thing too, because, like I said, we are very busy and the work keeps coming in. I'm working on several different things and my boss told me he has some more things on his list he's going to push my way. Let's hear it for job security.

Superstar

We went kayaking again yesterday to celebrate Labor Day and the end of summer. It was kind of the most beautiful day ever, so I'm glad we were outside.

This time I had my own kayak, whereas last time Marissa and I shared a tandem kayak. I was nervous and I actually took a spill at the end of our initial trek down to the beach, but that was only to avoid getting taken out to sea by the current. I doubted my abilities to kayak my way out of the ocean. I headed toward shore and while the nose of my kayak hit the sand, the tail was flipping around behind me and headed out to sea. So I tipped over. Some nice people helped me and my kayak onto the shore, and one person downriver a bit grabbed my shoe that had fallen off my foot. The current was so strong that, after beaching the kayaks, Marissa and I walked out into the river, lifted up our feet and were carried, fairly rapidly, into the ocean without any effort on our part. Kind of like a ride.

After we jumped around in the waves for an hour or so, we decided to head upriver, which is when I discovered I'm kind of a good kayaker. It was only my second time ever kayaking and I beat Dr. K getting out of the current. He said, "I have to beat Kellito" and I thought, "I don't think so" and I paddled hard and he didn't beat me. His trail-running legs were no match for my swimmer arms apparently. I just kept paddling and before I knew it only me, Dr. K and Pei-Yu (another guy from Jason's lab) were around. I could see everyone else in the distance behind us. Honestly, I didn't mean to be that far ahead, it just kind of happened.

My shoulders are sore today, but I kind of feel like a rock star.

I also felt very humble and grateful yesterday, paddling along the riverbank on such a gorgeous day.