The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Today was my last day as erstwhile webmaster for the EFF. The regular webmaster had gone off to Australia for a month and since I was already hanging around interning, they asked if I'd mind covering. Mind??!! It was probably the most visible and most important web site I'd ever worked on. Two pages I spent particular "effort" on (actually, it was just basic HTML - nothing too challenging technically or creatively) were linked to Slashdot during my tenure. This one on the state-level Super-DMCAs, and the one about the Morpheus/Grokster decision. That was an exciting day - having that verdict announced and then needing to get everything coded quickly so that it could be reflected on the web site.

Got my pictures back from my trip, and I'm dismayed to discover that I am not nearly as photogenic as Huey Lewis.

I was listening to NPR today and it talked about how Vaclav Havel was a lifelong Frank Zappa fan. So I'm very relieved to know that my being a lifelong Huey Lewis fan doesn't necessarily disqualify me from being a globally-known political figure....

I really need to start doing a better job with this "thinking before talking" thing.

I was out at a Denny's with some friends a few nights ago. We thought we might be a big crowd so we were sat at a larger table. But it was an awkward setup: the booth was such that we all sort of sat next to each other, facing no one. When it turned out we were only 4 people I suggested we move to a normal booth, saying to the friend next to me, "I can't look at you and eat."

Oh dear. Maybe someday he'll forgive me. He's not THAT bad looking!

I'm really glad that I found my new apartment long before I moved in yesterday. At the end of the long drive it was so nice to have a destination. And unlike the last one, this landlord seems really nice. An older Russian woman lives with her upstairs, a very nice woman who speaks only Russian. It's interesting to have an apartment with a built-in babushka.

The building has an interesting smell, of tea and Russian food which reminds me of my friend Olga, who lived in St. Petersburg. I met Olga on a Russian exchange in high school and I liked her a lot. We giggled about boys and silly things. We talked about our dreams and realized how similar we were. It was to stare in the face the utter stupidity of the Cold War, the nonsense of being raised to hate someone who, it turned out, saw the world so much the same as me.

KFOG-FM is a radio station in the Bay Area that from time to time plays "sledgehammers": listeners call in and tell the stories behind why certain songs conjure up incredibly strong memories or emotions for them (hence feeling like you've been hit by a sledgehammer when you hear them.) I never called in, but if I had I would have told the story about why my sledgehammer is Seal's "Kissed by a Rose."

When I was in college I went back to Russia a few times to see Olga. Olga has an artist's soul. Although her English was good enough that we were able to converse, she wasn't able to pick up the lyrics to songs she liked. One of them was "Kissed by a Rose." She had a sense that it was deeply poetic and asked me to transcribe the lyrics for her. The exercise forced me to listen to it closely and I realized she was right.

Olga was planning to emigrate soon after the last time I saw her, and I think she said she was going to Germany. But I haven't heard from her since and it saddens me greatly to have lost someone whose friendship meant a lot to me. The horrible thing is that it's probably my fault. I was youthfully irresponsible and did a terrible job keeping in touch. Maybe she decided I didn't care anymore and didn't bother to write me her new address. Or maybe, and I fear this, her move didn't go so well. It's been several years now since I've last seen her, but someday I hope to find her again. In the meantime whenever "Kissed by a Rose" comes on the radio I change the channel.

But I digress. I wanted to mention that I had learned a bit of Russian, both before the high school exchange and again in college. Unfortunately I don't seem to remember much of it, and this is driving me crazy whenever I see Nana (the grandmother). I used to know enough Russian to be conversational, but now whenever I open my mouth French comes out instead. With one exception.

In the month or so since I'd last seen the apartment the gas stove was replaced. When I moved in yesterday Nana was bustling about turning on the burners, and one didn't work. This morning she came down again to check it out and suddenly the word for it flashed into my brain, "duhofka".

During the high school Russian exchange there was a contest between the American students to see who knew the most Russian words. I competed against someone who may have grown up hearing some spoken at home. But I'd made an effort in preparation for this trip and so I won the battle. This was partly because I could count to twenty and that took care of a slew of words right there. But before I pulled that rabbit out of my hat I spouted off other random words that I'd picked up.

One night in Olga's kitchen her mom (who spoke only Russian, incidentally) had pointed out things to me and told me what they were called. Since we were in the kitchen, she pointed out the oven and said, "duhofka". (I'm not entirely sure if the word refers to just the oven part or the entire oven/range appliance. I don't think it actually matters to the story - you get the point: I knew some obscure word for a kitchen appliance.)

So during the contest, I blurted out, "duhofka". And everyone laughed. I wasn't entirely sure why they laughed, but I think it had something to do with an American who knew maybe 30 words of Russian randomly blurt out a completely esoteric word. And it must have been very funny indeed, because when we got home after school Olga regaled her mom with the story and they both laughed at me AGAIN!

But now I get the last laugh, because this morning when Nana was messing about with the unworking stove I KNEW THE WORD FOR IT! I couldn't even remember how to say hello, but I knew the word for the random piece of kitchen equipment that was the focus of our interaction. So who's laughing now, huh?

CNN Money is running an article , "Is your boss an idiot?" They include several examples of employer idiocy, like this one:

"So, why are you the boss?" That was surely on the minds of staffers at one Web start-up when they attended a meeting held to introduce the new chief technology officer. According to one former staffer, the CTO had zero Internet experience, a fact made all too apparent when he walked into the meeting carrying the book, "Building a Web Site for Dummies."

Unfortunately, I had a boss like that once.

In 1998-9 I had a job working for a web consulting company. It was a dream job in the sense that I got to live in France. And also in the sense that nightmares are dreams too.

My boss, the "PDG" of the company (he owned the company and was its president), decided he wanted to start an American-style web consulting company. By American-style he seemed to mean that it should be pro-customer: do what it takes to make them happy. As opposed to the stereotypical French tendency of being indifferent to their customers' needs. (I love the French dearly, but we all know - French people included - that this attitude has historically manifested itself in many French businesses. Of course, Americans know that it has also manifested itself in many American businesses as well, but that reality never seemed to enter into my boss's thinking. Which is hardly surprising since many other realities also evaded his consideration.)

When he'd offered me the job initially I thought it was because of my talents as a webmaster. After I got there though he let it be known that he hired me because I was an American, and a female one at that. As if my demographic qualities were going to magically elevate the quality of his company's product. I don't think I'm being too bold to say that his company's product would have been better improved if instead of trying to employ some sort of aura I was supposedly exuding he'd actually tapped into my experience in building websites. Especially since (as I found out way too late) he apparently didn't have a clue about how to do it himself.

Now, he did have a couple of employees, myself included, who were good at it. But we weren't there for the sales calls when he promised customers things that were at best ill-advised and more often completely impossible. I'd sit at my desk and try wring out every drop of my existential essence but it was of no use. My feminine wiles may be good, but let's just say that if they were able to make Internet Explorer and Netscape compatible they would have done so long ago.

(Of course, my boss was practically a savant compared to the director of sales who wasn't even computer literate. There weren't enough computers in the office so when I was at lunch he'd use mine. The hazard this posed stemmed from him not knowing the difference between minimizing a window, and closing it. As if working digital alchemy wasn't trying enough, having to start over halfway through the day didn't make things any easier.)

So every day, against my better judgment, but per his instructions, I built crap. Which naturally the customers ended up hating. Which NATURALLY was my fault. It was a train wreck. It got to the point where I could see the train coming, but I couldn't figure out how to jump off the track in time to not get flattened. Perhaps if I'd been able to employ any professional discretion I could have actually helped the situation, built a decent and appropriate web site, and pleased the client. But when I tried doing so, he reminded me that I wasn't hired for that. Which is ironic since all my American instincts, which supposedly he did hire me for, told me that the best way to keep a customer happy was to not give them garbage.

Eventually I managed to extricate myself from this mess, which was hard because I was in a foreign country and pretty much dependent on him for everything. And I had significantly underestimated how big of an ass he was. He'd orally promised me a dozen or so times that he'd pay to ship my belongings back to the U.S. when I left his employ, but when I asked him if he could put that in writing he became furious. "How DARE you not trust me!" he bellowed (in English). Then, raising his arm and pointing to my office, he ordered me, "Get back to work!" Which is sort of amusing in retrospect because when I did leave (soon after, duh) he stiffed me.

So the moral of the story is that if your boss seems to be an idiot, it's probably not his only personality flaw.

Apparently my grandma reads my blog, and when I don't post in a while she calls up my mom to ask why. So it's ok, Grandma, I've just been busy!

Let's see: what have I done? And where have I done it? Suffice it to say, I'm extremely well-traveled. Two Friday's ago, after class, I hopped on the T, took it to the airport, and got on a plane to California so that the next day I could go to Big Game. Big Game is the annual football match-up between Cal (UC Berkeley) and Stanford.

I've decided that I want to be one of the ancient Old Blues (Cal alums) who can claim to have attended 80+ years of consecutive Big Games. So far, with this year's, I'm at 12. It's a respectable number but my streak almost got broken a few years ago when my ex-boyfriend insisted that I forgo what was immensely important to me to instead attend his best friend's wedding. Fortunately, it turned out that the wedding was ACROSS THE STREET from the Big Game so I was able to do a wedding-football game double-header. Given that my ex now refuses to speak to me and I've had no contact with the betrothed friend since, I'm REALLY REALLY glad that my record didn't get compromised for nothing...

It might sound like a silly priority to try to attend a football game, but it isn't. It's not really about the football at all, although I do enjoy watching Cal play it. (And given Cal's until recently recent predilection for mediocrity, it's clearly not about the winning either.)

It's about being attached to the community. I've noted elsewhere how annoyingly hard it is to be a Yankee fan somewhere where it's completely incongruous to be a Yankee fan. Caring for a team makes more sense when you are in the community that the team plays for. With Cal, though, the community aspect transcends geography. I've been in far-flung places (e.g., a line in an American Express office in St. Petersburg, Russia) where I've run into Cal alumni. We greet each other with a hearty "Go Bears!" and are suddenly no longer strangers. The Big Game just gives us the occasion to all converge on the same place and reconvene with all of our friends.

It’s not that I’d want to relive my undergrad years: they were full of stress and angst as I learned a lot of (sometimes hard) lessons, academically and otherwise. But I still couldn't imagine a better place to have learned them. The gorgeousness of the campus, the vibrance of the town, the ambient desire for knowledge and discovery that hung in the air like the heavy smell of eucalyptus... these are just some of the things that I appreciate about my time there. Cal was absolutely the best place for me to have gone to school, and as I go out into the world I want there to remain a little tangible tether to keep me tied to her.

"To the University of California, then, cheer for her, it will do your lungs good. Love her, it will do your hearts and lives good."
- Benjamin Ide Wheeler, former University of California President, 1899

The trip to California was very quick. Landed Friday, and took the red-eye back on Saturday after the game. But it was good; I saw many of my Cal friends who I now don't see so often, and on top of that, Cal won! One disappointment is that the Stanford fans seem a bit dispassionate about our rivalry. Spoilsports! It's no fun having a rivalry if one side doesn't care. It IS possible, though, that because Cal has been such a doormat for many of the last several years that Stanford was getting bored with us. But things might be turning around: we've got a new(ish) coach, and in his first year last year he won us back the Axe (the trophy the winning team gets to keep) for the first time in years. And he won us the right to keep it for this year, so maybe Stanford will start to sit up and take notice if we keep getting in the way of their post-season goals by beating them.

It was good that the trip was quick, though, because I have other things to be worried about than Cal sports. The semester is winding down and finals are now visible on the horizon. Stress stress stress. Earlier last week I did several study sessions and went to class, but then the holiday break came up. My sister and I carpooled down to New Jersey, waking up before dawn on Thanksgiving to beat the traffic. On the way we argued about various public policy questions. At one point I commented that when we used to ride in cars together we'd complain to our parents from our car seats, "She's looking out my window!" But we've grown up a bit, and so now my protests are more like, "She's disagreeing with my worldview!"

We spent the holiday dinner with our dad, who unfortunately did not win the election. At least not in the sense that winning describes the person with the most votes. It seems that there are other things he did win, in a matter of speaking. He did very respectably, with around 1300 votes to the victor's 1600. These are 1300 people who didn't even know my dad in the slightest before the election, who nonetheless chose HIM to represent them. He says he gets fan mail(!) all the time from people thanking him for having run (while I was visiting he even got a letter from the governor), and for simply having attempted this people regard him with much more respect. I likened it to a village from a fairy tale, with a menacing dragon living nearby. People want to be rid of the dragon but no one can make themselves be the one to do it. My dad took it on, and even though he didn't slay the dragon, for even having tried to he demonstrated a worthiness that most people only idly aspire to.

My sister studies public policy, and she wrote about my dad's election on a mailing list for classmates:

"[N]ot only do our nation's leaders often get their start on the local level, but the issues in these elections often represent the very essence of our democracy. In my dad's election, he and his runningmates are campaigning for the very basics of transparency in government, increased and improved communication between government and citizens, and an end to one-party rule. I know many ... students who have worked on democratization projects worldwide with these same objectives, and I find it interesting we often overlook how simple it is to support these goals in our native neighborhoods..."

Well, it had to happen sometime. I couldn't resist my New Jersey roots, I had to go shopping.

I hate shopping. Apparently I'm missing the gene which makes poring over racks and racks of clothes seem any way enticing. The thrill of the hunt for bargains? Not that thrilling. The chance to try on lots of clothes? Um, no. There's a limit to how often I can take my pants off before I lose my patience. And you will never catch me using the words "darling," "cute," or "precious" before any sort of garment. Garments are functional things. They are not toys. If I think of all the fun or fulfilling things I could do with my money, purchasing clothes is nowhere on the list.

But every so often the need presents itself and insists on being attended to and then it's off to the store. I went to Garden State Plaza, now (I believe) the largest mall in New Jersey. When I was a little kid it was an open-air shopping plaza anchored by a Bambergers and Gimbels. Then they enclosed it. Then they dug out a second level under one of the halls. Then they added and entire multi-level wing and now the thing is huge. I went there because for a change I was feeling patient, willing to check out as many stores as I could, and I wanted a large selection. I got there at 10 to get a parking space and spent all day.

I needed a few things, like a suit for moot court. So I walked into lots of stores. It was interesting how each store had a different theme for their clothing and different background music to go along with it. Sometimes the differences were subtle. We aren't talking "young" versus "mature" styling... even the stores aimed at the teen set were differentiated and had different music as well. Some with techno music, others with grunge. I began to notice that anywhere where I couldn't stand the music I was also not likely to be able to stand the clothes. Music that I was comfortable with made it possible to be comfortable with the clothes too. Similarly, jarring music tended to correspond with the jarring sensation felt after looking in the mirror after trying on something "hip." Such endeavors made me realize I am comfortable with my lack of hipness. I may not be on the fashion edge, but 5 years from now when I look at pictures of myself I doubt, unlike many, many other people out there, I'll be saying to myself, "What was I thinking???" I prefer to go for more timeless styles, mostly because it helps forestall the need to go back to the mall any time soon.

Date changed to when it should have been posted. Actually posted 1/2/04.

I tried, I really did. I decided that I would try to upgrade my look from t-shirts and jeans to something more en vogue and stylish.

I grabbed a friend and we headed off to the Gap to buy, well, jeans. But the fashionable kind, with the dropped waist and flairs. After trying on lots of permutations we found a pair that fit.

Flatteringly, and frighteningly, the pair that fit was a size two. If I'm a size two, then several women I know are a size -12. But I guess that's what all this was about. As I near 30 it's nice to have a figure that can fit a size two. And the thing about this particular fashion style is that it's all about showing off that figure.

But on retrospect, I am not comfortable with this. To wear clothes whose purpose is to show off my femininity - it's absurd. That to be fashionable I have to objectify myself? I refuse to vacate my senses, my judgment, my intellect, my self-esteem, even if that's what it takes to be fashionable. I thought about myself walking around in my new clothes. First of all, I don't believe in wearing anything that would prevent me from kicking up my feet and running down the block if the whim should strike me. This is one of the main reasons I don't wear skirts. Looking nice doesn't trump mobility in my book. So these jeans appeared to be a workable fashion for me because they were jeans, and not stride-inhibiting skirts. But like most women's clothes, they were not the practical devices that they might have at first appeared to be. They are so tight that mobility is contricted, with waists so low that bending down becomes something only for exhibitionists. What happened to all the practical value of plain old blue jeans?

Suffice it to say, I did not keep them.

Edit 1/18/04 - I actually wrote this post last fall but for some reason didn't post it. Since entries have been sparse so far in January I thought I'd throw it up there with a date that would sort of spread these things out. Yes, I really should be posting more and in a more timely manner. I blame the food poisoning...

(apologies to the Marx Brothers)

Passover comes at a lousy time in the first year of law school because there's way too much going on, and it's all important. But it's a fun holiday and I wanted to mark it. So my friend and I organized our own seder, a first for both of us, and invited our friends. I borrowed some Haggadah's from my step-sister (easy, fairly ecumenical ones) that we added to along the way as somebody had a favorite piece that they wanted to include. And we made the seder potluck so it didn't involve too much cooking. All told it turned out to be surprisingly easy to pull off and we're glad we did.

I led the seder, which was also a first for me. When I spend the holiday with my family usually my dad leads, or when I was very little my grandpa would lead. He died when I was 8 so these are old, dusty memories but I remember some of them well. I remember the hiding of the afikomen:

There are three matzohs at the table ceremoniously. The middle one gets broken and the leader hides it, the afikomen, for safe keeping. He needs it to be able to finish the seder. But, normally, the kids find it during the meal and then ransom it back to the leader. He needs it, so he pays. (This is the way that we used to do it, and it's the way it makes sense. My step-family, however, does it that the kids hide the afikomen and the parents find it. I don't think this makes as much sense. Why would the kids have it in the first place?) My grandpa used to routinely hide it behind the cushions on his chair - we never had trouble finding it...

It's a reasonable prize to get some gelt in exchange for the afikomen, a small amount of money or some other nominal prize. My grandpa was a coin collector, though, so he'd always give us a special coin like a silver dollar. So at our seder I did the same. I gave out "feminist coins," a Susan B. Anthony dollar and a Sacagawea dollar. Handing out a dollar bill or two just wouldn't have been the same.

Date changed closer to when Passover actually occurred, which is when I intended to post this. Not 4/18/04 when it was actually posted.

I'm queuing up lots of ideas for posts but I'm not allowing myself the time required to format them into proper posts until I finish finals. Fortunately that happens on Thursday.

But in keeping with my other foliage-admiring posts, I am inclined to post now that I also like tulips. I think I like them more than daffodils which tend to present themselves in rather staid yellowness. Tulips on the other hand come in lots of bright colors, with straight sturdy stalks, and often nice, rounded petals confidently cupping fragrant middles. I did see a tulip today I didn't like - at least I think it was a tulip derivation - which had pointy petals flailing backwards, but I like all the other tulips I've encountered in numeracity all around town.

And that's the point. It's not just that the flowers are pretty, but that it's been a long time since I've lived somewhere where seasonal flowers have accented the environment. I appreciate seeing them now. They make me feel like I'm home.

This semester on Tuesday evenings I've been taking an additional class. Not a law class but something completely different: improv. My original thinking was that it would help me learn better how to think on my feet, which in theory would help me when I did moot court. It didn't hurt, but it wasn't a magic pill either. (Of course, this caused a friend of mine to hypothesize that when called upon by the judge, I'd be tempted to respond, "Your Honor, pretend we're all in a taxi...")

I was only going to do one session of the class but I had fun so I did the next level too. The last class for me was last night. Where I've been taking my classes the emphasis has been on developing characters, taking on physicality or status or mood or some combination thereof. Last night in one scene one of my classmates started taking on a mother role and my teacher helped reorient the scene so that she'd take on a different type of relationship. Afterwards she commented that many women improvisers tend to take on motherly characters, or that of prostitutes. In a fit of self-righteousness I blurted out, "I've never been a prostitute." The teacher said, "Well next week we'll have to fix that." It was a bluff, of course, because she and I both knew I wouldn't be there for next week's class, the last one of the session. But my classmates were having none of that. "Do it now!" they cried, and then started chanting, "Whore! Whore! Whore!" Oops.

So because it was my last class I got to be in all the scenes (normally we just randomly partner-up and do separate ones with different characters in each.) I was the same prostitute in every one, but each other person would come in and be some other character that could interact with me in some context. The environments would change for each one too: one person was a john meeting me on the street, one was a doctor in an exam room, etc. But each time I was the same character with the same history, mannerisms, and personality informing "me" in each context.

I was given a few moments at the beginning to establish the character a little on my own so that other people would have some idea of whom they would be interacting with. I got myself "dressed" with a tight skirt, garters, make-up and teased and heavily hair-sprayed hair, then went out to the "corner" and made some comment about needing to do this to make a living, since what good was a Harvard education. It was a dig, of course, at one of my classmates who went there. During the scene he did with me I continued to discount the education. "Graduating magna cum laude from Harvard just doesn't get you very far," I lamented. He zinged back, "Yeah, it's a summa world out there." But it became a running joke threading all the scenes. I refused one character, a john, because he was a Harvard grad and I was afraid of the health implications of dealing with such a lowlife... Then there was a scene where I was being accused of murdering someone. "So someone gets clocked in the head by a Constitutional Law case book and dies three days later of a brain hemorrhage – what makes you think that was my doing?"

Anyway, it was all very silly, but it was fun to do. I don't have any particular background in the theater arts so I've never tried to take on other characters before. It's interesting, though, putting on someone else's physicality because it makes you much more aware of your own native one by contrast.

I once was interested in a guy 10 years older than I was. It didn't work out. This cartoon explains why.

My sister gave me, for Chrismahanukwanzakah, the Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera, which contains among its memorable scenes contract negotiation between Groucho and Chico. When they reach the standard sanity clause Chico gets dismissive, "Aw, you can't fool me. I know there's no such thing as Sanity Claus."

It's a little unclear what holiday my sister and I were celebrating. I gave her a mezuzah I brought back from Israel, but I gave it to her on Christmas Eve. Partly this is due to us having been 200 miles apart on any of the nights of Hanukah. And partly this is due to our strange upbringing where Santa regularly visited a house with two Jewish kids. In fact, one year he gave me pickled herring, a fine NY-Jewish delicacy, in my stocking. Santa is nothing if not eclectic. I am nothing if not confused...

I'm famous! And I didn't even know it!

A Google search last night revealed that apparently a post of mine had been linked to from Notes from the Legal Underground, a blog I tend to read now but didn't know about on June 27, 2004, when he made the post. He was very complimentary (even though the one he was enamored with I don't think is one of my best) and apparently thinks I am sufficiently shmoozy to be a good plaintiff's lawyer. Is that my true calling? I actually find it amusing that he's picked up on my conversational abilities. Or, rather, that I have them at all. Thank goodness I'm the child of BOTH my parents: I clearly get the shmoozing gene from my dad. He'll talk to anyone anywhere, which, as you can imagine, made him so much fun to be seen in public with when I was a teenager... My mom, on the other hand, is not particularly gregarious. She has her own charms and talents, of course, it's just that this isn't one of them. But I am both my parents' child, and therefore have inherited completely opposite inclinations. For instance, I'm great at cocktail parties where I can be confident and effusive, and terrible at cold-calling or emailing where I feel shy and awkward. You can imagine how much fun job hunting is with these dueling sensitivities...

Read Part II

If I am crankier than normal, and I think I probably am, it's not without reason. Case in point: my odyssey last night.

As has been earlier mentioned, I am in technology hell. All forward progress has ground to a halt while I take care of fixing the basic technological infrastructure underpinning my life. To that end I am fortunate to have a helpful friend, the one who lent me the laptop and last night offered to loan me a new router. Great. The problem? He lives in another dimension: there is no direct way through time and space to get to Newton, Massachusetts. The street plan looks to have been designed by M.C. Esher. Roads that seem parallel intersect. Streets that look like they connect to major thoroughfares instead at the last minute double-back on themselves into one-way mobius strips. Forget having a sense of direction: it will be of no use to you in Newton.

But before I could even begin to attempt my extradimensional journey, I first had to dig my car out from two feet of snow. It required a lot of digging, not only so I could back it out of the space but also so I could get into the car. The passenger side didn't have a lot of snow in front of it, and I was willing to get in there and climb over to the driver's seat, but, alas, my car has only one functioning lock (and only barely, at that) and it's on the other side - the side with all the snow. Eventually I gained access to the vehicle and began a routine of starting it up, trying to back out, failing, then getting out to shovel some more. This process was repeated quite a few times until the car was at last free.

I started driving and tried to put on a nice Huey Lewis and the News tape to keep me company on the trip. But the tape deck apparently is in cahoots with the broken laptop and router and refused to let me insert the tape into it. Perhaps it preferred to play the Moody Blues tape I had just taken out (although perhaps not - the last Moody Blues tape I had tried to play it ate.) So add the tape deck, with the car lock (and did I mention the crack in my windshield?) to my ever-growing list of broken things.

Meanwhile, there I was, crawling along the dark, icy, unpainted yet multilane roads towards the mysterious Newton wormhole that could somehow whisk me to where I wanted to go. All the while it's raining/sleeting/snowing/precipitating in some obnoxious manner and I can hardly see out of my windshield thanks to my inadequate wiper blades. Not that it mattered too much: what I could see didn't look familiar.

Yet somehow, magically, I at last arrived at my friend's house. I picked up the router and lingered to chat a bit. Big mistake. While I was there the precipitation had turned into a solid sheet of ice on the road. He lives on a hill. My car refused to climb it. I had no choice but to go in the opposite direction, downhill, and follow a set of mysterious directions I had never taken before (at least not purposefully). They were given to me by both my friend and later a "friendly" neighbor, thereby leading to the inescapable conclusion that the species who lives in this alternate dimension is involved in some sinister conspiracy to keep people who dare enter their Newtonian lair from ever being able to leave to tell the tale. They were both very patient telling me the directions, making sure I understood them, but nonetheless they bore no relation to the reality I actually encountered once I was underway.

Eventually I escaped the gravitational pull of Newton and managed to return home. I turned into my parking space, and promptly got stuck. The car would neither go all the way into the parking space nor back out so I could try again. It opted instead to stick out into the middle of the driveway, but I sensed the neighbors might find this situation objectionable. So I had to get out and shovel *again*, but here I was stymied because my door was now wedged closed by a snowdrift. Instead I had to crawl over to the passenger seat, and then be careful that the door didn't lock behind me since that's the side the key won't open. After much digging I finally got the snow cleared enough that the car was able to fishtail back into its spot. It may be stuck there until spring, but that's ok because currently I have no desire to ever leave the house again.

In high school I was so good at putting my nose to the grindstone that it never dawned on me that there was anything else to the experience. Like dating. But about 3/4 of the way through I suddenly got the sense I was probably missing out on something. Yes, if I ever wanted to say I had done the "high school" thing properly, I was going to need to go on a date.

But what did that mean? What constituted a "date"? I had guy friends I spent time with, but surely that wasn't "dating." Daunted by the ambiguity, I decided there was only one sure-fire way to have a date: going to the prom. And with that realization, suddenly "going to the prom" ended up on the List of Things I Absolutely Positively Needed to Do.

Unfortunately, having not previously dated made accomplishing this goal difficult. Who was I to go with? I could go alone, but that seemed to defeat the purpose. No, I was going to have to find someone to go with me.

And so my quest began. It began my junior year with a single proposal for someone to join me at the junior prom. He turned me down, saying he didn't want to go. It continued the following year, but again I encountered resistance: first the junior prom candidate got asked out from under me by someone else. Then his friend turned me down, not just once, but twice. Meanwhile someone asked me but I turned HIM down because I was hoping that the other guy would change his mind. With options drying up left and right I was forced to cast a wider net. I tried an "ex-boyfriend" from summer camp when I was 12. When that failed, I tried asking juniors. When THAT failed I started flipping through yearbooks, trying to find someone who might still be available and whose phone number I might also have. But no dice...

So after running out of all the people I knew reasonably well, I turned to the people I hardly knew at all. There was one guy whom I knew a tiny bit from Quiz Bowl the previous year. I think we'd only done one event together but from what I remembered he'd seemed nice enough. Anyway, at this point I was desperate. I called him.

"Are you going to the prom?"

"Yes." My heart dropped: this was not the answer I wanted to hear at this point. But there was too much at stake to be deterred so easily. I continued:

"Are you going with anyone?"

"No." Aha! Now was my chance to make my move. Somewhat impressed by his gumption to have been willing to go without a date, I asked the important next question.

"Want to go with me?"

"Sure."

"OK, great, I'll call you on Wednesday."

I think we had maybe one more conversation before prom night, just to cover basic logistics like whether to get each other corsages and so he could color coordinate his cummerbund with my outfit. We also agreed that I would drive and arranged when I would pick him up. The plan seemed quite workable, except that prom night the weather was terrible. It wasn't just raining: it was dumping water gallons at a time. Just getting into the car risked a full-soaking. Then out on the highway my poor little underpowered Tercel nearly got washed off the road by the buckets of water being kicked up by semi trailers. With zero visibility, driving to somewhere I'd never been, so much could have gone so horribly wrong.

In fact, so much could have gone wrong with the whole endeavor. After all, I was off to the prom with someone who was essentially a complete stranger. But you know what? It was perfect. We got to the prom and had a great time. So much so that we officially "dated" for the rest of the school year. So much so that we've stayed good friends, and now, 13 years later, on my spring break, I have someone to visit in Japan.

I knew going to the prom would surely pay off somehow...

Cathy and Koichi, before the prom, June 1992

With dateline changes and being offline during travel the dates have gotten messed up. This post belongs on 3/4.

Wil Wheaton is an interesting guy with an interesting blog. He writes very well, very vividly. I saw a recent post where he made this comment:

"There's some tree-trimming going on in my neighborhood, so the not-entirely-unpleasant drone of distant chainsaws underscores the bird's singing. For some reason, the sound of yard work always makes me feel secure, and brings to mind happy childhood sense memories that I can't see, but feel nevertheless."

I know exactly what he's talking about. I have many a strong and pleasant memory of waking up on soft spring weekend mornings to the hum of neighborhood lawn mowers. I've heard people complain that it's all noise pollution but to me it always seemed like a noise that belonged. And signified a nice day ahead of running around in the green grass of the neighborhood, under the canopy of tree leaves with its dripping inchworms, playing on the swingset, and enjoying kid-life to the fullest. Even then I knew it was idyllic, and I find myself drawn back to New Jersey to capture that feeling again.

Edited 4/10.

Tonight's dinner came with a fortune cookie that espoused:

"Be prepared for a sudden, needed, and happy change in plans."

I can't help being a little concerned, though. I LIKE my plans - I don't think I want them to change!

Edit 5/2: There's an update. Tonight's fortune cookie (from the same restaurant, it was leftovers) said:

"Don't be surprised by the emergence of undiscovered talents!"

Why do I suddenly fear I'm about to run off and join the circus?

I had first applied to study abroad last year. But since then my international horizons became even further expanded. I'd already experienced living and working in France; I'd already traveled considerably around Europe on many occasions; I'd even been to Australia.

But then last summer happened. First I went to Cambodia, traveling from Phnom Penh, up the Tonle Sap river, past the bamboo houses along its banks where people live much like they have for hundreds and hundreds of years, to Siem Reap and its nearby majestic temples of Angkor. Then later in the summer I went to Israel, another place where I hadn't before been. There I toured places of ancient and modern historical import, gaining insight into the human dilemmas that ripple throughout the region. And as if all that wasn't enough, on the way home from Israel I stopped off in Europe and traveled by rail to the Balkans and Kosovo, another place where history was being developed right before my eyes.

I did not escape these experiences untouched. It is impossible for me to hear news from any of these places without being instantly transported back to these communities. I am much more aware of the history and tensions that percolate through the regions. I am much more aware of the humanity that occupies them, and the needs that these people often have unmet. These are worlds far beyond what is easily understood from within US borders, and they are worlds I want to continue to explore.

The effect of this resolution is the determination that my legal education should incorporate international law to the largest extent possible. Already at BU I've taken courses in international law process, and I'm currently taking EU law. This is also why I am interested in going abroad. There's something about BEING abroad that more directly informs one's learning than mere academic study can remotely. International legal institutions can be much better understood when one can see how they fit local societies in context. Furthermore, the opportunities to study international law through a semester abroad seem greater than they would be stateside.

In the long term I hope to combine this increasingly-expanding interest in international law with the already developed passion for intellectual property and the civil liberties it implicates. International law and IP dovetail, and there is a niche to be carved out in this space, I believe. At my internship last summer I worked with one such organization, an NGO that advocated for the needs of developing nations on the international stage with regard to affordable access to intellectual property. The organization had already lobbied for access to drug patents; my job was to make sure that the people of these nations could also have access to copyrighted materials so that they too could promote their Progress of Science. With the activities in WIPO, multilateral trade agreements, local national law, EU law, etc. I'm sure there will be plenty of areas to get involved with promoting the interests of people everywhere in having access to the intellectual property resources they need.

The above was written as part of my application for one of the BU study abroad programs. It worked: fall semester I will study in Germany. More details when it gets closer.

I'm so stoked. While I'm out in California this summer I'll have a second job teaching swimming lessons.

I love teaching swimming lessons. I've done it every summer (except 3) since 1989. When I was a little kid, even as I struggled to pass Beginner's, I got it into my head that when I grew up I wanted to be a swimming teacher. So I did.

The first year, when I was 15, I was an aide to some not very good teachers, so I effectively taught the classes myself. By the next summer I'd gotten my lifeguarding certificatation so I got to have my own classes. Then when I was 17 I got my Water Safety Instructor certification. Lots of facilities will let people with just Lifeguarding teach lessons, but they prefer to have WSIs since this is the certification that says you're actually qualified to teach Red Cross lessons.

To keep the WSI current, you need to teach one class every two years. So even as I've had day jobs and careers I've tried to make sure I could teach some classes. Partly to keep the certification current, and partly because I really like doing it. It's just so rewarding. I particularly like teaching little kids. Getting them to put their face in the water for the first time, getting them to float... it's wonderful. Some kids will pick it up the first time around; for others it takes more work. There's been some kids I've worked with an entire summer who finally get it at the end. It's a special kind of happy for both of us when that happens.

So even though I'm on a different trajectory now, building my career as a lawyer, I'm glad that I can keep the swimming lessons in my life. It's something that I feel really good about saying I do.

I spent part of the day on the Cal campus trying to get on payroll for my swimming job. I met with a modicum of success, although I'm not done yet. In fact tomorrow I need to spend all day in training. It's not a great use of my time, but the upside is that I'll get paid! (Interestingly, I'll get paid more for the swim teaching than I do for the law job...) It's quite a novel thing these days, getting paid for the work I do. I might not mind it so much when I go to my zillions of Huey Lewis and the News concerts this summer and they inevitably close the show with "Workin' for a Livin'," because for a change I'll actually relate...

Visiting the Cal campus was an interesting experience. There was a moment when I flashed back to my first days here as a freshman, walking around with an increasingly crumpled campus map as I found my way around. It's easy for me being here now because I don't need the map anymore. I pretty much know where everything is, though there are some exceptions. I was joking afterwards that the buildings are all in the same place, but they all have different names... Actually, this isn't quite true: there are a lot of new buildings too... And of course, many are exactly as I left them, in terms of location and appellation. But there is a lot of construction on campus; an engineering survey a few years ago determined that most buildings were not seismically safe, and so there has been a drive to retrofit as much as possible. That effort appears to have led to new building names to reflect the contributions to the capital campaigns.

I also observed some systemic changes to the running of the campus, some good and some less so. In certain ways there's more bureaucracy, but on the other hand, the bureaucracy seems to be a bit more effective.

But by and large this is a much easier summer for me than last year. Last year I moved to Washington, near the Maryland border. And everything was new. Even the simplest of errands required learning new neighborhoods, new driving directions, etc. I got done what I needed to, but it took some effort and I still spent the summer feeling like a stranger who didn't really belong. It's a much different experience this year, when I know where everything is and feel like I'm home.

I didn't want to say anything earlier in case it all came to naught. But it's now safe to say: I'm famous...

Early in the semester a reporter came to my law and ethics class. As I've written before, I liked the class. It really did make me think. And I wasn't hesitant to participate in it. So when the reporter asked us questions I had no compunction about telling him what I thought too...

Anyway, he came and went and the semester went on. Then about two months later I got this email:

Catherine Gellis
Boston University

Catherine,

Corporate Board Member magazine (www.boardmember.com) is featuring your interview with James Burnett in the AMERICA's BEST LAWYERS 2005 Special Issue.

We are the design firm that arranges photography for the magazine.
We'd like to get a few photos of you on the Boston campus, in Andrew Perlman's class room or walking to class for the article. If you consent, I'd like to make arrangements with our photographer to have your portrait taken in the next week or two.

Please let me know as soon as possible and I'll have our photographer contact you directly to discuss possible set up location, schedule, and location that works for both of you.

Interview??? Featuring? Photographer? Yeah, I answered the reporter's questions in class and spoke to him a bit afterwards. But I wouldn't have called it an interview. Of course, what was somewhat alarming is that by that point, I could hardly recall it at all...

Still, I decided to roll with it. I reasoned that some people have to pay publicists a lot of money to get into glossy magazines, and here someone was offering to put me in one for free!

The photographer got in touch and we arranged a time to meet in the law school after class one day. I've had my picture taken professionally before, for school pictures and such. But those were quick portrait sittings. This turned out to be a photo shoot. No dull background, no staid head shot poses. There were lights, Polaroid test shots, three different locations... We did a series with me sitting at a desk, pretending to type on my laptop. We did a series with me back up against the chalkboard (bad shot - it made me look like the professor). And then we did a series with me sitting on a desk at the front of an empty room. The problem was that it was at the end of the day, and I was really tired. Really, really physically tired. It was ok at the beginning, when I was all excited at the attention. But it took time to set up the lights and do all the tests, and I withered. We took several rolls of film, but after the first few shots I couldn't remember how to smile! My face felt contorted, frozen, unnatural... It hurt!

But physical arduousness aside, I enjoyed going along with the absurdity. What the hell was I doing in this magazine? Still, if Corporate Board Member magazine wanted to send photographers hither and yon to snap law students pictures, I was happy to oblige. (Particularly once I regained feeling in my face.)

Anyway, this all happened in April, and I heard nothing about it until this week when the July/August 2005 edition of the magazine was finally published. It's the magazine's special legal issue, with the cover story "America's Best Corporate Lawyers." Personally I think I'm quite the prodigy to end up in the magazine, not even yet being a lawyer myself...

The article itself is online. I don't quite remember saying the words attributed to me (nor do I remember being that much of a kiss-ass...) but otherwise the general thoughts seem familiar.

Perhaps most irritating thing about it though is that I'm characterized by the voluminous backpack I carry around. In high school I was notorious for never using my locker and carrying around all my books in my gigantic backpack 1/3 of my total bodily volume. (Perhaps this is why I'm short?) And now, years later (really -- I graduated in 1992!), I'm stuck with the same reputation...

Of course, it is the same backpack... And you can see it, in its shabby tealness, in the paper version of the magazine where, for reasons that escape me, there is a humungous glossy photograph of me. About the size of a snapshot, it takes up two of the three columns on the last page of the article, where my measly two paragraphs conclude it. It's a pose from the third series, when I no longer retained any muscular control (I'm serious - in the picture you can practically see me listing. The law books were on my lap just to prop me up...)

Sadly, or luckily, the magazine is not available on newsstands. They were nice enough to send me a copy, because it's entirely subscription-based. It gets sent out, so they say, to the "homes and primary businesses" of "45,000 directors and top company officers who serve on boards listed with New York, NASDAQ and American stock exchanges," which, of course, is just the demographic I want to reach...

But don't worry - I'll try not to let my fame go to my head.

In thinking about make-up, I remembered something from 4th grade, when we did a wax museum to honor great women from history. Each girl was teamed up with a boy, and then we wrote a report on the woman we chose. Afterwards, we put on a wax museum in the auditorium, where the girls dressed up as wax mannequins of the woman and the boys gave a short presentation on them to people who came by to visit our "exhibit."

Anyway, to become "wax" mannequins we dressed up as the woman in question, and then some volunteer parents put make-up on us, followed by a slathering of vaseline on top of it to give the wax effect. I didn't mind the vaseline, actually (I liked that I could stick my fingernails in it) but I *hated* the make-up. I hate the way it felt, I hate the way it smelled... When it came time to put lipstick on me I complained. "I don't want to wear lipstick!"

"You need to. Otherwise it will look like you don't have lips."

This I doubt. Why someone would presume that someone didn't have lips is hardly intuitive to me. But the question that no one ever answered is "WHY DOES THIS MATTER?"

It wasn't answered for me then, and I've yet to encounter an explanation since. I don't see why it's so important to show the world I have lips. And I certainly never figured out why I didn't get to be the one to control my appearance. It was extremely unpleasant sitting there, being forced to be made up in a way I wasn't comfortable with. It's not something I've let anyone do to me since.

Edit 6/26: Here's a picture from the wax museum. Even though time has aged the photo quality, notice how you can still see my lips! Thank goodness for that...

Cathy as Golda Meir, 1984.

Somehow when I joined my firm this summer I got put into their system as Catherine. That's ok to some degree – for official stuff like taxes I use the formal name. But historically I've hated being called it. It's too formal, and I'm not a formal person. (Plus once I drew my line in the sand – "Don't call me Catherine!" – I had to stick to my guns...)

But I ended up in the Exchange server as Catherine, so all my emails go out that way. Which means that everyone now calls me Catherine. All the time.

I probably should have said something about it earlier. I thought that if I just signed my emails "Cathy" people would switch. But that doesn't seem to have been the case. And the people who first got to know me as Catherine are now introducing me to others the same way. It looks like if I want to go back to being a Cathy I'll need to retrain the entire firm! I should have cracked down when it was still only a few people... But I didn't – it just seemed too awkward to correct people – and now I seem to be stuck.

But maybe part of the reason I didn't make the effort to change my name even in Exchange was because I was curious to try it out. I've never been a Catherine; I've always been a Cathy. But now that I'm spreading into law stuff, which itself can be very formal, I find myself using it more often (I signed my moot court brief that way, for instance). But so far only in writings. This is the first time where I've used it in conversation. Which concerns me unto itself – I'm afraid I'll accidentally ignore people who use it because I'm not used to conditioned to respond to it.

Except, of course, when I'm in BIG trouble and Catherine Rachel had better get down here RIGHT NOW...

Lately I've had occasion to think a lot about my freshman year at Cal. When I was a freshman I lived in Unit I, a quad of high-rise dorms at the top of Durant Avenue. Mine was called Freeborn, and when I first moved in there were big paper capital letters spelling the name mounted on each of the 8 floors of the exterior stairwell. Except that someone had ripped off the bottom bulb of the "B," which changed the name to something somewhat different.

I lived in a triple room because I'd asked to live in a triple. Why did I do that? Because the triples had bunk beds, whereas the regular double rooms didn't. And I wanted me a top bunk. In fact, I was distressed to discover that I wasn't the first person to arrive on moving-in day. "Another girl will surely have taken the coveted top bunk!" I inwardly wailed, since as a mature freshman I could never be so demonstrative. But it turned out, happily, that my other roommates had no interest in the top bunk. Can't imagine why, but, hey, whatever floats their boat...

The room itself was all the way at the edge of the building, on the first floor, right next to Durant, and the bed was along that far wall. We had no TV, so in moments when I needed to lounge around with flatlined brain activity I would just lie on the bed and look out the huge window, watching people go up and down the street and gazing upon the distant Marin hills I could just see through the trees. I found the whole thing quite decadent and relaxing, my favorite quiet spot.

Below the window was a bike rack, a bike rack of some infamy. Bikes parked there would periodically get vandalized: knocked over, wheels stolen, or absconded with outright. Not that I ever saw any of this happen, but I would see the results the next day.

Anyway, after watching other people's bikes for a month or two, I decided to get me one of my own. Without paying too much, of course, because I was a poor student. So I went to the flea market at the Ashby BART one Saturday, where I saw a ten-speed that appeared to be my size. The problem: the man selling it only spoke Spanish. Fortunately I had taken Spanish in high school. This was my chance to show my stuff. Our conversation limped along as we struggled to communicate, but in the end I gave him $20 and went on my way, quite pleased with my purchase.

Unfortunately, the one question I'd forgotten to ask was "Do the brakes work?" It would have been a good one to ask, since apparently they didn't. The bike was deemed un-ridable, and now I had a problem. What was I going to do with the bike?

It was too crappy to sink more money into to get into good repair, so that was out. I wouldn't be able to sell it, since who would want to (knowingly) buy a bike that wasn't safe to ride? (And I couldn't in good conscience lie or obfuscate about its condition – plus what if the buyer got hurt and sued?) I couldn't give the bike away either, since there was no one I knew who would want an unsafe bike, nor anyone I knew whom I'd want to have an unsafe bike. Also I couldn't throw it away – it didn't fit in a garbage can, and that's the kind of thing you usually have to pay someone to haul away, which I definitely didn't want to spend money doing. And I couldn't just leave it somewhere, since that would be littering. So what was I to do?

I did the only thing I could: I parked it at the bike rack without a lock and waited for nature to take its course. And waited and waited and waited. Months went by and nothing happened to it. I think at one point someone knocked it over, but every morning I looked out my window and it was still there. Damn.

Until one day it was gone, and that's when I came to know who my true friends were. They were the people that, when I said, "My bike got stolen!" said, "Congratulations!"

Anyway, the other day I walked by the dorm. There, where the bike rack used to be, is a building. A brand new dorm built in Unit I to accommodate the influx of expected undergrads. It looks like a nice building, but I can't help feeling sad to see it. Not only is the bike rack gone, but so is the view.

The other reason news of the Voltron movie is good is because I have a Voltron action figure packed away in an attic. In excellent condition, and in its original packaging. Maybe now it will be worth something. Hopefully enough to pay off, oh, say, a year or two of student loans...

Sadly it's the terrain Voltron and not the lion Voltron. I much preferred the lion Voltron show, and always wished I'd gotten that toy instead. (I didn't because a friend already had that one, and it didn't seem to make sense to get the same one.) Although arguably the land one is better because you can do more things with it: either have 15 separate vehicles, form them into 3 larger vehicles, or make a giant Voltron figure. Whereas the lion one is either 5 separate lions or just one Voltron.

It's interesting in thinking about how much money it might be worth now and remembering one of the hard lessons of childhood its purchase occasioned my mom to teach me: I had saved up some birthday money to buy this toy, and it was expensive. Prices ranged from $65-$85, which, for a kid in the mid-1980s, represented a lot of money. The problem was, it was hard to find. And I really, really wanted it. And there were only so many nights after work she could take me to try to buy it. (It was only available from stores on the highway.) So when we went to a store that had it, at the inflated $85 price, I didn't care. I wanted to buy it. Right then. But my mom wouldn't let me. It was obviously overpriced, and I needed to learn that instant gratification was not always advisable. If I could hang on a little longer, perhaps just a week - which, while not a long time for a grown-up is an infinity to an 11 year old - I'd be able to get my toy and save the money. But she might as well have told me I'd never get to eat chocolate again. There was my toy, and she wouldn't let me have it! I cried, I whined, I complained that she was being *sooo* unfair!

But of course she was right. And soon we found it cheaper and all was right in the world.

(Plus given how rarely I got to play with it before I grew out of it, she was especially right. But because I'd held out, I now had the money left over to buy my very first Huey Lewis and the News album, Sports, just a few months later.)

Thanks, Mom.

I just saw an article on Slashdot that they will be making a Voltron movie.

It may be time to reveal my deep dark secret: circa sixth grade I REALLY liked Voltron. Yeah, I also watched Transformers, and sometimes He-Man, but only because nothing else was on. Voltron, on the other hand, I would wake up early to watch, I liked it so much.

Looking back, I'm not quite sure what the appeal was, but I guess the stories and characters were sufficiently compelling to grab my attention. It was an odd time for me anyway, on the cusp between kid-hood and adolescence. In fact, I remember that I'd just started getting really into Huey Lewis and the News around the same time. For a brief moment in time I maintained both interests. I even had this great issue of Dynamite magazine, which supported this cultural convergence by containing both an article about Voltron *and* a poster of HLN (as well as an article about Soleil Moon Frye, aka Punky Brewster).

But it was not to last. I was growing up and growing out of cartoons. I remember the specific realization dawning when I asked myself what was I doing being a "fan" of imaginary animated people? Being a fan of actual people is questionable enough, but at least they're sentient! Clearly I was going to need to make a choice: either HLN, or Voltron.

As it happens, Voltron disappeared from the TV not long after that. Whereas there's been 20 years of great music from HLN. So I'm pretty sure I made the right decision.

Although it seems now I will once again be able to have a Dynamite moment: there may soon come a day when I'll be able to go see a Voltron movie, followed by a Huey Lewis and the News concert. I just knew it was only a matter of time before I could get the cake and eat it too...

The other reason I came up to Boston this weekend was that today my laptop-loaning friend got married. He and his wonderful former girlfriend tied the knot in a very nice backyard ceremony. I've been to a few friends' weddings before, but not many. And at most of them I felt a bit like an outsider - not in the immediate circle of friends and family. But this was different. I consider them some of my closest friends, and I was honored that they asked me to sign their ketubah.

A ketubah is the actual covenant document in a Jewish marriage, and it's signed by witnesses. Because traditional Judaism is patriarchal, witnesses must be men. But a lot of progressive Jews, my friends included, ask women to sign it as well, for the day "when they count too."

To do it, I had to sign my name in Hebrew: "Chaya bat Shalom" (roughly the equivalent of "Cathy, daughter of Steve," except using our Hebrew names). And I had to use actual Hebrew script to do it. The problem: I can't read or write Hebrew. But I got there early, and a relative who did wrote it out for me and I spent the next hour practicing. I got it down pretty good, although I was still nervous about writing it on such an important document. Turns out I needn't have worried - I actually did pretty well. (Although I did manage to screw up the English version of my name I also signed with, and you'd have thought I'd have had that one already mastered by now...)

When I looked at the ketubah later on, after it had been all framed, and saw my handwritten Hebrew I felt sort of amazed that it was my writing. "I did that!" I proudly exclaimed to myself. It was strange to me that I was able to produce letters like these, but it made me think that maybe someday I'd like to be able to write more of them.

(I've also decided that I would like a hora at my wedding. This may require marrying someone Jewish, because I'm not sure I've got enough Jewish relatives to manage hoisting the chairs on their own, but irrespective of the groom ... I want a hora.)

Dateline: September 4, 1979, Willard School, New Jersey – Today passers-by on Morningside Road could see student Cathy Gellis posing for a picture for her mom before heading inside the brick building and her first day of kindergarten. Wearing a green jumper decorated with little flowers, white kneesocks, and buckle shoes, Cathy then headed into class all by herself because she was a big girl now and was ready for school. Once inside the school she found her cubby hole and then got her own set of crayons. Later that day Cathy was quoted at home as saying that she'd liked school and was looking forward to going back the next day.

Dateline: September 5, 2005, Bucerius Law School, Germany – Today passers-by in Hamburg could see student Cathy Gellis walking to the yellow and white law school building for the first day of her fall semester. Wearing jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and shoes with laces – because Cathy is a big girl now and knows how to tie her own shoes – Cathy arrived at the school all by herself now because she was a third-year law student and was ready for her courses to begin. Once inside the school she found her locker and then booted her laptop to check her email. Later that day Cathy was quoted as saying that she liked law school and was looking forward to going back the next day.

(The above post was inspired when it dawned on me this morning that today is my last first day of school ever...)

I'm really enjoying my time here in Germany. I'm learning a lot of interesting law, meeting lots of really nice people, learning the language... I'm really glad I came, and as an American student I'm being made to feel very welcome at the school, in the city, and in the country.

But I'm not just an American. I'm also Jewish, and it's hard to think about being Jewish in Germany without stumbling upon the elephant in the room: what happened 60-70 years ago. It's the history we've all inherited - but to what end? I know relatives and acquaintances who refuse to set foot in Germany, not out of any sense of personal fear (although there probably is some distrust that the virulent anti-Semitism is truly a thing of the past) but more out of a lingering anger for those horrible crimes perpetuated against so many people, and particularly against people like us.

I can't dismiss their feelings: they are a reasonable reaction to an incomprehensibly horrible tragedy that I would not want to minimize, nor encourage others to minimize. But at the same time, it's completely unintuitive to me to dig my heels in and continue to punish a nation of strangers. On the contrary, it seems that the complete opposite is called for. Hatred festers in the distrust unfamiliarity breeds. The thing to do, it has always seemed to me, is to take affirmative steps to not be strangers anymore.

In this vein I had an interesting conversation with a German woman a week or so ago. Her parents were war refugees themselves, having fled what is now Poland in advance of the Russian army. Growing up, her parents - directly scarred by the trauma - harbored and often articulated ill feelings towards the Russians as a result. But she, not being as directly affected, resisted absorbing those attitudes. Instead she chose to study Russian, and come to know the people that she otherwise might have regarded with fear and suspicion. I understood exactly why she felt it was so important to do that, because when I was younger, as a child of the Cold War, it was what motivated me to study Russian as well. It was also what prompted me, when I was 13, to want to study German too.

Of course, learning the language is just the first part of the equation. The next step is to learn people's stories. In talking to this woman she admitted to me that when she meets someone who says they're Jewish, immediately the wheels start turning and she wants to know how their families' stories personally intertwined with history. And when she said that, I immediately blurted out, "You know, I've always been curious the same way about the Germans that I've met."

The conversation greatly validated what both of us, independently, had come to believe - that it was necessary to climb down from our respective, distant turrets history had built for us and make a point to lay a shared, positive foundation for a mutual history that's yet to be written. (And that both of us from such different - perhaps oppositional - pasts could reach the same conclusion is itself an important lesson, too, I think.) For my part, I'm here - learning German, "being" German, and making an effort to see the world through the eyes of my German friends and neighbors. And for their part, the Germans I've met are making a tremendous effort themselves. My woman friend, for instance, learned Yiddish and wrote her dissertation on a community of Russian Jews. As another striking example, a few nights ago I was out at dinner with a group of German students from school, and was amazed to find that, in this random group of four people, three of them - completely separately - had visited Israel. (Two had gone on student exchanges, and one worked at Yad Vashem.)

All that said, I still find some things about being in Germany difficult or poignant, especially around this time of year. And there is one concrete thing that I felt very uncomfortable about in particular. While I suppose there are many things about Germany that don't make sense to me, or that I think should be different, it's not my country and therefore not my place to criticize. Except in this one instance, and I say what I do with all due respect for my host country and the complete cognizance that I am a guest here: it felt extremely wrong to me that when I filled out the city registration application, I had to report my religion. Purportedly this was for tax purposes, and had something to do with the city needing to know how many people the churches served. But it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I don't want to tell the German government that I'm Jewish, and I don't think it's good if it knows where all its Jewish residents live. Things went horribly wrong the last time it knew.

But beyond that, the Jewish high holidays are here. Even not-particularly-observant Jews tend to use the occasion as a time to reflect on their Jewishness, and given where I am right now, I felt it was important that I did as well. I didn't want to let the occasion go unmarked. I didn't really care if I marked it formally by going to services; indeed, I found the prospect intimidating. I'm not so well versed in my own religion that I can resist feeling a bit like an outcast amidst other Jews who are strangers to me. I tend to feel very inept, and consequently critically question my own identity. This wasn't the time for that though - to be able to be Jewish in Germany is an important thing, and I needed to find a way I was comfortable being so.

So I took the day off on Tuesday for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. I didn't go to school that day, passing on the matriculation ceremony for new students we were graciously invited to. I felt my obligations to myself were the most important ones for me to attend to and focused only on those. I did go to a German class for a bit in the afternoon - after all, learning the language is one of the obligations I owe to myself - but that was the only regular appointment that I kept.

Instead I threw a party. One of the traditions of Rosh Hashanah is to eat sweet things in hope of having a sweet new year. I thought it might be nice then to have a dessert party. But poor planning morphed it into something else - something nicer, even: some of my German friends came over and joined me (and my roommate) for dinner. One made some delicious sweet pancakes, and we ate them with applesauce, carrots with peanut butter, and, of course, the traditional apples with honey. It was one of those lovely occasions where you can sit back and marvel, "Wow, I'm a grown-up!" as we enjoyed the company of good friends and good food, all of which we arranged ourselves. It was such a nice evening my roommate and I were still high-fiving each other an hour later about it. Then, the kitchen and our rooms all straightened up, we were ready to face the new year.

It was one of the nicest evenings I've ever had, spending it in the company of people I really like. German people, even. Call it an irony of history if you want, although I would prefer to see it as an inevitability. Being willing to cross the barriers that sorrowful history has placed before you seems well worth its rewards. If I hadn't come here to Germany, I wouldn't have known these people, and they wouldn't have shared my holiday with me. I don't mean to suggest, though, that I shouldn't look at the elephant, or pretend that the elephant isn't there. We all need to look at that elephant, long and hard, so that we can make sure it doesn't happen again. My nice evening does not make me glib about that. But what I have come to realize, with increasing clarity over recent days, is that running away from the elephant isn't the right thing to do either. If I had refused to come to Germany, or refused to know my friends, or refused to let them share in my personal celebration of such an important day, what would it have accomplished? What sense would it have made to punish my friends for something they themselves didn't do? I would only have been punishing myself.

Keeping the holiday around here is challenging. My days are particularly packed, with more classes than usual as two of them wrap up this week. Yesterday began with Conflict of Laws, followed by Comparative Torts. Then almost immediately thereafter many of us boarded a bus for a field trip to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp.

It was one of those gorgeous fall days the holiday often falls on, sunny and pleasant. But we spent it in an environment whose modern serenity belied its past. Although this camp wasn't dedicated to the extermination of Jews, per se, many did perish there (along with many, many others). On an occasion of contemplation, it was quite the place to spend the afternoon.

We got back to school at about sunset. I tried to pretend that sunset hadn't quite happened yet and had one more meal in preparation for today's fast. I have 4 classes today so missing school really wasn't a viable option, but I wanted to do something to not glibly ignore the day.

Yesterday also I discovered that Eric Muller, law prof at UNC, had linked to my post about the Elephant in the Room (reconciling the Holocaust with my current participation in modern German life). I read his comments in the morning, and was particularly pensive throughout the rest of the day and camp tour. I imagine I'll have more to say on the subject as I digest everything, but I can't currently claim any sort of clarity.

Of course, how can there be any clarity? At the camp we faced the abject horrors inflicted by Germans. And back at school, I faced my 19 year old German friend who kindly stayed behind, even though he'd long since finished, to keep me company while I finished my meal.

Still, later in the evening some of us gathered to watch a soccer game – the German national team versus China. And one of my friends leaned over and asked, "Which one are you rooting for?"

Somewhat surprised at the question – I suppose I tacitly rooted for Germany, in support of my friends – I cryptically responded, "You know, it's a bad day to ask me that question. I'm finding it hard right now to say, 'Rah rah, go Germany.'"

The thing is, Germans themselves don't say that so much themselves anymore. In fact, those who do are immediately regarded as extremists. Even at political rallies there was vastly less pageantry than there would be at similar American events, where everything would be draped with red white and blue, with brass bands belting out Irving Berlin songs. Here, the only color motifs were those of the party, and only on the stage and some literature. There would be tremendous discomfort, my friends have explained, with having it any other way.

This picture provides an interesting snapshot into my personality.

My sister and I were given pumpkins to decorate with markers (PERMANENT markers, even! None of the washable Crayola ones for this job!). So I divided my pumpkin up into a lot of slices so that I could draw a lot of different faces, and not have to pick just one.

How little has changed in 26 years... My life is a lot like that pumpkin, sliced up into a bunch of pieces so I can experience everything and not have to pick just one thing to focus on.

I do remember though that some of the slices were a bit cramped. It was hard to properly draw the desired expression in the space I'd allotted myself. And fast-forward to today, I wonder if sometimes I haven't over-extended myself, so that my quest to taste everything doesn't undermine my ability to fully enjoy any of the things I experience.

But this is just a matter of balance. It is an essential truth about me that I am always like that pumpkin-decorator. And the life I decorate now is just like my pumpkin from kindergarten: well-rounded, and multi-faceted...

As I've fully acknowledged several times, I'm a complete slut for United Airlines frequent flier miles. Obviously I take brand loyalty in this area very seriously, but it works out well for me. In the past few years for instance I've had lots of travel adventures, some of which I paid for and many of which I got for free as a result of the brand loyalty.

Now, I love traveling. And I love traveling by air. So the fact that I do so much on United isn't all that odd. And I do sometimes fly other carriers from time to time (eg, Alaska, Aer Lingus, Delta, plus others in the Star Alliance). But I like flying on United more than the others. As I've discussed before, every airline has a system for how it runs itself. These systems vary somewhat from carrier to carrier. I rather like United's, and I'm very used to it. As a result it tends to feel more "homey" and I tend to feel less like a stranger flying them than I do other carriers.

And sometimes that brand loyalty has inspired me to take trips that I might otherwise not have taken. This may sound strange: it's an airline! How can it be that important to take an airplane trip with any particular airline?

It's important because traveling is important. And if the brand loyalty helps me overcome my inertia to get out and go somewhere, that's a good thing. There are so many things I would have missed out on doing or experiencing if I hadn't taken the trips that I have.

I remember one trip in particular. It was in late 2000, and I needed 6400 miles to renew my Premier status. At my job in California I had a floating holiday, a "use it or lose it" day off that needed to be used before the end of the year. So I turned it into a three-day weekend, and then stared at a map to figure out where I could go that would earn me 6400 miles.

The answer: Florida. If I flew via Dulles I'd end up with the right number of miles, and a chance to see my grandma who lived there. So this is what I did. And I'm very glad, too, because just a few months later, before I'd had any chance to see her again, she died.

So while maybe to some it may seem foolish to go out of my way to take a trip, to me it seems foolish not to.

(All this said, however, United can still annoy me. For instance, I've NEVER been given a complimentary upgrade… What's up with THAT? C'mon United! Cough one up for me one of these days!)

Sometimes when I'm stressed out from supreme busy-ness I compulsively reload websites whose content I particularly like and are frequently updated, hoping for something new on each refresh to tickle my brain with before I turn back to the task at hand.

OK, fine.

The question is, why do I compulsively reload my site?

BoingBoing has a post about an author of a book on parasites, which explains, among other things, that there is a parasite in cat feces that can affect humans - making women more friendly and men into jerks.

Perhaps that's why my August 2000 turned out the way it did. I had been living, catlessly, with my boyfriend for 13 months. He really wanted to get a cat, but I resisted. It's not that I object to the concept of a cat, but I am not comfortable with their logistical realities: smelly input and output, and the long-term commitment any house pet requires. How could we go places? How could we travel? Having a cat would seem to instill a burdensome complexity in our lives that I thought we were better off without.

Still, I wasn't anti-cat, per se. Just like everyone else I thought the stray kitten we found frolicking at the bottom of the stairs of our garden apartment was incredibly cute and charming. To the point that I tossed and turned all night worrying about what would happen to it. It was not an idle concern: we discovered later that the cat had been living across the street. (A four-lane street - hardly conducive for safe cat crossing!) But she and her two brothers were all strays that the neighbor had been leaving some food out for. And that was about to end as her husband insisted that they be taken to the humane society. Word had it though that if they ended up there, after three days they'd all be put down. But this little calico seemed way too sweet and friendly to allow that to happen to.

So we brought her home - temporarily. Some friends of mine at my job worked with a cat rescue organization, and as a favor to me agreed to take her and get her adopted out. But they couldn't do that right away so we took her in for a couple of days.

We named her Bovina because her calico spots made her look like a cow. She wasn't too young - my boyfriend thought she was the equivalent of a teenager - but lots of things were new to her and she seemed to enjoy exploring our apartment. For this brief period I didn't mind having a pet. She was very affectionate and nice to pet and I genuinely cared about what happened to her. But I knew I couldn't commit to taking care of her, so instead I did what I could to find her a nice home elsewhere.

Soon my friends came to take the cat away and get her ready for adoption. Shortly thereafter, my boyfriend also moved out. We'd been having problems, but the move-out came as a surprise to me: I came home from work one day to find half the furniture gone! I was not thrilled with him, to say the least. But now I understand - perhaps this assholishness was caused by the parasite! He obviously couldn't help himself - the cat made him do it!

It did seem bitterly ironic that within less than a month, I'd managed to lose both a cat and a partner. The apartment had rapidly gone from very crowded to very empty. But I do think it was all for the best. Look at my life now - I travel the world hither and yon, having all sorts of adventures. How could I do all that if I was tied down by a long-term commitment?

And what would I have done with the cat?

My mom and I took a roadtrip yesterday up to Freeport, Maine to go to L.L. Bean. Yes, we could have ordered things from the catalog or off the web, but sometimes you just need to try stuff on. Especially when pants are involved. And did I ever need pants... I was down to my last pair of jeans, which had themselves just sprung a hole, and I couldn't replace them because the Gap is no longer stocking anything that isn't completely hideous or ill-fitting. Plus even my nice pants, purchased at Eddie Bauer so long ago that I was still living in California, seem to be on their last legs too (so to speak...).

Unfortunately, pants-shopping is a completely tedious and frustrating experience. Unlike men's pants, which come with dimensions, women's pants come in overly-generalized sizing that only roughly approximates how they will actually fit on the person. Woe be the woman who has her curves in places the pants-makers haven't presumed… It takes a zillion attempts, trying on pair after pair, before one can find a pair of pants that fits. Even within the same pants-brand they can vary widely in sizing and styling.

Compound that with being petite. Never mind the impossibility of finding pants that don't make my hips look 100 times larger than they actually are, I also need to find pants that end where my feet begin. Which is no small feat (so to speak...).

Anyway, I can't imagine that there's any woman - not even the most hard core shopper - who enjoys this process. And for someone like me who hates shopping entirely, it's a complete nightmare.

But it had to be done. And it had to be done now.

So thank goodness for L.L. Bean. And my mom. We spent all afternoon up there, trying on pants after pants, but the result was two pairs of brilliantly-fitting non-ugly jeans, and four pairs of nice slacks. They look lovely. They look like MY pants, and not pants that I hastily borrowed from someone either twice or half my size. In fact, they are so nice that I bought them in all the (non-ugly) colors available (hence why there are four). And for the jeans, once I found a pair that fit I bought a second. I can now dispose of my holy Gap jeans... PLUS, while I was at it, I bought shorts to replace some of my beloved but now ragged ones. Again in two colors, just to be safe.

All this, plus a shirt, for under $250. And as the best bonus I DON'T HAVE TO GO SHOPPING EVER AGAIN. Or at least not for pants for the next several years.*

* (Provided, of course, I don't forget to pack them again...)

The New York Times has an article (which Ann Althouse and her commenters are also discussing) on women dining alone. Should they be pitied? Should they be joined? So should they be ignored entirely?

The article posits that they should not be pitied, and any invitations to have them join you should be conveyed through the wait staff. Sounds ok to me. Personally I might not mind a direct inquiry, but I guess it would depend on the surrounding circumstances whether I might feel uncomfortable about it. Ordinarily if I'm traveling alone I'm very open to meeting new people, and as long as I had not brought along something to read or work on - or sometimes even if I have - I wouldn't mind the opportunity to share a conversation with someone new.

I've done this from time to time, having spontaneous dining conversations with previously complete strangers. It happened most recently in Poland. At the hotel I was staying at in Suwalki, dinner was included in the dining room downstairs. I was joined midway through by two German men I'd started chatting with on line to check in. They were both train enthusiasts out visiting the area to see a nearby narrow-gauge railroad. We had a nice conversation, and they let me practice my German.

I also remember one of my final meals in France before I moved back to the US. My apartment was over a Mexican restaurant ("El Chuncho"), which was run by a very friendly, barrel-chested Mexican man, who was married to a Frenchwoman and had 14 children, including some sons he liked to try to set me up with... Because it was so close, and because it was relatively affordable (I could get a strip steak, salad, and potatoes for 60 francs, which was probably one of the few balanced meals I could properly afford) I used to go there about once a month. Sometimes he offered me free tequila to shoot after dinner, and I have an amusing picture of me, my mom, and my sister attempting it on one occasion…

As I was packing to move home I decided to go one last time. It was crowded (this place was one of the few in France where people could get halfway decent fajitas), but there were two two-person tables out front. I was sat at one, leaving a vacant seat, and another man was sat at another, leaving another vacant seat. This arrangement wasn't going to work for the restaurant, however, so they unilaterally resat the man with me.

Thus, thrust together by destiny, we decided to make the most of it and talk to each other. I actually still remember much of what was said. He was very open in talking about his life, and he was unlike anyone I'd ever met before. I remember him telling me about how he (too) had moved countries, how his career had gotten started, and how the risks he'd taken had led to his success. I think he was someone I needed to meet at that point in my life, someone who could show me that there were other ways to live than conservatively.

But I kind of ignored what he said, because I was about to leave France to go live conservatively. I was about to move in with my boyfriend and set forth on the path of a husband, a mortgage, two kids, and a cat. And that's what I wanted, so I thought.

After dinner we walked around for a bit and he treated me for ice cream at the Haagen Daas on Boulevard St. German des Pres. Then we said good-night and good-bye, and we went our separate ways.

I do think about him from time to time, though. I remember his field was paper-technology, and every time I read about advances in this field I think about him. I also think about him every time I log in to check my email, for there, at the top of my messages, is one from him inviting me to write back.

I never did. I never could. I was so absorbed in my own life, a life I was so determined to lead in exactly the way I'd set out, that I could never find the moment to tear myself away from it to maintain the connection. Instead I relegated him to a memory, a memory I haven't thought so much about until the New York Times article reminded me.

I think I made a mistake in not maintaining the connection. Yes, sure it's awkward to know how to handle these things, knowing how to navigate people's expectations and such. Maybe I was afraid, and it seemed safer to just run back to California and pretend we'd never met. But that was a cowardly way to live, and if there's anything I remember him communicating to me it was that life shouldn't be lived that way. Seven years later I can look back on it and realize he was right. But then, I think in some way I always knew that.

The asparagus my mom made for dinner reminded me of what I should have known: it's asparagus season!

How do I know this? Because I've been to the Stockton State Asparagus Festival, held every April in California. Ever been to an asparagus festival? It's full of asparagus. Crates and crates of asparagus. Asparagus cookbooks. Asparagus souvenirs. People dressed as asparagus.

If you are perhaps now thinking to yourself that it's a maybe just a little odd that I've been to an asparagus festival, let me point out two additional facts:

1) I did not go to the Stockton State Asparagus Festival during the 10+ years of my adulthood spent in the vicinity. Nope. I went as a 14 year old high school student from New Jersey; and

2) I don't actually like asparagus.

(Nor do I like frog's legs, which were being sold at one of the food stalls. But years later, when I attended the more famous Gilroy Garlic Festival, I did try alligator at one of the food stalls there. As well as garlic ice cream, which is surprisingly good. But I have no memory of asparagus ice cream. Of course, perhaps I've blocked it out????)

I had forgotten to mention in my posts about my trip to Memphis something else from the Little Richard concert. Before he got started, his crew came out to the crowd and asked if there were any women who wanted to get up on stage and dance. Because I was right up front one guy asked me directly if I wanted to. But I turned him down.

To be honest, a primary reason was that I didn't want to give up my nice spot for the Huey Lewis and the News concert that would follow. I also feared that they would take one look at the rest of me (the guy could only see my head above the barrier) and send me off the stage…

But the other reason was that there didn't seem to be anything to be gained by it. Yeah, I guess getting to dance on stage with Little Richard sounds like an interesting thing to do, but did I really need to exhibit for thousands of people? Was there anything to be gained by that? I thought not.

Which reminds me of a lesson I ended up learning a few weeks ago, because it happened again: a press publication offered to interview me and put my picture in their paper. Like the last time, I decided to take them up on it. After all, some people pay a lot of money to get into the press - so I should take my free opportunities when I can get them, right?

I no longer think so. I mean, the article isn't horrible and the picture - well, I guess it's ok although I don't really like it. But as I was getting interviewed, and as I was saying all these things to the reporter that didn't seem to be getting written down (we did this over the phone) I started to wonder just how well I was going to get represented when it finally came out. In the end I wasn't represented badly, but about 5 insightful sentences got completely ignored and two others got condensed into one sentence I didn't exactly say. As I said, I guess it's all ok, but I sort of feel like I dodged a bullet. I do not have a life where "any press is good press;" I have a life where credibility is of the utmost importance. Now, exposure is good. The most credible voice in the world will have no impact if no one hears it. But I've come to realize that not all exposure of that voice is good exposure if it doesn't convey that voice faithfully.

Anyway, if you happen to pick up the April 28th copy of the Boston Business Journal you'll happen to see me and some other people from my journal adorn the cover of the supplement. But if you can't find it, it's just as well.

I needed to find a picture of me from Germany for something my school requested of me, but what I found when I went to look for one was that while I may be really good at getting my picture in the paper, I seem to have utterly failed at getting a picture of me in Germany. Well, I found a few, but almost all of them are at parties(!), and half of those involve me drunk. Now, while my drunkenness may be a rare enough occurence to warrant memorializing when it happened, such photos will not meet the requirements of the picture request...

I am truly amazed to discover that in four months there I apparently took not one picture of me in front of a landscape or building. In fact, I'm not sure I took any pictures of any buildings at all! The only moderately building-like picture I've been able to rustle up is one of me in front of some random doorway to some random building that looks just like any other doorway to any other building in the Western World...

I suppose I could have a perfect picture somewhere that I just can't find right now, but it's probably more likely to be the case that I'm just this lame.

(To be fair, I have found one other picture of me in front of a building. But it's a building in Poland.)

Last week I started my erstwhile swim teaching job. It's just two classes meeting 7 times each over the next few weeks (ending about when BarBri ends), but as usual I'm glad I'm doing it. For one, it's helped structure my time - I've been getting a lot of studying done during the gap between the morning BarBri lectures and my afternoon teaching. Plus I can stay and swim some laps when I'm done, which is also consistent with my summer mission of becoming less squishy (I miss muscle tone...), and it will allow me to extend my certification another two years.

And then there's the teaching itself, which is its own reward. I have one non-homogenous Level III class and one class of little kids (3-5 years old). I think that's my favorite class to teach. The kids are always lots of fun and learn so much so quickly. And I get to play Zoo, which is my favorite game. I sometimes think I like to teach just so I get to play Zoo...

I was a little anxious before I started teaching because this is a new facility for me. I've taught at relatively few facilities, I think - this is only my 4th since 1989! Every facility has its own ways of doing things, it's own culture, and it's own physical constraints. I was afraid, culture-wise, that I would be too much of an outsider since I'm new here and only doing just those few lessons and not guarding. But the aquatics people are all really nice, and the people in charge of the swim program have good pedagogical values so I feel comfortable working for them. (In the past there have been a few occasions where that's not been the case, and I've been instructed to teach in a way inconsistent with my better judgment).

The physical layout of the pool is a little frustrating though. There's just not enough shallow area, and that makes teaching the 3-5 year olds a little difficult. This tends to be a problem in pools, where "shallow" is considered 3' or 3.5' deep, but they really need 2.5' deep water. Pools just don't seem to have enough sufficiently shallow areas like that, which is not only bad for teaching but limits these kids' rec swimming options too. I very much miss the first pool where I taught - the one where I learned to swim myself - which was a natural pond landscaped into a swimmable lake (600 square yards or so?) with a gradually sloping sandy bottom. It eventually got to 3.5'-4' deep, but not for a long time. There was plenty of space to line up the kids in waste-deep water before that point, and you never had to worry about them keeping "two hands on the wall!" at all. But I haven't taught there since 1992... so instead I'm learning to adapt my curriculum for this particular pool's constraints.

This morning I find that there is yet another person with my name wandering around, and, moreover, the other day she was wandering around in my neighborhood!

There's a picture of her in the actual paper, with Sheryl Crow - hey, meeting rock stars is my thing! - but while she may have my name, she definitely doesn't have my face. But wouldn't it have been weird if we'd actually run into each other? "Hi, I'm Cathy Gellis." "Me too! Give me back my name!"

Anyway, I just wanted to point this out so that anyone else who happened to have set a Google Alert to keep tabs on me would know that this hit wasn't...

Just for fun, I'll write this in Opinionistas style.

We sat down at the wrought iron table off to the side of the broad sidewalk. No dark, dingy interior dining for us; tonight, in the waning, mild summer days of Boston, it was all about the al fresco experience.

"Cathy! I had a dream about you last night!"

"O-kaaay..." My brain started racing. What does it mean to end up in someone else's dreams? Is that ok? Or is it, like, a harbinger of doom? Paging Freud! Help!!

Hearing the trepidation in my response she immediately followed up with, "Oh, no, it wasn't anything bad." I breathed an audible sigh of relief.

She continued. "I dreamed I heard you on NPR."

Oh! That wasn't bad at all! In fact, it was pretty complimentary.

She went on. "Yeah, you were reading your blog aloud. Apparently you were frustrated that people weren't reading it, so you decided to read it to them."

It was a very perceptive dream, I do have to say. Although I'm still a bit alarmed by how my subconscious ended up getting processed in her brain...

And there was more. "And in my dream I kept trying and trying to comment, but I couldn't get through!"

Good grief, her dreams are channeling my ISP too!

She clearly thought the whole thing was weird and random, but to me it seemed marvelously prescient.

"Did you know I've done radio before?" The look of surprise on her face told me no. "Yeah, in college I used to read the morning news on the college station. I really liked doing it. I discovered I had a radio voice --"

As opposed to the nasal verbal sprint I mostly speak with - on the radio I managed to speak slower, with more resonance to my voice.

"-- and I enjoyed getting to ad lib too." When the guy who was supposed to report on the sports forgot to call in that morning, I would get to do it. I would cut out of the newspaper the page with all the scores listed on it, circle each result so my eye could easily fall on them as I quickly scanned down the page, and then I'd come up with some way to link them together, all on the fly with a live mike. This all went well until the one morning (this was during hockey season) when I got ahead of myself and inadvertently announced that, "The Rangers destroyed the Devils by a score of... one to nothing." Oops.

I told my friend this story. She seemed surprised to learn about my radio proclivities, as it was not something my life had recently been plugged into. Like so many things about me it's a piece of my life that was buried in my past, from another place and time, that I didn't bring with me to law school.

"Goo--ood morning, you are listening to the K-A-L-X morning news from this Wednesday, August 30..." I demonstrated for her in my radio voice. She looked suitably impressed. "I'd love to do radio again," I commented wistfully.

And maybe someday I will. When my talent for it starts appearing in other people's dreams, perhaps it's a sign...

Perhaps it's karmic payback for my awful, awful 1L roommate, but my roommates on the houseboat are great. We don't just co-exist well as roommates; in a way we've become an instant family. I don't know, maybe having pointed this out will make things all go downhill and we'll hate each other in two weeks... but it's been a great run for the past few months and worth acknowledging.

Every so often we're able to get this group of four heretofore strangers together for "family night," where one or two of us cooks and we all eat dinner together and hang out afterwards (talking, sharing music, dancing, playing twister...). Earlier one of the other roommates used to do most of the cooking, but last night it was my turn.

If you look at the calendar you'll see that last night was Passover. But it was also the birthday of one of the other roommates. I just wasn't organized enough this year to either get invited to a seder or plan my own, but, really, what is a seder but a chance to have a festive dinner with people close to you? Throwing her a birthday dinner seemed like a perfectly reasonable substitute. (Besides, I counted there being at least four glasses of wine last night...)

Another roommate did some pre-dinner vegetables and guacamole, as well as some steamed string beans, but I made the rest, which somewhat inadvertently turned out to be one of my favorite dinners: steak and buttered noodles. The noodles were straightforward, but I've been practicing with the London Broil ever since Thanksgiving. It's taken a few tries to learn how to reliably not pulverize it, but I think I've finally got it down. (I'd mentioned to my grandma earlier that I was planning on making it. "Just as long as you don't burn down your wharf," she cautioned. I thanked her for the vote of confidence... but I do have to say that last night's was the best effort yet.)

And then there was the cake. It was a Duncan Hines devil's food cake mix, but as one of our guests last night noted, that's no guarantee that it will actually come out edible. I was actually very worried about it: I trusted my mixing skills, but I had no faith in the oven. I turned it up to the recommended temperature but became alarmed when the thermometer hung inside said it was at least 50 degrees hotter! So I turned it down 50 degrees, but then it was taking ages longer to cook than the box had said. Concerned, I turned it back up, but then as soon as the toothpick seemed to come out mostly clean I yanked it from the oven, afraid that the edges would get charred while I waited for the middle to get less soupy. Would the cake turn out ok like that? Who knew! The noodles, and even the steak, I could taste before serving, but that's not really possible with a whole 13x9 cake...

Then came the frosting. My mom had given me a recipe for 7 minute frosting, but I'd never made it before. Nor had I ever separated an egg, as far as I can recall, which this recipe called for two of. Clearly this endeavor was tempting culinary disaster, and I thought I'd achieved it after I put in the vanilla extract and was suddenly overwhelmed with the aroma. But that's what the recipe had called for, so I went ahead and smeared the frosting on the cake. Then I tasted it... and was once again overwhelmed with the taste of the extract. Dammit... But, hey, while it may not taste like the frosting my mother always used to make, no one else knows that, right? I went ahead and finished decorating the cake anyway, using colored sugars, which was really all I had available. My roommate likes flowers on her cakes, but since I couldn't make them with frosting I sprinkled the sugars in such a way as to make it look like a flower garden. Then I used the end of a spoon to embed the letters of her name and rolled sprinkles into the indentations to give it color.

Cleverly, however, I'd done this all a day in advance. By the time it was served, all the excess vanilla flavor had evaporated, the frosting was a perfect consistency, and the cake was still supremely moist. In other words, it turned out beyond-all-expectations perfect. Even today, a day later, that cake is still fabulous.

And my roommate was thrilled. She was totally flattered that someone had gone to the effort, and she and everyone else ate all the food I prepared. It was really validating. I've cooked a little, over the years, but never really a proper meal for others. I don't know if I ever really before considered it something I could do.

As the saying goes during the seder, "Next year in Jerusalem," although for me perhaps the phrase should be, "Next year without the leavened baked goods," which, to be fair, is an operative feature of most respectable seders... Still, if I can keep practicing with such willing guinea pigs, perhaps someday I may just be able to pull it off...

Edit 4/8: In better keeping with the season, I'm happy to report that I've now twice successfully made matzah brei, which my roommates tasted this morning. I make mine just like my father used to make it, with chopped up matzah softened with hot water, covered in beaten egg, and fried as a pancake in butter. I then serve it with honey.

At the Blawg Roundtable last month Colin Samuels told about how in googling himself he discovered that all the links related to a different Colin Samuels, who was apparently some sort of skier. Realizing this, he then made it his mission to become the #1 Colin Samuels in Google, which apparently he has done...

I, too, have my dopplegangers: the geek who used to live in the Bay Area but who now appears to live in Virginia, and some sort of ski instructor who lives in New England. (What's up with all the doppleganging skiers?) But in my vanity googling the other day I was pleased to discover that I occupy most of the upper echelon hits. Even as "Catherine Gellis," particularly ever since my note was published. And of course as "Cathy Gellis" quite a bit, particularly since dozens of people had posted the Blawg Roundtable announcement, where I was listed.

Anyway, some interesting things turned up in my googling. An Italian Huey Lewis and the News fan I know mentioned me (and my "Y") in his write up of the concerts from last summer. Someone else cited my "Cheese Ratio" post, as it was linked by Ann Althouse, in a particularly authoritative (I like the footnotes) and complimentary way. In a similarly scholarly vein someone else cited one of the distance learning essays I wrote as a junior in college way back in 1995.

And it also turns out that I'm on BU's website touting the Bucerius program. This doesn't surprise me - I'd been asked to submit a picture and then had trouble doing so - but I hadn't heard that they'd actually used the one measly picture I'd come up with. I suppose it came out pretty well, the way it was used on the website, but in the future not only should I do a better job making sure I get my picture taken, but I should probably give more thought to how my hair looks in said pictures...

I wonder how the other Catherine Gellises wear theirs?

As long as I'm going down memory lane thinking about my public school education, I might as well talk about this.

Ridgewood really did have a very good school system, but it obviously wasn't perfect. As a kid I always thought, for instance, that it was a little full of itself. And even now I'm not entirely sure I was mistaken in that impression. Because Ridgewood tries so hard to be the perfect education system, it can sometimes be a little... much. As I've gotten older, however, I've realized that some its initiatives really did have sound pedagogical value, and even as a kid they never posed any problem for me. I was always an excellent Ridgewood student, the kind of student the many Education Ph.D's in the administration were really trying quite hard to educate as thoroughly and appropriately as possible. I was always commended and valued for my intellectual abilities as well, and while I was often glib about them, as an adult I can see that it was a real gift to have had these abilities as nourished and validated as they were.

Except in sixth grade, when they weren't in the slightest. In fact, they were nearly destroyed.

To be fair, sixth grade was always doomed to be a disappointment. At the time I started kindergarten, Ridgewood had seven K-6 elementary schools feeding into two 7-9 junior high schools, which fed into one 10-12 high school. Due to population shifts, however, they realigned the schools shortly before I reached junior high, so that by the time I got there in seventh grade it was now a 6-8 middle school instead. In many ways I think this shift was a good thing, as sixth grade in an elementary school is an overly coddled experience. Whereas by seventh grade I was given a schedule and a locker and left on my own to get where I needed to be, in sixth grade we were still lining up and traveling as a class to gym/music/art/lunch/etc. together, just as we had been since kindergarten. On the flip side, however, sixth graders got to enjoy particular privileges and activities as being the oldest in the school. And every year as I grew through the school, I eagerly looked forward to when I would reach the hallowed heights of the sixth grade and be able to enjoy them too. Unfortunately, because it turned out the fifth grade would also be graduating with us to go on to the new middle school, we had to share all these things with them, and thus none of the fun or esteem I'd long expected from the sixth grade ever really came to came to pass. It was a huge disappointment.

But none of that was really anyone's fault. Where people can be held accountable is in the teaching, which was inexcusable. At my school there were three sixth grade teachers, each with about 20 students in their class. We were all assigned to one as our regular teacher, and then we were divided up again into cross sections for our math, English, and social studies classes. My regular teacher, Mrs. S., was the social studies teacher. Mrs. B. was the math teacher, and Mrs. Sp. was the English teacher. I don't have as much to say about the English class, except that I found it very boring and unengaging. Mrs. Sp. was always thought to be strict, but that wasn't really the problem. She did tend to take an inordinate amount of class time to lecture us about eating a nutritious breakfast, but that was ok too. Still, I did massively underperform in that class, which makes me generally question her teaching skills given that I'd always been a decent student before that year, and was again subsequently, but the larger problem was that she served as a ringleader for the other, younger teachers, and nothing good came of that.

Mrs. B. was a problem on her own. Prone to histrionics, I don't even remember in full detail how bad she was, but other people who were there with me remember how she seemed to have it in for me for some reason. For instance - and I'm sure there was more, but I've largely blocked it out - I would hand in my homework, she would lose it on her desk, and then she would yell at me! And then there was her tracking recommendation, a recommendation that affected the course of my math studies for the rest of my life, where for the first time ever, a teacher had held me back from being able to educate myself as fully as possible. To underestimate a kid is unforgivable, and especially for a girl at that age to be told she won't be able to do harder math, even though she'd never had any problems with math before, is reprehensible. I may not have excelled in her class, but she had made it impossible for me to do so. (My mom and I once discussed appealing her tracking decision, but then didn't. I suppose we were cowered into believing she was right. She wasn't, and I resent her having instilled in me such self-doubt.)

Meanwhile Mrs. S. was a new teacher who was learning all her tricks of the trade from these other two, and it wasn't doing her any favors. She could have been nice, but she ended up cruel. There was one day when I'd forgotten my spelling homework. The articulated punishment for cases like that was that we'd have to write out each word 10 times, or something like that. I felt very embarrassed that I'd forgotten my homework and, in sincere penance, took extra, meticulous care in copying out my words, using my best possible handwriting. Then I gave it to her. Now, I don't know, maybe I was hoping that she'd see my gorgeous penmanship and congratulate me on my efforts. And maybe that was an unreasonable expectation. But there was no way I ever could or should have expected her to do what she actually did, which was to rip up the papers right in front of my face.

These were clearly not teachers who liked students. One day during social studies class, Mrs. S. collapsed. She wasn't unconscious or seriously hurt, but she was unwell and dizzy and slowly fell to the floor. Stunned, the class at first sat there quietly. Then, very responsibly, on our own volition, we all sat still while we (the students) sent one of our own next door to get Mrs. B. She came in, the school nurse came in, Mrs. S. left and got help, everything was fine. And we'd handled the situation completely appropriately. That, however, did not stop Mrs. B. from tearing into us about how ungrateful we all were that even though Mrs. S. had been so sick she'd still come to school to teach us. I don't know why, none of us had even said a word.

But as kids, we were clearly delinquents in their eyes. There were two scheduled field trips for the year. On the first one, about six kids misbehaved (out of 60, and not all that terribly). As a result, they cancelled the second field trip. I've still never been to the New York Stock Exchange...

Yet all of the above pales to the worst thing they did, which was to institute a policy called "SQ." "SQ," you see, stands for "stupid question." And I don't know who they thought they were trying to fool, but just because they didn't spell it out fully does not exonerate them for the egregiousness of ever calling any kid's question stupid. Admittedly, I think the policy originated from frustration with that annoying habit kids of that age often have, which is to not listen to directions and then ask all sorts of questions about all the details they missed while they were fooling around. I empathize with that frustration. But the application of "SQ" was not limited to just those situations. A kid could have simply not heard or not understood a detail, and they'd get an SQ rather than an answer. Or the teacher could have misunderstood the kid's question and then dole out a misapplied SQ. Once SQ was in their responsive arsenal, it was used quite liberally.

Just so we're clear, no kid's question is ever stupid. Your job as a teacher is to sate your students' curiosity, not mock it. Even if these teachers had done nothing else questionable that year, for this reason alone they should have been sanctioned, although as far as I know none were. Mrs. B. did leave the district the following year, but I heard she moved to Tennessee. Mrs. S. ended up at one of the middle schools, and I think may have eventually gotten tenure, and Mrs. Sp. ended up at the other middle school. In fact, I think my sister may have eventually had her. But maybe once separated from each other and in the company of saner co-teachers their behavior was ameliorated.

For my part, I couldn't wait to get sixth grade behind me, and in seventh and eighth grade I really flourished. Which is a big deal itself, because middle school is a crucial time, particularly for girls, where kids either sink or learn to swim. I did the latter and never looked back. (Except for times like now, in this essay.) I just am thankful that I was able to get away from them and into an environment where I could thrive. Had I been under their thumb for one more year I am sure I would have been ruined and would never have been able to be where I am today.

I don't mean at Plymouth. I mean the first Thanksgiving I ever hosted.

Fortunately it was nice and small. A trial Thanksgiving, if you will. Just my mom and sister, who had flown out to see my houseboat. (And, I suppose, me. And my turkey...)

I'd taken Wednesday off to prepare. I've always loved the day before Thanksgiving. It counts as a "real" day, but no one ever actually does anything. I remember in elementary school we'd only go for a half-day, just long enough to get credit for the schoolday, and then after maybe about an hour of real work we'd spend the rest of the morning doing recess and eating cupcakes. Even without recess and cupcakes, the day before Thanksgiving always provides a welcome change of routine.

I spent mine this year running errands, although I'm not sure I'd do that again on such a day. The stores were fine, but the roads were packed. I should have hit the grocery store in the morning and quit there. Surprisingly the grocery store wasn't too crowded - well, except for the baking aisle. No one ever goes to the baking aisle, except the day before Thanksgiving when all of a sudden they discover all the ingredients America's insta-meal eaters had forgotten they need on this rare occasion they actually make something from scratch.

Thanksgiving dinner, chez bateau, was pretty straightforward. Salad, bratkartoffeln, which I've decided I miss from Germany (that and a decent Schnitzel), cranberry jelly, bread and butter (a homage to my grandma, whose Thanksgiving table was never without), wine, and, of course, turkey. I'm proud to say I managed to defrost and then cook said turkey without killing anyone, despite all the warnings that turkeys are little more than plump and juicy bio-hazards poised to wipe out the country. Who needs terrorism when you instead have American culinary incompetence.

Technically my mom supervised, but somehow (hey!) I ended up doing all the work. Maybe it's nothing to brag about that I'm a grown woman who had never managed to cook a turkey before, but I'd never had occasion to. The world is pretty much divided between "turkey preparers" and "guests," and I've always been a guest. At all my childhood Thanksgivings my grandma cooked the turkey. As an adult it's usually been my step-mom or some other random host on those Thanksgivings when I was not either on my own and not cooking turkey, as it is not a single-person's meal, or in Europe, where no one was cooking turkey as it was just another random Thursday. So this was the first time I was in charge of it, and it's reassuring to know that I could be again.

Update on my FasTrak problem:

We have reviewed the dispute form you submitted... Based on the documentation you provided and a further review of our records, we have dismissed the violation. No payment or further action is required.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Sincerely,
Bay Area FasTrak Customer Service Center

So there you go - I'm already 1 for 1 in my legal career...

Did you know I could draw? Er, did you at least know that I have drawn? Whether or not it's a skill I can actually claim is a separate matter from whether I've attempted it, which, as it happens, I have.

Nothing fancy, mind you. I don't have any particular artistic gift like some do. I once had a friend who was one of those people who could capture something in their mind's eye and then accurately replicate it in some drawn medium. I'm not like that, so I tend to stay towards the cartoonish, where accurate representations aren't so important. As long as the object of what you're trying to convey is recognizable, that's usually enough.

Still, even the cartoonish requires some sort of technique, and in this respect I'm grateful to one of my friends in high school for telling me that I had some instinct for it. He used to sketch comics effortlessly and often. Most of them were satirical looks at our physics class, which, though somewhat esoteric, were actually pretty funny. He established some consistent conventions throughout his comics for how certain people would be characterized. (Nothing mean, just some gentle ribbing.) For example there was one classmate whose intelligence made him seem more akin to a 52 year old physics Ph.D. than the17 year old high school student he was. So my classmate always drew him with an overly inflated head orbited by electrons.

I borrowed the convention for one of my first comics. I'm sure I still have it, somewhere, but I can't currently find it. So instead of a picture, a thousand words will have to do... In this comic the teacher has asked the class a question. In the second panel the entire class gives the same answer, represented only by about a half-a-dozen quote bubbles entering and filling the space from all directions. In the third panel, the large, inflated and orbited head appears, with my classmate giving a completely different answer, which in the final panel the teacher confirms is correct. Part of me originally thought the second panel was a bit of a cop-out, since by using the quote bubbles I didn't have to draw the whole class. But my friend gave it high praise as an effective cartooning technique. Who really wanted to see all those people drawn out anyway? The point (upon which the humor was ultimately created) was to represent the unanimous chorus, and that's just what I'd done.

Since then I've only drawn a bit here and there, but a few years ago there was a period where I tried to take drawing more seriously. A friend of mine was on an autocross team called "Track Monkeys," so I decided to draw them a mascot:

It's probably one of my best drawings ever, and probably because it's the one I took most seriously. It may or may not be the most brilliant picture ever, but what regularly perplexes me with an "I did that?" sort of confusion is that it really did come out looking exactly like I'd visualized it.

More recently I've tried going back to the comics, and a few months ago I did this one, "Tales from the Boardroom." Like it says at the top, it really was drawn from a real life story. (The Internet boom years were a strange time indeed...) Which may be why I'm a little lukewarm on it - it's almost too true to be funny... I do like it though because it was a chance to work further with the technique of using different viewpoints and dialog indicators to tell the story, which I need to be able to do, given my limited artistry.

Still, if I can manage to tell a story that's funny, then I'm happy. Towards that end I did this one a few years ago, around the time of the Track Monkey, that's still my favorite. Maybe someday I'll even do a sequel for it as I'm sure there's more silliness to explore in "The Adventures of Vacuous Man"....

My mom saw a review in the Boston Globe for a book called, "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read."

She thought it was interesting then that when she looked it up in her local library's catalog it was listed as an audiobook...

The whole thing reminds me about a book report I had to do in sixth grade. Unfortunately we had to give our reports as oral presentations to the class. Even more unfortunately, I hadn't finished the book.

Fortunately, however, the book I'd chosen was a mystery, so after talking about the bits I had read, I ended my presentation by saying I didn't want to ruin the ending by talking about the rest.

Suffice it to say, that book reviewed in the Globe is yet another I don't need to read...