The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

My friend and I went to see the fireworks put on by the town of Santa Clara, CA at its Central Park. We found seats on a grassy patch near a duck pond.

All was well until the fireworks started going off and suddenly a stampede of terrified ducks jumped out of the water and dashed off past us. They couldn't get far because there were too many people blocking their egress, so they'd turn around during the pauses and head back for the pond. Then there'd be another flash and another boom and they'd turn around and start running in the opposite direction. Another boom, and there'd be even greater confusion and they'd start crashing into each other as they dashed around in utter panic.

They were clearly out of their little ducky minds with fear (and the sociopathic little kids who decided to chase after them didn't help) but there was something incredibly absurd about seeing a horde of ducks blaze past us with their webbed feet pitter-pattering on the concrete (dozens of ducks collectively make quite an audible pitter-patter.)

Eventually they did seem to get used to it, and by the time the finale came around most of them stood still near the edge of the pond, either having figured out that the flashing and booming posed no threat to them, or frozen in fear and exhausted from all their frenzied waddling. Despite the inherent humor in watching ducks scramble en masse, it was hard to enjoy something which was clearly putting these cute little creatures in such distress...

One of the best donut shops I've ever been to was Sappy's Donuts in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I went there when I was a kid on vacation. It was the kind of place that you'd have to get to very very early because they closed up for the day after the donuts ran out. Last fall I went up to Maine (reasonably convenient since I now live in Massachusetts) and went to look for it. Apparently it's become a Thai restaurant.

This leaves me with my previous runner up for favorite donut shop, Dunkin' Donuts, which, for a chain, I think is pretty good. MUCH better than Krispy Kreme and its insulin-shock-in-a-round-shape flavorless donuts. It's no wonder that they sell them piping hot: if you scorch your tongue you won't notice how tasteless they are.

So I like Dunkin' Donuts, and my favorite donut is the chocolate kreme filled. But, alas, even though Boston is crammed full of Dunkin' Donuts (whereas the Bay Area is essentially devoid of them almost entirely), not all of them sell this type of donut. I've come to suspect, upon inquiring, that some Dunkin' Donuts make their donuts on site, and others have them produced elsewhere and delivered. I then began to notice a correlation that donut shops that had them delivered did not generally sell that kind.

One evening I went out to dinner with my sister, and across the parking lot was a Dunkin' Donuts. Well-acquainted with my fondness for chocolate kreme filled donuts, having accompanied me previously on some fruitless quests to purchase them from various Dunkin' Donuts establishments, she suggested I run across and see if I could get one at this particular place.

But as is often the case, there were no chocolate kreme filled donuts for sale. Ever. They don't carry them. Wanting to test my earlier theory I inquired with the clerk, "So do you get your donuts delivered, or do you make them on site?"

"I have no idea where the donuts come from."

Immediately all thoughts of chocolate kreme filled donuts disappeared from my mind as I reeled in utter amazement at the total lack of curiosity demonstrated by the clerk. He works in a donut shop, and not only does he not know where the product somes from, but he apparently also never thought to check behind that door to the kitchen to see if anyone ever made any.

Perhaps there's an explanation. Perhaps he was under strict orders not to divulge to the customers the true origin of the donuts. Or perhaps he had been hired that day, perhaps in the previous ten minutes.

Maybe it's just as well that he works in a donut shop. Imagine the confusion if someone asked him where hamburgers came from.

One of the perks with living in a seasonal climate is the little gifts the seasons give. Spring gives flowers, and today I spotted for the first time in a long time my favorite: the crocus.

They're small but sturdy, they're brightly colored, and they always mean that spring is upon us finally. What more could one ask from a flower?

Edit 3/26/04: Even the New York Times thinks so:

"Oh, yes, crocuses. We'd almost forgotten. The glacial mantle of ice and snow has withdrawn, and in the disorder it left behind - matted lawns, pulped leaves - the first bulbs are rising. And not merely rising, but standing tall, as tall as a crocus gets, quivering in a southerly breeze. The crocuses come up in the colors of repudiation, rejecting winter and all its monochromatic affairs. It's always something to see the stems of the early bulbs cleaving their way up through the soil, a reminder of the power of small things, the undeterred thrust of the season."

The article goes to talk about the first robin of spring and other seasonal harbingers. I have to wonder, though, about the significance of the robin I saw today: it was dead.

I have a friend at school whom I met slightly before the semester began. He was living in California and we'd gotten in touch initially to see if it made sense to join forces for the move out to Boston. (Turns out it didn't). It ended up that he was in my section (and therefore all my classes) and we have similar academic interests so we spend a lot of time together. Of course, I also spend a lot of time with his roommate who was in all my classes AND my writing seminar. In fact the group of us spend a lot of time together in general, sometimes with another (female) friend.

It's all very above board, our friendship, like all the other friendships I have with people who just happen to be male. Which is why the rumor of our dating is so perplexing. Apparently the rumor is fairly widely held among my classmates. At first I was amused by it, because it wasn't true and I smirked at people's ignorance. But where I once smirked now I'm irked because at its core the whole thing is insulting. Why is it that a male and a female can't socialize without a romantic agenda always being inferred?

I've since discussed this with two friends, the one in question and another woman. They disagreed with me when I said it was a remarkably chauvinist automatic assumption. They said no, it was just as unfair for my male friend that he had to labor under the supposition that he was dating his female friend as it was for me to be presumed to be dating my male one. I agree with the mutuality of that unfairness but I still maintain that there is a chauvinist subtext underlying the whole matter.

It used to be that only men were the law students, the businessmen, the people who got to be self-actualized in a non-familial context. Women's traditional roles were familial, so if that's all women were expected to be capable of or interested in, it was more reasonable to believe that any interactions between men and women were part of some mating dance, even if they originated in some seemingly unromantic context (like school). Those biases towards women have been widely discredited as women take their place as equals in what had previously been a male-dominated world, or so I thought. I mean, I came to law school to be a lawyer, to focus on succeeding in this practice. My goal was not to find a husband. So why would people see me interacting with a man and presume, with no evidence other than the fact that I spend time with him (e.g., no holding hands, no saccharine flirting language), my focus was the latter? Women need to be able to interact with men as men would have interacted with each other, in a context devoid of romantic politics. My friend doesn't have a problem with the gender neutrality of our relationship, but it seems like many of my peers do.

There's something very second grade about the whole attitude. Put a man and a woman together and oooooooo.... I can practically hear the singsong jeer: "Cathy and [friend], sittin' in a tree..." But worse, these are grown-ups. These are men and women who seem content to view the world as entirely a matter of male-female maneuvering. There's no aspiration for something better, of having men and women being equals in non-romantic contexts and resigning sexual politics to a separate, more private sphere.

Today's lesson, boys and girls, is all about the wisdom of leaving important public services to the discretionary self-regulation of private companies. The moral learned, for those of you in a rush, is that it's not a good idea.

First, the Saga of the Cell Phone. Elsewhere I've alluded to my dissatisfaction with AT&T Wireless (or whoever they are these days) whom I've had service with (or, should I say, to whom I've been paying money monthly) since 2001. Initially I was satisfied. Their coverage in the Bay Area was excellent. But in Boston I noticed, to my horror and inconvenience, that it was not very good at all. In fact, it was barely present. Calls frequently failed to go through, despite 4 bars on my phone for signal strength. Similarly voicemails took eons to be delivered, and calls were often dropped midway through. That was annoying enough when I visited Boston. It was absurdly useless when I moved there. And in case it wasn't bad enough upon arrival, it got worse as the months have passed. My cell phone plan is now a really expensive voice mailbox, and nothing more. In case of emergency I couldn't even reach 911.

So number portability is a wonderful thing. Time to research new companies/phones/plans is also a wonderful thing, or so I hear because it's not like I've had any. I should have switched as soon as the opportunity became available but I had a pesky little thing called "law school" to take care of. But this week, now that I'm living in a place with no landline to use instead, I've had to make some time. I finally settled on the phone I wanted, the plan I wanted, and the carrier: Verizon.

There are a couple of complications. I'm trying to port a Bay Area number and I can only do that with CA-based telesales or a Bay Area store. Yesterday I talked to a sales rep on the phone who said he'd have no problem overnighting a phone to me. That was good, because I'll be traveling beginning Friday and I needed it before I left. But I wanted a chance to see the phones in a store one more time so today I did so and then called back, and that's where the trouble began.

In a sense I should have seen the trouble coming. The rep I talked to yesterday gave me several bits of nice, but ultimately incorrect information. Then today when I walked into the store I asked to see "tri-band" phones. "We don't have tri-band here," was the response. "You don't have the 8600?" I asked incredulously. "Oh we have that. But we don't have a tri-band phone." "I thought the 8600 was a tri-band phone." "Oh no." "So how do you distinguish the phones from the all-digital ones?" "Well we have tri-MODE phones." It was my mistake for getting the term mixed up, but they were ready to send me out the door before it dawned on them that I, the customer and NOT the expert, might have meant the other. Apparently critical thinking skills are not required on a Verizon employment application.

So when I called back later I discovered a credit check was involved. That was ok, or so I thought, because my credit is good. I gave them permission to pull my report. Then they put on this credit review counselor to ask me questions about my report that only I would know. They said that this was to make sure I was really myself. I answered her questions, but I admit my answers were a little unusual. "What is your address?" for me is not so simple and I have no idea what the report says. I lived at one, moved to another, but am living at another one still. But if she was confused she never asked for clarification. Of course, I can't see what business it was of theirs. If the report said I wasn't a credit risk, and I could identify the information as mine, it should have ended there. But that's where the nightmare began. Because she wasn't satisfied apparently and instructed the sales rep that I'd need to fax in supporting documentation. What? I knew all my addresses, I knew my credit cards (although she didn't want me to give just one or two apparently but every single credit card I've ever had). She asked if I had a private loan and I told her about the school loans, but apparently she couldn't find them on the report. It was all very strange, because I had no idea what report she was even looking at, let alone what it said, but they said the only point of the call was to verify I was me so I don't see what the problem was.

Worse, after she transferred me back, with no indication she had concerns, I was now heretofore banned from Ever. Speaking. To. The. Credit. Department. Again. Ever. I have no idea what the problem was, and they refused to tell me or let me clarify. No amount of pleading would get me transferred back to the credit people. Apparently my file had been suddenly passed off to the shadowy people in the Review Department. Meanwhile, I'm not even a customer yet so there's no transactional record to follow up on and there's no one who's going to take charge and make sure this works out right. Even if I can find the stuff they want me to fax I have no idea if it will solve the problem. And I need it solved, and I need it solved NOW. Thanks to AT&T not bothering to provide service to my phone (and I do believe it to be service-related and not phone-related because it does work reasonably in California) I'm dead in the water. No telephony access. So I could try another vendor, but that's not the point. The government regulates the cell phone industry because it provides a valuable communications service to the public. It regulates the airwaves, which are a finite public asset, by doling it out to private entities. Who seem to be under no obligation to return any service to the public in exchange for the lifeblood of their business. Citizens are still at the mercy of private companies in order to get access to an increasingly indispensable mode of communication.

For me, I've been at least delayed by a small-minded, irresponsible, misrepresentative, apathetic, disconnected corporate policy and process. It might work out, or it very well might not since there's no one at Verizon who is going to ensure that this gets worked out properly. (As it is I have to do all the work.) But this is just a cell phone where I'm at the mercy of a private company providing a public communications service. Imagine if it was a lifesaving drug.

Edit 6/8/04: Well, I'm now all set up with Verizon. It ended up being somewhat painless once I got to the California store. Interestingly, once I was in the Bay Area my AT&T phone started working just fine. I was so tempted to give it a second chance but I slapped myself back into reality. The Verizon phone is ok, but not spectacular. The new phone has poor volume controls, only asinine ring tones, and the reception is not all I hoped for. Dammit.

Intrigue in the nation's capital? The Patriot Act rearing its ugly head?

Actually it's that there's holes in my window screens. At night with the light on bugs invite themselves right in.

The interesting thing is that it's not like a lot of bugs of the same type. No swarms. It's more like one of each species. I have a little bug with disproportionately long grey wings. I had a big bug with a brown body and dark wings. There's been a moth with an unfortunate habit of making itself comfortable on my laundry. There have also been a couple of miscellaneous bugs whose particular exoskeletons I can't quite recall offhand, although some of them have been squished for lack of a better way of ensuring their timely departure from my bedroom. And then there is a really stupid ladybug that keeps flying into the spinning ceiling fan and crashing down on my bed.

Last night the ladybug crashed into the fan again for about the third time. And once again I put it back outside. You'd think it would have learned better by now. I suppose it's possible that maybe it was a different ladybug. To make sure, if it happens again, I'll start counting the spots.

I try to help out the ladybug(s) and not squish it (them) because it's (they're) pretty and aphid-eating. Although if it is in fact the same one every night it is beginning to wear out my patience and I may be no longer able to guarantee safe passage from my room. Still, if it has been a different one every night, why would I only be seeing them one at a time? If I had a horde of ladybugs living in my bedroom, wouldn't I have noticed? Or is it some secret ladybug protocol that they only reveal themselves one at a time?

Of course, WHY would a horde of ladybugs be living in my room? It's not like I have a lot of aphids hanging around. Unless they too only show themselves one at a time...

What is wrong with some people?

My sister went out to her car this morning and found a dead squirrel on it. She doesn't suspect this was a natural occurrence, since squirrels, very sure-footed animals, are not likely to accidentally plummet onto a windshield below.

They are even less likely to plummet onto the windshield and become wedged under the wiper blades without an awful lot of help...

Edit 12/24: Comments reluctantly closed due to recurrent comment spam.

Today's scintillating conversation at school resulted when my friend reported the indignity she suffered when a bee stung her, in her apartment, and worse, while she was still in bed. She said it appears she has two bees' nests outside her window and was wondering what to do. A brief discussion of rocket launchers and flame throwers ensued, along with an inquiry into the various tort liabilities one might incur if one pursued any of these means. We then resolved that a bebe gun would, perhaps, be an effective means of extermination. After all, it was reasoned, you would outnumber the bees, since a bebe is clearly twice as endowed than a single bee.

In my maudlin moments connected to the job search I get frustrated with figuring out how to represent myself. Until I entered an environment where merit was judged so reductively I used to think that past accomplishments were simply enough. I was reading a book the other day about how to play up those things, especially seeing how (for most of us!) our GPAs are not going to be opening the doors. But in reflecting on the whole system, I noted how certain items end up being shorthand confessions for negative qualities, whether they mean so truthfully or not. The GPA is just one example (hmmm, only a 3.09? Not very smart or hardworking...). Or for a person who is unemployed, they acquire a certain "untouchability," because even though their unemployment may be due to no fault of their own (e.g., a layoff) it's so easy for an employer to immediately construe that if a person is unemployed, there must be some aspect of dessert to it. Who would want to hire the kind of person who would actually need a job?

But these kinds of erroneous supposition evidence themselves in many other ways and many other contexts, and my thoughts on it turned to something I recently read in Salon, a discussion on women who wear t-shirts admitting that they'd had abortions. While this subject matter has little bearing on my job search, it was interesting to think about because the same mechanism was in play, trying to communicate something whose resulting message you can't control and is often misconstrued. For instance, some people said that the t-shirts acknowledging abortions would label these women negatively, perhaps as sluts, poor, or people with the poor judgment to have gotten pregnant. And they might even appear as such to people who claim to be pro-choice! The worst is so easily assumed, and the truth of it is so frequently ignored. Very likely those women are monogamous, educated, and responsible, but for some reason still needed to make that choice. But that is the last thing that is presumed, because these biases become very ingrained and we judge people so easily on their basis, even though we may aspire to be non-judgmental.

It was argued that the women wore the t-shirts because they wanted to start rewriting those suppositions. That as long as people kept their reproductive activities in the shadows, the false perceptions would persist for lack of anything to challenge them.

Although it may appear to be a leap of topics from reproductive freedom to job-hunting, the connection between the two, relevant also to many other areas in between, is the way that they all involve communicating to strangers in such brief ways that helping them get past their biases to see your worth as a person may be difficult.

Friday the Thirteenth?
Triskaidekaphobia!
Oh wait - it's the Twelfth.

OK, yes I was late and didn't post it until the 13th. But I wrote it well in advance with every intention of posting it on the 12th, I swear. Since it was going to be so long before the next Friday the 12th would occur I decided to go ahead and post it today anyway and just tweak the date. And really, if I hadn't said anything, people who didn't check the blog yesterday wouldn't have known any better. Given that most people on the planet probably didn't check the blog yesterday, perhaps I should just have kept my mouth shut about it. Hmmm....

At lunchtime yesterday I tried to buy a soda at the student union to go with my sushi, but none of the fountains worked. Just a stream of syrup would pour out, lacking the carbonated water necessary to turn it into soda. I tried fountain after fountain. None dispensed correctly, not for any flavor. Oh well, I'll just buy a soda from a vending machine in the law tower, I decided, apparently forgetting the lesson from the day before when my corporations professor had failed to obtain one from the recalcitrant (and apparently empty) machine. There is another machine next to it that dispenses more nutritious drinks, and I can see through its clear plexiglass that it's full of such product, but alas it has been refusing to take money. Fine, whatever, I'll just go out into the hall for a drink of water.

Figures the fountain doesn't work.

Thank goodness for the Westlaw rep who was giving out free apple juice this morning in the lobby or else I'd have been really thirsty, so totally stymied in my quest for potable liquid anywhere on campus.

Meanwhile, yesterday's lunch prompts me to make a note to stop buying the sushi at the student union. It's consistently crunchy. Given that it's a salmon and avocado roll, such a texture is not really appropriate. How hard would it be for them to wait for the avocado to ripen before using it? Did they really not notice how hard it was when they cut it up? I hope this oversight is only because they are paying such particular attention to the respective quality of the fish.

And finally, in closing I will share another random observation gleaned from my lunchtime adventures: pickled ginger and Wise CheezDoodle "cheese" work together surprisingly well on the palate.

What's the point of getting spam if you can't take the opportunity to mock it? Phishing spam - the kind which trolls for your personal financial information - is the most dangerous if you take the bait, but it also can be the silliest because it depends on its prey to believe it's legitimate. The relative illiteracy of its authors can consequently render it hilarious.

I liked this one I got the other day, ostensibly from a bank where I do not have an account:

Dear Washington Mutual user, We are performing system maintenance, wich may interfere with access to your Online Services. Due to these technical updates your online account has been deactivate. Washington Mutual recommend you to reactivate your online account.

OK, that's just embarrasing spelling and grammatical errors (as well as highly implausible that a bank would be so inept to disable a customer's account while performing system maintenance - someone would get fired for that). But I really liked the earnest logic in its final customer service statement:

Our goal is to have Internet Banking available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but Internet Banking may be unavailable during the following times for scheduled systems maintenance: Sunday: 12:00am - 6:15am Eastern Time.

24/7 access, except for the 6 hours it's down every week (so they can disable more customer accounts?). Guess it's not likely they'll be meeting that goal any time soon...

A religious discussion broke out on the Huey Lewis and the News chat board, of all places. It all got started because a teenage girl is slowly learning about the band and experiencing some of their music for the first time. She's bright and articulate but clearly seems to be leading a sheltered existence, being homeschooled by her apparently ultra-conservative Christian parents. (She was the person who posted the cheers for Bush after the election. While it wouldn't be fair to hold these views against a 14 year old, I'm pretty sure, based on other posts, she was essentially parroting her dad.) I am, frankly, somewhat surprised her parents even let her hang out on the fan board in the first place with all us heathens...

Anyway, she reported that she got the second album, Picture This, and liked all the songs on it except "Workin' for a Livin'." Someone asked why. Because of the bad words, she said.

What bad words? Oh THESE "bad words":

"Some days won't end ever,
And some days pass on by.
I'll be working here forever
At least until I die.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't;
I'm s'posed to get a raise next week
You know damn well I won't."

This unexpected response then unleashed a discussion about the biblical mandates against using bad words, eventually morphing into a further discussion of what it would take to achieve salvation, etc. It was actually fairly interesting, once it was moved out of the Picture This thread to one in the off-topic area, partly because for such sensitive material it was being handled so civilly.

Still I kept my distance. I'm not qualified to discuss Christian biblical doctrine, and I sort of had this fear that at some point the conversation might turn into a train wreck. Extremism inevitably seems to lead to it, because it exists so fully in its narrow definition of the universe, incapable of accounting for other people's varying beliefs.

No full-on train wreck has occurred, but small bits of harm were nonetheless sneaking through. The girl had never heard of the Koran, and was mixing up Muslims and Hindus (and in a very dismissive way.) [Edit: further research suggests she may actually have been speaking about Jains.] But the bigger problem was the person who swooped in to set the record straight, but may have made things worse through his tone of authority and lack of corresponding accuracy, particularly in discussing Jews. Although I'd wanted to steer clear of the whole thing, I didn't think I could or should, not when these misstatements were allowed to linger publicly, unchallenged. Given how little knowledge some people are working with, it isn't good for wrong facts to become the basis of their erudition. These misapprehensions have so often been the basis for discrimination – or worse. Fearing this kind of reaction I felt compelled to set the record straight.

Yet I feel resentful for having had to do it. I had not wanted to enter the conversation. I had wanted to leave them to spin their wheels alone. By entering the discussion I felt like I validated it, and I didn't want to do that. But being silent felt like it was validating the ignorance, and that's really what I fear. Extremism can take root much easier when there is no alternate information competing with it. I don't only mean extremism as a matter of faith – I mean any narrow world view that fails to incorporate the panoply of differences of all its people. Whether it was misstating that all Jews were of anglo-saxon origin (huh?) or why they don't accept Jesus as the messiah, these were the real bad words, words that left unchallenged end up validating the negative biases underpinning them and can entrench further hatred. Somebody needed to speak up against them. Apparently that somebody had to be me.

Edit 1/3/05: This post could use some editing because I'm not sure if it's quite clear the point I'm trying to make in the last paragraph. The comment I made below will help clarify somewhat, so please read it to get a better sense of what I was trying to say. It wasn't so much that I felt personally burdened by needing to post the correction, but that it was concerning that there was no one else willing - or, more likely, able - to do so. I initially interpreted my emotional reaction to the situation as one of resentment, but in reflecting further I think it was really fear, more than anything else, that motivated me to post. Fear of so much ignorance in the world, and the harm it so often wreaks. (And as it happens, so often on people like me.)

My friend got this fortune yesterday at lunch. I'm retyping it here exactly as it reads:

"Striving for the best will bring you loser to the best."

It was really unfair. My friend is NOT a loser...

As has been mentioned before, I like sushi. But not this much...

I'm also a little concerned about the Google ad I saw included on the site:

"Sushi Sashimi for Sale
Discount Sushi Sashimi. Check out the deals now!
www.ebay.com"

"Discount sushi?"

From an auction?

Is this where other people get their sushi when the restaurant is closed?

Edit 8/8/05: But even if you think it's bad to buy sushi from eBay, surely you need to admit that this is even worse.

But not of spelling bees, apparently.

I found a typo on my cereal box today. There's an asinine and not particularly educational montage on the back, full of useless geographical trivia questions targeted to kids who are maybe 9, yet with the sense of humor of your typical three year old.

One of the "fun facts" included is the following:

"Vikings used birds to help in nagivating their ships." (emphasis added) (oh, and [sic])

So much for education, but what's particularly ironic about this misspelling is that it's on the back of a box of Alphabits. If any cereal was to know how to spell, you'd think it'd be that one.

I was walking through campus today, and down in the eucalyptus grove I saw a group of boys throwing things at a target. I couldn't really see what they were throwing at, but they were at the edge of the grove, aiming towards Strawberry Creek, and it didn't seem there should be anything worth hitting over there.

As I got closer I saw they were throwing at a squirrel. There were several boys - maybe 6-8 of them, around 12-14 years old. They seemed very caught up in the moment, not really thinking about what they were doing to this poor creature. So I said something.

"Guys, what are you doing?" I went into swimming teacher mode. I wasn't a parent; I wasn't a pal. I struck a tone of authority somewhere in the middle. A tone that doesn't make me a hardass, but that kids take seriously anyway. As they did here, because rather than ignoring me or telling me to fuck off, at least a few turned around and answered me. "Are you throwing stuff at a squirrel???" I asked again.

A few of them put up a weak defense. There had been a big crash right before I got there and I thought they'd thrown a brick. "It wasn't a brick - we're just throwing acorns," they responded.

"Yeah, well, I don't think that squirrel is enjoying you throwing acorns at it either."

After the moment had passed I thought of better things I could have said. But I don't think it matters. I think what does matter is that I had bothered to call them on their behavior at all. I imagine there were some kids in that group who really think there's nothing wrong with throwing stuff at an animal. But I think for those kids who had just gotten swept up in it, having someone stop to call them on their behavior probably made a difference. It was a big deal for a bystander to stop. There were other people passing by right then and none of them did, except me. In fact, as I began talking to them the other people that had been in the area suddenly vanished, leaving me to deal with the encounter alone.

So I hope that my having interfered will help puncture that bubble of adolescent immunity lots of kids build up around them, making them more inclined to think these things through and realize that what they decide to do matters. And that when they decide to do things that aren't ok, people will care. And that throwing things at an animal is definitely not ok.

Anyway, by now the squirrel was able to run away and I moved on. But word must have gotten out about my good deed among the local wildlife. Because later in the afternoon, while I was walking on the fire trail to Strawberry Canyon, I passed by a skunk. Who, despite ample opportunity, did not spray me.

I'm sure there's a connection.

The kid yesterday was very precocious. We were typing words on the screen so he could practice reading. I was impressed that he knew how to spell "yellow." Tough word, with all those l's and such.

At one point we were talking about video games and Super Mario Brothers came up. I happened to say the name "Mario" in the course of the conversation, in my typical New Jersey accent, with a soft "a."

He stopped me when I said it and gave me this *look.*

"It's MAHrio," he sternly corrected me.

Anyway, one of the perks with the swimming job is that I get to hang out with kids and listen to what's on their minds. It's often much more interesting that what adults have to say...

One of my favorite comments came from a kid who exclaimed, "A dolphin is a whale with a beak!" I really enjoyed the image that popped up into my head of a whale with a pointy nose strapped on with an elastic band.

Of course, sometimes these uninhibited exclamations can be difficult to hear. Case in point, the student I had in a private lesson once who blurted out, "My mommy's dead!"

Oh dear.

Thank you for not dumping a load of crap on all the people I care about, but I wish you would stop beating up on those whom you have. Quite a large clump of them, wouldn't you say? With quite a lot of crap, too.

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate it if you would cut it out.

Sincerely,
Cathy

After a fruitless conversation where I attempted to explain the concept of "customer satisfaction" to a recalcitrant motel manager in Winnemucca, NV, Super 8 made good on refunding me a reasonable portion of my bill. Or at least it would have been reasonable, had it not involved three separate phone calls to make right... So I will deign to stay at a Super 8 again (although NOT in Winnemucca), though cautiously. I'm not *entirely* sure anyone at the company really gets it either, but I am satisfied enough to give them another chance.

Although like I said, not in Winnemucca. As I tried to explain to the manager there, for someone who's not a trucker I drive the I-80 corridor rather a lot. It may arise again sometime that I will want to stay in Winnemucca, and because they insisted on keeping every penny of my $67, they've guaranteed that it's the last one they'll ever see from me.

Edit: Maybe I should explain better why I'm so annoyed. When I drove back east I stayed in a string of Super 8s, but the first one ended up being a big mistake. Starting before 5am the ceiling started creaking under a lot of footfalls. At first I thought they'd stop as soon as the person(s) got done doing what they were doing. But eventually I realized they weren't stopping. (It's also possible that the reason for this was that it was actually people in the stairwell walking, and not someone above me.) After a wasted hour of tossing and turning and failing to get back to sleep, I gave up and fully woke up. At which point I just packed up and left, since there was no point in staying there anymore.

I complained at the desk on my way out, but the manager was out and the clerk wouldn't do anything. I had to call Super 8 to file a complaint. But they didn't do anything either, and referred the matter back to the manager. Who eventually wrote me a letter apologizing, but doing nothing else. Even more irritated by this point I called her back to say this wasn't good enough, and engaged in a battle of wills. Her argument: because I didn't call the desk to complain and give them a chance to fix the problem, it wasn't their fault and I was on my own. My argument: by the time I was awake enough to have the presence of mind to call the desk, I was already irretrievably awake and there would be nothing they could do to fix it. Furthermore, for the rate I was paying, it wasn't too much to expect that I'd be able to get an undisturbed night of sleep. They failed to deliver, however, and I expected some compensation for that - particularly because for a motel, it was pretty expensive.

To the manager, however, my position was unreasonable. (To me, the fact that I was even required to have this argument was unreasonable. They really care so little about customer satisfaction that they're willing to go to the mat on this?) Fortunately Super 8, when I called them back, saw the unreasonableness of the situation and refunded me a reasonable portion of money.

True, this isn't one of my rants about inequitable conduct by companies. I suffered no great injustice because of the hotel. It was just frustrating and amazingly dumb on their part of blow off my concerns. If the manager - or Super 8 itself - had just given me back the $35 from the outset everything would have been fine. It's a small amount to them, but a big amount to me, but their adamant refusal to make the situation right because *I* failed to follow "procedure" was ridiculous. And just wasted my time.

So in the end she won her battle - the manager never gave me any money back - but she lost her war because she also lost her customer. Stupid.

Yesterday's adventure involved me going to Wal-Mart. Now, normally I don't approve of going to Wal-Mart. But I decided to make an exception. For one, despite some initially crappy behavior, Wal-Mart ultimately ended up being extremely responsible in its reaction to Katrina. For another, it has also gone on record with some enlightened attitudes towards copyright policy. So for these reasons I felt I could reward it with a purchase. Plus, it was interesting to see how Wal-Mart fit into the German world. And besides, I'd been all over Hamburg and there were some things I just couldn't find. So off to Wal-Mart I went...

It was enormous. A veritable orgy of consumerism. If it existed at all in Germany, you could find it there. And maybe only there. I bought a halogen lamp (18 euros! Cheaper than in the US!), a package of 4 mechanical pencils (in Germany it's almost impossible to find mechanical pencils ("Druckbleistift," or "push-pencils") at all, much less the cheap disposable ones you won't cry over when you inevitably lose them), a package of smoked salmon which was cheap AND good (as opposed to the last package of salmon I bought in the regular grocery store), a package of gum (Wrigley's is quite available in Germany, but I hadn't remembered to buy some the last time I was out), and a small package of Oreos, which I was going to share with my German friends but I may end up eating in the next 30 minutes before I get the opportunity.

All told, it cost about $35, and I now have that nicely out of my system. Unless I decide that I just can no longer live without Hershey's Syrup, because they do sell it there, in a bottle prepared for international sale as its label suggests. The ingredients are listed in multiple languages, including Arabic. Not quite the same bottle you pick up at the local Safeway, at least not at $5 a bottle...

Edit: Good thing I didn't share my oreos: they didn't taste very good. I think that's what happens when the "oreos" are actually manufactured by "United Biscuits Iberia, S.L." In fact, I should have known that something labelled "chocolate flavour sandwich biscuits" would be suspect. I mean, yeah, they have the trademark blue and white oreo packaging with the little red nabisco triangle in the corner, but Nabisco should really rethink their licensing...

Anyway, I'll have to take care of disposing of the remaining three oreos myself so that no Germans accidentally end up with their tastebuds traumatized. They'll thank me later, I'm sure.

Tonight at an academic meeting with German students I had an occasion to try German pizza.

It wasn't as good as good New York (or even Boston) pizzaria pizza, but it was vastly better than California pizza. Perhaps proximity to Italy helped?

I told the assembled 19-22 year olds (mostly male) that they should be like their American counterparts and eat it cold for breakfast, but I think they found the prospect unappealing.

Did you know turkeys can fly? It's true:

From the Washington Post 11/21:

"If you can't get a first-class upgrade to Los Angeles tomorrow on United Airlines, it may be because a turkey beat you to the seat.

After President Bush offers his official pardon for this year's Thanksgiving turkey today, the turkey and its handler will be flown first class from Dulles to Los Angeles for a trip to Disneyland. United spokeswoman Robin Urbansky declined to comment on how much the flight would cost the airline, which is in bankruptcy protection, or if the turkey used its frequent-flier miles for the upgrade. United dubbed the flight Turkey One."

I am, of course, proud to say that I am a loyal customer of the airline that even delicious birds turn to for their air travel needs.

Quite frankly I wouldn't mind being on a plane right now, even seated next to a turkey. Today's Thanksgiving, yet out here in Germany it's not likely that I'm going be getting any traditional Thanksgiving fare.

Of course, the airline probably frowns upon eating the other passengers, so I guess it's just as well.

(Although think of the advantages: a decent airplane meal AND more elbow room!)

Title changed 11/25 to be more, um, what's the word... funny?

Did you know (so I've been told) that the maximum number of Friday the 13ths you can have in one year is 3? (I also think the minimum is 1.)

When I was in fourth grade (1983-4) we had three. Each time, the teacher put a ladder in the corridor leading to our classroom as an example of other superstitions. On each of the three occasions I decided to test whether or not walking under the ladder affected one's luck. What I determined was that walking under a ladder was fine, but if you made contact with the ladder you'd have problems. This was true whether you walked under or around it.

Now, when I say "problems" I mean it in a metaphoric way. Like having a bad day. But if you think about why people might have decided walking under ladders could be bad luck - perhaps due to the increased likelihood of things falling on your head - the ladder-contact corollary seems reasonable. After all, if you touch the ladder, things are much more likely to fall on your head than if the ladder is left alone. And if things fall on your head you're likely to have a very bad day indeed.

One of the nice things about living with my mom is that she does the cooking.

One of the downsides is conversations like these:

My mom: "We're either having eggs or chicken for dinner tonight, and we'll have the other one tomorrow."

Me: "But which comes first, the chicken or the eggs?"

To be fair, I guess it was my fault that the conversation took the dismal turn it did. Yet it seemed like such a reasonable question to ask at the time...

Edit: For those of you keeping score at home, the eggs came first.

Over the weekend I acquired a package of "Rachel's Potato Chips," where the apostrophe is made with a picture of a heart. The front of the package also includes three taglines: "Made from the heart," "gourmet traditional" (whatever that is…), and "America's Finest Gourmet." It's all incredibly cheesy and pointless, but nothing to really put me off from eating the chips.

It was the writing on the back that did me in:

Rachel's Story

When I was a little girl, I would spend many weekends on my grandparent's[sic] farm. The wonderful smell in my G[sic]randmother's kitchen come[sic] back to me as real today as they were then.¹ I remember she would say, "You should always use the best ingredients you can find. Don't take any shortcuts, because there is only one way to do something right!"²

At the end of the day she would get a twinkle in her eye and say, "I suppose you're too tired to make a batch of my famous potato chips."³ I would beg her to let me do the seasoning and she would tell me that I would have to wait until I was older [sic]that it had to be done just right.⁴ She smiled and told me of a promise that she had made a long time ago to her G[sic]randmother, a solemn promise to make everything as best[sic] as it could be made.⁵ A promise she made from the heart.⁶

I remember those days in that wonderful kitchen and I remember Grandmother's lessons.⁷ They are what guide us at Rachel's.⁸ When you open this bag you will taste a chip made with the best and healthiest ingredients, cooked with care, one batch at a time. As Grandmother did, we make a promise that each chip we prepare is -[sic] made from the heart.⁹

1. Sentences like these make my brain hurt.
2. Apparently, however, that advice does not apply to copyediting. (Though they at least managed to spell "potato" correctly...)
3. The chips were already famous? Who was this woman???
4. Grandma sounds cruel. She messes with her daughter to make her THINK she was going to get to make the potato chips, and then doesn't let her.
5. This poor kid! Her grandmother won't let her help her make the chips because of a promise she'd made to her grandmother??? At some point, YEARS ago, before her own children were even a glimmer in her eye, she'd apparently swore a solemn oath to her own heartless grandmother never to let anyone mess with the potato chips, not even if it was her own flesh and blood who could someday pass along the family tradition for quality potato chips, since clearly they would only RUIN them. What a horrible promise! And a particularly ironic one, seeing how the granddaughter herself grew up to be a professional potato chip maker with apparently no guidance whatsoever…
6. Her ice cold, stony heart.
7. Including, "Never trust your children with anything as important as making potato chips. They'll just do it WRONG."
8. By the way, "Rachel's" is really KLN Enterprises of Perham, MN.
9. Ripped from the body still beating, sliced into paper-thin strips, and then deep-fried in only the finest oils available.

Anyway, this packaging leaves me with grave concerns about eating the chips therein...

I was emailing back and forth with a guy in England late last week.

"We're all excited about the long weekend here," he wrote. "Bank holiday and all."

I wrote back, "Now that you mention it, it's a long weekend here in Boston too. It's Patriots Day, where we celebrate having kicked some English ass."

Funny, I haven't heard back from him since...

I've been commenting over at the Conglomerate on Vic Fleischer's post on how to grow the next Silicon Valley. It comes in response to another essay saying that it takes nerds + rich people to make a Silicon Valley, and you need a way to be able to get lots of both before one can sprout.

This brought to mind the work of AnnaLee Saxenian, whose work comparing Silicon Valley with the 128 corridor in Massachusetts we read in one of my undergraduate sociology classes. According to her, it takes more than nerds to get a Silicon Valley. You need to have an organizational structure that can maximize all that nerd power (to paraphrase rather crudely...)

I suddenly am interested in reading her book... (Perhaps post-bar?) But it is pretty cool that I still remember it. I think it's been at least 11 years since I took that class... (I also wonder if I'd perhaps worked from an earlier paper, since the copyright date listed on the book is a year after I remember taking the course.)

Everyone's favorite airline to kick around is the subject of an article in the New York Times (via Reuters) today, discussing how it needs to further cut costs, including through outsourcing.

What is not mentioned in the article is that United already outsourced some of its functions, and as a result of that decision, has nearly (if not actually) lost customers.

A month ago when I went to Memphis something weird happened to my reservation. As a premier member one of the perks is that I'm entitled to a seat in the Economy Plus part of the plane. It's the part with more legroom, and it's also in the front of the plane (the aspect I care about more). So whenever a seat is available, which is most of the time, I reserve my seats there. But when I got to the airport to check in, I discovered that the system had removed me from the forward window seat I'd booked and relocated me to an aisle seat in the back, and at this late date there were no seats remaining for me to move back to. This was annoying, but seemed like a fluke.

However, when I checked in a few weeks later for the trip to California and the same thing happened, I decided it wasn't a fluke. Something was definitely wrong. So I called customer service. And what a train wreck that was.

Actually, before I called customer service I called reservations. As I was stranded in the security line and unable to talk to the gate agent, I called the reservations number (the only one I had) to implore them to fix this. Or at the very least communicate to the gate agent since I was unable to. It was a painful, unproductive conversation as I had to pull teeth to get the agent to realize that there was a problem (Her: "You have to pay for a seat in Economy Plus." Me: "No, as a premier member I'm entitled to sit there!") or that there was anything that could possibly even be attempted to fix my current situation. (Her: "It's all controlled by the gate." Me: "I know that! So please send a message to the gate! You can do that!" And I was right…)

Once in Denver, like in Memphis, an airport agent was able to fix my seat assignments for my return flights. But they couldn't fix the systemic problem and instead gave me the customer service number. That was when the real train wreck ensued.

The first person who answered the phone had no concept of what he was doing. He kept focusing on how to spell my name. Minutes passed before we got around to talking about what my problem actually was, which, like the reservations agent before, he discounted. (Him: "You need to buy a seat in Economy Plus." Me: "NO I DON'T!!!!"). The conversation descended from there, as he threw what sounded like pre-packaged excuses at me and made no attempt to recognize, let alone fix, the problem. So I asked for the supervisor, and got the same thing.

At this point, having talked to three consecutive people with Indian accents, I suspected outsourcing. It used to be when you called United that you'd get a lot of people with Midwestern accents, so it was a bit of a giveaway. But what was also a giveaway is the complete lack of any personal interest in solving the problem. In the days of the employee/owners of United you would always encounter a strong sense of initiative. And if you didn't… well, then United went through rounds of layoffs. Plenty of occasion to weed out the bad apples. But it seems that in all these layoffs they also managed to weed out the good apples too.

Anyway, at this point after three separate conversations I'd yet to find someone to take any real accountability. The conversation ended, but at this point I'd gone from annoyed by the original problem to furious with the airline's general treatment of me so I called back once more. This time the person was a little better. She recognized that the problem was beyond her capacity to fix and so she transferred me - to a customer support specialist in Chicago.

So here's the thing with outsourcing: apparently they'd outsourced a year ago, and I'd never noticed before. If that's the case, I guess it was working. But in my more recent phone calls it was definitely not working. The lack of ownership and complete indifference to the mission of the company (e.g., not pissing off the customers) resulted in them working at cross-purposes with it. As I told the woman in Chicago, I missed the days when it was the employee/owners who you dealt with because of that sense of pride. But as long as the outsourced people could at least fake that level of interest it would have been ok…

I had a nice, long conversation with that woman who took down all the information and affirmed my sense that something had indeed gone awry in these conversations. Which absolutely saved me as a customer. I already had my 25,000 miles for the year, and I was ready to walk away. Possibly forever. Because I was livid. I have all this loyalty invested with them, but after these phone calls I no longer believed that I could trust them with my business. It's not just that there was the situation with the original seat SNAFU (which still takes the fun out of traveling, because without predictability it becomes very stressful - too stressful to do very much of), but that I was losing faith in the company's willingness and ability to do right by its customers.

All because they outsourced.

Since then I've had better conversations on the phone. The woman also gave me a direct number to Chicago if I ever encountered further recalcitrance. But the airline got off easy. I really wasn't that difficult a customer (I really could not understand why they were so willing to take a small problem and turn it into a big one…) and I really didn't want to leave United, but I was on the precipice. Imagine how many they may have lost when the customers they antagonized were not so loyal.

Meanwhile, as a postscript, it's also worth noticing that they outsourced the web site functionality too. And that was equally a mistake. Because the woman I ended up talking to over there, who was allegedly going to try to diagnose my seat-displacement problem, thought that an effective problem solving method would be for me to give her my username and PASSWORD(!!!!) so she could login as me and poke around. Um, no…. (And for what it's worth, the callback they most reluctantly agreed to make to inform me of the status of the fix has still never occurred. So I still have no idea of what the problem was or if it was corrected, and will be left to find out the hard way.)

Anyway, the moral of this story is that outsourcing is not the panacea that it's often made out to be. It's not that it can't ever work, but it has to be done with the utmost care. Otherwise it will be the Achilles heel of the company. While it may seem like it's just a matter of getting cheap labor for basic tasks, they are not tasks that the company can afford to have done badly lest it risk losing the lifeblood of the company - its customers.

If:

- Every single CPR for the Professional Rescuer course you've ever heard of (let alone taken) in the last 15 years was offered by the Red Cross, and

- When you renewed the certification last year at the same facility they gave you a Red Cross card, and

- You've just been hired to be a Red Cross instructor at this facility,

Wouldn't you expect that when you did the recertification course last night they would give you a Red Cross card? I sure did, but instead they gave me a card from some organization I'd never heard of before (I can't tell if it's the "American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons" or the "American College of Emergency Physicians."). The guy in charge swears it's just as good as the Red Cross card and will be accepted anywhere that the Red Cross one would be, but I still feel very uncomfortable about this arrangement. I know nothing about the organization that has just certified me. Now, granted, the material all seemed to be the same for the most part as what is contained in the Red Cross version - apparently every certifying agency works from the same guidelines - but I know nothing about any subtle differences there might be between the Red Cross course and this one. And given that my legal duties associated with this certification are tied to my training, I don't know if I can safely presume that the certifications are truly interchangeable. Especially since last night was just a recertification course - not a fresh course out of the box with all the videos and books and such. I don't even have the book by this organization - I only have (and have read) the Red Cross book.

It is possible that my attitude on this is particularly negative given that I didn't find out about the "no Red Cross" thing until 10 o'clock at night after a long day and a long four hours in a classroom. I suppose he could be right that it won't make a difference. But given the tremendous liabilities that can attach when making rescues (or even from just having the certifications) I don't think it's necessarily overreacting to be concerned about receiving a certification that was not what you reasonably understood you would get.

The houseboat lives at a marina with other houseboats. (Think of it as a floating trailer park.) It seems to have some sort of homeowner association that maintains the docks, provides parking, hosts the mailboxes, etc. Anyway, out by the mailboxes is a shelf that is apparently called "the happy box." This is where people leave things they no longer want, and other people take them.

I think this is a fabulous idea. I hate wasting things that still have life in them, even though I no longer have any use for them. I've gone to great lengths at times to keep these things from immediately heading to landfills by finding them new homes. Leaving Paris was one such occasion. After my boss stiffed me on shipping home my belongings, and after I mailed home 6 boxes, and after I stuffed my suitcases to the gills, I still had 2-3 bags of things left over I just couldn't keep. So on a blazing hot day, while I was suffering from food poisoning, while I was running out of French money, and after my Metro card had expired, I began my quest to find someone who would want them. I went downstairs and headed west. First I encountered a homeless man. I asked if he wanted it, but he got scared and ran away. Then I encountered a fireman and asked where he thought I could donate it. Was there perhaps a Red Cross-type agency that would? There wasn't, but he thought a church might want it. In Paris there's a church about every three blocks, although in this neighborhood it seemed like a very long three blocks as I shlepped these heavily-laden bags increasingly lethargically from the heat and dehydration down the much-longer-than-I-remembered-it street. Eventually arriving at the church, the people there said, "Bless you. But we can't take it here," and then gave me confusing and incorrect directions to the arondissement's diocese that was completely inaccessible by mass transit and a half-mile away. With the last surge of energy that only obstinance can provide I eventually (after several wrong turns) reached the place. Where they haughtily took the bags with nary a thank you.

So the happy box is much better. People exchange everything: clothes, CDs, books, even furniture (one night there was a dresser, the next night there was a chair). If only there'd been a happy box when I was packing up... There are some definite advantages to living in a community of hippies, and I think this is one of them.

I've always had some environmentalist proclivities, but they were pretty staid and ordinary. Preferring to recycle, valuing fuel efficiency, saving electricity, etc. But since my trip to China my concern for the state of the environment seems to have drastically deepened, particularly with respect to air and water pollution. We aren't talking about simple littering, or even the problems manifest in creating a gigantic pile of garbage in a landfill somewhere. We are talking about the destruction of the fundamental pillars of life on earth. Without clean air and clean water, we cannot survive, and yet mankind is blithely forging full-steam ahead to pollute both.

My time in China made me realize how a little bit of pollution in one place can so heavily impact another. And it's insidious, because it's very hard to see the impact a particular bit of pollution has. With littering you can see the garbage. You know it's your trash, and you know it's your mess you created. And for the most part it's confined within one place. With air pollution, though, it's hard to imagine that your little car could be making a difference. Or even your little smokestack, especially if the gas it belches into the sky is clear. Anyway, it's a big sky up there. So what if a little pollution gets into it?

The same thing happens with water. Your sink is small. Your bathtub is small. The glass of water that you pour is small, and if there's dirt in any of it you'll know. But the river is big, and the ocean it runs into even bigger. The filth you would never think to drink surely will just get lost in the vastness of the world's waters, so why not pour it in? Who's going to notice?

Until you go to someplace like China, an increasingly modern place with fancy modern buildings with fancy modern plumbing and kitchens, and you start to realize all the things you can't eat unless you cook them in a certain way or rinse them in special and expensive water that doesn't come through the taps. Or maybe not eat at all, given the time your food has spent in filthy waters, absorbing into its cells the poison you would never have poured into your glass.

The biggest problem with pollution is the mindset of polluters - out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Because it is too easy for that to happen. Maybe less so in a place like China where the consequences of pollution are so overt - the choking air, the putrid, black rivers... In the U.S. things are a little better, but that may just raise the risk of them becoming much worse. Why not dump the oil you change into the storm sewer? So what if it flows to the Bay. It's a big bay - who's going to notice?

Well, how about the people with the water right outside their window?

(I also noticed the kitchen sink that washed up behind the house too.)

The latest Dilbert newsletter, in "True Tales of Induhviduals," included this:

Our health teacher told us that "1 out of 3 people who start smoking will eventually die." The other two apparently became immortal.

Very silly. But it got me wondering. What if there was something, like, say, smoking, which would lower one's lifespan by half for 1/3 of the people who do it, but double the lifespan for the other 2/3? Would you smoke then? What if it killed 1/3 almost immediately, but made the other 2/3 immortal? What if it was the other way around - 2/3 died immediately, but 1/3 lived forever?