Going Through the Motions

The truth about "Hot Coffee"

2011-06-29T14:51:00.002-04:00

Monday night as I lazed on the sofa trying to figure out what to watch on TV, I came across the new HBO documentary "Hot Coffee." The title comes from the now infamous McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, in which a patron who was burned by hot coffee was awarded millions of dollars. This story has been retold, twisted and bastardized so many times by now that it barely resembles the truth, and so this documentary focused on the evils of tort reform and big business tactics in litigation used the story as the introduction to set the stage. As I watched the whole thing, numerous friends mentioned to me on Twitter that I should be watching it, presumably because I do litigate cases of the sort being described in the doc, and on behalf of evil big business to boot.

The McDonald's hot coffee case is a bit of a personal crusade for me precisely because so few people know the real details. The salient points commonly bandied about are correct: the woman spilled hot coffee on herself, was burned, and won millions at trial thanks to a punitive damages award that was calculated on the basis of McDonalds' daily revenues for sales of coffee. What many people don't know is that the woman was burned severely on much of her body, suffered extensively as a result, and was able to develop evidence at trial of numerous other similar injuries that had provided notice to McDonalds that its coffee was being delivered to customers in a dangerously hot condition (and well above the temperature other drive thru restaurants were serving their coffee at.) The punitive damages award occurred because the jury found McDonalds knew this was a problem that was injuring consumers but declined to fix it. It is far from the travesty of justice that proponents of tort reform would have us believe.

The rest of the documentary focused on four other serious problems with the state of personal injury litigation today: 1) tort reform, 2) damages caps, 3) elected judges, and 4) mandatory arbitration clauses. I happen to not be in favor of any of these things (with the exception of certain tort reform that I think does make sense, more on this later.) The dirty little secret that most defense attorneys don't like to say in public is that we don't particularly like tort reform any more than the plaintiffs do. Our livelihoods depend on having lawsuits to defend, and making it harder to sue people doesn't do us any favors. But apart from that basic defense of my job security, I find all four of these methods of controlling "runaway lawsuits" to be ineffective and unfair.

Tort reform often consists of a package of legislative enactments intended to make it harder to sue companies and harder to win a lot of money doing so. In Georgia, for example, it included several provisions that make a lot of sense--requiring defendants to be sued in the county in which they are located, requiring medical malpractice lawsuits to be supported by an affidavit signed by a physician in the same specialty saying that the care provided was deficient, and a mechanism for offers of judgment that are already available in federal court. It also included things that I didn't like, particularly caps on punitive and non-economic damages. More on those later. But the point is, there are parts of tort reform that I think can make sense and be fair. It is when the tort reform becomes focused on capping what a plaintiff can win even in the most extreme of cases, or when it seeks to shorten the time for filing a lawsuit to points that make almost no sense (such as states that now have just a one year statute of limitations for tort lawsuits) that I start to get uncomfortable.

The second part of the documentary focused on the damages caps enacted in most states, and the situations in which they often leave injured persons and their families holding the bag. Generally damages caps apply to so-called "non-economic damages," i.e. everything but lost wages and out of pocket medical costs. Pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of consortium, and such "squishy" things are included in the cap, which may be as low as $250,000. The documentary accurately pointed out that some injuries, such as loss of ability to bear children, blindness, or loss of a limb might be considered excruciating to most people but would not be associated with high medical costs or loss of earning capacity, meaning the only way it could be compensated is with non-economic damages. If I lost my uterus in a car accident and learned that I was only getting $250K for the imposed inability to have children, I'd probably think that was a worth a lot more money to me than $250K. If I lost my eyesight, I'd definitely think it was worth more. The documentary also focused on states where the cap is absolute, on all damages. In those instances, where the money from a verdict or settlement runs out, the costs of future care invariably fall to the state and federal governments. The side effect that the documentary did not really explore (probably because it was made by trial lawyers) is that when such provisions are enacted, lawyers stop taking those cases because they cannot make enough money on them, which makes it even harder for people who have been injured by medical malpractice or someone's negligence to even recover the capped amount in a lawsuit.

The third section of the documentary was one that I feel particularly passionate about: electing judges. I have never been comfortable with the concept of allowing people who know nothing about the legal system to decide who should preside over it. I am even less comfortable with allowing judges to take campaign contributions from people and corporations who have cases before them. Massachusetts, where I began my legal career, had appointed judges with a mandatory retirement age at 65. I was shocked and uncomfortable upon coming to Georgia to learn that lawyers running for judicial slots and sitting judges hoping to hold their seats would be coming to our office and asking us for money. I was even more uncomfortable at the notion that my clients with cases winding their way through the courts system could make donations to judges who might hear those cases, and all of this was 100% legal.

However, it is after trying a case in Texas that I have now seen the true worst judicial election situation in the country: judges run as Democrats or Republicans, and voters usually end up electing a "slate" depending on what party is doing well in their county, with absolutely zero knowledge of whether any of the judges are qualified or doing a good job as judges. I hesitate to talk out of school about our judge for my last case, but let's just say that he was younger than I was, the son of a prominent plaintiffs' attorney, and elected in the 2008 Democratic "wave" election in Houston. And he had the worst ratings of any civil judge in Harris County in the survey of attorneys put out by the local legal newspaper. However, we heard horror stories about other judges elected in that same wave who would actually cajole attorneys appearing before them about not yet having received their "check"--for campaign contributions they expected to receive from all local attorneys. The obvious grift on display in Texas is astounding, and demoralizing as a lawyer. We were able to persuade our judge to rule in our favor when it really mattered, and we put on a good case, but in plenty of situations the judge's rulings will make or break a party's chances, or at minimum cause a defendant to spend millions defending a frivolous lawsuit by refusing to dismiss the case at the outset. And it makes me no more comfortable to know that my clients can give massive contributions to those same judges in an effort to influence their decisions--I want no part of that sort of winning.

The documentary's claims about the inability of plaintiffs' attorneys to compete with the Chamber of Commerce in funding judicial elections was probably the part that felt the most "off" to me. The Plaintiffs' bar is a hugely powerful organization and they can certainly compete in terms of dollars and influence. Also, traditionally plaintiffs' attorneys have been fond of electing judges precisely because in many instances they can get their pro-plaintiff buddies into office. The easiest way to get rid of Chamber money in judicial selection is to take judges off the ballot, but I sincerely doubt we will see the AAJ (formerly ATLA) pushing for that radical notion anytime soon.

The final portion of the documentary about mandatory arbitration clauses was by far the most powerful, due primarily to the story of one Jamie Leigh Jones. Most of us do not realize how many times we have unwittingly agreed to arbitrate any dispute we may have with our creditors, employers, or anyone else we've ever signed a preprinted contract with. But what happened to Jones was far more disturbing: she had signed an employment agreement containing a mandatory arbitration clause, and then shortly thereafter was shipped by Halliburton subsidiary KBR to Iraq, where her coworkers drugged and gang-raped her, then locked her in a shipping container. (The story is actually far worse than what was shown in the documentary--the rape was so brutal that it tore her pectoral muscles and ruptured a breast implant, requiring reconstructive surgery, and left her bruised and bloodied. She was examined by a physician who completed a rape kit, and the contents of that kit, including photographs and DNA samples, mysteriously disappeared soon thereafter when the kit was turned over to KBR security.)

When Jones went to sue her employer KBR and the one man who had admitted to her that he had participated, they sought to enforce the arbitration clause and have the lawsuit thrown out of court. Years later, the 5th Circuit court of appeals disagreed and ruled that Jones' suit could go to trial in the court system instead of a secret arbitration. In fact, Jones' trial began two weeks ago in Houston, and is currently ongoing. I have been watching the news and the federal court docket in her case with great interest in the outcome. In what should come as a shock to noone, KBR is now calling Jones a liar and claiming her sex was consensual and that there is no evidence to say otherwise (especially with no rape kit contents to worry about.)

Our own Hank Johnson in Georgia's 4th congressional district has been pushing for years to pass legislation prohibiting mandatory arbitration clauses from being included in these sorts of contracts. The legislation has not made it far to date, but hopefully as more people become aware of the abuse of mandatory arbitration clauses, this is an issue that will receive more attention. While it may make sense for some disputes to be arbitrated, certainly the provisions are over-used now and should not cover all types of potential disputes. In the meantime, Al Franken's amendment prohibiting companies doing work for the federal government from having arbitration clauses in their employment contracts that would include claims like Jones' claims did pass, so that at least is good news.

Overall, Hot Coffee was an interesting and thought-provoking piece, but with an obvious slant. I've seen the other side and I know there are no documentary film-makers itching to make movies about stupid, bogus lawsuits but if there were I would have BOATLOADS of material. It is a problem, in that my clients often end up paying northwards of $2 million from inception of the case through trial in order to prove their products didn't injure anyone. That may seem like highway robbery, but it's a necessary cost to retain the right experts, take the right depositions, get and review ALL the medical records, produce the necessary company documents, draft and file the right motions, and get ready for and complete a successful trial. That's just for one case, but big companies that make products like drugs, medical devices, cars, or tractors might get sued hundreds of times a year. And it's not like they can just offer to pay every plaintiff a quarter of what they'd spend to defend the case, because as soon as they did that they'd get 3 times as many cases as news spread of their willingness to open the checkbook in order to avoid litigation costs. So, not that I am suggesting you should feel bad for big business, but consider the alternatives that a big company has--pay millions to defend each case and clear their name every time, or pay millions in settlements and verdicts, or stop making products that could ever potentially be involved in any injury. These are not good options. Defending the cases vigorously and sending the message that our products are good products that never hurt anyone, and that we're going to fight back if we ever get sued, is the best of the flawed options. And it's precisely what makes everything in this country cost more than it needs to.

The other concept that I think got lost somewhere along the way is that people can get hurt without it being anyone's fault. I had an argument awhile back about vaccine litigation, and someone told the story of how they had a cousin who was severely disabled following a bad reaction to a vaccine. She assumed that was the vaccine manufacturer's fault and that they should pay for the lifetime care of that child. But people can have a "bad reaction" to almost anything--I could drink a glass of milk tomorrow and go into anaphylactic shock, through no fault of the cow or dairy. It could even kill me. Vaccines are no different than any other chemical compound ingested into the human body, be it medication, food, vitamin supplements, or beauty products. All of it can really hurt us for no particular reason. So often in my cases I see a situation where a person is severely injured and it was around the same time as they were taking this drug, or using this device, and so they assume it must be the result of that drug or device and that the manufacturer must be responsible. But they seem to have forgotten the notion that SHIT HAPPENS--people get sick, people have allergic reactions, people develop medical conditions and people have bad outcomes in surgeries or hospitalizations. None of these things necessarily mean that anyone did anything wrong.

The challenge for us defense attorneys is to remind judges and jurors that shit happens. It's not always the role that we want to be in, and it can be a tough argument. The plaintiff's attorney is essentially trying to argue that the shit wasn't there before the drug or the device, and suddenly it was there, and we have no other obvious cause, so clearly the shit is the fault of the drug or device. There is a simplicity to their argument, which is their greatest weapon. Plenty of jurors can be convinced that temporal relationship is sufficient to meet the preponderance of the evidence standard. So before everyone goes worrying that we've made it impossible to win a lawsuit in this country because Hot Coffee told you so, I'd advise you to start reading the legal newspapers in your city for a month. Think critically about what the producers of the documentary (trial attorneys, by the way) have to gain from it. Recognize there are two sides to every story. Yes, there are many tales of abuse of the legal system on both sides, and many tales of people who have been negatively impacted by tort reform, big business tactics, and defense attorneys like me. But as with almost any story, the facts depend on who's telling it. Hot Coffee got a lot right, but it got a lot wrong and left a lot out. Dig deeper.

Undefeated!

2011-06-06T16:41:00.002-04:00

So, I've been gone for awhile but I had a really good reason. I just returned from a monthlong trial in Houston...my first jury trial. And we won. I can't really post about the trial itself, as much as I might want to, but I can say that I learned a great deal.

One of the most important things I learned is what really matters, based on what you can and cannot live without for an extended period of time. I've read or watched almost zero news or sports over the last few months, and I haven't missed it. I haven't watched a single moment of television except for the Indy 500 since sometime in March. I slept very little. I felt at times completely out of touch with what was going on in the world. And it was very disorienting, but I could live without those things if I needed to, because it was important.

What I could not live without, even though I had to try, was the love and support of my friends and family, the people who really matter to me. Being out of touch from them was nearly physically painful, so much so that I jumped at an opportunity to run home for a quick weekend to spend with those I really care about. It was glorious, and it kept me sane. And now that I'm back, I still haven't gone grocery shopping, done laundry, restocked my fridge or my bathroom cabinets, or anything essential like that. Instead I've spent 2 days being around the people I missed so much, and will continue to do so for much of this week. I am home, in every sense of the word, and it's what I craved and felt so deprived of for the past month of trial and even the weeks leading up to it.

The greatest lesson I learned is to appreciate and revel in that wonderful feeling of being home with those I love, because it's the one thing that I will desperately long for when I don't have it. I'm looking forward to not knowing that feeling again for a good long while.

Oh hey

2011-03-29T13:38:00.004-04:00

So I went on that crazy trip to New Zealand, and it was amazing, and then I came back to the single busiest period at work that I have ever experienced. I seriously will bill 180 hours in 2.5 weeks this month, putting me on pace for a 270 hour month if I hadn't been on vacation until March 13th. NUTSO!

But because I've posted it everywhere else, I should post here my Flickr set of the photos I took. I'd also link to link to the photos taken by my traveling companion if he will make them publicly available. His are MUCH better than mine because I spent most of the 4 day 33.5 mile hike through the Milford Track trying not to die. He was a little more relaxed, having only to work hard at trying not to kill me. (Perhaps this explains why there were actually bets at our local bar as to whether we would still be speaking post-17 days together in New Zealand and hiking over a f*cking mountain. For the record: the answer is yes, you suckers.) The picture above is one of his that I have shamelessly stolen, and hopefully he won't mind.

Also, this Flickr set is from some guys who were on the hike with us, and they also took amazing photographs. That should give you a great sense of just what the hike was like...and someday I will find the time and energy to relive the whole trip here in great detail. But not today.

Also, I have videos on a YouTube page but I won't link them until I find the time to edit all together into one long video. Right now it has a serious case of the shakeycams, and some clips are just a few seconds. But I will get it done sometime this year, even if it has to be in July.

A Eulogy

2011-02-14T11:12:00.007-05:00

It was late September of 2001, and I was a first year associate in a big law firm, living on Beacon Hill with my soon to be ex-boyfriend. We were still trying to find our way through the collective national nightmare and hangover of September 11th. Gabe had started smoking again, and we were both pretty frayed from the stress and anxiety. One of us, I don't even remember which, had the bright idea that what we needed to bring us out of our funk was to get a kitten. We both loved and had grown up with cats, and it seemed like the sort of thing that would bring us a sorely needed dose of happy playfulness.

We went to a pet store in a nearby suburb and signed up for a waiting list with a local shelter they worked with. A few weeks later we got a call that two black and white kittens, brothers from a mama cat that had been hit by a car when they were still just tiny, had come in from the shelter and were available for adoption. We needed to come get one that afternoon or it would be offered to someone else. So, we raced down to the pet store only to discover that one of the two kittens had already been adopted. The one that was left had been named Linus by the shelter, a beautiful little black and white kitten with one black ear and one white ear, a mask of black covering about 3/4 of his face, and along his back with a white belly and feet. His tail was black with a tiny little white tip. I wanted him immediately.

As the pet store was filling out the paperwork and loading us up with all of the gear we would need, we heard how we had just missed the family that had adopted Linus' brother Pigpen. I wondered if they had gotten the "better cat," but as we were leaving with Linus in a carrier and a sack full of food and toys, the family came back with the other kitten because they had forgotten something. Linus' brother was almost entirely white with just a few flecks of black here and there. We had clearly gotten the cuter of the two. We drove home with him in the carrier, and it was only when we exited Storrow Drive at the Esplanade that he meowed for the first time. The first of so many.

We renamed him Claudio, at my ex's urging because he was an obsessive classical music fan and at the time his obsessions were with Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. (He first wanted to name the cat Ludwig or Wolfgang and I said no, so Claudio seemed like a bargain.) He was almost 12 weeks old when we got him, so not a tiny kitten for very long, but extremely energentic and curious. He made us so happy right away, even as he attacked our feet under the covers in the middle of the night, or bit Gabe on the nipple once when he got out of the shower, or fought a little too hard and drew blood and cries of pain when we play fought with him. Claudio played to win, all the time, every time. And as much as I didn't like the slash marks on my arms, the middle of the night attack dive-bombs as he tried to kill the snore monster in my face, or the finicky way he'd been sweet one second and then nasty the next, I loved the little booger.

He was mean to almost everyone, including sometimes me, because he very much did not like people trespassing in his home. He would howl and hiss at visitors when I had parties, and though I tried to tell them not to pet him, he invariably drew blood from someone who pushed it too far. He defied any attempts to keep him from eating people food, including thefts of meat or fish directly off of my plate on more than one occasion. When caught, he would stare you right in the eye and say "what?" like it was your fault for being dumb enough to turn your back for even a second. Even at the end, when he'd poop on the living room floor, he'd just look at me like shame or guilt were the last things on his mind. He had to go, and that was where he happened to be at the moment the urge hit, and I could just forget about talking him out of it. That's how he was.

But he was also capable of being so incredibly sweet, particularly when I was at home alone and feeling lousy. Claudio knew when to give me a nose-to-nose rub, or curl up with a purring belly at my side when I was sick, or hung over, or crying because yet another guy in my life post-Gabe decided to act like a jackass. Most of my friends and family never saw this side of him, but he brought so much comfort to me through some really tough times. Gabe and I broke up 3 months after we got him, then I got laid off and went through a period of extended unemployment, then I went to work in a job I came to hate, I moved several times, then I quit that job and moved to Georgia, then I moved twice more before settling into my house, and through all of this change and turmoil, Claudio was a source of great comfort and peace to me.

He was ridiculously smart for a cat: in Boston, when still very young he would climb my clothes while hanging in the closet, which as you might imagine was not desirable because of all the pulls and tears it caused. I put child-proofing sliders on the tops of the closet doors that were intended to keep him out of the closet. One day as I sat gape-mouthed in amazement watching, he climbed onto the elliptical trainer, jumped from there to the top of the bookshelf next to the closet, and then reached over and slid the childproofing off the door. He then dismounted and opened the closet. I have never seen anything like that in my life. But he was also stupid, and would do ridiculous things like try to sniff a burning candle and singe off half of his whiskers (this actually happened), or go chasing after a bug head-first into a wall.

He loved coffee and cigarettes, which caused my mother to call him Garfield. I don't drink coffee or own a coffeemaker, but when my parents would come to town while in Boston or as they were building their house in Georgia, they would go out to get coffee, and the cat would just go nuts to get his head in their coffee cups. Somewhere in the nascent days of this blog there was a picture of Claudio with his head stuck in a Starbucks cup, but sadly that photograph is now lost to the ether. He would lick the fingers of any smokers I brought home (of which there were...a few), right on the spot where they held their cigarettes. One night a particular guy left an open pack of smokes on the table while we slept, and Claudio ate a part of a cigarette. He looked pretty sick the next day. He also ate virtually anything I put a piece of on the floor for him, including cake, avocado, tomatoes, mushrooms, biscuits, potatoes, you name it. I think most of the time he was just happy that he didn't have to sneak bites when he thought I wasn't looking, so he was damn sure going to finish it.

The day we got him from that pet store, we purchased a cat toy that is essentially a tiny fishing rod with a string and a piece of denim at the end. He loved this toy. When I would take it out of its hiding place in the table next to my front door, he would start making this eh-eh-eh-eh-eh noise that he also made when he was hunting a bug in the house. We would play with this toy for hours, until his nose was so red that I knew he was wiped. I still have that toy, which is now reduced to a bundle of frayed denim threads at the end of that string. We played with it one day this week, but he was too tired to do too much with it.

As I wrote about a few months ago, Claudio was diagnosed with lymphoma in November just before Thanksgiving. I opted to put him on steroids, which temporarily shrank his tumors and gave me nearly three months with him at almost full speed before he started to rapidly decline last week. On Monday, he had vomited a large amount when I got home from work, and I knew the end was coming. He was better on Tuesday and Wednesday when I worked from home while sick with the flu, but he seemed tired. By Thursday and Friday, he was eating far less than usual. On Saturday I could only get him to eat a little bit of tuna, and by Sunday even tuna and chicken were not enticing him like they usually would. The vet had told me that after the steroids stopped working at the tumors started growing again, that eventually I would know it was time to end his life when he stopped eating. That would be the sign that the tumors were starting to close off his digestive system. So, knowing what was about to happen, yesterday I made an appointment at the vet. He seemed so tired and weak all day on Saturday and Sunday, and I knew I wanted to end it before he was in real pain.

Before we left, I brushed him and blow-dryed his back, which I knew he loved and made him purr for the only time that day. I carried him out to the back deck and let him feel the sun and the wind, see the trees and squirrels and birds out there, and to spend a calm and quiet moment with him before changing things forever. The vet examined him, said the tumors were fairly large and pushing on his stomach which was causing him not to eat, and confirmed there was little they could do to treat him at that point. I couldn't be there at the moment he died, so I signed the paperwork and authorized them to give him a sedative with painkiller, and then a controlled overdose of anesthesia to stop his breathing and heart. He growled the whole time while I cried and petted him, praying for a moment of peace as our last few minutes together. Then, they left with him and I waited and cried.

My baby cat is gone. He was 9 years old, would have been 10 in June. He was beautiful, and crazy, and sweet, and mean, and brazen and brilliant, and defiant, and stupid, and loving. He left scratch marks on the walls, stains on my rugs, scars on my arms, unrelenting white fur on every surface of my house, and I will miss him terribly every single day for a very, very long time.

So this is crazy, right?

2011-01-06T11:58:00.004-05:00

My 2011 is off to a crazy start, and has the potential to be a truly whirlwind year before all is said and done. I have two trials set this year already, with two more cases to be set for trial at some point and others that could find their way onto trial calendars before too long. One of those cases is not set until May, but we have a ton of expert depositions still to be taken in the meantime, and major motions to be drafted. All of that needs to be completed by sometime in March, which will be here much sooner than we think.

I tell you this only to set up the sheer insanity of what I am about to say.

For awhile now, I have been lamenting my lack of travel partners to the many places on my travel wish list. It is sad that at 35 years old, I've only just recently acquired a passport and taken my first trip outside the U.S., and that was to Vancouver. Not exactly a stretch. Well, last year I met someone who is as down with international travel as I am, and who has traveled yearly to New Zealand for several years now. A few months ago, on a whim because of low airfares, we gave serious thought to setting a trip there in February or March of this year (the tail end of their summer, given the change in hemisphere.) Ultimately, fiscal responsibility concerns for both of us made us elect not to book...but we made a deal that if my year-end bonus was over amount X, we'd go.

Well, my year end bonus was paid out on Friday and to my complete and total shock, it was not only over amount X but almost twice that much. We talked about it over the weekend and starting planning where and when we would go. I have a settlement conference in New Jersey on February 22nd, so I cannot go before then, but I thought we could find a way to squeeze in two weeks there at the end of February and beginning of March. All I had to do was get permission from my boss.

I haven't asked her yet, but as I've spent this week trying to plan out everything that must be done for my approaching trial and to set depositions in this case and in another case in which discovery closes in February, I've realized that it is truly insane of me to try to take a two week out of pocket vacation during this time period. And yet, the more I realize that my first six months of 2011 are going to be batshit insane of the working all night and never sleeping variety, I am more convinced than ever that my sanity DEMANDS that I do this.

I should go, right? I should demand from my boss that she give me permission, and show that I can do this and still get everything done. I should go. Even though airfare is $3000 (premium economy is the only way to go when the flight is 17 hours and your legs are 47" hip to heel, dontchaknow), and even though my parents find it nutso that I will travel to a foreign country with someone they have never even met -- they're very quaint about this -- I should totally make this work.

Right?

I have only taken two real vacations in my entire adult post-graduation life, and both were only a week long. I also worked some during both trips, and stayed within the U.S. in places where I could be regularly connected if necessary. New Zealand for two weeks demands that I just accept I will be out of contact for most of the time, and if people need me they have to friggin' wait. Or figure it out on their own. I love this idea, but I know the people I work with will hate it. But instead of thinking this is why this idea is dumb and crazy and irresponsible, I'm thinking this is why I have to do it.

I just pray she says yes.

FSU football predictions: How'd I do?

2010-12-31T09:57:00.007-05:00

You may remember that back in July I wrote a post predicting how FSU's football season would go. Well, with the bowl game tonight I think it's high time I revisit those predictions and see how I did in the prognostication department.

Anticipated Final Regular Season Record: 9-3
Actual Final Regular Season Record: 9-3

Well howsabout that!

Predicted Wins: Samford, BYU, Wake, Virginia, Boston College, N.C. State, Maryland
We beat everyone on this list except N.C. State. We also beat Miami and Florida.

Predicted Losses: Oklahoma, Florida
We lost to Oklahoma, did not lose to Florida. We also lost to N.C. State and North Carolina, and to Virginia Tech in the ACC title game. We should not have lost to N.C. State or North Carolina, both resulted from last second disasters, but that's a story for another day.

Predicted Could Go Either Way (i.e. we'll win at least one and lose at least one, I just can't predict which ones): Clemson, Miami, UNC
We beat Miami and Clemson, lost to UNC. I should have put Florida in this category, in retrospect.

Back in July, I wrote this:

However, I do think we have a very good shot for the first time in awhile of beating Florida, though I couldn't in good conscience move it into the tossup category. But I won't be shocked at all if it happens.

Shows what I know. We killed Florida, absolutely annihilated them, and I was there to watch it all. I, like many others, did not realize exactly how bad that team would be with a new QB and a lousy Offensive Coordinator.

I also wrote this back in July:

Miami could be great this year or mediocre, and it is really too early to tell. I think we will probably lose to them because the game is in Miami, but we do always play them pretty tough and close, so I have to leave that one a tossup.

Hahaha! Actually to say Miami was mediocre would be generous. That game was probably our best overall game of the season, in terms of every aspect of the team clicking at the right times. We beat them by four touchdowns, in Miami. It was GLORIOUS.

I predicted that Christian Ponder would be a top 5 NFL draft pick, and that was glaringly wrong. Ponder will be drafted, but probably not until after the first day of the draft. He was too injured for much of this year to be as effective as he was last year.

I also said this:

[E]ven with the improvement of a defense-heavy recruiting class and all new defensive coaching, our defense is likely to just go from terrible to mediocre.

For awhile there, it looked like we were going to have a top 25 defense, something simply unfathomable back when I wrote these predictions. However, a few tough games at the end and some serious injury issues on the D-line caused us to fall back into the 60th range. Still, to take a defense ranked 100th out of 120 teams last year and bring them up into the top half of defenses nationally, that was a great turnaround for first year Defensive Coordinator Mark Stoops.

I said this about whether FSU would win the ACC:

We certainly can. If we lose only one ACC game, as I anticipate (and especially if it's to Miami or UNC who are not in our division), then we should at minimum make the title game. Many are predicting BC will win our division because they play UVA and Duke--the two patsies of the league--but we will probably beat BC and if we each only have one conference loss then the head to head game will be the tiebreaker. Having said that, whoever comes out of the other division--Va Tech, Miami, Ga Tech, or UNC--is going to be a pretty tough team to beat in the conference championship game. FSU can do it, but I can't predict that it will happen this year.

We made the title game, and that was fantastic for Jimbo Fisher's first year. (Granted, we needed some help to get there since 2 of our 3 losses were to ACC teams.) But I was pretty sure we would play Va Tech in the title game, and pretty sure we would lose to them. And I was right.

And finally, I said this:

I am also so incredibly ready for the modern era of football as ushered in by Jimbo Fisher to finally get here. I am ready to start kicking Florida's ass again. I am ready to do the warchant and the tomahawk chop and to scream with joy for my team, rather than scaring small children with my stream of angry profanities (true story). I do not fear change, I embrace it. This is Jimbo's team now.

I got to do all of these things this year, and it was better than I could possibly have imagined. Jimbo Fisher's first year as head coach has been a great triumph, and we have an incredibly bright future ahead. Many are projecting FSU to have the top recruiting class in the country this year, after the No. 4 or No. 6 (depending on who you ask) class last year. We have a quarterback taking over the reigns next year who has already started 6 games as an underclassman, with a 4-2 record (losses coming to Florida last year and Va Tech this year.) E.J. Manuel could very well be the second coming of Charlie Ward, and our defense will only continue to improve. Very, very good things are coming our way.

However, I don't think we will beat South Carolina tonight. And that's OK.

2010 Year in Review

2010-12-30T13:11:00.005-05:00

Everyone is doing it, and I stole this from Darcey.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Went to Las Vegas, twice! Took a two day solo beach vacation. Became part of the law firm ruling class. Drank Chartreuse, which is terrible. Attended basketball and baseball playoff games (football to come in early 2011). And this one other little thing that I can't blog about because it's WAY too personal.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Lord, I don't even want to remember my resolutions, but I'm sure I didn't keep most of them. I didn't save money or lose weight, although I didn't gain any either (and that was a big concern throughout the year.) I know I wanted to try a half marathon by year end, but yet again it didn't happen. Maybe in 2011.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
At one point this year, I knew eight women who were all pregnant. It has felt like an oppressive plague bearing down upon every woman I know. Two have given birth, one 10 weeks early and the other on time. Six more to go between February and June! I have never been more careful about taking my pills in my entire life.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, although we thought both of my grandparents might at various times this year. I listened to "Fairytale of New York" on the drive to my parents' house for Christmas and started crying at the line "and an old man said to me / won't see another one," because it made me think of my grandpa. I doubt he will make it to next Christmas. My grandma, however, will probably live to be 100.

5. What countries did you visit?
Sadly, just the U.S. on my dancecard this year. I'm hoping 2011 will include New Zealand.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you didn’t have in 2010?
A stable, serious relationship with a boy with crinkly eyes, a nice smile, and an IQ in the triple digits. And a victory at my trial in May.

7. What dates from 2010 will be etched upon your memory, and why?
January 31st (not sayin' why). September 1st, the day I was made Of Counsel by my firm. November 27th, the FSU-UF football game I attended with my father. December 20th, an amazing birthday celebration and bluegrass show at Diesel that I attended. December 27th, the epic Falcons-Saints game that I attended.

8. What was your biggest achievement of this year?
Working really hard, becoming a key member of my team again, and being rewarded by elevation to Of Counsel and a nice raise. A close second would be finally cutting a toxic situation out of my life for good.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I really tried to recapture my 2009 success on Weight Watchers and using the treadmill, and I just couldn't find the time. I have to find a way to make this a part of my life again next year.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I was sick once or twice early in the year and in October with colds. I had UTIs in April and December. Nothing major, though, thank God.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My new iPad. Easily. A customized Falcons jersey that brought someone special to me
great joy was a close second.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Far too many friends to list here...and I have to give major props to my boss, who forced the firm to make me Of Counsel mid-year when they initially had told her I'd have to wait until sometime in January. She steamrolled it through like a champ.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
More Republicans than I care to count. A coworker who nearly made someone quit with particularly vitriolic criticism. The voters of Georgia.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage, car payment, veterinarian bills, and traveling. I spent a LOT of money on my two gambling trips this year. (But worth it.)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Vegas, and the Braves, and the Falcons, and FSU football. And a boy...sometimes.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
I'm not sure I can associate a song with this year. Maybe the gospel choir singing in Samuel L. Jackson's "Rise Up" commercials for the Falcons?

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) Happier, not that I was unhappy at this time last year. But things all feel on the right track for the most part. Kitty health issues are the only thing worse than this time last year.
b) Exactly the same.
c) Richer, but not by much.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Exercise, definitely. And cooking at home. And saving money. And snuggling my kitty, which I now feel like I will never have had enough of.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating and drinking. And spending. Moderation is the theme in 2011.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
We had my entire family over for dinner in the early afternoon, with me and my mother cooking all morning to prepare. Then everyone left because of the snow, and we watched Star Wars together and just basked in the beauty of my first White Christmas ever.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
No. I'm scared to fall in love right now.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Dexter, probably. Mad Men, True Blood, Project Runway and Chuck are up there too. The Walking Dead was my favorite new show.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Hate is the wrong word. Reached a place of lacking in any emotion towards...yeah, that.

24. What was the best book you read?
Probably the Blind Side. I only read 3 or 4 books this year.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Langhorne Slim. I'd heard his stuff before, but his live show at the Earl back in the fall was a total revelation. Also, exposure to older Neko Case was an amazing gift to my life this year.

26. What did you want and get?
Laid. :) Also, travel with good friends, an iPad, a new HDTV for the guest room. And more time with my grandparents even though it was touch and go for awhile.

27. What did you want and not get?
Relationshiped-up. :( Also, the benches in my front porch to finally be built, a clean bill of health for my cat, and most frustratingly...closure.

28. What was your favorite film of 2010?
I cannot even remember what movies I saw this year. Crazy Heart? That was probably my favorite.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 35. I went to dinner with my friend Jen, then went and got a little crazy at the bar with a boy.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
To have gotten back into regular exercise and lost another 20 pounds. I felt more accomplishment from that one feat last year than I did from making Of Counsel this year.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2010?
Same as it ever was. When I like it, I know it.

32. What kept you sane?
Alcohol and good friends.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?
I cannot even think about politics this year, it has been so disheartening to watch everything fall apart.

34. Who did you miss?
My best friend Samantha.

35. Who was the best new person you met?
Paul. (Technically we first met in late 2009 but just once, the rest was all this year.)

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
There is really so little that I absolutely cannot do.

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
From Guster's "Do You Love Me":
I wanna wake you from your dream
I wanna know who you're talking to
when you're singing in your sleep
I wanna find out what it means
This song has been stuck in my head for weeks.

So, yeah

2010-12-30T12:51:00.003-05:00

I'm still around but it's going to be far less frequent going forward. Too much else in my life demanding my time right now: work, dying cat (more on that in a bit), personal entanglements, more work, etc.

I would apologize for my scarcity, but I really don't feel all that bad about it. It is a good thing to be too busy to have time to document my life here, and since I primarily used this place as catharsis when I had far more to whine about than I currently do, I instead see my lack of time or interest in blogging to mean that I am in less need of therapy than previously might have been recommended. Maybe? Let me dream for a bit, OK?

So I mentioned the dying cat, and that is something I've been reluctant to blog about precisely because it is so upsetting to me. As I posted about last year, Claudio has had an ongoing puking problem for almost 2 years now. Last year, he developed Chylothorax, which is lymphatic fluid in his chest, of unknown origin. I spent a lot of money to hospitalize him for a week and then it sort of magically got better, but the puking continued. I thought about taking him to the vet for more tests, but he seemed for the most part fine despite the puke problem (which admittedly is not ideal for the appearance of my house, but still.) I also was afraid they would want to run numerous expensive tests that would continue to reveal nothing about what was causing the problem.

Then, back in November, Claudio started pooping on the floor. He was doing it every day, and I read online that often cats do this because they are feeling ill and are trying to find a way to tell their owners. I started thinking more seriously about taking him to the vet. Then, one night a few days later, I was rubbing his belly while he was laying on my desk, and I felt something hard in his abdomen. It concerned me. I decided I would take him later that week, and he suddenly started acting like he felt awful. He was hiding under the guest bed, not eating very much, and moving very slowly. I made a vet appointment. The vet initially thought the mass I felt in his belly was just feces, and that he likely had irritable bowel syndrome after seeing some thickening of his intestine on X-ray. I went home to await the results of bloodwork, after he got some IV fluids.

Two days later the cat was not only feeling better, but I noticed that his left pupil was permanently dilated as compared to his right. In humans, differences in pupil size is nearly always a sign of serious neurological conditions (stroke, brain tumor, etc.) so this was an emergency. I took him back to the vet, and they said it could be Horner's Syndrome, a neurological condition that can be caused by infections, trauma, or tumors that result in pressure on the optic nerve that causes the dilation. He had an ear that was very sensitive and had fluid in it suggestive of ear infection, so they gave me antibiotics and told me he would hopefully get better once the infection in his ear was cleared up. I was also supposed to bring him back in a couple days for an abdominal ultrasound, because his bloodwork had been for the most part normal and they wanted to look at his intestine.

The ultrasound was finally performed, and revealed what I had been afraid of all along: a large abdominal mass either very near or wrapped around his intestines, and another spot on his liver. The vet took a sample of fluid from the mass for testing, and told me that the most likely cause of the mass was lymphoma. She started him on steroids, and told me that I could consider chemotherapy, steroid therapy alone, or do nothing. It sounded like his options ranged from a few weeks at best to potentially much longer if the chemotherapy was a success.

I'll spare you the details of some uncertainty that was injected into the diagnosis, but the steroids worked wonders--his eyes returned to normal and he was acting like his old happy self the next day. A week later the vet did a second ultrasound, and already the mass had shrunk. Though I lacked a definitive diagnosis, she told me that nothing else would have reacted so well to steroids, other than cancer. So, my kitty has lymphoma and is living on borrowed time. The vet hopes that I will get 3-6 months with him while on the steroids before they stop working, the tumor starts growing again, and he has to be put to sleep. I decided against the chemotherapy because the cat would hate it, it is insanely expensive, and ultimately in about half the cases it doesn't really prolong the cat's life that much anyhow.

He is his old sweet self, waking me up early every morning with plaintive wails for food, scratching all leather shoes and all wooden doorways, curling up next to me every night to purr while we sleep, and generally being adorable. I have to give him liquid steroids every day, which he became a total shit about taking via syringe by mouth, so I mix them into some milk. He is eating well and seems to have no obvious signs of a problem, other than a stomach that growls loudly for at least an hour after he eats.

He is on borrowed time, and my fervent desire to make sure I spend as much time with him as I can in the little time we have left together is yet another reason I never post anymore. I will miss this cat so much when is gone, that I can already feel the heartache. I'm scared of exactly how hard it will be. He has been with me for 9 years, through multiple breakups, a layoff, a move from Boston to Atlanta, an ice storm in which I had no power for three cold days, and so much more. He has been my constant little slice of happiness ever since we got him from a shelter a month after 9/11. And soon, way too soon, I will have to make the terrible decision to end his life before he suffers too much. It's going to be awful.

In which I explain my sports mojo

2010-10-05T14:02:00.003-04:00

I've written about this before, many years ago, but here's a refresher course for those of you who weren't reading then: I am a super duper lucky charm for a city's sports teams. Don't believe me?

In 1993, I moved to Tallahassee to attend FSU. They won the national championship. They played for the national championship four more times that decade, winning it again in 1999. I had moved away back then, and thus began a decade of awfulness.

The summer of 1995, I was back in Orlando (my hometown) working at Disney World for the summer, and the Orlando Magic made it to the NBA Finals in just their 5th year of existence. (They did get swept in the Finals, but I was only in Orlando for 2 short months so my lucky effect probably had not built up enough by then.)

In 1997, I moved to Boston for law school. The Red Sox were mediocre, the Patriots were mediocre, the Celtics were awful. It took a few years for it to kick in, but in 2002 the Patriots won their first of three Super Bowls championships in four years. In 2004 the Red Sox broke an 86 year curse on their way to 2 World Series championships in four years. And in 2008 the Celtics even won a championship, the culmination of a rebuilding that started while I was still there.

In fall of 2005 I moved to Georgia, just after the Atlanta Braves made the playoffs for the last of their amazing 14 year postseason streak. In February 2006 I formally moved to Atlanta, and slowly began switching my allegiances to Atlanta sports teams. The first to go was football, because I was really bothered by the Patriots' taping/cheating scandal. Then went basketball, because I liked the young, raw talent of the Hawks and their tremendous upside. But I'd been holding onto my Red Sox love, and had a really hard time giving it up. I had been through hell and bliss with my Sox, and I just wasn't sure I could root for any other team. Still, at the start of this season, I decided I had to do it. The Braves needed me, and I told everyone I was on board.

Needless to say, it's helping. The Braves just returned to the postseason for the first time since 2005 despite having the wheels nearly fall off due to numerous injuries to critical players. The Hawks have made it to the playoffs three years in a row, and should have a very good team this year again. The Falcons made the playoffs two years ago, broke the curse of never having back to back winning seasons with their 9-7 record last year (after Matt Ryan's injury), and look great this year--so great that they have become a very trendy sleeper Super Bowl pick. I have no idea when the championships will come, but within the next five years, I think any one of the Braves, Hawks or Falcons could win it all. Maybe all three.

When I moved to Atlanta in 2006, none of our major sports teams were in the postseason. The Braves were going into rebuilding mode, the Falcons were dealing with the Michael Vick saga, and the Hawks were still a young team that had been nothing to write home about for over a decade. Since then, all 3 have made the postseason at least once, and this year we should have all 3 in the postseason in the same year. Meanwhile, the Patriots have stopped winning Super Bowls, and the Red Sox failed to make the postseason this year. Boston's reign as supreme sports town is drawing to a close, while Atlanta's is just beginning.

You can all thank me later.

Atlanta Floods: NEVER FORGET

2010-09-20T12:59:00.003-04:00

While I'm on this nostalgia kick, someone mentioned on Twitter this morning that this is the anniversary of the Atlanta floods of a year ago. And lo and behold, the AJC has a retrospective up. Check it out, and relive the insanity, heartbreak and ALL THAT WATER.

Something About September

2010-09-20T10:35:00.002-04:00

In 2005, I quit my job on the Friday before Labor Day weekend and spent the rest of the month trying to get the hell out of Dodge (aka Boston) before the rapidly-approaching winter. One of the most popular songs on the radio at that time was Green Day's "When September Ends," and it felt quite fitting to be asking the universe to hurry up and get me through this month and out of this life I had decided I didn't want anymore.

Fast-forward four years, and in September of 2009 my life was about to experience numerous earthquakes but I didn't realize it just yet. Two co-workers had left and a partner had announced he was leaving the practice of law altogether. I had taken on some of their responsibilities, and out of the blue I had also received a phone call from a federal goverment agency asking me to interview for the same job I had interviewed for in January, because I had been their #2 choice but the guy they had chosen to hire had decided to jump agencies just 6 months after starting. They were only interviewing me and one other guy, and they wanted to move quickly, so it seemed like getting hired was a VERY real possibility. At the very same time, I knew my coworker was in the final stages of interviewing for a fantastic opportunity elsewhere. We joked just before the Labor Day weekend about wanting to be the first of the two of us to give notice, because the rash of departures had started to freak people out. (Ultimately, she got the call first and put in her notice a year ago tomorrow, and I didn't get the nod for the government job because they were concerned I would decide to leave after a year or two in order to earn more money. They were probably right.)

Because the government job would have paid a lot less than my current job, my parents decided I needed to buy my house from them (long story made slightly less long: when we found my house I wasn't yet working and didn't qualify for a good mortgage rate, but they did, so they were the official buyers but I paid the mortgage for the first 3.5 years), and found a way through a mortgage broker to make this happen. We locked in a rate in late September, and a month later we closed and I took on the crushing debt load of my very own. We also discovered during this time that my roof was leaking (right after the Atlanta floods last year, September 18-22) and some other renovations were needed, so we hired a builder and started planning for the renovations that began in October.

At the same time, I had been talking off and on since July with a guy who I wanted to go out with and I was pretty sure he wanted to go out with me too, but despite a few abortive attempts to meet up somewhere we still had not yet gone out face to face. We shared a mutual friend (who had actually tried to set us up a year earlier but I said no), and she finally talked to me and then talked to him and basically found a way to push us both into getting the hell on with it, already. Right around this time we finally started talking on the phone and made plans for our first date, plans that I would ultimately have to cancel because I got sick. We ended up going out for the first time later in September, and having a great time. It was the start of something different and exciting. (Things didn't work out in the end, but it was still a VERY fun fall...)

I was about to become insanely busy at work, and I was about to get sick 5 times in 6 months (likely because of said work insanity.) Because of that sickness streak and my limited free time due to work, I would stop working out for more than six months and gain back half of the 20 pounds I had lost from March to September of last year. I would stop having time to go play poker on Thursdays, to go out with friends on Friday nights, to visit my family on Sundays, or to do anything but work all the damn time. I knew things were about to become difficult, but I had no idea just how difficult, yet.

I was also about to experience a fundamental realignment of my social circle. At the end of September I recall driving with a close friend, listening to a sad song about goodbyes and regret that suddenly brought forth the tears. I didn't know why I was crying, yet. I knew things needed to change and had already started to, but I didn't realize that what really needed to happen was finality, an ending. That earthquake came in October. But on that late September day, part of me already knew, and was already recording that moment, as one place I may never go in my life again.

Looking back now, a year ago I was on the brink of everything. I had no idea at the time how fundamental the changes would be, but it got me here, and for that I am grateful. The last year has put me in such a better place, and this September I am just hoping that I can keep building on the positive change of a year ago. Through a combination of my crash Vegas diet and a week of being sick, I've lost enough weight that my low point from last year is once again in sight and I'm inspired to keep going. I have met some fascinating and truly amazing guys in the last year, and made some fantastic new friends while strengthening existing friendships with others. I was promoted at work and got a raise after I really rededicated myself to my job and I ended up with a house that love and put my own mark on forever.

Septembers are always full of change for me, but as I sit here today reflecting on all the positive change that started a year ago, I just can't wait to see what happens next.

Oh, hey

2010-09-13T23:20:00.004-04:00

I nearly forgot to mention, for any of you who are not Twitter followers (those folks knew 2 wks ago)...

The night before I left for my vacation, I found out I was being made Of Counsel at my firm. This is something I initially asked for at the end of last year but was told that the timing was no good, and I thought I'd have to wait until the end of this year. But then my boss decided that since I was busting my ass extra hard in 2010, she would push to make them do it in mid-year. It almost didn't work, but they caved. This is sort of like "making partner" but not...it's a promotion to being one of the leaders of my group, and some job security to an extent, but I still have to keep busting ass and see if they make me a shareholder next year if that's what I decide I'm after. (If someone knows the answer to this question, can you clue me in?) It did come with a sweet raise, although with cuts over the last 2 years this has really just brought me back to my starting point.

At many times over the last 4 1/2 years I have thought about jumping ship, as I have blogged about here from time to time with varying stages of vagueness, but as I look back I'm SO glad I didn't. Once in awhile, sticking it out through something tough and finding a way to turn it around and make it work really does pay off. I wish more people would realize that when they become unhappy with where they're at.

Today I got the handbook they give to new Shareholders and Of Counsels. I spent an hour reading it, and was sad to learn there were no secrets in there. They must save the good shit for verbal telling only, never to be committed to paper.

Sadly, I have to become a shareholder before I'll get to go to the annual retreat in Vegas with the crazy parties. I am now not eligible until end of 2011 at the earliest. But I'm 100% fine with that.

Quick and Dirty

2010-09-13T16:25:00.002-04:00

I have no time or enthusiasm for blogging anymore, obviously. But I just can't bring myself to shut this place down. So, we do a quick and dirty update since the last post pre-vacation:

* I played in one poker tournament in Biloxi. Finished somewhere in the high 40's, and top 27 got paid. I had terrible cards for most of the day so even lasting that long was really surprising, and actually made me feel pretty good about my effort. I had nothing to work with, but I made it work well enough to outlast some really good players.

* The sexism in poker still gets to me, but I'm finally used to it now. I actually had a guy lay down pocket queens to my bet, and it was an older guy who had been super-flirty with me to that point. (He saw me on my cell phone at the break and asked if I was "texting with my boyfriend," kept calling me "hot stuff," etc.) Now he said he was laying them down because he had gotten burned with them several times already, and I think that was at least partially true. But I also think he was trying to do me a favor, which is fairly condescending. Of course, I had pocket jacks so I was happy for the fold, but I didn't tell him that. He had been very chatty with the whole table, trying to play the "I'm just a dumb first timer, you must be really good at this" role...meanwhile before the tournament started he was bitching about how lousy the comps were for poker players when he had gambled over $2mil. in MGM owned casinos in the last year. So, notsomuch.

* It was raining when I got to Pensacola the first day of my vacation, so I decided not to play in the Tuesday poker tournament and instead stayed all morning in Fla. to get a nice long walk on the beach in before I had to leave. It was wonderful. Despite normally not being a big Hampton Inn fan, I have to give it up for the Hampton Inn on Pensacola Beach--it is way nicer than most of the chain and I would totally stay there again. Although their "heated pool" was so cold I nearly died.

* I ate at a restaurant on the beach called Peg Leg Pete's--also highly recommended. The food was delicious and the company was good too. However, I did have an older retired couple from GA there start talking to me about why they moved to Pensacola, and at one point the guy did a quick look around the bar and then just launched into an incredibly racist statement. (Something about how the locals all call this one beach "chicken wing beach" because "that kind" hang out there.) I hate it when things like this happen, because I realize it would do no good to chide him for saying it, but I also don't want to be complicit in his racism and act like it doesn't bother me. So, inevitably, I end up sitting there with an uncomfortable look on my face, hoping he will realize he shouldn't have said it but that I am too polite or weak or whatever to flat out call him out for it. And then I wrapped up my drinking and left soon thereafter.

* In Biloxi, I lost a lot of money and ate a wonderful meal at Mary Mahoney's, as is my annual tradition. Still the best seafood gumbo I have EVER had. However, they cannot make a gimlet to save their damn lives. Here's a hint: it should not be over ice, and it should not be fizzy.

* After Biloxi, I drove back to attend a friend's show at Smith's, and the next morning on little sleep and much hangover, I flew to Vegas. We stayed at the Mandalay Bay this time, and I much preferred it to the MGM Grand where I stayed in May. I again lost money, but had a couple big slot machine wins ($350 oncer, $200 at the airport) and some good blackjack play. However, overall the trip was pricey because my gambling would swing hard in both directions. Not as bad as T., who was with us, and who lost $800 in about 20 minutes on 8 $100 hands of blackjack! LIVING THE DREAM.

* We ate our way through Vegas, and that seriously has to be the best foodie town in the universe. First night we had Border Grill mexican food that was delicious, the next day we had Burger Bar for lunch (it says a lot that this very tasty meal ended up being the least impressive of the trip but was still good), then Nobu for dinner where SOME PEOPLE ordered kobe beef steaks cooked over hot rocks at $32 an ounce, then the next day for lunch I had a lamb burger and fried dill pickles at BLT Burger that was TO DIE FOR, and finally we finished it off with an excellent Russian fusion tasting menu at Red Square. All of it was yummy.

* Good thing I went on that "crash vegas" diet...I lost 7 pounds in 17 days, and I wasn't even trying that hard for the last week or so. But I gained 4 right back in Vegas! (I've taken off 2 of those in the last week since I've been back and hitting the treadmill again.) This really inspired me to rededicate, because I do feel so much better when I am working out 4 days a week at least. Also, with the cooler weather, I am going to try walking outside on weekends more often. I still hope to get myself half-marathon ready by January...

* The craziest moment of the entire Vegas experience was when I realized while eating lunch at BLT Burger in the Mirage that my wallet was gone. I didn't know if I had dropped it, been pickpocketed, or left it in the cab I had arrived in 45 minutes earlier. I have to give major, major props to the staff of the Mirage, who got the security folks to find the cab number of the cab I got out of through their security camera footage, called the cab company and fought their way through the labyrynthic maze to reach the driver, and discovered that he had my wallet and made arrangements for him to bring it back to me. It completely saved my vacation, and then I tipped the entire world for their help. I will also probably stay at the Mirage next time I am in town, because I feel like I owe them for going over the top for me when I was not even a guest on their property.

* Speaking of next time, there is already a movement afoot to go back for Thanksgiving. I don't think I can afford it!

* This was only my second "real vacation" (i.e. not a long weekend or Christmas/Thanksgiving holiday trips home to family) since I graduated from law school. Twice I have managed to take an entire week off from work, in 10 years. This is sad. This needs to be remedied.

Gone fishin'

2010-08-30T11:00:00.003-04:00

I'm headed today to Pensacola Beach, FL for one night, then tomorrow for Biloxi for my third year playing in the Gulf Coast Poker Championship. I'll be back briefly on Thursday night to see a friend's bluegrass band play at Smith's Olde Bar (come join us!) and then on Friday morning I head to Vegas.

I hope to have interesting tales to tell next week. And to not be completely broke ass.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

2010-08-19T15:38:00.002-04:00

I could write a whole new post about Sarah Palin's ridiculous tweet that Dr. Laura's 1st amendment rights are being violated because people complained she used the N-word 11 times on a show last week...but why bother? I already wrote the exact same post last year when she made the same ridiculously inaccurate claim about Carrie Prejean. So, lather, rinse, repeat...here's last year's post in its entirety:

There are many things that make me crazy, but today's crazy-maker is a legal issue:

People who cite "free speech" or the 1st Amendment as justification for expressing unpopular political or social opinions make me crazy.

For starters, the 1st Amendment only prohibits restrictions on the freedom of speech that are imposed by the government. Let's read the text of the First Amendment, shall we? It's pretty short, so it should be easy to understand:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The "Congress shall make no law" part of the amendment is pretty clear. (The Constitution originally only restricted federal government action, but was been held applicable to state and local government action through the fourteenth amendment's equal protection provisions.)

So, pursuant to the First Amendment, your federal, state or local government is not allowed to tell you that you can't espouse the view that Barack Obama is inferior because he is black. But a private individual can throw you out of their home or shout at you in the street for saying that. A company can fire you for saying that at work, or a store manager can ask you to leave and ban you from their property. A private organization like Kiwanis can expel you from the membership. "Free speech" and the first amendment have no force of law anywhere other than in government.

(Even in government, "content-neutral" restrictions on speech are often upheld, such as when a government prohibits protesting in the middle of a busy street because it could cause a traffic jam that creates a safety hazard. Such a restriction would generally be permissible regardless of whether it prohibited a Nazi protest or people who want you to honk for more breast cancer research funding.)

Now everyone's favorite Constitutional scholar, Sarah Palin, has claimed that Carrie Prejean (Miss California), was just trying to assert her protected First Amendment rights when she answered in the Miss USA pageant that she believes gay marriage is wrong according to the bible.
“I respect Carrie for standing strong and staying true to herself, and for not letting those who disagree with her deny her protection under the nation’s First Amendment Rights,” Palin said.
“Our Constitution protects us all — not just those who agree with the far left.”

Governor Palin apparently does not understand that despite being called "Miss USA," the pageant organization has no government affiliation and is in fact owned by Donald Trump's corporate empire. Thus, the pageant is not governed by the Constitution and can punish Prejean for her views however they chose to do so, including not awarding her the crown because she wasn't apparently smart enough to give a more diplomatic answer. The television, print and online media entities that excoriated Prejean were also not Constitutionally bound not to criticize Prejean. The Miss California USA organization could have fired her if they wanted to, without any Constitutional impediment. The First Amendment does not protect anything that Carrie Prejean said during the pageant competition or at any time since, unless she said it in a government building or on government property and I just missed it. Last time I checked, nobody is claiming that Prejean was prevented by any governmental entity from speaking about her views.

It figures that a bubbleheaded beauty queen known for her intolerance would feel the need to speak out in support of someone whose attributes must have seemed mighty familiar. It would have been nice if a sitting Governor who considered herself qualified to be Vice President had bothered to actually read and understand the Constitution she has been charged with upholding and defending, before she claimed that it protected Prejean in the Miss USA pageant.

The Crash Vegas Diet

2010-08-17T14:25:00.002-04:00

Having planned my vacation for the last week of August, I am faced with needing to wear a swimsuit in public in two weeks for my one night on a Florida beach, and then 5 days later while in Vegas lazing about the pool at the Mandalay Bay. But I've been a bad Sara, and do not currently feel swimsuit-worthy. The answer? A challenge to myself to see if I can drop 5 pounds by the time I leave for Vegas on Sept. 3rd.

Luckily, being tall and weighing more generally means that stringing together several pounds lost in 2.5 weeks is not as hard for me as it is for some. The bad part of that is, it takes more to make a noticeable difference. So, how am I going to do it?

1. I'm eating under 1400 calories a day. This is not that hard to do for me, but I'm going to accomplish it by eating as many fruits and vegetables as I can, and cutting meat out of my diet as much as I can for the next 17 days. I will still eat seafood, however, because it's just too hard for me to go full vegetarian. The usual breakdown of a day will look like this:

Breakfast: fruit and a diet coke, possibly with greek yogurt
Lunch: Salad or sandwich of some sort from takeout, or a frozen Lean Cuisine/Healthy Choice/etc. meal
Afternoon snack: 100 calorie popcorn bag, fruit, carrots
Dinner: takeout sushi, margherita pizza, or if I'm really good a homecooked meal of mostly vegetables with possibly some seafood.
Dessert: Sorbet du jour (I am currently obsessed with sorbet)

2. I'm spending an hour a day, EVERY DAY, on the treadmill. No ifs ands or buts. However, over the next 17 days I am giving myself 2 days off as needed for work purposes.

3. I'm doing 100 sit-ups every single morning or night. Gotta get some ab muscles back in evidence.

4. Drinking no more than twice a week, light beer or wine only. I bet you were thinking that sample menu up there looked mighty light, right? Well, I have to save the calories for an adult beverage now and then. Also the occasional inescapable chocolate craving.

I'll let you know on September 2nd how I've done...

Vacation Plans Update

2010-08-10T13:31:00.002-04:00

So, things changed a little bit in the last couple weeks as I planned my vacation for the last week of August. I am probably NOT going to the Florida gulf coast because cost has become somewhat prohibitive. (Beach house rentals in FL are EXPENSIVE despite the whole oil spill thingee!) Instead, I will probably drive or fly straight to Biloxi on Monday for 3 days of poker tournament goodness and fun with my friend Susan (and technically it's on a beach so that should fulfill my beach-fix) thanks to free airfare and hotel deals from the Beau Rivage. I'll come back on Thursday, in time to see an awesome bluegrass band, Whoa Nelly, play at Smith's. (You should come if you're here in the ATL. Seriously. They are great.) And then early the next morning, I'll fly to Vegas for Labor Day weekend with some friends. I have free hotel offers there, too, so the only question is whether the airfare will become semi-reasonable before I give up and book a ticket. I may not even gamble all that much this time out...I probably will just hang by the pool during the days so that I resist the urge to give MGM/Mirage Corp. my hard-earned dollars. (Yeah, right.)

Woot! I'm looking forward to an entire week off. I just told my boss about it today, and she didn't balk. So it's as good as set in stone.

Help Me Plan My Vacation

2010-07-28T10:32:00.005-04:00

I have decided to take the week leading up to Labor Day weekend off, for some sort of vacation. My friend Susan is going with some family to Biloxi in the middle of that week and has invited me to come along, and since a) there is a poker tournament that week and b) I have a million free hotel and airfare offers for the Beau Rivage anyhow, I've decided I will probably spend at least a few days down there. I also want to go visit a friend who moved to New Orleans a few months ago. And I need to satisfy my beach craving with a couple days on a beach somewhere. Can all of these things be combined into one 10 day journey? Also, a part of me just wants to fly to Vegas for Labor Day weekend. And my parents have been begging me to come up and spend a long weekend with them in the mountains.

Suggestions welcome, in particular as to beaches along the gulf coast that aren't befouled with oil and that have nice beachfront hotels.

Ridiculously Early FSU Football Predictions

2010-07-27T10:52:00.004-04:00

Although I love baseball, this is around about the time when I start thinking about Labor Day weekend plans, and thus also find myself looking forward with eager anticipation to the start of the college football season. Because there is really nothing to do but wait, and because I have been devouring all the news I can find in the off-season about the upcoming inaugural season of the Jimbo Fisher Era at Florida State, I figured I would make some random prognostications.

Anticipated Final Regular Season Record: 9-3
Wins: Samford, BYU, Wake, Virginia, Boston College, N.C. State, Maryland
Losses: Oklahoma, Florida
Could Go Either Way (i.e. we'll win at least one and lose at least one, I just can't predict which ones): Clemson, Miami, UNC
We are absolutely, positively, 100% going to lose to Oklahoma. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dreaming. However, I do think we have a very good shot for the first time in awhile of beating Florida, though I couldn't in good conscience move it into the tossup category. But I won't be shocked at all if it happens. UNC would've been a much tougher game for us before Marvin Austin and possibly some other players got into a little agent trouble, so I feel much better about our chances of beating them but still couldn't call it a sure win yet. Similarly, a week ago I would've felt strongly about our chances against Clemson but that was when I assumed they'd have a freshman QB and not the very good Kyle Parker, who turned down a million dollar baseball signing bonus to return. So now Clemson could very easily beat us. Miami could be great this year or mediocre, and it is really too early to tell. I think we will probably lose to them because the game is in Miami, but we do always play them pretty tough and close, so I have to leave that one a tossup.

Will Christian Ponder win the Heisman? No, but he will put up the numbers that will make him a top 5 NFL draft pick. If he'd have a better defense behind him, he would be a top 3 Heisman candidate, but even with the improvement of a defense-heavy recruiting class and all new defensive coaching, our defense is likely to just go from terrible to mediocre. Not enough to propel us to the top 10, which is where Ponder would need to be in order to have a chance at the statue. He might get an invite to NYC, though, depending on how the other top candidates fare.

Which games am I attending? Right now I have hotel rooms booked for BYU, UNC and UF. I may throw Clemson in there too, depending on how the team is doing and whether I can get a hotel for that weekend. (Also, if my big trial goes in November I may have to cancel any hope of attending the UNC or Clemson games.) I also plan to actually tailgate this year if I can figure out where FSU fans tailgate. You UGA folks may find this strange, but we are not a big tailgating school. Most people roll up to the stadium right before the game starts, and the parking situation is sort of sporadic and spread out so there aren't a lot of places with great tailgate setups (although there are some.) However, we can walk around with open containers of alcohol, so in the past I have just shotgunned 2 or 3 beers on the walk from car to stadium (and then spent the game drunkenly feeling the liquid sloshing in my stomach while needing to pee. Fun!) But I like the tailgate concept, and would love to find a way to add it to my football experience. I think staying in Tallahassee, unlike my arrangements in years past, will probably help with that somewhat.

Will FSU win the ACC? We certainly can. If we lose only one ACC game, as I anticipate (and especially if it's to Miami or UNC who are not in our division), then we should at minimum make the title game. Many are predicting BC will win our division because they play UVA and Duke--the two patsies of the league--but we will probably beat BC and if we each only have one conference loss then the head to head game will be the tiebreaker. Having said that, whoever comes out of the other division--Va Tech, Miami, Ga Tech, or UNC--is going to be a pretty tough team to beat in the conference championship game. FSU can do it, but I can't predict that it will happen this year. I would love it if we somehow made it back to a BCS game, though.

Will I miss Bobby Bowden? Probably. I was a vocal critic who wanted him out years ago, but I also am eternally grateful to him for making FSU into a spectacular dynasty and putting us on the college football map. I will think of him fondly every time I walk by the statue outside Bobby Bowden field. But I am also so incredibly ready for the modern era of football as ushered in by Jimbo Fisher to finally get here. I am ready to start kicking Florida's ass again. I am ready to do the warchant and the tomahawk chop and to scream with joy for my team, rather than scaring small children with my stream of angry profanities (true story). I do not fear change, I embrace it. This is Jimbo's team now.

Do I regret renewing my season tickets? Not. For. A. Second. Hopefully I'll have made the jump in priority level by the time we have returned to our former glory! I am committed. Speaking of...

My newest infusion

2010-07-26T16:13:00.003-04:00

Last night, I pitted over 1 pound of fresh bing cherries, enough to fill a massive mason jar half full of vodka all the way to the top. There is something so refreshing and satisfying about seeing that clear liquor turning red with the cherry juice (fittingly, I did this just before watching True Blood, using my "cherry guillotine" that lets me core 4 cherries at once). I have no idea how long the cherry vodka will need to infuse before it is ready, but I have very high hopes for this one. Even if I do either have to throw another party or find someone else's party to take it to just so that it all gets consumed.

I also have 2 more batches of the peach-cinnamon bourbon brewing, but those are already spoken for, headed for someone else's party and as a gift. If you want me to brew you up an infsuion for my Christmas gift to you, let me know and I will get one started before the fruits go out of season. It really is so easy and delicious, I am surprised I didn't think of this sooner.

Pictures to come soon.

So, I guess I'm back...kinda?

2010-07-22T11:36:00.003-04:00

A long rambly multi-topic catchup post wherein I pretend all 3 of my remaining readers still care...

Last night I scrolled through my first two pages of posts and realized that was all I had so far for 2010, and it's nearly freakin August. This made me feel terrible about my chronic blog neglect. Luckily several massive projects completed either last week or Monday of this week, and so while I am certainly still swamped I no longer feel like I am swimming for the surface but just don't know if I will make it before I drown. Living in that feeling for the last 3 months, and in other spurts for most of the last 10 months, has really sucked. And I'm sure it will suck again soon.
...

So, like I said in the infusions post, I had 2 parties in June and July. It wasn't really the greatest idea I've ever had, but it's done now and it was for the most part fun. Also, crazy expensive. Also, this post from my dear friend Susan is like the greatest thing ever. Read it, learn it, live it.

I made so many different dishes it is hard to pick just one or two to share recipes for, but one is something I sort of invented based upon a suggestion from a friend, and it was delicious, and easy:

Feta-Stuffed Mini Peppers

2 packages of miniature red, yellow and orange peppers, tops removed, cleaned, split down one side
1 package of good feta cheese
olive oil, ideally infused with some herbs, garlic or red pepper for extra flavor
balsamic vinegar
8 leaves fresh basil (if oil is not infused)
salt and pepper

If using basil, cut into a chiffonade and place a pinch of the basil into each pepper. Stuff each pepper with feta, packing tightly. Drizzle liberally with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and any remaining basil. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour to allow flavors to meld. Skewer each pepper and either place on top rack of a grill away from direct flame, with uncut sides of peppers down, or place on a rimmed baking sheet and broil in a hot oven until the cheese browns and the peppers have just started to soften. Be careful when removing the peppers from the grill or oven, as the filling will want to fall out. (If it does, just discreetly stuff it back in. Nobody will notice.) Serve warm.

...

I've decided that when I get my bonus in December, I need to do something big with it. Option #1 is a major trip somewhere outside the U.S. where I can get away from it all for awhile. Suggestions on locale are welcome...right now, I am considering exotic places like Italy, France, New Zealand, Tahiti, Barbados, etc. Ideally it should be somewhere that the weather will be lovely in January or February when I can afford to go. Honestly, my biggest concern is that none of my friends will be willing to go with me because of either financial restraints, lack of interest in traveling to where I want to go, or fear of flying. I've been trying to explain to people recently that traveling alone as a single girl is just way dicier than as a guy. My friend who went to France last year by herself and got mugged 3 times in the span of a two week trip, including having her wallet stolen on the very first day she arrived in Paris, is a classic example. She hung in there, got money wired by her parents, and made the best of it, but I would probably be so dejected at that point that I'd just want to turn around and come home. I travel alone all the time for work, but that's different--I never GO anywhere or see anything, I just go from airport to hotel to deposition back to airport. But if I'm traveling abroad, I really don't want to be alone. There should be a place where you can find travel partners for things like this who aren't shady or annoying. (Feel free to also volunteer to be my travel partner in the comments, although I won't be fronting your costs if you do...)

...

On the mini-vacation front, I need to go visit a friend in New Orleans for some weekend in August, and I am also probably going back to Biloxi for the poker tournament around Labor Day. This was a total bust last year, but a friend is also going that same week for other reasons and asked me to join her, plus they have lowered the buy-ins considerably from last year. I wonder if that's the effect of the economy? At any rate, I never have the time or desire to play poker in my Thursday night game anymore, so in order to get some practice with live play I am probably going to have to start playing bar tourneys a few times a week. Suggestions for good places in Atlanta with bar tourneys that start at 9pm (not 8, which I can never make it to) are welcome. I used to play at the Brewhouse but apparently new folks are running it so it may suck now.

...

Local politics is depressing the hell out of me. I seriously don't like any of the candidates on either side of the aisle who ran for Governor of Georgia, and I will probably write in my friend Page in November. (It's a thing, we write in Page when we don't know who to vote for.) I waver between resolving not to give a shit because it's too upsetting to pay attention to, and resolving to make my own change by working to revamp the Democratic party in this state into something effective and inspiring again. Y'know, with all that free time I have.

...

So it's late July, and I resolved in March to maybe run a half marathon this year, and yet I haven't even been able to string together 13 miles on the treadmill across one whole week since that promise, let alone actually starting to train for it. I keep waiting for things at work to get less hectic so I can get home at a normal hour and have the energy and time to recommit, but it just hasn't happened. I wish I didn't have to choose between getting in shape physically and getting my career in order. But doing both at the same time has proven nearly impossible.

...

I'm getting ridiculously excited about FSU football this year, even though Vegas has apparently only pegged us to win 8 games. Still, this is one of those years that has the potential to be really special--not national championship special (despite what Tim Brando apparently predicted), but a better year than we have seen in recent memory. I think we could conceivably run the table in the ACC, which would be great if we didn't also have the incredibly difficult non-conference schedule of Oklahoma, BYU and Florida to deal with. Still, the most frustrating thing about FSU's decline this decade has been our tendency to let mediocre ACC teams beat us, and the first step to returning to former glory is to stop letting that happen and start kicking conference asses again.

...

I think that's all I got for now. Whew, I was storing up a lot of random junk!

The Great Infused Liquor Experiment

2010-07-19T12:31:00.003-04:00

Back in March, on a whim I purchased some old-fashioned bottles a bit like the one pictured above while shopping at the Container Store. I had gotten the idea last fall from my friend The Frugal Hostess about the possibility of making your own cordials, and figured these bottles might be a nice start towards infusing my own liquor. Then in late May I was cajoled into planning two parties two weeks apart, and I decided that my "gimmick" for these parties would be the attempt at liquor infusions.

One night in May, I scared an entire liquor store with my plentiful alcohol purchases, including several massive bottles of vodka (I went with Skyy because it is a decent vodka but not terribly expensive) and one massive bottle of bourbon (Maker's Mark, because the store was out of Knob Creek. I don't like Maker's as much but it ended up not making a difference to the end result.). I had only the roughest idea of what I was going to infuse into each, but figured that going with the fruits that were in season this time of year was a good start. I did some reading and discovered that fruits that are particularly juicy tend to do best in the infusions. And then I ultimately decided to kind of wing it.

I ended up making the following four infusions (giving you the recipes, infusion times, and end results for each):

1. Blueberry-Lemon Vodka: Blueberries look really beautiful in the bottle, but man are they a pain in the butt to prepare for infusion. The key for whatever fruit you are infusing is to either mash it or poke holes in it so that the liquor marinates with the juices and produces both a nice color and flavor. For my first pint of blueberries, this meant poking every single one with a toothpick several times before adding them to the bottle. I used about half a pint of blueberries for this project. I also cut several lemons up very thinly sliced so that they would fit through the opening of the bottle, because I had not yet realized this project would be done much more easily with massive Mason jars. I added approximately two cut lemons to the bottle along with the blueberries, and filled to the very top with vodka.

I kept this chilled in my wine chiller, which kept it cool but not super cold, and I took out the bottle and shook it every couple days. I also changed out the fruit after about 10 days, straining the vodka through a colander and painstakingly pulling out all those blueberries and lemon slices through the small bottle opening. If I had it to do all over again, I'd use the Mason jar from the start.

For the second batch of fruit that I added, rather than poking all those blueberries again I just mashed them up in a bowl and added them with the juice to the bottle. I also zested one lemon into the bottle to really kick up the lemon flavor. It wasn't as delicately pretty as the first batch, but it was more effective. The liquor got nicely purple by the end of 20 days. Because I needed to rush this one to completion for the party, I ended up straining the liquor through a cheesecloth to remove sediment and bits of lemon peel. I then made a lemon simple syrup to add to the bottle to cut some of the tartness of the vodka that remained.

This was delicious, but I think it would have benefitted from another week of infusion (4 weeks total) with new fruit every 7 days rather than every 10 days, which hopefully would have allowed us to avoid the need for the simple syrup. The end result, however, was a beautiful purple liquor. I will definitely make this concoction again.

2. Cantaloupe-Kiwi Vodka: I had heard from a friend about a delicious cantaloupe-cucumber infusion she had at a restaurant in D.C., but I wanted to avoid using cucumber because I knew some people would not like it. Since kiwi has a nice clean flavor as a fruit, I decided to substitute it. I used a large Mason jar for this one because the fruit was much larger than the blueberries and lemon slices, and it was a smart choice. I bought pre-cut cantaloupe in a container from Whole Foods, approximately 2 cups, and also peeled and sliced 4 kiwi fruit. I added this to the jar and filled to the brim with vodka.

Like with the blueberry-lemon, I kept the jar in the wine chiller and shook occasionally to help the infusion work. I also changed out the fruit after 1 week and then after another 5 days. On the day of the party, I poured through a colander to catch the fruit, strained once through relatively thin cheesecloth to get any bits of fruit, and then poured it into a fancy pretty glass bottle to chill until ice cold (which really helps the vodka go down smooth). Luckily, these fruits don't leave any real sediment or bits in the vodka (other than the occasional kiwi seed), so this was probably the easiest one to prepare. This infusion was completed in only about 18 days, but was absolutely perfect. The natural juiciness of the cantaloupe and kiwis really lent themselves well to infusion, and this was the hit of the party. I will definitely make this again, because it was ridiculously easy and so successful.

3. Peach-Cinnamon Bourbon: This was probably my most ambitious infusion, and at first I didn't think it was going to work. I vastly underestimated how many peaches I would need relative to the amount of bourbon I had (a 750 bottle), and after a week of infusion in the Mason Jar this still tasted like slightly sweeter Maker's Mark (which as I said above I don't even really like.) I became concerned, and decided to add cinnamon and a shitload more peaches the next time, and also realized a 4 week infusion would like be necessary for this one. I bought a bag of peaches that I let ripen before I cut them into big chunks and put in the bourbon for another week, and also chilled this one in the refrigerator rather than the wine chiller because the peaches had seemed to break down more quickly in the less cold environment. I stopped peeling the peaches to save time, but it ultimately made no discernable difference.

After just one week of that many more peaches and the addition of the cinnamon, this was starting to taste great. But after I changed the fruit yet again, this went from great to insanely delicious. Ultimately I had 4 full weeks of infusion with 4 separate batches of peaches, and by the time this was done it tasted according to my July 4th party guests like a dessert sauce rather than a liquor. The peach flavor completely covered up the bite of the liquor and this was dangerously drinkable in mass quantities. I will definitely make this one again, and I think it was probably the best one of all 4 batches I attempted. The key is simply to use ripe peaches, and a lot of them.

One challenge with this infusion was that it was quite thick and did not want to pour through the cheesecloth despite needing to strain the cinnamon out. It took a long time, and so when I make this again I will use cinnamon sticks rather than what I had in the pantry (ground cinnamon) to hopefully avoid that step and be able to use a thinner cheesecloth. I am about to make batches 2 and 3 of this for friends' birthday parties, and cannot wait to have it again.

4. Pomegranate vodka: This was the only disappointment of the 4 batches, which really surprised me because it was the one I started first. I bought a package of pre-cleaned pomegranate arils and added them to one of my fancy old-fashioned bottles that I then filled to the top with vodka. It turned a lovely shade of red almost immediately, but the color that was imparted did not translate into flavor. I ended up changing out the arils every single week for 4 weeks, until the color saturation was super-intense. However, perhaps because of the tart flavor of pomegranate generally, the vodka's alcohol bite remained even after all that infusing.

The end result was a liquor that would be good in cocktails--a pomegranate cosmo, perhaps--but was not really as good to drink on its own because it was not easy to shoot. I was left with over half the bottle at the end of my second party. (It has since been consumed, but only because if you bring a bottle of cold pink liquor to a bunch of drunk people at a pool, they'll drink just about anything.) I'm not sure there is anything I should have done differently, and I even tried to save it with some more simple syrup and sweetened lime juice. I think this is just one infusion that simply does not work.

So, for my next trick I want to attempt some sort of cherry infusion (probably vodka) and will also be open to suggestions for late summer and fall fruits. Anything you think I absolutely need to try? Hit me with a suggestion in the comments and I might give it a shot.

The hardest part about infsuing is having the patience to wait it out, since 4 weeks is a really long time to have a big jar of bourbon or vodka staring at you from the freezer. But trust me, it will be worth it when it's done. This would also make an excellent Christmas gift, although for the summer fruits you will likely need to have the willpower to make the liquor when the fruit is in season and then not drink it for the next 5 months until you can give the gifts away. I am considering attempting that, though odds are not good all the gifts will arrive at their ultimate destinations. :)

(From L to R, the pomegranate infusion, the cantaloupe-kiwi infusion, and the blueberry-lemon infusion in process. I think the peach bourbon was sitting in a bowl in the sink waiting for another batch of peaches to be added when I took this.)

Jukebox Wars

2010-07-07T13:42:00.004-04:00

For the last month or so, ATL Malcontent has been counting down the 10 most annoying songs ever. So far, his list includes:

#10: Bush--Glycerine

#9: John Denver--Thank God I'm a Country Boy

#8: Darryl Worley--Have You Forgotten?

#7: Genesis--Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

#6: The Rembrandts--I'll Be There For You (aka the theme from "Friends")

#5: Soundgarden--Black Hole Sun

#4: Five for Fighting--100 Years

#3: Hootie and the Blowfish--Only Wanna Be With You

#2: Kenny Loggins--(Highway to the) Danger Zone

#1: R. Kelly--I Believe I Can Fly

I can't really disagree with any of the choices on the list, though I do generally like Soundgarden and also find Danger Zone to be hilarious in its awfulness. But then, I tend to find really awful music pretty funny overall.

Reading this list reminded me of an old bar trick some friends and I used to engage in about a year ago (maybe longer...the days in bars all blend together.) We never gave it a name, but I hereby christen it Jukebox Wars. I was talking about this just this past Friday night, after some friends were deliberately playing awful music in a nearly-empty Diesel, which was led off with the hilariously bad "Into the Night" by Benny Mardones. (Any song that begins with "She's just 16 years old / leave her alone they say" is gonna be uncomfortably awful by definition!)

Jukebox Wars started when the bartenders at Moe's and Joe's were bored and annoyed one Saturday night and started deliberately playing bad music in the hope of annoying patrons. They took turns seeing how bad they could make the songs, which as I drunkenly recall included the Spice Girls, New Kids on the Block, Chumbawumba, and that "Who Let the Dogs Out" song. Undaunted, my friends and I began doing battle to top their selections. For whatever $5 will buy in terms of download credits on the jukebox, we would pick our slate of the worst songs in the world. We quickly discovered that our lists were largely generational--the bartenders' songs were heavily from the 90's, mine were largely from the late 70's or 80's, and others' were from the 60's or 70's. Many of those in that last category I had never heard before, so I didn't have the same negative visceral reaction that others in the bar often did (such as when I was beaten with the selection "Season in the Sun." Dammit.)

I can't remember all 10 of the terrible songs I played, but I can remember most. They included Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch," Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby," Taylor Dayne's "Love Will Lead You Back," Starship's "Sara" (a personal most-hated song for reasons I have described elsewhere...if you play it for me I will punch you in the throat), Alabama's "When We Make Love," and that goddamned "Breakfast at Tiffany's" song that makes me want to gouge out eyeballs. Just pulling together those links has made me think I should have won this damn battle...that's how bad those songs are! But alas, based upon the votes of others in the bar, I was defeated by even worse songs.

I also can't remember all the terrible songs that the person who beat me played, but I do remember some of the submissions of others included Muskrat Love, We Built This City, the Pina Colada song (which I unabashedly love), and Baby I'm a Want You.

The one song that both I and my competitor wanted to include, but couldn't because it was not available for download on that jukebox, was Convoy. This is quite simply the worst song of all time--listen and see for yourself! If ATL Malcontent doesn't make this #1 on his list I will be so disappointed.

So, this makes me wonder...what are your all-time top 10 worst songs ever? Feel free to leave a list in the comments. (Nothing that I have listed here is off-limits simply because I included it.)

I didn't forget about you

2010-05-25T16:28:00.002-04:00

Since May 1st, I have been busting my ass to get a major brief done, also while flying all over the country for work and play. I've been to Vegas, Naples, and San Francisco...all the while working late hours even from hotel rooms to get this brief done. It's due June 1st, so I should hopefully be back a little more semi-regularly after that's done.

Yep.

2010-05-04T17:23:00.001-04:00

This is me.

A Threat or a Promise? McBerry's Libel Claims

2010-05-04T11:19:00.010-04:00

Recently the word "libel" has been thrown around a lot in the Georgia blogosophere in connection with one fringe gubernatorial candidate who allegedly had a past predilection for the young ladies. Very young ladies.

Ray McBerry was a teacher in the late 1990's when he got to know a student at his school fairly well. She moved on to a different high school, and to hear her and her parents tell it, she began a romantic relationship with McBerry that led to him leaving teaching and having a judge order him to stay away from the girl. To hear him tell it, he was just counseling the girl after her parents made her end an interracial relationship, and her parents got the wrong idea and now they are all defaming* him all over Georgia.

Meanwhile, a few weeks before the girl and her parents' story hit the pages of "respectable" media, the SWGA Politics blog threw its skirt over its head and called McBerry a child molester. When informed that the law in Georgia does not apply to victims over the age of 16, and that this girl was 16 when the alleged sexual contact began, the blogger in question basically said he didn't care because McBerry was a teacher and teacher-student sex is still some form of crime, even if not meeting the legal elements of child molestation. (Side note: it's unclear whether this is even accurate, since the girl claimed the sexual contact only occurred once McBerry was no longer her teacher, as she had moved to a different school.)

McBerry threw a hissy fit of his own the other day, and started making threats of litigation against online outlets and individuals. Some wondered if one target for a libel suit might be SWGA Politics itself. But despite all his bluster, I would bet a cool Benjamin that McBerry never files any sort of defamation lawsuit against anyone. Why?

1) Defamation suits are expensive, time-consuming, and generally not taken on contingency by the attorneys who file them. This means McBerry would probably have to pay a lawyer by the hour to file the lawsuit, unless he intended to proceed pro se (in which case he might as well not even bother). McBerry hasn't exactly been lighting up the fundraising in his gubernatorial race, and I don't think he's rolling in the dough personally either. Even litigating on the cheap is likely to cost upwards of $25K to take such a case to trial, which brings us to the next problem...

2) The targets of such a suit, for the most part, are judgment-proof or close to it. What assets do either the girl and her family, or the proprietors of SWGA Politics, really have to satisfy any judgment rendered against them? Lawyers are especially wary of taking such cases on contingency when they strongly suspect at most their clients will obtain a moral victory, but no real cash. Why spend $25K to win an apology and a judgment that allows you to garnish someone's wages until the end of time? Now, any media outlets that report the allegedly defamatory statements could also be sued, and would not be judgment proof by any means, but the standards for a libel suit against a newspaper are higher and they have more defenses. They also have more and better lawyers who have defended cases like this before. Does McBerry want to take on the AJC and the big firms that represent it? I doubt it.

3) Truth is a defense in defamation cases. I make no allegations about McBerry's veracity or the propriety of his past behavior. (See, I know how to stay on the good side of the defamation line!) But if the girl and her family have evidence to support their allegations, which it sounds like they might based upon the apology letter they have already produced, then they could defeat any defamation action simply by showing that McBerry really did the things they claimed he did. Even if they don't have evidence, if a jury were to determine that the girl and her parents were telling the truth, McBerry would lose. And on the way to presenting evidence of truth or falsity to a jury, the parties would have to engage in embarassing discovery in the form of depositions of those McBerry or the girl talked to about their relationship, people who may have found them in compromising positions, etc. Not exactly the sort of character evidence an aspiring politician wants to see put down on the public record, even if he did eventually prevail at trial.

4) Potentially, McBerry would have to show "actual malice"--knowledge the story is false, or reckless disregard for its truth or falsity--in order to prevail. There is little law out there on the question of whether blogs enjoy the same first amendment protections as "traditional press" like newspapers in defamation cases, so this one is sort of a guess. The Supreme Court famously ruled in New York Times v. Sullivan that in order for a newspaper to have libeled a public figure, it must have shown actual malice--meaning either the newspaper knew a published statement was untrue or showed a reckless disregard for its truth or falsity. McBerry is arguably a public figure by virtue of qualifying as a candidate for Governor. The question is whether the blogs that published this story showed reckless disregard for the truth of the story or knew it was false. Now, as discussed briefly above, if the story is true then McBerry has no case. And if the bloggers who published the allegedly defamatory statements are protected by Sullivan to the same extent the AJC and other traditional media outlets are protected, then McBerry would need to prove that they showed a willful disregard for the truth of this story, which is a high burden and highly subjective because it relies upon the knowledge and intentions of the publisher of the libel.

I could write an entire series of posts on whether Sullivan applies to bloggers, and whether it should, but that is a post for another day when I have more free time. For now, if we assume it applies, then it makes a tough case to prove nearly impossible.

And that, my 3 readers, is why Ray McBerry's threats to sue will never be more than threats.

* I prefer to use the term "defamation" to cover both libel and slander, because people often erroneously use the two terms interchangeably and having one term that covers both is less confusing. Generally speaking, libel is written while slander is spoken, though the expanding definition of publication has led to libel also governing internet postings and TV/radio broadcasts. In the instant situation, the news stories containing the statements of the girl and parents about McBerry would be governed by libel laws, while the girl and her parents' actual spoken statements about McBerry would be governed by slander laws. However, because this gets confusing in a situation where slander is published in a potentially libelous news story, I'll just use defamation for both. The only real differences are that libel requires "publication" of the defamatory statement, slander requires actual damage to reputation through the spoken defamation, and there are some libel protections for press reports involving public figures as described above.

Sometimes the First Amendment is Inconvenient, but Still Must Be Obeyed

2010-04-20T11:06:00.002-04:00

Over two years ago, I wrote about the legal issue decided today by the Supreme Court: laws banning videographic depictions of animal cruelty are unconstitutional content-based restrictions on speech. The challenger of the federal law, passed in 1999, claimed he was researching dogfighting's history and cultural implications through his videos, rather than appealing to a purely prurient interest.

The 1999 law was intended to ban the production and distribution of so-called "crush videos," in which women in high heeled shoes stomp on and kill small animals such as mice and kittens. The decision today apparently leaves open the possibility that such speech could still constitutionally be outlawed (presumably by arguing it is purely directed at a prurient interest) if the law is rewritten in a much narrower fashion. The flaw in the existing law, per the SCOTUS, is that it was vastly overbroad and could encompass speech that should be protected.

This is one of those situations when I don't really like the end result, but I can't argue with the reasoning. In fact, I predicted this would probably happen in my first post years ago. When Congress tries to write a law that it knows is on thin constitutional ice, bad things tend to happen. This is but one example.

I am weak

2010-04-19T10:06:00.003-04:00

My vegan experiment made it all of 3.5 days. Thursday night was by far the most difficult, as I left work late and had zero desire to cook. I also realized there was pretty much nowhere I could stop to pick up something that would be animal product-free. I nearly bailed on the whole thing, but as luck would have it, my friend in DC who has been eating vegan periodically for religious reasons called and gave me a pep talk about her delicious vegan sandwich, and I found the will to cook a veggie burger when I got home.

So, what did I learn? First, I cannot live without at least a small glass of skim milk every day. I just really crave that calcium and the comfort it gives me as part of my bedtime ritual. I ended up having milk for 2 of the 3.5 days because I just couldn't resist.

Second, there is a limit to how many roasted beets I can eat. I LOVE roasted beets, but after having them at 3 consecutive meals I was peeing pink for three days*, and that really freaked me out. I have one big serving's worth leftover, and I have not been able to stomach the thought of eating them. Maybe tonight.

Third, the easiest part of this was eating fruit for breakfast, which I already do. That is a daily change that I can easily make for good.

Fourth, I really hate tofu. I got vegetarian pad thai at a restaurant on Friday for lunch, and even though it was quite tasty, I just could not bring myself to eat the fried tofu chunks. However, vegetarian spring rolls saved my life.

Fifth, if you buy the light whole wheat hamburger buns, unless they are hiding them in there somewhere that I cannot see, there are no egg or dairy ingredients. These, plus Boca all-american burgers, saved my life.

Sixth, you can have my mayonnaise when you pry it from my cold dead hands. Also, eggless aioli is a myth that cannot be created at home no matter how hard you try. The many glasses of olive oil dressing I attempted to whip into a froth with my immersion blender are proof of this.

Seventh, while cutting meat out of my diet is an easy way to drop extra calories during the week (and why I'm going vegetarian, but not vegan, this week), the deprivation caused by having to exclude dairy and egg is really too much to ask. Luckily I was only doing this as an experiment and not for real due to either a dietary issue or a moral/religious reason--so if I screwed up a bit, it was no big deal. But I have renewed appreciation for just how difficult life must be for people allergic to eggs or dairy, or for those who choose to be vegan for some reason.

Eighth, as usual my attempt to adopt a strict diet did not reap the weight loss benefits I was seeking. I lost 1.5 lbs. despite feeling tremendously deprived for much of the week. I could have lost the same amount by sticking to Weight Watchers. In part, I think this is because the only satisfying options I did have were all relatively high carb or contained oils & fats (or both)--such as sweet potato fries, chips w/ guacamole, mixed nuts, pasta/noodles, or vegetables cooked with olive oil. It really does prove that moderation wins out over deprivation every time.

Ninth, I was never actually hungry while eating vegan, and I had loads of energy. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps the increase in carb intake? I felt great all week, for some reason. It definitely was an unexpected bounce, and a reason to consider trying it again at some point.

Tenth, I remain convinced that the single most important factor in my weight loss last year was my adoption of regular exercise. Unfortunately, I am still having trouble working in time for that. I have to make it a priority to spend 5 hours a week on the treadmill, otherwise all the good eating in the world doesn't make enough of a dent.

So anyhow, that's what I learned. This week I will be eating vegetarian for as long as I can stand it, but if I get the urge for a little animal flesh, I am not going to deprive myself. And thank God, alcohol is 100% vegetarian.

*I'm sorry for mentioning the pink pee, but I really really wanted to talk about it to someone all week and I just couldn't bring myself to tweet it. I guess I figure I have fewer blog readers than twitter followers now, so you all don't mind, right? And at least I did not mention the other way beets affect my body...

Twigs & Berries

2010-04-12T23:33:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow, just to see if I can do it (and also to see how much it impacts my weight in a given week), I'm starting a 5 day vegan cleanse. Basically, I'm not eating any animal products for as long as I can stand it. This will be hard for me, but I think I can manage. Here are some of the meals I plan to make:

Tuesday
Breakfast: pineapple
Snack: orange
Lunch: Humongous salad (since I won't have time to prepare anything tonight)
Afternoon snack: popcorn
Dinner: Roasted beets, sweet potatoes, zucchini, peppers, summer squash and portobella mushrooms sauteed with couscous, sun dried tomatoes and olives

Wednesday
Breakfast: cantaloupe
Snack: vegetables with garlicky egg-free aioli (if I can perfect a recipe)
Lunch: Roasted vegetables and large salad
Afternoon snack: strawberries
Dinner: Sweet potato enchiladas, grilled corn, baked tortilla chips & guacamole

Thursday
Breakfast: pineapple
Snack: Orange
Lunch: Roasted vegetable tacos with refried beans & guacamole
Snack: Cucumber salad
Dinner: Grilled Portobello mushroom sandwich with sweet potato fries

You get the point. I am out to prove I can make 5 days worth of delicious meals without any animal products. I might waver on Friday night and Saturday, but if so I will try to make up for it by several more days next week. The hardest part will actually be giving up dairy--I drink a lot of skim milk and love greek yogurt. But I'm happy to find out that the pita bread, whole wheat couscous and whole wheat pasta I have in my cupboard do not contain eggs or dairy, so I should have options. If I come up with any particularly great options I will share the recipes here. There are so many delicious dishes and snacks that are 100% vegan--olive tapenade on water crackers, roasted garlic hummus and olives on grilled pita, vegetable fried rice (w/o eggs), pasta with lemon, garlic and pine nuts, mushroom burritos, etc.--that I am excited about the nearly infinte possibilities.

Also, I will probably be dying for a hamburger or piece of bacon by Thursday. I am realistic about this.

But, if I need motivation in addition to the health benefits of cleansing my body of bad foods for awhile...mama's gotta be able to wear a swimsuit in public in just 3 short weeks!

My local paper sees great things ahead for my alma mater

2010-03-31T18:39:00.001-04:00

Local college football writer Tony Barnhart visited FSU during spring practice and talks about the very encouraging signs of rebirth and renewal for my beloved alma mater this spring.

Fisher has always shown Bobby Bowden the proper deference and will continue to do so. “All you have to do is look around to see what he built here,” said Fisher. “There is a reason there is a statue of him in front of this stadium. Every one of us who works here owes coach Bowden a lot.”

But Fisher also knows that now it is his job to take the legacy that Bowden created and to build on it. His job is to put Florida State back into the yearly discussion for the national championship.

“It’s not like we’re trying to do something here that hasn’t been done before,” Fisher said. “Coach Bowden and all those great coaches and players set the standard. Our job is to get Florida State back there.”

Perhaps our long Seminole nation nightmare is finally over...

Of Diets and Such

2010-03-24T11:27:00.003-04:00

One provision of the recently passed healthcare reform legislation that I did not know was in there will require every chain restaurant to post nutritional information for the foods they sell. As someone trying to carefully count Weight Watchers points, it has been beyond frustrating to not know exactly how to account for restaurant meals. But thanks to similar legislation in California and NY, many of the popular chain restaurants have been forced to share their nutritional information in menus that have been posted online--and what they reveal is terribly eye-opening. When I was in New York last December, I was trying to decide what to eat at the airport before my flight. Having to face down the calories in a Nathan's hot dog and fries (900 or so) really forced me to make a smarter choice. Talk about your hidden calories!

Speaking of hidden calories, last night while picking up tequila and margarita mixer at a liquor store I came across a bottle called "Skinny Girl." I read the back, and it is a margarita made with silver tequila and agave nectar, and purports to come in at 100 calories for a 4 oz. glass. I bought it to try, and it wasn't bad. But then, googling the calories in a regular margarita for comparison's sake, I discovered that a 4 oz. margarita clocks in at nearly 500 calories! Holy shnikies! This skinny girl drink is a concoction created by Bethenny Frankel, who was on one of those Real Housewives shows and apparently also has a diet book, so I'm sure it will be the next big thing. The folks at the liquor store said apparently they can barely keep it on the shelves. If you're dieting, and like margaritas, I can verify that it doesn't suck. (Particularly if you add a splash of Patron Reposado.)

Tonight, I'll be blowing my diet by visiting a restaurant in Dallas that sounds amazing--Abacus. It is owned by Kent Rathbun, brother of local Atlanta megachef Kevin Rathbun. This blog post about the place has my mouth totally watering...so damn the torpedoes! (P.S.--I took my workout gear with me too so I can work it all off tomorrow.)

I do not think it means what they think it means

2010-03-17T14:19:00.004-04:00

On several blogs today, I have seen the following scary warning about "secret language" that Harry Reid has somehow snuck into the Health Care Reform bill in the "dead of night" that will make it impossible for Congress to amend or repeal the bill later. Here's one example, taken from this comment:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada buried this anti-democratic poison pill designed to prevent any future Congress from repealing the central feature of the Healtcare Bill.

Beginning on page 1,000 of the measure, Section 3403 reads in part: ". it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection."

In other words, if President Barack Obama signs this measure into law, no future Senate or House will be able to change a single word of Section 3403, regardless whether future Americans or their representatives in Congress wish otherwise!!

Note that the subsection at issue here concerns the regulatory power of the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB) to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending."

That is precisely the kind of open-ended grant of regulatory power that effectively establishes the IMAB as the ultimate arbiter of the cost, quality and quantity of health care to be made available to the American people.

And Reid wants the decisions of this group of unelected federal bureaucrats to be untouchable for all time.

No wonder the majority leader tossed aside assurances that senators and the public would have at least 72 hours to study the text of the final Senate version of Obamacare before the critical vote on cloture. And no wonder Reid was so desperate to rush his amendment through the Senate, even scheduling the key tally on it at 1 a.m., while America slept.

True to form, Reid wanted to keep his Section 3403 poison pill secret for as long as possible, just as he negotiated his bribes for the votes of Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bernie Sanders of Vermont behind closed doors.

The final Orwellian touch in this subversion of democratic procedure is found in the ruling of the Reid-controlled Senate Parliamentarian that the anti-repeal provision is not a change in Senate rules, but rather of Senate "procedures."

Why is that significant?

Because for 200 years, changes in the Senate's standing rules have required approval by two-thirds of those voting, or 67 votes rather than the 60 Reid's amendment received.

Reid has flouted two centuries of standing Senate rules to pass a measure in the dead of night that no senator has read, and part of which can never be changed. If this is not tyranny, then what is?

DON'T SIT BY AND LET THIS HAPPEN IN THE DARK!!! FORWARD TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST!

Because these sorts of things tend to be total fabrication, I first went to check Snopes. Unfortunately their page lists the status of this story as "undetermined," because they are still researching it. I don't blame them for taking awhile, since the current HCR bill is 2500 pages long and not real fun to slog through. So, I did it for them. I read the relevant provision, which is over 30 pages of dull as hell. And the short answer is, the language quoted is in there, but it doesn't do what they say it does.

Section 3403 establishes an Independent Medicare Advisory Board that will study and submit proposals to the President and Congress each year, beginning in 2014, as to ways to contain costs in Medicare. Section (c)(2) specifies in subsection (A)(1) that the proposals submitted in each year must "include recommendations so that the proposal as a whole...will result in a net reduction in total Medicare program spending in the implementation year that is at least equal to [a savings target specified in another section.]" Also, "The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums...increase Medicare beneficiary cost-sharing...or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria." In addition, "the proposal shall not include any recommendation that would reduce payment rates for items and services furnished." Subsection (C) also requires that the proposal "be designed in such a manner that implementation of the recommendations contained in the proposal would not be expected to result...in any increase in the total amount of net Medicare program spending relative to the total amount of net...spending that would have occurred absent such implementation."

Later, in section (d)(3), the bill does state "It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, or amendment, pursuant to this subsection or conference report thereon, that fails to satisfy the requirements of subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) of subsection (c)(2)." It also says "It shall not be in order in the Senate or House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution amendment or conference report...that would repeal or otherwise change the recommendations of the Board if that change would fail to satisfy the requirements of subparagraphs (A)(i) and (C) of subsection (c)(2)." The bill then goes on to state that this particular provision cannot be repealed or changed except by a 3/5 vote, and specifies parliamentary rules limiting the length of debate on any such proposed changes.

So what does all this legal mumbo jumbo mean? Well, yes, the language cited above is really in the bill. But it doesn't prevent Congress from ever tinkering with healthcare reform as some would suggest, and it isn't designed to prevent oversight from a board intended to bring draconian healthcare rationing to Medicare. The bill's language expressly prohibits the board fromm implementing rationing, increase of premiums, and other scary things.

Instead, this language is intended to prevent Congress from rewriting the proposals to be drafted by a board whose sole job is to figure out ways to control healthcare costs. Controlling costs is often politically unpopular, so the fear would certianly be that a proposal would come to Congress and the politicians there would amend the proposal in perpetuity to add funding for all sorts of additional programs and violate the spending limits, in order to make their constitutents happy. We need only look at the way the closings of military bases were often botched or used as political footballs to see how easily cost cutting measures become viewed as political kryptonite for politicians to be wheeled and dealed away to nothing.

Also, this provision is limited solely to the section establishing the Independent Medicare Advisory Board. It does not apply to the rest of the bill, and it doesn't limit future tinkering with the rest of the legislation through amendments or even repeal.

Now, I do have a question as to whether this provision is Constitutional, so I am hoping the drafters of the bill included a severability clause making clear that just because one section might be thrown out by the courts, the rest of of the bill is unaffected and remains in place.

Still, if anyone tells you that Harry Reid and the Democrats are trying to pass healthcare reform that can never be amended or repealed no matter how much of a disaster it might be, you deserve to know what the bill really says. So, I read it so that you don't have to. Go forth and correct the misinformation, my readers.

In which I sound like a shill for a diet plan, but have a serious point under it all

2010-03-16T11:44:00.003-04:00

So, I haven't been around much lately. (I'm sure all six of you noticed.) Work continues to be insanely busy, my personal life experienced a short-lived but dramatic uptick in activity, and I really just find political and legal developments too depressing to even talk about.

But there is something I've been meaning to write about for awhile, so here goes...

One year ago, on March 7th, I got up and registered with Weight Watchers. The morning before I had caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized that I just could not live with how I looked a second longer. I had always been resistant to the idea of organized diet programs, believing that I could do it on my own using common sense food choices and portion control. The problem was, of course, that I'd never actually used that common sense to lose any weight.

Being a technology lover and resistant to anything involving meetings or expensive food programs, I decided WW was the right option. For a monthly fee, I could enter my daily food and exercise into the tracker and it would calculate my daily and weekly point limits. I wasn't terribly busy at work at the time, so I quickly realized that the more I worked out, the more flex points I could save up for the weekend. I had bought a treadmill 3 years earlier but never used it, so I decided now was a good time to start. I walked on the treadmill while watching on DVD entire seasons of TV shows like Dexter that I'd been meaning to watch. Every other weekend, I'd try to do a longer walk (perhaps with less incline or at a slower speed) while watching a movie. I got to the point where I could do a 7 or 8 mile walk every once in awhile, though the last mile or so was usually pretty brutal. I had never been a regular exerciser, and I came to really enjoy it.

I also figured out that I could eat anything I wanted, as long as I planned for it. A week of fruit for breakfast and Lean Cuisine meals for lunch would mean I could eat relatively "normal" dinners and still have my 35 flex points saved up for one weekend day of drinking and eating bar food with friends. If I went out to dinner, I just tried to either have points saved up or only eat half of whatever I ordered, and I started looking up point values on the internet if I wasn't sure. I switched to Amstel Light, which is terrible but is the most widely available light beer that I can stand to drink. As a friend remarked to me recently, it wasn't even that noticeable of a change for my social life, since I could still go to the same places I always did, but just had to be careful about what I chose.

I lost 20 pounds and dropped a dress size in 5 months from March 7th-August 15th. That was a huge milestone, but about 15 pounds from my goal (which would put me back where I weighed in college.) That might sound huge to some people, but when you're 6 ft tall, 20 pounds is a mere drop in the bucket. But it still felt good to have people notice. It felt good to have my jeans become too big to wear because they were falling off and baggy in the butt. It felt great to wear a bikini in New Orleans in July for a bachelorette weekend and not feel completely self-conscious about it.

About once a month, I also went off the wagon for a few days entirely. First it was a trip to New Orleans in late March, then it was Easter Sunday with my family in April, then it was my birthday in May, then it was a conference in Vancouver in June, then it was the bachelorette in July. Every time, as long as I limited the damage to a few days and got right back on plan afterwards, I avoided any real backsliding. It slowed down my progress, but also kept me sane.

Then, in September I got busy again at work. I recall that over Labor Day weekend in Biloxi, I ate whatever I wanted and didn't work out at all, but I also was only eating one real meal a day so I didn't gain anything. I had no time to work out, though, so I knew I would stall out. Then I got sick at the end of September, and ate whatever I wanted while I was recovering. I got sick again in October, and again in December, and again last month. I might have worked out maybe 5 times in that time span until last week, because between billing 200 hours a month at work, the holidays, and constantly struggling with illnesses, I just couldn't muster the energy or the time. I also used my busy-ness at work and the holidays as an excuse to go off the wagon on tracking my points. By the new year, I had gained back 10 of the pounds I'd lost.

By last week, my one year anniversary, I'd decided I had no excuses left. I worked out 4 days last week, and I got back to calculating my points. It was hard (particularly because of some personal life drama that decided to emerge late Friday night and make me want to eat all of the fried food and chocolate in the known universe) but I stuck to it. And I'll hopefully keep sticking to it, because in 3 weeks I need to be able to wear a swimsuit in Vegas without wanting to cut myself.

I'm not writing this as some sort of testimonial for Weight Watchers or seeking a pat on the back. I'm writing this because up until a year ago I was one of those people full of excuses and distrust when it came to diet plans or my ability to get anywhere with something like this. I said I "only run when chased," I talked about my bad knees and back, I made fun of the cultishness of WW meetings. I said I knew everything I needed to know to be healthy, but food was just so delicious. I was a skeptic of the highest order, and yet a year later I have been proven wrong. And I know so many people who are in those same shoes--making excuses, doubting they could ever do it, giving all the reasons why the mere thought makes them so uncomfortable. But I want them to listen to me and think about giving it a try.

And I'm hoping that by this time next year, I'll weigh less than I did in college. Which would be awesome. If I meet this goal, I'll post a picture of myself in a bikini as proof. I make this promise to you now.

I'm also thinking of running a half marathon. Yes, really.

Counting My Blessings

2010-03-02T15:51:00.003-05:00

I've done a lot of bitching and moaning here about life in a big law firm and my desire to escape this climate at some point. But I'm not going to do that today. I've been at my job for over four years now, and at times it has been intensely frustrating and something I just wanted to walk away from. But I didn't.

And at times I am quite certain that some people at this firm wanted to walk away from me, such as when my workload suddenly dried up and I was the heftiest salary among our group's associate ranks with not nearly enough work to stay profitable. But they didn't walk away from me even though over 10,000 BigLaw associates all over the country lost their jobs in the last 2 years, often with a lot less justification than my firm would've had for pulling the rug out from under me. They stuck by me, and so I've stuck by them. After a very rough year or so, I have good cases again, I'm busy as hell (hence no blog posts), and I have a chance for the brass ring promotion at the end of the year if I play my cards right. Much to my great amazement, things are good again.

It's been sort of like a tough marriage to a good man who can be mighty annoying sometimes. Neither of us is always happy about our mutual obligations and commitments, but during the worst economic crisis of my generation, I feel tremendously lucky to have found loyalty from a big, soulless corporate law firm...the last place I would have ever thought to find it.

I personally know at least five people who have been laid off during this recession, and it feels like that number grows every day, often when I least expect it. Every single time I hear their pained announcements of the unexpected news, I feel a gut check--like I know I am tremendously lucky not to be in their shoes. And who knows? I still could be before it is all over. But for now, I am turning over a new leaf. No more whining about it here. My law firm ain't perfect, it has its quirks and drawbacks, but we've stuck it out all these years depsite all the difficulties, and that means something.

To draw the relationship analogy out as far as it can stand, maybe after getting screwed over so many times by the dashingly handsome assholes I've made questionable commitments to in the past, I now understand and can warmly appreciate the simple pleasures of life with a decent, honorable guy who may not seem as superficially perfect at first meeting, but has turned out to be much more real and enduring than anything I've ever known.

I would never have thought I would still be here by now, but I am, and I'm learning to be happy. For a girl who has said often that my theme song is Steve Earle's "I Ain't Ever Satisfied," that is a surprise. A happy accident.

Recipe of the week (a new feature, if I can remember to keep up with it)

2010-02-23T10:38:00.002-05:00

My best friend from high school, Samantha, is currently in town and decided she wanted to throw a dinner party at my house last night. While I was at work, she spent the day slaving away cooking insanely delicious things like tuna and avocado tartarte and sweet potato goat cheese ravioli with hazelnut brown butter sauce. Since she'll be writing about those recipes elsewhere (hopefully), I'll be posting the recipes for the only part of the dinner I actually made. Both are ridiculously easy, but always a hit for dinners.

The first is so easy I don't even need to actually write it out like a real recipe. I intended to grill asparagus, but unfortunately did not notice that my grill is out of propane. Oops. So, instead I snipped the ends off 2 bunches of asparagus, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and roasted them in the oven. Then I grated fresh parmesano reggiano over the top (which I would have done right off the grill, if I'd been able to grill them). Speaking of--grilling asparagus is simple as hell: you just have to put down tinfoil on the grill (ideally top shelf of the grill) so they can cook without burning. Turn once, and take off the grill when they just start to brown.

Now the actual recipe, which comes from my aunt Collette:

SHREDDED ROMAINE WITH GARLIC VINAIGRETTE

4 Garlic Cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Dijon-Style Mustard
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
1 large head of Romaine, rinsed, spun dry and shredded
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted lightly

In a small pot of boiling water, boil garlic for 10 minutes and drain. In large salad bowl, mash the garlic with the salt until it forms a paste. Rub some of the paste up the sides of the salad bowl. In bottom of bowl, whisk in mustard and white wine vinegar into remaining garlic. Whisk in oil in a stream, and whisk until fully emulsified. Add the shredded romaine, pine nuts, and parmesan and toss well to coat. Sprinkle with pepper. The dressing actually develops flavor if it sits for awhile on the leaves before serving.

Buzz off!

2010-02-18T16:24:00.002-05:00

If you have any sort of online or social media presence, then you probably heard about last week's rollout of Google Buzz. The program is intended to be an aggregator of various social media profiles into one place--basically, a way to see your friends' Tweets, flickr pictures, Googletalk status updates, and more compiled in one screen in your Gmail inbox. As part of the rollout, Buzz just magically showed up in Gmail users' inboxes one day, and they already were automatically following the people they interacted with the most through Google. But the list of people they auto-followed was also automatically available to others, and that's not so cool when you consider people like journalists, politicians, cheating spouses, and corporate spies who might have reasons why they wouldn't want the entire world to be able to see who they email or chat with most often. Google quickly changed the settings on Buzz and sent out apologies and explanations of how to make sure this information stayed private, but the damage was done.

Yesterday, an FTC complaint was filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. (Full disclosure: my first law firm did legal work for EPIC.) And today, the inevitable class action lawsuit followed, in Florida.

Last week I had dinner with two lawyers I know, and we lamented the fact that we needed to figure out a way to parlay our chosen profession into an easy way to make a bajillion dollars so we can retire. We talked about all sorts of lucrative and fairly stupid lawsuits--qui tam actions, shareholder derivative suits, etc. This was on the same day that Google Buzz came out, so I'm not sure why it never struck any of us that this was the perfect get rich quick scheme. There are over 30 million Gmail users, and the end result of this lawsuit will probably be some sort of stupid settlement worth roughly a dollar to every user...and worth $10 million or possibly even more to the attorneys who filed the lawsuit.

WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THIS?

Seriously, Google's actions with regard to Buzz are troubling for a variety of reasons, not the least of which that they apparently did not think through the rollout at ALL before shoving it down our collective throats. I'm bothered by what I see as an increasing disregard within the tech community for what people actually want out of technology. I don't need or want Buzz, and after facing down potential liability on multiple fronts, I'm sure Google is wondering whether they need or want it either.

What happens when you ignore "objective reality"

2010-02-16T14:38:00.005-05:00

You may recall my little spat with Atlanta Progressive News' Matthew Cardinale last November over a misleading story he wrote about Kasim Reed's representation of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. In the story, Cardinale implied that Reed currently represented Cracker Barrel (my review of the docket showed he withdrew from the case in 2001 when he was still a young associate) and that he was defending Cracker Barrel against race discrimination claims brought by the NAACP (in fact it was a Fair Labor Standards Act case in which the NAACP filed an amicus brief). It took me all of half an hour reviewing the federal court's PACER docket to find that his story was full of misleading implications and omitted context. So, I called him a lazy biased fucking douchebag, which apparently offended his delicate sensibilities.

But Cardinale is SO committed to his irresponsibly slanted form of yellow journalism masquerading as progressive thought that he just fired one of APN's writers for insisting on a pursuit of "objective reality" (which apparently is pretty unwelcome at APN.) Ignoring objective reality in favor of a progressive slant is what allows Cardinale to write a story all about how Cracker Barrel is a big old racist company and Kasim Reed defends them in cases brought by the NAACP, while leaving out that this one case happened 9 years ago, had nothing to do with allegations of race discrimination, and the NAACP only played a tangential role. It also means that the stories coming out of APN must be viewed with an extremely critical eye, because there is no telling what facts have been emphasized or omitted depending on whether they do or do not support Cardinale's progressive vision.

I've long had concerns about APN's ethical integrity, only some of which I have publicly voiced on this blog. (Having friends in politics and journalism, and not wanting to throw stones without being sure *I* had a fully-sourced understanding of "objective reality" has caused me to hold my tongue when perhaps I shouldn't have.) The fact that Cardinale would and did fire a reporter for wanting to find the truth in a story does nothing to ease my concerns. Instead, it tells me exactly how it was possible to justify to himself the story he decided to tell about Kasim Reed last fall. Take any "news" reported by APN from this point forward with a massive heaping dose of salt...for we now know the rules of the game they are playing, and "objective reality" is not their goal.

Name that Justice

2010-01-21T12:45:00.006-05:00

As I wrote today over at Blog for Democracy's /law page, today the Supreme Court issued the Citizens United v. FEC ruling invalidating restrictions on political advertisements funded by corporations, on first amendment grounds. Many people have been shocked to learn for the first time that corporations have 1st amendment rights, but they shouldn't be. The Supreme Court ruled in 1978 in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti that a corporation had a 1st amendment right to engage in political speech through campaign contributions. While some recent rulings had narrowed the precedential value of Bellotti, the Supreme Court had specifically asked the litigants in Citizens United to brief and argue whether those later precedents should be overruled. That is exactly what happened.

In re-reading Bellotti today for the first time since law school, I was struck by the fact that Justice Stevens was in the majority of the opinion, which was authored by the more liberal wing of the Court at the time. Stevens wrote a 90 page dissent to Citizens United, so you'd never know that he was one of the majority votes for the decision that essentially underpinned today's decision. But even more amusing was this dissent in Bellotti, written by a Justice to be named later (see if you can guess after you read the whole thing):

This Court decided at an early date, with neither argument nor discussion, that a business corporation is a "person" entitled to the protection of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394, 396 (1886). Likewise, it soon became accepted that the property of a corporation was protected under the Due Process Clause of that same Amendment. See, e. g., Smyth v. Ames, 169 U.S. 466, 522 (1898). Nevertheless, we concluded soon thereafter that the liberty protected by that Amendment "is the liberty of natural, not artificial persons." Northwestern Nat. Life Ins. Co. v. Riggs, 203 U.S. 243, 255 (1906). Before today, our only considered and explicit departures from that holding have been that a corporation engaged in the business of publishing or broadcasting enjoys the same liberty of the press as is enjoyed by natural persons, Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 244 (1936), and that a nonprofit membership corporation organized for the purpose of "achieving . . . equality of treatment by all government, federal, state and local, for the members of the Negro community" enjoys certain liberties of political expression. NAACP v.
Button, 371 U.S. 415, 429 (1963).
The question presented today, whether business corporations have a constitutionally protected liberty to engage in political activities, has never been squarely addressed by any previous decision of this Court. 1 However, the General Court [435 U.S. 765, 823] of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Congress of the United States, and the legislatures of 30 other States of this Republic have considered the matter, and have concluded that restrictions upon the political activity of business corporations are both politically desirable and constitutionally permissible. The judgment of such a broad consensus of governmental bodies expressed over a period of many decades is entitled to considerable deference from this Court. I think it quite probable that their judgment may properly be reconciled with our controlling precedents, but I am certain that under my views of the limited application of the First Amendment to the States, which I share with the two immediately preceding occupants of my seat on the Court, but not with my present colleagues, the judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts should be affirmed.
Early in our history, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall described the status of a corporation in the eyes of federal law:
"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence. These are such as are supposed best calculated to effect the object for which it was created." Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, 636 (1819).
The appellants herein either were created by the Commonwealth or were admitted into the Commonwealth only for the limited purposes described in their charters and regulated by [435 U.S. 765, 824] state law. 2 Since it cannot be disputed that the mere creation of a corporation does not invest it with all the liberties enjoyed by natural persons, United States v. White, 322 U.S. 694, 698 -701 (1944) (corporations do not enjoy the privilege against self-incrimination), our inquiry must seek to determine which constitutional protections are "incidental to its very existence." Dartmouth College, supra, at 636. There can be little doubt that when a State creates a corporation with the power to acquire and utilize property, it necessarily and implicitly guarantees that the corporation will not be deprived of that property absent due process of law. Likewise, when a State charters a corporation for the purpose of publishing a newspaper, it necessarily assumes that the corporation is entitled to the liberty of the press essential to the conduct of its business. 3 Grosjean so held, and our subsequent cases have so assumed. E. g., Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448 (1976); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, [435 U.S. 765, 825] 376 U.S. 254 (1964). 4 Until recently, it was not thought that any persons, natural or artificial, had any protected right to engage in commercial speech. See Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 761 -770 (1976). Although the Court has never explicitly recognized a corporation's right of commercial speech, such a right might be considered necessarily incidental to the business of a commercial corporation.
It cannot be so readily concluded that the right of political expression is equally necessary to carry out the functions of a corporation organized for commercial purposes. 5 A State grants to a business corporation the blessings of potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance its efficiency as [435 U.S. 765, 826] an economic entity. It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere. Furthermore, it might be argued that liberties of political expression are not at all necessary to effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to exist. So long as the Judicial Branches of the State and Federal Governments remain open to protect the corporation's interest in its property, it has no need, though it may have the desire, to petition the political branches for similar protection. Indeed, the States might reasonably fear that the corporation would use its economic power to obtain further benefits beyond those already bestowed. 6 I would think that any particular form of organization [435 U.S. 765, 827] upon which the State confers special privileges or immunities different from those of natural persons would be subject to like regulation, whether the organization is a labor union, a partnership, a trade association, or a corporation.
One need not adopt such a restrictive view of the political liberties of business corporations to affirm the judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court in this case. That court reasoned that this Court's decisions entitling the property of a corporation to constitutional protection should be construed as recognizing the liberty of a corporation to express itself on political matters concerning that property. Thus, the Court construed the statute in question not to forbid political expression [435 U.S. 765, 828] by a corporation "when a general political issue materially affects a corporation's business, property or assets." 371 Mass. 773, 785, 359 N. E. 2d 1262, 1270 (1977). I can see no basis for concluding that the liberty of a corporation to engage in political activity with regard to matters having no material effect on its business is necessarily incidental to the purposes for which the Commonwealth permitted these corporations to be organized or admitted within its boundaries. Nor can I disagree with the Supreme Judicial Court's factual finding that no such effect has been shown by these appellants. Because the statute as construed provides at least as much protection as the Fourteenth Amendment requires, I believe it is constitutionally valid.
It is true, as the Court points out, ante, at 781-783, that recent decisions of this Court have emphasized the interest of the public in receiving the information offered by the speaker seeking protection. The free flow of information is in no way diminished by the Commonwealth's decision to permit the operation of business corporations with limited rights of political expression. All natural persons, who owe their existence to a higher sovereign than the Commonwealth, remain as free as before to engage in political activity. Cf. Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464, 474 (1977).
I would affirm the judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court.

That argument against finding that the first amendment could be applied with equal force to corporations crafted entirely out of the laws of states that recognized them, was the work of one Justice William Rehnquist. I'm quite certain Justice Rehnquist would have come down with the majority in today's ruling, so it begs the question: what changed?

Quote of the Day, doomed to repeat it edition

2010-01-20T13:29:00.002-05:00

Giving up on the idea that’s been your primary preoccupation for the last year-- and, by the way, a primary focus of the last presidential campaign--is not exactly a way to challenge these conclusions.

You'll have less political capital, making it hard to deliver progress on the economy or anything else. As for reelection, well, ask the congressional Democrats running in 1994 how failing to deliver health care reform worked for them.
--TNR's Jonathan Cohn in an open letter to House Democrats.

Live Like You Were Dying

2010-01-19T23:35:00.004-05:00

So Martha Coakley lost the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held for 40 years to an unknown Neanderthal, and suddenly the world's gone topsy-turvy for Democrats. Prominent House and Senate members who'd voted for Healthcare reform at the end of last year are suddenly sounding the alarm and wondering if we need to seriously re-evaluate everything just because one special election went the way of the candidate that ran the vastly superior campaign and capitalized on voter unease with Washington's not-at-all-clear plans.

Well, maybe we do need to seriously re-evaluate, but probably not for the reasons that they think. So what if Scott Brown's election signals that every Democrat is vulnerable in 2010 or 2012? They probably are, but this is not a signal that Democrats need to go into every-man-for-himself survival mode and try to figure out if killing HCR will get them more votes than helping to pass it. Who does that serve, other than the ones lucky enough to hold onto their jobs for another term? Nobody.

Instead, I ask every single Democrat in Congress right now to do one simple thing: think about what you would want your political legacy to be if your current term were your last. If you knew you were retiring at the end of this term, what unfinished business would you want to make sure made it through before you were done? Discard considerations about your colleagues' electability, too: imagine that EVERYONE in Congress were retiring at the end of this term. What's on your legislative Bucket List?

Ted Kennedy wanted more than anything in the world to see Healthcare reform come to pass in his lifetime. His legacy may forever be damaged if the current legislation is allowed to wither on the vine or be tinkered with to death. But there were a LOT of things that the folks in Congress told voters in 2006 and 2008 they wanted to get done and would do once we took back a majority, and presumably at least some of it really did matter to them and wasn't just a focus-grouped soundbite. So what would be on that list? What would you do if you could enact anything you wanted free of political considerations?

Make single payer health insurance available to every American who wants it?
Ensure every child is insured until age 18 regardless of ability to pay?
Pass a new Equal Rights Amendment and send it back to the states to be ratified?
Renew and strengthen the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and add new benchmarks for sustainability and global warming prevention?
Pass a new Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation?
Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act?
Make all healthcare expenses tax deductible?
Make all tuition at public higher education institutions fully tax deductible and with federally-guaranteed loans for every student admitted?
True immigration reform?
The expansion of environmentally friendly mass transit outside the big cities through a new federal initiative?
A new New Deal that puts the 10% of Americans in the workforce who are unemployed back to work on public works projects for the federal government?
Expand Medicare and Medicaid to every uninsured American?

Think big, Democrats. Remember what you believed in when you first thought about running for office, and the sorts of things you wanted to accomplish. Think about what legislation you would forever want to be known as having your name attached to it. And then figure out your own personal agenda of what you're willing to fight for, even if it kills you in your next election. If the answer is "nothing is worth risking my seat for," then you deserve to lose anyway. We want leaders who care about making the lives of the citizens better and fixing our country's problems, not people who only care about extending their own job security. And as we've shown tonight, we are not afraid to tip the election to the other guy if you forget who sends you to Washington and who you should be working for. So make your list, and live like there's no tomorrow. Because there might not be.

Once again, Jon Stewart nails it

2010-01-19T14:34:00.000-05:00

It would be pretty funny if it weren't so sad.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Mass Backwards

www.thedailyshow.com

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Healthy Recipe of the day: Roasted Vegetable and Feta Couscous

2010-01-19T12:38:00.002-05:00

Last night I made an old favorite of mine that is both healthy and delicious: Chicken Tagine with Lemon and Olives. While I have shared the recipe here previously, I served the chicken stew over a new recipe that I have not previously provided and thought I should share.

Roasted Vegetable and Feta Couscous

1 1/2 c. dried couscous (I use Trader Joes' whole wheat couscous)
1/4 c. crumbled feta cheese
1 1/2 c. water
1/4 c. chopped roasted zucchini
1/4 c. chopped roasted summer squash
1/4 c. chopped roasted portabella mushrooms
4 chopped sundried tomatoes
4 sliced pitted olives, any variety
1/4 c. chopped roasted red, yellow and orange peppers
1 T. olive oil

If you have never roasted vegetables before, here is how I do it: spray a cookie sheet with olive oil spray. Arrange thick slices of squash, zucchini, peppers, and portabella mushrooms on cookie sheet, spray with olive oil spray, and salt & pepper. Roast at high temperature in oven 15 minutes, turning on broiler at the end briefly if desired.

For this recipe, chop the vegetables into small chunks and add to a saute pan with 2 tsps olive oil. In medium sized pot with a lid, bring 1 1/2 c. water and 1 tsp olive oil to a boil, adding salt to the water to taste. Stir in couscous, cover with lid and remove from heat. Let sit 5 minutes, and when done fluff with fork. Add couscous to saute pan with vegetables and olive oil, and on low heat cook 1-2 minutes while mixing the vegetables with the couscous. Sprinkle with feta, remove from heat and continue to toss until feta is mixed evenly and just begins to melt.

This makes about 4 large or 6 small servings, and has approximately 4 Weight Watchers points. The Chicken Tagine has about 4 per serving as well, so this entire meal is about an 8 in terms of points, if you're into that sort of thing.

Secret sexism

2010-01-19T11:28:00.005-05:00

As voters in Massachusetts head to the polls today to decide who will take over Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, pundits everywhere are casting blame in anticipation of the loss by AG Martha Coakley (D) to state Sen. Scott Brown (R). There is much talk of Coakley's lackluster campaigning skills, a dig she made at Republican former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling as being a Yankee fan, a mailer she sent out accusing Brown of wanting to deny healthcare to rape victims, and comparisons of her meager time spent gladhanding the voters as compared to Brown's. There is also much discussion of how this is really a referendum on Obama, and Democratic control, and healthcare, and can't we see that voters are pissed off?!, etc. But one thing that nobody is talking about, and that may be playing just as much of a role as any of those factors, is the secret sexism of the Massachusetts voter.

Only five women have ever been elected to statewide office in Massachusetts, one of whom is current Attorney General Coakley, who was elected in 2006. 3 different women have been elected Lieutenant Governor, but MA elects a slate rather than individual Gov and Lt Gov votes, so there is not a separate campaign and election for Lt Gov like we have here in Georgia. The first woman independently elected to statewide office in MA was Shannon O'Brien, who was elected State Treasurer in 1999. O'Brien made a run for governor in 2002, but lost to Mitt Romney. Jane Swift was elected Lieutenant Governor along with Paul Cellucci in 1998, and became Governor in 2001 when Cellucci left to become an ambassador, but Swift served less than 2 years and was persuaded not to run for Governor because of her tremendous unpopularity. Mitt Romney's Lieutenant Governor was Kerry Healey, who lost to Deval Patrick in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Massachusetts has elected no female Senators, and only 4 Congresswomen. Prior to Niki Tsongas' election in 2008, it had been 25 years since a woman from Massachusetts had served in Congress. (For what it's worth, Tsongas is the widow of very popular Senator and former Presidential candidate Paul Tsongas. Her husband's legacy undoubtedly assisted her in her candidacy.)

For all of the discussion of how "liberal" Massachusetts is, in reality the electorate is politically quite moderate. Catholic voters make up a sizeable voting bloc, and those voters are socially more conservative (particularly on abortion) than the rest of the Democratic electorate. In fact, numerous Massachusetts House Speakers in recent years have been anti-abortion. In addition, union workers make up a sizeable chunk of the electorate, and even though union workers do tend to vote Democratic on the whole, they tend to be more politically moderate as well, particularly on social issues. They also don't tend to vote for female candidates.

Yet, despite the acknowledged difficulties female candidates have faced in past statewide elections in MA, virtually nobody is mentioning it as a potential factor in a Coakley defeat today. Why are the many political pundits, all of whom have been dissecting this race for weeks and loudly declaring why Coakely might lose even before a single vote has been counted, completely silent on the potential role that sexism might be playing in Coakley's lukewarm response in MA? You would think that after the landmark year that was 2008, when female candidates and the unique challenges they face were front and center in both the primary and the general Presidential election, that reporters wouldn't be afraid to mention the fact that one candidate is a girl running in a state that traditional doesn't like electing girls very much.

But if in the past 3 weeks you have watched any political news program, read political blogs, or read the newspapers with their Coakley pre-mortems, you'll find that virtually nobody is mentioning the gender of the candidate as a factor. Maybe they're assuming to the point of hoping that we are suddenly post-gender and that being a girl no longer matters, but that would be a foolish assumption to make. It obviously still matters, in some places more than others. So why the silence on this fairly obvious contributing factor to Coakley's struggles? I find it completely perplexing.

Truer words were never spoken

2010-01-18T11:58:00.002-05:00

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

--Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Something for us all to remember on this day of reflection on the legacy of a great man taken from us too soon. We had made such tremendous progress a year ago, as I was in D.C. preparing to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. But the last year has been a difficult and painful one, and some of the underlying ugliness was revealed to have merely been covered over for awhile, rather than truly healed. Progress is always a struggle, and as Dr. King once said, "the solution to one problem brings us face to face with another problem." But still we have to keep fighting, pushing forward, working to leave the old bad ideas and their proponents behind us in the dust.

I will promise to keep working for change if you will.

Why I Support Martha Coakley

2010-01-17T17:34:00.002-05:00

From 1997-2005, I lived in Boston and slowly learned the ways of the strange political world that is Massachusetts. It is unlike anything we have seen down here in Georgia or anything I had seen growing up in Florida. The state is known for being intensely Democratic, and yet they had 16 years of Republican governors. Granted, many of these "Republican" governors would be considered too liberal to be elected in the South, but they still managed to defeat some Democratic stalwarts to win their seats. Meanwhile, the entire state Congressional delegation was Democratic, and there was little movement into or out of that delegation. Congressional seats were almost never seriously contested, and when they were it was generally in the primary. But still, Massachusetts was not a terribly liberal place. The bulk of the Democrats in the state were old line labor-driven Democrats, many Catholic and staunchly anti-abortion, very resistant to change. Ted Kennedy held his Senate seat for 4 decades not because people loved his views or his votes, but because he was Teddy Kennedy and it would be strange not to vote for him.

But now, Teddy is gone. And running to replace him Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who is in the throes of a potentially disastrous campaign in which she might actually lose the seat to a Republican state senator. I have watched and admired Martha Coakley for years, and always found her to be intelligent, reasonable, not prone to grandstanding or the easy political play. She made her name as the Middlesex County DA, prosecuting several high profile cases and using that to vault into the AG position. She has been considered by many to be "biding her time" in that seat while waiting for a higher office to open up (MA having a very strange seniority system where the powerbrokers decide who has earned the right to run for an open seat when the rare situation arises), and I predicted last July that she was itching to run for Teddy's seat. Of course, I was hoping Teddy would be able to serve out his term and retire, but within a few months of my post he was gone, and the battle for his seat began. Coakley emerged from the scrum as the anointed one, and nobody really paid any attention until the whole healthcare reform movement came down to having 60 safe votes for passage, and then suddenly Massachusetts had itself a horserace.

Coakley has run a bad campaign, and I'm certainly not excusing her failings as a campaigner. But she is squeaky clean as a politician and public servant, and has taken some very progressive and intellectually risky positions in her time as AG. For starters, she filed the lawsuit against the federal government that sought to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, which she asserts violates traditional separation of powers between the federal government and the states by prohibiting MA residents in legal gay marriages from receiving federal marital benefits. That lawsuit could be the strongest gay rights challenge of the various legal maneuvers the gay rights folks are working through the courts right now, but it has gotten little attention in this election. It is perfectly emblematic of the sort of outside-the-box thinking Coakley has exhibited in her position as AG, and why the people of Massachusetts should support her now. There are many such reasons, but that is mine.

I trust and wholeheartedly endorse Martha Coakley for Senate and hope the good people of Massachusetts return to their senses and send her there.

I'm still here

2010-01-12T15:27:00.004-05:00

Despite the obvious lethargy, I am in fact still blogging. It's just been a REALLY busy end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 so far. Nothing I can really say but I'm sorry, faithful 4 readers, and I will try to do better as the work fog lifts a little bit.

The good news is everyone lost their collective mojo around this same time, so you ain't missing much.

Bobby's Last Goodbye

2010-01-02T23:34:00.002-05:00

Local photographer Josh D. Weiss beautifully photographed the Gator Bowl yesterday, which was legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden's swan song. The pregame celebrations of Bowden's legacy included a long walk to the stadium joined by his current players, surrounded by over 300 former players and loyal fans. These photographs are fantastic, and I urge you to check them out at Weiss' website.

And what a decade it was...

2009-12-29T11:26:00.005-05:00

Everyone's doing not just year-end lists, but end of the decade lists...and it has me feeling seriously nostalgic for my 24-year-old self. When the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve 1999, I have no idea where I was (either Boston or Orlando) but I know I was about to graduate from law school and embark into real adult life for the first time ever. I had a sweet job at a big firm lined up, a boyfriend who'd asked me to marry him, and the whole world was ahead of me.

Of course, a funny thing happened on the way to perfect bliss. I got laid off from that law firm job 2 years later, I broke up with the boyfriend/fiance after finally realizing it was never going to work, and I spent months unemployed and terrified I had lost everything. And then I spent years building back to the life I wanted and hoped for, first in a small decrepit apartment in the North End where rats ran by my bedroom window every night, then getting a job at a small firm making half my former salary and barely scraping by, then on my parents' intuition and some tremendous luck buying a condo in Jamaica Plain. I spent the middle of the 2000's treading water in this way, until I realized I just wasn't going to find what I was looking for in Boston. And even though it was the scariest thing I have ever done, and perhaps the scariest thing I will ever do, I decided to quit my treading water job and leave my little condo in J.P., and move to Georgia to be closer to my family and start a new life.

The last four years have been full of highs and lows, but mostly highs. I arrived with no job, living in a small house in a small town where I only knew my aunt and uncle. I got my current job, which has been great in a lot of ways (and burnout-inducingly awful in others.) I bought my house, which has been great in a lot of ways (and terribly expensive and frustrating in others.) I made a large, wonderful and supportive group of friends that far eclipses anything I have experienced in life to this point, and who make me absolutely certain Atlanta is where I was meant to be. I have almost everything I want in life, with the glaring exception of a partner to travel through it with me.

But, if you had asked me back in 1999 where I expected to be in a decade, I would have assumed it was probably right about here. I would be at a big law firm trying to decide whether to bury myself in work and push to make shareholder, or seek greener less stressful pastures in an in-house position, government work or academia. I would be living in a house that I love, with a cat, but not married or with any children. (Somehow I knew those things would always be difficult to come by for me.) I would be closer to my family as they get older and as we need each other more. And I would be mostly happy, but still never satisfied, and always striving for more.

As I sit here and think about where I want to be on the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 2019, I am not sure what to hope for or expect. I will be 44. I would love to believe I will be a happy wife and doting mother by then, but know it becomes less likely with every passing day. I hope I will be firmly ensconced in a legal career that provides at least a little prosperity and prestige AND a liveable schedule. I hope I will have renovated my house into what I envision it to be, or sold it and moved to a new project I can keep working on. I hope I will still have this wonderful circle of friends who I adore and draw so much strength and joy from. I hope I will find time and money to enjoy life a little bit more than I currently manage to squeeze in. And I hope I will finally find peace and contentment so I can finally plant roots and be happy where I'm at, rather than always searching for something more. But, I know myself too well, and this last one is least likely of all. The road goes on forever.

Tops

2009-12-24T00:09:00.003-05:00

Before I forget to do it, a few personal best of's for 2009...

Best 3 albums I listened to all the way through this year:
1. Black Joe Lewis--Tell 'Em What Your Name Is
2. Anya Marina--Slow & Steady Seduction: Phase II
3. Neko Case--Middle Cyclone
(Possibly the ONLY three new albums I listened to all the way through!)

Best 3 movies I saw this year:
1. The Blind Side
2. The Hangover
3. Star Trek
(Probably the only 3 I saw in theaters. Sensing a theme, here?)

Best 3 days of my year:
1. Inauguration of Barack Obama
2. Beth and Kevin's wedding ceremony
3. My walk around the Stanley Park sea wall in Vancouver in June

Best 3 nights of my year:
1. Beth and Kevin's wedding reception
2. Halloween Night
3. Dinner with Samantha, Rommel and friends in Brooklyn earlier this month

Best 3 trips I took this year:
1. New Orleans (March or July--both were great)
2. Vancouver in June
3. Washington, D.C. in Jan.

Best new hobbies I picked up this year:
1. Cupcaking
2. Treadmilling
3. Poker, the rededicated version (in which I still don't win any $.)

I have a feeling I will be making more lists of the decade-end variety soon. Feel free to add your own personal lists in the comments.

Grading Myself

2009-12-17T11:53:00.003-05:00

I have a group of friends who I have been posting with on various forms of social media since 2001. (First we were on messageboards, then we were moved to something that tried to be like myspace plus messageboards, then about 18 months ago we moved to Facebook.) Every year, we make our new year's resolutions and then in the following December we review our list to assess our progress. Sometimes one of the people in this group will remind us that we've been resolving every year since 20o7 to leave that job or lose those 25 pounds, which makes the annual resolution review particularly painful. Not that I speak from experience or anything.

So yesterday, someone suggested our annual resolution review and I immediately felt sick over the annual recriminations after realizing I have still made no progress on my list. But then when I went and found my blog post on the topic, I realized I kind of DID make some progress on several of them, and that was a pretty cool realization. Here's my list for the past year:

1. Resolve my job situation on my own terms.
If by "resolve," I meant "realize I am stuck here until the economy turns, and make the best of it," or perhaps just "don't get fired in the worst economic disaster of my generation," then yes. I resolved. But I am still in the same job I have had since January 2006. So, you do the math.

2. Become more frugal, in order to save money for a new mortgage.
I saved over $10K in the past year, and did get a new mortgage. I also blew all those savings on home renovations that currently carry a pricetag of almost $20K, and climbing. Oh joy. But yay, I finally got that mortgage, and the crushing debt load that comes with it! (Sometimes, adult milestones don't make you feel like you thought they would.)

3. Cook dinner more often at home, and eat healthier.
I barely cooked at home at all this year, but I did manage to follow Weight Watchers for 6 months and lose 20 pounds. (I've undone 6 pounds of that in the last 3 months though, and need desperately to get back on the program in 2 weeks when the holidays are behind us.

4. Cut caffeine from my daily diet.
Oh this is just too funny. I think I reduced my intake for like a month before I gave up. In fairness, I did say it would be the hardest one on the list to stick with. I think it was when I started dieting in earnest that I realized trying to quit caffeine while trying to quit every delicious food in the world is like the single most masochistic thing I could have attempted.

5. Begin exercising regularly, including attempting to start running on a regular basis by the end of the year.
In March I started working out on a regular basis and by May I was working out 5 nights a week on a treadmill. I even managed to do several long distances of 9 or 10 miles at a time, without dying. But then I stopped because I got sick in September, and then work became unbearably busy. I also never graduated to running. But, I am resolving to get back on the horse in the new year on this one. And by horse, I mean treadmill.

6. Remove as much stress from my life as possible.
Ha! What a fool I was.

7. FINALLY finish decorating this house--just need 2 rooms painted, and possibly a new desk in the guest room.
Or, y'know, I could decide instead to completely renovate the outside of the house and make zero progress indoors. The closest I got to progress on this front was having new light fixtures installed in my kitchen, and picking paint colors for my bedroom. BUT, I hope to finally get that painting actually done in 2010. Maybe.

8. Spend more time with family, since my grandparents are here now and both rapidly approaching 90.
This went well for the first half of the year when work was slow, and badly for the second half once I got super busy at work. Sunday dinners are hard to make it to when you work every Sunday. My grandpa is declining fairly steadily, though, so I really do need to make more time to be around him while I still have the chance. He turns 90 in January.

9. Focus on my writing, and really push myself to take the time for quality over filler.
Yeah, not so much. I had a couple decent blog posts this year, perhaps ones I will even assemble into a top 10 list if I find 10 I am at least halfway proud of. But for the most part, this year was slow on the writing front. I resolve to do better next year. (She said, as she wrote a blog post that could arguably be deemed "filler.")

10. Do something big and out of character. Details to come.
So, now that I didn't do it after all, I can reveal that my plan was to run a half marathon on Thanksgiving day. That obviously didn't happen, nor will I be running the March half marathon at Disney World that I was thinking of trying. However, I do want to try and complete a half marathon at some point, so I am going to try and carry this one over to the new year as well. But I did do something fairly out of character this year, and it was scary as hell: I went to Biloxi by myself and played in a poker tournament. I nearly got hives just thinking about doing it, but I'm glad I did. Even if I lost a lot of money and came away having yet again underperformed against the big boys.

Despite what this list might indicate, 2009 was a big year for me in several ways. As I look back, I'm pleased with where I've traveled to and hopeful that 2010 will be a year of even more change. I'll be thinking about my resolutions for 2010 in the next few weeks (several of them will be virtually identical, of course), but for now I think I give my progress in 2009 a B-. But of course, I resolve to do better next year, too.

Motion to Scrap that whole "trial" brouhaha so we can watch some football

2009-12-16T16:31:00.002-05:00

I'd have titled this post "Only in Alabama," but apparently something similar has happened in Louisiana a time or two as well. Lawyers in a case currently set to begin trial on January 4, 2010 in Jefferson County, Alabama have filed a Motion for Continuance, asking the Court to postpone the trial of the case until February or later so that they can attend the national championship game in Pasadena to cheer on their beloved Crimson Tide.

In addition to their own plans to attend the game, the movants cited as additional grounds that many of the witnesses will also be attending the game. They also argued that any Jefferson County jury pool is going to be too distracted with the impending national championship game to actually pay attention to trial anyhow, perhaps resulting in prejudice to the parties. (Hey, I didn't write these shitty arguments, I just paraphrased them for you.)

Apparently their opposing counsel are Auburn fans, however, so they refused to consent to a continuance. Luckily for the movants, the judge is also of the crimson persuasion and is almost certainly going to grant the request.

I have to say, even if Florida State had magically made it back to the national championship game this year, if I were set for trial on the Monday before the game I would never in my wildest dreams move for a continuance just so I could attend the game. And never in my wildest dreams would I expect a judge would actually grant this sort of thing. But maybe that's why I don't litigate in Jefferson County, Alabama...

Tell me about your Christmas list

2009-12-13T17:30:00.002-05:00

I am at a total loss in the gift-giving department this year. I just cannot figure out what any of my friends or family want or need, and since I'm unlikely to have much time to shop I need to come up with some ideas in a hurry. Unless people give me some good suggestions, virtually everyone on my Christmas list is getting a sweater, a bottle of wine, cologne/perfume, or a Snuggie. Seriously, I wish I were kidding but that's what has been purchased so far and what I think I am stuck with.

As a little quid pro quo for you sharing your wish list with me, I'll share mine with you in case you are similarly at a loss for gift ideas:

1. A Blu-ray disc player: preferably the kind that also can download movies etc. via wi-fi, because seriously, how cool is that?

2. Lolita Lempicka perfume: I wear this constantly. I got 2 bottles of it for my birthday a few years ago and I have just about used them up!

3. A dutch oven: the Le Creuset ridiculously expensive cast iron kind, not the one where you fart in my bed and pull the covers over my head, in case anyone was thinking this one sounded way too easy.

4. Gift card for a massage at a spa: always a good idea for the women in your life.

5. An FSU flag to fly outside my house: now that the team is back on the right track to its former perennial glory, I want to proudly display my allegiance in front of my soon-to-be garnet and gold house

I could probably come up with a few more, but those are the first 5 things that spring to mind. Of course, I would also be thrilled with a sweater or a bottle of wine (or tequila), because I am simple like that.

NY, NY a wonderful town

2009-12-07T11:34:00.003-05:00

I'm leaving tonight for three days in New York for a conference, and it couldn't come at a better time. Just yesterday I was lamenting on the phone to someone that I really didn't want to go, because I hate the networkingfest that these conferences inevitably turn into. We spend all day in presentations that we don't pay attention to, and then all night drinking and eating with potential clients. I come home more exhausted than when I left, with fewer billable hours and a few extra pounds.

BUT, since others have chosen today as a good day to blow up the Georgia GOP, and since I have serious reservations about the methodology being utilized, I'm quite happy to have an excuse to be off the grid until this mess blows over. Why do I have reservations, you ask? Because I have always been bothered by the media utilizing the reporting of rumors on blogs or the internet as sufficient basis to run with a story they otherwise couldn't run with because they lack sufficient independent verification and sourcing. No sooner did Erick Erickson put up his post telling all the tales that everyone wanted to hear about various Georgia Republican lawmakers, and he was saying on Twitter that a reporter told him that was giving the media the cover to run with the stories they'd been holding back. I'm willing to bet a shiny nickle those stories won't be about the underlying allegations themselves but will instead be couched in terms of "there are rumors on the internets that..." This sort of backdooring of otherwise unpublishable rumors without independent verification makes me sick. It's not even the story itself that bothers me, it's the way in which it is being brought to light suddenly now, after months of people holding back because nobody could nail down first-hand verification.

But, I have already lost the battle on that one, so I might as well head out of town for a few days to let the brouhaha blow over. Since my friend Samantha has brought me back burritos from Anna's Taqueria that I will get from her when I see her tonight, I can't complain too much. That is already guaranteed to make for a wonderful week. Maybe it will even snow a little, just so I can really get into the Christmas spirit. A girl can hope.

One last take on Bowden's retirement

2009-12-03T13:13:00.002-05:00

This quote really strikes at the heart of the matter:
Maybe the rest of the Southeast did catch up the outsized football culture of the super program Bowden helped usher in and reaped the benefits as he lost the younger man's knack for adaptation after so many years of wild success. It happens to all the great ones eventually.

And if it doesn't, by some chance, the rest of us sit around wondering what might have been if only the genius had stuck around instead of going out on top. In Bowden's case, we've seen what was and wished we could have reversed the planet's orbit until we were back in 2001, encasing his legacy in carbonite, instead of watching him play out the sad spectacle of trying to resurrect the thing, always just one year away, like Joe Paterno had managed after his even more dire over-the-hill stretch at Penn State. As if it could be replicated, as if he could get all those plates spinning again at the same time. That's the thing with successful people, I guess: If they could accept walking away from their achievement when it begins to crumble, it never would have existed in the first place.

Dear Georgia Democrats,

2009-12-03T11:20:00.005-05:00

You have just been handed a massive hammer. Use it.

If you cannot and do not capitalize on the coming Georgia Republican ethicinfidelapocalypse, then there is no hope for the state party. Three of the five Republicans who are or were running for Governor have somehow been swirled up in this mess of ethical breaches and banging of women other than their spouses. (The lone girl in the field will now benefit from the prevailing myth that women don't cheat on their spouses and can therefore be presumed above the fray and untainted.) Other powerful Republican members of the Legislature are in serious danger of being pulled into the drain swirl any minute now.

So, Georgia Democrats, you have 3 tasks:

1. Make sure every single member of the Democratic caucus is clean as a whistle on professional ethics and keeping it in your pants. NO SLIP UPS, and if they do happen, punish swiftly from within. Set the example.

2. Bang the drum of the dirty cadre of Republicans running this state constantly, loudly, and brutally, for the next year. I want to hear it in every debate, I want to see it in TV commercials and in the paper. I want you to force every candidate to take a stand on whether what these guys have done is wrong, and if they waffle then I want you to use that to make them look weak in the face of clear wrongdoing. You have been handed a massive gift--USE IT.

3. Remember, it's not the boinking of a woman other than their wives that is the problem, it's when that woman is a lobbyist pushing legislation at the same time. It's not the cheating on his wife, it's making criminal threats against her after she leaves him. It's not the blowjobs from women he isn't married to, it's the fact that they work for him and could constitute sexual harassment. FOCUS ON THE DIRTY PART, NOT THE SEXY PART. That is what ties it all together and makes it politically relevant, even if the other stuff is what makes people watch the TV and read the news. And one of the huge benefits of being out of power is that you have no real power to abuse--so emphasize that dramatic difference between Rs and Ds to your advantage.

I'm warning you guys now, if you don't come away with more seats in 2010 and at least one new statewide office, then you're more inept than I thought and I will not be giving the party another red cent of my money to waste wandering in the wilderness. Opportunities like this don't come along very often.

Unmatched

2009-12-01T12:03:00.011-05:00

(Photo from TTessori's flickr page.)

I come not to bury Bobby Bowden, but to praise him. Yes, I recognize this may surprise you, since lately I have been less than kind towards Saint Bobby. But long before he angered me by holding on past his time and hurting my alma mater, I adored him. And now that he is leaving, and finally letting go of the team that he made great, it is time to thank him and to recognize that we have witnessed something that may never be matched again.

Bobby Bowden was not a great football player on his own (he enrolled at Alabama as a QB but stayed only one semester). He did not rise to the pinnacle of football coaching because a fanbase fondly remembered his playing days, or because he was from a family of football royalty. He became a coach because he loved football, and had studied it while confined to his bed for nearly a year as a child. He started off small at colleges nobody has ever heard of, then moved up to colleges nobody wanted to coach, then had moderate success at a moderately successful football program. Then he finally was recruited into a school that had only started a football program 2 decades earlier, and had lost all but one game the year before he arrived. As a friend who has a few years on me is fond of saying, things were not always rosy for Florida State football. This is something that those of us who have only known Bobby Bowden as head coach for our entire lives have a tendency to forget.

I grew up in Orlando, smack dab in the middle of a three team rivalry that was unique in the quality of the teams, the notoriety of their coaches, and the closeness of the finishes. I remember Wide Right I and II, when FSU inexplicably lost to Miami two years in a row by missed field goals in the final minute and had their national championship hopes derailed. I remember the hatred we held for Spurrier even then, before his teams were REALLY good, when he was just a nasty visor-throwing smirky jackass. And I remember how each of us along the way picked the one of the three rivals we cleaved to, either from family tradition, local proximity, or instinct. I had neither of the first two going for me, being centrally located between all three and with a family that had attended college in Iowa and Minnesota. So I was drawn to Florida State, and it was because of Bobby Bowden.

My childhood memories of Bowden are of his wisecracking press conferences and halftime interviews. He was always so blunt and honest, so down to earth, so REAL. If his team was losing at the half, he shrugged and told the reporter he was going to whip them into shape and hope they played better in the second half, as he ran to the tunnel. If his team got beat on a last second field goal missed AGAIN against the same team, he had no choice but to make a joke about it and shrug it off, because there was always another game coming and he intended to win it. His honesty and his resiliency were endearing, and made me root for him. And by rooting for him, I came to root for FSU. When it was time to pick a college, I didn't have any intention of going to Florida State. I applied to the likes of Duke, Wake Forest, and Emory, but didn't get enough scholarship money and FSU offered a full ride. My parents made me go for a weekend visit, whining all the way, and to my great surprise I loved it. I never intended to go there, but it felt meant to be the second I arrived. I never for a second considered even visiting UF, even though Gainesville is considerably closer and was arguably the "better school" academically at the time. I was an FSU girl, and if I had to go state school it was the only choice.

I enrolled in the fall of 1993, a glorious time to be an FSU student. Charlie Ward would win the Heisman, we FINALLY held on to beat Miami, we blew out every other home game by double digits, and thanks to a BC field goal against Notre Dame that sent a cheer through the campus of FSU, we played Nebraska for the National Championship and won, fittingly on a last second field goal. Bobby Bowden had finally put all the pieces together and nobody deserved it more. We did not lose a single game I attended during my four years at FSU.

In the 1990's Bobby Bowden ran up a string of records and accomplishments that may never be equalled. Just a few off the top of my head:

14 straight top 5 finishes and 10 win seasons
Most wins in a decade by any FBS/Division I-A team ever (109). This is particularly notable because in the 90's there was no ACC championship game.
an .890 winning percentage for the 1990's
Played in 5 national championship games from 1993 to 2001, won 2
First wire-to-wire AP #1 in 1999
28 straight bowl game appearances, the longest active streak in college football
Longest streak of bowl game victories (1985-1996)

We were definitely all spoiled. A "down year" for FSU was one in which we had two losses and did not play for the national championship. For the entire decade, Bobby Bowden was known as a great recruiter, a 5-star general overseeing his highly skilled assistants, and a man that his players and fans loved. Along with the other fans, I was in heaven.

But things had to turn eventually, and they did. With benefit of hindsight, the decline has been precipitous and it is not surprising that many of us eventually turned on Bobby. After Mark Richt left to coach Georgia, Bowden elevated his son Jeff to offensive coordinator with disastrous results. Bobby refused to fire him despite the team's rapid offensive decline, and eventually the boosters paid Jeff $500,000 to walk away quietly. Bobby was reportedly furious about the boosters' forceout. While the offense has rebuilt thanks to new offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher, the team still has not managed more than 9 wins since 2000, and Bowden steadfastly resisted the many calls for change year after year. If anything, he became more defiant in the face of the criticism. But he should not have been surprised that the torches and pitchforks eventually reached his door. As one writer said today, "the first time the team went 6-6, they came for his son Jeff (offensive coordinator). The next time the team went 6-6, they came for him."

I was ready for Bobby to go three years ago. After graduating from FSU I'd moved to Boston, where college football is unimportant and it was easy to barely pay attention and only watch the big games, which we suddenly started to lose a lot of. Then I moved to Georgia in the fall of 2005, and decided that my newfound proximity to Tallahassee and my newfound prosperity meant that I should get season tickets. As a sign of how far we had fallen, I not only had no trouble obtaining season tickets, but did not even have to give a donation to get them. And so, in the fall of 2006 I walked into Doak Campbell stadium for the first time in a decade to watch us play Clemson. We lost in a squeaker and so I had my first experience of walking out of Doak forlornly while an opposing team's fans cheered. Since that game, I've been an FSU season ticketholder for four seasons now, have attended 10 games, and we've won two of them. TWO. It was bizarro world, and it seemed like it was never going to end.

But for all my rancor, and all of my wholehearted belief that the team needed a change at the helm, when Bowden finally announced his retirement yesterday I was overcome by sadness and appreciation. I was sad because I knew Bobby's heart was breaking over leaving, and how it had all come to pass. I was sad because the man who has been the coach of my team for as long as I have been alive was being shuffled off to retirement, where he had once famously said there was only one big event left, and he wasn't ready for that yet. I was sad because just like Bobby wanted to be the coach for one more great season, I wanted that for him too. But unlike Bobby, I had recognized that he could keep hanging on and hoping for that, but it just wasn't going to happen while he was there. And so I was sad that the football gods had denied him the sendoff season with a great team that he richly deserved. It simply was not meant to be.

I also wanted to make sure that the greatness that Bowden brought to my alma mater is not forgotten in how it all went down at the end. He has become an old man, lost a step as some said, but that is exactly why we should not remember him as he is now, but at his best. William O. Douglas was a lion of the Supreme Court who wrote some of the most important landmark decisions of an era, but at the end he refused to retire even after he suffered a stroke and could barely speak or read. He waited too long to go, but we do not remember him for how he fell at the end, but for how he rose before it. And we should do the same for Bobby Bowden. The man lived the life of a legend, built a program from nothing into a powerhouse that broke records and left everyone in the dust for an entire decade. That is the Bobby I will choose to remember fondly going forward. That is the Bobby who I will see in the statue outside Doak Campbell Stadium when I go to a game next year, when I watch my team run onto Bobby Bowden Field.

There is another statue outside Doak that features a Seminole warrior on horseback, holding a spear above his head. It says on the base "Unconquered." The Seminole tribe of Florida is known for having never been conquered by the U.S. government or any other tribe, despite many attempts that included driving them deep into the swamps of Florida. They may have been diminished, may have lost control of the lands they once held, but they were never conquered. Bobby Bowden may give up control of the Florida State football team, but the heights he brought our team to will never be matched again. And all of us who live this team must honor that tradition, and honor the man who gave his life to Florida State.

Goodbye, and thank you, Saint Bobby. We will never see your kind again.

Get off your ass and VOTE, Atlanta

2009-11-30T16:55:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow the City of Atlanta will hold runoff elections for the Mayor's race, City Council President, City Council Post 2 At Large, and City Council District 6. I won't be making new endorsements this time around because everyone I said I was voting for in the November 3rd general election either won outright or made the runoff, so my reasoning then still holds now.

Instead, I want to emphasize the importance of every single voter in the City of Atlanta turning out tomorrow to cast a ballot. First, let's dispel a few myths about runoff elections:

1. "It will take too long." Not so, since sadly turnout is projected to be in the ridiculously low category. In the general election, only 24% of Atlanta voters cast a ballot, and turnout for a runoff is usually below half the turnout for the general. It took me less than 5 minutes to vote on November 3rd, so really you should be able to carve out the 15 minutes it will take to find your precinct, cast a ballot, and head on to work in the morning or home after work at night. Don't be lazy!

2. "I can't vote in a runoff if I didn't vote in the general." I am not sure where this myth comes from, but it's completely not true. Nobody checks your name against voters who cast ballots on November 3rd. If you are a registered voter in the Atlanta city limits, you can vote in the runoff even if you've never cast a ballot in your life. Do NOT let anyone convince you that you have somehow waived your right to be heard.

3. "The candidate who got the most votes on election day always wins anyhow, so why bother." Oh how some candidates wish this were true! All you need to do is look at the 2008 Senate primary to see how false that is. Vernon Jones had a huge lead on the other candidates in the primary, but lost handily to Jim Martin in the runoff. In fact, runoff elections usually feature SUCH low turnout that it really is unpredictable as to who will win the race. One thing is for certain--your vote can absolutely make a difference. My City Council District, #6, was won in a runoff by just FIVE VOTES in 2005.

4. "My candidate lost the first time around, so why should I care." Most losing candidates in these crowded races have gone on to endorse someone who made it into the runoff, so why not see who they endorsed and decide if maybe they have a good reason to urge their supporters in that direction?

5. "It won't matter; this city will still be screwed up no matter who is elected." This may be true, but at least if you vote you won't feel like you squandered the opportunity to help stop it because you had a bunch of excuses and couldn't get your butt off the sofa. Besides, there are some important potential landmarks to be gained by tomorrow's races, depending on where you live--we could see the first gay man and Asian-American elected to city council, we could see the first black lesbian elected to Georgia state house. We could see Atlanta's mayorship held by a white woman for the first time in eons. It could be the first election where a major southern city's gay vote decided numerous elections. Tomorrow could be historic in so many ways--don't you want to be a part of it?

Now the details: polls are open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m tomorrow. Find your polling place here. Review a sample ballot here.

As I said above, just 24% of registered voters in City of Atlanta voted in the November 3rd general election. If we are lucky, just half of that will vote in this runoff. That means about one in eight of us will be deciding who will run this city at a crucial juncture in our governance. That, frankly, is just sad. I really hope everyone who reads this site who lives in the City of Atlanta will decide to be part of the electorate, rather than part of the problem.

OK, stepping off my soapbox now. Good luck to the candidates and the many people I know who are busting their asses to get good people elected. (You can sleep starting Wednesday!)

Serious Question of the Day

2009-11-24T14:42:00.004-05:00

Remind me again why we continue to pretend Joe Lieberman is a Democrat?

Reminder: Virtual Candidate Forum Today

2009-11-24T13:28:00.002-05:00

As I posted about on Friday, the Committee for a Better Atlanta's Virtual Candidate Forum is today from 4:30 to 7:00pm. Already, some great questions have been posted on CfaBA's website, and I am sure even better questions will be asked during the live forum itself.

Here is the schedule of candidate question sessions, if you want to ask questions or just see what each has to say:

4:30 pm Kasim Reed (Mayor)
4:45 pm Amir Faroki (City Council Post 2 At-Large)
5:00 pm Clair Muller(City Council President)
5:15 pm Ceasar Mitchell (City Council President)
5:30 pm Mary Norwood (Mayor)
5:45 pm Liz Coyle (City Council District 6)
6:00 pm Alex Wan (City Council District 6)
6:15 pm Aaron Watson (City Council Post 2 At-Large)

Depending on how much I get to participate and whether it ends up as interesting as I'm hoping for, I may have a summary up later tonight for those of you who can't make it.

Serious Question of the Day

2009-11-23T14:16:00.004-05:00

Would Sarah Palin be such a political or cultural hot commodity today if she wasn't hot (i.e., more physically attractive than average)?

I consider her to be the Anna Kournikova of politics, and I find that to be a sad and potentially dangerous thing. But I want to know if my 12 readers agree, and if so what you think it says about our culture that a hefty chunk of our population has elevated a nincompoop to politically iconic status simply because she's hot.

Questions for the Candidates?

2009-11-20T11:09:00.005-05:00

In what I can only assume was a complete and total mistake (calling me a "prominent blogger" makes me question your judgment!), the Committee for a Better Atlanta has invited me to participate in a Virtual Mayoral Forum next Tuesday from 4:30 to 7pm. The event will be hosted live on CBA’s online community at http://www.betteratlanta.org/. I have been asked to pass this information on to you, my 12 readers, so that you can submit questions for Norwood and Reed during the forum. If you aren't comfortable submitting your own questions and you want me to ask the candidates something, put it in the comments, or email me at sarawara@gmail.com if you are not comfortable posting your question for all to see.

In addition, you should tune in on Tuesday, since this really is a fairly cool concept and probably will be a little more interesting than the standard televised debates.

The Committee for a Better Atlanta will also be allowing us to pose questions to the City Council candidates in the various races that have gone to runoff--Clair Muller vs. Ceasar Mitchell for the Council President slot, Amir Farokhi vs. Aaron Watson for At Large Post 2, and Alex Wan vs. Liz Coyle for District 6. So please pass along questions for them, if you have them, as well.

If nothing else, it is nice that even local politics are embracing the power and opportunities of social media. I still am surprised I was included in this because I feel like a blogging peon, but want to give everyone the opportunity to participate. So have at it!

On Advocacy

2009-11-17T14:55:00.006-05:00

It is very easy for people to make fun of, look down upon, and pass judgment upon lawyers. As I have often said to friends, lawyers have the reputational issue they do because generally people only need one of us at the worst points in life: you have been injured, you have been accused of a crime, you have been sued, you are getting a divorce, you need to declare bankruptcy, or someone has died. As a result, it often feels to people who suddenly need to interact with lawyers that we are profiting from your misfortune, because we get paid for the work we do on some of the worst days of your life.

But on the worst days of your life, when your property, your liberty, or your rights are at risk, I assure you that you will want the most vigorous advocate you can find. You will want the person who will leave no stone unturned in trying to find the evidence of your innocence or the police misconduct that will keep you out of jail. You will want the person who persuades the judge not to give your ex sole custody of your children. You will want the person who makes sure your company is not run out of business by a massive punitive damages award simply because you made a great product that was involved in an isolated and unforeseeable injury. You will want the strongest advocate you can find and afford, and you will want that person to agree to represent you even if you are not 100% pure. Because frankly, nobody is.

When we sign up to go to law school, we know we will someday take an oath to vigorously advocate on behalf of our clients. We will agree to keep their secrets in virtually all circumstances (except when telling them can prevent death or serious injury to someone else). We will agree to take on representation we may later be ethically prohibited from withdrawing from even if we never get paid. We will agree to take positions that we may not personally agree with, because they are the best position for our client. And we will agree to put our own self-interest behind the interests of our clients virtually all the time. This is part and parcel of becoming a lawyer.

We agree to all of these things because we believe that vigorous advocacy is a necessary part of our criminal and civil justice system, which for all of its faults is the best one in the world. We recognize that we hold tremendous responsibility within that system as "officers of the court" to bring injustice to light, to prevent the entry of falsehood into the record whenever we can, and to ensure that every litigant's rights are protected whenever possible. Thought it is fashionable to assume we walk into court and lie every day, throw out the bad documents if we don't feel like turning them over to the other side, and train our witnesses how to wriggle out of responsibility for their actions, the truth down in the trenches is not even remotely close to this. In 9 years of practice, I can count on one hand, not using all of the fingers even, the number of lawyers I have worked with or battled against who I truly felt pushed the bounds of legal ethics. These people are usually treated as pariahs by the rest of us who are, by and large, passionate about upholding what we have sworn to do.

Some people can't fathom the commitments our profession requires, and for those people it is easy to announce moral absolutes about how they would rather get fired than represent this type of criminal defendant or that corporate behemoth with sketchy accusations against them. Perhaps they are incapable of compartmentalizing, and cannot understand that preventing police and prosecutorial excess is important even when doing so in defense of someone who committed armed robbery or rape. Perhaps they are incapable of anything but strict adherence to a particular ideology, and prefer not to examine it too closely to see if it should be revised from time to time. Whatever the reason, for people who recognize their own unsuitability for this profession to criticize the way in which others have performed it is ludicrous.

Kasim Reed defended large corporations accused of discrimination and other violations of employees' statutory rights. Not every case in which discrimination is alleged is meritorious, and not every corporate defendant accused of discrimination is branded an evildoer for all time.

Some plaintiffs' employment cases are bogus, and those should be weeded out and dismissed so that the meritorious cases can be resolved faster and more amicably. If a county has 20 rape allegations in one month and half of them are proven to be false accusations, then it makes it harder for the other 10 to obtain justice. The same is true with frivolous plaintiffs' litigation--it makes it harder for the meritorious cases to obtain justice more quickly.

In addition, corporations are not immutable objects incapable of change. A person may be a rapist for all time if convicted of (and actually guilty of rape.) But corporations are different--boards fire CEOs and hire new ones, company policies change, and the corporation that paid women less than men in 1979 shouldn't have that hanging over their heads thirty years later if it's no longer the case. To take Reed to task for representing Cracker Barrel in 1999 based upon cases that occurred years earlier completely ignores the potential for change within an organization. Perhaps this is by design--all large corporations are inherently evil, to some. But once we get to that point, we're demanding the sort of ideological purity that will disqualify virtually every candidate.

But even if I were retained to represent Cracker Barrel in a race discrimination case today--why shouldn't I? I am not going to lie, cheat or steal to win the case, I am only going to use the facts and evidence, legal defenses and procedural maneuvers legitimately available to me. If the company has really engaged in systemic discrimination, then that should usually result in either a verdict at trial or a settlement in the event the company's lawyers decide a trial win is unlikely. This is exactly how the free market is supposed to work--if someone is indefensibly injured or damaged by a corporation, the corporation pays. And if I am able to obtain dismissal of the case or keep the verdict/settlement low, then the case probably wasn't as meritorious is plaintiffs first believed.

What bothers me most about Cardinale's position is that he presumes all of the defendants Reed represented had violated the rights of employees, and that Reed was therefore working against workers' rights by advocating on behalf of those companies. Again, should we presume that simply because corporations are always evil and hurting people however they can? Do we really believe that? I have worked on hundreds of cases at this point in my career, and I have seen very few true slam dunks of liability. I have seen many, many cases that fall in the grey areas, and many cases that are obviously frivolous. To completely ignore the possibility that some of these companies were not liable for discrimination or statutory violations, and simply assume Reed was defending bad companies, is simplistic and unsupported by the evidence.

I've glossed over many of the points I wanted to make but struggled with, because they are difficult to wrestle with in one post. For example, the notion that a junior or midlevel associate in a large law firm gets to pick and choose what clients he wants to do work for is, frankly, ludicrous. Even now with 9 years of experience and some decent seniority, if I said "no, I can't represent Cracker Barrel because I disagree with things they've done in the past," I would expect it to potentially get me fired, and certainly lead to negative comments in performance reviews, etc. Earlier this year an associate at the law firm of Quinn Emmanuel was fired just a few days after sending an email in which he questioned whether the firm should be defending the Washington Redskins against constitutional claims brought by Native Americans. Law firms do not provide the freedom to pick and choose your clients as an associate, and I would never presume to demand that anyone to turn down an assignment when it could get them fired (and potentially blackballed within their industry to boot.)

Every single candidate for political office who is an attorney has probably represented an individual or entity who was guilty or liable of something bad. If we are going to start holding candidates to the standard that they can't have represented any client who ever committed a bad act, then we might as well just disqualify all lawyers from political office. Considering that our President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and more than half of Congress are lawyers...have fun picking from what's leftover after the disqualifications are complete.

I am not the slightest bit ashamed of my profession, or of having represented corporations accused of injuring people. They deserved a strong defense, and I provided it. I will not apologize for that simply because some people are incapable of understanding that I am fulfilling a necessary role in our justice system. Kasim Reed should not have to apologize for it either.

Let a Lawyer Show You How It's Done

2009-11-17T10:44:00.006-05:00

(This post will be a refutation of the factual assertions made by Atlanta Progressive News in two articles about Kasim Reed's representation of corporate interests in employment litigation. The background stories are here and here. I have pulled up the very same PACER dockets from which these stories were allegedly researched, except I bothered to actually read them all the way through and understand what they mean. In a separate post, I will share my strong feelings as to why it is complete garbage to make a political issue out of who a lawyer has represented.)

Dear Atlanta Progressive "News," if you weren't such lazy, biased f*cking douchebags, this is what you would have reported about Kasim Reed's representation of various corporations in employment litigation:

Kasim Reed's background

Reed was admitted to the bar in 1995. He initially joined the Atlanta law firm of Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker, where he was an associate in their employment litigation department. In that role, he represented a variety of corporations in cases brought against them alleging various types of employment discrimination, unfair employment practices, and the usual sorts of claims that employment litigators are called upon to defend. After a few years at Paul Hastings, Reed left for Holland & Knight, where he continued to practice employment litigation. It is not clear if he is still a current H&K employee, or if he is either on leave of absence or has left the firm to concentrate on his mayoral race. My guess is that he will have left H&K for good if he is elected.

First, APN tried to make an issue out of Reed's biography no longer appearing on the H&K website:

According to a 2006 article from the Black Commentator, the job description for Mr. Reed published on Holland & Knight's website read: "M. Kasim Reed represents employers in employment law matters, including sex, age and disability discrimination, civil rights litigation, and contract-related disputes… He has extensive experience representing employers before various state and federal courts, as well as before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other federal and state administrative agencies."

Incidentally, since that time all references for Reed have been apparently removed from Holland & Knight's website, which is unusual, especially when a firm should be proud to have a former employee running for Mayor of Atlanta.

It is not rare at all for law firms to remove the biographies of attorneys from their websites. It happens whenever an attorney leaves a firm. It happens if an attorney goes on leave. In fact, contrary to APN's assumption that H&K would want the good press of a former attorney made good on their site, I have never heard of a big firm keeping a biography of an attorney who has left the firm on their website. This argument by APN is just stupid.

Reed's Representation of Cracker Barrel

APN then attempts to stir up a storm of controversy over Reed's representation of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain in employment litigation. As many people know, Cracker Barrel was sued for discrimination in a variety of contexts and venues over the last few decades, and did not have the greatest run of PR during that time period. APN dedicated almost an entire article to community activists and well known (and paid) Norwood supporters acting shocked that Reed would dare represent Cracker Barrel when everyone knows they're racist bad guys. And APN is correct that Reed is listed as an attorney for Cracker Barrel in the Serena McDermott case, filed in 1999. But here's the rest of the story, as deduced from the very same PACER federal court docket information that APN claims to have reviewed:

Reed was counsel of record from 1999-2001 for Cracker Barrel, in Fair Labor Standards Act case brought by a class of employees. Though the case was brought by the NAACP, and though Cracker Barrel has been sued before for discrimination, the Fair Labor Standards Act is not a race discrimination statute. The lawsuit in question sought payment of unpaid and overtime wages, based upon allegations that the employees were made to work "off the clock," putting in more hours than they actually were compensated for and accruing time that was not compensated as overtime.

In other words, Reed did not defend Cracker Barrel in any sort of race discrimination case, or ANY type of discrimination case for that matter. Shame on APN for suggesting otherwise by quoting various individuals in their article to talk about past allegations against Cracker Barrel, without making the distinction between those cases and the one case Reed worked on.

In addition, Reed worked on the McDermott case from 1999-2001. The case continued until 2005, but PACER shows he was terminated from the case on 10/16/01. He was also one of twelve different attorneys who appeared on behalf of Cracker Barrel in the litigation, according to PACER. He was a 5th-7th year associate at the time of his involvement in this case, so it is not fair to suggest that he was lead counsel or necessarily even had a significant role in crafting the defense of Cracker Barrel to this major class action litigation. Attorneys can be added to the docket of a case whenever they appear for purposes of signing a few pleadings, appearing at a deposition or hearing, or to take over temporary responsibility for another attorney. Chances are good in a case of this magnitude that many firm associates were called upon to work on the case at various times, and Reed's role may have been very small. Neither of the two articles contain any followup research by APN to review the actual pleadings in the case to attempt to deduce if Reed was signing pleadings, if he was appearing at hearings or conferences, or if he had any significant involvement in the litigation. (I have not done that yet myself, but may do so if people continue to try and insist that he was lead counsel on this case and that it somehow should matter to his mayoral chances.)

APN also apparently did not contact the Reed campaign and give them a chance to respond to the allegations that Reed defended Cracker Barrel in cases brought by aggrieved workers. (There is no reference in either of the two articles about the Cracker Barrel case that APN sought comment from Reed or his campaign.) Presumably, Reed's campaign would have provided this sort of clarification of the actual scope of his role, however vast or limited, and it would have provided the article with proper context. But proper context does not appear to be what APN was after.

Kasim Reed's Other Employment Litigation Matters

Apart from the Cracker Barrel case, APN also reported about four other employment litigation cases in which Reed was counsel of record. I've checked those dockets as well. In the case in which he represented ATC Healthcare, Reed was counsel for the defendant from 2/13/97 until the case was terimnated in 9/16/98. In the case against The Hayman Company, Reed was counsel for the defendant from 12/11/96 until the case was terminated on 5/27/97. In the case against Parsons Brinckerhoff, Reed was counsel for the defendant from 2/14/96 until the case was terminated on 3/31/98. In each of these cases, the defendants were represented by additional counsel beyond Reed, and he was only a junior or midlevel associate at the time. He was almost certainly assigned to these cases and working under the direction of a partner who actually made the strategic decisions for the direction of the case.

To act like Reed was calling the shots and standing up to defend these companies in these cases when he was probably just a BigLaw minion is either disingenous, or demonstrates complete lack of understanding for life as a BigLaw employee. Since I am a BigLaw employee, in my next post I will explain exactly why it is ridiculous for APN to expect Reed or any other law firm attorney to refuse representation of companies that have been accused of race discrimination or other bad things, and why it is even more ridiculous to hold those past representations while a BigLaw associate against Reed the mayoral candidate today.

Mood Music

2009-11-17T08:14:00.002-05:00

One of these days
you'll go out of your way sometime

Absolutely

2009-11-11T16:30:00.001-05:00

Stefan at Blog for Democracy gets it exactly right in his open letter to Kasim Reed, who I support in the Atlanta mayor's race. While I want Reed to win, Stefan is 100% correct that HOW you win elections is very nearly as important as WHETHER you win elections, at least for those of us who have to live in this city after a mayor is chosen. I want Reed to win (or rather, unfortunately, I don't want Mary Norwood to be my next mayor), but I don't want him to do it in a way that further polarizes city residents or reinforces the rest of the state's views of what's wrong with Atlanta.

I'm glad someone finally articulated the importance of how the next few weeks go down, because it definitely does matter and the stakes are huge.

As if I needed more evidence...

2009-11-11T10:30:00.008-05:00

...that FSU's defense sucks balls:

(via Tomahawk Nation)

Every single Division I-A opponent FSU has played this year had their best offensive game of the season against FSU. (Well, until USF bested its 6.3 yards per play against FSU with 6.4 yards per play against WVU last weekend. But those are pretty close, and WVU also lost that game.)

But remember, I'm crazy or stupid for blaming much of our disastrous season on the completely porous defense. Right. At least I'm not alone.

Also, if you read the linked post above, it is frightening and sad how completely out of touch Bowden is with the particulars of the game he just coached. The man has checked out.

(Though, I do not agree with the suggestion in the linked post that Bobby is going to start accidentally talking racist anytime soon. That's just silly, the man has coached hundreds of players of all races for decades.)

Adventures in Dating #4: One Night Only

2009-11-10T13:24:00.004-05:00

Today as I returned to my car from withdrawing a sizeable amount of cash at the bank (long story), I noticed that I had a missed call on my phone from a guy I had been texting with earlier about meeting up tonight. I called him back without checking to see if he had left me a voicemail, and he told me he had accidentally called my phone without realizing it. Thankfully this conversation was not terribly awkward, but it did cause me to remember a similar one that inspired this Adventures in Dating story.

A few years ago when I lived in Boston, fresh off of the breakup of my 6 year relationship and some post-breakup dating disasters that included this infamous tale, I was persuaded by some friends to try internet dating for the first time. This was in approximately 2002 or 2003, when the prospect of meeting someone over the internet was still a vaguely terrifying thing to most people (as opposed to now, when it is normal for many but still creepy and/or terrifying for others), so I was very wary of trying it. Still, I created an account on Matchmaker and went on a couple dates with guys I had absolutely zero chemistry with and prayed that they would never call me again. Some will be featured on future Adventures in Dating posts, so I don't want to shoot my wad entirely here...but let's just say I was reluctant about this whole shebang.

Then I got an email from Joe (at least I think that was his name...it's all a little hazy) and we actually had several good email conversations so I let it progress to phone calls, and after several good phone calls I decided we should go out. Joe had recently left the military, and was a single dad to boot, so he'd moved back to Massachusetts from wherever the hell he had been stationed and was living in the suburbs with his parents while he got situated. He suggested that I take the T out to a stop near where he lived and we would go to dinner, so I did. We met and had a perfectly normal dinner, and then intended to see a movie but the only thing either of us wanted to see was sold out at the one theater in this sleepy suburb. So, Joe suggested he could drive me home and we could grab a drink near my place. If you are halfway intelligent, you see where this is heading.

In a move that shocked even me, and I'm the one that did it, I invited Joe back to my place and he became my first (and to date only) one night stand. It was awful, though I will spare the particular details of why it was so bad. But I fully expected never to hear from Joe again after that night, and I wasn't real bothered by that prospect because I saw nothing I felt the need to go back to.

But ego is a funny thing, and after a few days without getting a phone call or email, I was kind of bummed that he hadn't wanted to see me again and hadn't called. Then one night, I ran downstairs quickly to the CVS next door to my apartment building for something, and when I got back there was a missed call on my cell phone from Joe. Huh, maybe he did want to see me again after all! At least now I'd get the satisfaction of not feeling rejected, even if I had to decline any future dates on account of the worst sex in the history of the universe. (OK, it wasn't THAT bad, but by God it wasn't good or even decent.)

I didn't have a voicemail message icon yet, but since I had just missed the call a couple minutes earlier, I decided to call back and see what he wanted. Joe answered, and the conversation went like this:

Me: "Hi, it's Sara, I just noticed I have a missed call on my phone from you."
He: "Um, I didn't call you."
Me: "Okaaaay...but my phone says that you, in fact, did call me and I just called back the last number that called me, and it was you."
He: "Nope, didn't call you."
Me: "Hm. Nevermind then."(This is awkward.)
He: "OK, bye."
Me: *MORTIFIED*

I never heard from him again. I suppose there are a thousand reasons why he could have not realized his phone had called me. He could have accidentally hit a button, he could have been trying to delete my number and accidentally hit send, one of his parents or a girlfriend (or, God forbid, a wife he neglected to mention) could have dialed the last number in his received calls list...who knows. It was all very shady and strange and awful. But I came away from the experience feeling completely smacked down for my naivete in calling him back without thinking for a second that perhaps there had been some mistake.

And that feeling, I think, is why I have been unable to bring myself to have any one night stands since that time. I think it was just such a dehumanizing and demoralizing experience because of that stupid non-call afterwards that I decided then and there never to expose myself to such humiliation ever again.

Mood Music: a Twofer

2009-11-09T10:07:00.002-05:00

The song I previously posted was M. Ward, featuring Zooey Deschanel. They previously collaborated together as She & Him, and this song just gets under my skin and stays there for days.

Mood Music: Just like A-B-C edition

2009-11-09T10:05:00.001-05:00

But now that I've been through that hell
I've got a story to tell...

Random Football Rant

2009-11-05T15:25:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, longtime Florida State Defensive Coordinator Mickey Andrews finally put himself out of his own misery and announced he would retire after this season. This decision couldn't come soon enough, since FSU's defense is ranked 109th out of 120 teams...in other words, there's only 11 teams WORSE than we are on defense right now.

This creates an opening for next year, which poses a problem. Bobby Bowden only has one more year that he could possibly be head coach before FSU will have to pay Jimbo Fisher $5 mil. if they decide to keep Bobby. There is virtually no way that will happen, which means Bobby either retires this year, or next year. So, since Jimbo Fisher will apparently inherit the team after one more season, there is a question of who gets to pick the new Defensive Coordinator.

Normally the head coach gets to hire his coordinators, but if Bobby hired a new one, anyone interested in the job would have to realize they'd only have one year to prove themselves before Jimbo could replace them with whoever he wants. Who would take a job in that climate? Or, since Jimbo will be the coach after next season, FSU could let him choose the new Defensie Coordinator with the expectation that his choice would stay when Jimbo is elevated to Head Coach.

Today, Bobby Bowden announced he plans to select the next Defensive Coordinator. He might let Jimbo have some input, but he's still making the selection.

This makes me so angry I want to throw things. For starters, Bobby should be out at season's end. Our team is terrible, he's completely oblivious and saying things like how we're a few big plays away from being undefeated, and the boosters have lost faith in him. But he apparently intends to coach to the bitter end of his contract and continue to blindly believe that next year we'll magically have a good team even if all evidence points to Bobby and his handpicked staff having run the program into the ground.

But even if he wanted to coach one more year (something I wish the administration would strongly discourage), why the hell does he get to pick the Defensive Coordinator who will only coach under him for one dadgum year? When will he start acknowledging that starting in 2011 this is Jimbo Fisher's team, and his era is over?

There have been rumblings on the internets that Bobby intends to appoint Chuck Amato to the Defensive Coordinator position for 1 year. Amato was a former defensive assistant at FSU before he left to become head coach of NC State, where he was horrible. Now he's back with some bullshit title like "Executive Head Coach (who also pretends to coach linebackers)." Given how bad our defense is, I don't want anyone currently affiliated with the defensive coaching staff to even be in the running. In fact, I'd like to see virtually all of them replaced when Andrews leaves, hopefully with the input of the new DC.

But if Bobby appoints Amato to DC, nothing will change. The team will still suck. And all of us who care about FSU football will be sitting here twiddling our thumbs for another wasted year waiting for him to finally retire or die so that we can start rebuilding.

We have a fantastic quarterback in Christian Ponder, something that has been completely lost in this waste of a season. Ponder has the potential to be Heisman-worthy next year, if he could get the defensive support he needs to win games. By all but announcing his intention to stay next year, Bobby is probably dooming Ponder to the trash heap of wasted potential behind an inadequate defense. In all likelihood even the best Defensive Coordinator on the market wouldn't be able to turn around this shitty defense enough to help Ponder make a run at major glory next year, but at least we'd have a fighting chance and wouldn't be stuck in defenseless shootouts against the likes of USF, Georgia Tech, and N.C. State.

I wish someone in the Athletic Department or administration of FSU would FINALLY draw a line with Bowden. It's time, because this is unacceptable. If he stays next year and hand selects a Defensive Coordinator, I will not renew my season tickets or give another dime to the school until he's gone.

Mood Music: Old school Lucinda edition

2009-11-04T09:53:00.001-05:00

Shouldn't I have this
shouldn't I have this
Shouldn't I have all of this and...

Election Day

2009-11-03T07:17:00.004-05:00

I've agonized over whether to do an endorsements post for the city elections that are happening today, because I'm concerned I will not be able to provide good strong reasons for my votes. So instead, I will just tell you who I am voting for and let you sort out whether it makes any sense or not.

Atlanta Mayor: Kasim Reed
Oh how I have struggled over this vote. I do not particularly like any of the candidates, but Reed made me cringe the least. Then Shirley Franklin gave him her quasi-endorsement yesterday, which I had feared for months. In the end, I'm going to hold my nose and vote for Reed anyhow.

City Council President: Clair Muller
When I don't really know anything about the candidates, I vote for the girl.

City Council At Large Post 1: Michael Julian Bond
Because some of my politically astute friends said so.

City Council At Large Post 2: Amir Farokhi
Because we need to build a bench of young charismatic progressives in this state.

City Council At Large Post 3: Lamar Willis
This is a hold my nose vote, since Willis has had some ethical issues but from all accounts his opponent is not a better option.

City Council District 6: Alex Wan
I've met him, and he was impressive while the other candidates are all either really unpalatable or completely unprepared for real political office, judging by their increasingly bizarre mailers and astroturf wars in the Creative Loafing blog comments. This race is guaranteed to head to runoff, so I just hope this is one of the two lucky campaigns that get to fight it out for another month so we can watch the antics continue. (In the interest of full disclosure, I also know his campaign manager.)

For all of the Board of Education races,I'll be voting for the incumbent since I have no children in school and therefore no reason to believe that Fulton county schools are being run poorly. I have met Charlie Stadtlander, who is running for one of those seats, but I recently heard he's a Republican so that pretty much nixed any desire I had to deviate from my incumbency votes.

So there you have it. I'll be heading to Inman Middle School this morning, where I expect turnout will be ridiculously light. That's sad, because this is an important election for the City of Atlanta and will impact all of us more than we may realize.

Still alive

2009-10-29T16:54:00.003-04:00

Despite appearances, I'm still kicking. Last week I went to Baltimore for 4 days of cupcaking and the most beautiful wedding I've ever been to. When I returned I was swamped and exhausted...and promptly got sick.

I was just sick with a cold a month ago (had to push back a first date I was eagerly anticipating, so I remember the inconvenient timing of that illness well), so this new illness concerned me. I was particularly concerned because we have a confirmed case of swine flu in my office and my secretary was out on Tuesday with a fever and vomiting. Also, I made the ill-advised joke to several people on Monday that at least if I got swine flu I could stay home from work for a week. Eek!

When I got home Tuesday night I had a fever of 101.5 and a weird rattle in my chest. I was moderately concerned, so I stayed home yesterday and worked from here under the guise of "better safe than sorry," but the earliest I could get in to see the doctor was this morning. Since my fever didn't get much worse but my cough did, I determined through intrepid hypochondriac googling that I likely had bronchitis, outside chance of pneumonia. This is exactly what the doctor told me, but thankfully the meds she prescribed (Z-pak, Albuterol inhaler) were good to treat either condition.

So, hopefully I'm on the mend now. That, or I'll get full blown pneumonia and HAVE to take time off of work.

Cupcaking Returns

2009-10-19T14:08:00.004-04:00

This weekend I made test batches of two new cupcake flavors that we are making later this week for my friend Beth's wedding. They were both delicious! I figured I should share.

These are the Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting, courtesy of Smitten Kitchen:

Pumpkin Cupcakes With Maple–Cream Cheese Frosting

Yield: 17 to 18 cupcakes

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for greasing pans

1 cup firmly packed dark-brown sugar

1/3 cup granulated sugar

2 cups cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 large eggs

1/2 cup buttermilk mixed with 1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/4 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin

Frosting

Two (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

Make the cupcakes:1. Preheat the oven to 350° (175°C). Line a cupcake pan with 18 liners.
2. In a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugars on medium speed until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, salt, and pepper into a medium bowl. 3. Add the eggs 1 at a time to the mixer, scraping down the sides after each addition. Alternate adding the flour and milk mixtures, beginning and ending with the flour. Beat in the pumpkin until smooth. Scoop the batter among the cupcake liners — you’re looking to get them 3/4 full. Rap the filled pans once on the counter to release any air bubbles. Bake the cakes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes. Cool the cupcakes on racks completely.

Make the frosting:In a stand mixer beat all the ingredients on medium until fluffy. To assemble the cake, frost the top of one cake, place the other cake on top. Frost the sides and top, swirling decoratively. Refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes to set up frosting.

These are Almond Cupcakes with Amaretto Frosting, courtesy of Modern Domestic:

ALMOND CUPCAKES WITH AMARETTO FROSTING

Ingredients:
4 large eggs

1 1/3 cup sour cream

2 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 1/3 cups sifted cake flour

2/3 cup, ground, unblanched sliced almonds, toasted and finely ground

2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3 sticks softened butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two 12-cup muffin tins with paper lines, and lightly grease the top of the tins.In a medium bowl lightly combine the eggs, ¼ of the sour cream and the extracts. In a large mixing bowl combine the dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 30 seconds to blend. Add the butter and remaining sour cream. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed (high if using a hand mixer) and beat for 1¤½ minutes to aerate and develop the cake’s structure. Scrape down the sides. Gradually add the egg mixture in 3 batches, beating 20 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients and strengthen the structure. Scrape down the sides. Spoon the batter into the paper liners – each cup should be 2/3 full. Bake 25 minutes or until a wire cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cupcakes cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, before gently transferring them to a rack to cool. Allow to cool completely before frosting with amaretto frosting.

Amaretto Frosting

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

6 to 8 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbs amaretto

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the milk, vanilla, and amaretto. On the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat until smooth and creamy, about 3-5 minutes. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition (about 2 minutes), until the icing is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency. You may not need to add all of the sugar. If desired, add a few drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly. (Use and store the icing at room temperature because icing will set if chilled.) Icing can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Makes 24-28 cupcakes.

AJC gets it right

2009-10-19T13:52:00.004-04:00

It's easy for some in the local blogging community to treat our local newspaper as irrelvant, what with their repeated downsizing and the growing conventional wisdom that their eventual death and closure (and that of most major newspapers) is all but certain. But once in awhile, the AJC rises up and reminds us that news of their imminent demise is greatly exaggerated, and they can still put forth excellent local reporting of importance.

Yesterday's paper featured a fascinating story from AJC reporter Alison Young about the site of a former lead smelter in Atlanta's Morningside neighborhood, which may still be the source of some particularly scary pollution. Young's story is well-researched and incredibly thought provoking, particularly considering that numerous very expensive neighborhoods border the former smelter site. It appears that the entities who owned the site after the smelter was shut down have never bothered to undertake any sort of cleanup or remediation efforts at the site, so nearby families may still be exposed to unsafe levels of lead poisoning.

As a resident of Morningside who nearly bought a house just around the corner from that site, I was shocked to find that an obvious pollution source was sitting there unquestioned in what is otherwise a fairly active and vocal neighborhood. I am willing to bet most of the people who live in the area are similarly unaware and will be quite horrified to read this story. Already the article has resulted in an EPA investigation to determine if the federal Superfund program should mount a cleanup operation. (Interestingly, the state's environmental cleanup fund is broke and can't afford to provide any assistance here.)

Given that the City of Atlanta is currently in the throes of some fairly important elections, it will be interesting to see if this becomes an issue. Young should be commended for bringing attention to a story that we might never otherwise have heard about, and potentially saving families from future health effects due to exposure to lead in the area. Nice work, AJC.

The Mystery of the Not My Condoms

2009-10-18T12:22:00.003-04:00

Friday night I was searching for something high and low throughout my house, and my search took me to my nightstand drawer. While I have no desire to tell you all about the contents of that drawer, just trust that should my parents ever get curious and open it, they will immediately shut it and try to forget what they saw. While rummaging through the various things that would make Baby Jesus cry, I came across a stray condom...a plain old garden variety lubricated Trojan.

This was a curious discovery, since I am allergic to latex and therefore have not purchased or had latex condoms in my vicinity in at least a decade. (I will spare you the details on this too, except to say that once you've experienced a latex allergy in a delicate and highly sensitive place, you become more than a little wary. The first thing I tell every doctor is to make sure their gloves are not latex.) I knew right away it wasn't my condom, since I have a few of the polyurethane ones in the drawer and even those may have long since passed their expiration dates. So what the hell was this thing doing in my drawer?

The choices, none of which are particularly fun for me to contemplate, appear to be that a friend left it there as a joke during one of the parties I've had in the past few years, one of my friends with a key to my house left it there while cat-sitting (hopefully as a joke and not because it was leftover from some sort of sexual act that occurred in my bed because I WILL KILL WHOEVER DID THAT), my cleaning lady left it there (see aforementioned parenthetical), or some other option that I can't wrap my brain around right now. And before anyone suggests that my still-getting-frisky-over-sixty parents left it there, just don't. My mom got her tubes tied almost 20 years ago.

Regardless of how it ended up there, I am now completely bewildered and ooged out. And considering buying a new mattress and sheets and possibly burning my bed frame.

Are you a clueless voter?

2009-10-14T17:21:00.002-04:00

Don't be ashamed...I am too. When I voted in the February 2008 primary, I was shocked at how many positions I had to vote for where I knew completely zilch about any of the candidates. In those races, I decided my votes based on such superficial and ineffective factors as:

Who is the incumbent, and do I think it's likely that a change at that position is warranted? (For example, I always think the Fulton County Clerk of Courts could use a shakeup because that place is a total mess!)
Whose yard signs have I seen on my street at neighbors' houses?
Whose name interests me the most?
Which candidate is female?
Who have I *not* read a negative news story about in the last year?

I walked away from that experience determined to know more the next time I had to vote in a local election. Thankfully by the time the general election rolled around my choices had narrowed (or been decided in the primary since few Republicans are on the ballot in my district), so my choices were easier.

However, in 3 weeks we will have an election here in Atlanta that will be important, and if you're as wilfully clueless about local politics as I am, then you might be wondering if it's worth the time it would take to educate you about the issues. Well, what better way to make the decision about who should get your vote than to meet them up close and in person? You can do that tomorrow night, October 15th, at Manuel's Tavern. The Mid-Fulton Democrats have invited the mayoral candidates and all of the city council candidates to participate.

Now, rather than that pathetic list I gave you, you can at least decide your votes on things like their fashion sense, what beers they drink, and who has the hottest campaign staff. Knowledge is power, people!

Things I can't wrap my head around

2009-10-11T12:23:00.002-04:00

Before the start of this college football season, Bobby Bowden said he'd like to win one more championship and he thought we had the team to do it this year.

We are TERRIBLE. We are playing true freshmen on defense, and even then we're painfully thin.

Seriously, how out of touch with his own program does a head coach have to be in order to actually believe a team this lousy and inexperienced has a shot to contend?

I think there might be some dementia at work. I'm not even kidding.

Mood Music: a song and a story

2009-10-09T09:44:00.004-04:00

It's been a weird week, folks. Thanks to Monday morning's email from the ex-boyfriend, I've had more occasion to think about my life in Tallahassee and Boston many years ago than I have in ages. This morning the following song came on my iPod and it immediately transported me to 2002.

But let me take you back even further, to the fall of 1995 when we first met. I was a young, inexperienced and woefully naive 20 year old FSU student. My roommate convinced me to run for student Senate, and while campaigning for our seats I met Gabe. I actually met him for the first time at the house just on the edge of campus that we used as our campaign HQ--known as the "House of Kaos." I was at a party there, and Gabe walked in. (He was also a student senate candidate.) It was one of those moments like out of a movie, when you see someone and for no apparent reason you realize they are going to be significant to you in ways you cannot possibly anticipate. A few days later, we spent an afternoon campaigning sitting at a table outside the English building talking to students who stopped by and wanted to know more about our party, the Progressive Coalition. I was intrigued by him, and the die was cast.

During the course of that senate campaign, I also met Susan, who was running for one of the other Arts & Sciences senate seats. We became fairly good friends almost immediately, and in the months that followed after we won our senate seats and took over the FSU student senate, we spent a lot of time together. Susan was there for the budding romance between Gabe and I, including the disastrous first date (wherein SOMEONE neglected to mention to me that he would be rooting for Miami until we arrived together at the FSU-Miami game), the dream I had that convinced me to give him another chance despite said disaster, and the growing realization that there was more than just a spark at work.

Susan probably also knew it would be an eventual catastrohic failure. In some very obvious and important ways, he and I were so different.

For reasons I've long since forgotten, Susan and I fell out of touch. Gabe and I moved to Boston for several years before we finally broke up at the beginning of 2002. At the end of that year, I bought Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2, and I can still remember the slow, sad smile that crept across my face as I listened to this song for the first time. It was just so right.

In a happy quirk of coincidence, Susan and I have now both ended up living in Atlanta, and last fall we reconnected via Facebook. There is something so wonderful about reconnecting with someone who knew you at such an incredibly important formative point in your life, and I am privileged to have her as a friend again. I have never told her this story of how this song has made me think of her for the past 7 years, but hopefully she will listen to it and smile as well.

Love this

2009-10-08T14:50:00.002-04:00

(Via Share some candy)

Mood Music

2009-10-08T12:18:00.002-04:00

Tuesday night I went to see U2 at the Georgia Dome. The show was fantastic. Though I was not surprised by it, they did not play my favorite song of theirs:

The doors you open
I just can't close...

Well Hello There

2009-10-05T10:37:00.005-04:00

So, I've been a slackass blogger lately. Work has been insanely busy thanks to yet another coworker leaving (for the job I desperately wanted--Assistant U.S. Attorney!), and there just hasn't been much out there to inspire me lately even when I do have time to peruse the internets. I go through periods where I lose the will to write, but I have to remember to force myself to carve out a little bit of time because when I do have occasion to go back through and review my archives, I remember how much pride and joy I have invested in some of my old writing. And I did some of my best writing when I was working every bit as hard as I am now, so that's no excuse. I promise to try to do better.

I had occasion to peruse my archives a little this morning because something I knew would eventually happen finally happened. My ex-boyfriend found my blog. I saw it on my sitemeter last week, the Google search for "sarawaraclara" from Mexico followed by hours upon hours of reading the archives in order. Nobody else could take that dedicated an interest in my inane ramblings, so I knew it was him. I knew I had been less than kind in certain past posts, but unlike before I didn't even think a second about finding or deleting any of them. I own it all--and even though I am sure he will disagree, I think I was actually pretty fair. I always bend over backwards to admit my own mistakes and foibles (almost to a fault), and I certainly played a healthy role in our breakup. The difference is that I closed the door on that chapter and my feelings about it years ago, while he has been unable to stop examining it over and over again like he is searching for clues in an unsolved crime. Perhaps he never will.

This morning, I had another long email about him, and us, and why he read every post on this blog, and how it made him feel. I am not enough of a bitch to either quote it here or to say too much about what I think about it; that is for me to express to him in my response. But I find it so interesting that someone who used to know me so well has essentially reviewed the last three years of my life in reverse, like it was our own little version of the film "Memento." I'm not the same person now that I was in 2006 when I started this project, and certainly not the same person I was when we lived together. How strange it must have been to watch my de-evolution, in a sense? How disorienting to see my wailing a few years ago about this heartbreak or that betrayal, when he already knew from posts he'd already read how it would all shake out in the years to come. If I had the time and the inclination, I'd go re-read this entire blog in reverse just so I can see what he saw. (Perhaps it would explain why he recommended I get therapy!)

There are a lot of things changing for me right now, mostly in good ways. I haven't had a chance to write about them much lately, but this experience is making me want to put in the effort. I was greatly inspired and saddened by this story of the 18 years' worth of daily Polaroids someone found, and how upsetting it was to learn they ceased on the day the subject had died. I don't want this to fade off into nothing, like a movie with no ending. So, my story will continue, even though I now know who is reading.

Atlanta voter registration deadline fast approaching

2009-09-28T13:50:00.002-04:00

It's hard to imagine that anyone managed to make it through the 2008 election without getting registered to vote, what with the dramatic rise in both registration and turnout. However, some people may have been stuck under a rock, and others may have moved and not had a chance to register at their new residence yet.

If you are a city of Atlanta resident and want to be able to vote in the incredibly important upcoming mayoral election to choose Shirley Franklin's replacement, you better make sure you are registered soon. October 5th is the deadline to register in time to be able to vote in the November 6th election. (And only those who registered in time will be eligible to vote in the even-more-important-and-inevitable runoff elections in December.) Creative Loafing has the details.

Why should you bother to vote in a municipal election for perhaps the first time in your life? Well, if you live within the Atlanta city limits then you almost certainly have been at minimum troubled by, if not directly touched by, the rash of high profile crimes in the city. You may have been bothered by the willful blindness exhibited by our current mayor and her police chief. You may be flabbergasted that in this day and age our once-progressive city is raiding gay bars to prevent the victimless crime of dancing in tighty whities. You may want to make sure that fiscal irresponsibility remains just a bad memory for our city rather than a hallmark. There are a host of good reasons to actually pay attention and vote in this election. So make sure you have the power to have a say, and get registered this week!

That game sucked

2009-09-28T10:12:00.003-04:00

Really, there isn't much more that I can say than that. I was shamefully relieved that we weren't shut out at home, something that has not happened in so long that nobody believes it is even still possible. I was angry early and ready to give up before the half, because I could tell we just didn't have it in us to win that game and there seemed no point to staying to watch the carnage.

I would very much like Jimbo Fisher and Bobby Bowden to both go find something else to do with their time.

This is about as nice as I can be on the subject.

Ready for some football!

2009-09-25T15:07:00.003-04:00

Headed to Tallahassee this weekend for a little of this:

It should be interesting, because the fans have been asked to attempt one of these:

I am generally an opponent of "White-out" or "Black-out" games that seem designed to sell extra fan gear and don't do much to make the fans cheer louder or the team play harder, but I will still be heading down with white T-shirts in tow.

Really, since this is probably my only game this season, I just want a win.

Friday Video Clip

2009-09-25T13:47:00.001-04:00

Learn it. Know it. Love it.

Adventures in Dating #3: The Lawyer

2009-09-23T10:13:00.003-04:00

In law school, as you might expect, there were dozens of hookups amongst the single law students and by third year we had numerous engagements on our hands. I never understood the desire to date, let alone marry, another lawyer. While some of my best friends are lawyers, I think that the sort of strange and stressful lives that we lead lend themselves to needing the escape of a person with a fresh perspective. But, I must admit, most of my law school friends who married other lawyers are still with them. Perhaps it's because only another lawyer can put up with their shit.

I have dated a lawyer only once, and it was not a pleasant experience. This was about 3 years ago, and again I met the guy through Match.com during brief spurt of dating activity shortly after getting dumped. I was hesitant to date a lawyer, but he was a few years older than me and had been working for years as a County Attorney, so I hoped he would be less douchey than the male attorneys I generally encounter in large law firms. We agreed to meet at Sala (which is now El Taco), a nice Mexican fusion restaurant near my house.

Warning flag #1: We ate at the bar at Sala. I forget what he ordered, but I ordered the carne asada. It came with two pieces of steak that were each approximately the size of a deck of cards. It was very good, but after I ate the first piece and about 1/3 of the second, I was getting full so I asked him if he wanted to try it. His response was something along the lines of "wow, I can't believe you ate that much." Guys, it is NEVER appropriate on a first date to comment upon the amount that a woman eats on a date. Never.

Warning flag #2: After the meal, we decided to go have beers at Taco Mac down the street. I'm not sure why we picked that particular bar, but since my car was right outside the restaurant and his was down the street, I drove. As we got into my Passat, he said "wow, you must be really frugal. I figured all big firm lawyers are so loaded that you only drive Beemers and Benzes." Strike two for Dwayne! You insulted my car AND indicated you have a complex about how much money I make. Way to go! (He also mentioned during dinner that even though he makes less than I do as a county attorney, he's in court way more often and he works a normal 40 hour work week so "hour for hour we probably make about the same." Even though I did not bring up how much we make, ever, because I find that completely inappropriate. Ugh.)

Warning flag #3: At Taco Mac, there was a college football game on and we began talking about our respective teams. I graduated from FSU and am an avid fan and season ticket holder. Dwayne had gone to another ACC school, possibly Georgia Tech...I forget. Anyhow, in addition to being a rival school, he had a major pet peeve about FSU and proceeded to trash my team even as I told him I was preparing to go to a game in the near future. Then he told me he would be betting against FSU in that game because he was convinced we were a garbage team. Now, that year we probably were a garbage team. But if you are trying to get off on the right foot on a first date, don't trash my alma mater. So, for me, that was pretty much the final straw.

I became concerned midway through the beers at Taco Mac that whereas I was hating this guy a little more with every passing second, he was looking at me and licking his lips like a starving man hallucinating the image of me turning into a bucket of fried chicken. I knew we were going to have an expectations problem on our hands later, because no way in hell was I hooking up with Dwayne by that point. I grew ever more nervous as he leered a bit more obviously with every beer.

We drove back to where his car was parked, and the whole way I was worried of what was coming next. Ideally he would have had a lousy time too so that we could just forego the agony of him deciding whether to call me again and me waiting for the call (or, much worse, me trying to figure out a way to politely reject him.) Instead, as I pulled up next to his respectable Honda Accord, in a very brazenly confident move that might have impressed me on a different guy, Dwayne leaned in for the kiss. With a quick turn of my head he got my righ cheek, and there was actually an audible gasp of entitlement and surprise from him that I had denied him the lips. He was pissed, and he got out of the car, barely saying anything, not even bothering with the usual lies of "this was fun, we should do it again" or "I'll call you." I almost felt bad for a second.

Thankfully, Dwayne never called or emailed me again and I haven't run into him at any lawyer functions since then. That is my great fear, however.

Oldie but a goodie

2009-09-22T15:55:00.002-04:00

Today for what seems like about the 5th time since I moved to Atlanta, I was diagnosed with pinkeye. This seems to happen almost every time I get sick, for some reason. I have antibiotic drops and all that jazz, but when I got back to the office from the interminable wait at the Minute Clinic, I realized that I had probably blogged about this strange phenomenon of mine at least once before. And, lo and behold, I have! And then I remembered how my sick friends decided to convince me that I had an STD in my eye...ah, good times.

An interesting Atlanta-centered legal dispute

2009-09-22T15:45:00.003-04:00

The organizers of this year's Dragon*Con are working through lawyers to persuade the Guinness Book of World Records to grant them the record for the largest choreographed performance of "Thriller," with over 900 people. Watch it here:

The previous record was 242 participants, but unfortunately before the Dragon*Con dancers' record could be established, almost 14,000 Mexicans beat them out and were able to obtain the official Guinness record. I'm not really sure how much of a legal issue this is (is the Guinness system considered an offer of a prize for completion of a task in reliance upon the receipt of the prize?) but I am sure one of the other lawyers who reads here and who has burned away fewer brain cells since law school than I have can wax philosophical on that point.

At any rate, the Dragon*Con video is hilarious, if for no other reason than at one point you see the Flying Spaghetti Monster doing the Thriller dance. Mexico's got nothing on that!

Adventures in Dating #2: Big P*ssy

2009-09-18T16:18:00.004-04:00

I'm going to skip straight to the top of my list of bad dating stories for installment #2, because let's be honest, I'm probably not going to complete many more entries in this series before I grow tired of it and decide it's not really that interesting. So, easily far and away the worst dating experience ever was with a guy we'll call Tony because of his surprising resemblance to a character on the Sopranos. (I actually have forgotten his real name at this point.)

I was living in Boston's North End at the time, and was walking to the grocery store one day when two guys in a car pulled over and a guy hopped out and asked me directions to somewhere. I gave them to him, and then he said I was cute and asked for my number. I had just broken up with my long term boyfriend earlier that year and still hadn't really re-engaged into the dating scene, so I decided to give him my number. I figured he wouldn't call, or if he did it would be good for me to go out with someone and reacquaint myself with dating life after 6 years off the market.

A few days later he called and asked if I would accompany him to a friend's Christmas party. I reluctantly agreed, not entirely comfortable with going to a party where I would not know a soul as our first date. (To this day, I refuse to go to parties with guys before I have had a chance to get to know them, for this very reason.)

During this first call, he told me a bit about himself, like that he was a real estate developer and was a few years older than me, in his mid-30's. (Later he would describe to me a business that he owned that made predictions of who would win football games and other sporting events. I'm pretty sure his actual job description was "bookie.")

So, the plan was for us to meet at the apartment of one of his friends who lived near where the party was taking place. I arrived there without any real trouble, and while his friends were getting ready in the other room (or maybe they were having sex...it was all very shady), Tony decided to teach me how to play craps. He also asked me if I got high, and I said I did not. He claimed he didn't either, but every 20-30 minutes or so he would walk into the kitchen and I would hear the telltale bubbling sound of a bong hit. I could also SEE the reflection of both Tony and the bong in the refrigerator. But, probably because he was so stoned, Tony was convinced I was none the wiser.

We ended up waiting a LONG time for his friends to get ready for this party, like well over two hours. Shortly before the friends finally came out of the bedroom and were ready to go, Tony suddenly attacked me in the kitchen, all hell bent on making out. It was very awkward. But even more awkward was a few minutes later when his friends came out of the bedroom and I was introduced to them, and Tony decided to announce to them that we "just had our first kiss." Um, WHAT? I was just speechless with how incredibly weird that whole thing was.

We left with the friends and headed to the Christmas party, where much to my relief I did actually know someone after all because a friend and her sister were at the party as well. That relief was short-lived, because Tony's guy friend who was clearly high as a kite on illegal substances of his own had dated my friend's sister, and decided to pick a massive fight with her. He eventually had to be escorted out of the party, and Tony had to take him home. Our first date ended there, but Tony had been very smart about things and had made arrangements with me very early in the evening, before things got weird, for us to go on a second date to the Celtics game the following Wednesday. (He apologized that the first date amongst all of his friends at this party, so he said in order to make it up to me he wanted to go to the Celtics game, just the two of us. I stupidly agreed.)

A few days after the Christmas party debacle, Tony called me to make arrangements to go to the game. He had to go to his father's company Christmas party first that night, so we might miss the first quarter, but he would come to my apartment as soon as he could and pick me up to go to the game. I was even more wary at this point, but I gave him my address. On the night of the game, I grew angrier and angrier as it got later and later and Tony was still not there. The game was nearing the end of the third quarter when I got a call from Tony saying he was walking down my street, and asking me to come meet him.

I headed downstairs, figuring we would walk to the Fleet Center from my house since it was only a few blocks away. Instead, to my great amazement, here was Tony wearing a suit, walking up my street rolling a suitcase behind him. I must have made a confused face, because his first words were "you're probably wondering why I have this suitcase." Uh, YEAH. "I've got a change of clothes, a bottle of wine, and some other things in here," he said. He wanted to change out of the suit before the game, so we headed upstairs (yes, very much against my better judgment) so that he could change.

When we got to my apartment, rather than changing clothes in the bathroom or bedroom, Tony changed out of his suit and into a sweater and a pair of jeans in the middle of my kitchen. I was at this point seething, as the Celtics game was about to head into the fourth quarter. It was obvious we weren't going. It was also fairly obvious what Tony's "other things" in the suitcase were intended for. I was having none of it, and told him that I did not feel well and would probably not be very good company. This was my not so subtle hint that he and his suitcase could skedaddle. And they did.

I thought that was the end of the saga, with a very uncomfortable situation narrowly averted, but I was wrong. A few weeks later, I received a call from a blocked number on my cell phone. Normally I would not answer such a call, but a guy I'd become involved with in the interim had to use a blocked number when he called me from work so I assumed it was him. Instead, it was Tony who was obviously drunk and with a rowdy group of friends. He began the conversation with "I just wanted to explain why I wasn't going to call you again." I started to say that it really wasn't something I had been wondering about, when Tony launched into a strange and rambly list of my faults. I was so shocked that I only remember two of the things he said: 1) I let my cat scratch up my arms like a crazy cat lady (okay...), and 2) "you obviously weren't going to put out." At this, his rowdy friends in the background cackled.

Yes, a man in his mid-30's was still using failure to fuck by the second date as a reason to dump a woman.

I was so surprised by this strange conversation that I really couldn't formulate a response. I think I said something along the lines of "you really didn't need to call to tell me this," but that was about all I could muster. We hung up, and only about 10 minutes later when my brain had time to process it all did the witty comebacks start flowing freely. But of course by then it was too late.

A year or two later I ran across his profile on an online dating site, and felt a twinge of sadness for all those women who would be enduring similarly strange and awful first and second dates with this dweeb.

A Little Atlanta Inspiration

2009-09-18T09:53:00.005-04:00

Very few things penetrate my hard little cynical heart these days, but when they do I feel the need to share. Reading the fascinating inside story of how community advocate Kyle Keyser decided to run for mayor and then managed to raise the $4500 filing fee in just under three days, I felt like the grinch who finally learned the meaning of Christmas.

I haven't been involved with Keyser's group ATAC for several months now, mainly because I began despairing that crime in Atlanta was a problem that the powers that be simply refused to really tackle head-on. I felt hopeless and decided there was no point in paying attention to those who had not yet lost hope. Keyser isn't going to win the mayor's race, but he will certainly keep the other candidates on their toes when it comes to the issues of rising crime in Atlanta and police incompetence. And in his continuing quest to achieve his ultimate objectives of a safer Atlanta with more accountable public officials and police force, that will be a tremendous achievement.

Ultimately it's a very inspiringly American story. An average guy who would never have seen himself doing something like this a year ago is now thrust into the spotlight of running for mayor. He calls up on his friends and neighbors to help him, and they come through. And then, once he cleared the first hurdle of qualifying, Keyser knew exactly where they should go for lunch afterwards.

My heart grew three sizes today.

Adventures in Dating #1: Daffy Duck

2009-09-16T13:39:00.003-04:00

A few years ago, I went out a few times with a guy named T. (All names in this series will be changed to protect the innocent.) I met T on Match.com, which was my "get back on the horse" method for re-entering the dating pool whenever I got dumped, which unfortunately was not that uncommon. T was cute, had recently moved here from Virginia, and apparently was recently divorced. I probably would have seen these last 2 things as warning signs if not for the cute part, but in the mindset I was in I wanted to date as many people as humanly possible, so I gladly agreed when he suggested we meet in person.

We planned to meet on a weeknight at a restaurant in my neighborhood. I work until 7 most nights, and T had a dentist appointment after work on the day we were going to meet. He said he would call me once the appointment was over so that we could plan a place and time to meet (presumably because he did not know how long his dentist appointment would take.) I left work a bit early that day to go home and get ready, and on the way home, T called me. It was the first time we'd spoken on the phone, and he sounded cute--as much as someone can "sound cute" over the phone, anyway--but he also sounded like he had been pumped full of novocaine and was slurring his words. I worried he would want to cancel because the procedure had been more invasive than he expected, but to my surprise he wanted to confirm that we would meet at Atkins Park.

I asked him if he was sure he wanted to go ahead and meet when he was so full of novocaine, trying to be thoughtful and considerate. He asked "what novocaine?" I said I assumed he had been pumped full of novocaine at the dentist. He said that no, it had just been a routine cleaning. To my horror, I realized that T wasn't slurred with drugs, he just had a lisp. A very pronounced one.

We met that night and had a decent first date, decent enough that we were willing to go on subsequent dates. But after I took him to the Willie Nelson/Merle Haggard concert a few weeks later and was terrified the whole way home that his lispy mouth was going to attempt to connect with mine, I decided I had to break it off. It is never a good idea when you are actually afraid to kiss someone.

(T was also the only guy I have voluntarily dated who was shorter than me, and that may have contributed to things ending as well. For years my shorter female friends have lamented that I am being stupid by foreclosing dating shorter men, and so I decided to be open-minded for once. It never stopped bothering me that even with flats I had at least 2 inches on T.)

Apologies and excuses

2009-09-16T13:36:00.002-04:00

Yeah, so I never blog anymore. Work has gotten pretty crazy and I also just lack much in the way of motivation right now. Everything I want to say to the universe I say on Twitter, which means it only goes to the 60-something friends on my private feed. Oh well.

But because I feel guilty, today I am starting a new series that I hope other people will pick up sort of like how we all wrote about jobs we've had. This one will be: adventures in dating. Rather than blogging about funny things that happen on my dates now (which would be tough to do since I so rarely date these days), I will tell funny, sad and/or bewildering tales from former dating escapades. Sadly, I have many such stories.

Today's story is coming up shortly.

My un-recipe for perfect peach pie

2009-09-10T10:24:00.004-04:00

For Labor Day weekend, I traveled to Biloxi to play some poker. (I haven't been able to bring myself to write about the trip yet, and maybe never will. It wasn't bad at all, but stuck alone with my thoughts for the weekend and the long drive back, I feel like I have already done more than enough self-analysis about the trip.) When I returned, I discovered four huge, perfect Georgia peaches sitting in my refrigerator just begging to be eaten or cooked. I decided that since it was Labor Day, and I was in Georgia after all, the only answer was to make peach pie.

I didn't really have a recipe, but I was undeterred. First, I decided to try peeling the peaches with a carrot peeler rather than using the traditional boil then plunge into ice water method of peeling. This worked beautifully! I will always peel peaches this way from now on, and they are much easier to slice when still firm and cold. I peeled, pitted and sliced the four peaches and added them to a bowl. In with the peaches went the juice of one lemon, an eyeball approximation of roughly 3/4 a cup of brown sugar, a splash of almond extract, a healthy dose of cinnamon, 4 heaping spoonfuls of flour, and what was left of a stick of butter. (I think it was about 5 tablespoons' worth, softened.) I mixed all of this with a spatula until the peaches were completely coated, and let it sit for a few minutes.

I had a Pillsbury pie crust in the fridge, so I cheated on this part rather than making my own. I rolled out the bottom crust and pressed into a pie plate. Then I re-mixed the peaches mixture one more time, and poured it into the pie plate while making sure the peaches were as level as possible. I rolled out the top crust and put it over the peaches, carefully pressing the sides and fluting the edges. I cut four small vents in the crust, and placed into a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes. After that, I turned the oven down to 350 and baked for another 45 minutes, until the pie was just golden brown.

This was the end result:

I was a bit nervous about how well the pie turned out, given that I had completely made up the recipe for the filling from nothing. When I finally tried it...holy jeebus this was good. I warmed a slice in the microwave with a scoop of ice cream and then tried not to die from the deliciousness of it all. Seriously, if every food this tasty were this easy to make, I would weigh 300 pounds.

So now, you too can make perfect peach pie before the peaches go out of season!

Today's Video Interlude (contains NSFW language)

2009-09-02T13:58:00.002-04:00

"What, you're not hungry?"

What's the Matter with Georgia?

2009-09-01T14:06:00.005-04:00

Despite the creeping approach of legalized gambling along Georgia's borders with North Carolina, Alabama and Florida, our state continues to steadfastly oppose legalized gambling initiatives. The closest we have come to anything approximating a casino in Georgia is the proposed revamping of Underground Atlanta into an awful place filled with "video lottery terminals" that vaguely resemble slot machines, but even that half ass idea has failed to make any progress (thankfully, because it would have been a disaster).

Meanwhile, the state so controlled by religious conservatives that it was the subject of a nonfiction bestseller about everything that's wrong with it is preparing to open state-owned casinos to bring in new revenues. Kansas, the home of Operation Rescue, the state that voted evolution out of the educational curriculum, the state that only legalized drinking in the last 50 years, is getting into the casino business.

Admittedly, Kansas conservatives' opposition likely softened a great deal due to the arrival in the 90's of casinos owned by federally-recognized Indian tribes. It was probably tough for state politicians and residents to watch those tribes rake in bajillions of dollars over the last 15 years without virtually any of it going to the state, so it is only natural that they eventually came to crave their share for state coffers. In contrast, Georgia has no federally-recognized Indian tribes who could legally open a casino here, and thus the only way that any casino is coming to this state is through either a statewide ballot initiative (virtually impossible) or legislation redefining the lottery's authority to regulate gambling. This is ultimately the approach that Kansas utilized to legalize state-owned casinos through a narrow vote of the legislature in 2007.

Realistically, given the annual defeat of local control of alcohol sales on Sundays, it's probably unlikely that Georgia will seriously consider allowing REAL gambling anytime soon. But if Kansas' powerful and vocal religious conservatives couldn't prevent the passage of laws expanding revenues by opening state-owned casinos, why should we preemptively assume that Georgia's conservative base can kill this idea before it even gets serious consideration by the legislature, particularly in a year of state budget deficits, hiring freezes, furloughs, falling revenues, and no real end in sight?

It's something that smart politicians should consider embracing and taking the lead on pushing for serious consideration in the legislature. If it worked in Kansas, it can work anywhere.

(Update: As Richard noted in the comments, the Georgia constitution contains a prohibition on casino gambling that Kansas does not have. This probably raises a bigger legal/constitutional hurdle to expanding lottery powers to include running casinos than what Kansas faced.)

Legal Bullshit

2009-08-28T13:47:00.004-04:00

Given my chosen profession, I have a natural fundamental respect for the rule of law. I believe that it must be adhered to unless adherence is either impossible or unconstitutional. But sometimes, law creates impossible situations, little cracks where a few unlucky citizens can fall in and become trapped. At those moments I feel some personal responsibility for being part of a profession that tries to improve lives but often ends up being the source of so much strife.

Wendy Whitaker is the latest victim of well-meaning but bad law. She made the mistake of performing oral sex on a 15 year old boy when she was 17 years old. She was convicted under a sodomy law later ruled unconstitutional, and now she must follow the many onerous regulations and rules for sex offenders for the rest of her life while in Georgia.

Whitaker has been lead plaintiff in a suit challenging the constitutionality of Georgia's sex offender laws that prohibit her from living near virtually any place that a child might occasionally inhabit, which has left her with only tiny pockets of the state that are not off-limits. While that suit has been creeping through the courts for the past 3 years, she has been trying to comply with the laws as best she can (with help of a temporary injunction), but she was just rearrested for failure to register a new address. She remains in jail, with bail set at $10,000. This is an outrage.

While I know many people will make the argument that Whitaker should just keep her nose clean while her case is pending and make sure all laws are complied with, this is a law that Whitaker should never have been forced to operate under. On the flip side, I could easily argue that it borders on malicious prosecution to rearrest someone for failing to comply with a law to which they have made a pending constitutional challenge. To throw her in jail for non-compliance while she is challenging a law that shouldn't apply to her amounts to some very dirty pool.

The Southern Center for Human Rights has been handling Whitaker's constitutional challenge for the past three years, but I'm not sure if they have a mechanism or the funding to pay for bail money for Whitaker. I hope someone will create a way for people like me who agree this case is bullshit to donate to a legal defense fund to pay Whitaker's bail and her defense costs in the new criminal case. I have little doubt that the eventual outcome of Whitaker's pending case will be a vindication of her constitutional right to live wherever she chooses, but that may take more than a decade to accomplish. In the meantime, she needs our help to keep her out of jail for something that should never have been imposed upon her.

If you have any details about a legal defense fund, please post in the comments. If I learn anything about such a fund, I will pass it on. And I will donate.

The Lion Is Gone

2009-08-26T10:00:00.003-04:00

For eight years, Ted Kennedy was my Senator. And today he is dead.

I am so sad today. For all of his mistakes, and he made plenty and some were terrible, Teddy spent 47 years in the Senate making sure that the good he put into the world far outweighed the bad.

Perhaps because of the weight of being the sole remaining torchbearer of the three sons, perhaps because he felt the need to atone for those personal mistakes, perhaps because he was Senator in a state that would re-elect him in perpetuity no matter what happened, Ted Kennedy worked harder than anyone to bring a better life to everyone.

I honestly can't imagine that we'll ever see a career like that again, someone so completely unbridled by political concerns that he never had to ask if he would be re-elected, never had to balance his conscience against political realities. He never had to take a poll or worry about how his constituents might respond to something before he took a position on a critical issue. He just did what he thought was right, and the people of Massachusetts trusted him to watch out for them. He always did.

John McCain said on This Week this past Sunday that healthcare reform would have been much farther along if Teddy had been there to bring people from both sides together and to champion the cause of ensuring access to healthcare for all. I think he's right. I hope that in his memory and in respect of his tremendous service, Congress will make a renewed push to get it done. For Teddy.