A new addition!
Welcome baby Xiao Mei, Yin and Yang's newest addition!
February 13, 2008
February 11, 2008
Apologies
I completely dropped out of the world last week for no real reason, but I'm back now!
February 05, 2008
God, what a great football game!
I'm a big fan of watching the Super Bowl with friends and enjoying the last football game of the season, but usually the play isn't all that interesting. Until now, there's really only been two Super Bowls I've remembered with any clarity: When the Rams won in 2001, and when they lost to the Patriots in 2002 by a field goal courtesy of Adam Vinatieri. Until now.
Sunday night's game was one the best football games I've ever seen. I'm no Giants fan; I don't love Eli Manning like I love Peyton, and in fact went into the game rooting for Tom Brady and the Patriots. But I could not resist the draw of the underdog Giants, calmly marching up and down the field, sacking Tom Brady – Tom Brady! Sacked! In the Super Bowl! More than once! – and generally demonstrating that they could play better football. By that heart-stopping near-sack in the 4th quarter, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, fist clenched, rocking back and forth saying, "Come on, come on, come on!" to Manning and his Giants. The New York Times describes it thus:
More than Eli’s 5-yard scoring pass early in the fourth quarter to Tyree, more than his 13-yard scoring pass to Plaxico Burress in the final minute, the play that will be replayed and discussed endlessly came when Manning scrambled on third-and-5 from the Giants’ 44-yard line with about a minute left. It seemed as if he was about to be sacked, and that would have been devastating. Would-be tacklers grabbed at him, clutching his shirt and tugging it. “You try to get small and see if you can squeak through,” Manning said. He kept moving to his left, ducked out of a scrum, found open space and launched a soaring pass toward Tyree at the Patriots’ 25-yard line. “The ball hung up there,” Manning said with great understatement. Tyree leaped in the air and brought it down with his hands, which pressed the ball against his helmet. The Giants had a first down with 59 seconds left. Four plays later they scored to beat a team that was 18-0.
When Manning shook free of that tackle, when Tyree caught that ball and hung onto it, bent over backwards and clutching it to his helmet, I stood up and whooped. Talk about some exciting football! Now that's what I want to see at the Super Bowl. What a play! And what defense! The Giants defense really won that game, because even down as they were, Tom Brady could have marched over just about any other team in the league and used that 35 seconds to roll from one end of the field and into the end zone. Forget about The Greatest Show on Turf days – that was exciting football (if you're a Rams fan) but it was fairly one-sided. This was a knucklebiter right to the very end. Who couldn't celebrate the Giants after that game?
There was a lot of schadenfreude in St. Louis yesterday morning from a city still bitter over a nasty loss. Several of the morning talk shows mentioned the recent allegations that the Patriots videotaped the Rams practicing before beating them in the Super Bowl. Plenty of other people around say that the Pats cheated during the game, grabbing jerseys and doing other illegal things that didn't get called by the refs. (I won't say that – three turnovers and you can't expect to win the Super Bowl, that's what I say, even with Jeff Wilkins kicking.) St. Louisans are not willing to let go of that particular grudge, so even though the Rams had yet another terrible season this year, there was a lot of joy in the Gateway City last night and today.
As for me and my Patriots fan-dom? Well, I figure that this morning Tom Brady is still smart, gorgeous, and a helluva football player with three Super Bowl rings already (oh yeah, and dating a supermodel), so it's not like his life is all that bad.
February 01, 2008
Lookin' Out My Back Door
No tambourines or elephants, just lots and lots of snow.
(Tabasco added to show scale; we don't normally keep hot sauce on the floor!)
I have to say
This is one of the most gorgeous babies on the internet, and I'm lovin' the quilt she's sitting on, too.
January 30, 2008
It Changes!
Yesterday at lunch time, I couldn't stay inside - it was too beautiful outside, nearly 70 degrees with a constant steady breeze - so I walked down to the river (two blocks) and chatted with a pal who also works downtown.
Last night, I went out to a debate at the local college featuring Ron Jeremy, the "movie" star. When I got home it was 11 degrees with a windchill of -2.
Gotta love that Midwestern weather!
January 23, 2008
January 22, 2008
Let's talk some more about me
I'm obviously quite into navel-gazing today, so let's talk some more about my introvert "problem." Today, instead of being at work or engaging in normal adult activities, due to circumstances, I'm sitting at home eating dry cereal out of the bag reading advice columns online. This isn't a problem - many people need a break. Sometimes you're stuck at home waiting for the cable guy, sometimes you indulge by doing so in your pajamas and accomplishing absolutely nothing of worth.
Where I start to diverge from others, I fear, is the fact that I could happily spend the next six months doing just this - sitting in my pajamas, reading the entire internet and eating dry cereal out of the bag. It's both why I long to/am slightly afraid to live alone - I'd never emerge from my home. I can see it in my mind's eye - cozy, welcoming, full of only my stuff, music I like, colors I like, my computer and bookshelves having the most prominent place, the t.v. there for occasional bursts of mindlessness (Have I mentioned I'm totally into Boston Public reruns lately?). I'd never come out. I'd sit in contented silence evening after evening, from the time I got home from work til I turned out the lights (later than I ought to) with my cellphone on silent and logged off the chat programs, just enjoying my solitary pursuits. That's getting a little weird. Now, of course I don't know if it's true - who knows? If I really had six months to sit at home doing nothing, would I do it? Or would I get bored by the fifth day, and start emerging into society again? Only time will tell.
Whence Introverted?
So Myer-Briggs has always told me that I am "INTJ", something which has (I suspect) become even more prevalent lately. But what does that mean for a social life? If you're an introvert, how on earth do you meet new people with whom to construct relationships - business, social, and romantic? It's a quandry.
I was reading Amy Alkon this morning, and got deep into the comments discussing an introvert-extrovert romantic relationship. A commenter wrote:
I have my own definition of "introvert" and I didn't make it up. An introvert is not someone who doesn't like others, but rather, someone who is drained by the effort of being with others. While an extrovert is someone who is energized by being with others.
That's a perfect description of me. I like other people, but I often find it incredibly draining to be with large groups of people, or to go night after night to social engagements with even small groups of people. In that sense, law school was ideal for someone like me: I could spend as much time at school as I wanted to spend, and when I'd had enough social interaction for the day, I could retire to my home with a perfect excuse for not socializing - I'm in law school, I have to study. (Or, I'm stressed and need a break on the couch with the O.C.) Fellow law students tended to understand that manifestation of introversion, either because the law attracts introverts to a greater degree or just because the process of studying law is itself so draining that everyone adopts introvert-type strategies to deal with it all.
Post-law school, it doesn't go over so well with my friends. For one, most of my friends are extreme extroverts. Some of these were pre-law school friends and I found their ideas about the proper arrangement of social calendars much easier to take prior to law school. My theory is that I've always leaned introverted, but that law school fundamentally changed me and I'm now so strongly introverted I may never recover. I just took a Myer-Briggs test online, and the result was that I "distinctively expressed introvert" (whereas I only "moderately expressed" intuitive personality and judging personality, and "slightly expressed" thinking personality).
I could speculate on why I'm different now - law school makes us selfish monsters, law school encourages people to retreat into isolation amongst the "laypeople", three years of being surrounded by other introverts and allowed to indulge my every selfish whim with the defense of "I can't do that because I'm in law school and too busy" has allowed me to fully develop this potential that was already there, the depression common to lawyers. But the fact remains that I am now strongly introverted, and lots of people think that's a weird or bad thing. I could blame it on being thirty and being "done" with the party scene, but to be frank with the exception of a few years in my college fraternity, I was never into the party scene. Commenter Dale really struck a nerve with me when he wrote:
I actually have to plan my social calendar around my introversion knowing that by the end of a long week of interaction I'm usually ready to gut the next person who tries to engage me in idle, pointless chit-chat. Gouging the wrong person's eye can have negative long term dating and business ramifications.
I do that too! I even have to plan it so that "social" weekends are staggered. If I go out of town one weekend, to a gathering or event or whatever, I try to make sure that the following weekend is completely free of engagements so I can "recover." This probably sounds really odd coming from someone who blathers on day and night from a blog, and who spend three years sitting in the patent law library to study because that's where all of my friends gathered. But that's the impulse I have to fight every day when I try to balance maintaining relationships with my own sanity.
The quandry I mentioned earlier is, how to network and build relationships - of all stripes - as an introvert? The only way is by forcing myself to get "out there", although nowadays with the internet it is really a lot easier than it used to be. I have contacts in the legal world I made solely through blogging (alone! in my pajamas! on a Friday night!); friends I socialize with only via different online ventures; even a potential romantic entanglement with a fella I've met online (who claims to be extroverted, but is online nearly every evening...hmm). I thought this advice was the best bit of all:
As an introvert, you all are correct when you realize socializing is "work" for us. However, I have found such work necessary to still be able the call myself human. So, I disagree with those that imply that if you don't enjoy it don't do it. It is important that introverts work on their socializing skills by occasionally getting out. My experience is that I generally enjoy such gatherings as long as they are limited (and alchohol is served ;-)) as it really is "work". I have even made real friends from such adventures! All relationships are about give and take and it is important to "bend" a little to learn about aspects of life that your significant other brings to the party.
January 15, 2008
My Ears are Bleeding
(I think even my teeth are bleeding.)
So....just got back from the Hannah Montana concert. My (older) sister and I took the two little sisters to the Hannah Montana concert as their Christmas present this year. Conveniently, we were going to take them to see the Hannah Montana 3D concert movie, but the week I was going to buy tickets she added another St. Louis date to her tour. We both logged in to Ticketmaster when the tickets went on sale, and she got four tickets (the limit) while I got none. They sold out in ten seconds. Crazy. Anyway, we were going to use the extra tickets to sell (allright, scalp) to pay for the first set, but we were happy just to have one set.
I must say, for a teeny-bopper Disney production, the show wasn't that bad. It was actually pretty good. Miley's a great entertainer and the place was full of little girls who have drunk all the Disney Kool-Aid their entire lives. It was wholesome, it was catchy, it had fireworks, it was a spectacle. Hannah/Miley never writhed on the stage, never showed cleavage, grabbed herself, or wallowed on a boy. She didn't curse or throw anything. And I'm pretty sure she wore underwear the entire time. Very wholesome, although I did observe at one point to my sister that just walking into the venue was a dirty old man's dream come true, with all the little girls there.
The only trouble was the screaming. Have you ever been in a room with 50,000 little girls between the ages of four and fourteen, all screaming their lungs out? You can only imagine the dreadful amount of noise. By the end of the night I was nearly weeping because I'd forgotten my earplugs in my purse, in the trunk of the car, at the rail station. Boo hoo.
Still, the girls had a blast and that's all that matters.
