divine angst

Happy new year, all!

I was reflecting back on the last year and realizing that it was not a terrific year for me. Oh sure, I had some successes, and I am proud of those, but I also had a horribly stressful year as well as some “failures.” Frankly, I’m glad to put 2007 behind me.

This is not to say that 2008 won’t have it’s share of stresses, but I think they are the kinds of stresses that I know how to deal with. The bar exam will be hard, but it’s a test, and I have taken many tests in my life, and I know how to deal with that kind of stress. We may be moving because of career developments, but we’ve moved across the country before, and I know how to handle that. Thankfully, my job situation shouldn’t be a stressor even if we do move, but even if I have to find a new job, well, I’ve looked for jobs before, and I know how to keep my sanity. I’m not saying any of these things will be fun—I know the bar won’t be, and I hate moving, and I hate the mass resume drop—but I know that I can deal with all of it.

And maybe that’s why 2007 was so stressful for me—I was doing a lot of things I’d never done before, and doing them under intense time constraints and while picking up a lot of other people’s slack. I struggled for balance, and I don’t think I ever really achieved it. I regret that. I have a few more months of dealing with those duties and frustrations, but I’ve learned a lot from my experiences in 2007, so I think have a better grasp of how to achieve balance now—and a better sense of when to not to just do it all myself. I wish I’d found that earlier.

So here’s to a good 2008. I have some specific resolutions (for instance, I want to lose a few more pounds before I order the bridesmaid’s dress I have to wear in May) but I also have a more general goal for this year: to achieve balance. That goal has a lot of nuances for me—I need to balance personal with school, journal with non-journal, perfectionism with delegation, and initiative with distraction. But I think it’s also very simple—my life needs to be more balanced. I’m eager to get there.

After a week of travel and family and Christmas and food and more food and presents and more food, Mr. Angst and I are back home with Himself.^[1]

All is right with the world.

1. Who, by the way, is completely zonked out. Maybe just being boarded is exhausting for him? He doesn’t get as much exercise as he might when boarded since he can’t be put in with the general population of dogs to play and wear himself out, but he’s definitely worn out. Maybe he feels a little like I do—he’s home and can finally relax. ↩

I promised a follow-up, so here it is!

First, if someone at UPS tells you something you either don’t believe or don’t want to hear, call back and talk to someone else. Yesterday, I called UPS to check on the status of my claim, and the girl I spoke to said she couldn’t tell me anything since I wasn’t the shipper. I told her that the shipper didn’t call in the claim, that there was no problem with the shipper, that I brought it to the attention of UPS, and I was pretty sure the shipper didn’t know there WAS a problem. She said, “No, we’ve been in touch with the shipper. You’ll have to contact them for updates.”

That seemed fishy to me, but I let it go, because I had an exam to take. And I went and took my exam and then did some post-exam shopping, and then came home to get ready to go out and have fun, celebrating the end of the semester.

But this morning, I got nervous—after all, Christmas is on Tuesday, and I still didn’t know if this package was going to arrive on time. So I called UPS again. This time, I got a more helpful—and probably smarter, and possibly less harried—customer service agent. I told her what I’d been told yesterday and she said (and this is EXACTLY what she said and I wish I could replicate her tone), “What? Really?”

So I explained to her that I was getting desperate, and I needed to know something. And she was great. She took a look at the history of my package (and as she was looking at it said something like, “OK, shipped to Texas, and then . . . oh wow, Florida, wow, how did THAT happen . . . what the heck? . . . OK . . . Yeah, we’re still trying to locate that box. Boy that’s strange!). She told me they are still trying to get in touch with Florida Lady. She told me UPS would reimburse the shipper the cost of sending me a new package overnight so it would arrive by Christmas. Though she said I’d need to call them and arrange for the new shipment, she also said if they gave me trouble, to just conference them in with UPS so the UPS people could corroborate my story.

So that’s what I did. (Well, the conference call wasn’t necessary, thank goodness.) The company has already sent out a new package, overnight delivery, and they told me they would deal with UPS from now on, so I didn’t need to worry about anything.

Despite the tremendous hassle this was—from trying (in vain) to reach Florida Lady, to calling UPS multiple times, to calling the shipper multiple times (they’re a small company and don’t appear to have very many more than one customer service person), to being generally very fretful about all of this at a time when I was trying to prepare for my exam—it all worked out pretty well, and I am pretty happy with both UPS and with the company I bought this gift from. With the exception of that one customer service girl, everyone has been very nice and very understanding of how important it is that I get this package before Christmas. They’ve all been very accommodating, and I appreciate that.

I guess this delivery horror story is now just cocktail party fodder. (And I think it will be terrific in that role—I’ve told the story to a few friends already and the universal response has been shock and amazement of the really gratifying kind.) I’m glad everything turned out well enough that I can continue to tell the story and have it be humorous, rather than a reminder of something more bitter and ugly.

Did you think you’d get through this holiday season without having to read a delivery horror story from me?

You’d be wrong.

Today’s doghouse resident: UPS.

I am proudest of one of the first gifts I ordered this holiday season. Inspiration struck me out of the blue, and I knew exactly what to get this particular family member. So I ordered this particular (very cool) gift right away, on December 6. The next day I got an email from the company I ordered from telling me my order had been fulfilled and giving me the tracking number. I cheered, knowing that at least one gift was taken care of and would arrive at my dad’s house in Texas in plenty of time to be opened on Christmas Day. I didn’t track the package because I figured it would get there when it got there, and I wouldn’t be down there to open it and wrap it until the 23rd.

On Monday, I got a phone call from a nice lady in Florida telling me that she had my package and wanted to know when I could come pick it up.

Florida Lady’s address is the same as my dad’s—except for, of course, the CITY, STATE, and ZIP CODE.

I immediately got online and looked up the tracking number so I could see what the heck was going on. I first blamed the vendor—the stupid company probably got the address wrong on the shipping label, so I’d just call and make them send a new order to the correct address, and deal with getting the other order back on their own time. But the invoice showed the correct address—me, care of my dad, at his address in Texas. So I pulled up the tracking information.

There it was, on December 12:

[CITY], TX: A CORRECT STREET NUMBER IS NEEDED FOR DELIVERY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION / THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

And then they sent it to Florida.

I spent quite a bit of time on the phone yesterday morning with UPS trying to figure out (a) how this happened, (b) how I was going to get my package, since Florida Lady had given me her phone number but wasn’t answering her phone and her voice mail was full, and (c) what UPS was going to do to FIX IT.

To be fair, UPS was very apologetic (though I am sure it is in the customer service script that they are to apologize every time they say anything to a customer who has lost a package), and they are doing everything they can to get my package back from Florida Lady and on to Texas. They also got detailed information on what was in the box (including item numbers), presumably so that, if the package is gone, they can just call the vendor and order a new one on their dime and overnight it to Texas in time for Christmas.

Of course, I’m not completely won over—after all, they screwed up. I am just not sure how someone in Texas decided that my dad’s perfectly valid address was not valid, and then how that someone decided that I really meant the package to go to the same address but in a different city and state. I bet there are other cities in this country that also have an address with the same number and street as my dad’s—I guess I’m lucky they happened to send it to someone who was nice enough to call me and say, Hey, I’ve got your package here!

Simply unbelievable. I’ll keep you posted on what happens next.

I just finished watching the new trailer for The Dark Knight, and let me say, while I spent a good chunk of my summer seriously annoyed by the transportation snafus filming caused around here (bus reroutes, street closures, etc.), I also spent a good chunk of my summer keeping an eye on what buildings and streets were being filmed as well as what “set pieces” were left sitting around on streets^[1] and it is Very Cool to see those streets and buildings showing up even just in the trailer. It’s just going to be that much cooler to see the movie when it comes out next summer, right before I have to take the bar.

1. This doesn’t even mention the very cool bit of filming I and some friends saw one night, which I am pretty sure is ALSO in the trailer, though not the whole thing, and not the thing that we saw that was the coolest. ↩

This weather makes my skin dry, which usually manifests in an itchy back or ankles. Until today. My fingers were itching, so I took off my rings to discover dry, peeling skin underneath. Ack! My rings are platinum, so I’m pretty sure this isn’t an allergic reaction, so I’m hoping it’s just the weather. Even so, it’s pretty pissy that my rings are rubbing my finger in a way that LOOKS like I’m allergic to them.

Yucky.

I have a task chair at my desk, and it’s really all I need. My desk is small and compact and I like having a small and compact chair to go with it.

However, the small, compact chair has its drawbacks. Notably, it’s a little unstable if I lean over in it. Usually I can tell if it’s starting to tip in time to correct it, but not always. Even when it does tip, I’m usually right by the futon in the office, so I catch myself—or I’ve got my feet planted on the ground because I’m leaning over in the chair to get something from the printer, so I just end up half-squatting, half-standing while the chair skates across the floor on its side.

Well, yesterday I was leaning over in my chair, towards the futon, because I wanted to play with the dog. The dog was on the futon, blocking my easiest path to safety when the chair skidded out from under me. So I landed on the floor. On my butt. Hard.

It wasn’t fun at the time, but I didn’t think it was all that big a deal. It didn’t bother me at all yesterday afternoon and evening.

But I got up this morning, and my butt hurts. It even hurts to sit on the soft, cushy couch. I’m afraid to actually look at it because I’m sure it’s ugly and bruised. My butt is bruised. Because of my cheap chair.

I like the snow.  It’s so pretty when it’s coming down and when it’s fresh and new and white.  What I hate is when the snow turns into big gray piles of gross on the side of the street.  Which is what the snow will be like when I actually have time—and the inclination—to go out in it.

I am a bit ashamed that I’ve become the kind of person who can’t order at Starbucks in fewer than 10 words.

At least my drink only costs $1.60.

When the weather gets really gross, that’s the time to hunker down at home with hot tea and Get Things Done.

Of course that means I went to a small pre-exam shindig last night, and will be going to a birthday dinner tonight. Sigh.

Yes, I’ve been gone for a while. No, I am still here and still alive. Between traveling to the Angst-in-laws’ for Thanksgiving and working on plowing through journal stuff and reading for class and contemplating beginning outlining and hounding relatives to send me pictures for my grandmother’s Christmas letter which I design, it’s been a little busy.

Here’s what I’ve done over the last two weeks:

• Drove 6 hours, each way, in nasty rainy stuff, to Thanskgiving.
• Played fetch with the dog in the backyard, which he loved.
• Ate turkey three four times.
• Made sides to go with leftover turkey once.
• Saw Dan in Real Life and wished the filmmakers had been brave enough not to give it a happy ending.
• Watched The Incredibles and remembered what a totally kick-ass movie it is. Too bad it’s Disney and I bet I can’t get it on DVD for another twenty years.
• Finished editing the most boring article ever. Maybe second-most boring. It’s hard to say.
• Slogged through some administrative responsibilities that were unpleasant.
• Decided I needed better backup, so bought an external hard drive. Might arrive tomorrow.
• Woke up with swollen tonsils. Afraid am getting sick. Fighting through it.
• Wrote this post.

I think that actually only covers about a week and a half, maybe even just a week, but I think it’s a fair assessment of what my life is like right now—editing, some reading for class, eating, sleeping, trying not to die, that sort of thing.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. For all my complaining, I have many things to be thankful for, not least of which is realizing I have many things to be thankful for. Heaven help me if I ever forget to acknowledge how incredibly blessed I am.

I don’t usually walk through the lobby of our apartment building, preferring instead to go out a side door. But today as I headed for that side door, I noticed some plants from the lobby had been relocated to the area near the side door. Curious, I went through the lobby and discovered our building is holiday crazy. We have a giant gold and white-decorated tree, white (fake?) poinsettias, and white drippy lights all over the lobby. It’s kind of nice, but it also makes me a little insane because it means I’ll now be reminded every time I walk downstairs how UNdecorated my own apartment is.

Holiday mania, here I come.

I don’t know if this conversation is more depressing because of its sheer inanity or because of the complete lack of broader social view among the average commuter on the bus.

Background: My Metro Area is about to experience some public transit cutbacks because the Transit Agency in our area has been historically mismanaged as well as chronically underfunded by the state. People are starting to get worried and concerned about what this will mean for their commutes. I don’t want to make it seem as though I am making light of those concerns. Instead, I am commenting on how little people know about the actual circumstances that are leading to the transit cutback, leading to their concerns.

Scene: Three women get on my bus, headed to a commuter rail station, heading home at the end of the day. After some conversation about increasing costs of everything and the looming inconvenience of transit cutbacks, the following exchange occurs:

Woman 1: You know, I think all these downtown businesses should move out of the city, into the suburbs, and stick it to [Transit Agency].

Woman 2: Yeah! Stick it to [the mayor] and [Transit Agency].

Woman 3: If they’d just all move out to the suburbs, we could just drive to work.

There are so many things wrong with all of these statements. The first just doesn’t make sense. Businesses moving out of downtown won’t affect [Transit Agency] at all, except to relieve some of the congestion on buses and trains. That could actually have a net positive effect on [Transit Agency].

The second statement—the part about the mayor—is accurate. Businesses moving out of downtown would hurt the mayor, or the city government, by depriving him/it of tax revenue. So, OK. I’m not sure why sticking it to the mayor is the way to go, though, since the big funding problem here is at the state, not municipal, level.

The third statement I just find ridiculous. Yes, all the businesses downtown could move out to the suburbs and everyone could drive. That’s absolutely true. Except, of course, that those of us without cars wouldn’t have a way to get to work. And, of course, that would have its own repercussions—quicker degradation of highways, increased wear and tear on individual vehicles and more money spent on gasoline, and, of course, massively increased congestion on all the highways circling the city.

As I listened to their conversation—the part of it preceding this little bit—I was mentally shaking my head. They seemed so much like my family, complaining (as we all do) about all kinds of rising costs, about cumulative inconveniences that make our lives more difficult, every day.^[1] But that final snippet of conversation was different. It really drove home that people will blame whoever is most visible—in this case, [Transit Agency] and, I suppose, the mayor. And that is the crux of this particular problem. [Transit Agency] has been encouraging people to contact their state legislators, but that message is apparently not sinking in. This is not something [Transit Agency] can fix on its own. It doesn’t have the money and it needs more from the state. There’s a trade-off there, of course: if you don’t want higher taxes, don’t push the state to give [Transit Agency] more money. But accept that the consequence is that your bus service will probably get cancelled.

1. One interesting thing, though: they were talking about increased phone bills, and one insisted to the others that they should never cancel the add-on line-protection service on their home telephones. She had just had a problem with her line, and the telephone company came out and fixed it for free, when it would have cost $350. She’s been paying that fee for 15 years, and it’s $4 a month. Guess what? She’s paid for that repair twice over! I couldn’t help but do the quick math in my head right then and there. ↩

I don’t know if this is a sign that I’m out of touch with reality or just that my head is full of snot, but a child dressed in a bear suit just got on my bus and it took me fully forty-five seconds to register that he wasn’t just wearing a bear suit.

Happy Hallowe’en!

In an attempt to feed the cold I’ve come home with, I ordered approximately five times as much Thai food as any human being—or two, in this case—could ever consume. Each order of pad thai was enough for a week; my beef noodle soup was also NOT, apparently, an appetizer. Heh. It’s a good thing I like pad thai and beef noodle soup.

I have been out of town. While away, I:

• Ate at my favorite hamburger place in the whole world
• Ate Tex-Mex (and it was GOOD)
• Saw oodles of good friends, including most of our wedding party
• Picked up some nasty head cold from my cousin (or from his sick kid)
• Bought two new sweaters
• Managed to respond to every important email I got

I’m home now, but exhausted.

For the last two and a half years, Mr. Angst has not been able to check in for flights online. (That post doesn’t explain that it’s definitely Mr. Angst who hasn’t been able to check in online, but we very quickly discovered it’s Mr. Angst who has the problem when I was able to check in online for a flight and he wasn’t.)

If we fly American or Continental or any other airline with reserved seating, this isn’t really a problem. We have to get to the airport a little early so Mr. Angst can check in at the ticket counter (no kiosks for us), but otherwise, it’s just not a big deal. Southwest, though, is different. Since Southwest boards in groups by when you check in, and you can check in online 24 hours in advance, Mr. Angst hasn’t been able to board in Group A for a very long time. (Well, OK, he has, but only by piggybacking on my Group A boarding pass, and only if I was able to check in online. Sometimes, when we’ve bought our tickets together, the whole confirmation number gets locked out and even I can’t check in online. That changed about a year ago—I think Southwest upgraded its online check-in system. But still.) Even worse was if Mr. Angst had to travel alone on Southwest (still the cheapest and most convenient airline for flying back home). He’d get to the airport 3 hours early and still be stuck in Group C.

Last night, I got online to check myself in for our flight tonight. I knew I’d be able to check myself in, since my ticket was purchased separately and had its own confirmation number. At the very least, we knew Mr. Angst would be able to board in Group A with me. We’d still have to get to the airport a little early, though, so he could stand in line at the ticket counter to check in.

On a lark, I decided to go ahead and try his confirmation number, because, hey, why not? And guess what? He could check in. Sometimes, he’s been able to check in on a return flight, presumably because being cleared for the first leg of a flight cleared him for the last leg. But Mr. Angst has not been able to check in online for an originating flight in two and a half years—and now, suddenly, he can.

I sincerely hope this means that his name was purged from whatever list it has been on during a routine update. Current news reports indicate the watch list is growing rather than shrinking. But it appears that, at the very least, it’s shrunk by one in the last few months. And I am SO glad.

I have gotten two horoscopes today that were unsettling. Or would be, if I actually believed in horoscopes.

The first was in Allure magazine, and I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something to the effect of, “Because you lack confidence, you accepted a job for which you are overqualified. Tough luck on you.” The second came from My Yahoo, and says, “Step back from a relationship that has become too combative. You need time apart.”

Horoscopes are usually written to be optimistic, like, “Things may seem wretched now, but adversity makes you stronger! Get through this and things will be rainbows on the other side.” Apparently not for me any more, though. Boo.

You know those friends you had in college, the ones who were really wicked smart but also smart enough to be funny about it, funny in a sort of nerdy way, like quoting Augustine on how math is possibly of the devil when they were math majors, and who could drink more than you thought humanly possible and do really crazy things on the weekends but then get up on Saturday morning to give a talk at some conference being held on campus, and then go drinking with the other nerdy conference attendees and talk about math or physics but also get really crazy about SEC football? And they might also be the kind of people who make Long Island Iced Tea in giant Gatorade coolers intead of in pitchers and start fires behind their fraternity houses with the old furniture they hated, and do things like watch The Sound of Music with The Wall synced up in perfect time?

How weird (scary, bizarre) is it to discover those friends are college professors now?

Suddenly it’s really fall. It’s dark at 6:30, it’s brisk outside, and I’m in the thick of the semester. I have bunches to do, but it’s all really interesting, at least. And now that there’s no more evening sunshine, my mind understands that it’s time to buckle down and work hard. Thankfully, I finished one big project today, so I’m not stretched so thin, or with the more tedious work.

Fall means good things, like Halloween and Thanksgiving and trips home and visits from family. It also means winter is just around the corner. And exams. And grades. The good with the less good. That’s fall.

Because something is wrong with an electrical transformer at our building, they shut down the building’s power. Each unit still has power but stuff that relies on common power is down. No AC, then, nor water (the pumps are off), nor, for some odd reason, cable. I.e., no internet.

One would think I’d be really productive without the internet. One would be wrong. It turns out, I use westlaw A Lot. And I feel lost without it. I guess I’ll just have to make up for It while I’m at school. At least everything should be back to normal by this evening.

By the way, I know I’m supposed to get the Law School Roundup posted at some point, but I’m having trouble pulling it together. Frankly, the only thing I’ve been paying much attention to in the law-student-blogosphere this week has been the nightmare Lag Liv, her husband, and son have been going through.

It’s times like these the anonymity of blogging really gets to me. Luckily, not everyone is anonymous, but, face it, most of us are. Anonymity is just fine when we’re all griping about the work, the work, and, oh yeah, the work—or the gunners, the administration, the feeling of being completely lost—but every once in a while, real life comes crashing down and I realize we are NOT just floating along in a bubble called law school.

Perhaps I’m just a little introspective right now because my grand plans for next year didn’t turn out the way I thought they would. Don’t get me wrong—my “Plan B” is just fine, and might, in fact, end up better than the plan I originally pursued. But I’m actually staring Real Life in the face here, when I’m actually not really ready not to be a student any more.

The lesson to be learned is that you can’t manage your life. Oh, you can keep your ducks lined up, and make sure you cross your t’s and dot your i’s, but every now and then someone will come along with some birdseed, and the ducks will scatter, or you’ll knock over the pot of ink, and your t’s and i’s will merge with a sea of messy. I’m having to just let go lately—get through the day, and then get through the next day, and get through the following day—and the only crappy thing about that is knowing that there will always be another day, even when I’ve caught up or finished my work.

I know this hardly counts as a Roundup, but it’s the best I can manage right now.

I am feeling better today. After writing yesterday’s post, I wandered over to happy hour with some friends, which turned into a late dinner. Perhaps I drank a bit too much…in any case, I got my mind off of things.

Of course the downside is that I really can’t drink like that any more, so I was not as productive as I wanted to be this morning. Oh, I got my stuff done, it was just more of a struggle than iit had to be. I think the hangover is officially gone now, but instead of taking advantage of that and really busting ass on my work, I’m headed to watch a football game at a bar. Stupid ABC, making it impossible to get the football I want to watch at home.

I have this relative who I love dearly, but whose flaws I am deeply aware of. These flaws include being a bit flaky, a bit naive, a bit impressionable, and a bit unable to see her flaws in action. Today I received a letter from her, exhibiting each and every one of these flaws and though the letter was well-intentioned, it hurt my feelings deeply. Frankly, I am too busy right now to be in emotional turmoil, so I’m a bit pissed on that account, too, but mostly I’m just upset that someone who has been so supportive of me and my decisions in the past has chosen to write down all the reasons she thinks one of those decisions in particular was the wrong decision (and, typically, then says she felt she “failed” me by not stopping me from making that decision).

I usually find it amusing that I am so different from my family, and they usually seem to also. We all seem pretty accepting that I’m my own person. Well, apparently not all. Apparently some people in my family wish I was more like them—and more like them in a way I chose not to be like as an adult, over a dozen years ago. The worst part is that, upon reading this letter, I thought of a dozen ways I could respond to it, some of which would be equally hurtful to the letter-writer, some of which would just be inappropriate, and some of which would be logical, rational, and true—yet I know that I will never be able to say any of them, because no matter how clear I was (whether in a calm way or in a mean way), she just wouldn’t understand why what she wrote was so wrong.

I often miss living close to my family, but times like these I’m glad I’m far away so I only have to get these little guilt-trips in letters, instead of in the thousand small gestures of daily interaction.

I got a new toy over the weekend. It’s the kind of toy that’s supposed to aid my productivity, by allowing me to get more done when I’m not at my desk. Instead, it’s encouraging me to get less done on my commute. Instead of reading that book for The Task I’m posting this. Oops.