The Gurly Life

Caturday

Saturday began lazily, as Saturdays usually do for me. No matter what else I have planned for the weekend, I reserve the few hours before yoga, which begins at 11:30, to just being lazy. I usually wake up early-ish, have breakfast in bed, and either read or watch a movie on DVD. Yes, I still have DVD, I have not made the move to Blu Ray yet. And I have resolved not to buy any more movies ever because I'm sure that as soon as I decide to buy even one movie on Blu Ray, they will come out with some new technology, and Blu Ray will be phased out. Screw that, I'm done. Until the next Kevin James movie. What? I love him.

Yoga was awesome, as usual. Sometimes I'll do a yoga class and I will be sore in places I find surprising. Yesterday I was sore in my shoulder blades. I guess I finally worked those bad boys. Maybe one day I can try a level 2-3 class.

After yoga I drove to Whittier to hang out with my friend Blythe. Blythe and I have been friends since we met in federal district court. During my 3L, I spent one semester externing for a federal district court judge, the Honorable Ronald S.W. Lew, and Blythe was one of his law clerks. The other law clerk was Melanie, and Joe was the second extern. We had a great time working together, and laughed a lot. We are all still friends, even though Melanie and Joe have moved away. The Judge does a law clerk/extern reunion dinner every year, and this year will also be his 70th birthday. A video is being edited together, and Blythe and I couldn't make it to the official taping, so we did a little video together to send in to the videographer, who will no doubt cry from the lameness and maybe use 5-10 seconds of what we send in.

We made several attempts, 3 of which we're sending in and 1 of which we're not. Blythe and I are not exactly movie star materials, and we entertained ourselves by our own lameness. Here's some of the lameness.

In the evening I went to my friend Francesca's 40th birthday gathering. I joined her and a few other great people at La Cachette in Santa Monica. Proceeds from a small silent auction and from bar sales went to the Talbert Family Foundation. This nonprofit's mission is to assist families with children who have cancer and other serious illnesses. Please consider making a donation to this worthy cause. And yes, I donate to about 17 different charities, not including all the friends and co-workers miscellaneous foundations.  And yes, I am asking you to donate to this one, too.

We all got dressed up for this one, and looked lovely. I took pictures with my new iPhone 4. They're not nearly the quality I like, but the phone fit in my tiny purse so that's what worked. Here are some of the pics.

Francesca, the birthday girl, and me.

Dave, Francesca's husband, toasting Francesca's birthday.

With Natalie.

With Fatima.

Meaghan and Adam. You can see part of the baby carriage behind them. They showed up with their 5 week old daughter, who slept through the whole thing.

My good friend Ian.

Francesca and Meaghan.

I drove home after 11pm, SO LATE!, so I turned up the music. At one point I noticed that I had Lady Gaga going so loud that my car was doing the bass vibration thing - an incredibly nerdy thing, as I drive a Prius. But then, I was out till practically dawn, so I thought the hell with it, I'm going to be an obnoxious Prius driver. Until, of course, I got to my neighborhood, when I turned down the music because disturbing people at night is rude, thus fizzling out my bad girl streak.

It's a small world after all

More like, a small baseball world.

Last night, I went to a baseball game at Dodger Stadium. First time this summer. Usually I get to the stadium a little earlier in the season, but frankly the cool weather has been a disincentive. Cesar Chavez Ravine gets mighty chilly at night. Mighty.

From where I was sitting, I could see Zebigboss and his wife in their season ticket seats. So after a few text messages back and forth they spotted me and we waved at each other.

Happy Fourth of July!

Today I went to Izabelle's parents' house in Granada Hills for a July 4th bbq. Izabelle is one of my best friends from law school. I was at (in!) their wedding in Hawaii. (You can read about it here and here, if you like, and even see the whole trip in pictures here.) Today also happens to be Izabelle and Ryan's daughter Joey's second birthday. How perfect is being born on the Fourth of July? It's a national holiday, a party is guaranteed (even if you might not want one), and it's far enough from Christmas that you get presents at both. Everybody wins. Except I don't know where Izabelle and Ryan will put all the stuff, they will need a bigger house, I think, very soon.

Izabelle's family is Filipino, so there  are about 100 of them, plus the spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, kids, friends, "cousins," ohmygod there are always a million cousins, it's awesome. There is always an enormous, overwhelming amount of food. Enormous. Overwhelming. As in, lots of food. More than is needed, even with all those eating, resting to allow their stomach to make more room, and eating again. Oh, don't be so scandalized, you do it too. The house is packed to the gills, as is the outside where a couple of shade tent things were set up. A barbeque of gargantuan proportions probably cooked more or less the equivalent of an entire pig, a half dozen chickens, and a side of cow.

This year's party theme was (patriotic) Mickey Mouse. (Hello, Disney po-po, how's it going?) Very cute. Just a reminder, folks, Disneyland IS the happiest place on earth.

Here I am with Izabelle. She's the one with the Minnie Mouse ears.

Here is little Joey with mom and dad

The cake was awesome, and I must point out that Izabelle made it herself. Well done, Izabelle!


Joey took all the attention in stride, though she did appear surprised that we cheered when she blew out the candle. So cute! And by the way, she's quite tall for a 2 year old.

Natch, Joey was the star of the day, and she was a graceful star at that, not to mention adorable and pretty chilled out.

There was also this cute little girl on a mini-slide that I couldn't resist taking a picture of.

I think it's the little shoes that got me. I mean, come on! Could you die?

Honorable mention goes to Ryan, the Dad, here with his own dad, the Grandpa, for having lost about 90 lbs. Basically it's like he regurgitated a Chinese Olympic gymnast. Or the person who ate him spit him up. Whatever makes you gag the most.

And yes, they had matching t-shirts. Ryan's said "DAD" and his dad's said "GRANDPA" on the back. Yup. The cuteness was pretty maxed out. Disney does not do things half-assed, and neither does Izabelle. They were well matched.

By the way, if you want to see what 90 lbs looks like, go here for an earlier photo of Ryan. This will give you a sense of how impressive this is.

Hope you all had a good Fourth!

Resistance is futile

Late last week, I received a text message from Verizon Wireless alerting me to the fact that I was on my way to going over my monthly minutes. In truth, I paid little attention to it - last time I got such a text, I was about 150 minutes below my limit with only a couple of days to go, so I just didn't worry.

WRONG! (A word of warning, do not ignore those texts.)

Yesterday morning, I donned my cool yellah Jawbone bluetooth gizmo, and started making calls on my way to work. First call in, I get rerouted to Verizon Wireless. I was all, whoa! WTF! My first thought, since I'm a law abiding citizen, was that I mentioned C4 in my conversations a little too much. Dang it, I knew this would happen. The reason I've been mentioning C4 is that I filed a case in the Central Justice courthouse and it was assigned to Dept C-4, but those machine things that listen to key words don't know the difference between C-4 the courtroom and C4 the explosive. Incidentally, if Homeland Security got sucked into this post, sorry, dudes.

Natch, it had nothing to do with any key words in my conversations - Verizon saw fit to stop me from making any further calls because I had already incurred EIGHTY-SIX DOLLARS IN OVERAGES. Holy shit! If they hadn't stopped me my cell phone bill would have run me $300. Ouch. Verizon, bless their hearts, decided not to make me pay said $86, which was entirely within their contractual rights to do, but instead helped me find a new plan that would fit my minutes usage better. Instead of an extra $100+ this month, I'll be paying $10 less than I have been.

Of course, this got me thinking about privacy and the modern digital world. Don't get excited, I didn't have any particularly insightful or original thoughts, although it did not escape my notice that I was somewhat grateful for Big Brother Verizon's intervention. However, I must admit I was conflicted about having my call rerouted. On the one hand, I'm grateful that Verizon saved me from myself. On the other, it struck me that even though I am fully aware that there is very little privacy in this here digital age (especially since I blog and Tweet and Facebook and shop online and can't remember the last time I used my land line at home), I still have an expectation of privacy. My expectation of privacy is that what I write online is not private, but that my phone conversations and text messages are private, and they are intended to be so, and I don't think about it much beyond that.

The question I ask myself is this: is Big Brother already here, with our consent and at our invitation? Or is this simply the modern version of community? Is it an invasion of privacy, or at least a little creepy, that Verizon would hijack my call to have a conversation with me about not wasting my money, or is Verizon part of my community now, a community that is exponentially larger than it was 10 years ago, and that includes all kinds of people who I have never met and who I will never meet, but who contribute to my life in different ways? And does the fact that Verizon is ultimately in it for the money make any difference to the answer to the question? After all, everyone in my life has their own agenda that they pursue, as do I, and our agendas may or may not align, but that does not mean that we are not part of a community and that we do not contribute something to each other.

This query extends to the new privacy settings on Facebook. I read up on the changes, and they do not appear particularly threatening to me. (Incidentally, here is a concise and clear article about what the changes consist of, and how to adjust your settings, courtesy of Nicholas de Wolff and Fast Company.) I have adjusted my privacy settings, and am not particularly concerned about my FB friends knowing what pages I like on the internet, or for that matter about The Internet knowing what pages I like. My surfing and online shopping preferences are no secret to anyone. Besides, Facebook is free. There are trade-offs.

Which brings me to another point: are they really trade-offs? Facebook is a social networking site, emphah-sis on social. Its entire premise, its raison d'etre if you will, is for its members to be all up in each other's business. I mean, that's the point, right? And for folks who do not want to be public, they can simply avoid updates or really much activity at all and then they can choose to contact their friends offline or by email or whatever. The point is, is it fair or even reasonable to be on a huge social networking site, be active on it daily, and then expect to have privacy?

I do see that there is a distinction between privacy as to your friends, and privacy as to commercial establishments that want your business. However, I also think that we are smart enough to be able to treat our friends and businesses differently.

So I guess my point is this: that whether I feel that my privacy is invaded or that my community has expanded to fit modern life is largely a matter of perception. I for one lean towards believing that my community has expanded. But then, I don't have much of a sense of privacy, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask.

How you can REALLY help in your Los Angeles community

In these tough economic times, when cities are rolling back their operating budgets, this innovative City of Los Angeles program needs people: The Crisis Response Team (CRT) Volunteer Program.

Here's how the program is described:

What is the Crisis Response Team?

The Crisis Response Team is a citywide volunteer program coordinated through the Mayor's Office.

As a volunteer member of the Crisis Response Team (C-R-T) you are activated by the Los Angeles Police and Fire Departments to provide immediate on-scene crisis intervention, emotional support and referrals to victims and their families involved in a traumatic incident such as:

Major Traffic Accidents	Homicides
Death Notification Assistance	Multi-Casualty Incidents
Drive-by Shootings	Natural Deaths
Fires	Suicides

The training is from January 27 through March 12, 2009, Tuesday and Thursday evenings 6:30-9:30. If you go to the link provided above, you can get all the info necessary and download the application.