J.D., finally

The long road to law school graduation:

June 2008: Parents and in-laws (who insisted on the ceremony in the first place) descend on Cambridge with cameras. I put on my cap and gown and walk across the stage to receive my empty diploma folder. People who don't know me well say "Congratulations" and I smile and nod. Back at work the next day, people ask where I was and I tell them I was at my pretend graduation.

September 2008: Back to school.

December 2008: Done with school! Big milestone for me. Having been through the cap-and-gown graduation, nobody in my family cares.

February 2009: Start work at The Firm. I tell people that I recently "finished" law school. When pressed for graduation details by a few people, I have to admit that "finished" doesn't actually mean "graduated."

March 2009: Finally, I get the piece of paper.


The same day, I start my bar exam application. Believe it or not, I am eager to take the bar exam. When people ask what I do, I want to be able to say "attorney" with no asterisk.

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Special occasion

K missed his bedtime for the second time EVER (the first time was just a few weeks ago, for a relative's birthday party). He didn't care. He got to eat cake.

And we got to be in the room with the man himself, Dan Pawson, while his on-screen past self become the Ultimate Jeopardy Champion! It was hilarious to see Becca matter-of-factly point at the TV and say, "Daddy." Congratulations, Mr. PBB!

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My first securities filing

I did my first securities filings last week!

(You can tell you're still in the honeymoon phase of your job when you get excited over email from the SEC.)

It was a little frustrating because everything got done at the last minute, so I was sweating over each delay in the process. And of course, I couldn't anticipate the points of delay, having never done this before.

So here's what I learned:

1. Immediately after the closing, figure out exactly what needs to be filed with the SEC and states. For state blue sky stuff, look in the giant books. Do not rely on the Internet.

2. Fill out a preliminary version of all documents, resolving any questions that come up.

3. Gather everything that needs the client's signature and send it to them in a packet.

4. Fill out electronic versions of the SEC documents and any state documents that require electronic filing. You can save them without submitting, so that later you can go back and just submit when you're ready.

5. When in doubt, call the securities agency and ask for help.

I have to thank Linda Babcock for #5. At one point, I needed SEC approval for a form I submitted before I could move on. I called up and they told me it should get done by the end of the day. A previous version of me would have thanked them, hung up, and bitten my nails praying it would get done on time. Instead, I told them I needed it done right away and asked if they could expedite the process. The guy said, "Hold on," and then came back and said they could do it in an hour. When an hour passed and nothing happened, I called again. The woman I talked to sounded annoyed, BUT she made sure that it was processed immediately, while we were on the phone. Asking for what you need: what a concept.

Now that I've done it once, I feel much more confident about the next time.

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Sunday cooking

I've been obsessed with Smitten Kitchen lately, and today I made two Smitten-inspired recipes.

For breakfast, we had lemon-ricotta pancakes. I could never resist ordering ricotta pancakes I saw them on a brunch menu (past tense because, post-baby, I can't remember when we've gone out for brunch). I tried making them once but they turned out flat and soggy. These were perfect, thanks to the Smitten pancake 101 technique. Usually I'm impatient and try to flip too early, but this time I held back. Three minutes on one side, two minutes on the other, and they were golden-brown, round, and guest-worthy.

Speaking of guest-worthy brunches, we didn't have this today, but last weekend I brought home fresh mesclun greens (or mescaline, as served by the more psychedelic restaurants) and ate them topped with an egg gently cooked in ikra. If you don't happen to have an Armenian grocery in your neighborhood, a similar stewed tomato-eggplant-pepper-onion mixture would work. It was delicious, and would have been even better with the greens lightly tossed with vinaigrette. In fact, this plus the pancakes and some sliced fresh fruit would be just about the perfect brunch. Maybe with some fresh bread too.

For dinner I made a variation of this pumpkin soup. I chopped up an onion and two shallots and sauteed them in olive oil with four cloves of garlic (actually little frozen cubes of garlic, since I was trying to keep K occupied while I was cooking). I dumped in a big spoonful of cumin, an undrained can of TJ's organic black beans, half a can of diced tomatoes, a can of pumpkin puree, and 2 cups of beef broth, and let it simmer for a little while. Part of the way through I added some chopped scallions and corn. At the end, I stirred in the juice of half a lemon. I toasted some pumpkin seeds, which we sprinkled on top along with a dollop of fat-free sour cream and the green part of the scallions. I didn't bother to puree it, and it was a nice Southwestern-tasting chunky soup, and totally healthy. The pumpkin taste wasn't really noticeable. I would definitely make this again, maybe with baked tortillas or quesadillas on the side.

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Grapefruit yogurt cake

I was going to work out, but instead I baked a cake.

I blame the New York Times. I was being industrious and looking up something work-related when the NYT wedding announcement of one of our clients popped up, so of course I had to go look at that, and then they had their list of frequently emailed articles on the side, and one thing led to another.

So I made Ina Garten's lemon yogurt cake, but with grapefruit zest instead of lemon because ever since making grapefruit pancakes a few weeks ago I have fallen in love with grapefruit. (Except, after tasting it, I think it would have been better with lemon.)

Dorie Greespan has almost the same recipe, and I borrowed her technique of rubbing the zest and sugar together. I decreased the sugar to a little under 3/4 cup, but I used superfine sugar because it was all I had on hand, and I decreased the olive oil to 1/3 cup.

This was a lovely light-tasting cake to eat warm out of the oven. When it came out, I just wanted to pick up the little golden-brown loaf and eat it like a sandwich. It wasn't terribly unhealthy, and the best part was that it came together in under ten minutes, dirtying only a few measuring cups, one bowl, and one spatula. (I didn't bother to separate wet and dry ingredients, just dumped everything in. And I didn't whisk, and the batter was lumpy, but the cake turned out fine.)

I confessed to JW that I used up some yogurt that expired in February and a really old YoBaby in this recipe, and he said, "Yogurt is already bad. That's the whole point of yogurt."

The next day the cake was still good, but seemed more dense and moist. A little slice was plenty. And the olive oil seemed more pronounced in a way I didn't really like. I wonder if a neutral oil mixed with a nut oil, like grapeseed and walnut, would work. Next time we have unexpected visitors and I want to whip up something using pantry ingredients, I'll try a variation.

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Bostonian's lament

Warning! I am about to commit two cardinal sins of blogging: (1) whining (2) about the weather.

I lasted until mid-March, but now I'm calling it. I am officially sick of being cold. I'm tired of wearing three layers indoors, tired of my eyes watering and nose running when I stay outside too long, tired of jogging in place in the shower. I have not been warm in months. I NEED TO BE WARM. Not "warm for winter," not "warm as long as you keep moving," not "the thermostat says it's seventy degrees, what are you complaining about?" Just WARM.

In law school it would always annoy me when people complained about how much Boston sucked compared to where they were from. If the weather/nightlife/Mexican food is so much better in Texas or California, maybe you should have STAYED there. It's not like someone put a gun to your head and forced you to come to Boston. But at the tail end of winter each year, a little voice in my head wonders if we were crazy to ever move back here.

One weekend, when JW and I were living in San Francisco years ago, we went down to the South Bay to visit friends. As we walked through a park on a bright 78-degree day, I said, "I forgot how big a difference the sun makes! I always felt so happy when I lived down here." JW gave me the cold shoulder until I asked him what was wrong and he exploded, "You went on and on about how much happier you were before I moved here!" I felt terrible. I had phrased it carelessly, but of course your level of life happiness is different than the mood you're in when you wake up in the morning. My life was much better when JW and I ditched the long-distance and he moved out west to be with me. My life is great right now. But I have to say, on a daily basis, I have never been in a consistently better mood than when I lived in a place where it was warm and sunny nearly every day, and I could step outside (without a coat on) and be in a park within five minutes.

(P.S. - This is my 1,000th post!)

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Pinkeye

I may have yelled at K more this weekend than I have in his whole life. I'm usually pretty good with the gentle discipline, but when the child is trying to kick you as hard as he can while simultaneously yanking a poop-filled diaper out from underneath him, it's not the best time for a discussion about consequences.

After a contentious weekend, I was relieved when Monday rolled around. I wiped K's goopy eye, ignored JW when he said, "Are you sure he can go to daycare? His eye looks bad!" and attempted to drop him off anyway. I'm not winning Mother of the Year for that one, but at least I had the decency to turn right around and take him home when Mrs. Daycare apologetically said he couldn't stay. (Although she also mentioned that at least one other kid was home with pinkeye, so I think the contagion ship has sailed.)

I steeled myself for another day of fighting with a cranky toddler who couldn't go anywhere for fear of contaminating other kids, and fretted about missing work (damn you, billable hours!).

But K was perfect all day. His eye didn't seem to bother him at all. We hung out at home, ate popcorn, danced to "Particle Man," drew pictures of snowmen, looked at engines on the computer, and spent about twenty minutes running up and down the driveway. He stayed calm through FOUR poopy diaper changes, remained within five feet of me and didn't attempt to eat or destroy anything during a long wait at the pharmacy, and brushed his teeth voluntarily. He even suffered through three applications of eye ointment without a single tear.

By the end of the day, I started to envy stay-at-home parents. (By the way, I love this column about stay-at-home moms.) But I was still happy that JW had agreed to be on baby duty the next day so I could go to work.

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Symphony in ABC

Q, R, S, T, U, V, Double-Y, and... Z!

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Two things I learned in the past two days

1. Vermouth is wine! All this time I thought it was nonalcoholic.

2. You can graduate from an unaccredited law school and still become a lawyer in certain jurisdictions. (Did I say I went to Harvard Law? I meant Herbert Law.)

I learned this after looking up the Massachusetts School of Law. I kept hearing its president, Lawrence Velvel, quoted in the media. He wrote a letter on behalf of his group of Madoff victims, arguing that the "little people" like him, individuals who had put their life savings in Bernie Madoff's hands, deserved restitution. And all I could think of was, sure, I sympathize (although I question their judgment in putting their entire life savings in one place), but you run an unaccredited law school. Isn't that basically a scam too? But it turns out that Mass Law graduates do get a J.D. and are eligible to take the bar in Massachusetts or Connecticut after they graduate. The school is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, even though it's not accredited by the ABA. At $15K a year, less than half the price of all the ABA-accredited schools in the state, I can understand the appeal.

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Things we have eaten

Some things we've cooked lately:

Basic seared scallops from Joy of Cooking. Dredge 3/4 pound of scallops in 1.5T flour + salt + marjoram, sear in a little olive oil over medium-high heat for 3 minutes on each side, remove from pan. Reduce 1/2 cup white wine (we used vermouth for the kid's sake) and 2t balsamic vinegar in the same pan to make a sauce.

The verdict: This was pretty basic, but easy and quick, and scallops are always good. For the longest time I thought I didn't like them because I had only had them in my college cafeteria, where they used the tiny ones and cooked them to the consistency of pencil erasers. Next time I'd use white wine for real (K refused to eat more than a little piece anyway) and add a squeeze of lemon and maybe some herbs to the sauce.

Crockpot pulled pork. Rubbed a 2-pound pork roast with a spice rub (S&P, chili powder, ancho chile powder, oregano, allspice, paprika, cumin, possibly other stuff). Sliced up an onion, threw it in the bottom, put the pork on top, poured over about 2/3 cup Stubb's barbecue sauce. Cooked all day.

The verdict: Very good, especially for 5 minutes of prep time. Next time I'd make about 4T spice rub and use 2 onions (and maybe a clove or two of garlic?) and 2 cups of barbecue sauce. Browning the meat would be good, but it was fine without it.

Cheese muffins. Omitted the sugar and added a little sour cream per the reviews, and used a bunch of different cheeses from the fridge.

The verdict: Pretty good. Easy, nice change from the usual dinner starches, and the leftovers were good heated in the toaster oven. I'd make these again, or some variation.

Kale and white bean soup, from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. Canned tomatoes, beans, broth; lots of kale added at the end.

The verdict: In its original incarnation, not so good. Kale took about 2 hours to cook instead of the 10 minutes the recipe said, and there was way too much of it. We were hungry so we basically ended up eating bowls of raw kale. Incarnation #2 was better: turned it into a sauce with turkey sausage and more tomato puree, red wine, etc. Incarnation #3 was the best: ground up #2 to make a faux bolognese. But still, I'd only make this again if I seriously couldn't think of anything else to do with kale, or wanted a kale-based tomato sauce.

And new restaurants we've tried:

Guru the Caterer. YUM. Probably the best Indian food we've had around here, homestyle, fresh, cheap. Perfect takeout option when we're near Powderhouse Square.

Salts. Good food, beautiful presentation (with lots of cylinders), but didn't blow me away. I'd rather go to Craigie at the same price point. Anyway, it was fun to have a rare night out with friends.

On the to-try list: Silk Road BBQ in Belmont, Pho 'n' Rice in Somerville.

Update in case anyone comes here searching for Silk Road: We've gotten takeout from there twice now. The guy who runs the stand is really nice, and makes a mean skewer. We have tried the pork, chicken, and lamb kofte, and the three sides of tzatziki, sesame carrot salad, and shepard's salad. I'm not a pork lover, but JW and I agreed the pork (a special that day) was the best. The chicken was the perfect combination of charred on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside. I didn't get to eat a ton of the lamb kofte, because both times K kept demanding "Mo' meatball!" Prices are reasonable at about $10 for a platter (with rice and a side), $5 for a single skewer. Portions aren't huge -- three meals plus a hot dog worked well for the three of us (two adults, one toddler, all hungry), with K eating the hot dog and about half the lamb.

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In the past 2 weeks...

K turned 2, had a party with a duck cake and babies running around. He's like me -- he needs to take breaks from parties. So every half hour or so, he asked to go to bed and hung out in his crib reading books for a few minutes before heading back to the party.

K also had his doctor's appointment. He's 33 inches, 24 1/2 pounds. Didn't start yelling until after I started to take off his clothes, an improvement over last time. He can switch to low-fat dairy and won't have another shot until he's 5.

I had my first closing, after over a week of being at work until 10-11 at night. I didn't think I would, but I actually like deal work! (Not that there's a whole lot of it to go around these days.)

I called up the Department of Education and told them that the notice of deferment they sent me was a mistake, and that I actually should be repaying my loans. The guy just seemed confused. He changed my repayment date to May, even though I already started paying back in February. Whatever. As long as they don't think I'm defrauding them.

I read and liked Ask for It: How Women Can Use Negotiation to Get What They Really Want by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. Their main point is that regardless of their skills at negotiation, it doesn't even occur to women to ask for things. The book is aimed at getting you to rethink what is negotiable in your life, and to ask for things that you don't necessarily think you can get. It repeatedly attributes the disparity in salary between men and women doing the same job to the fact that men are vastly more likely to negotiate their salary up front and ask for larger bonuses each year, while women often take what they can get, or negotiate up front but assume that bonuses are handed out using some objective criteria. The message resonated with me. The book had so many stories about women complaining that they were treated unfairly, when in fact the reason that men had received better treatment was that they had asked for it and the women hadn't.

Time is at a premium these days. LL, I don't know how you have the spare time to take up photography and read historical fiction and blog every other day! When I do have a free hour at home, all I want to do is sit on the couch with JW and watch TV. Nothing that requires even the slightest use of my brain. (Which, sadly, includes blogging.)

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