Saturday, December 6, 2008

The best story ever.

me: so I'm in Huntsville and I went to a restaurant with my friend Amy after we finished eating we figured we'd head to the bar to have a cocktail
there was this guy sitting next to me and he started talking with me, engaging in somewhat flirtatious and sarcastic banter
Orshi: lol, i'm not surprised :)
me: at one point i said something and he was like "I would just topple you right off the barstool." and I said "that would not only be rude, but rather injurious." he said "Injurious is not a word."
Orshi: haha love that comment
me: I said "yes, it definitely is"
now to give background, he's been out here on business travel for a year, all expenses paid, he gets more money than we do. just so you know.
(expenses including his $1500 share of rent on his Manhattan apartment)
Orshi: wow
me: so anyways we argue a bit and he's like "I would bet $1000 (i typed that right) that injurious is not a word"
I said "You're on."
because i know, without a doubt, it's a word.
Orshi: NICE
me: a girl at the end of the bar had an iPhone
she looked it up online and said "It's definitely a word." She read the definition from Webster's.
I told him to go to an ATM.
He said that he would pay for $1,000 for me in drinks.
Orshi: dumbass
me: I facetiously said "Well, unless we get out a bottle of Dom Perignon I don't think that would happen"
(I really just thought of the most expensive alcohol I could)
the bartender went to the refrigerator and pulled out what I later found was a $246 bottle of Dom Perignon.
Orshi: holy cow
me: Now before anything was opened, I felt I needed to clear the air.
So I said, "I feel like I just need to say, so I'm totally above board here, that I do have a boyfriend. I don't want to lead you on."
He was like "OK. Open it up"
So me, this guy, my friend, and the waitress all shared a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.
Orshi: nice
me: I AM AWESOME.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Little holes.

I'm in a hotel room in Huntsville, Alabama. It's dark and chilly outside, and the room is only slightly disturbed by my presence. I've got some purchases spread on the bed and a few pieces of clothing draped over chairs to prevent wrinkling from sitting in the suitcase. All the sundries litter the vanity counter, in my typical disorganized way. A CD is playing to break the silence -- not one of my favorites, I've decided, but for its purpose, it'll do just fine.

The connection here is only wired, so I need to sit a desk that's too high up. I have to take periodic computer breaks so my hands can get some blood again, regain some warmth. I'm wearing the same jacket I've worn the past four days; after several business trips, you learn that kind of unfashionable efficiency.

I've only been gone from home for a few days, but after learning a life that constantly enjoys company, it's an adjustment to go back to this amount of alone time. I struggle to find things to do on this workless weekend. I've done all the Christmas shopping my suitcase will allow; I watched the new James Bond, and I liked it, but so far no one can discuss it with me.

There are different kinds of acquaintances you make while on business travel. You develop a rapport with the bartender, since he's the only person you talk to while sitting at the bar, eating your meal for one. Of course, they're experts in this kind of conversation, those quick and fleeting connections you cling to in the absence of people dear to you. Yes, you start talking too long to almost everyone -- your bartenders, yes, but your waiters, your store clerks, people in line, even the people you've just met at work, trying to feel something with someone.

These are the times you know what it means to miss someone. It's only been a few days, of course, but it's a slight glimpse into that emptiness you feel when you are removed from the person whose company is most valuable to you.

You go from sharing to having everything to yourself, just left to wondering as to what his thoughts would be. You drink your wine, wondering what he'd think of it. You wear an outfit and wonder if he'd like it today. You hear a song, recalling how it's tied to a certain memory you created with him. You do something rather silly and fill in what kind of joke he'd make about it.

These are the nuances of love. Yes, there's the longing to be held and to hold, to feel the person's presence and hear them, to enjoy holding hands and kisses and the smell and skin and silent moments when you take time to just BE. But it's in the small things that you really miss someone. It's those moments when, because of love, because of knowing that person in that intimate way, you feel it profoundly when those mundane moments are gone.

He's not worried about if we need to take separate cars to work or if we can carpool. I'm not getting something for dinner because I'm not there to cook it and because I don't even know what he wants for dinner. He'll handle that himself. He's taking care of himself. We're taking care of ourselves right now.

And as much as it bristles against my independent state of mind (or perhaps just my stubborn nature), that interdependency of love is part of why we crave it. There are things we need from each other. There is a need FOR each other. Love is giving up part of your self-sufficiency, not in a way that's harmful to the soul, but rather, feeds the soul by giving it more than you ever could by yourself.

These are the little holes of the soul, those dark spots that want the other so much, the pinpricks that are tiny and not disabling, but hurt all the same, the smile that isn't as big as it could be and the days that you'd rather hurry through than savor.

Yes, we all want our time to ourselves, and I definitely take that time. But when you're home and when he's home, you can choose when that time ends. Here I have no choice; I am my company, I'm my friend, I'm all I've got. Sometimes, you don't want to be all you've got.

For me it's easy; in a few days I return home and I get to resume (for a while) my life with the one I love. But it's definitely not that easy for many. There are those whose spouses have to be away for much longer, whose loves have made the decision to leave, whose partners in life have departed this world, and for them, this is much more than this small sadness I possess. And from the very partial way that I can relate, I know no words of mine truly help.

I suppose I write this to try to capture the ineffeable; it's what I try to do a lot. The heart is always striving to say something but lacks the capacity, and I try to give it voice as much as possible through my words. Right now, my heart hurts a little bit.

I think it's really just trying to say that it misses you, love.

Monday, September 29, 2008

The language of obfuscation

ob·fus·cate
1 a: darken b: to make obscure
2: confuse intransitive verb: to be evasive, unclear, or confusing

I'm pretty uneducated when it comes to the world of finance. I can't explain the terminology. Once the terminology is defined for me, I still can't understand it. The words used in the finance world are like a layer cake of confusing.

I think it's intentional. And I think it's how the muckety-mucks on Wall Street have been able to pull this snow-job on all of us.

Take these paragraphs, which are designed to CLEAR UP the issue. I'm not stupid, really. But attempt to wrap your brain around this:

"We all know about the subprime crisis. That's part of the problem, as banks and institutions are now having to write off a lot of bad loans. The second part of the problem is a little more complex. Because we were running a huge trade deficit, countries all over the world were selling us goods and taking our dollars. They in turn invested those excess dollars in US bonds, helping to drive down interest rates. It became easy to borrow money at low rates. Banks, and what Paul McCulley properly called the Shadow Banking System, used that ability to borrow and dramatically leverage up those bad loans (when everyone thought they were good), as it seemed like easy money. They created off-balance-sheet vehicles called Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) and put loans and other debt into them. They then borrowed money on the short-term commercial paper market to fund the SIVs and made as profit the difference between the low short-term rates of commercial paper and the higher long-term rates on the loans in the SIV. And if a little leverage was good, why not use a lot of leverage and make even more money? Everyone knew these were AAA-rated securities.
And then the music stopped. It became evident that some of these SIVs contained subprime debt and other risky loans. Investors stopped buying the commercial paper of these SIVs. Large banks were basically forced to take the loans and other debt in the SIVs back onto their balance sheets last summer as the credit crisis started. Because of a new accounting rule (called FASB 157), banks had to mark their illiquid investments to the most recent market price of a similar security that actually had a trade. Over $500 billion has been written off so far, with credible estimates that there might be another $500 billion to go. That means these large banks have to get more capital, and it also means they have less to lend. "


-- Who's Afraid of a Big, Bad Bailout? by John Mauldin, September 26, 2008, Frontline Weekly Newsletter

I kind of get it. That's the best I can do. I understand that every industry has their language, but this is language that affects us, that we need to know. I'm not even sure what "illiquid investments" means...OK, update, it was just explained to me (something you can't sell off quickly).

Language is power. There's the language that unites and divides and conquers. There's language that says love and hate, peace and war, life and death. And there's the language of obfuscation, the terms and words that are meant to hide their true meaning. It seems counterintuitive...to develop words that don't serve the function of passing knowledge. But again...language is power. And owning the language that defines what you do -- it enables you to sweep ugliness under a linguistic rug.

That's what Wall Street has done. They've essentially developed a hundred ways to say "stinking-pile-of-crap investments" and to hide that sanitized terminology under other, even friendlier labels.

Even now, the public resistance to a bail-out is largely due to the muddled language. If you could explain to me, the common person, in a clear way, that "Investment bank failure -> commercial bank failure -> economic failure -> your own economic failure" -- well, we wouldn't have much public resistance, methinks.

But they've built up such semantic walls so the common person CAN'T understand the mechinations that, at a time when we DO need to be aware of how these lofty problems affect us plebes, we are hesitant. Hesitant to help those who have profited from our ignorance, and parlayed our desires into the trough from which their greed feeds.

Their ruin will mean our ruin, but we aren't hurting enough yet for that lesson to hit. It's like having excessive problems with your gall bladder, and being told you need a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. You react. "What? What does that mean? Why would I need that? It sounds expensive!" and you balk and hesitate until someone says "It's a procedure to remove your gallbladder."

But no one is explaining in these real terms. And that's why we're teetering on the brink of total collapse.

I'm someone who loves words and turns of phrase, and I get frustrated when these supposed vehicles of understanding are turned against me. There's a lot of reform that's needed, but perhaps, in the wave of new rules that will surely result from this mess, we should add a clause in there to make the language clear and honest.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Sushi night!

We didn't know we were starting a tradition. But we did, and how those little things in a relationship make all the difference.

When my boyfriend and I first started dating -- literally, within the first few days -- we went to this little sushi place in King of Prussia. It was inexpensive, with slow service, scalding hot tea, and pretty good sushi. Later, when I subjected him to (and even later, when he anticipated) watching The Office, sushi grew to Sushi and the Office night. I also subjected him to Grey's Anatomy, which he did not willingly comply with at all, but that's beside the point.

We did that the entire time we spent back East. And when I moved out here, we continued it at an even better sushi place. Now, we're regulars. The waitress knows us, the sushi chef knows us, and I think he's getting a jump start on our order once we walk in, since it seems to come faster. I've never been a regular before, anywhere. It's a nice feeling, particularly in a place that still doesn't have the years-long familiarity I once knew.

It's a reminder of our early dating days; it's a tradition; it's something we can rely on; it's something we've even involved his daughter in (she LOVES it). We've brought family there, and spent nights, just the two of us, enjoying this one little bit of togetherness and ritual. Yes, cold fish CAN bring you closer.

So yeah, I love sushi night. And I'm stoked The Office comes back next week.