When we are grown ups.

There have been times throughout my life when I asked the question "Am I grown up?" When do we actually become individuals who maintain lifestyles that could be considered "adult"? I guess the legal age of "grown up" is 18. But I certainly was not an adult at that age. I certainly was not an adult through college. I think I pretended to be an adult mostly through the first two years of law school. I was still learning the lessons and the makings of being a real individual. I had some knock downs and always got back up. All through this time my decisions generally only affected me.

I think this weekend I learned when we become real life grownups. It's when you recognize the actions you take have consequences for more than just you the individual. It isn't the fun realization you imagine when you're sixteen and think your life is going to be all fun and games until your 110th birthday when you fall asleep and die peacefully. The hardest part of realizing this is that sometimes you have to consider the outcome of another before choosing what you want. Sometimes what you want is not the right choice. What makes a strong adult is someone who chooses the "right" thing even if it isn't popular or fun. As I initially explained in my first entry, you are what you do. Sometimes that is hard to accept. I choose to accept this reality and choose to continuously pursue the right path. I might fail sometimes but will pick myself up and return to what I know is the right way. These choices are hard and will continue to be harder as our actions and decisions grow layers and sometimes the right answer isn't always easy to see. Or for me, I can justify pretty much anything if I try hard enough.

As far as the weekend update. A couple of us ladies at my office painted BabyInTheCorner's kitchen Friday and Saturday. I had a really good time. Something about manual labor puts things in perspective. Last night I went to a friend of a friend's surprise birthday party. Funny small world story about that. This friend of a friend is actually my Stalkerbook friend. Stalkerbook makes the world seem so connected it is creepy. It was pretty cool to meet someone I had interacted with on the world wide web but never in person. And who says the internet makes us antisocial? Most of the people there had all known each other from high school. That was pretty amazing. It was a really good time. (Until the toilets plugged up- true story.) My Russian Friend introduced me to sweet tea and lemonade. YUM.

Hope you all had a fab weekend. I promise, health care blog tomorrow!

Life is good in SD.

Hello all! Hope you had a great weekend. Awesome time with my Dad. As some of you know, I'm gearing up for a big change in my life and it was nice to enjoy the dwindling weekends of freedom!

Sunday I spent some time with PrettyKitty and Cdizz at our place, Wine Steals. We are officially "regulars" and even have our own rewards cards! Nice times chatting up about life. One lesson from Sunday- sometimes people will never be what you think they should. It's a hard lesson to learn. Take people at face value, because generally their actions are who they are. In the case of this individual, I'll do some additional recon, but don't expect him to meet the expectations I had.

Looking forward to then next weekend already. BabyInTheCorner and I are embarking on some home improvement. Friday I will be helping redo some kitchen cabinets and then Saturday painting. I'll be bringing a massive country playlist and some vodka iced teas for us to enjoy while we slave away. I'm also going to attempt to look moderately not hideous...I don't think impressing men and home improvement generally go together, but it might at least make a good fail at dating round 1 million story for me.

Anyone else thoroughly enjoying this fabulous weather of our great city? I think I'll head out to Mecca for a while...until then- keep the faith.

people with bad credit...a protected class?

Good morning all!

Two mornings ago, I was happily enjoying my daily cup of coffee and WSJ when I was rudely interrupted by a story in the "Personal Journal" section (the most skimmable section in my opinion) about individuals not able to obtain certain jobs because their poor credit rules them out. I thought not too much of it other than sour grapes until I ventured further into the article. Congress is actually considering making a law that would restrict employers from using credit checks to make hiring decisions.

This involvement by Congress bothers me on so many levels. Firstly, free markets people. Employers should be able to use whatever methods they deem appropriate to determine if an individual should be hired. Imagine if an investment firm could not consider employees' credit before they let them advise clients on money management. Secondly, poor credit is a result of individual circumstances and choices. Congress' involvement will only punish those who strive to act financially responsible and protect many who have failed to build credit by going through life behaving irresponsibly. Credit is determined by behavior of an individual and is not a benign physical trait such as hair color or skin color. Thus, Congress should not act to essentially make them a protected class (so accurately described by my Protege!). I swear, we are headed to (as Satan so kindly help me coin): Hell in a handbasket on a rocketship with napalm.

In other news: Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I'm currently in the process of charting my rejections on eharmony. I think it would make a fabulous demonstration to represent my fail rate in a graph (x = time, y = number of rejections). Now, when I log into eharmony I pray for more rejections so that my graph can be that much more dramatic. Not really helping my dating situation, but eh- I paid, and I think any entertainment I can get out of it helps me get my money's worth.

Going to Hooleys tonight for the Irish day celebration. BabyInTheCorner and my Protege and their respective significant others will hopefully join us. I love that my coworkers are cool chickas but they really deserve their own blog at some point.