Um. Yes, I suppose that needs an explanation.

We stopped in to a wine tasting at a small shop, just another thing I like about Charlotte. By the chardonnay, we’d exchanged the Massachusetts liberal secret handshake with the group next to us.

One woman had been an English major, such a fan of Pride and Prejudice that she once convinced her husband to read it to her. Only once, though, because he skipped parts. Which was instantly obvious to anyone who really loves Jane Austen, of course, and I knew just how she felt, since I once read a copy of Pride and Prejudice with typos. Her husband and Stick immediately wandered off to talk about football, and possibly the horrors of living with a woman who tries to take an interest by cheering for the correct color.

The two women were lawyers and now professors of law at a local college. After a mutual rant on text message-speak slipping into students’ essays, they told me they’d recently been to an out-of-town conference in a city that was also home to a historical plantation house, surrounded by local legend.

“Amy and I had a whole day to relax before the conference,” she said,  ”and you know what she did? She dragged me to the Registry of Deeds.” (Please note: I had no idea there was a physical registry of deeds. I forget that sometimes you have to go to your information, instead of it coming to you.)

“Where we looked up the house.”

“And we found the deed.”

“Which was an irregular lawyer-babble lawyer-babble entailed on the heirs as a lawyer-babble!”

“And we did the happy dance.”

“The Registry of Deeds happy dance.”

Look, I’m still not entirely sure if the heirs owned the property and let the historical society use it, or if the heirs has defaulted and the society had picked up the slack, but I do know that I want the Registry of Deeds happy dance. I want to do something so interesting that I want to do it on my days off.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

The Registry of Deeds

Now I get it.

It is NOVEMBER and I still don’t need a coat. For Stick, it’s T-shirt weather, but even for those of us who like having circulation in our extremities, it’s cute sweater weather. In Massachusetts, in November we’d be scraping frost off the windshield every morning and bundling up in layers of winter gear and hoping that the car will start.

If this is November weather, then maybe by December it’ll be cold enough to wear my scarf collection! Without a coat!

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

In Which I Am British, And Talk About The Weather

Anything to avoid a trip to the DMV!  It’s also good because if you miss the October 10th deadline for regular voter registration, you can get a second chance to vote at the walk-in early voting between October 19th and the Saturday before election day. (Not sure how they came up with that time period) The locations and opening hours for special early voting in Wake County are listed here, I don’t really know the rules of other counties. Because early, walk-in voting goes on for a couple weeks, I don’t expect any election-day crowds.

Just in case my Twitter buddy Barack is reading, I would parallel park for you too, but now I won’t have to!

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Voter Registration

Everything negative that Hilary and the republicans said about Obama’s lack of experience backfired with me. Probably not just me, probably other people disappointed by entry-level jobs and looking wistfully at the positions available to those with more experience. (Am I the only person who cringes at those success stories about slowly working one’s way from minimum-wage mail clerk all the way up to management? I’m not, am I? Tell me a lifetime of waiting for a promotion makes you feel just a little bit dead inside, too.) I think references to Obama’s lack of experience just make a stronger connection to twentysomethings.

Obama’s really made an “us” feeling with this references to growing up struggling, working while in school, and so forth. It would be great at any time to see an alternative to rich old men, but it’s even sharper focus with McCain’s recent goof about the number of houses he owns. That was an unlucky soundbite for McCain, but there’s just no “us” connection with someone who’s got so much stuff he can’t keep track of it all. I know Obama isn’t exactly struggling to put gas in his car now, but he’s been broke in his life. When I mentioned this to Stick, he said that he doesn’t feel connected to McCain even though they were both in the military because McCain was an officer.* And beyond Obama’s message, his use of texting, blogging and Facebook really shows a level of connection to everyday people** and not faceless corporations, without going the faux-folksy Bush route.

I know that an election race is 99% show, but I’m thrilled to see a candidate who cares to put on the show for twentysomethings. I’m a bit worried about whether the Facebook-friending college-age crowd will actually register to vote and show up at the polls, though.

*Hope it doesn’t ruin my feminist rant to add “And my boyfriend thinks…” in the middle.

** Everyday people  = Blog and twitter nerds

Related: My last political rant was Parallel Parking For Kerry.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Oligatory Election Comments

My license is both expired and out-of-state, which isn’t exactly the ideal state of things, so I didn’t expect the first person who picked up the phone at the Department of Motor Vehicles to know what I needed. But after speaking to several people who had no idea what I’d need to do and weren’t particularly inclined to find out, I started to wonder if everyone else times their international travel with their license expiration. The phone recording told me several times that they are experiencing heavy call volume, aren’t any of those folks calling about an expired license? Is it one of those things that everyone else gets right, and only I do wrong?

It was looking more and more like the only way to find out what I’d need to do was to gather all the paperwork I might need, and go down to the DMV in person, where I couldn’t be put on hold.  I called my dad.

“Dad? Are you busy?”

“I’m keeping my congregation from throwing each other to the lions right now,” (Note: This is not exactly word-for-word what he said. I think he said something less about lions and more about being in a meeting) “Do you need something?”

“Can you take me to the DMV tomorrow* to get my license renewed? And stand around in lines all day to see unhelpful people?”

“Ok. I’ll even wear my clerical collar, maybe we won’t get anyone really nasty.”

I knew being the pastor’s daughter was eventually going to work out for me!

*Before we left, though, I found out that I need to have my driving records mailed from Massachusetts, which is a bit of a pain but at least it’s an answer. And then I need to present my records, my 6 forms of ID and my self at the DMV, so I’m still scheduled for a day waiting in line.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

The Pastor’s Daughter

I’m so happy to be back in an English-speaking country that I’ve become the chatty person you hope to avoid. Hi! How are you? How’s your day? How’s the weather been? How’s business? Do you like working here? Which is better, the strawberry margarita or the mojito? What do you think of this phone?

Being suddenly half of a couple is even weirder. Fortunately, being broke, looking for housing, looking for work to afford said housing, having one car (and I’m not on the insurance until we get a permanent address), reactivating everything that we closed when we left the States, totally takes the focus off any reacquainting awkwardness.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Culture Shock, Girlfriend Shock

Stick’s plane to Beijing is now more than seven hours late, so he’s missed the last flight to Yantai by about 4 1/2 hours. That means I won’t see him until he arrives in Yantai tomorrow… seventeen hours late.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Seventeen Hours Late

I drink coffee and read every morning, annotating my Chinese history book with crossreferences to Roman customs and notes about life in Yantai. And I write, which I thought was a solitary activity, but actually improves by reading passages aloud. Without Fresca, if I should happen to swear at the complexity of a particular Chinese character, no one will ask if I’ve hurt myself walking into the glass table again.

I’m afraid this is exactly how those guys in Goodbye, Mr. Chips and To Serve Them All My Days started, and soon I’ll trade in my instant coffee for tea from a little caddy. In fact I said this out loud as I drank juice from the bottle because I’m becoming totally antisocial. Perhaps those British academians don’t fall asleep to Harry Potter quite as often as I do, but that’s because they don’t have Fresca to wake them up and send them to bed.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Fresca Goes Back To Massachusetts

Today is also the day I left Massachusetts, and more importantly, Stick, to go to my parents’ house before leaving for China, so I wasn’t exactly partying like it’s 4704.

I found out that I make this weird noise when I cry, which sounds a little like something Squeaky does on turns. I have also developed a fixation on our last events, like some kind of crazed anti-memorybook. Our Last WarCraft Night. Our Last Diner Trip. I feel like one of the Sex and the City girls, destoying a perfectly fine night with my relationship neurosis, until Stick practically holds a filibuster on what to eat for Our Last Order-In And Play Computer Games Night.

I finally said goodbye to Stick and I drove to New Jersey, on my Last Trip in Squeaky, the two of us making the same noises.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Chinese New Year

“I know who R.A.B. is,” I began, in lieu of hi or what’s up? or how have your last two months been, torturing lampreys in Michigan?.

“Who?” she says, in lieu of hello or how are you? or how have your last two months been, torturing single people in Massachusetts?.

After I told her all aspects of the theory, and we still couldn’t find any plotholes in it, I asked what she was doing when I called. She told me she was converting her truck into a movable freezer to transport dead turtles from Michigan to Massachusetts.

You see why I went straight to Harry Potter?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

I Miss Kristine