Does anyone really need to carry around this much stuff? I wondered why my wallet was literally bursting open, until I realized that it contains the following:

• driver's license
• AAA membership card
• AAA bail bond card
• Social Security card
• MBTA Charlie Card
• WRTA 10-ride card
• 2 DC Metro farecards
• CVS frequent shopper
• Price Chopper frequent shopper
• Stop & Shop frequent shopper
• Shaw's frequent shopper
• American Red Cross blood donor card
• 2 credit cards
• ATM card
• Baseball Hall of Fame membership card
• organ donor card
• Best Buy gift card
• 111 Chop House gift card
• FedEx account card
• medical insurance card
• prescription insurance card
• several family photos

I threw out the TIPS certification card that expired last October.

These items don't fit in my wallet, so they get thrown into my pocketbook:

• National Marrow Donor Program donor card
• Borders frequent shopper card
• DSW frequent shopper card
• Dick's Sporting Goods frequent shopper card
• Bob's Stores frequent shopper card
• Auto Zone frequent shopper card
• Blockbuster Video membership card
• U.S. Airways frequent flyer card
• America's Best Value Inn frequent traveler card
• Seoul Leecci frequent diner card
• library card
• Border's kids/young adults bonus card
• 4 old Baseball Hall of Fame membership cards
• several of my son's old prom photos

I guess this makes me a saver.

Labels: minutiae

When I was in college, I had a sorority sister who was born in Spain. She told me that the convention there is for a child to use two last names, her father's and her mother's. But she herself was very proud of the fact that she knew her family names going back four generations, to her great-great-grandparents. Apparently this is not uncommon among the Spanish. I found it a fascinating cultural tidbit and, just for the heck of it (and because I feared she might spring it on me as a pop quiz during hell week), learned her full name, including all sixteen surnames.

More recently, my father has been compiling as much family genealogical information as possible. Unfortunately, I am descended mainly from working-class immigrants whose family records are virtually non-existent, so we have been able to go back only so far. Nonetheless, I decided to see how many of my own family names I could come up with.

So I am, with my actual first and last names substituted to preserve my privacy, <First Name> <Last Name> Santavenere Gublo (formerly Gubała) Cannata Rowe Kortsep DiGregorio Giardina Johnson Fenton Wontone Ortel <_____> <_____> <_____> Vinci.

The blanks represent three of my mother's four great-grandmothers, all of whom were born and lived their whole lives in Sicily or Italy. In total, 12 of my 16 great-great-grandparents were born and lived their entire lives in Europe, one immigrated from Europe to the United States, and three were natural born Americans. Two of my great-grandparents lived and died in Europe, four others immigrated to the U.S., and two were natural born Americans. One of my grandparents immigrated, the other three were born here. Both my parents were born American. So in spite of having ancestors in four generations back from eastern Europe, the Mediterranean area, and the British Isles, I am at least a second-generation American.

I hope to be able to mine my surviving grand-aunts and grand-uncles for more ancestral information.

(Many thanks to Teresa, the aforementioned sorority sister, for her inspiration.)

Labels: family

It would make a great lawyer joke if it weren't true. Roy L. Pearson, Jr., an administrative law judge from Washington, D.C., who claimed that his dry cleaners gave him back the wrong pair of pants. Naturally, he sued the cleaners. For $54,000,000. That's $54 million, for those confused by all those zeroes. Washington Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff, the much more sane judge who was saddled with the task of hearing this ridiculous lawsuit, ruled in favor of the dry cleaners and threw out the suit. Read all about it here.

The problem is that to get to that point, the family that owns the dry cleaning business, Jin, Soo, and Ki Chung, spent almost $100,000 in legal costs. The Chungs are considering a lawsuit against Pearson to recoup their legal costs, but the nit-wit will probably figure out a way to drag it out and cost them even more money.

Which brings me to the banner at the top of this post. The Institute for Legal Reform and the American Tort Reform Association are holding a fundraiser to support the Chungs, whose entire savings is reportedly gone. Whether or not you're in the D.C. area, you might consider helping out. Go here to buy tickets or make a donation. I did. For more information, check out the Chungs' defense fund.

Labels: lawyers gone wild

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's been two months and six days since I posted. But that doesn't mean you have to stop coming by. If your mother didn't call you for a couple months, you'd call her to check in, wouldn't you? The Den Mother deserves the same consideration.

It isn't that I haven't had anything to write about. On the contrary, I have five drafts of posts on various topics awaiting completion, and I hope to get them done and online before, well, before the subject matter is stale. Maybe I'll post it even if it is stale. You can decide for yourself whether or not to spend time reading it.

Labels: minutiae