In early November I attended a cocktail party. A business acquaintance mentioned she was exhausted from traveling constantly for her work, which is international. I asked if she’d be able to be home for Thanksgiving, and she said yes. I then said I hoped she could be home for Christmas, too. She said, "So I'm Jewish--" and someone interrupted before we could finish the conversation. She didn't seem offended, but I was embarrassed that by default I’d asked about the holiday I grew up celebrating....
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Author: admin
Five Wonderful Things About Millennials
When I created the main character for my Awakening series, I wasn't thinking about generational issues. I wanted Tara Spencer to be young enough that it was believable she’d never had sex, I wanted her to have a strong reason other than a religious one for choosing to remain a virgin, and I wanted her to discover she was nonetheless pregnant when it would most disrupt her life. So I made her a pre-med student and the oldest of five children, so she understood exactly how much responsibility bein...
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Five Somewhat Unexpected Things To Be Thankful For
I had a few different ideas about what to write this week, but then I looked at my calendar and saw this post would go live the day before Thanksgiving. So in the spirit of the holiday, and in no particular order, I'll share what I'm especially grateful for.- Grandparents who emigrated from Poland: I said no particular order and then realized I needed to start with my grandparents. If they had not come to this country, I wouldn't be here. My grandfather came before World War I, and my grandmothe...
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Book Fairs, Fun Fairs, and Ice Cream
When I was in grade school, my three favorite events during the school year were the Fun Fair, the Ice Cream Social, and when the Scholastic book catalog came out. (I know, I was really wild kid, right?) The Fun Fair was held in the gymnasium. It was a giant space, or at least it seem that way at the time. There were rows and rows of carnival-like games. The one I loved most had plastic ducklings floating in long narrow troughs. You handed over your tickets and chose a duckling to lift out of th...
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The Workplace, Veterans, PTSD, & The Mockingjay
Over the last week, I rewatched the Hunger Games movies. (CAUTION: Some spoilers ahead.) In the beginning of Mockingjay Part One, hero Katniss Everdeen, survivor of two battles to the death, hides in a narrow corridor, rocking and whispering the few facts she remembers, desperate to reorient herself. The scene reminded me of a question a friend asked me after I saw the film at the theater. She hadn't seen it yet, but she'd heard other moviegoers say they did not like it as much as the previous t...
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Premiums, Provider Networks, And Other Changes To Affordable Care Act Plans (Adventures in Health Insurance Post No. 7)
It's been a little over two years since I wrote about my experiences buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare). Many insurers, including mine, are changing plans or premiums or both this year, so it's a good time for an update.I still work for myself and and remain thrilled that I can buy an individual health insurance plan. For reasons I wrote about before, I was denied individual health insurance after I started my own law firm, and there is no group coverage available t...
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Do The Clothes Make The Woman?
Here is my wish for the coming presidential campaign season: that no matter who the candidates are, we will talk more about substance than appearances. This occurred to me when I read Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column discussing the recent Benghazi Committee hearings. Noonan mentioned that presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton was beautifully coiffed and made up and wore a "sober, dark high-end pantsuit." In response to young journalists who told her she wasn't allowed to describe how Cli...
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Entrepreneur Or Ne’re Do Well?
A boyfriend I had in my early twenties was a hard worker but did not like his job. He had no interest in going to college, and he was unimpressed by how long it took most people to build businesses from the ground up, so he looked into various get-rich quick-schemes. He purchased a series of books on how to buy a house with no money down, fix it up and rent it out, then use equity in the first house to help buy another, and so on. The idea was not to earn income through rentals but to sell after...
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Why Write a Thriller Series About A Potential Female Messiah?
People often ask me why, as a non-believer, I'm writing a thriller series that revolves around religion-related concepts. (The Awakening series follows a young woman whose virgin pregnancy might bring the world a female messiah or trigger Armageddon.) First, completely aside from religion, I’ve always been intrigued by world changing or world ending stories. A great example of this type of story is my favorite movie, The Terminator.The Awakening (Book 1) and The Unbelievers (Book 2).Second, the ...
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Kind Words From A Stranger
The week of January 22, 2007, I received two phone calls from complete strangers. The first came on a snowy, bitter Monday evening. A chaplain from Loyola Hospital told me my father was in the emergency room. He needed some tests, and he might feel better if I were there. But when I arrived, I was shown into a small, private waiting room. A chaplain, the pastor from my parents' parish in Brookfield, and my cousin Marty, who lived about a mile from my parents, were there. Logic would have told me...
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