** As I’m sure even those of you who don’t give a crap about basketball are aware, the Miami Heat are the new champs of the NBA.\u00c2\u00a0 I spent most of the series thinking I was cheering for the Thunder and yet during the actual games cheering for plays made by the Heat.\u00c2\u00a0 It was all very confusing until Game 5 when Mike Miller rained down a barrage of three’s even though he could clearly barely walk up and down the court thanks to his old-man back.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s when I realized that although I preferred the Thunder stars (KD, Westbrook and Ibaka in particular, Harden needs to shave his beard and then maybe) I can’t stand a lot of their role players.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0(Two words: Derek Fisher.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0‘Nuff said.)\u00c2\u00a0 The opposite is true of Miami,\u00c2\u00a0I love their role players (c’mon, Haslem, Turiaf, Battier, Chalmers, Cole, and Miller with his Gatorade commercial worthy Game 5, what’s not to love about all those guys?) and at the end of the day, I’m a gal that loves role players.\u00c2\u00a0 To me, they make up the heart of the team and they are always overlooked despite the fact that\u00c2\u00a0a role player is almost always the difference maker in winning\u00c2\u00a0a championship.\u00c2\u00a0 Stars will do their thang, it’s the role players and their gutsy, no glory performances that make\u00c2\u00a0the difference.\u00c2\u00a0 What can I say?\u00c2\u00a0 I’m a dirty work gal, and I prefer the dirty work players of Miami to those on the Thunder.\u00c2\u00a0 So even though I thought I wanted the Thunder to win, I find myself overjoyed for all the players who contributed to the Miami win.\u00c2\u00a0 Well done boys.\u00c2\u00a0 And just like when the Giants won the World Series a couple years ago, I really, really love that moment when the win sinks in and grown men turn into little boys.\u00c2\u00a0 It always makes me smile (unless it’s the Lakers, of course).<\/p>\n
** Have you guys heard about those little monsters that bullied a 68-year old grandma on the school bus?\u00c2\u00a0 I admit, I couldn’t watch more than a few seconds of the video without wanting to burst out into tears.\u00c2\u00a0 Reading the descriptions of the things that were said were bad enough.\u00c2\u00a0 One of my friends said the dreaded phrase, “kids being kids” and I completely lost it at him.\u00c2\u00a0 If that is “kids being kids” then kids must be vile little creatures.\u00c2\u00a0 I get kids bullying other kids, but what has happened to our society that kids have the nerve to bully a senior citizen?\u00c2\u00a0 My first thought was, wow, I hope their parents are completely ashamed of themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, the sad fact is, they’re probably not.\u00c2\u00a0 How else could they have raised such disgusting, disrespectful, foul-mouthed little creatures?\u00c2\u00a0 I read in an ABC article that one of the father’s said he thinks his son has been punished enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, it’s exactly that kind of attitude that has let your son turn into an adult-size asshole right before your eyes.\u00c2\u00a0 If that was my kid?\u00c2\u00a0 First of all, I’d be asking what I <\/em>did wrong, and second, I would be marching my child over to Mrs. Klein’s house and tell him he better get down on his hands and knees and beg for forgiveness.\u00c2\u00a0 I would also be doing everything I could to apologize (in person, none of this writing a letter and sending it through the news media bullshit) to that poor lady and her family.\u00c2\u00a0 And you better believe, every single video game cartridge memory card my kid owned would be deleted immediately, not to mention grounding for the entire summer (or maybe until they graduate from high school).\u00c2\u00a0 But again, I doubt any of that will happen to these kids because their parents are probably too busy telling them it’s not their fault.\u00c2\u00a0 Thank goodness the little twerps were dumb enough to film the whole thing themselves and put it up on the internet of their own accord, thinking it would be just hilarious.\u00c2\u00a0 At least now Mrs. Klein will have enough money to retire and never have to be within five feet of those awful “children” again. Here<\/a> is the best article I’ve read so far on the whole thing.<\/p>\n ** My friend Lian pointed out this<\/a> Atlantic Magazine article to me entitled Why Women Still Can’t Have It All<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I found it fascinating, particularly in that the reasons Slaughter gave for why it is difficult for women with families to succeed in the world of international relations are directly applicable to the field I work in.\u00c2\u00a0 Long hours in the office?\u00c2\u00a0 Check.\u00c2\u00a0 Frequent travel?\u00c2\u00a0 Check.\u00c2\u00a0 Inflexible schedules?\u00c2\u00a0 Check.\u00c2\u00a0 And let’s face it, Wall Street is still very much an “ol’ boys club.”\u00c2\u00a0 I consider myself lucky that I work in a San Francisco branch office because the work-life balance here is leaps and bounds better than it would be if I were in NYC, but even in SF there is the pressure to put in facetime and never take time off unless you absolutely have to.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, I get four weeks of vacation each year but haven’t even come close to taking that amount of time off.\u00c2\u00a0 Last year I rolled over the maximum allowed ten days and right now I’m sitting on 26 days of vacation time.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve recently started thinking long and hard about what direction my career will take if this pregnancy is successful and I have yet to come up with any answers.\u00c2\u00a0 There are only a handful of women in the office who have a role similar to mine and only ONE that has a child.\u00c2\u00a0 The one that does have a child is much older than I am, had her child only very recently (I have never asked but my guess is she plans to have only one, given her age) and was already extremely senior in the firm before she got pregnant.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the men I work with have children, but they also almost all have stay at home (or work from home) wives.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t really have anyone to look to for how to be the kind of working mother I’d like to be if I stay within my current position, and I do find that somewhat upsetting.\u00c2\u00a0 I think there are a lot of ways that I could easily do my job at least part of the time from home, but I don’t know if the culture of my job (not just at my firm, but across the entire street) would be open to that.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully (there’s that word again!) this will be something I actually get to try to\u00c2\u00a0figure out in 8 months or so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ** As I’m sure even those of you who don’t give a crap about basketball are aware, the Miami Heat are the new champs of the NBA.\u00c2\u00a0 I spent most of the series thinking I was cheering for the Thunder and yet during the actual games cheering for plays made by the Heat.\u00c2\u00a0 It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-time","category-navel-gazing","category-the-grind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/transcended.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}