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Working Girl Wednesday: Low Tech in High Places

By Lynne DeVenny

Some paralegals and legal assistants, like Vicki Voisin, Laureen Pittman, and Therese Josie Chaffee (see her drool-worthy, award-winning apple pie in my last post) are naturally talented cooks.

Other people are born to appreciate the efforts of naturally talented cooks and would give away their stoves if their spouses weren't oddly resistant to the idea.

For example, when I work all day in a busy litigation practice to bring home the bacon - from Subway - I want to make sure that I can leave it on the stove top (a nice place to put take-out) without worrying about The Cat (who moved in with my new husband) eating it. (The Corginator can only reach Subway sandwiches left on coffee tables, not impossibly high places like stove tops).

Also, The Cat once threw up on the stove, which bothered me more than you would think, because while I don't use the stove much, I do like things clean.

What to do, what to do? The answer came in a McDonald's Happy Meal. While cleaning off the kitchen counter, I stumbled upon an abandoned plastic Madagascar Penguin still in its packaging. It had a button in its back. Thinking it would toddle across the floor when activated, I turned it on - only to discover that this little guy is a whooping motion detector.

Whoop-whoop. The Cat hates it. Now the justifiably smug penguin resides on the stove - leaving me to dream about Vicki's brownies and Josie's apple pie.

* * * * *

Have I mentioned I'm also drooling over iPads?

While I only have a motion-detecting plastic penguin sitting on my stove, this guy installed his iPad in his kitchen cabinet. (Thanks, Engadget.)

Whoop. (Now my penguin looks a little lame.)

The iPad serves as an aquarium when it's not a digital cook book.

* * * * *

I definitely drool over red things. So when the Bindertek catalog came across my desk this week, with this gorgeous Milano Vertical Laptop Rolling Case (I am also a 90-pound weakling who likes to drag everything), I was struck with an attack of covetousness so severe that I nearly gave up Subway and cookies for a month to buy it. Because I need (and deserve) a $320 leather briefcase with wheels.

Then I remembered those Oreos on the stove top that The Penguin vigilantly protects don't come cheap either, and sometimes one Oreo is all that stands between me and insanity. I'm really more of a NaugaHide chick than a leather gal, anyway. I have a $35 black rolling laptop case from Wally World that gets the job done (even after getting tangled up in my own legs in airports), but I found this nice CalPak Tracer Wheeled Laptop Briefcase at Walmart for $55 that has me seeing red, too.

Whoop-whoop.

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on May 05, 2010 (boomark / email).