Resolution of Conflict

Last night after fuming to the point that I was ready to start a fight I tried talking calmly to my wife who was already defensive, argumentative, and upset at me from my previous tirades.

I spoke to her calmly, and thank G-d she's a good-hearted person. She listened to me and heard me out which is exactly what I needed. She then gave me her advice and after a bit of arguing, etc. we kind of got an understanding of each other.

Yesterday was not one of my highlights of being a husband, but it does show how one miscommunication after the other can build up to a huge fight where we were fighting and getting angry at every minute detail of the things the other was doing when in fact we were angry about something else. Namely, she was upset about me having a "poor-me" mentality, and I was upset about her not supporting me.

This morning was much better. We woke up, had coffee, talked about what needed to get done today, and she went off to the store and I went to work at the dining room table. We were very polite to each other (which is the key to getting along in a marriage -- being polite to one another) and I was happy that our fight was over.

Completed the Synthetic Organic Patent!

I can't believe I completed this patent! It was killer. In order to do this patent, I needed to understand this patent (where the chemistry was quite tough), and then I needed to find in the prior art a patent which did the same thing. After days of searching non-stop, I started to feel as if all of the chemical compounds were looking the same. Finally, I stumbled onto something that worked. I called my new (third) boss who gave me great advice on how to render the claims in our application obvious and invalid based on the prior art that I found. I wrote up the paperwork, and I submitted it around 6pm tonight.

I feel so relaxed that I got this done. It was a lot of work, but it was a triumph that I was able to complete this -- in three days, no less! I was expecting to take over a week on this. Halleluyah!

Synthetic Organic patents, here I come!

This coming week will be quite exciting for me. I will get a chance to do a prior art search / validation search on a synthetic organic patent -- one that is over 300 pages in length and is totally complex for me! I figure that if I will be able to do this, then I can become familiar with synthetic organic patents which will score me the job in the patent prosecution field I can't wait to get into! I will be devoting all week to learning how to do a search on this kind of patent.

Boss Problems

My second week wasn't so bad. I was very frustrated most of the week because I had one of my patent files due, but my new boss for the file would not return any of my phone calls. When I finally climbed the chain of command in the company, I finally got to her boss who called her at her home and yelled at her why she didn't return any of my phone calls or e-mails. She then proceeded to yell at me as if it was my fault she didn't answer her phone for days at a time when the file was coming due.

In short, I told her that her behavior was unprofessional and that if I spent the time doing research on the patent and writing my opinion validating and invalidating the claims, the least she could do is return my phone calls and read my e-mails. Or, at the very least, e-mail me or call me telling me that she is unavailable and giving me a time that she would be available. She disagreed with me and acted childish, and later on that day, she called me up and apologized for her behavior.

I worked the rest of the day and the following day and I finished up the file and submitted it. A day or so later, payment for that file AND the file I did earlier last week (the one that was pulled from my docket) was approved. This was great! I checked it out and apparently, they liked my work on the first file, even though they pulled the file from my docket. In short, they realized that I worked on the case sufficiently to complete it, but my boss did not help me out so they paid me anyway.

Job Stresses

The patent attorney position was very exciting for me because I was actually doing the work of a patent attorney. This is what I worked towards for so many years! Thank G-d I've finally been given the opportunity to work in the field I trained in.

In short, the position as I understand it is that I am a pre-examiner for a law firm who has been contracted by the foreign wing of the US patent office to examine patents before the examiners get to them. The USPTO has been quite backlogged these past few years, and so I am one of the attorneys who are working on the files that have taken quite a while for the examiners to get to. I have access to the same resources as the patent examiners, and so I can see what they see which on the one hand is exciting for me, and on the other hand is a bummer because they are a bit not yet up to date on the searching technology they use.

My first case was a killer, probably because it had so many sub-parts to it. It wasn't one invention, it was around 5 or 6 crammed into one patent. Further, above me is a boss for each of my patent files, and my boss wasn't too helpful in helping me search for prior art references. In fact, I found him to be quite on the lazy side in that he didn't want to help me in searching for the references I could not find. He just wanted to get paid his portion of what he would get paid when I turned in the file.

I worked on that case for over 50 hours before I submitted the file for my boss' review. During my prior art searching, I regularly sent my boss status updates so that he can see which references I am using and could comment (or give me constructive advice) on what I was doing. "Great job!" he said over and over again... Well, when I submitted the file, I realized that he hadn't been reading any of the work that I have been doing because he rejected my work telling me that a prior art reference that I used (and that I asked him about before I used it) had a publication date later than the priority date / filing date of the patent application that I was examining. In US law, it's the filing date that takes priority in a dispute between two applications. In foreign patent law, it is the publication date that takes precedence. How was I supposed to know this? I am a US patent attorney, not a foreign patent attorney. In short, my opinion and the 50 hours I spent was for nothing. On top of that, my incompetent boss complained to his bosses about me and told them I was incompetent.

Honestly, I will accept blame for mistakes when I make them, but I checked this reference with my boss before I used it. Had he taken any time to read my e-mails or actually do due diligence in answering me properly, he would have caught that mistake before I used it rather than 50 hours later after applying that patent to every claim in the application. I was very annoyed and the law firm removed the case from my docket, which means that I don't get paid on it.

Took a job as a Patent Attorney doing VPN Remote Work

Wow, I can't believe that it has been almost a month since I've written. I can't say things are better. In fact, things have deteriorated a bit based on my mood which seems to be affecting everybody around me. Since I know I have a lot to say, I'll break this post into bite-sized parts. This is part I.

Around a month ago, I took a temporary document review job in a law firm that paid almost nothing and had a 5 hour daily commute (around 2 hours each way), but because my wife was on maternity and we lost her salary, I felt that it would be better to work so that we could pay the bills, so I took the job.

The job cut off any free time I had to apply to patent attorney positions, and because I was leaving at 6am and getting home at sometimes 10pm or 11pm, I wasn't spending much time with my wife. Further, we were starting to feel the stress of the job on our relationship because I was tired all the time. Combining all that with the fact that the document review bosses ran the position like a sweatshop, the money didn't seem worth it after a while.

Around the same time I received a job offer as a patent attorney working remotely, where I would be reviewing patent applications and finding prior art to invalidate them. I called it the "dark patent attorney" position because our job as patent attorneys is to write patents and create new patents, not to kill them. This seemed like the evil side of the coin. The only problem is that it didn't pay nearly as much as my temporary position, and it had a very steep learning curve. To become an expert searcher of patents, it would take weeks if not months of work, and the pay would not be good until I got good at it.

After talking to my wife about the fact that the document review position would be over in a few months coupled with the fact that I would be unemployed in a month or so again, we decided that it would be wise to leave the document review position and take the remote patent attorney position.

For almost two years now, I've been writing two blogs simultaneously, each with its own set of rules.

My first blog is my public blog -- that blog is the one with my real name and my real information on it. However, the problem with that blog is that my friends and family know about it, so I have to be very careful what I write on it.

My second blog is this blog -- Frumpter. This is my anonymous blog, where for the past few years I have enjoyed the liberties of having a free exchange of thought, where I can write whatever is happening in my life -- the uncensored version -- without fear that my close friends and family (and prospective employers and others with snooping eyes who might do a Google.com search on my real name) will find out what is on my mind, or what I think of them or the situations I go through when the situations may be politically, religiously, or socially charged.

I found this solution of having two blogs to be the ideal. I post pictures on one blog, and on the other, I write what I think or the private things that I need to sort out. The benefit of this is that I have you -- the readers -- who have been so helpful in giving unbiased advice which has benefited my life in ways I cannot express, and I am grateful for the feedback you have given me over the years.

Occasionally, I have some people from my private life stumble onto this anonymous site, and since the events written about on this blog are so unmistakably those of my life (coupled with my writing style), my identity is immediately exposed and the person who stumbles onto this site, smiles and thinks, "I know EXACTLY who you are."

So to those valued friends who have decided to start reading from THIS blog instead of from the blog I have made public to you, I say "welcome aboard, enjoy the juicy details of my private life, and shhhh.... please keep this site to yourself."

[The toughest thing a blogger has to do -- especially when he or she has developed a solid readership and people start telling other people who the author of the blog it and the anonymity is diminished -- is to make the blog disappear (e.g. "oops, computer failure wiped out the blog") and to sadly start anew from scratch with a new blog name and web address leaving all his or her old blog readers behind.]

Which company's questions to use during bar exam study

For those of you taking the bar exam, I received an e-mail from a friend today asking which questions he should study from to prepare for the bar exam -- Barbri questions? Pieper questions? PMBR questions? Adaptibar.com questions?

My answer was a resounding "YES."

I heard one of the bar exam speakers discussing it after a class. He said that one company legally doesn't have any leg up on any other company -- they all have access to the same questions. Of course, you've heard about the rumor of PMBR getting caught sneaking questions out from the bar exam, but know that it could have been PMBR that has circulated that rumor.

My experience is that all the questions are identical. The "Strategies & Tactics" book questions are easier to teach you how to take exam questions. The PMBR questions are your primary source for questions just because there are SO MANY of them. Barbri and Pieper's questions are about on par, each saying theirs are better. Adaptibar.com (my favorite because I used to spend countless hours on the computer in law school) 1) because their information is ONLINE, 2) because your progress is TRACKABLE (so you can see how you are doing on various topics and you can figure out which topics need work and which don't, 3) you have an online running of how everyone else did a) in your area, and b) nationally, and how many questions the average person answered -- that way you can keep up to par with everyone else taking adaptibar.com, and 4) their questions were totally simplistic, but they would REPEAT questions OVER AND OVER, which was annoying for me until I realized that each time they ask a question, THEY VARY THE FACT PATTERN SLIGHTLY to come to a different answer -- this seriously helped me to come to the realization that IT IS NOT ONLY KNOWING HOW TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS that will give you points on the MBE, but that THERE ARE ONLY A CERTAIN LIMITED NUMBER OF WAYS that a question on any topic can be asked, and this will follow a certain pattern. This is what I learned from Adaptibar.com.

So in short, your source of questions is hands down PMBR, and you will do the most good if you review the answers right after you do a group (say 20-50) of questions -- this way, you'll learn the distinctions. Your BarBri/Pieper question book is invaluable for state law because that is not covered in the PMBR book. Adaptibar is good only if 1) you will use it a lot, and 2) if you take advantage of their tracking features.

I hope this helps.

Zoe

No Science Degree... Argh.

It's very nice when everything is going your way, but when reality crashes down around you, things begin to seem a bit more dark.

I have been thinking strongly about the feedback I have been receiving over and over from law firms. They say I have no science degree, and they are right.

In college, I was a philosophy major. I am not quite sure why I did that -- perhaps I just wanted to graduate, and I didn't think that it mattered what I majored in, as long as I had the desire to succeed. I did take a science concentration, but that was to fulfill the pre-med requirements. Law school and patent law were the furthest thing from my mind -- I didn't even know they existed when I was in college.

Anyway, I've been kicking myself all day for not having the foresight to realize that a chemistry degree would have been the wise thing to do. I can't stop thinking about all those semesters I wasted on what?!? Descartes? Plato? Kant? I remember why I did the philosophy degree -- I wanted to be well rounded.

So the result? I'm having the hardest time getting employed as a patent attorney. I actually want to cry about this. This is really bothering me to the point that I spent all morning researching whether I should go back to school for a summer and a year to get my undergraduate chemistry degree. My wife and friends though say it is not feasible because I have responsibilities to attend to. I agree with them.

I'm going to write a letter to the Lubavicher Rebbe. I need help and a blessing.

Zoe Strickman... a TATTY

I have some exciting news. I am a tatty!

The baby is a boy. He was born May 19th, 2007 (2 Sivan), on my Hebrew (and English) birthday. He weighs 7 pounds, 10 ounces, and he is 20 inches long. He has beautiful brown eyes, and a cute little round head. He is totally interactive, and he loves to cuddle and sleep in our arms.

The day before the baby was born, I heard my wife tell the baby, "tomorrow is a good day to come." The following morning, she is totally excited telling me knock knock jokes ("...knock knock. Who's there? Baby Strickman is coming today!") Half awake, I couldn't tell if she was kidding or not. When it occurred to me that she was serious, we got ready, hopped in the car, and drove to the hospital.

The whole day was taken up saying Tehillim (psalms). Specifically, I learned that the Lubavicher Rebbe in wrote in the beginning of Sefer Toldos Admur Maharash that,

"According to the instructions issued by the Tzemach Tzedek to his sons during the birth of the Rebbe Maharash, the following chapters of Tehillim are recited: 1, 2, 3, 4, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 33, 47, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 104, 112, and 113 to the end."

So I spent the whole day by my wife's side, catering to her every need. Every moment I had free, I read the book of Tehillim, and I focused on those chapters, along with chapters 20, 23, 30 [my chapter], 27 [her chapter], and 106 [the Rebbe's chapter]. I said so much Tehillim that day I thought my head was going to explode. I did so fervently because my Rabbi said, "Zoe, you should say Tehillim all the way until after the baby is born because the words you say can affect your wife's health and the health of the baby. So, you can never say too much tehillim." Later, when my baby was handed to me, I felt that the whole experience was worth it.

Since the birth on Friday, I spent Shabbos at the hospital so that I can be there with my wife. The baby is adorable. Tonight since shabbos ended, I came back to the apartment, and I spent the evening setting up furniture, strollers, etc. My wife and my newborn son come home from the hospital tomorrow afternoon.

Niddah During Pregnancy REVERSED!

After the last post, a man named Moshe wrote me this comment to my last post. B'kitzur, my 9-month pregnant wife had a medical exam, and during the exam, she was cut down in her area by the doctor. She felt pain when it happened, and later found blood on the toilet paper when she urinated.

That night as soon as it happened, I called the town Rabbi and told him the details, and he told me there was a presumption that since the blood came from that area, she is Niddah. However, after Moshe's comment which came to me by e-mail on Friday right before Shabbos, I went back to the Rabbi with his letter.

After hearing what we had to say (me and the letter), the Rabbi and I went back and forth asking and answering questions about the size of the stain of blood, the color, etc. After mentioning that she felt the pain when the cut happened, he exclaimed, "She felt pain when she was cut??? That changes the whole situation!!" Apparently I left this small detail out in our previous conversations.

A few minutes later, the Rabbi called me up and told me that the fact that she felt pain changed the whole situation. That, on top of the fact that she is pregnant and is not supposed to have a period -- AND the fact that the stain was NOT on a white cloth, but on a piece of toilet paper -- AND the fact that she didn't stick the toilet paper inside which would have created a question of whether the toilet paper was a bedika -- but rather, she just dabbed the toilet paper on the surface -- the presumption of Niddah had been broken and we had created enough coolas [doubts] by all these factors combined to safely say that my wife was not a Niddah.

This story alone is enough to justify to anyone why blogging is valuable to me and to my marriage. Sometimes I just don't know the answers and by having you review my stories and my issues when they arise, your objective opinions have helped find a valuable solution. This has happened over and over during the course of the past few years. In this case, it helped break a presumption of something as serious as Niddah.

Had Moshe not written that letter to me through his comment on my blog, my wife and I would have counted five days, after the fifth day, she would have done a hefsek tahara, and she would have had to check herself with a bedika cloth [a cloth used to check for blood] for seven clean days before she would have immersed in a mikveh. All this would have had to been done before I would have been allowed to have any physical contact - even a touch on the shoulder - with her.

Also, the difficult thing was that since the baby is so close to being due, chances are that by the time this whole Tahara [purity] cleansing process would have been finished, my wife would have already have gone into labor, and having a baby makes the wife Niddah for a six-week period before she goes to the mikveh. So if you add six-weeks to the two-weeks (give or take) it would have taken to make her Tahara again, that would have been a long time that I couldn't touch or have any physical contact with my wife. Thank you Moshe.

On a mystical side note, my rabbi mentioned that it is a Segula [a sort of mystical blessing that is brought down by a particular physical action done during a particular time] for pregnant women to go to the mikveh. When they do this, they bring down blessings for the other women going to the mikveh after them to have a child. So with this occurance, my Rabbi told me that my wife should go to the mikveh [and jokingly added "a few times"] so that she could help other women have children from this potential disaster. My wife heard this and said that she would be willing to do this, especially the night she would have gone to the mikveh had she been a Niddah, because perhaps there is a woman who would have gone afterwards that was having trouble having a child.

-Zoe

Niddah During Pregnancy from Medical Checkup

Okay, onto the exciting part of the evening.

My wife is expecting our first child next month, which means that she is in her 9th month of our pregnancy.

Tonight her doctor did a test to see whether she ever had strep throat, because if she did, she might pass that to the baby during labor and birth which could be dangerous to the baby.

However, when she was doing the procedure, my wife felt a bit of pressure because the doctor cut my wife inside her vaginal area. Later, my wife was urinating, and after checking the toilet paper, she saw blood. "Houston, we have a problem," she said.

Normally, religious women who are in a Tahara [ritual purity] state don't look at what comes out of them from that area because if it is blood, then she might be in a state of Niddah [ritual impurity]. The presumption is that if blood comes from the vagina, then regardless of whether it came from the vaginal walls or the uterus, she is Niddah. Pregnant women as a general rule do not get their period, therefore they do not enter the state of Niddah. However, after my wife bled from her cut, the situation was different.

We called the local rabbi and my mashpia, and after a few phone calls, my wife and I understood the situation: she is now 9 months pregnant and is in a state of Niddah. So now we have to wait 5 days, and then she does a Hefsek Tahara, where she begins counting 7 clean days using a bedika cloth. After counting 7 clean days, she goes to the mikveh [ritual bath]... or by then the delivery room.

The interesting thing about the timing of this is that the laws of family purity (Taharas HaMishpacha) help a couple bond and become closer through their physical distance from each other. By not being permitted to sleep in the same bed, to cuddle, or even to be intimate, the couple becomes sensitized to each other and as a result, they become closer. By not being able to touch, when they are allowed to touch again, the feelings get heightened and more exciting.

Our situation is that my wife got pregnant immediately after our wedding, so after our first time being separated after the wedding, we never had to count days of cleanliness, and we never had to separate for purposes of Taharas HaMishpacha more than once. Thus, intimacy became the norm and being able to touch each other whenever we wanted lost some of it's forbidden pleasure. Thank G-d now, right before the baby is born when my wife will have entered a Niddah state upon the baby's birth and we will have had to be separate for six weeks, after she goes through this cycle of becoming Tahara, we will IY"H have around a week and a half to be together physically before she gives birth to our first child.

A "Document Review" Paycheck

It has been almost a month since my last post because my life has been pretty ordinary until tonight. My days have been spent contacting patent law firms and intellectual property law firms across the United States with emphasis in the Colorado, New York, New Jersey, District of Columbia, and Minnesota states.

Additionally, I have been putting in around 12 hours daily posting my resume to job sites and e-mailing recruiters and networking.

Last week for the first time, I had a quick 25 hour job at a document review firm in Denver where I had the chance to sit in front of the computer and review documents for a second request from the Department of Justice. Basically, that entailed looking through thousands of documents and checking ["tagging"] them as to whether or not they apply to the case at hand.

This is my life. The jist of it is that since my wife will be losing most (75%) of her paycheck in a few weeks because she is going to be having our first child and going on maternity leave, I feel that the quickest way to replace her income is through these temporary document review recruiters. Unfortunately, while a patent attorney makes close to six figures, I have an interview on Tuesday to meet with a recruiter about a document review project in another state (a 1.5 hour drive, plus traffic) which pays $25/hr. This amounts to roughly $1000/wk working 40 hours per week which will be slightly higher than what my wife is currently making. The tough thing to grasp is that the average document review project pays between $35/hr to $40/hr. At least this will be a paycheck.

The Admission Ceremony

The NY admission ceremony was calm and exciting. At one point, I wondered whether this is what it is like when people swear in to be a US Citizen. Then they called roll call. As they went from A-Z, they didn't call my name. I took out my admission ticket and I wrote my name on the ticket, and just as I was about to pass my name to the speaker telling him that he forgot my name, he started to call names for the next district, and I was one of the first to be called. Feeling a bit silly, I placed my written name back in my pocket and said "present". The man standing next to me giggled.

The interesting thing that I noticed was that nobody asked for my ID or my invitation card. In fact, anybody could have stood there and taken the oath to become a NYS Attorney, and nobody would have known the difference. At the end, instead of sitting down to sign the registry, he or she could have just walked out and felt good that he took the oath. While that would be fun, I was both happy and relieved that everything was over. At every step of the way -- admission to law school, getting through every semester, studying and taking the bar, studying and taking the patent bar, character and fitness review, etc., I feared that something would come up that would be a stumbling block to me becoming an attorney. But happily, the whole process is complete.

The next thing on my agenda is getting admitted as a patent attorney. I have passed the exam as you know, and as of this minute, my name is published in the USPTO's Official Gazette of potential patent attorneys -- this is their Character and Fitness portion of the admission. If nobody objects to my admission, in a few days, the deadline for sending in an objection will have passed, and one week later, I will get my patent registration number, and B"H I will have arrived at the goal I set over five years ago -- to become a patent attorney.

Have a kosher and freiliche Pesach, and I'll write some more as soon as more happens.

Now admitted as a New York Attorney

Okay, so here is the skinny on my life since my last post. In short, as of yesterday, I am now an attorney licensed to practice law in New York State. Funny enough, I'm not yet admitted in Colorado, my home state. However, my wife and I flew in and in return, now I am a New York State Attorney. We are staying by a few friends here in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and we will be flying back home to finish Pesach cleaning in our modest apartment later this week before Shabbos.

Based on my MBE (Multistate Bar Exam) scores, as you know, I am eligible to be admitted into the District of Columbia and Minnesota without taking their state bar exams. That is quite exciting for me because that means that I can be a Patent Attorney in those states -- this will make my wife happier because I hear that weather is much nicer there than here in Denver. Sadly, my argument about not being an attorney admitted in other states has now gone out the window, because now I can be one in other states. In a discussion with my wife, she told me that she would be willing to live on Long Island or in the suburbs around the city, but just like at home in Denver, the fast Brooklyn, NY lifestyle is not the kind of lifestyle she'd want to live in. However, she did agree that if I got a job here, she'd be willing to move here.

So that's pretty much it. I blanketed the United States with resumes (except for Colorado and New York -- I wanted to save those resumes for when I was admitted) and I've begun receiving rejection letters from firms around the country, just like I did in 2005. However, now that I am admitted in NY (and I hope to soon be admitted in Colorado), I will send out resumes to Intellectual Property firms in those states, and hopefully a job will come from that. Oh, I'll also do the same for DC and Minnesota when I get sworn into those states as well.

Truthfully, between you and me, all I need is to be admitted in Colorado. NY, DC, MN -- these are all extras which give my resume a boost, and allow me to work in those states, just in case we want to change our lives and move to a new place.

Automatic Admission into the DC Bar ?

My scaled score on the MBE (Multistate Bar Exam) was 147, and my scaled score on the MPRE (Professional Responsibility Exam) was 97, and my law school is an ABA accredited law school.

Now look at the requirements below. That means that I can be admitted into DC as an attorney without another bar exam, right? Are there any downsides that you know of to being admitting in DC?

-Zoe

--
DC Bar Exam MBE Reciprocity

Candidates for admission may be admitted without sitting for the
exam if candidate received a scaled MBE score of 133 or higher on an
exam upon which candidate was admitted in another jurisdiction, achieved
a scaled score of at least 75 on the MPRE, and has a JD from an ABA
accredited law school. If a candidate received a 133 on the MBE but was
not admitted in that jurisdiction, candidate may waive in MBE score and
take only the essay portions of the exam. A candidate must then score a
133 on the essay portion to pass the exam.

DC Bar Reciprocity

1) Membership in good standing for 5 years prior to application from
any state bar; OR

2) Membership in good standing in any state bar and a scaled score
of 133 on the MBE and a scaled score of 75 on the MPRE and a JD from an
ABA accredited law school; OR

3) An applicant can use a scaled MBE score of 133 or better in the
past 25 months. The applicant must then attain a 133 on the essay
portion of the examination.

Sending out resumes to Patent Law Firms across the US.

It has been a while, but that is starting to become usual because I don't blog unless there is something to blog about... The typical "today I went to the bathroom and played video games and saw my friend Joe" just doesn't seem so relevant to my kind of blog.

I am excited to say that since my last post, I have been diligently working on getting a job as a patent attorney. I spent a few days working with my career services adviser from law school to perfect my resume and cover letter. I also compiled a database of all of the main patent firms in the United States (yes, all of the states); I retrieved their address and contact information, including who specifically reviews the resumes and I organized it onto an excel database. Then I made a mailmerge, merging the data from the Excel spreadsheet onto Microsoft Word (which has my resume and cover letter). Then I went to print. My wife helped me with the folding and stuffing of the 65 envelopes.

With the counsel of a friend that I trust, it has come to my attention that as a patent attorney, I need to go where the work is -- even if that means that I need to move to DC or to California or anywhere else. So my wife was happy to hear that I applied across the United States.

On a Chassidic note, my wife and I wrote to the Lubavicher Rebbe (the Rebbe) in a P"N (Pidyon Nefesh -- sort of a "status update" letter) and we asked the Rebbe for a beracha (blessing) that we find the right and proper place to raise our family, even if that means moving out of our state. To make a kli (a vessel) to hold this beracha, I felt it would be wise to apply to law firms in different states, so that just in case the beracha, for example, is to have a happy family in New York, at least I will have applied to the law firms in that state so that that blessing can come to fruition through the natural course of nature (teva) and my physical acts rather than through the course of a miracle. [I learned in Yeshiva (Rabbinical School) that when a person makes a kli (a vessel) to allow brachot (blessings) to come down from the spiritual world into our physical world, and that kli will allow the blessings to come in a natural and physical way, the blessings come much easier than asking G-d for a miracle.]

Anyway, so today I plan on compiling the list of patent and intellectual property law firms in my own state and apply to these next. I am also out of resume paper and envelopes, so I need to go out and buy more.

Patent Attorney Job Search

I didn't realize that so many days have passed since my post about the bathtub. It's surprising to me that when I catch a cold or get sick, I stay sick for so many days. I'm just getting over my cold from last week now. Here are some updates on things that are going on in my life:

WIFE WANTING TO LEAVE THE STATE:

The "wife wanting to leave the state" issue has since been resolved. It was simply a matter of putting my foot down in a loving way, and then having my wife go through a grieving process. It was tough though, but the point I wanted to drive home to her was that wherever she is, that is where she should be living -- not in some other place. This in essence (after all the defensive reasons of why we should specifically be in this state) was what I wanted her to acknowledge.

PATENT ATTORNEY JOB SEARCH:

I am starting to feel as if I desperately need a job and that I am not doing what I should be doing to get one. Until a dinner meeting yesterday with a law school friend that I trust, I was under the impression that all I had to do was pass the patent registration exam to practice before the USPTO and then all my job searching troubles would be solved.

I was informed last night over dinner that my narrow-minded ideals were off-base. If I am to get a job as a patent attorney, I have to do whatever I can to get a job because the field is so competitive in our state.

My options are to 1) apply for and get a job in another state (my wife would love this option); 2) move to Washington DC and work for the US government to defend them against patent infringement suits (to get massive amounts of experience, and to "write my own ticket" into a great job in a few years); or, 3) just start MASSIVELY NETWORKING with other lawyers and other law associations.

In short, I realize that I need to significantly change my approach and get way more aggressive in my patent law job search. I will start today.

Pi (1998) and the Number 23 (2007)

vs.
12:25am Tuesday evening, now Wednesday morning. Yesterday morning, I knew I would be watching the Number 23 with Jim Carrey, and since it received such horrible reviews, I was still a fan of the plot, namely that a number rules our lives. I have such a number. I have shown it to my wife on many occasions. It has been with my family for years. Now my wife notices that three-digit number. We don't make predictions of what the number means, nor do we base our actions on seeing the number as that would be against halacha (Jewish Law) and it would amount to sorcery and idol worship. However, it is permissible to notice patterns in nature, as we have done with this number that seems to appear to us whenever we are on the right path.

Anyway, this morning before seeing The Number 23, I decided to see the movie Pi (1998) which seemed to have a similar plot. I was very amused that it seems like there were Yechi Lubavichers in that movie which were like a gang of people trying to unlock the name of G-d for their own benefit. I found the tefillin scenes totally funny because that is exactly what we Lubavichers do on mivtzoim.

All in all, however, I found the movie Pi to be quite stupid. I don't know why people have been suggesting that I see this movie for years and years. Yes, I predict the stock market based on the Elliott Wave Theory and based on Fibonacci numbers, but I don't have some weird wormy thing growing out of my brain, nor am I looking for G-d in a computer program. Plus, the idea that a computer becomes conscious of itself and then explodes after vomiting out the name of G-d seemed to be silly and pointless in relation to the overall plot.

I did like the fact that at the end of the movie, the wacko character (now bald and better looking) realized that he cannot be a vessel for G-dliness, and so he drilled a hole into his brain [through the wormy growth] which took away his abilities to "see G-d" and which made him normal, so to speak. However, the movie was still stupid.

Then, while I expected the movie 23 to be equally as stupid because of its terrible ratings, it was quite interesting. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole movie with twists and turns and a surprise ending. I was totally a fan of this movie, and I would see it again.

Telling my wife "no" to leaving the state.

I'm certainly not one to air our private laundry for the world to see (even though this seems to be exactly what I am doing), however the moving issue is not such a fight between us. Every few weeks my wife mentions us moving and I confront her telling her we are staying where we are.

That being said, I love my wife dearly and my biggest fear is that one day she may take a position such as "we're moving to state X or else I'm divorcing you and I'm taking our children with me." This is my biggest fear [rational or not], especially since I know she feels such a strong connection to her home state, sometimes I wonder whether -- if push came to shove -- she would choose California over me.

[I would also add in that the divorces of my parents and of my close friends are always on my mind, and I'm spooked by how a woman can love a man one minute and not love him anymore the next, and vice versa.]

Anyway, I've attached her response to my last letter and my reply to her. I hope this should clarify things between us, at least until I have a job here in Denver.

Mrs. Zoe Strickman wrote:
> I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO SORRY I upset you so much. I didn't
> mean to be pressuring. Not at all. I think you are doing a great
> job. You said you were applying for jobs so I didn't want you to
> forget CA. There was never a thought that you were not doing
> things the way you should. I'm sorry if I made you feel that way.

My reply:
Thank you for your supportive e-mail. I'm just feeling very pressured with everything that is going on and I just want for things to be in order. Running off to a far away place just doesn't seem to be the responsible thing to do at this point as I can't make any educated decisions about a place I know nothing about. I know it means a lot to you to be close to your family and to live in California.

Lastly, keep in mind that if we move I will have to study for yet another bar exam or else I will be stuck writing patents for the rest of my life. Moving might sound like fun but the idea of not being able to practice other areas of law (including other related areas in which I have plans to practice along with patent law) is a horrifying thought for me, especially since I just spent so much time and effort getting ready to practice.

You know that after a lawyer has worked in one state for a number of years, he can grandfather into various states by just applying and paying the fee. I don't know what the future holds, but you know I want to start here. This is where we are; this is where I have planted my seeds, so to speak. I have done so much work these past few years to set up getting a job here. Let's get by the next few years and get a bit of stability in our lives before we start jumping to other states.

-Zoe

All in all, I feel like a jerk for getting angry at her. Obviously with hindsight from her answer, I realize that she meant no harm by suggesting that I contact her father's friend in California. Moreso, maybe she was even being helpful and I judged her as being passive-aggressive. I guess in her mind [with the baby coming and all,] it is more important for us to get a job rather than to get a job in a particular state where I am allowed to practice.