I am caught between Thanksgiving (when I express thankfulness) and Christmas (when I ask for gifts) and New Year’s (when I make resolutions). Best to combine them all and devote this post to a list of those things I resolve to be thankful for if they come about in 2010:

1. Computer silence. I ask that my computer cease telling me that I’ve made a “fatal error.”  It sets me on edge.

2. Bluetooth headset bans. I want people to stop walking through the downtown skyways talking on their Bluetooth headsets. I think they are talking to me and when I answer, I feel foolish.

3. Decreased Google hits. The next time I Google “Why I hate lawyers” I want to get less than 106 million hits, particularly since my husband is an accountant and when I Google “Why I hate accountants” I only get 204,000 hits. Makes me feel inferior.

4. Product warnings that make me laugh. Keep up the product warnings. I not only laugh at various warnings (good for my health) but also bust with pride, knowing that one of my fellow attorneys is likely responsible for them. Take this one on the Starburst Hard Candy package: “Enjoyment tip: While enjoying candy or other food, avoid activities that could cause it/them to accidentally lodge in your throat.” I’ll say, choking to death is a downer.

5. Cases resolved. I promise to be thankful for cases resolved reasonably, like the stolen peanut butter sandwich from the Des Moines airport. “By the letter of the law, it is a theft,” Lt. David Huberty said. “But sending a detective out to the airport to interview 16 people over a missing sandwich would be, I think, inappropriate use of resources.”

6. Cocktail party conversations that don’t touch on the law. I will be eternally grateful if people at parties (or at the bus stop) don’t assume that because I am an attorney I must know something about Texas probate law or Connecticut family law. (Not to mention that I can explain it for free, on the spot, between hors d’oeuvres or before the next express bus pulls up.)

7. Continuing education that educates. I will welcome any continuing education session I attend where the presenter doesn’t read me a Power Point.

8. Successful transfers. I will be thankful if, in my fifth year of employment with the MSBA, I learn how to successfully transfer a telephone call in a reasonable amount of time.

9. Lawyers. That’s right. Most of all, I want to continue to be able to see all the good in the Minnesota bar: all the attorneys who lose more sleep than their clients worrying about and working on client matters, who give tons of volunteer time, who work tirelessly to make things right and well yet still endure the constant criticism of the profession, can laugh at lawyer jokes, and start each new day hopeful.

That’s all I want for Christmas. Not even my two front teeth. Resolved.

Posted by Nancy Hupp