This is my dad.

He is extremely handy.  He can fix almost anything and, if he doesn’t know how to fix it already, he will research the hell out of it until he finds out.  He has repaired televisions, doors, gardens, garages, bathrooms, broken glasses, broken computers, broken cell phones, pianos, and, most importantly, cars.

This Labor Day Weekend, as I was home with my parents, my dad, hawk-eyed, noticed a problem with my car’s windshield wipers.  I didn’t notice, mainly because I know nothing about cars, and also, thanks to living in White People Central, I walk/Metro to work every day and use my car about once every two weeks to go home or to Philadelphia.

“I can fix this problem.  It’s going to cost you a lot of money at a dealership,” my dad said.

“Please let me take this car in.  It’s going to take you forever to fix it, and I don’t want you to waste your time,” I, as an economist well-versed in comparative advantage, pleaded with him.  My dad’s time is more important to me than my money.

“No.”  My dad has the same level of distrust for car dealerships as Elin has for Tiger. “They’re only going to rip you off, especially since your car is old.  I will do a much better job.” My dad is cynical and jaded. This does not run in the family.

“Ok,” I sighed and threw up my hands.  If there is one person more stubborn than me, it’s my dad.

Four hours later, my dad was still checking out the car, and found the source of the problem.  It was a holiday weekend, and my dad was rooting around in my car.  I love him, and even though he likes getting to the root of problems, it was hurting me to watch.

“Let me take it to the dealership,” I pleaded with him.

“No. They don’t have the same standards I do and they’ll replace the wrong thing,” said Stalin.

“I have a repair guy I really trust, who I found from Car Talk,” I begged.

“They’re going to bankrupt you,” said Beria, furrowing his brow.

“I don’t care, as long as you don’t have to stand over the car for hours at a time.”

“Ok.  Call the repair guy.  If he gives you too high of a quote, bring it back here and I’ll take care of it.”

Today rolls around, and I’m on the phone with the mechanic and my dad, alternately, for the span of at least half an hour, because my dad keeps trying to clarify details and I have to keep calling back the mechanic and then keep calling my dad back with details.  I’m like a Wall Street trader. At one point, my dad calls the mechanic himself.

At this point, my dad has spent four hours looking at the car himself, 20 minutes going to the store for parts, half an hour calling me with the back-and-forth, and probably 2 or 3 hours on Saturday.  All time he  could be playing the guitar.

So, finally, in a desperate attempt to claw his time back, I schedule an appointment, and am relieved that he will not be fixing my car this weekend.  Because I am an economist and hate inefficiencies. But mostly because I love him.

Yesterday, I bought three pairs of shoes, because I need some fall shoes and I don’t think I’ve bought shoes in the past year.  I particularly needed a nice new pair of work shoes, but since DSW are heartless bastards, all of their nice work shoes cost more than $20 a pair, which is what I’ve been paying for the last 24 years, and which might explain why I constantly need new shoes.

I stood in front of the high heels section for a good half hour, trying to find a pair that didn’t have a heel that was higher than an inch (because high-heeled shoes destroy your back and if there’s anything more annoying than being hypochondriac it’s being justified in being hypochondriac) and that was at a price I felt comfortable with.   I paced back and forth, trying to justify the $50 pricetag on a pair of shoes, because I’ve been brought up that you should never buy for full price if you can buy on sale. I didn’t know jeans cost more than $25 until I went to college.

It was a struggle within myself of herculean proportions as I picked out these shoes, took them to the register, took them back, bit my lip, sucked it up, and bought $50 shoes, because I am a Working Woman who has her own money and can have nice things, damnit.

Then I called my mom.

“Mom, you’ve ruined my childhood, ” I said right off the bat.

“By sacrificing and bringing you to America?”

“No, by raising me to be cheap, in the family tradition.”

“I’m very proud of that.”

“Yeah, but now I can’t even buy a pair of shoes without feeling guilty and repneting afterwards.”

“I’m proud that I’ve taught you life skills.”

“Well, I bought myself a pair of shoes for $50 today, so ha!”

I paused a second.

“But I also bought two other pairs on clearance.”

“That’s my girl.”

I need to schedule a physical because I’m pretty sure I have restless overreactive brain syndrome which will result in my untimely death and Mr. B becoming a young widower who finally gets some peace and quiet and doesn’t have to answer my annoying questions.  This is in spite of the fact that I am now virtually bulletproof.    But,  I’ve been having some trouble scheduling my physical.

There are several issues at hand here.  First,  there is no free market for medicine in America (or in most places) and I am forced to  choose between whatever is available from my company-sponsored healthcare plan.So I am already segmented into a specific group of doctors and can’t choose who I want.

The other problem is that healthcare knowledge is generally not public knowledge, at least to my knowledge,  so there is no rating system a-la Yelp for doctors other than word-of-mouth from those in the same healthcare plan as you. (Although there have been some attempts.)

So I end up having to root around on my insurance company’s website for a list of doctors near my office and I get a list of physicians that includes their name, address, medical school, and specialty, which is not much to go by at all.

The process ends up going something like this,

So, for now, I am stuck.  If I could, I would really stay away from Soviet-educated doctors. But other than that, I have no information upon which to base my decision.  This is extremely frustrating on several levels, one of which is that I can’t go to my old pediatrician anymore since he retired and therefore cannot receive a Tootsie Pop when I’m done with my visit.

Eventually, I’ll suck it up and pick one at random.

It’s not as big of a problem as this post makes it out to be.  But I really just wanted an excuse to post that last tweet one more time, because it’s the best thing I’ve written all summer.

Mr. B and I were watching Afghan Star last night, which is about as sad and as inspiring as it sounds.  You should check it out.

One of the things we noticed is that, in the beginning of the documentary, about 30 people would crowd around a TV set to watch the competition, like so:

And Mr. B said, “I remember my dad telling me how they were one of three families in their town that had a TV and everyone would gather around to watch,” and I remembered my mom telling me the same thing, except that it wasn’t her family that had the TV but a friend’s and she and the neighborhood kids would run over and watch the one channel that was available in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s. And then I remembered when my parents bought their first TV in 1989 and what a huge deal and joy it was for them to be able to watch nightly news in our apartment while I was safe asleep across the room from them, shielded from the glare of the TV by a closet door propped ajar.  And Mr. B and I understood those kids in Afghanistan very well.

I whined to Mr. B, “I don’t want our kids to grow up thinking that having a TV is normal.  I want them to understand where we came from and not think of ‘back in the old country’ as quaint and far away.  I don’t want them to be spoiled. I want them to be able to understand Afghan Star on more level than one, to be able to empathize beyond simply understanding that those kids are poor. “   But it’s going to be tough raising kids  that understand what living in the second world means. Especially if they’ve never been in a Russian public bathroom.  We’re going to try our hardest. Probably by exiling them to Russia until they are seven or so.

With this in mind, I’m always interested in how immigrants raise their kids, how immigrant kids like us behave, and, especially, how Russian kids that were born to immigrant parents conceptualize the world, which is why I was pretty excited when I got an email from Babelgum whose subject line was,

“Great feature story on Jewish filmmaker who becomes a vodka importer while investigating his ancestors in Ukraine”

From the press release,

How To Re-Establish A Vodka Empire”, the latest of a series of projects which break the boundaries of traditional film distribution. The 24-part series charts the fascinating and often surreal odyssey of a young filmmaker, Dan Edelstyn, who heads to Ukraine to explore his ancestry. Finding out his great-grandfather once owned the town’s now nearly bankrupt vodka distillery, the filmmaker decides to use his wits and wherewithal to not only revive the business by launching a new vodka brand named after his ancestors, but the fortunes of the small, financially put-upon town from which his family grew.

Here’s the first episode:

The second episode is especially interesting because it goes through the Edelstyn family history during the Russian Revolution with pictures much like the ones I often see in our family albums.  What strikes me most is how much Edelstyn feels the need to connect back to his family roots, even though many generations have passed since anyone in his family has been from Russia.  What is also interesting is that he somehow becomes crazily convinced that he needs to re-open his family’s vodka factory and bring the small village he’s from into the 21st century.

Another interesting fact is that, in the letters he discovered in his attic that led him to start this search, it is revealed that his grandmother converted to Catholicism as a result of sympathy for the Irish cause when the family immigrated to Belfast.  That’s just part of the story he weaves, which includes Italy and Odessa.

Although Edelstyn romantic and extremely naive when dealing with Eastern Europe, that’s part of the charm of the project.  And, you have to give him lots of credit.  Many people (and organizations such as the UN, Amnesty, blah, blah, blah) talk about boosting the economies and living conditions of the former Soviet Union countries, but few do it at a level that actually impacts people directly.

I can’t wait to watch more episodes and see how this turns out for him. After all, his production company is called Optimistic Productions.

I wrote a piece for work for industry publication American Shipper, which you can read here, under “Trade Forecast 2010″ (requires registration but is free.) I’m pretty proud of it.