Mark Leventhal started a weight loss service for lawyers (WARNING: mildly intoxicating/annoying music plays when you open this link).

Why, I wondered after reading a press release about said service, do lawyers need their own weight loss service? This deserved a phone call.

It takes a lawyer to understand lawyers, Leventhal said—to know how to harness and work with the being that is Lawyer and make that Lawyer lose weight. For example, a lot of weight loss plans involve group meetings. But lawyers, it seems, don’t like to admit to weakness in public, so this program has no group meetings—instead, lawyers check in with Leventhal every day to talk one-on-one. But lawyers are also very rules oriented—more so than regular people. Leventhal can tell lawyers they have to keep detailed food diaries, and unlike regular people who say OK and then don’t, the lawyers will actually do it.

Plus, there’s the lifestyle stuff—like that lawyers go to lots of dinner meetings—and Leventhal’s program takes these lifestyle things into account. So when a lawyer is going to a dinner meeting, Leventhal calls the restaurant ahead of time to find out from the chef what on the menu isn’t too fatty. That way the lawyer knows what to order, and won’t be embarrassed in public by having to ask the waiter for low cal recommendations—but also won’t sabotage his (Leventhal’s lawyers are mostly men) weight loss goals.

As soon I was starting to come around—maybe lawyers really do need their own weight loss programs?—Leventhal let slip the most delightful thing that has set my mind a-reeling for the last few hours.

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The case of the mysterious green Saab that is frequently parked in front of a fire hydrant but never has any tickets on it is closed, more or less.

A couple of months ago my brother and sister-in-law noticed a green Saab - the one pictured above with its license plate blurred out - that was, more often than not, parked on their street in front of a fire hydrant.

Why?, they asked, would the car be parked in front of the fire hydrant so often? And why are there never any tickets on it?

We speculated: undercover cop car, undercover diplomat, someone who has something on the chief of police.

In recent months the car started parking in legal spots, and we more or less forgot about it. Until yesterday, when I got a text message from my sister-in-law: Green Saab is back in front of the hydrant!

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If Catholics prefer Hillary, and Guam is overwhelmingly Catholic, then how did Obama win Guam? Is it the islander connection—Obama being from Hawaii, which is the New York of Micronesia? Is it, as Slate suggests, that Catholics generally prefer Hillary because they don’t want to support a non-Caucasian candidate—which presumably isn’t an issue in Guam, where the majority of the island’s people and politicians are non-Caucasian?

a Catholic church in southern Guam

I’m still looking for my amusing Christmas photos of Santas riding on Guamanian rooftops, under blue blue skies; they’re around, but have gotten lost on my computer

As a former resident of that part of the world, I have sent off some emails to smart friends involved with Micronesian politics to see what they think about Obama’s seven-vote victory. I’m curious what they have to say about it.