I’ll be chatting from noon-1p.m. Eastern Time here. Come by! (And if you can’t, you can read the transcript later.)

I am enjoying all your tales of career advice and aspirations, both good and bad! Please keep them coming.

Here’s a fun experiment: post as your status update that you’re taking a day to contemplate your career, and ask your friends what you should do next. The answers will amuse you. So far I’ve gotten:

* Have a child
* Become a ballerina (those two were the “restructure your pelvic cage at age 40!” answers)
* Send your pic and bio to casting agents –especially those working on Star Trek
projects in need of Vulcans
* Become a high-class hooker
* Be a “slacker Oprah”
* Start a Kenny Rogers cover band
* Learn Spanish and get on one of their soap operas (“Can you beat your fists into the chest of your leading man and scream out raspy pleas of exasperation at his infidelity?”)
* Be a rabbi
* World domination. As a benevolent dictator.
* Rock climbing
* Parkour
* Go back to school and be a paramedic

Try it yourself, and see what your friends really think of you — or what their own projected fantasy lives are!

As some of you might have noticed, the Deep Insightful Blogging has kind of flagged off a bit since Italy. Prior to the trip, as I’d noted, things were extremely hectic: my “sick” kept recurring, and I was also on a work project at my Harvard job that had begun to feel truly Sisyphean. I needed that trip, and I’m still not all the way back to full-on work mode.

I’m hoping that will change at least a bit tomorrow, because I’ve decided that I’m going to take myself, and my laptop, and my coffee money, down to a coffee shop and spend the afternoon doing a one-woman corporate retreat. I’ve got a doctorate, a book, a newspaper column, two blogs, and a job at Harvard B-school: what can I turn these things into? What should I spend my energies on, given that newspapers and publishing and television and media in general is topsy-turvy, and no one knows what tomorrow will bring? What is really important to me about what I do? How do I define success for myself? And what are the intermediate steps — next week, next month, next quarter — to get me there?

These are tricky questions, and it may take more than one afternoon to get them settled. (Depends on how much coffee I have.) These are, to some extent, the questions that my boss and I study at HBS.

What’s the best career-planning advice you’ve ever gotten? What’s the worst? What’s the weirdest thing someone ever said you should be when you grew up? (I was once told that I’d be good in the Air Force. My terrible eyesight and inability to tell left from right would, I think, rule that straight out, assuming my entire personality hadn’t already done so.)

What’s the weirdest idea you ever had about yourself, in terms of what you should be when you grew up? My first genuine ambition was to be an animal behaviorist, which is something I’m still very interested in. Before that? I wanted to either work at McDonalds, or be a ballerina. Given my strongly held beliefs about the horrors that both fast food and ballet inflict on the human body, this is ironic, but I’m impressed that even as a four-year-old I somehow knew artists had day jobs.

Hey guys, we’re having another creative contest over at the boston.com blog! This one is to write parodies of holiday song lyrics — thanks to all of you who came up with that idea!

Details are over yonder. You can leave your entries on this blog or the other one, and we’ll probably be doing voting here next week. Let’s get those parodies ringagling, ting-ting-tingaling too!

There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, which has proven sufficient for a lexicon of some quarter of a million words or so, but nonetheless appears inadequate for creating non-repeating acronyms. How many times have you changed jobs to find out that at XYZ Corp., “TPS report” stands for “Tactics, Priorities & Strategies Report,” while at NewCo, “TPS reports” means “Talk to the President’s Secretary, she’ll report it to him so you don’t have to.”

I was thinking about that this weekend, when a friend of mine posted the following link to his Facebook page:

I’ve said it before: aren’t moms amazing? I swear, motherhood gives you political — and apparently hostage-negotiation — skills like nothing else. (As my friend said, “I feel sorry for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, but that’s got to be a hell of a recruiting tool.”)

I have to show you the graphic, because if you follow the actual link, someone at the Christian Science Monitor clearly had the big “D’oh!” and removed the last two words since it was originally posted.

(Author’s note: If you don’t know what a MILF is, I’m not telling you. You are by definition on the internet as you read this. Go look it up.)

So it got me to thinking about other acronyms that go two ways, or more than two. I used to work in central administration at Harvard when we were installing a new HR and payroll system, the doing of which required us to get clear on a lot of our HR policies and practices. Anyway, you can take two kinds of medical leave at Harvard: short- and long-term disability. Which are referred to by, of course, acronyms.

Which is why, when the benefits lady said, “We more or less consider pregnancy to be an STD,” I really shouldn’t have choked on my coffee and blurted out, “Good Lord, I don’t even want kids and I find that offensively cynical!”

Acronym lag. It happens to the best of us. Share your stories (SOS)!

… is online here. How much hate mail do you think I’m going to get for this one? I always get hate mail when there’s a religious topic, no matter how fair and evenhanded I try to be.

Also, a heads-up: if you’ve got a holiday-related question for Miss Conduct, send it in ASAP. The magazine’s deadline is well in advance of the newspaper proper … which means I’m always getting good Christmas, Valentine’s Day, prom, etc. questions that don’t get run because I didn’t receive them in time.

Since so many of you liked my writing on the first chapters of Genesis, I thought I’d share an essay I wrote on another Torah portion. I wrote this four years ago — we had just gotten Milo, and that year, this Torah portion came on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which as you can tell rather affected my reading of it. Enjoy:

I need to get rid of the leftovers. It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and the leftovers are weighing heavy on my mind, my belly, and my refrigerator shelves. It’s been a week of shopping and cooking and planning, but at least I have a wonderful cleaning lady and a nearby Trader Joe’s; my mother got along well with our new dog, and vice versa; and my husband and I are blessed to actually like our families, so that time spent with them is as much pleasure as it is duty.

And duty has its pleasures too. I felt competent and strong this Thanksgiving. I was proud of the dinner I made. I was proud of the warm, book-lined rooms my family ate in, that I worked so hard to arrange and decorate. I was proud to show the local museums off to my mother, and to take her to shops the likes of which they do not have in Nixa, Missouri. I was proud that I knew when she was too tired to walk home after a morning’s shopping, and too proud, herself, to say so immediately, so I took charge and sent my husband off to retrieve the car.

And I wonder about the danger of that pride.

In this week’s Torah portion, we meet Rebecca, the second matriarch of the Jewish people. Abraham is concerned about finding a wife for his son, Isaac: he doesn’t want one of these flashy Canaanite broads, he wants a nice homegirl from Aram-naharaim, his old neighborhood. So he sends his servant off to collect a bride for Isaac. Wanting a kind as well as beautiful woman, the servant devises a test. He will wait at the well outside of town with his camels, and when he sees a young woman, he will ask her for a drink. If she not only gives him a drink, but offers to water his camels too—all 10 of them—he will know that she is the one.

As soon as Eliezer has thought this up, Rebecca appears, and he asks her for water. “When she had let him drink his fill, she said, ‘I will also draw for your camels, until they finish drinking.’ Quickly emptying her jar into the trough, she ran back to the well to draw, and she drew for all his camels. The man, meanwhile, stood gazing at her, silently wondering whether the Lord had made his errand successful or not.” (Genesis 24:19-20.)

At this point in the story, we like Rebecca. We like her very much, even if we are intimidated by her scary biceps. (It takes a strong woman to draw enough water for 10 camels.) Isaac likes Rebecca too, when he meets her, and we are told that he “brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebecca as his wife. Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death.” (Genesis 24:67.)

Does anyone else find that a little creepy? Does anyone else think that maybe Isaac is going to turn into one of those men who calls his wife “mommy”? Is anyone else remembering at this point that while the Greeks may have invented the Oedipus complex, it took the Jews to identify it?

We’re supposed to understand by this that Rebecca is the spiritual daughter of Sarah, and like her will be God-fearing and loyal. We’re supposed to understand that drawing water for the camels is a sign of chesed (lovingkindness). We’re supposed to believe that the things that Rebecca does later on — when she stage-manages a deception to make Isaac, on his deathbed, bless her favorite son, Jacob, rather his, Esau — are a sign of her intelligence and superior understanding of God’s will.

But I’m not so sure about that. I think maybe Rebecca is a control freak.

Her final deception of Isaac is hard to justify, no matter how you twist it around. Rebecca begins her story as a kind and well-intentioned person, but I wonder if the role of caretaker, hostess, Competent Woman Who Does It All, doesn’t eventually go to her head. She takes care of others until she starts believing that they cannot take care of themselves. She knows better than anyone else. And she loves to complain.

I think all women are at least a little bit familiar with this phenomenon. With the glow that comes from providing for everyone else. With the martyred pleasure of putting everyone elses’ needs before your own. With the belief that there’s no point asking for help, because it’s easier to just do it yourself.

Rebecca is a warning about what that kind of attitude can lead to. How easily caretaking can slide into a subtle form of contempt.

Eliezer just stood there watching her as she went to the well, again and again and again, watering all those camels. Rebecca had a choice. She could have asked him to help. Would she have become a different person if she had? A little less generous, perhaps, but also less manipulative?

I did a good job this Thanksgiving. I took care of my husband, and my mother, and my dog. I brought pleasure and delight to my family. And I had a pretty good time in the process, myself. But I need to be watchful of that glow of pride. I need to remember that the people in my life are responsible and competent and can take care of themselves — and even of me, sometimes. I need to relax my hold, my desire for control.

I need to get rid of those leftovers.

Blogger FemaleScienceProfessor has a great article up at the Chronicle of Higher Education about academic etiquette. Amusing and informative — and good for people who work in many walks of life, as well. (Particularly, some good advice about job searching from the points of view of both applicant and hiring committee.) And I have to love tip # 11:

If you are going to ask a professor a question and you need to refer to your notes or a book, have them within easy reach, with the relevant pages marked. Don’t spend the first few minutes searching through your backpack and your giant folders covered with skull doodles only to realize that you left the desired item at home and have no idea what your question was, so instead you just ask the professor if you missed anything important in the class session you skipped because you overslept.

As you may have noticed, folks, I’m not all the way back to non-vacation mode yet. Italy was just so very nice. And things here had gotten so very stressful. Anyway, real life has started again, whether I wanted it to or not. So blog I shall.

And I’m hoping to get some ideas from you. I’ve got a pair of extra tickets to Tru Grace: Holiday Memoirs at Central Square Theater. I’d like to give them away on my boston.com blog. Ideally, I’d like to run some kind of contest — but what kind? I can’t do holiday recipes, because you really need to taste those. I’ve already requested good gift ideas, so no go there, either. What would be a fun contest — something akin to the Clerihew contest, but holiday-themed?

I await your creative suggestions!

I mentioned below that “Project Grizzly” and “Grizzly Man” would be an excellent double feature, especially if you were in the mood to watch movies about bears and the men who love them too much. What are some good double features you’d recommend for Netflix Night at home?

Mr. Improbable and I once watched “Galaxy Quest” and “Trekkies” back to back, which is a terrific combination: if you haven’t heard of it, “Trekkies” is a documentary about Star Trek fans. (“Galaxy Quest,” of course, is a spoof on Star Trek and Trek fandom.)

“Rushmore” and “Election” came out around the same time, and I saw those as a double feature in the theater: two quirky comedies about high school politics.

The nights are getting longer. Time to curl up on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn or a cup of hot chocolate and watch some flicks. What double features do you like?

The next time you take a flight to or from Boston — especially if you are going overseas — notice how often you can tell the Boston women by their Dansko clogs. It is our native attire.

I’ve been quoted, and there’s some wonderful news posted about “Project Grizzly.” (If you’re looking for an evening of bear-themed entertainment, and why wouldn’t you be, you could do worse than back-to-back viewings of “Project Grizzly” and “Grizzly Man.”)

… is online here.

A final Genoa note … these were the shoes that I wore for most of the trip, and I was quite delighted with them. They’re called “Cresson” by Naturalizer (not really a name that makes sense, but better than some of the company’s other attempts).

But what kind of shoes are these? You see them a lot, these kinds of half ballet flat/half running shoe. What are they called? I can highly recommend them for travel–they’re wonderfully comfortable and look good with everything. If I knew what to call them I’d run around telling everyone about them.

I’ll be chatting today from noon to 1pm Eastern time here.