n a t h a n

Of all the statistics used to show just how bad the economy is, the most commonly cited is the unemployment rate, which is currently at 7.6 percent.

Most Americans assume it’s an accurate representation of how many people are out of work, which is why they’re usually surprised when they find out where that number actually comes from.

In fact, the unemployment rate is not based on any hard data about how many people don’t have jobs in a given month. Instead, it’s the product of information from two sources: an old-fashioned telephone poll of around 60,000 homes and the payroll reports of 400,000 businesses.

Not surprisingly, both methodologies have problems that can affect their accuracy.

The phone survey is based on the assumption that those being polled are telling the full truth about their job situation, but even if they do, they only count as unemployed if they’ve been actively seeking work in the past four weeks; otherwise, they’re categorized as being “marginally attached to the labor force.”

The payroll survey doesn’t take into account anyone that’s self-employed (an estimated 9.5 million Americans) and counts those with two jobs as two separate workers.

That’s not to say the unemployment rate isn’t a worthwhile indicator, of course, but for as much as we hear and discuss it, we ought to at least know where it’s coming from, right?

My sister is getting married later this year and her engagement announcement was in my hometown newspaper last week along with a few others. They all say pretty much the same thing: so-and-so are getting married, these are their parents, this is where they went to 

Here’s Amanda’s:

Amanda Gotsch and Dan Campbell have set May 30 as their wedding date. Their parents are Gary and Debbie Gotsch of Fort Wayne, and Kevin and Sue Campbell of Mishawaka. The bride-to-be graduated from Concordia Lutheran High School and Illinois Institute of Art. She is an assistant designer at Vera Bradley. Her fiance graduated from Penn High School, Mishawaka, and attends Purdue University.

I’ve decided that my engagement announcement is going to read:

Her fiance is a graduate of Concordia High School and the University of Southern California. He thinks work is for suckers.

Tomorrow I’m heading out of town for a week, which is why I found myself at the laundromat earlier today. (For some reason I always end up doing laundry on the day before a trip. I think it’s something I inherited from my mom.)

Normally the only people in there are old and/or weird people, but because today was a holiday, the place was packed, which increased the odds that I would encounter another normal person. Miraculously there were two, a set of roommates who were celebrating our presidents by taking the opportunity to clean their clothes in public.

I struck up a conversation with the more attractive of the two girls (hey, I’m a guy) about the Jaguar with the handicap placard that was parked outside, intentionally straddling two spaces. We speculated on which of our fellow launderers was both handicapped and an asshole. (I also wondered if being an asshole was now considered an actual handicap.)

Laundromat conversations are a funny thing, especially with attractive women. First of all, it’s so rare to see one there (sort of like the aurora borealis), so you’re automatically caught off guard. To make matters worse, you’re lugging around your dirty underwear (I happen to be a briefs man, which doesn’t help) and even if you do manage to strike up a conversation, it’s constantly interrupted by having to go move clothes from washers to dryers or from dryers to folding tables to laundry baskets to your car.

Despite these obstacles, however, we managed to form a bond — and by that I mean, she was laughing at the things I was saying rather than running away. (This was briefly interrupted by a homeless and likely mentally ill man chastising me for being a “yuppie” — apparently my crime was wearing a sweater — and lamenting the fact that he had accidentally washed the marijuana he forgot to remove from his pants pockets, all the while edging closer and closer to us before finally leaving.)

I don’t exactly go to the laundromat to pick up women — my primary goal is usually clean clothes — but she was cute and going out of her way to be nice to me (introducing herself by name, inviting me to sit down next to her while we were waiting through the second rinse cycle, etc.) so I decided I was going to ask for her number and see if we could replicate this vibe somewhere else that didn’t have COIN LAUNDRY painted on the windows.

Soon after I made this decision, as I was folding some sheets, her friend walked by.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

“No,” I answered, which she would know if she had checked my Facebook profile first, but whatever.

“Well then I think you should ask my friend out,” she replied.

I nodded my head slightly and she walked away.

On one hand, it’s always nice for a guy to know that he doesn’t have to worry about being rejected when he asks a girl for her number, but on the other, we are strange creatures who usually like to think that it was our idea to ask a girl out and not because her best friend told us to do it.

Still, it wouldn’t have been fair to hold this girl’s friend’s request against her, so, as I was leaving, I stopped to close the deal with the beautiful launderette.

“What’s your phone number,” I asked. (Hey — it was already a done deal. I’m not going to waste valuable brain power trying to come up with a witty way to do it.)

“XXX-XXX-XXXX,” she replied. (She obviously did not answer in Xs, but I can’t have the Internet prank calling her, now can I?)

Ladies, you may not know this, but different guys have different methods of saving your phone numbers into our phones. My preferred method is to dial the number as she tells it to me, press CALL and then immediately hang up. This automatically saves it in my recent calls, and has the added benefit of usually showing up on the phone of the woman in question as a missed call, so she can recognize my number when I call her for real.

Only later, when I’m out of her sightline, do I add the number to my address book, with her name attached of course. Don’t ask me why; it’s just my method.

And so that’s exactly what I did after I pulled out of the laundromat parking lot and onto Westwood Boulevard, saving the number from my recent calls into my address book and entering her name.

Suddenly, I heard the brief WHOOP-WHOOP of a siren behind me, and looked up at my rearview mirror to see a police car with its lights on.

Wait a minute, I wondered, am I getting pulled over? For what?

And then it hit me.

I had been entering this girl’s name in my phone while driving — with an LAPD squad car behind me.

I was about to get a ticket for texting.

As of January 1, 2009, the State of California prohibits sending text messages while driving. (We also have a law against talking on your cell phone without a hands-free device, which went into effect last July.)

Though this was the first time I’d ever been pulled over, I knew the drill. A few years ago, I’d spent the day riding along with a friend who is a police officer, and one of the things we did was pull people over for running red lights. (He only went after drivers who entered the intersection after the light had already turned red.)

License, registration, proof of insurance. The officer takes that back to his squad car, runs your license and plates through the computer to see if there are any warrants out for your arrest, writes up a ticket and then sends you on your way.

Which is exactly what happened. The officer wrote up a nice little ticket and told me the date I needed to be in court if I wanted to contest it.

“Thanks,” I replied, without irony for once. I waited for him to get back in his car and drive away and then did the same.

When I got home, I looked up the statute in question. While I clearly was using my phone while driving, I wasn’t actually text messaging, and while I don’t mind paying the $20 fine you get for a first offense, if it’s going to cause my insurance rates to rise, I thought it might be worth contesting.

Still, I didn’t hold out much hope that I was going to get out of this. After all, what difference did it really make whether you were actually texting or doing something else with your phone? It’s not like a police officer could tell the difference, anyway.

So you can imagine my surprise when I found the following on the California DMV website:

This law does not prohibit reading, selecting or entering a phone number, or name in an electronic wireless device for the purpose of making or receiving a phone call. Drivers are strongly urged not to enter a phone number while driving.

Things are looking up.