Frequent Citations

Oh September, How You Taunt Me

I have an appointment for my character and fitness interview, and for my orientation to the Bar, and for my swearing-in ceremony.

All in September.

My office mate points out to me that I will probably be the last person in our class to be admitted.  My response is inevitably obscene.

TFL merely remarked that September is only some weeks away. 

Bah.

Truth be told, the important lesson in all this is:  take the time to do what you need to do and to heck with everyone else, including the partner down the hall, because the world can wait for half an hour while you finish writing out your bar application.  Really.  Or, you know, get your passport renewed.

He Was Big In Japan*

The day Michael Jackson died, I fired up the internets while still at work and watched videos while finishing up work for the night, and then came home and watched more.  For hours, probably.

Am I, or was I ever, a huge Michael Jackson fan?  Not particularly.   At least, not as he reincarnated himself after his first solo album.  I know, I know, Thriller was the perfect album.  Meh.  And it was a revolutionary video that broke all sorts of boundaries, but a) it was silly, b) I didn't have a tv, c) I had no idea that those color boundaries even existed.  See, where I grew up, Motown was a Big Deal.  So I had no idea that in other parts of the country the Jackson 5 didn't necessarily get lots of airtime.

That was crazy.

Anyway.

The Jackson 5, child laborers that they were, were fantastic.  Such great songs, perfectly sung.  And when he died, I took some time to remember what a talent Michael was, and how much joy he gave us.

Then I ordered Off the Wall and, because he was another fabulous child Motown phenom, Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, which I played to death when I was a kid.  I am currently humming along to the horns in Sir Duke.

*My squirts can identify this reference.  Anyone else?

You know you love it.

Guilty, So Guilty

Not Madoff or the Irani government or --well, them too, but I was speaking of myself.  Guilty of overwork, failure to post, abandonment of TFL and Dogness . . . and that's about it.  I've been working too much to be guilty of anything else.  No time for sin.

It's been a month of depositions, preparing for depositions, preparing witnesses for depositions, etc., etc., and so forth.

With a little mid-year review action thrown in, but they didn't escort me from the building or anything (so far).   What else?  Drafting motions for summary judgment, statements of fact, emails summarizing yet more research . . . and a RIDE!

Yesterday was the first ride since before all the trees had fully leafed out. How sad is that?  And we had to cut it short, because TFL and I both had to work -- boy.  We're in serious danger of becoming downright dull.  I'll have to think of something to do about that.  Maybe next month, because this month is all about yet more depositions, and preparations, and so forth.

Walking To Work

Every day it's an adventure.  The city is a kaleidoscope with sights of beautiful (or shocking or both) dresses, vignettes of men in a my-career-is-on-the-line hurry to catch a cab, toddlers holding umbrellas taller than themselves as they sob on the rainy sidewalk.

I can walk almost all the way to work in the shade, which I do now that the sun is stronger in the mornings.  I miss the sight of the Park, but I don't arrive at work with a sunburn.  So far hats have been an unworkable dream.

At any rate, this morning I was moving along, trying to get to work before a truly horrendously late hour (yesterday I met the associate I'm working with strolling in to the elevator bank at the same time I arrived; neither of us had left before midnight the night before).  But I noticed as I crossed the street that the shadows were pointing the wrong way.  I was definitely heading east, and the shadows were going from west to east, and it was (still) well before noon. 

I found this puzzling enough to glance around a bit (movie set?  Twilight Zone?  it's much much later than I thought?) and then I looked up and saw the explanation.  The sun was hitting a window high up in a tower and the reflected light was strong enough, and precisely focused enough, to be casting shadows from entirely the wrong direction.

So yes, I made it to work before noon.  To spend all of the day in a windowless room pulling the key documents out of an mass of imperfectly-chron'd boxes of paper for deposition outlines due (gulp!) in less than a week.  Egad. 

Summers Are A Coming In

The summer associates have arrived.  Poor things.  A short summer, constant uncertainty, hard caps on the lunch budget...

I don't think it's such a bad world out there for baby lawyers.  It's maybe a slightly more reality-based world.  But I wish all the summer associates lots of luck, and even more luck to those who didn't manage to snag a job for the summer.  Hang in there, people.

You Would Think I'd Remember

That, you know, I have a blog.

A place to write down the happenings of my life and frivolities.

And entertain you with stories of my parents coming to visit and falling in love with the Emerald City while they charmed waiters and critiqued the ballet and delighted in the Park.

Well.  It was a great visit.  We're still eating leftovers.  And now work has arisen up and smacked me over the head, and I'm wondering when I'll next get to the grocery store and whether I can possibly cram 72 hours into the next 48.  And maybe I'm feeling a wee bit one-dimensional, as TFL was at some international shin-dig tonight and seems to have had a great time making friends.

But for now I'll spend a bit of my precious sleeping time watching "You've Got Mail" just because.

Avoiding Children Like The Plague

One of the schools with a confirmed case of the flu is basically up the street from us.  Well, up the street a ways, but now that I think about it we were within half a mile of it on our walk on Sunday.

So.

It's one of the better excuses I've found for avoiding snot-nosed little squirts.  (Not that I'm around them anyway, these days.)

Of course, my own darling children are coming to visit--in fact, Boy arrives this week!--and I shall not be avoiding them.  Unless they start coughing or barfing.

In other news:  work progresses, taking up most of my waking hours and then some.  I went for a ride this weekend, though, and wound up with a mild case of heat stroke which, of course, means only one thing:  I need a new, lightweight motorcycle jacket.  TFL said so!  I could be practical and go for a water-repellent jacket with pads.  Or I could look around for a thin, pretty little leather jacket that I could wear all the time. 

Riding Season Again

It was a truly beautiful weekend, so TFL and I took off on a ride last Saturday.

Man, it was good to be back on the bike.  We went up 95, which is horrid, but branched off on 7 and then stumbled upon the 33 to 35 route--stunning.  The perfect road, all twisty and hilly and charming.

I'm trying to concentrate on that pretty ride and the hope of another this weekend to distract me from the news of the day, and the amoral idiots who are making me spitting mad.

It's like an equal opportunity slime fest, where the game of the day is to mangle language and logic to make the awful seem . . . acceptable, even laudable.  I've been livid about this issue for years, and appalled at the willful blindness and nauseating apologetics, and now those who should be cleaning house are all about sweeping things under the rug.

Shame on them.  And more shame on us if we let them get away with it.

On The Easter Parade

It really does exist, and we went.  It's the most charmingly chaotic affair ever, absolutely no organizing principle, not a parade so much as a milling about.

It was all a little crazy, but some of the hats were beautiful, not just silly.

TFL and I had a great time.

Can Someone Please Tell Me Where March Went?

Honestly?  I seem to have misplaced it. 

My niece is now a mother; my mother informs me that everyone is to get up and curtsy whenever a great-aunt enters or leaves a room.  But great-grandmothers get curtsies all the time.

Well, congrats to the niece.

I interviewed Richard G*re the other day.  Or maybe it was his nicer and better-looking twin.  So that was surreal.   (And no, I wasn't the one actually asking questions.  I was the Toter of Binders and Note-Taker.)

It's a Saturday.  My main goal for today:  I'm not going into the office.

I hope everyone else has had a great March.