Somewhat Educational, Halfway Entertaining, and Mostly for my own Amusement
The Mom: Did you know Shawn's birthday is this week? He's turning 33. We could almost be his parents.
The Aunt: He was born in 73? I was already in high school in 73.
The Dad: I was teaching high school in 73.
Not quite "Overheard in New York", but it gave me a laugh.
For the first time since I moved up to Indy, I left the cats alone in the apartment for the weekend. Usually I haul them home with me, since they did live there for 3 years. But my brother's cat, Max, has been banished from home, so we're trying other options.
The reason I've been hesitant to leave them at home alone is because one would starve and the other gorge himself to death. Max weighs about 27 lbs and my cat, Frosty, weighs about 14. In theory, I could leave enough food for the weekend, but knowing Max, it would all be gone within 2 hours and I'd come home to find undigested cat food thrown up around the apartment.
However, I'm happy to report that all was well when I returned. There was even food left in the bowls, and no vomit throughout the apartment. Which means I can leave for weekends and not have to have someone check in on them.
I did, however, find tufts of hair all over the floor. They've been wrestling and tearing each other apart shred by shred. But there's no blood, so I'm not too worried.
I love Law and Order SVU. Really and truly I do. But why in the world must they show the episode with the little girl who was kidnapped for the THIRD time this season" Really. It was good for about the first 20 minutes the first time they aired it. I can't even say it was good for the entire 60 minutes the first time they aired the episode. Now it's just killing viewership. Stop already.
Now you see it. Now you don't. Just like the sex scene from KH's new movie, this post has disappeared.
No reason other than a certain celebrity has a history of filing defamation claims. And even though I wasn't defaming, I don't want people getting to this site the way they seemed to be yesterday. With certain key word searches.
So if you missed the content of this post yesterday, sorry. You snooze, you lose. I also cleared the comments to protect the innocent.
I've never been the best at expressing myself in writing. (Excepting blogs where sarcasm is to be expected.) My email writing style tends to often be read wrong as either insulting or cold, when in fact, I'm just trying to be funny.
It's gotten worse now that I'm in the working world. I haven't quite finessed the proper letter writing style. It's that whole trying to balance formality with friendliness. I try to be professional, but when I read it back it sounds very cold. But if I'm too friendly, I sound un-professional. And as a young lawyer, I need all the help I can get in sounding like I know what I'm doing.
I survived my hearing with nary a scratch. The worst part was getting to the office by 6:45 this morning to get all my exhibits in a row. And then realizing at the last minute that I forgot to factor in a marital debt in my calculations. Which, once I worked it in helped my client. But it didn't help that by the time I got to court, I found a few typos in my proposed decree where I didn't catch the figure to correct it. Oops.
My boss had enough faith in me to let me go it on my own. And so did the client, even though the client knew I had only been a lawyer since Oct. That's a lot of faith.
I can't say whether I "won" because no one really wins in a divorce. And the matter is under advisement anyway. But if you count that I didn't get reprimanded by the judge, I got all of my exhibits admitted, and I got through my questioning of the witness without a hitch as winning, then yeah, I'm a winner.
I was supposed to attend a conference at my church yesterday for new members/visitors. I fall into the latter category, in case you care, but you don't.
After the seminar I was to meet my boss at work to go over my strategy for my first final hearing on Monday. I've been prepping for it all week and even met with the client on Friday. But as I was in the shower on Saturday morning, I realized I wasn' t as prepared as I would like to be, so instead I made a direct bee-line to work. Plus, after seeing my billable report for December, I realized I have some ground to make up before my year mark. Granted, that's still far away, but I hope to nip it in the bud before it gets too out of hand.
I arrived at work at 9:15, and after some issues with the outer door lock, I started billing at 9:30. Twice, if not 3 times I conferenced with my boss and rehearsed my examination of witnesses. Which is very helpful, but when you don't exactly have a witness, it's a little difficult to keep the flow going.
My proposed 6 page Order was reviewed and corrected and when I got it back to make the changes, it looked like a 2 year old had attacked it with a pen. Marks everywhere. And thanks to it being a weekend, no paralegal to dictate to and make my changes. (Which as reluctant as I was to admit, is actually faster than doing it myself.)'
Finally, I had bored both myself and my boss to death and we decided it was time to sleep on it for the night. I'm not expecting any major issues, and I don't really worry so much about the witness stuff as I do about the whole procedure. It's like, what do I say as soon as the judge says I can proceed with the case. And how do I wrap it up. But I guess the only way I'll actually learn is to be thrown into the fire. Which will happen sharply tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.
On the upside, billable hour count for Saturday: 7.25
Oye, I started reading Kelly's blog today, and when I saw she had a tag post, I knew before even getting to the end that I was a goner. But who am I kidding, I love these things.
4 Jobs You've had:
1. Cashier at Kroger. It really was that glamorous.
2. Maid for my Dad's residential cleaning service. Even more glamourous with the blue uniforms I had to wear.
3. Library gopher for IU's interlibrary loan. Trekking all over campus carrying 3 bags in each hand and a backpack on my back full of thesis' lazy people wanted to check out. And I make a mean copy on the copier.
4. Social Security Disability Adjudicator. Denying people's dreams.
4 Movies you can watch over and over:
1. Hoosiers
2. Rudy
3. 8 Seconds
4. Life as a House
4 TV shows you like to watch:
1. Grey's Anatomy
2. Gilmore Girls
3. Law and Order SVU
4. Lost
4 Places You've been on Vacation:
1. The geographical center of the US
2. Lookout Mountain
4. The Holocaust Museum
5. The Alamo
4 Websites you visit daily:
1. Google
2. Buzzpage
3. Hotmail
4. The Indiana Code
4 of my Favorite Foods:
1. Mashed potatoes
2. Beets
3. Green beans
4. Chocolate
4 Places I'd rather be:
1. Vegas
2. London
3. With my niece
4. NYC
4 Albums I can't live without: (I'm changing it to artists/bands since I can't decide between albums)
1. Guster
2. Switchfoot
3. Jadon Lavik
4. Bee Gees
4 People to Tag with this List:
1. The Mom
2. Stag
3. Pooh
4. (Don't have anyone to put here because everyone who reads my blog has been tagged.)
Oh my gosh, I can't stop watching. It's like a horrific train wreck.
Some of these girls weren't cut out for pairs skating. Pairs girls are usually really petite and a foot or two shorter than their male partners. I just watched Lloyd Eisler and Kristy Something or other, and the lifts look like it took quite a bit of effort. I don't think Lloyd is used to lifting a girl who is almost his height.
I'd say I'd love to hear Chuckke's take, but knowing his refined skating palette, I'm betting he's refusing to even tune in.
Edited: Ok, chatting with a friend while watching and she just had the best comment ever. Todd Bridges was wearing knee pads and such during his rehearsals and the commentors said something about how he didn't want to injure himself. And my friend Pooh said, "doesn't want to injure himself? what is he saving himself for? his acting career?"
Prof. Cooper is retiring from the blogging world. And like the Kels have said, he was one of the first to introduce we fledgling young law students to the word "blog". But we've all grown up, (and somehow amazingly became law school grads and lawyers) and our blogs have changed. So it's with a hearty sigh that we bid goodbye to Cooped Up.
At church yesterday, I had the (mis)fortune of sitting behind 2 couples in their early 20s. The couple directly in front of me weren't at church: they were on a date. During the singing at the beginning of the service, the boy kept running his hand up and down the girl's back and then brushing her hair back and kissing her behind the ear. Then she would turn to him and they'd kiss on each other a bit. During the communion prayer, she used one hand to massage his neck muscles, and at all other points when we were standing, one or the other of them had wrapped themselves around the others' arms and were laying their head on the others' shoulder.
It was a bit distracting to say the least. At one point I almost tapped them on the shoulder to ask them to cut it out. But then thought that would just be drawing attention to myself. Seriously, though, church is about the last place I can go by myself as a single person and not feel out of place, so can we all just keep our hands to ourselves?
I may have mentioned once, or maybe three dozen times that I dictate everything at work. Emails. Letters. Memos. Everything. Which was intimidating and odd for quite a while. But my associate assured me I'd get used to it, and sure enough I have. He even parlayed a few embarrassing aspects of becoming too comfortable with it and I laughed thinking they would never happen to me.
I was wrong.
When I dictate, I have to dictate punctuation, paragraph breaks, etc. Because as wonderful as my paralegals are, they are not telepathic. Yesterday, forgetting to switch out of dictation mode and into phone mode, I left a punctually correct voice mail message for another attorney. It went something like this: "As you know, the court has set our preliminary hearing for January 27 comma 2006 at 9:30 a.m. period." Fortunately, I only did it once and caught myself before I could make a bigger idiot of myself. Unfortunately there's no rewind button on voice mail.
Though it still isn't quite as bad as the time I was leaving a voice mail message for lead counsel of a national airline and managed stall for 2 minutes while I tried to find my work number so that I could leave it for him. I was new to my job and it wasn't memorized yet, so counsel got an earful of me stammering about how I was looking for my number. Then I managed to leave the first 3 digits of my work number with the last 4 digits of my home phone number and had to call the guy back to leave a follow up apologizing and leaving the correct number. He never returned my call.
I came home Friday evening so that the fam could take me out for my birthday. Only things didn't go quite as planned. We got to have Dominoes delivered to my niece's hospital room and we all stood around eating. Not quite the steak dinner I had imagined.
But don't worry, the niece is fine. She has a viral infection that has exacerbated her asthma. Except they won't diagnose her with asthma until she's at least 2. So the doc keeps saying, "she doesn't have asthma" and then in the very next sentence, "when kids have asthma as bad as hers...". Go figure.
Also, she didn't go straight to the hospital but had to hop from doc to doc until she was admitted. Lots of x-rays and breathing treatments and trips in the car to get from doc to doc. At one of the docs office, a nurse was trying to get her pulse ox count, and the niece, not wanting to be poked and prodded was crying in protest. And ever so eloquently the nurse blurted out, "well if you'd quit screaming maybe your lungs would work." Nice bedside manner, eh?
She's better now though and got to come home today. Unfortunately, they have her so doped up on steroids she'll be sitting out this season of baseball. So no one put her on your fantasy team roster or you'll just be throwing your team away.