guess how many people i cried in front of at work today

7.5

that's both of the summer work flow coordinators, 3 of my co-summers, the attorney who has done the most work with me, and my secretary who asked if i had allergies or if i was crying. and the .5 is the guy who gave me the assignment that made me cry.

so we alllll know about the research assignment i haven't gotten anywhere with in 3 weeks. but how i just keep trying. which is kinda stupid b/c clearly these avenues aren't working. but i didn't know what else to do and when i asked for suggestions, they suggested things i had already tried.

anyways, i had my performance eval today. and they tell you that it will be fine, don't worry, etc etc. well, of course i cried. first it was just the welling up of tears that you struggle to keep under control, and then the meeting doesn't end within 12 seconds and you start crying, and then i can't stop. AND THEN they say nice things. well that doesn't help. that just sets me off again once i'm almost under control again. so anyways. that was my afternoon. and it sucked. EXCEPT that this way the one workflow coordinator decided we should call CA attorneys to see if they could help. and one man MIGHT HAVE HELPED! everyone else suggested the same old same old resources. but this man suggested something new! the bible of municipal law in california, he says! so it is being sent to me from CA and hopefully it will be here next week, but more importantly than that, hopefully it has the answer! but i suppose that the nice thing is that i have these next 4 days to hold out with my renewed sense of hope and believe that the answer is in the mail.

of course, i will be doing that in my apartment where the AC has not worked for 4 days and it was supposed to be fixed today, but it was not, so i will be sweating thru the next 3 days, which i had initially been very excited about b/c both my roommates would be out of town and it was going to be lovely vegging time, but so much for that theory. i am inviting myself to eli's tonight for AC but he does not know that. i am showing up and we are going to dinner with khang. i am showing up with PJs and a toothbrush. i figure that at that point he can't possibly get rid of me. right? well i hope not.

i think they have figured out where my strengths lie

it seems that my last few assignments have begun with the words, "it's not at all legal, but...." (ok, so it was just this last assignment.) i figure they would feel really bad giving these assignments to anyone else, but since they know what research questions are doing to me, well this is probably the way to go. this way (1) no one else has to do it, (2) i don't have to do anything legal, which makes it less likely that i will cry, and (3) no partner is left wondering why he never got an answer to that 10 hour research assignment he gave that summer 7 weeks ago. it works for everyone.

AND I'M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT WHAT I GOT!! i'm supposed to try to get a copy of a document from 20 years ago. FROM THE DC GOVERNMENT! i mean, there is no way this could go wrong! b/c they are totally efficient and well-organized and it won't matter that we don't know exactly what we're looking for! oh, and the staff is always pleasant and motivated! I AM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS! (i'm actually not kidding.) (yes i'm kidding about the part about the efficiency and all, but i'm not kidding about the excited about it.) basically, my task is to go down to the zoning office and act persistent, friendly, and uninformed and to make it clear that i am not leaving until i get this sheet of paper, but that i am perfectly happy to sit there all day. WELL I AM HAPPY TO SIT THERE ALL DAY! it is going to be great!

i don't know who is to blame--

me or the internet.

[for the fact that i am still awake, having meant to go to sleep hours ago. ]

my latest plan

this series of posts (around june 26) made me realize that there is so much great old tv out there that i never had the fortune of experiencing and there are tons of movies too that i have never seen and i should probably just dedicate myself to sitting at home and either just trying to find these shows on reruns on all those cable channels that are out there or renting them when the come to DVD. i think that would be a great way to spend at least a bit of my life.

i have the plague

so, b/c i am old, and i had two nights of so little sleep and one night of heavy drinking and i have been stressed for a solid month and b/c all of these things wear down our immune systems, leaving us susceptible to all the terrible evil diseases that just wander around waiting to attack us, i am sick. ugh. very very sick. well, i'm not sure how sick i am, but i do sound awful. for the past 4 days i have had the kind of cough that makes people run for the nearest exit when they hear you coming. not that i blame them. i sound awful. and it's accompanied by general fatigue and soreness and a sore throat and oh yes, my favorite--the fact that every time i cough, i feel like throwing up. aren't you glad i've shared?

anyways, i decided that i would come down to cville for the weekend, just to get away. and i thought that i could go to the law library and get some work done in an environment i like. but that didn't happen. my mom told me to watch tv and rest up and i figure that mommy knows best. BUT the other great thing is that my place in cville has all the prescription drugs my parents have given me over the years. so when she said i should have antibiotics, i could do that! i didn't need to bother with seeing if student health was open on a saturday afternoon in the middle of summer. cuz i'm in the home where i HAVE a course of antibiotics, just sitting around, waiting for use. probably a year or two after its expiration date, but who believes in expiration dates anyways? so now to see if prescription drugs can shake this.

then, of course, we supplement the use of the free sample prescription antibiotics with the use of random prescription medications that you have been given for all sorts of reasons. so when i get sick, i call my mom and start reading the names off the bottles to see what would be appropriate. or i call and ask what i should take and she starts listing things until we come across something i have. i just called and mentioned one, and she says, "tussionex? why do you have that?" well, i don't know, but it has my father's name on it and it's from 2001. so i'm going to guess that at some point, daddy had a bad cough. then, at some later point, i was home and i had a cough. so my mom opened up a cabinet, rummaged around, pulled it out and said, "hey laura, take this." and that would explain why i have it in late 2006. if you're interested, in the end we settled on a drug from the drawer that has my name on the prescription label, is only about a year old, and i remember exactly where it came from. which is a pretty big deal. also, it has codeine. sweet.

it would also be helpful if the legal research and memo-writing elves would visit me, but i'm about to give up believing in them.

lexis does it better!

so a couple of weeks ago we had our westlaw training for the summer. i was already 30 minutes late b/c i had my first uber-chatty partner encounter, but then i went to westlaw training and decided that in addition to the fact that i prefer lexis, i did not like the westlaw rep here either. so i decided to be that laura. i am normally very chatty with the lexis/westlaw reps. i'm the girl who answers all the questions. so i was still that girl, only with a bit of bite. [i wish i had had enough advance warning and could have made a t-shirt that says, "lexis does it better." actually, i'm thinking i may make one of those. probably better move fast on that, so i can get some use out of it b/f i leave school.] basically, i would answer every question, b/c the two systems are the same, and then i would mutter to diana, "lexis does that better" or "they have that on lexis too." the meeting really drove home for me that being a points whore really does mean you know lexis and westlaw better than other people. i was shocked by the things other people didn't know existed. i explained that i had used west-check b/c they once offered me points for it, not b/c i actually needed to cite-check a brief. i mean, if you offer me points to do it, well i've done it. anyways, the poor man. and he didn't give us points! he says he's not allowed to.
what-ever. see if you can buy my love like that. and that's just another reason that lexis does it better. plus, as i explained to everyone, westlaw points don't actually buy you anything, so it's not like it even helps to get them. i mean, what am i going to get after the first vacuum cleaner? i still haven't figured it out.

and a welcome to my new readers!

so it turns out that my post that briefly mentioned elvis costello has gotten me on the radar for more google searches (crap, i suppose i've just done it again and i want to apologize b/c i know that you are probably disappointed by my lack of elvis costello talk, tho i did really enjoy the concert. it was very good times. very. unfortunately, i am a terrible story teller and provider of detail and i know nothing about music to boot, so that's really all i have to say.) and has increased my international hits by a bazillion percent. also, i was even excerpted on an elvis costello site. i swear, you profess your love for "big sam" the trombonist just once on your blog and it's all over the internet. but you should have seen how much fun that man was having onstage. i stand by my love. anyways, this development in people stumbling onto my blog and maybe even reading it for half a minute before they move on elsewhere in the world wide web has been very exciting for me.

laughing all over the place

so molly has made me aware of the well-known "go fug yourself" blog and i have fallen in love with it. it's one of those things that i now waste time reading b/c i have soooo many archives to go thru and i'm only in may 2006 so far! so i've really got to dedicate myself to this. i mean, it's a saturday night. what else would i do? anyways, this is absolutely hysterical and i have just spent 10 minutes laughing aloud at every single line uttered therein. good stuff. great stuff. uproariously funny stuff. i have felt this way about other posts on the blog, so you should really just rifle around find more funny for yourself. it's there, i assure you.

i am a mess

yes, i know that i whine about this enough, but it has truly consumed my life and the thing is that i am so worried about this that i am unable to think about anything else and it is really bad and i feel stressed out all the time, but i don't know what to do about it. i am supposed to have been writing this motion for a whole week and i have nothing. to some degree, this is b/c i am paralyzed, to some degree it is b/c i have no idea what to do, and to some degree it is b/c i am a lazy slug. oh, and to some degree it is b/c out of every work day there are about 4 hours of other stuff we are supposed to be doing and that really eats into your work day. particularly when you can't get yourself to show up early or stay late. so i am basically worthless on fridays and today was no exception. and i had accepted that and resigned myself to it and was so tired all day and figured that i would just go home early and take a nap and maybe even wake up and get some stuff done this evening or at the very least, well i have to go in this weekend and produce some tangible work product, tho i still have no idea what i am supposed to be doing. and at lunch, a partner was telling me about some sort of virginia case law that would be relevant. case law?!?! there's supposed to be case law?!?! shit! no one told me that. [so you know what i did? i told him i was getting a drink and ran away. smooth.] anyways, i am so terrified of not finishing this project that i wanted to leave the office in the middle of the day and just never go back. but that's not going to happen. unfortunately. so this is just me continuing to freak out about this in a public forum. OH! except i forgot the last part. so i was going to leave early, right? except i walked by another summer's office on my way out and she made me stay for an hour and a half and help her finish her project! a project that i could have done! and that she kept yelling at me as i made suggestions. but i was helping! and then, by the time i got to leave, i was no longer tired and i was feeling like being productive, but i couldn't get on board with doing my own thing and i had to come home to nap and oh look, i am still freaking out about all of this. how high can you have your blood pressure for how long b/f you just die?

more funny?!!? tonight!?!?! it's just too good to be true!

so lexi taught me how to see who looks at my blog. i am not very popular in the blogosphere. but that's ok. anyways, today someone linked to my page from the google finance page! oooooh, i'm sorry to whoever you were. turns out the title "big money" threw the search engines off or something and they threw me in together with a guy whose blurb that is excerpted on the page says this:

a.inject(0) { sum, v sum+v }. Woah. Basically, inject calls the block for each element
in a and assigns it to the variable v. Whatever the block returned the." (you can see more
at Uncle Booben's Ramblings)

i'm sure these people are thrilled to see that they have been linked to with the likes of me, who is talking about marrying a man b/c his legs move like noodles. and that's not the most inane thing i've written this week! (also, i have decided not to correct the typos from when i was drunk. i figure it adds ambiance.) maybe i should start to add "financial advice" to my page and see how many people go under by using it.

ok, that is all.

i am not a multi-millionaire

as a matter of a fact, out of twelve numbers, i matched not a single one.

this might be harder than i thought...

in other news, i had a wonderful night at wolftrap. the summers went to see elvis costello and eli joined us and i don't even like music and it was 9:06 before i realized we were watching elvis costello (i thought he looked a lot like elvis costello, but i also thought there was an opening act), but i had a wonderful time. many random things amused me greatly. first off, the other people. they were a riot. concerts with the older generation are truly delightful things. second, we were next to a crazy man. he was maybe not funny at first, and even managed to incense eli which should say something about the fact that he was actually quite terrible, but maybe moderately funny once we moved away. also, i was in love with the trombonist on the end rather quickly. well, i started out amused. i liked the way he moved and he always looked like he was having fun and the way his pants hung it looked like his legs moved like noodles sometimes, but i think it was just his pants. thru/out the night, it grew to love. and then, in general, i think i was just in a good mood and it was very fun. yay for fun.

and now, for my next night of "waking up at 6." it's not even that i'm tired. it's that i just would rather stay in bed. can you really blame me?

big money!

so i've only got anohter 23 hours or so to tell this story until it is rendered completely null and void and i got out of bed so i suppose i might as well do so now.

so i know that i should buy a place when i move here to start working. only i have no idea how to buy a place. so i keep bothering people about it. and i was reading an article in the washingtonian the other day. and then, i flipped to the pages right after the article. where houseing prices were listed. and b/c the article and the beautiful pictures of homes in dupont, i realized that i had to own a home. i couldn't deal with a condo! so then i looked at the price.

at which point i realized i would win the lottery. not that i would have to win the lottery, but that i WOULD win the lottery. i suppose it may have happened in the opposite direction, but what you have to understand aobut me is that i very rarely buy lottery tickets. and when i do, i am FIRMLY convinced that i WILL win the lottery. i think i have bought 3 in the past. which i know b/c the last time i bought a lottery ticket, i was FIRMLY convinced that the "third time's a charm." which is part of why i don't know exactly what to make of this time. actually, the whole thing is a bit disheartening when you realize that i have probably never even matched a single number on a ticket. but dana and i went out an bought them yesterday, in the hopes that we wouldn't have to worry about being lawyers and so now i have to wait til tomorrow to see if it si true.

also, i have struck deal with god about the lottery. only i'm not exactly sure what the deal is. so at first i figured that i just needed a couple of million. but when we bought the tix, they were at $86 million. so i'll have some left over. i figured i would strike a deal with god and then i would be more likely to win. so i started by telliung him that i would give the rest to charity. but then i realized that the home in dupont would need repairs. and i started wondering how much i was allowed to put aside for that. but then you start to think about all the other things you could do. like pay the land taxes on the ranch for the next 50 years so that your dad would never have to sell the ranch. which he wants to do and you don't b/c you have no appreciation for the cost of these things. and then i started to wonder lump sum v. yearly b/c i was thinking that maybe it would really be wiser for me to just do the whole investment thing and then, when i died, they could make a trust or something. only i have no idea how that all works. so then i figured that when i win, my first call will be to my dad to explain these things. but then i have to worry about keeping the fact that i won from my mom, who will think that it should all go to god.

do you see how difficult it is to be me?

anyways. it will be less difficult when i am a millionaire in 23 hours. maybe. hopefully. desperatey hopfully. oh, and i decided that people could live there for dirt cheap. so you want me to win too. cross your fingers!

oh! and!

i got out of bed to share this. mostly b/c i have no idea what it means.

so tonight a co-summer associate told me that his girlfriend said that i was the kind of person you would want by your side if your hand had been cut off and you had to go to the hospital.

i think it's a good thing, but it's also a bit unsettling. mostly b/c i don't like blood.

new post!

so i was going to put up a new post today (and i even remember what it was about--i went to visit my old place of employment today for lunch and i rememebered that it was the best place ever to work), but then i realized that there wasn't too much to say about that. but why did i leave again?

anyways, on the way home, i decided that i would have to post about something b/c i experience guilt that people read and i don't have new posts and i do have new posts, a different post-it every day, but they don't necessarily get typed up, but then the guilt started to consume me, and i suppose the $80 worth of drinks, which isn't really that many drinks when you are forced to go somewhere you didn't want to go b/c you are still a cheap bastard at heart, and so i realized that i HAD TO post when i got home.

so here i am--posting.

and here is what you get--the most recent thing in memory--i woud like to encourage people not to wear tricky pieces of clothing when you drink. but getting out of a tricky piece of clothing can be very difficult. and after a few drinks, and when everyone is asleep, and you've been wearing the same dress for 6 years (you were thinking about getting rid of it, except 4 people gave you compliments on it today) and the zipper broke about 4 years ago, well i just want to say that getting out of that dress can be a bit problematic. actually, from experience, it isn't as problematic as getting into/out of dresses that are a size too small or dreadfully inappropriate for your body even tho they are in the right size, but i felt obligated to say something and so this is what you got.

oh lucky you!

ok, so we'll see if we get up at 6am in the morning. we've been trying to make ourselves a morning person (this is all the royal plural, obviously), but it's not working very well and the very serious effort was to begin tomorrow, but tonight has probably not done much for that effort. ok, ttyl!

croutons

so i FINALLY went to the grocery store today, where i purchased a box of croutons. i figured that if i didn't open them, they would last for forever and i could just leave them in the cupboard with the salad dressing i also bought until i purchased some lettuce and made a salad. except that i forgot that croutons are an essential part of many non-salad meals. for example, you can't have today's lunch--croutons and cottage cheese--without croutons. or another of my favorite meals--croutons and chunks of cheese. or, one of the greatest classic laura meals of all times--box of croutons.

the croutons are becoming even more central to this lunch b/c for the second time in my life i made the mistake of buying the non-salted cottage cheese. ugh! awful!

cockatoo, maybe

so i was just walking down the street and i saw the cutest dog in the whole wide world. a dog so cute that i, who had been waiting all day to get out of work as soon as possible and to go home and me, who doesn't like waiting at lights and walking at the pace of other people, waited at a light and nearly walked a block just to be with this dog. SO CUTE! the man said it was a mix of a cocker spaniel and a shih-tzu and i think that's a cockatoo, except that's a kind of bird and i can't find this breed on the internet.

but the thing is that this kills me! it's kinda like how i never liked little dogs, but now they have really grown on me. well this is another type of dog i never wanted to like--a dog that has been bred solely to be cute. well god, it worked. i was sooooo tempted to pick the little thing up and just run off with it. and if only i wasn't so bad at the internet, i would be researching what kind of disposition it has and how much love and attention it needs. i mean, maybe i can't be a lawyer if i'm going to give this dog all the love and attention it needs and i should probably figure that out before i finish law school.

seriously, this dog was the cutest thing you have EVER seen.

grade addendum

ok, so i emailed 6 people about the MT grade. and you know what? 2 of them had the same grade as i did. which doesn't make any sense if he said he was going to stick at or above the curve. unless me and my best friends are just the class idiots. so i don't know if this makes me feel better or worse, but it makes the whole thing even weirder. what's up, KF?

shout out to cosi employees!

so after about 3 ½ hours of being mopey laura, i decided that it was time to just get over it and be happy laura again. and i knew exactly where to start! with my cosi coupons! for the second time all summer we didn't have a lunch meeting and i was going to get me a cosi sandwich! for $6! it was going to be great. then maybe i would work at my desk, to try to atone for the fact that it would be about 1pm before i got anything done.

well cosi at lunch is MADNESS! there are lines EVERYWHERE! and once you get thru the food line, THEN you have the paying line. but they are well staffed and very efficient. AND THEY ARE ALWAYS SO FRIENDLY! and i love that. it's so chaotic and i imagine that some people can be short and frustrated, but in all my visits to cosi (this particular cosi at least), the people have been SSOOOOO upbeat and cheerful. and i love that. and i appreciate it a lot. i'm sure we all know of the starbucks experience where they made me cry. and initially, all those years ago, i didn't like cosi for the same reasons i didn't like starbucks. i thought they charged me too much for what i was getting and they were always crowded. but the food is very good, and i have decided that i will not get it all the time, but that it is worth the more-ness of the cost. and they're very friendly and i will never again think of them like starbucks. not to say that there aren't friendly starbucks employees. the man at the cville teeter starbucks almost made me a starbucks fan b/c he was so delightful during my first semester 1L finals. and i actually went back to the culprit starbucks last week and they were friendly. but that one experience. well you know how long laura can hold a grudge. actually, i'm not a fan of the cosi i went to the other week. hm. well anyways. this was another post that was initially going to make one point and then wound up not making a completely different one.

but thanks to cosi employees at the corner of 6th & indiana for being so delightful in the lunchtime crush. it means a lot to me. and to others, i'm sure.

friends in response to shell-shocked

so i don’t normally ask people about grades. well, maybe i do. i am a bit nosy. but i think that i’m worried that people will think i’m nosy if i ask about grades, so i generally don’t. anyways, this bothered me enough that i emailed a bunch of people to ask how they did.

the thing about when people are upset is that everyone has their own way of trying to reply and fix things. but what actually helps depends on any number of things and some of the things people say to help only even make things worse. and what placates me in response to one thing, may just upset me more in response to the thing that upset me the next week.

1) i suppose that what really counts is that people care enough to try at all and that in itself should help. which it does. 2) sometimes someone sends exactly the right thing to say and that is amazing and makes you so appreciative of the friends that you have and of your life at that very moment, when even tho things may suck in some regards they can be more perfect than you can even understand in others.

one person’s email this morning was right on in response to the problem itself, which is just b/c misery loves company and b/c this person was the right person for that task. but then another friend sent an email that was so the perfect thing to say to laura in general, and yet somehow made more appropriate to this laura who has been upset by this thing at this particular moment that it had me crying in my office, which is a good thing, but only b/c the hallways were empty while people were at lunch but would not have been a good thing if anyone had walked in while my eyes were still red.

looking at it again, it was maybe the simplest email ever and may have actually been cut and pasted from an email i sent to him previously, and maybe i am just an overly-emotional freak show. but i suppose i’ll give the kid credit anyways. but all that aside—thanks to those of you who tried. =)

as a side-note about grades

b/c of something i said about another grade, a friend mistakenly believed that i had beaten the curve in another one of my classes. well, that was silly. to date, i have only beaten the curve in one class. of course, it was the first grade i ever got back in law school. i was off to a very misguided start. alas. and the thing is that it was in a class that everyone else hated b/c of the prof. he was visiting and wasn’t a really good teacher and the exam was one of those where our answers were probably just about all the same and it was fair to say that grades were going to be arbitrary. but of course your perception of this man would depend on where you fell on that curve. and let’s just say that if darryl brown taught at uva, i would have taken an all darryl brown, all the time schedule for these 3 years. i probably should have transferred to william and mary to make that dream a reality.

shell-shocked

so, for the first time, a law school grade has upset me. i am very accustomed to bringing up the rear of the class in law school. i have become accepting of that. i don’t take law school exams well and i go to an amazing law school. i love the people, i love the profs, i’m going to get a great job so long as i don’t REALLY f*@! it up and once i accepted that, i was ok. so i generally look at my grades, feel my stomach drop and my hopes deflate, and then i go on. somehow i feel really detached from them. maybe it’s b/c we’ve all decided they’re so arbitrary. i don’t know.

but i never give up the dream of beating the curve. and this semester i had REALLY thought this might come true in one class in particular. i had LOVED this class. the material, the prof, everything. i had even volunteered to be on call an extra day. I DON’T SPEAK IN CLASS. this was unprecedented. and i thought maybe that fact would help my grade too. in addition, the prof had told some of us that he would grade almost completely at the curve, and if you fell outside the curve, he would be more likely to go high than low. i was REALLY hoping to be one of those highs. but at least i knew i wouldn’t be lower than a B+.

right. well i got the lowest grade i have ever received, outside of high school math classes. and we all know those don’t count. initially, i had my usual detached feeling. but then, at some point, i really started to take it personally. or something. the point is that it really sucked. i mean, how much do you have to stink to fall SO FAR below the curve in a class where you were told that nearly EVERYONE would be at least at the curve. YOU HAVE TO HAVE SUCKED A LOT! and i guess that this was the kind of exam where being bad at law school exams would hurt you. but that’s all he could say about it. but it’s not like i said something WRONG. b/c he didn’t ask us for actual INFORMATION about the things we had LEARNED. granted, i’m not always good at that either. but still.

addendum

so i put the used papers in the bin nearest to my apartment and decided it was stupid to get more coupons, since i have 11 and they expire in 12 days and i am responsible for about 1 lunch a week and trying to distribute them too widely would make people outside of my circle of friends aware of the fact that i am a freak show.

but i returned them to a bin right next to a security guard at the MCI center's parking garage and he was not at all concerned by what i was doing, and i think that i could have been a terrorist putting exlosives in them and no one would have cared at all. tho i suppose that that could be true of billions of things a day. tho i think my conduct may have counted as suspicious. who places a large stack of something into a newspaper dispenser at 10pm at night next to a very large arena that maybe could be considered a quasi-landmark if i really wanted to push this? tho i am a very law-abiding looking white girl and i had just walked out of an upscale condo building. but i'm not sure that really makes it any better.

ok, that is all.

what did you do this tuesday night?

i'll tell you what i did. so, i had picked up the express today and had discovered a $2 coupon off cosi sandwiches or salads contained therein. so after sitting around my apartment for a while this evening, i remembered this fact at about 9:00. so i decided that i would walk around my neighborhood and empty out all the remaining expresses in the area to get their coupons.

see, i love cosi sandwiches and salads. but i am cheap. it's fair to say. and when you spend $8 for them, well you feel a bit put out. but when you pay $6, then you feel ok. i like me a good savings!

so i left my apartment. i live right across from the MCI center, an arena at which some sort of event was just letting out. and i live in a neighbhorhood where about 99% of people out at this time are going to a nice dinner or a bar or maybe returning home from their days at work. the other 1% is homeless. and then there is me. i was clearly in my pajamas, not wearing a bra, and wearing shorts that when you have thighs like mine, are borderline indecent. i actually felt a bit inappropriate wandering around. but i had not known that this trip would be as lengthy as it was. or as populated.

but that did not deter me in my mission. the problem was that i live in a very heavily traveled area. so i walked around about 10 neighborhood blocks, only to find 2 papers left! with every empty box i saw, my efforts seemed more fruitless and my heart sank just a bit.

but then i remembered a bin that sat behind my old office building, about 8 blocks away, and thru a fairly deserted and sketchy area. but i was not to be deterred! there were savings out there! just waiting for me!

so off i went. but better than that! just a block into this journey, and while i was still in perfectly legit territory, i discovered a bin of them, partially obscured behind a tree and on a side of a street probably not heavily traversed by people on their way to work. but it gets even better! the door was broken on it! so you had to make a sincere effort to get out your paper. well other people in a hurry to get to work don't make an effort. but laura, seeing tens of dollars worth of savings behind that broken door, oh she makes an effort.

i figure that i look like someone who was actually pictured in the paper today and was picking up copies for everyone i knew. or at least a good friend of someone pictured in the paper today. probably those two wrestling squirrels featured on page 9.

also, i am the kind of person who stops when she sees something shiny on the ground. if it is change, even a penny, i pick it up. the evidence gathered this evening shows that in my neighborhood, shiny things that catch your eye on the ground are generally just spit.

and actually, it got even better before i got to my apartment. now i truly know that god loves me. i decided i would check my mail box. do you know what was in there? A COUPON BOOK! for mcdonalds, granted. but i can now 2 free 32 oz soft drinks! and 20 piece orders of chicken mcnuggets for $3.29! and any breakfast sandwich for 99cents! i mean, those prices are a steal!

ok, so now i am debating going back out and getting the rest of the papers from that bin. actually, i do not know how to recycle in my building, or if it is possible. so now i am thinking about cutting the coupons out of the papers i have, returning them to the bins and hoping that when they re-fill the bins in the morning, they pick up the remnants of yesterday and recycle them. this sounds like an evening well-spent.

are other people at hugging?

at the UVA 1L reception in the spring, i felt that i wanted to hug the recruiting coordinator, but i thought i would never again work in a place where hugging was appropriate. altho that's silly. but it seems that in the last couple of days, hugging has become the appropriate means of saying farewell to female associates. i still feel a bit awkward with it, but i like hugs! so maybe this is a good sign on the whole.

the tech guy does not loathe my company!

so many people had told me recently that a certain law tech guy with whom i believe myself to have fostered a friendship really hates it whenever i come in. some people think this is b/c my stories are terrible and some people said this b/c they just can't imagine that a tech person would appreciate any kind of visit. i knew that these people were wrong and that they did not know enough about the relationship b/t derek and i to form a knowledgeable opinion and realize that i really am great and my visits are cherished. however, i now have proof.

as you may know, i have recently been trying to delete emails from my sent box. i had emailed derek asking if this was a stupid thing to do. he replied promptly, tho this fact is irrelevant to the point i am trying to make. and then last night, at 1:30 in the morning, when i was supposed to be waking up at 5am, i found this email, which i forwarded along to him--

09/12/2004
re: (minor) bundle problems

I am a 1L with a bundle. I’m having a couple of really minor problems that I was wondering if you could look at. The first is that since I installed the Microsoft update, my computer is me a security alert about a firewall. And the second is that I can’t access sites with cookies, despite the fact that the security settings are where they’re supposed to be. I don’t think it would take long at all, but was hoping to know when would be best for me to drop by.

Thanks,
Laura XXX

in my forward, i asked, "ahhhh, remember the good old days when i didn’t just drop by your office 47 times a day to bother you and i ASKED when i should come by?" of course there were a multitude of additional comments that i forwarded along, trying to remind him that we are friends and he misses me this summer. and to all of those who say that derek does not like my visits! you are wrong! and i know this b/c his reply was the following--

I miss the regular student visits visits so I am happy to get an email howdy.

and then there was more follow-up and details about his summer and even tho you could construe "student visits" broadly i know that he means me and my ray of sunshine that follows me around, so take that! take that!

i think that the people who told me that derek does not love my visits are other summers at my firm, and they will hopefully never read this, but at least now i know. and saunders, but he doesn't read this, and it's not like i take the things he says seriously anyways.

long time, no inane rambling

and i don't really have much to say now, but i figured i should post. of course, we all know that once i start to post, i can't stop posting. maybe later i will sign on to tell you how awful the series premiere of falcon beach was last night and yet how i insisted on watching all two hours of it. well, actually that about covers it.

anyways, i was going to talk about work stuff.

so, i am pretty excited! it's like a two-fer! they've started to give me projects in practice groups in which i have epxressed interest! but to make it even better! they're projects that involve things like document review! and going to meetings and taking notes! i did these things as a professional for 3 years! i can do these things! i know they don't involve legal research or a legal education, but do you have any idea how happy that makes me?!!?!

so i got a government investigation case on friday and i was uber-excited about that. it's a long-term thing, so i'll really be a part of a team AND it involves projects that were started by a summer LAST summer, so it's totally not time-sensitive and the people are uber-nice and i'm just parsing information out of documents! god i love drivel!!!

AND THEN TODAY! so i had expressed an interest in government contracts b/c i interviewed with this guy and i thought he was amazing tho i learned on friday that maybe i shouldn't be too excited about working with him, but then today i had the opportunity and we will see how badly i screwed up. but still. so guess who represented the largest association of defense contractors at a meeting with the VP of homeland security today when the guy in her office who was instrumental in drafting the regulation that was issued today called in sick? yes, that very clearly overstates my role and the importance of the meeting, tho it is always motivational to attend meetings where those in charge are commended for their artful not answering of the questions. i can not answer questions! maybe i should do this!

so i was very excited b/c i even billed a whole day. of course, to non-billable projects. but whatever. i was so proud of my 9 hours til i realized that that is not ever going to cut it in the real world, but baby steps. so yay for me! of course, since i may very well have dreadfully angered a top-dog partner, maybe i will be fired again. actually, the funny thing is that i kinda failed in this too. well, i didn't fail. but he expected them to talk about things at the meeting. substantive things. but they didn't! mostly they just patted the guys who wrote the regs on the back, and then those guys said this was just a step and waaaay more needed to be done, and then the other people would ask questions and then those guys would fail to answer them. so big partner man was not very thrilled about my report back, but hopefully the written report will make it clear. not that i understood most of what was going on, so hopefully he can figure that out for himself.

i'm not giving away privileged information, right?

ok, well this is all very boring.

and tomorrow i go to a jail! for 16 hours! i'm tired just thinking about it. blargh. but also kinda excited! unless partner man tells me i'm not allowed to. which i hope he doesn't. aren't you glad i involve all of you in these discussions?