Single 37 year old female power attorney buys new laptop and must figure out how to hook it up at home on her own.

Will she succeed? To be continued ...

Update on the TUMS witness:

I was in yet another deposition today involving all the same parties (therefore all the same attorneys and experts who were in attendance at yesterday's deposition, and the same court reporter, basically all the same exact people in the same exact room, with the sole exception of yesterday's deponent, who had already flown back to his home state), and during a break, we talked about the guy in his absence ... specifically, we all talked about the bottle of tums he had on the table yesterday. He did in fact finish off the entire half of the bottle (that big plastic bottle with the multi-colored tablets? you know the one I'm talking about?) that he started off with, by the end of the day. But what I learned today, that only three of the people who were sitting closest to him yesterday (those three being his own attorney who sat to his right, the lead attorney asking the majority of the questions who sat directly opposite him, and the court reporter who sat to his left, at the head of the table) noticed, was that he came back from lunch with a mylanta mustache. Not a milk mustache; he did not drink milk at lunch. But he was seen drinking straight from a bottle of Mylanta at the end of the lunch break, right before we started back. And he must've been a sloppy Mylanta drinker. Because once we got going again for the second half of the day, the Mylanta that had spilled onto his face above his upper lip when he swigged from the bottle dried and became milky white and crusty looking, and stayed that way for most of the rest of the afternoon.

His own attorney confessed to trying to give him the silent sign to check his upper lip any time they made eye contact, by brushing his own upper lip with his finger, but I guess the guy didn't get it. But at least he must've noticed in during an afternoon bathroom break, b/c it was gone after that. Poor guy. At least none of us laughed at him or made fun of him to his face yesterday ... but I guess if you don't show up for something you're free game, even by your own attorney, because we sure did get a collective chuckle sharing thoughts about the TUMS and the Mylanta mustache today.

How do you spell relief?

Day-long deposition today. Expert witness deponent, hired consultant. Large, crowded conference room, lots of attorneys, lots of other hired consultants for the other parties.

Half-way through the day my associate leans in to me and whispers, "have you ever been in a deposition before where the witness put their bottle of tums on the table like that?" It took me a second to understand what she said. I looked over at the witness, who was down on the far side of the conference table from me, and noticed for the first time the half-empty bottle of tums sitting at his elbow. And I proceeded to lose my shit.

I don't know if it was actually as funny as it seemed at the time, but in that moment, it turned my giggle box over on its ass. I have never struggled so hard and for so long to keep my laughter silent and smothered behind my hands in a setting like that. Tears started streaming down my face, I couldn't get my laughter under control.

And my answer to her question, once I was able to speak (or rather whisper) again, was no. It doesn't surprise me that a witness would bring antacids with them to a deposition. But that is in fact the first time I have ever seen one plant the antacid bottle within reach on the table right next to all the exhibit notebooks containing all the thousands of pages of documents, and pop tablets so conspicuously as he gets grilled by attorneys. Not that I blame him. But it was seriously funny.

But Halloween is over ...

I had a deposition today, one I was defending. Big case, big witness. I had taken a lot of documents I'd need for it home with me last night, partly to do some last review in anticipation of the depo, mostly so I'd have everything I needed to take with me, so that I could go directly from home to the depo this morning w/o going by the office.

So when I was getting ready to leave my house for the depo this morning, I had a lot of stuff to pack up to take with me. And I remembered a soft messenger bag that I knew I had somewhere that I thought would hold more than what I had been using. Dug around a little in the upstairs of my old house, through all the junk that's accumulated in my study, and found what I was looking for. Took the bag downstairs and threw in all my stuff, grabbed a to go cup for my coffee, headed out the door, straight to the depo.

When I got to the law firm, I pretty much dumped out all my stuff onto the conference table and then just sorted it quickly into big stacks. Big stacks of documents. And the deposition began.

Maybe ten mintues into the deposition, my associate attorney, who was sitting next to me, pinched my arm gently, unnoticeable to anyone else. I looked over at her, and she inclined her head towards one of my stacks of documents. I looked, and holy shit, there was a ginormous spider crawling up the side of the stack of papers.

Bless her heart, my associate stood up and discretely picked up a napkin at the coffee/drink bar behind us, scooped up the spider with it, and tossed it in the trash. I was still trying to hide my squirminess and squealiness and girly need to shriek about the eek!gross!eww!yikes!omg!spider!spider!getitaway!eek! feeling about the whole thing. I was seriously thinking to myself, "stop the deposition! tell them we have a situation, this is an emergency, spider! spider! big one! stop the deposition!" But before my mouth formed the words my brain was screaming, my associate had dealt with it, the spider was gone, and as I looked around the table, I realized that no one else had even noticed, or at least had not thought to pay one bit of attention, to what was going on over on my end of the table.

I'm assuming, I mean it's pretty obvious, that what happened is that some big-ass creepy spider had hidden itself away into my messenger bag that I'd left lying around, opened and empty, in a room of my old house for who knows how long. And it must've attached itself to the documents I threw into the bag this morning, and it came right out with them when I put all my stuff on the table. So, sure, understandable. Not normal, not something that happens any old day, not welcome certainly, but explainable. And discreetly dealt with by my associate. My very capable female associate.

We both maintained our professionalism, completely and totally. On the outside anyway, which, hey, is all that really matters, right? I mean, no one even noticed, like I said. But eww! eww! eww! omg! I really really really wanted to jump up and squeal and demand that one of the men in the room kill it. Which, actually, makes me thinkg that maybe my associate is a more evolved female than I am. I apparently am still a bit of a whimpy woman when it comes to things like creepy crawly spiders, no matter the tough aura I attempt to give off when wearing my power suit and defending my key witness in a day-long deposition at a big firm in a big big case. Power woman, reduced by spider.

Oops

My office passed around a Hallmark card for people to sign today. Someone brought it in to me while I was sitting in on a telephone deposition. I looked at the name of the person it was for on the envelope that came with it, then I signed it w/o reading anything else, and gave it back to the person to pass on around to the rest of the office.

I just now realized that I wished my boss a happy birthday, on boss's day.

I bet I get employee of the month.

Bourgeois Blues

I love Taj Mahal. I have ever since I was in college, dating a guy who had his Real Thing album on vinyl; we'd listen to it on his record player in his dorm room (and later in his off campus apartment, we dated sophomore through senior years), while hanging out, drinking cheap wine, smoking pot, eating Chinese food, having sex. We wore that record out.

So I was sooo freaking excited to find out that Taj Mahal would be playing, live, near me a oouple weekends ago, at a tiny little hole in the wall place. Seemed too good to be true. And it totally was.

Don't get me wrong, it was still cool to see Taj play. But I didn't get to hear him play any of those cool old songs that I love so much - it was more of his recent stuff. Good stuff though; I liked everything I heard. Gearing up for it, though, I was listening to and singing all those old songs, and I didn't get to hear any of them.

But it still would've been a good night, but for these assholes who were all around me. It was a hole in the wall place, like I said; standing room only. So I made my way up to the front of the room, right in front of the stage, right before Taj came on. During a break, while people were talking and stepping back to the bar for another round of drinks before the main act. And when these assholes who had been right up front realized that I'd snuck my way past them, they gave me such shit. Tried to bully me out of the way, back behind them.

That's where my lawyer training came in handy, though. I have to say, the longer I've practiced law, the better I've become at being a bitch. And man, can I be a stone cold bitch when I want to be. I didn't back down from them, and eventually they gave up trying and let me be.

But this one chick, though; for some reason, she decided to molest me with her breasts to try to get me to back down. Seriously, she rubbed her tits all up against me, constantly, while saying shit in my ear and trying to get me to back off from her group.

I don't get it. How was that supposed to run me off? I don't go for girls, I don't have sex with girls; but I have to admit that it wasn't unpleasant to let this chick, who had a hot body, rub her tits against my arm, and against my back. So I told her, feel free to keep doing that until you get yourself off; feels pretty good to me. It didn't make her back off at first, but after a while she gave up.

What is it with people. There I was, expecting to just have a good time, listen to some music that would take me back to those good old days of hanging out with my cool, mellow, bohemian boyfriend of the amazing sex drive, and instead I was surrounded by young asshole bullies, who didn't give a shit about the music; and the closest I got to sex was a little bit of lesbian molestation.

Oh John, ain't it hard.

Slurp. Slurp.

I went out for drinks after work tonight with a group of lawyers and other professionals, who I know solely through business connections.

Only one of them is someone I actually work with in my office, who I can claim to really be truly friends with, to the point that I don't mind embarrassing myself in front of her. The others - well, I know them well enough to go out for drinks with them, but I like to think that I'm all professional when I mingle with them.

Tonight I found myself saying the word "slurping" to them when describing sounds made while one gives a blowjob.

Yeah. I'm a real professional. A true class act. My momma would be proud.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program ...

Just kidding, don't know if I'll get back to posting regularly or not (for the one person out there who might still follow this blog). But whew, what a year it's been ... doing the job of two attorneys while my boss wound up for retirement, getting promoted to the boss job, continuing to do the job of two attorneys while the big boss man considered getting around to interviewing for a new attorney to help me out, then training said new attorney ... who just pointed out to me that it's her six month anniversary on the job, which made me think, holy fuckadoodles, where has the time gone?

Six months since the new hire. So, nine months since the promotion. Man. It still seems like it just happened. I think I've settled into it finally though, at least to a comfortable point.

And now once again it's time to start thinking about hiring law clerks for the summer; and this year, I'm in charge. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha. Come on sweet innocent unaware cuties, send in your applications ... I'm here to mentor and ogle you.

It's time to get back with the program.

Btw, I'd like to think that my cross today was like the first half of this video ... but it was probably more like the second half ...

Doesn't matter really; either way, it still gives me an excuse to post this video

I KICKED someone's ASS on cross-examination in court today.

And I enjoyed the hell out of it.

One sure sign I've hit the "tipsy" point

If I can't remember where I last put down my glass, I know I'm tipsy. The harder I have to look for it, the tipsier I am.

Disconnect

I logged on to Facebook tonight and saw status messages from the majority of people I'm friends with saying something like "I can't believe my son/daughter had his/her first day/first day back at school!"

I so cannot relate.

At least I'm wearing matching shoes

Three o'clock in the afternoon. I just now caught my reflection in a mirror and realized for the first time today that, yes, I am wearing a white blouse and a black bra. Sigh.

I remember changing my mind a couple times this morning about what I was going to wear to work today. When I was considering wearing a dark dress, the black bra would've been fine; but underneath a thin white blouse, well ... even paired with a basic black below-the-knee pencil skirt, my outfit doesn't say "professional attorney" so much as it does "professional whore."

Lovely.

loving the new clerks, esp. the one who (intentionally? or not? can't tell, but either way it's awesome) threw in a "my cousi vinny" reference in memo

I'm wondering if my office is benefitting this summer from the economic downslide our country's been in the past few years, especially as it affects the market for hiring new lawyers. Because this summer we seem to have lucked into hiring some really, truly awesome law clerks, who probably could've gotten jobs in big, high-paying firms for the summer if only those firms were hiring, and I am just loving them.

The work product has been very, very good so far. I almost hadn't even realized just how much work I've got on my shoulders these days, until I was able to hand off some assignments and then get back very helpful research/analysis/memos/end results. Saves me time. And damn, on top of just saving time, these kids do research above and beyond what I would have done in trying to just make deadlines and address what has to be addressed and shit. It's not always right on point, but there's so much of it that there's bound to be helpful stuff there that I wouldn't have taken the time to find myself. Awesome for me, right? I mean especially since I'm currently dealing not just with my new promotion, but also doing the jobs of two attorneys, since we still haven't hired someone to take my old position yet. It's a fuckload of work, I tell you.

Best of all, it's just so damn nice to have fresh new people, personalities, in the office. I love it. They're so nice, and it's fun to watch them interact with each other too.

Tomorrow I have to leave town at 7:45 am to drive two hours to another town for a hearing, the kind of thing I have to do often but usually do by myself, but this time I'll have a very personable, talkative female clerk going with me, who I already like a lot. It's going to be soooo much better spending 4 hours in the car round-trip with company - - that is, company who is very easy and fun to talk to. It's going to make a day that I would normally dread having to go through the motions on much easier to stand, and probably enjoyable in the end.

And tonight I'm still going on my damn workday, at 10 o'clock at night, just at home now instead of the office, working on an appellate brief that is due Friday. (Shit, Friday? As in day after tomorrow? Fuck. Fuck!) I'm tired, I'm annoyed, and I'm stressed. But I was just reading over a memo that one of the other new clerks prepared for me, analyzing the cases cited by the appellants in their brief, and offering his own opinion on the appellant's arguments. And about halfway through his memo, he starts off a new paragraph by stating that the appellant's assertion that blah-da-blah-da-blah does not hold water.

Maybe I'm letting the late hour and long day get to me, maybe I'm starting to get a little giddy and silly or something, but all I can think about right now is this image I now have in my head of this law clerk's words - the words of this very nice, very unassuming, very polite, I mean super super polite, (he calls me ma'am constantly, automatically and deferentially and almost shyly, and I've teased him about it and tried to break him of calling me that but he can't seem to help it), young law clerk - coming out of Vinny Gambini's mouth. And I'm just imaging this scene in my head, this back and forth between an imaginary attorney arguing this brief and an imaginary judge up on the appellate bench, that goes something like this:

Attorney: Does the appellant's case hold water? Does it? PLEASE! ANSWER THE QUESTION! DOES IT HOLD WATER!?!?!?

Appellate Judge: NO!!! It DOESN'T!!! It DOES NOT HOLD WATER!!!!!!



I know I took the long way around in getting there, but I just love any chance to bring up that movie. So after reading that memo tonight, and having that exact imaginary scene run through my head, I just had to take a few minutes to write this post, mostly just so that I could then post a clip of Vinny Gambini and Mona Lisa Vito:

2:00 am Wednesday: to sleep, or not to sleep?

Ok seriously, have we only gotten through two days so far this work-week? Because I swear it should be Friday already.

Apparently, along with a big promotion comes expectations that you work harder. Who knew? Sheesh. I've been staying later each day since my promotion, and sooooo not because I feel like I have to put in face time; b/c I soooooo don't ever feel that need. No, it's because there's just seriously more shit to do than I can get done.

And all this extra work is totally cutting into my goofing off time at work, too. I hardly ever have time to catch up on the latest issue of People or US Weekly online anymore. It's a crying shame, is what it is.


For real though, I actually don't mind the extra busy-ness at work; mostly because I've realized that the hours are passing more quickly in the office nowadays than they used to. There's plenty to do, to the point that by the time I have a few minutes to just sit down and chill and not think about anything for a moment, I realize I'm already halfway through my day, and I'm always surprised. That's good. It also means, though, that there's always something more still to do when quitting time rolls around ... which has me thinking about and doing more work stuff at home in the evenings.

I'm never going to be a slave to work again, though. (The way I was back in the days of my old law firm - where they owned my soul; so not worth it.) So tonight I spent a couple hours working on a painting and watching Dancing with the Stars (what? Pamela Anderson is gone? what fun is it going to be to watch now?). But, of course, thoughts of all the shit that I have to do tomorrow, evidenced by my bulging briefcase sitting atop my coffee table, led me back to work stuff before hitting the sack.

And once I was finally determined to quit that work stuff for the night, shit, it was after midnight already. And I was so not tired. Now here it is, almost 2 a.m., and I feel wired - wired about work stuff, actually, thinking about how I can resolve a few things that are going on - and I have an 8 a.m. meeting in the morning. So now I can't decide: is it better to take advantage of being so wired and having all these thoughts about how to resolve work things, by staying up and taking care of some more stuff? Or would I be better off trying to force myself to get rid of those thoughts and focus instead on the darkness and stillness of the night, and make myself get some sleep? If I go the first way, I might actually take care of some shit that I need to take care of, (might as well do it while you're thinking about it), but that means I'll probably end up either staying up all night, b/c it'll be so close to time to get up in the morning that I'll figure the amount of sleep I might get wouldn't be worth the risk of oversleeping my alarm clock out of exhaustion once I did fall asleep; or, the second way, well, like I said, I'd probably, by the time I actually fell asleep, end up getting only just a little bit of sleep - not enough to be restful, just enough to make me oversleep my alarm and run late for my meeting and still feel grumpy for having a deep sleep interrupted.

Did that make sense? This late at night, it's hard to tell anymore if anything I write makes sense. The bed does beckon ... but the mind will not stop thinking ... about the four meetings I have tomorrow, all of which I'll be leading, or the motion I have to file tomorrow, which is mostly done but still needs to be edited, or the hearing I have on Thursday, for which I am mostly prepped but still will need to spend some time focusing on beforehand to freshen up and be ready for, or the two appellate briefs I have to write within the next month, or the three week trial that starts in mid-June that keeps getting closer and closer and that I have to keep preparing for, or the law clerks that will start next week that I'm co-in-chair-of, (yeah that made no sense, but you know what I mean), or the interviews I need to help schedule in order to find a new attorney to come on board and actually help me out with all this shit ....

.... yeah, ok, now that I've written all that, I'm so, so, so, so totally not going to go to sleep tonight, I've decided. Meeting prep, at the very least, for those four meetings, it will be for the rest of the night I believe ... hey, it's a three day weekend coming up, I can always catch up on sleep then anyway.

learning how to paint clouds

it's very soothing

cele*hiccup*bration

I took myself out tonight to celebrate my new promotion at work. Nothing big, just decided when I got home from work tonight, while drinking an after-work glass of wine, that I should go out to eat someplace I like for dinner. Even if I was all by myself.

So after hanging out at the house on the front porch a couple hours with the kitty cats, drinking chardonnay and reading a book, I went to a New Orleans-style restaurant near my house (excellent crawfish etoufee, I think that's their best dish, although tonight I had mahi mahi), and sat up at the bar and had myself some dinner and a couple more glasses of chardonnay. (I wasn't the only one eating at the bar, btw; place was packed, more than half the people sitting at the bar were eating right there too).

It was a good place to go on a night like that. Casual, friendly, lively, neighborhood kind of place, with good food and a live band playing bluegrass music. Nice.

By the time I left, I was feeling my wine. Even after that cup of she crab soup and the grilled mahi mahi. I think maybe I'd been pouring my glasses on the heavy side at home before even going over there.

And it's times like this, when I'm feeling pretty damn freaking buzzed but am all alone, that I realize what a talkative damn drunk I am. Because I keep talking to myself, only inside my head, and I can't seem to shut myself up. It's just drunk me, blabbering away all chatter-like, letting loose internally all these thoughts and conversational tidbits I might let loose if there were someone here to hear them. Of course, I do occasionally let those tidbits loose out loud and direct them towards my cats; Pearl, the older, lazier cat, will at least raise her head and look at me in acknowledgment, but she can't carry on her own half of a conversation. I just get the indulgent "ok, I listened, I gave it a shot anyway" look, and then she's back down for the count, napping away, oblivious to my need to communicate with another living soul. I tell her all about my happiness at getting my new promotion, and all the anxiety I have about it as well, my ambivalence about it in general - still not sure if it's such a good thing or not; she listens ok, but as soon as I'm done, she tunes out. "You've booooooooored me, woman," she seems to say when I'm done, as she stretches her long back and rolls into a new position and closes her eyes.

Well, no problem. I'll just pour myself another glass of wine. Only, see, (and this is what had me deciding to write a post tonight to begin with, right here at the end), I think I must be kind of a little too drunk at this point maybe ... because I think I just poured a glass of red wine on top of what was still left of a glass of white wine. Which was about a fourth a glass ... how did I miss that? That's not a good sign.

Worse, though, is that I'm drinking it ... and it tastes good to me. Go figure.

Holla back!

Promotion!

I just got a big promotion at work. Woo-hoo! Feels good. Well done, me! :)

Some say the glass is half empty, some say the glass is half full...

I say, are you going to drink that?

Birthday card from my mom. How appropriate, for us both.

I just bought a 6-pack of Lime Cactus Michelob Ultra.

I feel like such a girl.