Alias

Sometimes, working for a judge feels like I'm part of the CIA--I can't talk about it. At all. So thanks for the curiosity, but I really, really can't talk about it. I can't talk about the work we do, I can't talk about the cases we have, and I can't talk about how things run in chambers. So it's a lot like the show Alias, where she works for the CIA, except I don't have an Alias. I just have a job where I can't talk about it.

Sorry.

But one hilarious thing that I CAN talk about is the court officers. In every federal court building, and all of the state courts I know of, you have to go through security to get into the building. The security guards are called court officers, and they do other things besides security screenings, but that's my primary interaction with them.

The court officers at the courthouse where I work are so, so funny. They are always cracking little jokes when I see them in the morning. One day, one of them was scanning my bag, and he says, "Hey! What's with all the guns??" And they all laughed, and I laughed and made some comment about how you can never be too prepared, and off we went.

What a weird job they have. I'm sure glad they're there to brighten the beginning and ending of my days.

What We Have Here is a Failure to Mature

The other day at the store, they were selling a plant called "Bishop's Balls."

When you grow up with four brothers, it doesn't matter how old you get--that's always going to make you laugh.

Feeling Neglected??

LL so kindly noted that it has been a while since I posted anything.

Sorry.

I don't have any good naked New Yorker stories (sorry, LL).

So, it's been a while. How's it going, everyone?

Random story to tide you over until I think of something to post:

Recently, they tore up the concrete of my sidewalk in front of my apartment. One day, they were putting new concrete down at the moment I needed to leave my apartment. Awkward.

So they stretched out a long board, maybe six inches wide, across the wet cement so I could walk out to the solid ground.

I was in a suit.

It was like walking the plank--I kept thinking I was going to fall into the wet cement. Then I would've been late to work.

But strangely, it seemed fitting that if it did happen, maybe there would be a me-shaped divot to mark my time in New York.

I made it.

But maybe in the future, I'll head out in jeans and sneakers with some climbing gear or something--you never can tell.

It's HERE!!!

I was walking through a park, headed to the subway, on Tuesday of this week (September 11, 2012, for the record) and I smelled a smell.

A smell I couldn't place.

A weird, strange, wonderful smell.

After a moment, I realized what the smell was, and I exclaimed (aloud, in a classy fashion)

"IT'S FALL!!!!"

It's official--fall is here, as of Tuesday.

Ah, the smell of fall. No days above 80 degrees in the 10 day forecast. It's going to be 72 on Saturday.

I love the fall.

Kindness Begins with Me

I like to help out the tourists in New York, when I have time. It's pretty easy to pause for a moment when you see a lost person, ask them if they need directions, and then point them to the right subway line or the right street so they can head on their way. Sometimes, if I really have a lot of time, I'll stop when I see one tourist taking pictures of their companion and ask if they'd like me to take a picture of them together.

So the other night, I was walking home from picking up some Panera (mmmm...Panera...), and I saw a couple of women standing by the subway entrance. One was getting into position to pose for a picture by the sign for which station it was, while the other was prepping to take her picture. I thought, "When I get up there, I'll ask if they'd like a picture together." And I smiled as I thought of how adorable they were, so excited by the subway.

Then as I got closer, I saw that the woman posing for the picture was completely topless.

I did not offer to take a picture for them. I walked on by.

On Construction

In this city, something or other is always under construction. These days, there's significant construction in my building (street-level construction), as well as in the underground of a nearby street. (Listen for the blasts--that means things are about to blow up!)

This weekend, things are pretty quiet because of the holiday. Lots of folks are out of the city having one last summertime hurrah, and no one really wants to work.

That's okay. Judging from how the construction looked when I recently left and then returned a month later, it won't matter if they're taking a few days off. Nothing looks like they're making progress anyway...

Pyramid - Round 7

This is a special post that will be easier to guess if you are a regular reader of the blog. (Ooooooo, intriguing...incentive to stay up on the blog, no?)

As always, I'll delay posting the comments for a few days (or a lot of days, if I forget like I did last time) while everyone has a chance to guess.

Ready?

Let's play Pyramid!


Airplanes
Mice, apparently
Lightning bugs

Party Time!

When I was in Utah, I was able to attend the huge, fabulous birthday party for my dad! He's a young spring chicken still, but we thought we'd have a big shindig and invite over family, friends, and coworkers.

What a fun evening we had! The food was great. Attendance was beautiful. Old friends reunited, babies played, and everyone had a fantastic time creating amazing ice cream creations with the soft serve machine we rented.

I would post pictures, but I didn't take any. You'll have to look to other family members for that. (Unless you don't know my family, in which case, just picture the best party you've ever been to. Then double it. It was like that.)

Anyway, it was wonderful to be with my family to celebrate my dad's birthday. I'm so grateful to have him as my dad, and I look forward to many, many more birthdays to come!

This Semester - Fall 2012

Well, it's my last fall semester of my law school career. I can't believe I'm finally a 3L! (That's what third-year students are called.)

This semester, I have the privilege of being a student clerk for a federal judge here in the city. This opportunity takes the place of most of my credits, so I'm barely going to be on campus at all. I'm definitely going to miss seeing my friends, but this is an incredible opportunity for me, and I'm very excited.

As I get going in this adventure, I won't really be able to discuss it much on this blog. The ethical code for judicial clerks is pretty strict about social media, so it's inappropriate for me to discuss any pending cases, any partisan or non-partisan political issues, or any details of my time in the judge's chambers. For the sake of discretion, I also won't be posting the name or district of the judge for whom I'll be working.

I'll try to post a basic sketch about what it's like to work for a judge, but beyond that, I'll have to refrain from discussion.

And what a horrible time to not be able to talk about politics! (I know that I generally don't talk too much about it on this blog, but now that I can't, weirdly, it's all I want to do. Probably some psychology principle there...)

Anyway, I'm incredibly excited and honored to have been selected by my school and the judge for this wonderful program. I'm going to have the opportunity to learn so much. And I won't have any finals!

Last year of law school commencing...here we go!

Re: Cracks

You all did such a great job with the last round of Pyramid--things with cracks!

Bonny made reference to not having personal knowledge of my feet having cracks, so I figured it was worth a post.

My feet have cracks.

The end.

Kidding! When I lived in Utah, I had some blistering and cracking of my hands, which my doctors at the time attributed to the dry winter. In New York, I have blistering and cracking of both my hands and feet, which doctors here have attributed to the humid heat. (Uh, seriously? Come on, folks. Pick a lane...)

Other than being painful and frustrating, it's not terrible. Sometimes it's even exciting, like when I take off a dress shoe and a big piece of my skin stays inside the shoe. Neat! I'm like my own freak show.

I worked hard while visiting my sister and then while visiting my folks to try to get my feet all healed up. I've tried all different kinds of prescription and non-prescription treatments, to varying results.

I really needed to get my feet all taken care of for today.

Why? It's the last day for my Amazon Local deal that I purchased for a manicure & pedicure.

Feet are ready. I am ready. Mani-pedi today, and then I presume my feet will fall into disarray as the winter approaches.

Whatever. At least my toenails will be cute.

Back Home...With Company

For the past few weeks, I've been jetting around the country visiting my family. It was a wonderful break, but I was ready to get back home.

When I got here, I discovered that I had had at least one houseguest while I was gone.

Of the rodent variety.

Somebody's Mother left some dark chocolates in a bag on the top shelf of a hanging set of shelves. (No legs - it just hangs on the wall, several feet up from the floor.)

Someone's been eating it. And leaving tiny wrapper pieces. And poop. All over. Awesome.

How?? HOW?!?!? How did it get up there? There's another thing sort of near by that it might have been able to crawl up, then leap over to...it must've been like a circus in here. Last night, as I laid in bed for my first night at home, I heard something crash down into a trashcan in my kitchen. I have many trashcans in my apartment, but this was the one just below that particular hanging shelf unit.

I took the trash out and didn't look to see if there was a mouse still in it. I just don't need to think about that.

Otherwise, it was a fairly uneventful day. I ended up coming home pretty exhausted from all of my adventures, so I settled into a pattern today of get up, move around a bit, accomplish one thing, take a nap. Repeat.

Tomorrow, I'll have to do a bit more, and classes start, so I'll be headed off to do that. (More on the coming semester in a future post.)

One of these days, I may venture WAY up to Target, to replace my clock, which died some day during my vacation at 10:49. Rest in peace, three-dollar clock.

How I Spent My Summer "Vacation"

Like basically all law students, I spent my summer working. I was fortunate to get a position with Big Firm, and I kept a pretty good life there.

Here's what my usual day looked like:

9:30ish: roll into the office. (Note: NewYorkers, particularly in law firms, don't start the day very early. There are some people at Big Firm who are big morning people and roll in around 7, but they are not the norm. The people who sat near me were never there that early.)
Arrival to about 12:30: Work. What does work involve, you might wonder? On any day, I might be meeting with attorneys, researching law, reading, reading, and reading cases and statutes, writing up memoranda for attorneys, proofing work being submitted to court, accompanying an attorney to one of her court hearings, etc.
12:30 until 1:30 or 2:30 or whenever: Lunch with some attorneys
2:30 until around 7 or so: work some more. New York attorneys may not start their day early, but they also don't end it early. I was usually out of the office around 7 or 7:30, sometimes 8, never past 9:30.

Repeat the next day.

At least once a week, I'd have some kind of meeting or training, and another day during the week, I'd have some kind of social event where I could meet more people at Big Firm. We had a wonderful time.

So there it is--that's what I did this summer. It was a good life, and I'm ready now to head back to school and get more done. First though, I'll probably take a little nap.

Foodie Life

One of the perks of living in NYC is the fabulous, fabulous food. New York is full of delicious restaurants.

One of the drawbacks of being a law student is that I am completely out of money basically all the time. And with my recent tonsillectomy, any extra money I have is already earmarked. Sigh.

Anyway, one cool thing about working at Big Firm, and this is true of pretty much all large law firms, is that when you spend your summer there, they really want you to get to meet lots of different attorneys there, hear all about what they do, and have a chance to work with lots of different people. One way they facilitate this is by having you go to lunch. Of course, the way I go out to lunch in my normal life is maybe picking up some Panera (single-handedly keeping that place in business, perhaps), or something similarly inexpensive. That's not how it works when you go out with attorneys, so I've gotten to eat at some wonderful places. I had delicious salads, beautiful fish, yummy gnocchi, and all kinds of great desserts.

(If you're thinking, wow, that sounds like a great way to gain weight, it can be. I have a friend who gained like 15 pounds in his summer at another law firm...)

This worked so beautifully for me, because after a lovely lunch, I wasn't hungry for dinner, so I usually just had a piece of fruit and went to sleep.

This fall, I'm going to have to go back to my regular life, but it sure was fun to get to go to some of New York's nice places.

Pyramid - Round 6

Well, folks, it's probably time for us to play pyramid again! For the record, on the last round, Springsteen, mothers with new babies, and my assistant are all people who rock!

You know the rules...let's play Pyramid!

Sidewalks
My feet
Plumbers

Have You Looked at a Calendar Lately?

I just got an email today from a company encouraging me to purchase something from them.

The subject line of the email reads: "Start Your Summer Right."

Really, folks? Is August 6th when you start your summer? Because mine is almost over...

Flying By

Well, summer is sure flying by. I finished up my time with Big Firm, and now I'm having a little break before school starts up again. It's crazy to think this is going to be my last year of law school--how did that happen? It seems like yesterday I was floundering about, trying to figure out where to go to school, and now I'm getting ready to complete my last year there.

One part of summer that is NOT flying by is the heat. Oh, the heat. It's so, so very hot. And having to ride the subway around makes it much worse. Subway stations in NYC are usually super heated because of all the heat that comes up off the tracks as the trains move through the system. There are little timers in most stations that tell you how long it is until the next train comes. The summer heat makes me feel sad and distressed even if the train is only two minutes away. So this summer, I've tried to take the buses more, because while they're still air conditioned, I don't have to wait in a super-heated dungeon to get one. I've gotten a bit more familiar with some of the city by riding around in it above ground instead of whipping past below ground.

Of course, when winter comes, I'll be glad I travel by subway.

Now, I get to spend the next year trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Job hunting, life planning, etc. It's exhausting, because I've already done this before. I had a life, and I left it to be a lawyer. And now that I'm almost a lawyer, it's time to get my life a bit more settled again. Hopefully it'll be easy and I can have at least a few settled years before I have to go through this all again.

One of the partners of Big Firm used to have a very successful career in medicine, before he found that too boring and decided he'd rather be a lawyer.

For the record, I'm not going to med school after all of this.

Although that would probably fly by, too.

Identity Crisis

Today I got an email from a customer service person noting they had taken care of my problem and apologizing for the delay in crediting my account for a return. (So far, so good--I did contact them, I did have a problem, and that was what I needed--I felt pretty great about it). Then I realized that the email was addressed to Peggy. Not my name. Not even close. The email is a reply to one of my earlier emails which was appropriately addressed, and it has the right dollar amount for my credit, so I think it's going to happen. But I'm not Peggy.

I also got an email from someone following up on our phone conversation yesterday. (So far, so good--we did have a conversation yesterday.) However, the things he is discussing are not things I asked him about yesterday, and he mentioned other things in the email that are totally inapplicable to me. Awkward...I appreciate the follow up, but it would make a bit more sense if it were about something I had asked him.

It seems like the world is only paying half attention to me. Maybe it's because life at BigFirm is keeping me pretty busy, and I'm only paying half attention to the rest of the world.

Or maybe I didn't notice that someone changed my name to Peggy. Tough to say.

Awkwardly, I should probably respond to the email "following up" on my phone call yesterday...not sure what to say though.

Hot Hot Heat

The weather forecast for today was "steamy." For tonight, it's "muggy."

Gross. It's gross here.

Nothing to Say

Dear Readers,

I seem to have nothing to say.

Really.

Nothing.

I don't want to be a neglectful blogger, but I really can't think of anything to say.

So, here is a question for all of you: what do you want to hear about?

If I don't want to answer, I just won't--so ask away!

Smooches,

Bacon

Weirdness

It's very, very hot in New York right now. New York, especially the city, has a special kind of heat. I swear, the meteorologist on the news last night looked heartbroken and apologetic--it's horrible.

Most of the time, I'm inside. I like to stay inside when possible, which means I haven't been running all of my errands or being very productive on the weekends. Too hot. I have to go down to Macy's this weekend, and it makes me just want to cry--my least favorite place to shop, and it'll be hot and unpleasant to get there and back, too. 

Weirdly, it's extremely chilly in my office building. The other day, I had to turn on a space heater because it was so, so cold in my office.

How is that possible?

Someone wanted to go out for Pinkberry today, but the thought of frozen yogurt just made me shiver.

Any day now, fall will come.

Please, please fall...you can do it!