Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

I’m attempting to sleep because I have to be up in about 5 hours to go to an early morning swim clinic halfway across the city. I say attempting because there’s about a dozen young persons outside my window playing, foot racing, and generally making far too much noise outside my window (which has to stay open because it’s too warm out to keep the place closed off).

So, being a curmudgeon, for the second or third time since I moved here I just called the police to have them come enforce the DC curfew law. If it’s like the last time, the police’ll be out after a bit, and the kids will be sent home with no arrests made. And I’m fine with that, as long as they urchins go inside and stop keeping me awake.

This week was supposed to be a relatively quiet one, or so I thought. Then a cousin called, is in town, and we’re having dinner tomorrow, which means my hair appointment (for the 3rd of 4th time in a row?) gets rescheduled, hopefully to Wednesday, when I have a date with BC (dinner after haircut, I suppose). Thursday turns out to be election night for my cult co-op, so I’ll be getting some knitting in then. Busy, busy, busy.

The legs are a bit sore from yesterday’s short run, which is expected. Treated myself by making a nice curry tonight, though it reminded me why I don’t keep cashews in the house in a regular basis (*nom, nom, nom!*). This curry’s best with a light topping of cilantro & chopped cashews, so I went all out after a brief stop at the grocery store for the fresh stuff.

One of my larger projects is going to be picking up steam here in short order, so work’s going to get very busy with lots of the more tedious aspects of being an attorney. I think we know where we’re going with it, though, so hopefully it won’t be too painful.

I’m deliberately not commenting on all of the political posts I see all over the ‘net these days (well, except to share satire), mainly because I happen to like my friends and would rather not unduly antagonize those relationships.

When you have a second person spending a considerable amount of time at your house, it’s amazing how much faster you run through personal grooming products.

Received a book from a friend today, a textbook on Queensland criminal law which I’d helped him read and edit. He thoughtfully included me in the dedications, a first for me. Strange to see my name there in print, but also kind of cool.

On the same line as the grooming products note, I got a new iron today in the mail. I hardly ever use my iron (I’m lazy), but BC uses one almost daily, so my old, leaky iron was not going to cut it. Especially after it leaked all over my desk. So, claiming my title as “Mr. Exciting” I ordered a new one. Very fancy, I’ll try it tomorrow morning before work. And shock my coworkers by not looking completely wrinkled. Maybe.

There are days when you have all of the answers, and days when you don’t. Today, thankfully, was the former and not the latter. Tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

I’ve been thinking a lot about work and being an attorney. Next year is ten years out from law school for me, and despite the occasional clusterfuck at work, I think I’ve gotten into a pretty good groove where I don’t feel like I’m just acting confident when dealing with clients, I actually am self-assured, because I’ve been doing this long enough to know what I’m talking about in my practice area most days. It’s a confidence that sort of snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking, and was a bit startling to realize was there.

Not to say that I think I’m all that and a bag of chips, but the advice giving business is a lot easier when you know what I do about the BGA now that I’ve been there for almost four years. I’ve still got a ton to learn, but it’s nice not feeling like I’m faking it all the time.

Of course, this will all go right out the window once Congress gets around to changing the budget rules again, but for the moment it’s a good feeling.

Today was flying in and out of meetings, reassuring program staffs that they weren’t in trouble, promising things which will be delivered in short order, and generally was most people’s best friend. It’s so much nicer when you can be helpful and not have to say no (because you don’t have to, here). The nay saying will come back soon enough (and is occasionally nice in and of itself when your client is being a ninny, but is generally more of a pain than anything else – I mean, who wants to deliver bad news to someone?).

[side note – I’m so used to old-school WYSIWYG web editing programs which insert a paragraph tag when you hit a return and a break tag when you hit shift return, that this new version of WordPress is a bit disconcerting in its word-processor-like behavior when it inserts only a break when you hit return once, and a paragraph when you hit it twice. How new school. oh, and I miss the “html lookup” button, which appears to be obsolete now that it’s keeping tags visible in the editing screen.]

I put in a WordPress plug-in that will allow me to post more easily from the iPhone. I did confirm with it this morning that I have to be determined to post, though, since if I leave the browser to do a lot of other things it tends to lose the post. I’ll have to play with it more to see if it’s possible to save and come back to something.

The LiveJournal one is cross-posting stuff well, too, even if it doesn’t allow me to choose the user pic from WordPress any more.

And on that note, I’m exhausted and need to crash.

I am reminded today why one of the many terms for lawyer is “counselor.” Despite my attempts at humor at work (“Moose, I need help!” “Well, my graduate degree is in law, not psychology, but I’ll do my best…”), I do try to listen as best I can. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes I think it helps, and that’s a good thing.

I just saw a woman wearing black Crocs with her pants suit. It’s a shame they don’t give us honorary fashion police ticket books, or she’d have gotten one.

I need to teach my clients the concept of “admission against interest.” Just because someone has asked for information doesn’t mean you have to divulge everything, only what they asked for, narrowly tailored to fit the request. This is not an opportunity to throw on a hair shirt and get out the scourge, folks.

Saw Stardust this weekend. Marvelous film. Will enjoy getting it on DVD once it’s out – this was definitely an over-and-over-again type of film for me. And Michelle Pfeiffer was hot as the witch queen.

Rode out to BC’s place on Saturday. If that type of commute is going to become a regular thing, which it may, I’ll need to get another bike. I rode the tri bike, which meant carrying a bag on my back. Not terribly comfortable for 2 hours. I need a bike with a rack for panniers, and the mountain bike simply is not up to that kind of riding. Maybe in the spring I’ll look for a road bike. And figure out where to store a third bicycle.

Getting back into the swing of things, post head cold and pre-races. The swim is still the most nerve-inducing part, but I expect it to go more smoothly than previous races. I’m less anxious about it than I have been in the past, and I think it’ll be fine.

I’m glad I gave up the morning paper, I am making it through more in the way of other reading, but the magazine pile hasn’t really diminished. I have made it through 1.5 books, though, and the last Harry Potter is sitting out, beckoning.

While writing in to a local listserv to respond to a question about people blocking the sidewalk, I gave some advice about the section of DC code that lets the police break up the impromptu gathering, and ended it with this sentence, which I didn’t catch until after it was published:

So if a group is blocking the sidewalk or road, either physically or by their behavior, the police may disburse them under this section.

I guess you can take the fiscal lawyer away from the money, but you can’t get the money away from the fiscal lawyer…

Managed to get up for the club bike ride again this morning, despite being up a touch too late the night before, and having a wee bit to drink while out with friends. The ride went well, despite being a tad cooler than Tuesday, and definitely more windy. The wind was coming up river, so each time we crossed down toward the Awakening it was like hitting a wall of wind when we came out of the trees down near the parking lot.

Long day today. Did finish up, I hope, a project which has been haunting us for several months now. Now I can move on to several other projects that have been on the back burner for far too long. At least they’re interesting ones that I feel like I can dig my legal teeth into. Payment for services we provide to the public (and the rates therefor), and the funds we receive for work we do for other federal and state entities and how that’s accounted for. We suspect some of our field offices have been playing fast and loose, so my accounting folks and I are digging down into the authorities there.

Boring to some (most), stock in trade for me.

Crashing early here tonight, up tomorrow for a run. Still on track for the races coming up, but watching it to make sure I’m careful about injuries. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Nothing quite like a false fire alarm at 9:30 p.m. to get the blood flowing. At least, since the last one, they managed to turn the volume up on the alarm (last time I could barely hear the thing in my bedroom – this time it was clear). Got all dressed, but neighbors were coming back up the staircase to let us know it was a false alarm by the time I popped out to say hello to folks. And thankfully it was while I was still awake and not in bed like the last one.

As yet no word on whether we’ll be out or not tomorrow because of the sleet/freezing rain/snow/whatever the heck it’s doing out there now. They let us off early today, something of which I was happy to take advantage. Traffic, even leaving almost an hour after the dismissal, was insane. I was on a bus, but it took us an eternity to get home. Had it not been ugly out I’d have just walked and gotten home faster, but as it was I enjoyed the warm bus far more than I would have enjoyed getting away more quickly.

Been helping an Australian law professor whose acquaintance I’ve made online do some research this afternoon before MG came over. Was fun to do some basic research that was law related, but not work related. Also, the Australia constitution is an odd affair. Not that the US constitution is a perfect work, but there are marked differences between the two documents. Was interesting to compare the two on the subject of (sovereign) immunity.

I can’t tell if it was a sign of how long it had been since I had last been out doing serious wine shopping or if I’m just a wino, but with J’s help I just picked up three cases of wine from Pearson’s (one mixed, two complete). Probably a little of both. But now I’m set for months. Or at least I hope it’ll last months.

I found it quite nice to be able to shop for spirits on a Sunday. Normally shops that sell both wine/beer and harder liquor have to close on Sunday in DC because of our antiquated Blue Laws. The place was hoppin’, about as busy as I normally see it when I’ve gone in the evening during the week or on a regular Saturday. The clerk allowed as how they’d been that busy all day. Anyway, because Xmas day and New Year’s Day are on Mondays, DC’s liquor laws allow liquor shops to stay open the Sunday before. There’s no real reason they can’t be open 7 days a week normally (aside from outdated hopes for moral suasion), but one lives with the law one has, not the law one wishes one had. Nonetheless, it felt like a bit of a stick in the eye to those ridiculous laws to buy alcohol until my heart was content.