I would like to inform my faithful readers that I am not dead. However, I feel like I'm about halfway there, thanks to a lovely episode of mono that actually landed me in the hospital for two days (who knew that mono interfered with your liver function? I thought it just made you really tired - which, by the way, it does). Consequently, I am spending this week not at work, but in bed/on bed. This means that I will have to work extra days to make up the work I'm missing this week - damn you, ABA requirements!

Of course, I haven't had mono since the date of my last blog post. Any gaps up to about a week ago are explained strictly by alternating laziness and hectic scheduling. I've been in and out of town for conferences, spending weekends out of Cambridge, and coming home during the week basically to sleep and change clothes. I barely spend any time on the internet anymore (which is probably a good thing), although I certainly spend enough that I should be blogging!

My life basically continues as it was in September - I'm loving work, even with all its attendant frustrations, and I'm starting to put the pieces together to enable me to move here for good in May. I've submitted one job application, will send another in early next week, and am continuing to keep my eyes out for any other possible opportunities. My life appears to be going in a nice, pleasant, fulfilling direction right now, so let's hope it stays that way!

Right now, though, my priorities are (a) sleep, (b) get well, aided by liberal amounts of (a), and (c) rediscover how to eat without feeling sick.

Sorry, sorry, sorry - apparently when I neglect my blog for like three weeks, people actually mind! I was unaware that anyone besides about three people actually read this thing, but apparently I Have Readers and They Are Pissed. So, apologies.

On the bright side, I've been neglecting the blog for good reasons, mainly that work is going really well and consequently keeping me rather busy. The universe also randomly decided to send me the bestest boyfriend ever a couple of weeks ago, so I've been out doing fun things on weekends too, and not spending nearly as much time on the Internet as I generally tend to. This is actually a good thing, although it does interfere with my blogging capabilities.

So basically, my life right now is going incredibly well, and I'm still loving this city and this job. So much, in fact, that I'm seriously thinking about coming right back to it as soon as possible - i.e., graduate law school in May 2008 and just jump right into working full-time (with a brief detour to study for/take the bar, of course). I'm really liking this whole adult-life kind of thing, and I think, as bizarre as this will sound coming from me, that I might well be done with full-time education after this spring. I went to law school because it was something I really wanted to do, and I don't want to fall into the trap of staying in school because I don't feel ready to leave or can't figure out what I want to do with my life. The latter was never going to be the case, but the longer I work full-time, the more I see that maybe I am ready to leave school after all.

That doesn't mean that I've abandoned the idea of a master's degree, though. I've found a program that may actually be a better fit for me than the Cornell one, and it's something I can do while living and working here in Boston (not to mention, WAY cheaper, which is a very big plus considering the amount of money I owe for law school). The Cornell name still carries a lot of weight in this field, so I haven't made my final decision by any means, but at the moment, all the road signs in my life seem to be pointing back toward Boston.

Insanity
Originally uploaded by kjoliat

To give you a better idea of what my roommate's like, this is taped to the wall above the toilet.


I should add, just in case you're all now wondering about me, this note was here when I moved in, and I assure you that I am thoroughly toilet-trained and do not need the reminder.

Apologies for the month's hiatus - I got a little busy with my last week of work, my stay in Cleveland, and my move to Boston. I'm back now, and oh dear Lord will I have a lot to blog about.

By way of introducing you all to my roommate here in Boston, here's part of an e-mail I wrote to a friend about her latest move:

"So I went out to the kitchen to see if there was anything there I remotely wanted to eat (answer: no), and I found a post-it note on the fridge. It says,

"Hi everyone,

Lets remember to not let go of frig and freezer doors and not bang cabinet doors."

There are several things wrong with this note.

1. "Everyone" consists of the note writer (my landlady/roommate), three cats, and me. Unless the note writer wants to use the note as a reminder to herself not to do it (in which case I'm not nearly as annoyed), there is no reason to address it to "everyone" when she quite obviously means me. Addressing it to "everyone" puts it firmly in the realm of Passive-Aggressive Notes (of which fine examples may be observed at http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/).

2. Since she clearly meant the note for me, I'm not really sure why she wrote me a note about it instead of speaking directly to me, which she has in fact done multiple times today and could have brought this up during any one of our conversations.

3. Unless the cats have somehow developed opposable thumbs, nobody's been banging cabinet doors and letting go of fridge and freezer doors. I should explain that the doors haven't got springs in them that keep them open, so if you don't hold on to them they swing back and smack into the wall. It is perfectly reasonable for my landlady to ask me to be careful, which she did the day I moved in. Consequently, there was no need for her to tell me about it again unless I'd been ignoring her request. I have been here two weeks and have let go of the door precisely once, when the alternatives were a) let the door hit the wall and rescue a beer bottle from smashing on the floor, or b) keep hold of the door and allow the beer bottle to smash. Guess which I thought was preferable.

4. This is a good example of my landlady's apparent belief that I'm out to trash her house and have no respect at all for her stuff/space, or alternatively, that I know nothing about taking care of a house/cleaning up after myself. Neither is true.

Is it any wonder I'm drinking at three o'clock in the afternoon?"

So as you all can guess, my roommate situation here in Boston is not nearly as great as my roommate situations were in Kingston and Pittsburgh. She's about my mother's age and apparently thinks she's my mother, except that my mother was never a tenth this annoying. (Hi Mom! Thanks for not being a pain in the ass!) Once I start work on Monday, though, I won't have to see her all day, which will be just lovely.

And other than that, my life in Boston is awesome! For the last couple of weeks, I've been settling in and exploring, and I still have so much left to do and see. I love this city and I love my neighborhood, I'm making some new friends, and I'm really excited to start my job. More posts soon!

Now that everything's reasonably calm around here, I thought I'd post this for your amusement. A slightly edited version of an e-mail I sent today:

The Top Ten Things That Are Annoying Me Today, In No Particular Order

1. Massive zit on forehead
2. Massive zit on chin
3. Pants that were slightly too tight at beginning of June when purchased are now slightly too loose and edging further into looking-silly territory (this in itself is not a bad thing but still means my meager supply of pants is dwindling)
4. Something wrong with my phone (alerts me when I have voicemail but not when people actually, you know, call)
5. At work - enough said
6. Senior attorney thinks he can just walk into my office when the door is closed to borrow a post-it note and pen (why his secretary is unavailable to provide these, I have no clue), and then walk off with my pen. At least I chewed on it.
7. Boston landlady still being incommunicado
8. Tired of usual lunch options/companions but forgot to bring my own lunch today, necessitating a trip to the other office building's food court in a huge pack of interns
9. Other interns (except for my roommate, she's cool)
10. Not in Boston yet

As it turned out, several items on that list became non-annoying over the course of the day. I don't know what I did to it, but I fiddled around with my phone and now it rings again. I got in touch with my landlady and everything's a go for me to move in on the 12th of August (!!!). All the other interns mysteriously disappeared off to some lunch thing involving lasagna, so I had a nice peaceful lunch alone. Plus, other good things have been happening, which I will not go into detail about here, but suffice it to say I am now looking forward to getting to Boston even more.

I only have six more days at this job, one big project and three small ones to finish up before next Friday, and then I'm done! Heading back to Cleveland on the 3rd after work, hanging out there for a week, and then off to Boston... I'm hoping the weather stays nice and cool like it has been so I can drive George instead of a rental car. I know the rental would be perfectly fine, and in truth, the loading/unloading would probably be easier, what with having a trunk and all (plus, easier on the cats), but dammit, I want to drive my car on such a momentous occasion! We'll see how it goes. Either way, I'll have to start making my driving-to-Boston playlist soon...

Maybe I'm just out of sorts today because I feel sick as hell from yesterday's rabies shot (last one! yay!), but now that I'm a week in, I can safely say that I don't like this job as much as the last one. It's a perfectly fine job, don't get me wrong - the people here are nice, and I can't deny that it's nice to have my own office (I kind of get territorial about office/desk space). The legal issues I've been working on are interesting, but all I've been asked to do is research, research, and more research, despite the fact that I'm the only legal intern here who has had a) more than one year of law school and b) actual labor law education/experience. Doing nothing but research on one small issue does nothing to help me understand what the case as a whole is about, and that bothers me - it's a lot harder to stay motivated to do actual work rather than dick around on the Internet (and blog). I'm not really worried about coming out of here without a writing sample, since I got a great one from job #1, but one of the other interns here has expressed concern to me that she won't have one, so I know it's a problem.

Plus, this is very much a sit-in-the-office-9-to-5 job - there's no going out to meet with clients, attend hearings, etc., which was one of my favorite parts of job #1. I'm really glad that this is job #2, because if I'd done this one first, I think I'd have had a very warped sense of what law practice is actually all about. Again, it's not a bad job, and maybe once I've been here a little longer I'll feel comfortable asking for more challenging assignments. Right now, though, I just get the distinct feeling that that's not the Way We Do Things around here.

Fortunately, things are much better jobwise today - I think the weirdness yesterday was just due to half the office being on vacation and the general unease of settling into a new job. I got formally introduced to everyone today, and several of us are going on a picnic tomorrow evening to watch Pittsburgh's (reputedly) incredible fireworks display. Plus, I got some more helpful information and was able to finish the assignment I was so unsure about yesterday (no idea if it's what the big cheese really wanted, but it's done!).

So far, everyone in the office seems really nice, and the work's definitely interesting. I don't feel terribly connected to the cases I'm dealing with yet, but I think I'll be able to get a better overall picture as I continue to work here. It'll be nice to have a day off tomorrow, though, so I can sleep in and explore the neighborhood some more.

I also forgot to mention the weirdest thing I saw on my drive down here on Sunday. Somewhere in rural Pennsylvania on Route 22, there is a drive-through strip club. I can't decide if I'm really impressed by American ingenuity, or just plain disturbed.

(Google says it's the world's only drive-through strip club. Apparently, it was auctioned on EBay in 2005. Clearly, whoever bought it was on board with keeping the drive-through concept.)