Legal Quandary

The Week in Review

As I mentioned in my (lame) post last night, I've been pretty delinquent in posting lately and feel like I owe some sort of accounting.

Aside from that little Thurs/Fri flu-like symptoms blip, mainly I've just been busy with school stuff.

My Environmental grade is based almost exclusively on a paper. I have to turn in a draft of said paper in just over 2 weeks. I'm not excited about the subject and I really more or less despise the class (which is a shame - because it could be really interesting), so motivating myself to do the research and writing has been something of a chore. Also, word on the street is that this prof never gives out bad grades, so there's not really much incentive. Except that damned internal desire to do a good job.

I have 5 classes on Wednesday - so Tuesdays are spent in large part doing homework. And watching Commander in Chief and Boston Legal. E.Spat was also here last week. Which means we both sat on the couch and made snarky comments about both shows while I diligently attempted my Commercial Transactions reading. (BTW - WHAT is going on with the TIES on Boston Legal? Spader and Shatner have been wearing some truly horrible ones lately.) Oh - and we ate some chocolate cake and ice cream too.


I also had the chance to meet some of E.Spat's friends Wednesday night - as well as be witness to the whole bartender incident. It was fun, but I think I've decided once and for all that I don't really like martinis. They always look so pretty - and then just taste like flavored rubbing alcohol.

As E.Spat left for the airport on Thursday, I went to the Pentagon to have lunch with a friend. My best friend from my first assignment is at the Pentagon now and I've never been there, so we decided to grab lunch there. There's a fairly elaborate security process, and you need 2 forms of picture id just to get in the door. Where you are rewarded with standing in line to go through an airport-like scanner, and then another line to get a truly awful picture taken for a temporary id badge. And then someone has to meet you and agree to walk around with you for the whole time you're there. The weird thing about the Pentagon is that it feels like a huge airport - but the planes never show up. Picture any large terminal. Starbucks, McDonald's and the newstands? Got 'em. The little golf carts that shuttle people from gate to gate? Check. People who will totally run you over if you don't move fast enough? Absolutely. Of course, there's also lots of long hallways with offices, but mostly, it just felt like an airport - but maybe that's because I don't work there. Sadly, lunch was cut short because I started feeling awful.

Aside from working on the dreaded Environmental paper this weekend, I was also a sideline participant in the Great Fireplace Experiment of 2005. Our new house has a wood-burning fireplace. (This is something of a novelty as TVPNM house had a gas fireplace - which didn't get used all that often because it was so LOUD.) The house even came with firewood - and I LOVE fires!!! But I have never built a fire, so I let Mr. Q and EC take the lead. They went through an elaborate process of rolling up newspaper, adding kindling, and selecting a medium sized log that would be "just right". This took a long time. Finally, it was time to light the fire. Within minutes, the whole middle floor of the house was filled with smoke and the smoke detectors started going off. It was at about this point I asked if he'd opened the damper - to which he responded that he couldn't find it. I do know enough about fireplaces to have an idea where this is - and showed him. I also discovered at this point that he had never built an INDOOR fire in a regular fireplace before - only his parent's wood-burning stove. At any rate, the whole house now has a campfire aroma to it, which I'm frantically trying to air out before it gets too cold to open windows. Mr. Q tried again on Sunday night, with similar results, so I think there may be something wrong with the fireplace. Consider the Great Fireplace Experiment of 2005 an ABJECT FAILURE. We probably won't be attempting it again - unless anyone has any good ideas as to 1) what went wrong, and 2) how to avoid future bouts of smoke-inhalation.

There was a lot of baseball watching last week. Hooray for the White Sox! There's also been a lot of movie watching this past week, and I think Lil Q may be permanently scarred. For the record, she did not enjoy Ghostbusters at all and told us we should "take back to library. People watch it. NOT Lil Q. I no like scary movies." She didn't think much of the X-Files either. Finally, on Sunday, the poor kid got to exercise her voice in the movie selection. She spotted Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the shelves and asked Mr. Q to "Please daddy, get for me? I watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Make Lil Q HAPPEEEEE!" How could he say no?

So that's what I've been up to. I've also been batting around a couple of other posts in my head. Maybe at some point I'll get around to putting them on paper. For now, back to Commercial Trans...

posted by Legal Quandary at 07:43