I�ve finally crawled out from under my legal briefs. About fucking time. It�s been three weeks of hellishly long days, capped off by three days of nearly around the clock madness. I kid you not. Saturday I worked until almost midnight; Sunday I was back in the office at 8:30 and didn�t leave until 3:00 a.m. Yes. You read that right. Three in the fucking morning. At that point I was practically drooling from exhaustion and could hardly remember my own name. Yesterday I put in another 13 hour day. I finished my last bench memo at 11:30 last night. Thank the gods.

On top of working like a fiend all weekend to get a memo done by Monday morning, I had to work in an unbearably hot office. For some reason, despite being notified that we would be working during the weekend, the monitors of the building�s thermostat did not leave the air conditioning on. I don�t know if I�ve told you anything about the courthouse that I work in. It�s a building made entirely of steel and glass located smack dab in the middle of the Sonoran dessert. Fucking genius of an architect, huh? So, as you can imagine, without appropriate temperature control, it get�s pretty damn hot in here. I was literally working up a sweat and the only physical activity I was doing was typing as quickly as my fingers would move. I seriously considered stripping off my clothes and working in a t-shirt and underwear. But I figured, with my crappy luck, some emergency would bring the security guard to my office, and I�d have one hell of a time explaining why I was writing my bench memo in the buff. So I kept my clothes on. But, damn, was it ever hot.

All in all it was a pretty miserable weekend.

Today, however, life is back to being good. Or, at least, not wretched. Which is definitely an improvement over last week.

I�ve spent the morning making a list of everything I need to do now that I have time to attend to life�s little inconveniences like dry cleaning, hair cuts, oil changes and taxes. Since I leave for Seattle on Sunday, I have to plow through my to-do list before then. After the work insanity of the past month, I�m actually looking forward to ordinary tasks like laundry and grocery shopping. Pathetic, huh?

At lunch I went to the local elementary school to do my mentor thing. I got to meet my �mentee.� Her name is Angela and she�s a bright and engaging 7th grader. She likes math and science, but isn�t so crazy about history. She�s a mystery book fan. She seems like a great kid and I�m excited to be working with her.

So . . .

Bench memos for next week�s calendar done . . . check.

To-do list written . . . check.

Weekly community service obligation met . . . check.

Now, all that�s left for me to do is catch up on my missed sleep and work in some time for sex (ok, ok, so it�ll only be sex with myself . . . but really, does it look to you as if I actually have time to meet anyone, much less have a relationship that involves sex with another person?) and then life will be back to normal.

Oh, I nearly forgot . . . I need to say thank you to whystinger for adding me to his favorites list.

Listening To: Seven Nations, "You'd Be Mine"
Reading: Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Feeling: accomplished