A Eulogy

It was late September of 2001, and I was a first year associate in a big law firm, living on Beacon Hill with my soon to be ex-boyfriend. We were still trying to find our way through the collective national nightmare and hangover of September 11th. Gabe had started smoking again, and we were both pretty frayed from the stress and anxiety. One of us, I don't even remember which, had the bright idea that what we needed to bring us out of our funk was to get a kitten. We both loved and had grown up with cats, and it seemed like the sort of thing that would bring us a sorely needed dose of happy playfulness.

We went to a pet store in a nearby suburb and signed up for a waiting list with a local shelter they worked with. A few weeks later we got a call that two black and white kittens, brothers from a mama cat that had been hit by a car when they were still just tiny, had come in from the shelter and were available for adoption. We needed to come get one that afternoon or it would be offered to someone else. So, we raced down to the pet store only to discover that one of the two kittens had already been adopted. The one that was left had been named Linus by the shelter, a beautiful little black and white kitten with one black ear and one white ear, a mask of black covering about 3/4 of his face, and along his back with a white belly and feet. His tail was black with a tiny little white tip. I wanted him immediately.

As the pet store was filling out the paperwork and loading us up with all of the gear we would need, we heard how we had just missed the family that had adopted Linus' brother Pigpen. I wondered if they had gotten the "better cat," but as we were leaving with Linus in a carrier and a sack full of food and toys, the family came back with the other kitten because they had forgotten something. Linus' brother was almost entirely white with just a few flecks of black here and there. We had clearly gotten the cuter of the two. We drove home with him in the carrier, and it was only when we exited Storrow Drive at the Esplanade that he meowed for the first time. The first of so many.

We renamed him Claudio, at my ex's urging because he was an obsessive classical music fan and at the time his obsessions were with Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. (He first wanted to name the cat Ludwig or Wolfgang and I said no, so Claudio seemed like a bargain.) He was almost 12 weeks old when we got him, so not a tiny kitten for very long, but extremely energentic and curious. He made us so happy right away, even as he attacked our feet under the covers in the middle of the night, or bit Gabe on the nipple once when he got out of the shower, or fought a little too hard and drew blood and cries of pain when we play fought with him. Claudio played to win, all the time, every time. And as much as I didn't like the slash marks on my arms, the middle of the night attack dive-bombs as he tried to kill the snore monster in my face, or the finicky way he'd been sweet one second and then nasty the next, I loved the little booger.

He was mean to almost everyone, including sometimes me, because he very much did not like people trespassing in his home. He would howl and hiss at visitors when I had parties, and though I tried to tell them not to pet him, he invariably drew blood from someone who pushed it too far. He defied any attempts to keep him from eating people food, including thefts of meat or fish directly off of my plate on more than one occasion. When caught, he would stare you right in the eye and say "what?" like it was your fault for being dumb enough to turn your back for even a second. Even at the end, when he'd poop on the living room floor, he'd just look at me like shame or guilt were the last things on his mind. He had to go, and that was where he happened to be at the moment the urge hit, and I could just forget about talking him out of it. That's how he was.

But he was also capable of being so incredibly sweet, particularly when I was at home alone and feeling lousy. Claudio knew when to give me a nose-to-nose rub, or curl up with a purring belly at my side when I was sick, or hung over, or crying because yet another guy in my life post-Gabe decided to act like a jackass. Most of my friends and family never saw this side of him, but he brought so much comfort to me through some really tough times. Gabe and I broke up 3 months after we got him, then I got laid off and went through a period of extended unemployment, then I went to work in a job I came to hate, I moved several times, then I quit that job and moved to Georgia, then I moved twice more before settling into my house, and through all of this change and turmoil, Claudio was a source of great comfort and peace to me.

He was ridiculously smart for a cat: in Boston, when still very young he would climb my clothes while hanging in the closet, which as you might imagine was not desirable because of all the pulls and tears it caused. I put child-proofing sliders on the tops of the closet doors that were intended to keep him out of the closet. One day as I sat gape-mouthed in amazement watching, he climbed onto the elliptical trainer, jumped from there to the top of the bookshelf next to the closet, and then reached over and slid the childproofing off the door. He then dismounted and opened the closet. I have never seen anything like that in my life. But he was also stupid, and would do ridiculous things like try to sniff a burning candle and singe off half of his whiskers (this actually happened), or go chasing after a bug head-first into a wall.

He loved coffee and cigarettes, which caused my mother to call him Garfield. I don't drink coffee or own a coffeemaker, but when my parents would come to town while in Boston or as they were building their house in Georgia, they would go out to get coffee, and the cat would just go nuts to get his head in their coffee cups. Somewhere in the nascent days of this blog there was a picture of Claudio with his head stuck in a Starbucks cup, but sadly that photograph is now lost to the ether. He would lick the fingers of any smokers I brought home (of which there were...a few), right on the spot where they held their cigarettes. One night a particular guy left an open pack of smokes on the table while we slept, and Claudio ate a part of a cigarette. He looked pretty sick the next day. He also ate virtually anything I put a piece of on the floor for him, including cake, avocado, tomatoes, mushrooms, biscuits, potatoes, you name it. I think most of the time he was just happy that he didn't have to sneak bites when he thought I wasn't looking, so he was damn sure going to finish it.

The day we got him from that pet store, we purchased a cat toy that is essentially a tiny fishing rod with a string and a piece of denim at the end. He loved this toy. When I would take it out of its hiding place in the table next to my front door, he would start making this eh-eh-eh-eh-eh noise that he also made when he was hunting a bug in the house. We would play with this toy for hours, until his nose was so red that I knew he was wiped. I still have that toy, which is now reduced to a bundle of frayed denim threads at the end of that string. We played with it one day this week, but he was too tired to do too much with it.

As I wrote about a few months ago, Claudio was diagnosed with lymphoma in November just before Thanksgiving. I opted to put him on steroids, which temporarily shrank his tumors and gave me nearly three months with him at almost full speed before he started to rapidly decline last week. On Monday, he had vomited a large amount when I got home from work, and I knew the end was coming. He was better on Tuesday and Wednesday when I worked from home while sick with the flu, but he seemed tired. By Thursday and Friday, he was eating far less than usual. On Saturday I could only get him to eat a little bit of tuna, and by Sunday even tuna and chicken were not enticing him like they usually would. The vet had told me that after the steroids stopped working at the tumors started growing again, that eventually I would know it was time to end his life when he stopped eating. That would be the sign that the tumors were starting to close off his digestive system. So, knowing what was about to happen, yesterday I made an appointment at the vet. He seemed so tired and weak all day on Saturday and Sunday, and I knew I wanted to end it before he was in real pain.

Before we left, I brushed him and blow-dryed his back, which I knew he loved and made him purr for the only time that day. I carried him out to the back deck and let him feel the sun and the wind, see the trees and squirrels and birds out there, and to spend a calm and quiet moment with him before changing things forever. The vet examined him, said the tumors were fairly large and pushing on his stomach which was causing him not to eat, and confirmed there was little they could do to treat him at that point. I couldn't be there at the moment he died, so I signed the paperwork and authorized them to give him a sedative with painkiller, and then a controlled overdose of anesthesia to stop his breathing and heart. He growled the whole time while I cried and petted him, praying for a moment of peace as our last few minutes together. Then, they left with him and I waited and cried.

My baby cat is gone. He was 9 years old, would have been 10 in June. He was beautiful, and crazy, and sweet, and mean, and brazen and brilliant, and defiant, and stupid, and loving. He left scratch marks on the walls, stains on my rugs, scars on my arms, unrelenting white fur on every surface of my house, and I will miss him terribly every single day for a very, very long time.

2010 Year in Review

Everyone is doing it, and I stole this from Darcey.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Went to Las Vegas, twice! Took a two day solo beach vacation. Became part of the law firm ruling class. Drank Chartreuse, which is terrible. Attended basketball and baseball playoff games (football to come in early 2011). And this one other little thing that I can't blog about because it's WAY too personal.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Lord, I don't even want to remember my resolutions, but I'm sure I didn't keep most of them. I didn't save money or lose weight, although I didn't gain any either (and that was a big concern throughout the year.) I know I wanted to try a half marathon by year end, but yet again it didn't happen. Maybe in 2011.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
At one point this year, I knew eight women who were all pregnant. It has felt like an oppressive plague bearing down upon every woman I know. Two have given birth, one 10 weeks early and the other on time. Six more to go between February and June! I have never been more careful about taking my pills in my entire life.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, although we thought both of my grandparents might at various times this year. I listened to "Fairytale of New York" on the drive to my parents' house for Christmas and started crying at the line "and an old man said to me / won't see another one," because it made me think of my grandpa. I doubt he will make it to next Christmas. My grandma, however, will probably live to be 100.

5. What countries did you visit?
Sadly, just the U.S. on my dancecard this year. I'm hoping 2011 will include New Zealand.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you didn’t have in 2010?
A stable, serious relationship with a boy with crinkly eyes, a nice smile, and an IQ in the triple digits. And a victory at my trial in May.

7. What dates from 2010 will be etched upon your memory, and why?
January 31st (not sayin' why). September 1st, the day I was made Of Counsel by my firm. November 27th, the FSU-UF football game I attended with my father. December 20th, an amazing birthday celebration and bluegrass show at Diesel that I attended. December 27th, the epic Falcons-Saints game that I attended.

8. What was your biggest achievement of this year?
Working really hard, becoming a key member of my team again, and being rewarded by elevation to Of Counsel and a nice raise. A close second would be finally cutting a toxic situation out of my life for good.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I really tried to recapture my 2009 success on Weight Watchers and using the treadmill, and I just couldn't find the time. I have to find a way to make this a part of my life again next year.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I was sick once or twice early in the year and in October with colds. I had UTIs in April and December. Nothing major, though, thank God.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My new iPad. Easily. A customized Falcons jersey that brought someone special to me
great joy was a close second.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Far too many friends to list here...and I have to give major props to my boss, who forced the firm to make me Of Counsel mid-year when they initially had told her I'd have to wait until sometime in January. She steamrolled it through like a champ.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
More Republicans than I care to count. A coworker who nearly made someone quit with particularly vitriolic criticism. The voters of Georgia.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage, car payment, veterinarian bills, and traveling. I spent a LOT of money on my two gambling trips this year. (But worth it.)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Vegas, and the Braves, and the Falcons, and FSU football. And a boy...sometimes.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
I'm not sure I can associate a song with this year. Maybe the gospel choir singing in Samuel L. Jackson's "Rise Up" commercials for the Falcons?

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) Happier, not that I was unhappy at this time last year. But things all feel on the right track for the most part. Kitty health issues are the only thing worse than this time last year.
b) Exactly the same.
c) Richer, but not by much.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Exercise, definitely. And cooking at home. And saving money. And snuggling my kitty, which I now feel like I will never have had enough of.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Eating and drinking. And spending. Moderation is the theme in 2011.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
We had my entire family over for dinner in the early afternoon, with me and my mother cooking all morning to prepare. Then everyone left because of the snow, and we watched Star Wars together and just basked in the beauty of my first White Christmas ever.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
No. I'm scared to fall in love right now.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Dexter, probably. Mad Men, True Blood, Project Runway and Chuck are up there too. The Walking Dead was my favorite new show.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Hate is the wrong word. Reached a place of lacking in any emotion towards...yeah, that.

24. What was the best book you read?
Probably the Blind Side. I only read 3 or 4 books this year.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Langhorne Slim. I'd heard his stuff before, but his live show at the Earl back in the fall was a total revelation. Also, exposure to older Neko Case was an amazing gift to my life this year.

26. What did you want and get?
Laid. :) Also, travel with good friends, an iPad, a new HDTV for the guest room. And more time with my grandparents even though it was touch and go for awhile.

27. What did you want and not get?
Relationshiped-up. :( Also, the benches in my front porch to finally be built, a clean bill of health for my cat, and most frustratingly...closure.

28. What was your favorite film of 2010?
I cannot even remember what movies I saw this year. Crazy Heart? That was probably my favorite.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was 35. I went to dinner with my friend Jen, then went and got a little crazy at the bar with a boy.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
To have gotten back into regular exercise and lost another 20 pounds. I felt more accomplishment from that one feat last year than I did from making Of Counsel this year.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2010?
Same as it ever was. When I like it, I know it.

32. What kept you sane?
Alcohol and good friends.

33. What political issue stirred you the most?
I cannot even think about politics this year, it has been so disheartening to watch everything fall apart.

34. Who did you miss?
My best friend Samantha.

35. Who was the best new person you met?
Paul. (Technically we first met in late 2009 but just once, the rest was all this year.)

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
There is really so little that I absolutely cannot do.

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
From Guster's "Do You Love Me":
I wanna wake you from your dream
I wanna know who you're talking to
when you're singing in your sleep
I wanna find out what it means
This song has been stuck in my head for weeks.

Atlanta Floods: NEVER FORGET

While I'm on this nostalgia kick, someone mentioned on Twitter this morning that this is the anniversary of the Atlanta floods of a year ago. And lo and behold, the AJC has a retrospective up. Check it out, and relive the insanity, heartbreak and ALL THAT WATER.

Something About September

In 2005, I quit my job on the Friday before Labor Day weekend and spent the rest of the month trying to get the hell out of Dodge (aka Boston) before the rapidly-approaching winter. One of the most popular songs on the radio at that time was Green Day's "When September Ends," and it felt quite fitting to be asking the universe to hurry up and get me through this month and out of this life I had decided I didn't want anymore.

Fast-forward four years, and in September of 2009 my life was about to experience numerous earthquakes but I didn't realize it just yet. Two co-workers had left and a partner had announced he was leaving the practice of law altogether. I had taken on some of their responsibilities, and out of the blue I had also received a phone call from a federal goverment agency asking me to interview for the same job I had interviewed for in January, because I had been their #2 choice but the guy they had chosen to hire had decided to jump agencies just 6 months after starting. They were only interviewing me and one other guy, and they wanted to move quickly, so it seemed like getting hired was a VERY real possibility. At the very same time, I knew my coworker was in the final stages of interviewing for a fantastic opportunity elsewhere. We joked just before the Labor Day weekend about wanting to be the first of the two of us to give notice, because the rash of departures had started to freak people out. (Ultimately, she got the call first and put in her notice a year ago tomorrow, and I didn't get the nod for the government job because they were concerned I would decide to leave after a year or two in order to earn more money. They were probably right.)

Because the government job would have paid a lot less than my current job, my parents decided I needed to buy my house from them (long story made slightly less long: when we found my house I wasn't yet working and didn't qualify for a good mortgage rate, but they did, so they were the official buyers but I paid the mortgage for the first 3.5 years), and found a way through a mortgage broker to make this happen. We locked in a rate in late September, and a month later we closed and I took on the crushing debt load of my very own. We also discovered during this time that my roof was leaking (right after the Atlanta floods last year, September 18-22) and some other renovations were needed, so we hired a builder and started planning for the renovations that began in October.

At the same time, I had been talking off and on since July with a guy who I wanted to go out with and I was pretty sure he wanted to go out with me too, but despite a few abortive attempts to meet up somewhere we still had not yet gone out face to face. We shared a mutual friend (who had actually tried to set us up a year earlier but I said no), and she finally talked to me and then talked to him and basically found a way to push us both into getting the hell on with it, already. Right around this time we finally started talking on the phone and made plans for our first date, plans that I would ultimately have to cancel because I got sick. We ended up going out for the first time later in September, and having a great time. It was the start of something different and exciting. (Things didn't work out in the end, but it was still a VERY fun fall...)

I was about to become insanely busy at work, and I was about to get sick 5 times in 6 months (likely because of said work insanity.) Because of that sickness streak and my limited free time due to work, I would stop working out for more than six months and gain back half of the 20 pounds I had lost from March to September of last year. I would stop having time to go play poker on Thursdays, to go out with friends on Friday nights, to visit my family on Sundays, or to do anything but work all the damn time. I knew things were about to become difficult, but I had no idea just how difficult, yet.

I was also about to experience a fundamental realignment of my social circle. At the end of September I recall driving with a close friend, listening to a sad song about goodbyes and regret that suddenly brought forth the tears. I didn't know why I was crying, yet. I knew things needed to change and had already started to, but I didn't realize that what really needed to happen was finality, an ending. That earthquake came in October. But on that late September day, part of me already knew, and was already recording that moment, as one place I may never go in my life again.

Looking back now, a year ago I was on the brink of everything. I had no idea at the time how fundamental the changes would be, but it got me here, and for that I am grateful. The last year has put me in such a better place, and this September I am just hoping that I can keep building on the positive change of a year ago. Through a combination of my crash Vegas diet and a week of being sick, I've lost enough weight that my low point from last year is once again in sight and I'm inspired to keep going. I have met some fascinating and truly amazing guys in the last year, and made some fantastic new friends while strengthening existing friendships with others. I was promoted at work and got a raise after I really rededicated myself to my job and I ended up with a house that love and put my own mark on forever.

Septembers are always full of change for me, but as I sit here today reflecting on all the positive change that started a year ago, I just can't wait to see what happens next.

Jukebox Wars

For the last month or so, ATL Malcontent has been counting down the 10 most annoying songs ever. So far, his list includes:

#10: Bush--Glycerine

#9: John Denver--Thank God I'm a Country Boy

#8: Darryl Worley--Have You Forgotten?

#7: Genesis--Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

#6: The Rembrandts--I'll Be There For You (aka the theme from "Friends")

#5: Soundgarden--Black Hole Sun

#4: Five for Fighting--100 Years

#3: Hootie and the Blowfish--Only Wanna Be With You

#2: Kenny Loggins--(Highway to the) Danger Zone

#1: R. Kelly--I Believe I Can Fly

I can't really disagree with any of the choices on the list, though I do generally like Soundgarden and also find Danger Zone to be hilarious in its awfulness. But then, I tend to find really awful music pretty funny overall.

Reading this list reminded me of an old bar trick some friends and I used to engage in about a year ago (maybe longer...the days in bars all blend together.) We never gave it a name, but I hereby christen it Jukebox Wars. I was talking about this just this past Friday night, after some friends were deliberately playing awful music in a nearly-empty Diesel, which was led off with the hilariously bad "Into the Night" by Benny Mardones. (Any song that begins with "She's just 16 years old / leave her alone they say" is gonna be uncomfortably awful by definition!)

Jukebox Wars started when the bartenders at Moe's and Joe's were bored and annoyed one Saturday night and started deliberately playing bad music in the hope of annoying patrons. They took turns seeing how bad they could make the songs, which as I drunkenly recall included the Spice Girls, New Kids on the Block, Chumbawumba, and that "Who Let the Dogs Out" song. Undaunted, my friends and I began doing battle to top their selections. For whatever $5 will buy in terms of download credits on the jukebox, we would pick our slate of the worst songs in the world. We quickly discovered that our lists were largely generational--the bartenders' songs were heavily from the 90's, mine were largely from the late 70's or 80's, and others' were from the 60's or 70's. Many of those in that last category I had never heard before, so I didn't have the same negative visceral reaction that others in the bar often did (such as when I was beaten with the selection "Season in the Sun." Dammit.)

I can't remember all 10 of the terrible songs I played, but I can remember most. They included Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch," Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby," Taylor Dayne's "Love Will Lead You Back," Starship's "Sara" (a personal most-hated song for reasons I have described elsewhere...if you play it for me I will punch you in the throat), Alabama's "When We Make Love," and that goddamned "Breakfast at Tiffany's" song that makes me want to gouge out eyeballs. Just pulling together those links has made me think I should have won this damn battle...that's how bad those songs are! But alas, based upon the votes of others in the bar, I was defeated by even worse songs.

I also can't remember all the terrible songs that the person who beat me played, but I do remember some of the submissions of others included Muskrat Love, We Built This City, the Pina Colada song (which I unabashedly love), and Baby I'm a Want You.

The one song that both I and my competitor wanted to include, but couldn't because it was not available for download on that jukebox, was Convoy. This is quite simply the worst song of all time--listen and see for yourself! If ATL Malcontent doesn't make this #1 on his list I will be so disappointed.

So, this makes me wonder...what are your all-time top 10 worst songs ever? Feel free to leave a list in the comments. (Nothing that I have listed here is off-limits simply because I included it.)

And what a decade it was...

Everyone's doing not just year-end lists, but end of the decade lists...and it has me feeling seriously nostalgic for my 24-year-old self. When the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve 1999, I have no idea where I was (either Boston or Orlando) but I know I was about to graduate from law school and embark into real adult life for the first time ever. I had a sweet job at a big firm lined up, a boyfriend who'd asked me to marry him, and the whole world was ahead of me.

Of course, a funny thing happened on the way to perfect bliss. I got laid off from that law firm job 2 years later, I broke up with the boyfriend/fiance after finally realizing it was never going to work, and I spent months unemployed and terrified I had lost everything. And then I spent years building back to the life I wanted and hoped for, first in a small decrepit apartment in the North End where rats ran by my bedroom window every night, then getting a job at a small firm making half my former salary and barely scraping by, then on my parents' intuition and some tremendous luck buying a condo in Jamaica Plain. I spent the middle of the 2000's treading water in this way, until I realized I just wasn't going to find what I was looking for in Boston. And even though it was the scariest thing I have ever done, and perhaps the scariest thing I will ever do, I decided to quit my treading water job and leave my little condo in J.P., and move to Georgia to be closer to my family and start a new life.

The last four years have been full of highs and lows, but mostly highs. I arrived with no job, living in a small house in a small town where I only knew my aunt and uncle. I got my current job, which has been great in a lot of ways (and burnout-inducingly awful in others.) I bought my house, which has been great in a lot of ways (and terribly expensive and frustrating in others.) I made a large, wonderful and supportive group of friends that far eclipses anything I have experienced in life to this point, and who make me absolutely certain Atlanta is where I was meant to be. I have almost everything I want in life, with the glaring exception of a partner to travel through it with me.

But, if you had asked me back in 1999 where I expected to be in a decade, I would have assumed it was probably right about here. I would be at a big law firm trying to decide whether to bury myself in work and push to make shareholder, or seek greener less stressful pastures in an in-house position, government work or academia. I would be living in a house that I love, with a cat, but not married or with any children. (Somehow I knew those things would always be difficult to come by for me.) I would be closer to my family as they get older and as we need each other more. And I would be mostly happy, but still never satisfied, and always striving for more.

As I sit here and think about where I want to be on the stroke of midnight on December 31st, 2019, I am not sure what to hope for or expect. I will be 44. I would love to believe I will be a happy wife and doting mother by then, but know it becomes less likely with every passing day. I hope I will be firmly ensconced in a legal career that provides at least a little prosperity and prestige AND a liveable schedule. I hope I will have renovated my house into what I envision it to be, or sold it and moved to a new project I can keep working on. I hope I will still have this wonderful circle of friends who I adore and draw so much strength and joy from. I hope I will find time and money to enjoy life a little bit more than I currently manage to squeeze in. And I hope I will finally find peace and contentment so I can finally plant roots and be happy where I'm at, rather than always searching for something more. But, I know myself too well, and this last one is least likely of all. The road goes on forever.

Tops

Before I forget to do it, a few personal best of's for 2009...

Best 3 albums I listened to all the way through this year:
1. Black Joe Lewis--Tell 'Em What Your Name Is
2. Anya Marina--Slow & Steady Seduction: Phase II
3. Neko Case--Middle Cyclone
(Possibly the ONLY three new albums I listened to all the way through!)

Best 3 movies I saw this year:
1. The Blind Side
2. The Hangover
3. Star Trek
(Probably the only 3 I saw in theaters. Sensing a theme, here?)

Best 3 days of my year:
1. Inauguration of Barack Obama
2. Beth and Kevin's wedding ceremony
3. My walk around the Stanley Park sea wall in Vancouver in June

Best 3 nights of my year:
1. Beth and Kevin's wedding reception
2. Halloween Night
3. Dinner with Samantha, Rommel and friends in Brooklyn earlier this month

Best 3 trips I took this year:
1. New Orleans (March or July--both were great)
2. Vancouver in June
3. Washington, D.C. in Jan.

Best new hobbies I picked up this year:
1. Cupcaking
2. Treadmilling
3. Poker, the rededicated version (in which I still don't win any $.)

I have a feeling I will be making more lists of the decade-end variety soon. Feel free to add your own personal lists in the comments.

Unmatched

(Photo from TTessori's flickr page.)

I come not to bury Bobby Bowden, but to praise him. Yes, I recognize this may surprise you, since lately I have been less than kind towards Saint Bobby. But long before he angered me by holding on past his time and hurting my alma mater, I adored him. And now that he is leaving, and finally letting go of the team that he made great, it is time to thank him and to recognize that we have witnessed something that may never be matched again.

Bobby Bowden was not a great football player on his own (he enrolled at Alabama as a QB but stayed only one semester). He did not rise to the pinnacle of football coaching because a fanbase fondly remembered his playing days, or because he was from a family of football royalty. He became a coach because he loved football, and had studied it while confined to his bed for nearly a year as a child. He started off small at colleges nobody has ever heard of, then moved up to colleges nobody wanted to coach, then had moderate success at a moderately successful football program. Then he finally was recruited into a school that had only started a football program 2 decades earlier, and had lost all but one game the year before he arrived. As a friend who has a few years on me is fond of saying, things were not always rosy for Florida State football. This is something that those of us who have only known Bobby Bowden as head coach for our entire lives have a tendency to forget.

I grew up in Orlando, smack dab in the middle of a three team rivalry that was unique in the quality of the teams, the notoriety of their coaches, and the closeness of the finishes. I remember Wide Right I and II, when FSU inexplicably lost to Miami two years in a row by missed field goals in the final minute and had their national championship hopes derailed. I remember the hatred we held for Spurrier even then, before his teams were REALLY good, when he was just a nasty visor-throwing smirky jackass. And I remember how each of us along the way picked the one of the three rivals we cleaved to, either from family tradition, local proximity, or instinct. I had neither of the first two going for me, being centrally located between all three and with a family that had attended college in Iowa and Minnesota. So I was drawn to Florida State, and it was because of Bobby Bowden.

My childhood memories of Bowden are of his wisecracking press conferences and halftime interviews. He was always so blunt and honest, so down to earth, so REAL. If his team was losing at the half, he shrugged and told the reporter he was going to whip them into shape and hope they played better in the second half, as he ran to the tunnel. If his team got beat on a last second field goal missed AGAIN against the same team, he had no choice but to make a joke about it and shrug it off, because there was always another game coming and he intended to win it. His honesty and his resiliency were endearing, and made me root for him. And by rooting for him, I came to root for FSU. When it was time to pick a college, I didn't have any intention of going to Florida State. I applied to the likes of Duke, Wake Forest, and Emory, but didn't get enough scholarship money and FSU offered a full ride. My parents made me go for a weekend visit, whining all the way, and to my great surprise I loved it. I never intended to go there, but it felt meant to be the second I arrived. I never for a second considered even visiting UF, even though Gainesville is considerably closer and was arguably the "better school" academically at the time. I was an FSU girl, and if I had to go state school it was the only choice.

I enrolled in the fall of 1993, a glorious time to be an FSU student. Charlie Ward would win the Heisman, we FINALLY held on to beat Miami, we blew out every other home game by double digits, and thanks to a BC field goal against Notre Dame that sent a cheer through the campus of FSU, we played Nebraska for the National Championship and won, fittingly on a last second field goal. Bobby Bowden had finally put all the pieces together and nobody deserved it more. We did not lose a single game I attended during my four years at FSU.

In the 1990's Bobby Bowden ran up a string of records and accomplishments that may never be equalled. Just a few off the top of my head:

• 14 straight top 5 finishes and 10 win seasons
• Most wins in a decade by any FBS/Division I-A team ever (109). This is particularly notable because in the 90's there was no ACC championship game.
• an .890 winning percentage for the 1990's
• Played in 5 national championship games from 1993 to 2001, won 2
• First wire-to-wire AP #1 in 1999
• 28 straight bowl game appearances, the longest active streak in college football
• Longest streak of bowl game victories (1985-1996)

We were definitely all spoiled. A "down year" for FSU was one in which we had two losses and did not play for the national championship. For the entire decade, Bobby Bowden was known as a great recruiter, a 5-star general overseeing his highly skilled assistants, and a man that his players and fans loved. Along with the other fans, I was in heaven.

But things had to turn eventually, and they did. With benefit of hindsight, the decline has been precipitous and it is not surprising that many of us eventually turned on Bobby. After Mark Richt left to coach Georgia, Bowden elevated his son Jeff to offensive coordinator with disastrous results. Bobby refused to fire him despite the team's rapid offensive decline, and eventually the boosters paid Jeff $500,000 to walk away quietly. Bobby was reportedly furious about the boosters' forceout. While the offense has rebuilt thanks to new offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher, the team still has not managed more than 9 wins since 2000, and Bowden steadfastly resisted the many calls for change year after year. If anything, he became more defiant in the face of the criticism. But he should not have been surprised that the torches and pitchforks eventually reached his door. As one writer said today, "the first time the team went 6-6, they came for his son Jeff (offensive coordinator). The next time the team went 6-6, they came for him."

I was ready for Bobby to go three years ago. After graduating from FSU I'd moved to Boston, where college football is unimportant and it was easy to barely pay attention and only watch the big games, which we suddenly started to lose a lot of. Then I moved to Georgia in the fall of 2005, and decided that my newfound proximity to Tallahassee and my newfound prosperity meant that I should get season tickets. As a sign of how far we had fallen, I not only had no trouble obtaining season tickets, but did not even have to give a donation to get them. And so, in the fall of 2006 I walked into Doak Campbell stadium for the first time in a decade to watch us play Clemson. We lost in a squeaker and so I had my first experience of walking out of Doak forlornly while an opposing team's fans cheered. Since that game, I've been an FSU season ticketholder for four seasons now, have attended 10 games, and we've won two of them. TWO. It was bizarro world, and it seemed like it was never going to end.

But for all my rancor, and all of my wholehearted belief that the team needed a change at the helm, when Bowden finally announced his retirement yesterday I was overcome by sadness and appreciation. I was sad because I knew Bobby's heart was breaking over leaving, and how it had all come to pass. I was sad because the man who has been the coach of my team for as long as I have been alive was being shuffled off to retirement, where he had once famously said there was only one big event left, and he wasn't ready for that yet. I was sad because just like Bobby wanted to be the coach for one more great season, I wanted that for him too. But unlike Bobby, I had recognized that he could keep hanging on and hoping for that, but it just wasn't going to happen while he was there. And so I was sad that the football gods had denied him the sendoff season with a great team that he richly deserved. It simply was not meant to be.

I also wanted to make sure that the greatness that Bowden brought to my alma mater is not forgotten in how it all went down at the end. He has become an old man, lost a step as some said, but that is exactly why we should not remember him as he is now, but at his best. William O. Douglas was a lion of the Supreme Court who wrote some of the most important landmark decisions of an era, but at the end he refused to retire even after he suffered a stroke and could barely speak or read. He waited too long to go, but we do not remember him for how he fell at the end, but for how he rose before it. And we should do the same for Bobby Bowden. The man lived the life of a legend, built a program from nothing into a powerhouse that broke records and left everyone in the dust for an entire decade. That is the Bobby I will choose to remember fondly going forward. That is the Bobby who I will see in the statue outside Doak Campbell Stadium when I go to a game next year, when I watch my team run onto Bobby Bowden Field.

There is another statue outside Doak that features a Seminole warrior on horseback, holding a spear above his head. It says on the base "Unconquered." The Seminole tribe of Florida is known for having never been conquered by the U.S. government or any other tribe, despite many attempts that included driving them deep into the swamps of Florida. They may have been diminished, may have lost control of the lands they once held, but they were never conquered. Bobby Bowden may give up control of the Florida State football team, but the heights he brought our team to will never be matched again. And all of us who live this team must honor that tradition, and honor the man who gave his life to Florida State.

Goodbye, and thank you, Saint Bobby. We will never see your kind again.

Mood Music: a song and a story

It's been a weird week, folks. Thanks to Monday morning's email from the ex-boyfriend, I've had more occasion to think about my life in Tallahassee and Boston many years ago than I have in ages. This morning the following song came on my iPod and it immediately transported me to 2002.

But let me take you back even further, to the fall of 1995 when we first met. I was a young, inexperienced and woefully naive 20 year old FSU student. My roommate convinced me to run for student Senate, and while campaigning for our seats I met Gabe. I actually met him for the first time at the house just on the edge of campus that we used as our campaign HQ--known as the "House of Kaos." I was at a party there, and Gabe walked in. (He was also a student senate candidate.) It was one of those moments like out of a movie, when you see someone and for no apparent reason you realize they are going to be significant to you in ways you cannot possibly anticipate. A few days later, we spent an afternoon campaigning sitting at a table outside the English building talking to students who stopped by and wanted to know more about our party, the Progressive Coalition. I was intrigued by him, and the die was cast.

During the course of that senate campaign, I also met Susan, who was running for one of the other Arts & Sciences senate seats. We became fairly good friends almost immediately, and in the months that followed after we won our senate seats and took over the FSU student senate, we spent a lot of time together. Susan was there for the budding romance between Gabe and I, including the disastrous first date (wherein SOMEONE neglected to mention to me that he would be rooting for Miami until we arrived together at the FSU-Miami game), the dream I had that convinced me to give him another chance despite said disaster, and the growing realization that there was more than just a spark at work.

Susan probably also knew it would be an eventual catastrohic failure. In some very obvious and important ways, he and I were so different.

For reasons I've long since forgotten, Susan and I fell out of touch. Gabe and I moved to Boston for several years before we finally broke up at the beginning of 2002. At the end of that year, I bought Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2, and I can still remember the slow, sad smile that crept across my face as I listened to this song for the first time. It was just so right.

In a happy quirk of coincidence, Susan and I have now both ended up living in Atlanta, and last fall we reconnected via Facebook. There is something so wonderful about reconnecting with someone who knew you at such an incredibly important formative point in your life, and I am privileged to have her as a friend again. I have never told her this story of how this song has made me think of her for the past 7 years, but hopefully she will listen to it and smile as well.

Oldie but a goodie

Today for what seems like about the 5th time since I moved to Atlanta, I was diagnosed with pinkeye. This seems to happen almost every time I get sick, for some reason. I have antibiotic drops and all that jazz, but when I got back to the office from the interminable wait at the Minute Clinic, I realized that I had probably blogged about this strange phenomenon of mine at least once before. And, lo and behold, I have! And then I remembered how my sick friends decided to convince me that I had an STD in my eye...ah, good times.

Advice to the 1999 me

Inspired by this post at Extraface, I'm thinking what 3 things I would tell myself 10 years ago if I could travel back in time and give some quick advice. I think they would be:

1. Appreciate your 24 year old figure and work harder to keep it:

When I was 24, I was always dieting and unhappy with my body. That's a shame, because when I look back now or showing pictures of myself 10 years ago to people, I realize that I looked damn good. If I had only discovered my inner exercise fiend a little earlier, I might still have that figure. If I had appreciated it more when I had it, I probably would have had the courage to show it off a little bit more than I did while I was in a serious relationship. Only after we finally split up in 2002 and I had to go out on the town again as a single lady did I fully embrace the joys of occasionally tramping it up. I lost so much time! Which brings me to #2...

2. Dump that loser fiance of yours and go have more fun:

In December of 1995 I began dating a man who I would live with for nearly six years. We even technically got engaged in 1999, but we never made any sort of move towards actually planning a wedding. I'm not sure exactly when I realized it wasn't going to work out between us, but I don't think I had a clue by 1999. That was the year that I let a really great opportunity slip by when a guy named Tom who was a law school classmate basically suggested that we dump our loser boyfriend and girlfriend and get together ourselves. I turned him down, and I have regretted it for a decade. Even without that regret, once I did split with the 6 year guy, I had lost so much time in the dating and having fun department! I would have been SUCH a tramp if I had been single for the last half of that six years, instead of a girl with a relatively small number of notches on the bedpost. At the time I would've told you that I loved my fiance and thought we would be together forever; I couldn't imagine life without him. But with the benefit of hindsight 34 year old me could go back to 24 year old me and say "in a couple years you're going to start meeting men who you will love more than you ever loved this dweeb, and more than you ever believed possible. And when you do, you want to be available and ready."

3. Prepare yourself for true adversity, and know that you will make it through intact:

In August of 1999 I had just finished my summer associate position with the firm that I would eventually join after law school. I was high as a kite thinking of all the money I would make, and I didn't see a storm brewing. A year later I would graduate and go off to a firm with no work for us young associates, and then a year after that a national tragedy would cause the economy to go into freefall. I would lose the first real legal job I ever had through no fault of my own and be completely devastated. If I could go back and tell 24 year old me to prepare for that, I would not say to choose a different firm or practice area or anything like that. But I would pass on the knowledge that I would survive and eventually get back to doing what I wanted to do, and would be all the better for having made it through the first real crisis of my life. There were times when it felt like everything had been irretrievably ruined, and I would have benefitted from knowing that it would eventually be okay.

So, what would you tell yourself 10 years ago if you had the chance?

We are all so old

Wired's Geekdad blog assembles a list of 100 things that every geek remembers but that today's children will never know.

My personal favorite? #30: "Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time."

My personal addition to the list: learning how to write simple programs in Basic on my elementary school's computers.

Abortion juice

I wrote about this briefly on Twitter, and realized it was one of those strange but funny stories that would be perfect for a blog post.

Back in college, I spent a year living with a fun-loving and completely batshit crazy woman we will call A. I had been an RA and A had been one of my residents, and we became fast friends. A liked to live on the wild side, though, and in that regard we really could not be more different. (I merely occasionally dabbled.) By way of example, I went to a Bush concert with A during that year, and she was tripping on acid. She decided during the show that Gavin Rossdale was her soulmate, and proceeded to force me to travel to other Bush shows for the better part of a year until she finally actually met the guy in person and he showed her zero interest. (Even back then he was hooking up with Gwen Stefani as they toured together.)

Anyhow, A was a bit of a hellion. She kept sheets of acid in our freezer, she had a fake ID she'd obtained by stealing a military ID from someone she babysat for in high school and altering the photograph with one of her own, and she was the first friend I ever had who was just unabashedly and unapologetically promiscuous. A had an endless stream of guys in her life, and somewhat famously kept a list on our refrigerator that she called her "Fuck List." In order, it listed every guy she slept with and she updated it religiously. (At the time, she made a Fuck List for me that was blank for most of that year, until I started dating the guy that I would move in with by the end of that year. Yes, I was a late bloomer.)

A wasn't great about birth control, however, since she was still on her father's military health insurance and had to go all the way to Panama City to get her birth control prescriptions filled. She somehow let the prescription lapse for awhile, and then she unexpectedly got pregnant. We panicked together as she peed on stick after stick, and tried to figure out what to do. At the time I was active in the FSU Women's Center and FSU NOW, and my good feminist friends with their knowledge of pre-Roe v. Wade methods of dealing with unwanted pregnancy told us about an old wives' tale that drinking a strong concoction of ginger juice could induce miscarriage.

A and I decided to try this, in the hopes that we could avoid the expensive and painful surgical abortion that she was otherwise going to have. We went to Publix and bought several pounds of raw ginger. I peeled it, cut it up, and boiled it in some water until it reduced down to a few cups. I made her try it, and it was awful. She said she couldn't possibly drink it, so we decided to add it to a jug of Kool-Aid. I mixed half of a large jug of red cherry Kool-Aid, and added the ginger liquid. We let it cool, and then I poured A a big glass. She insisted that I had to try it first, because she was worried she might hurl. I will never EVER forget the terrible flavor of that one sip that I took. I thought it might burn my throat, the spiciness of the ginger was so strong. But I tried to keep a brave face and show A that she could drink this stuff. She managed to suffer through about half a glass before giving up. We put the jug back into the fridge, intending to try again the next day.

We must have either given up on the "abortion juice" or forgotten about it, because a week later it was still in the back of the fridge. Around about this time I had started getting semi-involved with G, and after a party at our place he had slept over on the sofa. (We weren't officially dating at this point.) I woke up early the next day to go to class, and when I returned he was sleeping in my bed. I woke him up, and after we talked for awhile he asked me what the hell kind of alcohol we were brewing in our fridge. I stared at him puzzled for a second, and then realized that he meant the abortion juice. Turns out, G had gotten up in the middle of the night looking for a drink, and had found what looked like a jug of red Kool-Aid in the back of the fridge. He had poured a big glass, taken a swig, and been met with the unholy burn of concentrated ginger. When I told him the story of what he had just drank, I laughed so hard I nearly peed.

Ultimately we abandoned the abortion juice idea, and A went through the usual method of terminating the pregnancy. I was there, holding her hand, through the whole procedure. That entire experience made me hyper-vigilant about my own birth control methods once I had occasion to employ them a couple months later, when I finally wrote a name on my own Fuck List. But, I had completely forgotten about abortion juice until a friend from college blogged today about making homemade ginger beer, and that awful taste memory came flooding back. None for me, thanks.

Mood Music: No Shame Edition

There are so many fantastic Michael Jackson songs I could choose from to remember him by, but I have to go with this one. Six years ago I drove from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta with a good friend who I did not know very well at the time. We came across this song on a CD of hers, and she initially went to skip it to the next song until I told her to stop. We had that moment of understanding when you realize that someone else also loves the song that you love, that everyone else thinks is cheesy. And then we began belting it out at the top of our lungs together.

For six years we have kept that secret, refused to tell anyone else that we love this song. But today, I confess. I love this song, and it's just one slice of the oeuvre of an immensely talented artist. Whatever you think about Michael Jackson's personal life, his appearance, his criminal trial, or anything else, if you were a child of my generation then he held a huge place in your musical awakening. And we will all miss him.

Mood Music: Yabba Dabba Doo

The first time I searched for this song over a year ago there were no videos to post, but since that time someone has finally put it on Youtube for all to see. Enjoy.

Jobs I've Had Part IX: Law School Jobs

During law school, I worked for two different small plaintiffs' firms in my second and then third year. The first was a job I acquired midway through the first semester of my second year, when I decided that I really needed some extra money because Boston was so damned expensive. I worked for a two man firm that did a little of everything, though personal injury was sort of the filler in between the cracks of their other cases. I worked 20 hours per week answering phones, drafting legal documents, doing legal research, and basically helping them out on whatever they needed done.

I remember working on documents for the arbitration of a post-divorce case all about stock options. The former husband had been quite high up at a technology company and had acquired millions of dollars' worth of stock options, and a portion of those options had been granted to the former wife in their divorce settlement, with the catch that she only obtained the rights to the stock options once they'd been both vested and exercised. The ex-wife claimed that the ex-husband had been deliberately NOT exercising his options in order to keep them from her. The ex-husband claimed that as a company executive his ability to exercise options was restricted for much of the year due to blackout provisions for stock transactions on company executives who might have foreknowledge of information that could affect stock prices. We represented the ex-husband in the case. I worked there for nearly 6 months and the arbitration still wasn't even completely over by the time I left, so you can imagine I came away from it with a dim view of how well arbitration provides a faster, less expensive alternative to traditional litigation.

One of the two lawyers was also in-house counsel part-time for a technology company, and that company had a patent litigation action that involved most of the other big firms in the city. I don't remember many details, beyond feeling like the poor guy representing them was a little outmatched given the firepower on all the other sides.

Another law student who actually looked enough like me that she could have been my sister shared my schedule there, and we occasionally overlapped enough that we could hang out and talk for a few minutes. I've long since forgotten how it came about, but one of us somehow discovered that we could search the cache of the computer at our desk and see what the 2 lawyers were viewing on the internet when we weren't around. We found URLS to beastiality sites in that computer, and were quite scandalized by trying to figure out who was responsible for it. I don't think we ever figured it out, though we had our suspicions. (One of the attorneys had a teenage son who occasionally came with him to the office on Saturdays.)

I left that job to serve as a summer associate at a big firm in Boston, which I would later join as a first year associate fresh out of law school. It was a cushy gig, since I was paid $1800 a week to do research projects, go to lunch with attorneys, go to cocktail parties and dinners all paid for by the firm, and even take a weekend trip sponsored by the firm to the Vermont mountains. Of course the firm was NOTHING like this when I returned as a real employee, but it was still lovely while it lasted. We had a big class of 30 law students from various schools, and there were several romances and scandals that summer. At the end of the summer I got an offer for full time employment, so I knew I could relax my third year of law school rather than sweating it through another interview process.

Third year I again needed to earn a bit of extra money, so I went to work part time for a solo practitioner. While I don't really want to put her name here because I'd prefer not to have her find this blog through a Google search, let's just say that her first name was the name of a famous main character from a Shakespeare play about star-crossed lovers, while her last name was the last name of the rival family. It was her married name, and she'd long since divorced Mr. M, but she kept the name because people found it distinctive. Also, she was crazy.

She had won a few huge cases in the years before I joined her practice, and I think she still fancied herself as a legal badass. The problem was that the money had started to wear a little thin, and the only cases that we had were not quite the moneymakers she hoped. I worked on a personal injury suit against a large Atlanta-based building supply chain (again, do the math) that really exposed me for the first time to the downfalls of dealing with plaintiffs. It's the reason I will never do that work again: plaintiffs lie, and they're almost all crazy.

I also worked on my first employment litigation case at that firm, a woman who had worked for a large banking organization and had been demoted after refusing her boss's sexual advances. It was a great case for us for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which was that the woman had kept copies of all sorts of emails from the boss saying how qualified she was for this new job, as well as a diary of all the things he tried to get into her pants. Ultimately we settled that case for nearly two years' pay, which is about as good as a sexual harassment case can turn out. (It had some warts, too, but we managed to keep those under wraps.) I had essentially been allowed to bring in and run that case entirely on my own, so I was very proud to get that result.

The lawyer I worked for was constantly trying to expand her repertoire, but sometimes before she really knew enough to take on a new type of work. She was called by a former personal injury client who has arrested for bank robbery, and decided that she could learn how to do criminal defense work. I recall frantically trying to research what I needed to put into a motion to suppress that she had decided we needed to file, and feeling stressed to the end of my rope out of fear that we were flying TOO blind in the case. Thankfully, that case was before a judge who was notoriously lenient on criminal defendants (to the point that she later was the subject of a campaign to kick her off the bench), and my boss managed to secure a deal for 6 months probation and a drug treatment program for the guy. I was amazed, because our client had signed a confession! (While high as a kite on Vicodin, but still...)

I worked there for the second half of my third year of law school, and while I studied for the bar exam. I left that office about a week before I started at my "real" firm, and when I left she asked if there was any way she could convince me to stay. Given what big firms were paying starting lawyers, I told her that I had to take the other deal. Honestly, she was such a strange bird--her depositions were excruciating to read because she liked to do weird things like stand on her chair to intimidate witnesses--that I really didn't think I could in good conscience keep working for her any longer.

However, I ended up being very happy she was still around and wanted me back 2 years later when I was laid off from that cushy firm gig. I worked for her part time for 6 months while I interviewed for full time positions at other firms, and strangely enough the same woman who had been the plaintiff in my first sexual harassment case had somehow managed to acquire a NEW sexual harassment case. I managed to settle that one too, though the terms were far less lucrative. By the time I left there a second time, the boss had started to talk about moving up to Vermont to retire, and it was clear her heart wasn't in it anymore. I ran into her in the courthouse a few years later and she was still working (and still crazy)...and told me a story about how she had an ethics complaint filed against her because she shoved opposing counsel at a hearing. She said this with pride.

Jobs I've Had Part VII: The ambulance chaser

(We're now at the boring part of my work history, i.e. the legal jobs. Sorry in advance.)

In Spring of 1997 I went back to school full time to finish my BA and decided I should try to get another job as a part time legal secretary to get some additional legal experience. A personal injury and worker's comp attorney in Tallahassee had placed an ad with FSU's career development office for a part time legal secretary, and I applied and was hired on the spot thanks to being the only applicant he had who still knew how to run MS-DOS. Yes, I managed to find someone who was clinging to old school technology like a life raft, and luckily thanks to my parents' outdated computers in their business I was uniquely qualified to help him. I worked 20 hours per week, mostly afternoons, transcribing tapes and handling the phones and scheduling. Quickly I progressed from menial secretarial tasks to actually taking first crack at drafting motions, petitions, discovery, etc. I was even allowed to take calls from potential clients and decide which should be passed on to the attorney and which should be advised to call elsewhere.

In this job, I really saw the inside of a plaintiff's personal injury practice for the first time. The attorney I worked for had the largest payout on record in the state of Florida for a worker's comp case, and he only handled premium cases. I spent much of that semester working on a case for a man who had been injured in a terrible car accident while on the job that left him profoundly brain-injured. My boss was trying to negotiate a large settlement and was on the brink when the client unexpectedly died in the middle of the night from a diabetic episode. I took the distraught call from our client's wife that morning, and I will never forget it.

I also made one mistake in that job that I will never live down: I scheduled a hearing and then put it in the calendar for the wrong time. I don't think I have ever seen someone as mad as my boss was that day, but thankfully I had made the appointment earlier rather than later, so he had simply shown up in the courtroom an hour early. Still, it taught me the importance of double and triple checking everything that involves interaction with the judge.

I also gave my first deposition right before I left for law school, in a case my boss filed against an FSU student who had rented the apartment behind our office building and left the place in a shambles when she moved out. I had been the first person into the apartment after she vacated, and my boss was worried that because I would be in Boston he needed to preserve my testimony about what I saw before I left. He coached me on the importance of giving short answers, only answering the question asked, and to always remember that if I found myself talking and I didn't know why, to shut up immediately. It is advice that I still give to every person I prepare for deposition even today, and I tell them this story: despite that extensive coaching, and despite the opposing party not even sending someone to the deposition, I still found myself responding to a question halfway through the deposition when I looked up and saw my boss glaring at me. I realized that I had gone on to answer the question I thought he would ask next, without waiting for him to ask it, despite his explicit instructions. I still use that experience today to illustrate my preparation suggestions for my clients.

I left that office when I moved to Boston in the fall of 1997, and did not work at all my first year of law school because it is generally prohibited by the school. I did get a little blast from the past the next summer in the form of a subpoena to give a deposition about this attorney's billing practices. In worker's comp cases in Florida, where a claimant's attorney is successful he can have his attorney's fees paid by the insurance company of the employer. He has to submit a bill detailing the hours spent on the case and a reasonable hourly fee, and then there is a fee hearing to determine whether the hours were actually spent and were reasonable, and whether the hourly rate is reasonable. One of the insurance companies was fighting my boss's fee for a particular case, and wanted me to testify about how he recorded his time. I had typed the dictation he prepared of all his work on the case, based upon his review of the extensive file and his estimate of how long each task took. I managed to call up the attorney who subpoenaed me, convince him I would not be helpful, and get him to agree not to try and depose me. Afterwards I called my boss to fill him in, and it was the last time I ever spoke to him. When I go to football games in Tallahassee, I drive by the old mansion converted into an office building where he practiced and wonder if he is still there.

Jobs I've Had Part VI: The Temp

In the fall of 1996, I decided to apply to work with a temp agency. I was only going to take one course at night that semester, and I wanted a job that I could quit or take a sabbatical on when I returned to school full time at some point. I worked with Randstad, which placed me in a variety of clerical positions. I only recall three of the many jobs that I worked in during those six months.

Columbia HCA

In the 1990's Columbia was probably the largest private for-profit hospital corporation in the country. I worked for several weeks at their consulting division, which would be retained by medical practices to analyze their business model and find ways to save money or function better. They would spend months producing one massive bound volume that contained their recommendations, and I was brought in to help with the process of preparing and finalizing that physical document. I remember next to nothing about it.

Talquin Electric Cooperative

I was sent to a small electric company outside Tallahassee called Talquin Electric Cooperative. It serviced the small towns outside the suburbs of the city, many of which were lower income. I originally was just the receptionist, answering the telephones and signing in people who were there to see one of the account managers. The customers who came into the office looked like an audience of Springer, and it was heartbreaking to see so many people drive all the way to the electric company to make a scrounged-together $20 payment and beg them not to shut off their power.

Overwhelmingly most of the calls I answered were people wanting to either try to make payment arrangements or to find out why their power had been shut off, and after a few weeks the account managers started letting me look at their accounts in the computer system and talk to them about their payment issues. It took a load off the account managers and prevented callers from staying on hold so long, but as a result I got yelled at at least 3 or 4 times a day by some irate person whose power had been shut off during a hot Tallahassee day.

I think I worked at Talquin for about 2 months before they hired a permanent receptionist, a very sweet but slightly dumb girl who I trained to replace me.

The Department of Transportation Office of the General Counsel

I was sent to be a legal secretary for two litigation attorneys in the State of Florida's Department of Transportation. I opened their mail, drafted their documents from dictation, handled their filing, and did other various administrative tasks. The FLDOT had a variety of types of cases, everything from recovering for property damage when a drunk driver took out a guardrail to a slip and fall at a rest stop.

The majority of the cases that I recall working on involved the train lines that ran through South Florida. The only cases that I remember involved two different sets of teenaged boys that died when they were hit by trains on the same stretch of track in West Palm Beach. The train tracks ran over a trestle, which was essentially a bridge over a canal that was only about a foot wider on each side than the tracks themselves. This particular trestle was a popular place to go fishing, but because trains came around a curve about 100 yards down the track, people fishing on the tracks did not get much warning. In the first case, two children had been sitting on the tracks when the train approached and had gotten up and started running but did not make it to the other side of the trestle. In the second case, a man had taken his child and a friend of the child fishing at that same location, and had told them about the first case as a way to make them be vigilant at all times to watch for approaching trains. He had also told the boys there were alligators in the canal, ostensibly also so that they would be careful to watch for a train. When a train did approach, the two boys were so scared about the alligators that they did not jump off the trestle, even as the father screamed at them to jump. I can recall receiving an envelope addressed to one of the FLDOT attorneys in the case, and opening it to find it contained the autopsy photos of the two boys who had been hit. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach for the rest of the day as a result.

I worked at the FLDOT for several months and became very good friends with the attorneys I worked with. They knew I wanted to go to law school, and one of them eventually wrote me a recommendation letter when I left to go back to school full time for spring semester.

I expected to hate temping, and sometimes it was very awkward to show up at a place where nobody had an incentive to get to know you because they presumed you would be gone in a few days. There was also a persistent belief that temps were usually incompetent, so I was frequently told that it was surprising I could figure out how to do someone's job while they were out. It was insulting to have people treat me as though they expected me to be a moron, even if they later ended up pleasantly surprised when I was not. But temping paid my bills, and it gave me my first bit of legal experience that inspired me to go back and finish my BA and get to law school. One of the attorneys I worked for had gone to BU Law, and he was a big part of the reason I decided to apply there. As luck would have it, I got a pretty sweet scholarship from them so I should probably have thanked him.


Rusty's posts inspired this topic, and Garrett and Thomas are writing about their former jobs as well. Join in the fun, and I'll link to you too!

Jobs I've Had Part V: The Randoms

In between the lobbyist gig and my next job working for a temp agency, I had a few fitfull attempts at other jobs for a few days or weeks at a time.

In 1996, an environmental organization was trying to get a ballot question on the Florida ballot that would force the state to clean up and preserve the Florida everglades. The 'Glades had been polluted and harmed by sugar farming down there for decades, and the sugar industry was a powerful lobby in Florida. The goal was to create a constitutional amendment requiring the state to prevent future pollution and to clean up the past effects. The organizations had been trying this for years, but they finally raised millions of dollars to front this referendum and were mounting a serious campaign. In order to place the issue on the ballot, the state was requiring something like 500,000 valid signatures from registered voters, and the campaign had raised millions so that they could pay people $1 per signature to get at least 1 million people signed up. (These sorts of campaigns always build in a cushion to account for signatures that will be thrown out because they can't be verified or are repeats.)

To a college student, $1 a signature sounds like a gold mine...you just find a crowded place and you could have earned $50 an hour. We had heard stories of people who had gone to an outdoor concert or a county fair and made $200 in just a few hours. The $1 per signature was paid out when you turned your signature pad in, even if the signer turned out to not be registered in Florida or to have previously signed the petition another time. My boyfriend and I decided this sounded like a great way to make lots of money very fast.

(This experience gave me some insight into the problems with fake registrations during the 2008 election, as I was fairly certain that the people turning in those fake registrations had also been paid per registration and thus had a powerful incentive to abuse the system. Not that we ever did anything like that with the signatures!)

We got our clipboards full of petitions and headed to a parking lot of a strip mall to accost people heading into or out of the Barnes and Noble. We quickly learned that getting people to sign this thing was tougher than we'd heard, particularly when store management would come out and ask us to leave. We'd move to another strip mall and start over, but we were averaging only about 5 signatures an hour apiece. We discovered that many people had already signed and did not want to fill out the lengthy form to do so again. Others had started seeing the ads run by the sugar industry against the proposed referendum, and wanted to argue with us. After about a week we decided this job was a bust and we turned in our clipboards. I think we maybe cleared $50 each.

Gabe and I worked together on two other occasions with similarly disastrous results. First, we saw an ad in the paper for a telephone sales job and both showed up to the address listed to find that it was circulation sales for the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper. I lasted all of one night before deciding that I absolutely hated telephone sales and would rather starve than try that again. Gabe went back for the rest of the week, because he actually sort of liked pissing people off, but even he burned out by the end of the week. I don't think I made a single sale before I quit.

We also worked for a department store, I think Dillard's faxing sale advertisements to local public schools for a teachers' discount promotion the store was running. We each sat in separate offices in the administrative part of the department store for 2 days faxing the same 1 page ad to several dozen local schools at a time. However, because the department store had gotten in trouble for sending un-requested faxes before, we had to call each school and reach a real live person to get their permission to fax the notice to each one. This was almost as unpleasant as telephone sales, and made worse by Gabe's constant need to make everything into a contest. This was probably why we never worked together again after that 2 day gig. I also recognized that I was not cut out for a career in sales, and vowed never to try to take on that sort of job ever again.

After a month or so of these odd jobs and the fear of living without a steady income, I was thinking of going home to Orlando to work for Disney for the rest of the summer but I was afraid my parents would find out about my school issues. I decided to apply to work for a temp agency, which was where I worked for the remainder of the summer and the fall semester. That story will be a separate post.


Rusty's posts inspired this topic, and Garrett and Thomas are writing about their former jobs as well. Join in the fun, and I'll link to you too!

Jobs I've Had Part IV: the Lobbyist

When I returned to FSU for my junior year, I unfortunately had far less money saved from my summer job than I'd hoped. I had moved into an expensive apartment with my crazy friend Amanda (crazy like she went to a Bush concert while tripping and believed for over a year afterwards that Gavin Rossdale was in love with her crazy, not like haha wacky crazy) and knew that at some point during the school year I would need to get a job. Unfortunately I'd also gotten roped into running for and winning a Student Senate seat, thanks to Amanda signing us up to volunteer for a student political party and saying yes on behalf of both of us when they called to ask if they could run us as candidates instead. It was fun, but it was time-consuming and made even moreso because I met the man who I would almost marry, Gabe, while campaigning for the seat. So suddenly I had this extra-curricular activity and this boyfriend, and a full courseload, and no money. It was kind of a problem.

Luckily in January I heard about a friend who had been working for a lobbyist in the Florida legislature. He had fired another employee because she dared to get mononucleosis, which when you are working to accomplish lots of legislative priorities in a session that is only three months long is apparently an unforgiveable sin. The friend managed to talk me up as the sick girl's replacement, and I was hired for what at the time was the obscene rate of $10 per hour. There were two drawbacks: first, I'd have to be there every day at 7am to open the office. Second: I had to agree to work whenever he wanted, or I'd be fired just like the last girl. I was desperate for money, so I didn't mind. As added bonus, we were all paid under the table so I wouldn't have to worry about taxes.

This was about 1996, and Florida's legislature had just gone Republican for the first time in ages. The lobbyist I worked for was from South Florida and was also a political consultant to various Democratic politicians in the area. He was still coping with the change in the power structure, as were we all by extension. Most of my day was spent sending faxes on upcoming votes, important legislative priorities, and other news items to the various legislators' offices. Any fax that we sent out had to go to well over a hundred people, and it could take hours to complete. I remember on one occasion being called in early on a Saturday morning for a faxing project, and the document I was sending was so long that it took roughly 10 minutes to send to each recipient. I would type in the number, put the document in, and hit send and take a nap on the floor. When the fax was done it would beep, I'd wake up, and send the next fax. I did this for 10 hours straight.

At the time, many of the people who are now making a name for themselves nationally were in the Florida legislature. Charlie Crist, Katharine Harris, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Robert Wexler all started out as state legislators and were serving in about this time period. Katharine Harris in particular stands out to me because she had this hilarious official portrait of herself hanging in the Capitol. She had her hair in a bun with a massive bubble at the top, looking like she was a librarian or a school principal (think the principal's hairdo in the movie "Pump Up the Volume"). Even then the rumor was that she was crazy. Charlie Crist was known as "Chain Gang Charlie" back then for repeatedly introducing legislation to bring chain gangs to Florida.

In addition to the endless faxing, we also ran various errands at the Capitol for the lobbyist. Often it was delivering donation checks or picking up revised versions of legislation. I recall two legislative initiatives that he was really working hard that session: viaticals, and tow trucks. I don't really recall the particulars on the tow truck issue but I know that a lot of tow truck owner organizations were donating a lot of money that session so they were obviously working some issue hard.

Viaticals were a much more compelling story. The viatical industry essentially buys up the beneficiary rights to a terminally ill person's life insurance policy and pays them out a portion of the proceeds in advance while they are still alive. The company makes its money when the person dies and they collect the full value of the policy. At the time, the industry was flourishing primarily by contracting with individuals with HIV. In the mid-1990's HIV was still considered a certain death sentence within a decade, and many of the individuals who were diagnosed did not have children or any other family that they particularly wanted their life insurance proceeds to go to. They argued powerfully and persuasively that they should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their life insurance now to make their remaining years more comfortable, rather than living austerely and then seeing the money go to next of kin once they were gone. It was a tough issue and there were strong opinions all around. We were lobbying in support of the industry and against legislation that would have prohibited viatical contracts in Florida, and the strategy was to put the real stories of people who had entered into these contracts before the legislators and allow them to hear how the availability of this option had improved their last few years of life. We were able to defeat the legislation, though the industry has been under continued attack in Florida since then.

This job was certainly interesting and it looked good on a resume, but it wreaked complete havoc on my life that semester. My work hours were supposed to be from 7-10, go attend classes until 1, come back and work until the lobbyist told me I was done. I frequently worked until 9 or 10, sometimes later. Instead of going to classes during my midday break, I was often so tired that I went home and slept from 10-1, and I started missing a ton of class time. I was also so constantly exhausted from waking up at 6 to get to work by 7 that I would fall asleep in my car at red lights, or at the table when we were out at a restaurant. Gabe and I went to a Barnes and Noble one Saturday and I ended up sleeping in a chair for three hours. I normally am awakened at the slightest noise or movement in the room, so I have to be completely wiped out to sleep in a public, bright place. It was then that I decided being a morning person was never going to be my thing.

I'd stopped going to all of my classes by midway through the semester, and I expected to fail all of them. This was supposed to be my last semester in school, because I had been on track to graduate a year early. Instead, I had flunked out. I was a complete mess about it, but sort of felt immobilized about the whole thing. I would ultimately take the next semester off, convince the school to let me retroactively withdraw from all of my Spring 1996 classes, and restore my GPA to its former respectability before applying to law schools in spring of 1997. I was extremely lucky in that regard, as law school would not have been an option if a flunked out semester had stayed on my transcript. It helped that my grades had been fantastic except for that one abberration, so I'd been able to argue that I was working too much and that it was completely out of character for me to miss so much class. Thankfully I was able to get my transcript fixed BEFORE my parents found out about that semester, so I could tell them that the situation was already taken care of. I thought they were going to absolutely lose their shit when they found out. To this day, I still have nightmares about that time in my life and all the anxiety I felt about having screwed my future.

After the legislative session ended in May, there was talk of me continuing to work part time for the lobbyist while he was down in South Florida, checking the mail and completing various administrative tasks. I didn't particularly want to keep working there, and I was not at all disappointed when the lobbyist never contacted me with details about continuing part-time work. I turned in my key and started looking for something else.


Rusty's posts inspired this topic, and Garrett and Thomas are writing about their former jobs as well. Join in the fun, and I'll link to you too!