Legal laughlines

I was watching Law & Order: SVU tonight, and the episode had a judge (Tom Skerritt) who had an ex parte communication with the defendant. Casey, the DA, had him picked up for facilitating a crime, saying he had lost his judicial immunity when he had the ex parte communication.

So Benson and Stabler went and picked up the judge, who was having a swank party at his place. I love the way that the judge soon became ex party because of his ex parte communication.

Yes, I'm a nerd. And perhaps my telling of the joke wasn't very funny, but that was the funniest thing I saw on tv in a while. But at least this proves a) I still have my sense of humor or b) I found law school to be ripe for really bad jokes and irony.

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I believe one feller was from Arkansas.

Sweatsuit

Arrrrrrrrrrgh...The a/c isn't working today. You know that saying, "I
was sweating like a whore in church"? I'm sweating like that, except
in an unairconditioned church. In the south. On a hot day. Wearing
long sleeves and long pants. Minus the whore part, and the whole
church thing.

I went to Wal-Mart and bought fans. So now we have circulation of hot
air. Which is better than stale hot air. I think.

All this heat is making me hungry and thirsty. I have a whole thermos
of coffee but I don't want to drink it because it would make me
hotter.

**************************
It's getting hot in here
So take off all your clothes
I am getting so hot, I want to take my clothes off
**************************

I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I did take off my
shirt earlier. Good thing I was wearing a camisole underneath.

Friday Cat Blogging: The "You can't say I don't bring you flowers anymore" edition

Misha sort of went by the "scratch and sniff" method. Oww. See if I bring that cat flowers anymore.

Eye spy

Due to popular request and the relative ease in doing this post, here are the new specs. Yeah, they look a lot like my old ones, but they feel awesome. Yay titanium!

Instigator!

Today's Wednesday. And I'm wearing jeans at work! I negotiated jeans
for the rest of this week, hahaha. I'm still working on shorts for
Friday AND a half day off (hence the shorts, for the shortened working
day) but I probably won't know until Thursday whether he'll ok that or
not. Either way, I'm glad I'm back to my old tricks, thinking of ways
to get away with silly little things at work.

I used to do that at the factory, too. I would negotiate extra jeans
days, or a day where we could wear shorts, or Mardi Gras masks. I
even got us a chili cheese dog day, but that was short-lived, as we
set off the fire alarm accidentally and the fire brigade came out.

I guess I hadn't made an official announcement but I alluded to it the
other day on accident when I said my job was looking for someone to
replace me. I'll be moving the Batcave at the end of this summer to
an undisclosed location where I *won't* be employed as a legal
secretary. I'm going to be a for-real-little-attorney (or a good
approximation)! I'm not sure if I'll be able to get away with as much
silliness at my new job, but I'll probably try, haha. I don't really
want to say too much about it, and I'm sure you'll understand. The
good news is that I'll be much farther inland, so I won't have any
hurricanes to worry about, except maybe the ones at a particular bar
known for its Hurricanes. Perhaps downing Hurricanes might get me
through hurricane season. Hmm. That's a lot of Hurricanes.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone

I went to Alabama this weekend (hahaha...I don't know why, but saying I'm going to Alabama for anything always seems funny to me) to get new glasses. It was that or Louisiana, and since I tend to have to utilize the roadside facilities on car trips, I try to stay away from Louisiana. I suppose I could have gotten glasses locally (or even a town away) but all the places were in optometrists' offices, with a limited selection. I wanted mass choice of same-looking glasses! So I went to a Lenscrafters in Alabama.

I ended up getting new frames after having worn the black plastic square ones all through law school. These are also kind of square, but with a slightly angled side. And they're titanium. Oooooh. I didn't think it would make such a difference, but titanium is awesome. It's so light. The lenses are also light. It really feels like nothing at all! They're a dark color that looks black but if you look closely, it's a dark purple! Yay purple!

I also got some prescription sunglasses in case I need to evacuate and drive a long time in the sun. At least, that's how I justified them. They're Ray-bans, but not aviators. I tried that but my cheeks are too high and they just wouldn't fit. Boo. So much for my dreams of being the next Maverick.

Respect my authorita!

I told a woman today that it was Tuesday. She totally believed me. Apparently the trick to making people believe you is a deep belief that you're right. I had no idea it wasn't Tuesday until a couple of hours ago, when I said something like, "Oh, this is the best Tuesday ever!" and the person responded, "Maybe because it's Wednesday today." D'oh.

It's a good Tuesday/Wednesday because I had Hebrew Nationals for lunch.

And I got some sweet boots during lunch. I told Mr. Grey they were my ass-kicking boots, so he'd better watch out. He seemed appropriately afraid.

What I'm doing at home: Not much. The cats are doing fine. Thomas is making a comeback on his baby food. Misha has just gone onto diet food, but I think he eats twice as much, which has got to be as bad as one regular scoop of cat food.

What I'm doing at work: Work has been work. They're already pre-missing me. They're going to miss my antics like choking on an Altoid while trying to hold it on the side of my mouth and lick an envelope at the same time, or mistaking a trash can for the sink and pouring a cup of water into it and throwing the paper cup into the sink.

They're already starting to interview for more help. Apparently I'm not helpful enough! I was super excited when Mr. Grey got a resume from a girl who listed "Four years as a Cheerleader" during high school. I told him he had to hire her because I needed a little friend who would help me improve my cheerleading skills.

He took all the staff out to lunch on Monday to celebrate Administrative Assistant's Day, which was in April. At least we didn't have to jostle with the crowd of other free-lunchers that day, I guess. We went to a historic restaurant that survived both Camille and Katrina. It's a good ways back from the beach, all the way across Highway 90 and back a couple blocks from that even. I was impressed by the commemorative marker showing how high the water had come into the building for Camille, about two feet on the first floor. I was surprised there wasn't a Katrina marker. Then I looked up the stairwell and it was about 5-6 feet higher. Wow.

What I'm reading: Still trying to finish The Game, which I started and then lost for about three months. The past few weeks I've been crazy about reading, and have read Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Prep, Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy and I think one other book. I can't remember it now.

What I'm listening to: The Essential Bob Dylan

What I'm thinking about: I'm starting to make hurricane preparedness plans. I need to find a motel that will shelter me and the cats in case of a "small" hurricane. For a big one, I'll just evacuate back to Texas. I'm already at the point where I keep the truck filled with gas at all times, and have a gas can at home in case it needs to be topped off before another exodus. I think the cats, Misha especially, are about ready for a summer vacation back with the Hurricane Hosts. Maybe it can be like a divorce, and they can keep the cats in the summer and I'll get them during the school year.

What I'm not thinking about: My drinking problem. I just opened a diet ginger ale and somehow missed my mouth completely. Now I have a big wet spot on my thigh. It's just as well that this is the last little entry in today's update. Time for a change of clothes.

Tell me

Do they sell baby food by the case? I'm tired of grabbing 10 or 12 little jars off the shelf every time I go to the store? How do parents feed their children without buying baby food in bulk? I'm serious. Thomas eats a lot of baby food.

What a senseless waste of human life

I spent an aggravating 30 minutes doing a tech chat to figure out what's wrong with my laptop. What follows is just PART of the real chat transcript they sent me.




















































--------------------
Have you in fact got any cheese here at all?

Yes, sir.

Really?

No. Not really, sir.

You haven't.

No sir. Not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time, sir.

Well I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to shoot you.

...and we're back

Sorry for the prolonged absence. Internet service went out at my
house on Wednesday, and then out for the entire local area on
Thursday, due to some maniac cutting a cable and spreading pieces of
it on a bridge. Obviously, it's up and running again. Unfortunately,
I don't have anything of substance to post.

El Presidente was in town again. I didn't see him this time.

A funny thing happened to me at a doctor's appointment for a refill of
Flonase the other week: I ended up getting an EKG. Okay, so that's
not actually funny. But how else does one introduce that? I'm fine.
I have no idea what was going on, but they couldn't get my heart rate
or something to go down. I think it momentarily stopped, though, when
they asked, "Um, how much coffee do you drink?" as I guzzled down the
rest of my morning coffee while awaiting the results. Yikes. They
let me go, so I must be ok. I was born with a heart defect (would you
believe my defect isn't that I was born heartless? Really, it was
something else) but it cleared up on its own. Anyway, that's about
the most exciting thing that's happened to me lately.

Anything interesting happen to you?

Not that this happened to me or anything...

When asked if one should bring shorts or jeans to go to storage, it
would be wrong/inappropriate/embarrassing for me to say, "Oh, it's
climax controlled, so I just wear my business suit. AND there's an
awesome bathroom at storage."

Climate controlled, dang it. Climate!

On the other hand, being a climaxologist might bring a lot more
viewers to The Weather Channel.

Twenty-two more days until hurricane season...

Monday Mustache blogging

Monsieur Mustache's cousin Senor Bueno visited work today. As you can see, they got along fabulously.

I think my coworkers are starting to get concerned about me, especially since I told Mr. Grey that he was going to have to start charging three times the rate since it was me, M. Mustache and Senor Bueno working together as a team. Actually, I think he liked that idea, but he's not overly crazy about how M. Mustache is always trying to convince one of the secretaries to run away with him. He speaks French to her! (Finally, those four years of French have come in handy!)

Zip it, zip it good

At work, I have to get a lot of addresses from people, and I've noticed that older people tend to give me the ZIP + 4 that nobody else ever seems to know. I've tried cutting them off after the first part of the zip code, but they're always like, "dash 4281" or whatever. I don't know how, but the Post Office has gotten into their brain that their mail is completely undeliverable without the ZIP + 4. It's probably better that way anyway, since no young people use the mail anymore.

Friday Cat Blogging: The cat's out of the bag!

Disappointment

I was really hyped up about the finger tattoo idea, so I was really sad to find out that all my coworkers thought it was a really dumb idea. I mean, if anyone is supposed to support you doing stupid ideas, isn't it your friends?

The thing is, they're not against tattoos. In fact, they think I ought to get one, just not the mustache one. Why is a finger tattoo of a curly mustache worse than any other stupid tattoo? It's little. It's sort of concealable. It might just look like you accidentally wrote on yourself if you weren't looking closely.

Besides, I've been doing the old "Maybe it was the guy with the black mustache" trick for years and years and it's never gotten old (to me, anyway). Plus, this way I could cut my hair off without losing my ability to blame that mustached criminal. You know, the one responsible for all my bad behavior over the years.

Monday morning mustache blogging

Thanks to my wonderful staff of interns who found me this video.

It's good to know that, if needed, my cats and I could live life undercover.

(Click to enlarge)

Why do we all look so guilty? I was just trying to look spy-ish, but Thomas and Misha look like they're part of a lineup.