Mosaic Fragments

I have been trying to return to a semblance of normal life (to the extent I even know what "normal" means anymore). But it's hard.

Since I last posted, here are some things that have happened:

We finished the trial on April 7. After flying back from DC, we dove straight into post-hearing briefing, which was 3 weeks of probably worse hell than the trial itself. I definitely set records at the end for least amount of sleep in a week.

Then I spent the first week of May hovering around at work not really getting anything done. On Friday, James and I drove down to San Diego. We spent two days at the Solamar lazing around and getting to know the Gaslamp district. Then we went to the zoo and Sea World. The weather was deceptively cool, and now I have a really stupid-looking tan -- the remnants of a sunburn. I went to the zoo with my family in December, but it was much nicer with more daylight hours and fewer crowds. Last time we skipped the pandas because there was a four hour wait, and didn't get to see the tigers because it had gotten dark and we kept getting lost on the Hippo Trail. This time we could walk right in to see the pandas, and over two days managed to wander the entire park. The only thing we kept visiting but never saw was the kiwis.

I took lots of pictures in San Diego, but I have been horrible about pictures this past year, so I won't try to predict when you'll ever see them. I still need to organize pictures from (1) trip to Disneyworld and Universal Studios Florida (including lots from the World of Harry Potter) and (2) trip to SoCal in December with my family.

After San Diego, we went to Pasadena for our five-year reunion. Only three people were at the dinner on Friday. At first they tried to squish us into a room with the class of 2001, which would have resulted in, at best, one of us at each table, and more likely with one person still seat-less. So they put us with a couple 1996 people instead. It was kind of funny because we were like mirror images (a Mole, a Rudd, and a Skurve). Fortunately the third person was Andrei, the only other person from Lynbrook my year, as well as a fellow ChemE, so we had a good conversation. They took pictures of each class before the dinner, and I wonder where they will show up. Us holding a check that none of us had contributed to...

Associates Tea on Sunday had better turnout. Plus there were people from classes above and below us -- not just multiples of five -- whom it was good to see.

Then we drove back up, and the fight for normalcy began. Today's the first day I managed to get up and drag myself into work before noon. But I'm still struggling to bill even one hour a day. Fortunately, the ITC case gave us enough buffer that we could do nothing for May and most of June and still be okay.

Also, I decided to clerk for the judge, which I will be starting in September. People seem pretty supportive, but I know I disappointed people at the spinoff firm, and it's hard not to have regrets. But like every time I make one of these decisions, I just have to stick with it and not look back. I will wend my way to a brief writing-filled career yet...

[Note: this may be one of the most random, stream-of-consciousness posts I've ever written. I decided to add bolded annotations after the fact, just to make things easier to find.]

In which I don't sleep...

I think Wednesday was the longest all-nighter I've ever pulled. I got up at 7am and didn't go to bed until around 10pm the following day. The week before, we called one of our experts and he was saying how he'd just been up 40 hours working on a grant proposal, and I thought, 'Wow, 40 hours is a long time.' Well, now I know just how long.

I did doze in my chair in 10-15 minute intervals for about 40 minutes at 8am Thursday. Does it still count?

I'm not a stranger to all-nighters, but I think I usually don't make it too far past the 24 hour mark. Before college, my all-nighters tended to begin at 4pm, so if I went to bed after dinner (or frequently before), then it wasn't really very long. At Tech, I'd usually take a nap in the middle of the following day.

This time, I had to get up early because our source code expert kept saying he'd come in between 8 and 9, forcing me to be there at 8. That was really killing me, even ignoring the need to stay up late. I'm a late riser. I keep trying to fix that, but haven't gotten anywhere near succeeding. I've also discovered that 8am is when people send their kids to the elementary school I pass on the way to work, so my normally heavenly commute (5 minutes, local streets only) has a hiccup. Then, on Thursday, by the time we were done with what we'd stayed up for, it was too late to go home and shower or nap before having to be back for afternoon meetings. Well, it was technically possible, but there was a very high chance that if we went home, we'd never come back. So we stuck it out. And then by the time I went home around 6, I was in the zone, and still didn't get in bed until 10.

I took yesterday easy. Perhaps too easy, since we got a bunch of assignments dumped on us at the aforementioned Thursday afternoon meeting. It seems like we were able to remember what we were assigned to do; we remember very little else from that meeting except the overwhelming desire to close our eyes.

In which I digress into manga...

Today I went to a friend's housewarming in San Francisco. He moved to near Japantown, and the original plan was to drive up early and shop the Kinokuniya first. But I got up late, and dithered around at home, and then the drive up was miserable, so I basically got there at a good time to just drop in.

I'm not that bummed about the Kinokuniya, really. It would have been nice to go just because I was in the area and I so hate driving to and in San Francisco. (But I discovered that there's a Safeway nearby that I could probably get away with parking in for a quick Kinokuniya run...) But I've been in a covetous mood lately, being tempted by all the Christmas deals, especially those at RightStuf. And there are all these series I liked the anime of, that I'd like to follow the gensaku for, though I haven't actually bought any of them: Pandora Hearts, 07-Ghost, Uraboku, Denyuuden. But I've been reading La Esperanca lately, and really enjoying it, and it kind of makes me realize I should just sit down and work methodically through things one series at a time, preferably starting with things I already own. I'm too fresh from the anime with series like Uraboku to start following the manga, anyway.

I'm really glad I picked La Esperanca back up, though. All of the characters are so endearing, and the stories are really sweet. Even if I can't who any of the characters are. Like when I got to the Erwin story, I was like, 'Who the heck is Erwin? Is his roommate Henri?' It took me a volume and a half to be able to reliably distinguish between Henri and Robert. Sometimes it's still tough when you can't see their collars.

In which I hate San Francisco and get drunk (not really)...

Anyways. The housewarming.

I was reminded how different San Francisco and the people who live there are. I really like my friend, and would love to hang out with him and catch up more, but his friends are not like my friends. His work is probably not like my work, even though we are both patent litigators in BigLaw. Hanging out with his motley gathering of friends was fine for a night, but I am just not used to those personality types. Toward the end, I discovered that a couple were apparently second-years from his firm, and . . . wow. I just can't imagine there being any people like that at my office. I like my people better.

But I'm glad I went and got to see it. And reaffirmed that I'm not missing out on anything that I would desire. Maybe that he can have such a nice apartment 2 miles from his office (which is about the distance I am from mine). But, his 2 miles goes through downtown is 10 minutes, according to Google. I hate San Francisco streets. I do wish east Menlo Park had more than crappy college student apartments and $5 million homes, though.

I think I drank more alcohol than I have in a while. It's hard to tell because I don't know what the alcohol content of all these things are. I think I did half a shot of vodka, a shot of tequila, and a shot of soju mixed with Calpico in some unknown ratio. Maybe it's not that much. I felt a little clumsy trying to type in my BlackBerry password while at his place, but other than that I felt fine, and I drove home okay... As long as I don't have a hangover tomorrow. But someday I think I need to get drunk just to have the experience.

In which I digress into seiyuu...

I got to listen to a couple of episodes of Omae ni Hyper Rainbow while driving up and back. There was someone who wrote a letter to them and kept calling him "Okiayu-sama." ^_^b I am so glad I got these CDs. They actually have re-listening value (because my comprehension is so bad, sigh). And speaking of covetousness, it makes me want the Souken no Mai CDs all the more. C'mo~~~n, exchange rate!

I think that's enough jumbled topics in one post, don't you?