Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

BC and I had a nice, low-key NYE, over at a friend’s house with a few other folks. Much fun was had playing Godzilla Unleashed on his Wii, and aside from a single glass of champagne at midnight I didn’t touch a drop (I drove up there so we didn’t have to deal with taxis or Metro). Driving home was the most challenging part – drunken people popping out in the road at random intervals, all trying to flag down any taxi they could. What. A. Mess.

No new year’s day run this year – we got up too late, and then had to zip off to another get-together at Richard’s place in the afternoon. No matter, we got in a nice 4 miles today which, while cold, wasn’t bad. The cold symptoms are calming somewhat finally, but aren’t completely gone quite yet. Rest, relaxation, lots of water, and no drinking. Am going to begin exercising again, though. I just can’t wait any longer.

Speaking of which, signed up for my third and final triathlon for this year, the Nation’s Triathlon here in DC. So I’m doing Columbia in May (Olympic distance), Nation’s Tri in September (Olympic again), and Ironman Arizona (aka IMZ) in November. And a couple of other running events, I’m sure, sprinkled in between (Lawyers Have Heart 10k in June, the National Press Club 5k in September, etc.). Aside from IMZ, they’re all local things, so not a ton of travel for races this year, which should be a bit easier, especially if I’m transitioning jobs later this year.

We did a little shopping today, and I picked up some extra controllers for the two gaming systems, as well as recharging stations for both – no more disposable batteries.

So, a nice quiet beginning to the year, which I hope bodes well for the rest of it.

Mind-numbingly boring work today. We’re reviewing emails in response to a Congressional inquiry, and actually what we’re doing is reviewing the work of the summer interns, and while I’m sure the member was expecting to find something smoking, what we’re finding instead is that people are really, really dull over email. If I have to read one more argument about where to go for dinner, or an announcement of another new baby, I may scream. Unfortunately the torture continues tomorrow.

Oh, and a manager (not in the counsel’s office) at the not-so-BGA called me today unsolicited to let me know there were attorney openings coming up there, and offered to answer any questions I had. I’m going to take her up on it tomorrow, since finding the actual structure of the counsel’s office there has proven to be a futile task. Again, nice to have folks with whom I’ve worked think of me for such things.

So, after the doc review, as a treat I stopped off at Jenny’s and picked up Chinese take-out (mmm, Fiery Tofu…). Ate at home, cleaned stuff up in the living room (pre-gaming chore), then set myself to setting up the Xbox. I actually crawled under the “entertainment center” (aka my desk) and unhooked all the cables from the PC that’s not worked in months now due to lack of a fan, and got that cleaned up and put away. Then the Xbox itself was relatively easy to set up and get into. Used the same old same old user name on there, ‘legalmoose,’ because my first choice was already taken and I didn’t feel like trying to come up with something else. Got hooked in, got the free month of Xbox Live Gold membership, and then popped in Bioshock.

Wow. Blown away. Absolutely loving this game, as evidenced by the posting here at 11:30ish. I had actually set an alarm on my phone (appropriately enough with the old horn “ah-OOOga” sound) for 9:30. That got snoozed a couple of times. I just played the thing on Easy mode, but am really enjoying it.

This is actually the first time I’ve played with a controller of this type. I know, scrape yourself off the ground, but up to the DS purchase, all my gaming had been on the PC. Now I’ve the DS, a Wii and an Xbox, and I love all three for the different types of experiences they give. Still having problems with the camera (for some reason I want to push down to move the camera up, and vice-versa – holdover from some other, older game on the PC maybe?), so occasionally I miss stuff, but the plasmids are quite fun. I’m playing the nice guy, rescuing the little sisters instead of killing them, ’cause for this one I wanted to see how that played out. Next time, slaughter.

So I have Bioshock, and Mass Effect (still in the shrink wrap), and two games that came with the system (some racing game and a Marvel Comics marketing ploy, I mean game). A fun addition to the living room, I have to say.

Wiped out. Completely wiped out. But a fun time was had in getting to here.

I spent the past three days with BC and his family. They do big stuff for the holidays, culminating in a big party the evening of the 25th at his Mom’s place. The 24th was relatively sedate – some last minute wrapping, prepping food for the next day, and some good Indian take-out for dinner. Wine and spades (the card game) after dinner, then a late bed time. The morning of the 25th bloomed with BC’s younger sister (29? 30?) coming in and announcing that Santa had come and we had to to come out to see what he brought.

At least, I’m told she did. I don’t recall it at all, and BC says I just buried my head further and snuggled up closer to him when she came in. Eventually we got up and did gift exchange with BC, his younger sister, Mom and Step-Dad. After that we cleaned up and then it was off to his oldest sister’s house for brunch and more exchanging of gifts. His brother-in-law did a fantastic job with the food, and including vegan dishes for me. Had fun picking on his niece (12 y/o), then it was off to Dad’s place.

The event at Dad’s went very well. This was the first time bringing a boyfriend to Dad’s event, and I think it went well. Step-mother’s family was in full force, and they were a trip and a half. Unfortunately there was not a damned thing there I could eat, so nibbling, just sipping of red wine over the course of the afternoon. Whew. Dad was gracious and pleasant, so was a pretty good time. Finally it was time to return to Mom’s house and the party, already in progress.

Plenty of food for me at Mom’s, which I dived into as soon as I could. And more wine. And then there was singing.

A big family tradition is the singing of carols. I have a fairly strong baritone (aided by the wine), and I’m not shy of singing in such a crowd, so I kept us mostly on key and pace, which I think Mom appreciated. No solos this year for anyone (thank heavens), but it was quite fun. At the end of the night BC volunteered the two of us to clean up and sent Mom & her husband off to bed. We got it pretty well policed, all food and dishes put away, and everything else straightened up nicely for the morning.

Slept in this morning, obviously, and thanks to lots of water at the end of the party and while cleaning, there was no hangover. And, as an added bonus, the plague that’s been stuck in my system for the last 2-3 weeks seems to have finally, finally been killed off. Late brunch, relaxing at the house with BC while his parents were at work, a good movie & cuddling. Finally came home at 5 or so.

No energy whatsoever tonight, so not going to set up the new Xbox 360, nor pop in any of the games I’m playing at the moment on the Wii. Working the next two days, and a good, long sleep tonight should be just what the doctor ordered. Get to have a talk with da bosslady this week about job prospects and how to proceed with these things. I trust her, so I know it won’t be a problem to tell her I’m considering some other options, but it’ll still be an interesting conversation.

With the plague over, hopefully there will be a return to regular training. I’ve missed getting out to run, and being active generally, and I know from past experience how much I need that activity for my physical and mental health. So, time to dig back in, and prep for the year to come.

I’m very bad at trying to pick gifts for my family. It’s an obnoxious process that taxes my patience. But anyway.

An opportunity may be arising at another Big Government Agency which I may apply for. It would be a step up in responsibilities, and a good career move. I’m not entirely certain if I’m ready for it, but there are extraneous factors which argue for applying now or missing the opportunity entirely. Given my particular specialty this isn’t surprising – a similar situation arose when my current position came open (though I was certainly much more ready to go when that one came open!). I’ve been told it’s going to be posted, so I’m keeping my eyes open, and I’ve asked a mentor (who mentioned the opening in the first place) to keep his ears open for when it’s posted so I can look it over and decide whether to apply.

I don’t look forward to polishing my resume, but that’s simply a necessary evil in the process. To be honest, the possibility is a bit intimidating. But again, this is a now-or-never kind of thing, and I think I want to try for it.

Work has been torture today – it’s my last day in the office until next week, and on top of that our email went down for most of the day (after the firedrill at 10, that is). The network is still hosed for getting at documents, so trying to work on a lot of things isn’t the easiest thing today.

Since my last serious update I’ve run a 5k with BC & his family (local turkey trot this past weekend), made progress in both Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess, picked up a couple more games on sale, found out my year-end bonus is coming (hello, new oven), had a soup & bad movies party, and have been otherwise occupied with life. BC & I are doing well. I’m headed down to see my folks for Thanksgiving, partially to see them before they take off for Florida for the winter, and partially so I don’t force the whole vegan thing on BC’s mother on the first major holiday she’s known me. She and her husband are doing well with it, but I am a bit sensitive to such things.

Back on the subject of games, what nimrod at Nintendo thought fishing would be fun? I spent a good 10-20 minutes yelling at the screen (“This is not fun! This is not entertaining!”) while trying to fish in the damned Ordon village before I gave up and googled the answer – you have to wiggle both controllers side to side, not up and down as Nintendo tells you to do. Once I switched I caught the requisite fish easily, but that was decidedly Not Fun, unlike the rest of the game. They’re lucky its not a larger part of the plot or I’d have been tempted to sell the game. My time is too precious to me for un-entertaining games.

And I beat Puzzle Quest on the DS finally. BC’s envious, he’s still working on it. I saw they ported it to the Wii as well, but I don’t see how the game would be much fun without the stylus and touch screen of the DS.

[…]

I love trying to explain legal citations to folks. Case in point, I was just telling one of my budget folks about 3 provisions of law she needs for footnotes, and for each one there at least 4 different ways to cite it – the amendment which gave us the funds acceptance authority (section XXX of public law YYY-YYY), the original section which was amended (section AAA of public law BBB-BBB, as amended), the US Code cite (cc USC dddd, note), and a statutes at large cite (eee STAT ffff), and all four were useable depending on her audience (Tre*sury, for example, only wants cites to the Statutes at Large). I told her to go with the code cites for our internal reference – they’re easier for non-lawyers to find, in my experience.

Anyway, haircut & laundry & playing on the Wii tonight, then driving to Tidewater tomorrow for the holiday. Hopefully will be a nice, quiet time.

Just out of a meeting with that worst kind of bureaucrat – the one who is constitutionally incapable of summarizing anything, even facts well known to all participants, and who must drone on at every chance he can, expounding at great lengths on the obvious.

Shoot
Me
Now

This is same guy who, when asked for a one-page summary, insists upon producing a 10 page treatise. Meetings with him are always painful, and always run over, unless you can somehow limit his ability to hijack the discussion. And he’s very good at insinuating himself into any conversational thread, no matter the topic.

Is it 6 pm yet? I’m done for today.

There are days when you have all of the answers, and days when you don’t. Today, thankfully, was the former and not the latter. Tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

I’ve been thinking a lot about work and being an attorney. Next year is ten years out from law school for me, and despite the occasional clusterfuck at work, I think I’ve gotten into a pretty good groove where I don’t feel like I’m just acting confident when dealing with clients, I actually am self-assured, because I’ve been doing this long enough to know what I’m talking about in my practice area most days. It’s a confidence that sort of snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking, and was a bit startling to realize was there.

Not to say that I think I’m all that and a bag of chips, but the advice giving business is a lot easier when you know what I do about the BGA now that I’ve been there for almost four years. I’ve still got a ton to learn, but it’s nice not feeling like I’m faking it all the time.

Of course, this will all go right out the window once Congress gets around to changing the budget rules again, but for the moment it’s a good feeling.

Today was flying in and out of meetings, reassuring program staffs that they weren’t in trouble, promising things which will be delivered in short order, and generally was most people’s best friend. It’s so much nicer when you can be helpful and not have to say no (because you don’t have to, here). The nay saying will come back soon enough (and is occasionally nice in and of itself when your client is being a ninny, but is generally more of a pain than anything else – I mean, who wants to deliver bad news to someone?).

[side note – I’m so used to old-school WYSIWYG web editing programs which insert a paragraph tag when you hit a return and a break tag when you hit shift return, that this new version of WordPress is a bit disconcerting in its word-processor-like behavior when it inserts only a break when you hit return once, and a paragraph when you hit it twice. How new school. oh, and I miss the “html lookup” button, which appears to be obsolete now that it’s keeping tags visible in the editing screen.]

I put in a WordPress plug-in that will allow me to post more easily from the iPhone. I did confirm with it this morning that I have to be determined to post, though, since if I leave the browser to do a lot of other things it tends to lose the post. I’ll have to play with it more to see if it’s possible to save and come back to something.

The LiveJournal one is cross-posting stuff well, too, even if it doesn’t allow me to choose the user pic from WordPress any more.

And on that note, I’m exhausted and need to crash.

I’m helping another staff with interviews they’re doing for a position which will have a focus on the type of law that I do, so today I wore a suit so I’d look presentable for the interview. My boss walked into the office early in the morning and asked why I was in a suit (I normally don’t even bother with a tie). “Oh, I have an interview,” I replied. Her eyes got really, really big. “You know, I’m helping [the other office] with vetting and there’s an interview today,” I continued. She was quite relieved to hear that. And then accused me of being cheeky, which I suppose I was. But one does have to have some fun with the boss on occasion, no?

Short run this morning. First morning I’ve needed to haul out cold weather gear (tights, gloves, heavier top layer). Very short run, less than two miles, about twenty minutes, focusing on keeping the heart rate down rather than pace (though I do glance at the pace thing from time to time).

Fantastic weekend with BC. Went out drinking with he and Brian and Mikey on Friday, made risotto for dinner Saturday, home fries and tofu scramble for brunch Sunday, carved pumpkins with his family on Sunday afternoon. Lots of good food, lots of fun. ‘Twas nice to spend the entirety of the weekend with him, with no real plans to have to go or be anywhere if we didn’t want to. Very good time.

I have to get to serious cleaning this week in anticipation of the weekend after next. More a matter of putting things away than anything else, but it’s a necessity if I’m to have folks in here. And laundry must be done, and done soon. Had planned on it tonight, but didn’t have the energy for it, especially after zipping up to check on the cats at Richard’s place (thank heavens I have the mini for such trips now). Tomorrow or Wednesday, then. No plans to go out on Halloween, not for lack of an invite or two, just for lack of motivation to get all dressed up. I couldn’t care less about costuming, and there won’t be trick or treaters in the high rise. All my candy is at work anyway.

Looks like my site it down, so I’m going to leave this up on the laptop and try to post it in the morning. At least the building turned the heat on three days earlier than they planned to (I hope they got the new valves in!), so it’s not frigid in here tonight.

Lotsa cooking this evening. At least, a lot for me of late. Whipped up some sauteed spinach with toasted pine nuts and garlic as a side dish, and then made taters and tofu with a miso gravy for the main course. The main recipe came out of Vegan with a Vengeance, and it was pretty darned good. Had to make a couple of tweaks, of course – the grocery store only had 3 nasty shallots, so no shallots, and the miso was almost out so I estimate I used closer to 3.5-4 tablespoons instead of three (why leave 1/2 a tablespoon in the container?). All in all a good dinner, and I’ll have a great lunch tomorrow at work, too.

Work was catching up after the time off. Lots of email to catch up on Surprisingly, no voice mails, but that’s a good thing (I despise voice mail – especially since our phones don’t give you a visual clue that you have voice mail).

I blame Julie, but I’ve been wanting to cook more of late, and to stretch myself on my cooking skills. I’m an okay cook, but I know there’s more I could be doing. To that end I’ve picked up the Veganomicon yesterday. It’s the same authors as Vegan with a Vengeance (well, one of the same authors), and I’ve tried other recipes of theirs with good results. the book’s a good entree to vegan cuisine and a variety of cooking techniques. I’m halfway tempted to do what Julie did, go through the entire cookbook and cook every single recipe. It would be good practice, and a good stretch. Not sure if I’m quite up to an undertaking like that yet. It would help if I had a working oven first.

And BC would have to spend much, much more time at the apartment. I can’t eat all this food by myself, even doing leftovers. That and I’d have to actually (*gasp*) have people over to eat.

It is awfully tempting, though.

I like warm weather. I really do. But I like warm weather with air conditioning, if I’ve been acclimated to AC, as I have been the past few years (I survived the subtropics in Taiwan without it). And I have no AC at the moment because the weather is supposed to have broken by now, the cold front hovering over West-by-God-Virginia is supposed to have rolled over by now, and it’s supposed to be cooler than 76 degrees inside my apartment. Pig fucker weather systems.

This is, as you can see, making me testy.

BC and I just got back from 30 Days of Night. Wow. Perhaps it was because we’d gone to Zatinya and each had 2 glasses of wine with dinner and a glass of port as dessert, but that was, um, well, cheesy. And unnecessarily silly. And filled with far too many opportunities to whisper snarky comments in his ear. Not as many as, say, Dragon War, but still. I was left tapping my fingers and wondering when they’d just kill off the people already so I could go home to my overly warm apartment and attempt to sleep.

Annual physical was this morning. BP’s good (105/70?), resting heart rate was good, lungs, clear, etc. All the blood work should come back at the end of the week or beginning of next week. Got a tetanus booster since I couldn’t remember my last one and they had no record of having one at their practice. So far the arm’s not sore, but we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Back to work tomorrow after 2.5 days off, so will be email heck to catch up with. I’m sort of ready for it. At least I have massive amounts of candy to carry in for the office, so for that alone I’ll be popular.