cool hand at the tiller

Here's what I learned from watching the debate tonight:

1. America is pronounced "A-merk-ah." It's like you are trying to pronounce what one uses to cover one's bald genitalia after shaving off one's crabs, except stuttering.
   
2. Americans are the best Americans! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A., my friends!
   
3. Vladimir Putin has three eyes.
4. Sarah Palin can see his three eyes from her house.
5. John McCain says he is that "cool hand at the tiller." Thank you. As if you have not already revived enough medievalisms, you trollop.

It was sort of a waste of time but I love following the carnival so I couldn't stop myself from watching. November 4 really can't come around soon enough.

Many of my friends who are clerking seem to hate their jobs. I don't hate my job, even though I find it frustrating that I while away so much time reading politics blogs and making Tyvek wallets out of Priority Mail envelopes - Shh!! The squandering of judicial resources! - instead of working. There are things about my job I really like. Since I am in the mood to make lists:

1. I like my co-clerks. They are awesome people. One clerk is a married, observant Muslim Gujarati who occasionally walks to work. She is no-nonsense about her preferences like CPong or AO, so I like her a lot. The other clerk is harder to pin down in terms of identifiers. She is soft-spoken at work and has a vast store of knowledge about the federal judiciary and issues I can't even comprehend the contours of, like antitrust, justiciability, and ERISA, but she also has the temperament to go out on Thursday nights for a trivia league at a neighborhood bar. They're both modest, very intelligent, and generous.
2. I like the other people who work for my judge. There are only two. One is the courtroom deputy, who is exceedingly nice and never thinks you're stupid when you ask her what a minute order is for the twentieth time and says things to me like, "Girl, you have got to call GSA to get that fan to stop blowing on your face!" I like it when people call me "girl" and it doesn't sound weird. The other is the stenographer, whom I don't know as well, but who works her three-fingers-at-a-time magic while sitting with a shawl over her shoulders and another shawl over her lap.
3. I like my judge. Today, while I was hunched over a particularly engaging Tyvek project, my judge came into the room and said, "[Bananarchist], you have to come into my office." I jumped. I gulped. I went into his office. He was wearing his robes because there was a trial today. Then he pointed out the window and said, "Isn't that the weirdest sign you've ever seen?" He was pointing at a big sign that read DePAUL UNIVERSITY. It was printed about halfway up the side of a twenty-story building, except the text was rotated counterclockwise. "Now why would they put a sign there, halfway up a building, and why would they write it sideways?" I speculated something about the view between buildings. Then I spent half an hour Googling "readability of rotated text" and sent the judge a link to a psych study that found that rotated text was more legible than marquee text.He came out and said, "Well, now that's very interesting, about the readability of marquee text." And I beamed, and inwardly resolved to finish that summary judgment motion I have been parked on for four days. That's why I like the man: he is intellectually curious and patient and generous with compliments for lazy fuckers like me.
   
4. I like what I get to wear in chambers. So after blowing a wad of cash at human rights violating clothing stores just before starting my job, out of a continuing life fear of schlub, it only took me four weeks on the job to go right back to my old fashion habits. The last time I had to care about my appearance was when I worked for a firm. You may recall that my way of coping with it then was to wear all-black clothes - or really, just one pair of black pants and one black shirt. This is my fashion scheme now. I bike commute to work, so it's jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, windbreaker, and fingerless gloves. I wear the same black knee-high hose, which the Internets tell me is called - AHAHAHAHA - "knee hose," every single day - I wash these socks on Fridays. Once at work, I beeline to the chambers bathroom and strip off all of my clothes and flex in front of the mirror until the sweat starts to dry. Then I wipe my face with a piece of toilet tissue, leaving damp crepe dangling all over my face. Then I step into one of the three dark pairs of pants I leave at the office, stuffed in a file cabinet, and put on one of three dark shirts I leave at the office, also stuffed in the file. My Payless shoes I keep under my desk but almost never wear, since I never have to leave my desk and who sees my feet? I then walk back to my desk and stuff my sweaty t-shirt into the file cabinet, where it dries slowly all day. As I have noted before, I sit directly under the AC vent, which is dialed to 68 degrees every day even when it is freezing cold outside. RC's scarf was not keeping me warm enough, so this weekend I went to REI and bought an expensive Marmot windbreaker, which works both for biking and sitting in the office. I put on the windbreaker, and I pull the hood over my head, and I cinch it up like I'm in a rainstorm. And then I fold RC's scarf into quarters and lay it over my lap. Then I put my fingerless gloves back on, and I drink hot tea all day and read blogs. When messengers come to deliver courtesy copies, I try to pull the fingerless gloves and the hood off but usually fail to do so in time. This set-up may sound like an exaggeration, but I invite you to visit me one day in chambers and see me in my regalia. I think I feel more productive when dressed like a hiker/Mimi from La Boheme, so it's nice.
   
5. I eat all day long. For some reason, maybe because my body burns through calories trying to keep my body temperature up in that chilly office, I need to eat every hour on the hour or I go crazy. I had four meals yesterday! SL and I exchange the day's menus at 5pm or so each day. Hers: nibble of fruit, nibble of salad. Mine: oatmeal, sausage, tater tots, bananas, biscuits and gravy for breakfast, half half and half and half tea at 9 a.m., peanut M&Ms and PB&J for second breakfast, Jimmy John's 8" veggie sub for early lunch, pea soup filled with hot dog coins for late lunch, then a snack of grapes, pretzels, cashews, tomatoes, and then a Clif bar before going home. Three quarts of water. Whoppers, if I can find them. Then at home, dinner, M&Ms, and more indeterminate snacking. I don't think I'm getting fat.
   
6. I have a somewhat flexible schedule. Well, not really. But I don't have to be at work at 7:30 a.m. like I feared I might. I work pretty late, but I can also get in pretty late.

But not that late. Now it is time for bedtime. Sorry for the self-absorption, but I'm really not!