can't make any promises, but...

...here i am.

i just reclaimed my office from the dreaded "extra room syndrome". yes, i just made that up. but it's when you've got a room in your house that you designate for some purpose, but since it's not a room designated for some regular necessity (bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, living room), it becomes the junk room, the room where you stash all the stuff that you accumulate but don't really use. then you can close that room's door and voila! all is orderly and proper!

i did a lot of housekeeping/organizing today (including collecting all of my knitting needles and accoutrements from various locations and bags throughout the house and putting them where they belong -- in an old tanqueray tin; and untangling the fire hazard of cords and wires connecting my tv to its various input devices) because lately i've felt kinda, well, kinda bleccchh. not for any reason, just have the my-life-is-kinda-boring blues. so maybe now that i feel that i have more control over my living space, i'll feel more in control of my time and my sense of well-being.

...which leads me to throckmorton. i miss this blog. i've kinda replaced the void it once filled with a mildly obsessive relationship to facebook, but facebook makes me feel like an asshole every time i ignore a friend request from someone who isn't really my friend. and lately i've felt a little put off by just how personal some of my facebookfriends get with their facebooking. i have thoughts and feelings, too! but i think it's better not to bombard the various and attenuated online contacts i've gathered with my deepest, darkest musings every time they open their facebook homepage.

anyway, i'm thinking of blogging again. yes -- i've said this before...and nothing has come of it. so i'm gonna treat this like when i quit smoking (which, for the record, was two fucking years ago which means i can now say that the portion of my life spent as a smoker is less than half) and not look at this as a big deal, just something i'm gonna do and if it works, then good.

but let's face it -- i'm not getting any younger, and if i want this site to turn into a book deal, i better get to work, right?

that whole "closing a door/opening a window" thing...

i moved in with carson. that's right. my boyfriend and i are now "living in sin". lucky for us, we are heathens for whom "sin" carries no threat.

nevertheless, this was a huge decision and one that we didn't make lightly. so far, all is going well. there have been no major cat fights (and i mean that literally: between the two of us we have four cats) and our love for each other has not diminished yet as a result of sharing space. in the interest of full disclosure, however, this has only been going on since friday.

last night, though, i bade farewell to my apartment. and it sucked and made me sad. don't get me wrong -- i'm happy to be living with carson and i think it was the right decision for us, but leaving my space, the apartment that was all mine and only mine, was tough.

i spent three and a half years in that apartment. that's the longest i've ever stayed in one place since college. it was a good place for me, filled with good memories and growth. i was a law student there, i became a lawyer there, i had good relationships while i lived there, and a few that i could have done without. there were adventures and misadventures (such as that unfortunate evening when i almost accidentally burned the place down, or the time krista and i bleached my hair, or when greg and andrew and i had sangria and wii night), manic pseudo-academic all-nighters, varying degrees of success with house plants and roof gardening, my 30th birthday party, three notre dame football seasons. mostly, though, it was 3 & 1/2 years of laughs and cries and struggles and triumphs. and it all happened in my little space, a space i made my own, filled with the contents of my life. and almost all of it was good.

last night, after i finished mopping the floors and scrubbing all the surfaces, after all the trash had been taken out and all the closets emptied, i couldn't leave. i kept walking through the rooms, looking around, remembering. if things go as i hope they should, i'll never live by myself again. that's more than a little terrifying, especially for a selfish and bratty girl like me who enjoys being the boss of her own life. but this is all part of it, right? and that's exciting.

but i'm allowed to feel a little sad.

goodbye, little apartment! thank you!

facebook?

okay. i know i'm about a hundred years too old for facebook and i'm also about a hundred years behind the times, but i had some sort of mad facebook frenzy come upon me this past weekend and i'm pretty much all blissed out now from essentially cyberstalking people i haven't seen in years.

yes, this is embarrassing. i am embarrassed. i'm going to be 32 years old next week and i spent my friday night uploading pictures and combing through friends' friends lists. it's so silly, really, but i don't care. i love it! it makes me happy to see what these people whom i truly love are up to these days and makes me feel incredibly fortunate to have known such amazing people in my life.

don't judge me. i've never claimed to be a grownup. not really, at least.

on being a lady voter in 2008...

jesus, where do i begin? my feelings on the whole sarah palin debacle can best be summed up as follows: WTF?!

how freaking stupid does the GOP think america is? actually, the sad truth is that there are way too many americans who are exactly as stupid as the GOP thinks they are. and that's the part that makes my head explode. because sarah palin makes no sense at all! seriously, by all logic and reason, the ultra-conservatives and the evangelicals should gasp in horror at sarah palin. yet, they're taking to her like a hockey mom to lipstick. and it truly truly terrifies me.

who the hell is this woman? before she was the governor of an oil-rich state of 683,000 people, she was mayor of a town of 6,000. and she has the balls to suggest that community organizing is some kind of hack job? i'd love to see sarah palin last an hour in a low-income, primarily black chicago neighborhood.

as for her pregnant teenage daughter? if that had been chelsea clinton back when bill was running for president, the GOP would have lept all over it. and it would have been ugly. but the real kicker about the whole bristol palin thing is that all of the coverage uses language like this:

Here's a statement the McCain camp released from Todd and Sarah Palin, which is identical to the quote in the Reuters story: "We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support."

um, correct me if i'm wrong, but bristol's "decision to have her baby" sure implies that she had an, um, choice to make? like, perhaps she could have chosen something other than having the baby? oh, the blasphemy! makes emily's head go KABOOM!!!

the thing is, strategically, the GOP made a really strong move in selecting palin. of course tons of americans are going to "relate" to this woman. tons of americans have the same small-town, PTA, book-banning, nascar-loving, guns-and-religion sense of identity. and this is what got us eight years of george w. bush. it's identity politics at its most dangerous, and it scares the hell out of me.

finally, sarah palin is not an emblem of feminism. sarah palin is not proof that the GOP cares about women's issues. sarah palin is the worst kind of woman -- she's an opportunistic beauty queen. and i hope joe biden eats her alive in the vice presidential debate next month.

blogfade...

aw man, i miss this little blog! i really really want to write new things, but i must make it a habit again. keeping this thing updated has been a real challenge since i haven't had regular during-the-day access to a computer. even if i weren't in a courtroom all day and if i had a computer (or even a desk) to use and the time to use it, the stupid county blocks practically every website that has even vaguely interesting content on it, so i doubt blogger would be accessible.

the short version of things lately is like this...

i love my job. I LOVE MY JOB. i'm getting paid (but not very much) to spend my time doing something i actually give a shit about. today i pissed off two cops. i later apologized to one of them because he didn't really deserve my wrath, but the other one can fuck right off for making my guy pay restitution to the county for crime lab fees. totally uncool. and if i hadn't been outside the courtroom when his case was called, explaining to another client what was going on with her case, i would have raised so much hell about that restitution issue (because district magistrates do NOT have power to hold attorneys in contempt).

i will now fully admit that writing about my job makes me nervous.

i got a new set of golf irons. cobra FPs. they totally rule. they have flowers on them, because apparently the entire golf industry thinks that lady golfers have the aesthetic taste of four year old girls, but at least the club shafts are blue and not pink. i dunno know when was the last time you were in a store that sells golf stuff, but almost all the things for women are pink or pastel and practically scream not to be taken seriously. yes -- this offends me. my golfing skills proclaim loudly enough that i shouldn't be taken seriously; my clubs should just shut the hell up.

on saturday, carson and i woke up ridiculously hungover (because of sid's birthday celebration the night before) and all i could think about was getting a giant big gulp from 7-11 filled with gatorade. this was a profound need that had to be met or else i was sure i would transform into a sad and thirsty pile of dust. so to 7-11 i went and i purchased the biggest drink i've ever seen in my life. it was 64 ounces, which is truly an absurdly stupid amount of liquid. it took carson and me several hours to drink. and i swear it made me happier than any other $1.92 purchase ever has before.

and finally, um, i can't stop watching this. seriously. i watch it over and over and it never stops being funny. you should watch it, too. and then watch it again.

okay, that's all for now. i'm going to read over my cases for tomorrow and then get some sleep. i miss you, throckmorton!

RIP Ad'H...

a billion years ago, when i was a grant writer at the philadelphia museum of art, one of my regular tasks was to write letters. i wrote cover letters for grant requests, thank you letters for grant awards, and cover letters for grant reports. and since nobody knew who the hell i, a lowly grants associate, was, and since the whole fundraising/development/arts&culture world is all about name/brand recognition, i wrote these letters under someone else's name, someone whose name got recognized.

one of those well-recognized people was anne d'harnoncourt, the museum's director. anne d'harnoncourt died over the weekend.

now, it's not like ADH and i were pals; it's not as if we'd trade quips about marcel duchamp when we'd pass each other in the halls. truthfully, i had very little direct interaction with her, and i was a little terrified of her because she was the big boss and she was six feet tall. but i liked her -- she was always kind and professional, she was a perfectionist even with my submitted drafts of two-paragraph thank you notes (very rarely did i get a draft returned to me without some minor change on it), she was completely devoted to her work, she was gracious and genuine with those who supported the museum and its programming, and she had truly fantastic handwriting. she did wonderful things with and for the philadelphia museum of art, and by extension for the city of philadelphia. she was very well liked and respected and she will definitely be missed.

(by the way, as an example of an editorial change that ADH would have made to one of my drafts, in the previous paragraph's second-to-last sentence, she likely would have marked through the word "wonderful" and replaced it with "marvelous." she actually talked like that, too.)

there are a few articles in the NYT about her. here's one of them.

by the way...

...that new job i mentioned? i'm gonna be a public defender. damn right!

i start on monday. i have no idea what i'm going to wear.

YES WE CAN!!!

never ever have i loved pittsburgh more than i do right now! i swear the whole city today was sleep-deprived; people were walking into their various downtown office buildings this morning like a mass of zombies. why? because every one of us stayed up last night to watch game 5 of the stanley cup finals!

now, here's my confession: i've only been a hockey fan for seven weeks, since friday, april 11th. that was game 2 of the stanley cup playoffs in the round one penguins/senators series. i didn't even want to watch the game that night, but carson did, so i watched it with him. and by the end of the first period, i was hooked! and yes, pun intended.

i had no idea that hockey was so fantastic! all this time -- for thirty one years -- i'd been convinced that a girl from the south like me had no business with the cold weather sports. and then i learned to snowboard. and then i discovered the true magnificence that is the NHL! you're SUPPOSED to check the guy with the puck! and there are fights and black eyes and bloody noses and sticks in faces! and a penalty box! and power plays! and man, can those boys skate! and really, hockey is totally hot. there's something about the sound of a good check against the boards that makes me all swoony.

also, of course, i have seventh-grade-girl-caliber crushes on like all the pens, but especially max talbot and marian hossa. although, after last night's game, i'm about ready to bear marc-andre fleury's children.

never have i been more emotionally invested in a sports event than i was in last night's game. that includes a lifetime obsession with notre dame football. those fifty minutes of overtime play took years from my life, but that sweet sweet petr sykora goal made it all worthwhile!

holy crap! game six tomorrow back at home! LET'S GO PENS!!!