January 2007 Archives

I woke up this morning in a cold sweat after a particularly bad dream. It was one of those dreams where you wake up and lay there for a few minutes just thanking your lucky starts that it was nothing but some sort of mental mind game your brain was playing to keep itself entertained while you slept. And then you get paranoid that its actually more than that, that its some sort of warning or glimpse of what is to come.

So what was this most horrid nightmare I had? I dreamt that I was getting some sort of performance review at work and that all the different attorneys I have worked with over the last 8 months or so had to provide supervisormentorchick with feedback on me. She started reading the responses. The first one spoke glowingly of me and how hard of a worker and how dedicated and intelligent I was (duh!). I sat there beaming and waiting for more ... and then she said "I have to warn you ... they're not that good from here on out ...". And she proceded to read me paragraph after paragraph about how I was very obviously just not cut out for this line of work, how it didn't seem like I really cared about what I was doing, and about how my intellect was way way below average. She then informed me that with reviews like that, there was no way I would ever get hired ... there or anywhere.

Now do you believe that I'm a little freaked out about this whole job thing?

Yeserday morning I got up at 6, bundled up and drove 50 miles on slick roads with my windshield constantly icing over to work. I worked for three hours and then my supervisormentorchick saw me and said "What the heck are you doing here?! Go home!". So I turned around and drove 50 more miles home on the same slick icy roads. And now the Maddie Dog and I are all hunkered down and ready to weather the storm in the apartment. I've got loads of food and coffee and wine and reading material. It sounds like a little retreat almost and that sounds really nice.

Work has been exciting. I have been paired up with one of the newer attorneys (she was a 3L when I was a 1L) and we are fumbling our way through this pretty crazy case together. We're being supervised by one of the managers/big shots in the office, who is FABULOUS to work with and is teaching us so much. This is the most that I've ever been involved in actual case development and its been really pretty interesting, especially when our whole case pretty much fell apart when we got some test results back. We're still plugging away though.

The work thing is really starting to stress me out again. Not the actual being at work part, but the whole trying to get hired part. I want so desperately to stay, and if I can't stay, to at least know where I will go next, and its driving me batty. I wish I could just get some indication of what the chances are. I'm not at all sure what is ok to ask and say to those who can influence my chances of being hired. My supervisormentorchick knows how much I want to stay, but I don't know that those who actually makes the decisions do and I don't know if its ok to tell them?

Anyway, time to make another cup of coffee and curl up with my hound and a book. Happy icy weekend everyone!

I guess I should tell you guys about last week.

How about a cliff's notes version?

There were five nights and three houses in three different towns. There was a get together with a bunch of tri freaks, three dogs, a full bar, two waterfalls, one miniature horse, and one pair of fake boobs. There was a cabin in the mountains with four ironchicks, one guy, and two dogs. There was a car spinning incident which resulted in my car stuck in a snowdrift that prevented it from going down the side of a hill. There were snowboarding lessons and two and a half hour runs. There was one knee twisty incident that still hurts a little bit. There was an impromptu snowboard lesson from a hot ski instructor dude who promptly left after I used the "f" word. There were four girls and one shot of Tuaca. There was wine, beer, and hot chocolate spiked with Grand Marnier. There was a passing out incident on a friend's bathroom floor. There was a house in the foothills outside of Boulder that I would pretty much kill to live in, complete with a whole herd of neighborhood dogs who know how to enter through the doggie door. There was a drive across western Kansas in the snow, an avalance that covered the highway (the day after we left), and not one but two meals eaten at Pizza Hut?! Yuck.

It was pretty much heaven.

Here's some evidence:

There are more pics from the trip up on Josh's flickr site.

So now that the initial rush of ohmygodwe'reENGAGED has worn off, its time to at least start thinking about the details and what this all means in real life.

And what it means is that we have to start planning a wedding?!

At first the whole idea made me feel all sorts of squeamish. Not because I have any sort of doubt about my ability and desire to commit to the jboy, but because ... well ... weddings are BIG events. Big formal events. The kind of events that I sort of dread. And the word "bride" just sounds sooooo girly and anyone who knows me knows I can fake the girly role when need be, but deep down, I am a tom boy through and through.

But something has happened over the last week or so. I don't know if its the overwhelmingly happy response of all of my girl friends or some sort of inner girlyness coming out, but the idea of planning a wedding is actually starting to sound ... fun? And I find myself thinking about things like what do I want my dress to look like and what kind of flowers do I want? Don't get me wrong, the most exciting part of wedding planning for me is still trying to figure out where I want to go on a honeymoon and what location will let us go mountain biking and hiking and kayaking and recover while sipping wine next to a fireplace or firepit or some other type of fire-bearing gizmo. But the frilly-er details are intriguing to me too. Beyond the honeymoon I am most excited about picking flowers!? Really?! Who is this woman?!

I don't want our wedding to be a huge fancy ordeal. But I'm loving the challenge of trying to figure out how to plan a big party that represents us and who we are. Its kind of cool, really.