repentantlawyer

Being a lawyer sometimes can really suck.  We're involved in some pretty contentious litigation down in Philly and I'm the Brief writer.  I write and usually can pull $*it out of my hat like a magician.  Right now, I'm sick and drained.  The girlfriend and I are feuding: I like my freedom and space and she likes to confine and restrict.  It's something that I can't say is doomed to end but if there's no change, there's no hope. 

Besides that, I have a cold.  I slept with the a/c blasting on Friday night (the day I began my feud with Xata) and woke up late Saturday afternoon with a head cold.  I deserved it.  So, the cold won't go away.  And I have this Brief to write.  And I haven't started it and have barely begun the background work to get it done.  Rough.   With that, I have to get back to work...

Looking out the window: blue sky, telephone wires and part of a Red Maple tree.  Me: I'm in the office, stuck here.  Looking for something else to do: post a journal on Buzznet.  I've got a boss waiting on my work in someone's office in Philadelphia and I'm exhausted.  It's only 7:30 p.m. and working till this hour is really no big deal in my profession.  I'm a lawyer.  The lights just went off in my office.  But the light still's streaming in and I'm lazy to get up and hit the switch to turn on the "after hours" (fun time) here at the Firm.  I hear we get charged for after hours electricity. 

I'm runnin low on power here.  I have assignments to do and would rather be doing anything but this....but I can't stop....not even to complete this journal entr........

It's 5:30 p.m. here in East Newark.  The sun is streaming through my window, through the new bead curtain I bought in St. Augustine, Florida, reaching me here at my desk/kitchen table.  I took a little drive w/my girlfriend down to Florida.  We left Jersey (Newark) on Easter Sunday and made it to Fayetteville, NC.  She's from Brazil and had never really been too far outside of the Eastern US. 

My little cousin, who's not so little, lives in Miami.  He works for the Brazilian Consulate and met up w/us on South Beach on Tuesday.  We made it to South Beach late Monday night.  My cousin obviously speaks Portuguese and we got along great all 3 of us.  It was a lot of fun and he reminds me of a younger version of me....trying to make it happen. 

Xata and I made it to Key West after that and hung out down there for 2 or so days...about 90 miles from Cuba.  I taught her to fish a little there at the White Street Pier.  It was late at night and there were 30 pound + Tarpon swimming the shallows.  She was screaming and yelling, "voce nao sabe pescar!  Eu vo embora se vc nao tira o negocio en frente dele, eu vo!  Dame a vara!!"  It went on like that for a few minutes but the Tarpon weren't interested in her casts or mine.  They're really strange fish and if she had one on, she'd have dropped my $300+ rod in the water.  All they do is jump and fight. 

After Key West, we headed up to Marco Island and fished with Captain Carlos.  Xata caught two fish to my one...q vergonha...and one was a nice-sized Redfish.  Cap't C kept the Redfish; we kept the pictures.  It cost me $400 (including tip) to go out w/Cap't C for a 1/2 Day of fishing.  He was really cool.  He didn't speak any Spanish, like I had originally hoped, but we got along just fine w/me trying to figure out how to say hook, rod, reel and bail in Portuguese.  I just used the typical "esse negocio la" and "olla la, olla li" and was understood. 

Following Marco, we went to my grandparents' house in Englewood.  I got there at 9:00 p.m. or later and some dude was parked in my driveway.  The streets are too narrow to park on them so I tried to pull on the lawn.  I ran over a coral rock that my grandpa put there in the 1970s.  It tore up the whole underside of my car.  Yet another blunder.  The dude moved out of my driveway about 10 minutes later b/c of all of the commotion.  No one lives there and no one's been there in a year.  So, I kinda can't blame him.  I had it towed to an Audi dealer in Sarasota and they tore some other crap from it and gave it a clean bill of health for me to drive it up north. 

In total, I must've put like 3K miles on the car.  My car's a piece of $hit so I really don't care much.  I've got 42 more payments left till it's mine all mine!!!   I hope to get rid of it before then. 

Xata fished more from my backyard and caught 2-3 more fish, mainly Snook.  She totally outfished me.  That was a first and hopefully will be a last.  My ex-girlfriends have never outfished me.  FISH FEAR MY NAME! 

After going there, we ate lunch at some Brasilian restaurant (Terra Nossa) in Sarasota and it was good.  The dude was from Union, NJ by way of Brazil, naturally.  He said there some 4000-5000 Brasilieros in Sarasota now.  We also went to some Brazilian supermarket there and Xata got all excited when she saw that they sold the thing to put Ximarrao (Mate) in.  She bought it ($17) and two things of Cha Mate ($6 total).  She said if they sold those things in Newark, it'd be like three times the price. 

We next went to DISNEY (in Brasilian Portuguese that's "JIZNEY") and I laid out $250 just to get in the freakin' park.  It was worth it, though.  I was last in JIZNEY in 1982, before Xa was even born.  LOL.   After that, we stayed a night in Orlando at Motel Seis (6) and went to St. Augustine, Florida.  We also were there on the way down, too.  It's the oldest city in the USA, founded in 1565.  The Spanish founded the city and had built an amazing fort there, el Castillo de San Marcos.  After going there, we went to Charleston, SC and Fort Sumter. 

After seeing Ft. Sumter on Monday, April 16th, I left Charleston at 5:00 p.m. and headed up I-95 toward New Jersey.  I had to work on Monday but skipped it because I was not making good time.  I had to start making some good time and had no choice about that at this last minute.  I made it to Richmond, VA by midnight and finally crashed in some rest stop north of DC in Maryland for 3 hours.  We made it back to Newark at 9:00 and I was in work by 11:00 a.m. 

Needless to say, I did nothing all day at work..... 

I've taken 2 days off--mornings only--to work from home to bang out a brief on a trademark dispute, which is what I do for a living: trademark law.  I figured I'd have this thing done by now and I am just blocked.  It's due Friday. 

My girlfriend is a pain in my ass, too...that might be why I'm "blocked" as she and I fight constantly.  It might be time for us to "Make it Happen" elsewhere.  We'll see...I think she feels it, too, however.  But, on the flip side, there is love there and we've got 9+ months invested in an "us."  If we do break it off, which I doubt, I'll probably just hang for a few weeks and decompress.  Maybe I'll go back to Spain and eat some bocadillos....I'm definitely renewing my Yankee Ticket Plan if she's gone. 

Seein' Jeter, Pettitte, Chien Ming Wang, and A-Rod run circles around the Sox is always good. 

Now, I could be "blocked" in terms of my writing skillz b/c we've got like 11 days till Opening Day in MLB. 

ELEVEN DAYS!!!!!!   LET'S GO YANKS!  27th WS CHAMPIONSHIP!!! 

It's Super Bowl Sunday and I'm at home in the apartment, cleaning.  Cleaning b/c my girlfriend was tired of living in the "vagonsa" (spelling?) or "mess" that I call home.  I've always been lax on cleanliness of my living quarters, always.  I had little structure in terms of chores from my parents growing up so it could be b/c of that.  Other kids I knew had to do chores and they turned out pretty fu**ed up in some cases.  I guess moral of the story is that you can't instill discipline by routine as if we were dogs or something. Either way, I didn't grow up scarred or anything like that.  It was a normal childhood in suburban New Jersey, public and parochial schools, Catholic all-boys H.S. and from there to college and then law school. 

I make more money than my girlfriend.  She's a waitress and works 12 hours/day.  I make what she makes in 12 hours in less than one at my current job.  Then again, she's from Brazil and doesn't speak English, which limits her job possibilities.  But, she got on my case yesterday to buy a $1200 furniture set (we live together, sorta) and has been after me to buy this item since November.  I've been reluctant b/c even w/my salary $1200 is still substantial.  I've been dating her since mid-July.  She needs a place to put her clothes in my 2-BR apartment.  And a nice wardrobe to "arrumar a casa" would be nice, she says.  I balked at buying it again last night and tried to change the subject.  She said that I am "accomodado" and that she knows now why my ex-fiancee (who I dated for 10 years) didn't want to marry me. 

So, now I'm in a bit of a quandry.  I cleaned the apartment, top to bottom, went and did the laundry at the laundromat (something I'm averse to), and made space in my bedroom's main closet for her stuff.  Actually, I took nearly all of my stuff out of there and moved it to another bedroom closet.  I left my pants there on a shelf that's above the clothes rod.  I text messaged her pictures of my work and expected a response.  None. 

And today is Super Bowl Sunday and I have nowhere to go...no parties, no nothing.......

I've been thinking about an "escape" from my law firm, where I've been working since Nov. 2003.  I came back from California and began working there.  At that time, we were 85 attorneys.  I had a fiancee then and was thinking about the future, e.g., making partner.  The work was hard and for someone who always liked to take it easy, it was a little too hard for the compensation that I was given.  The firm I just left is now about 120 attorneys and is growing in all the wrong ways.  Compensation is static and bonuses are so paltry it's insulting.  But, they have money to hire new attorneys and increase the amount of billables that are brought into the firm.  Most of us seemed to feel a decrease in the amount of hours that we were able to bill in any given day since June 2006.  The new hires were cutting into our margins and, at the end of the year, it would mean that some of us wouldn't get the "hours bonus" for making 100 hours over the yearly requirement of 1950 hours.  I won't even write the amount of that bonus here--suffice it to say that it's LOOOOOOWWWWW. 

At any rate, I was putting in New York hours at a New Jersey firm and I didn't quite like it.  Working as a lawyer isn't exactly conducive to going away and having nice vacations either.  I went to Thailand/Turkey/Greece in 2005 and haven't really been anywhere since.  Travel is really what I'm all about, too--I've been everywhere.  So, escape was on my mind--in more ways than one. 

I got a call about a new job from a headhunter in late August or early September.  Eventually, this woman found me a good job.  I am going to be working at a small boutique IP (intellectual property) law firm, starting on 11/15.  I'll be the 6th attorney there and the compensation package is nice--better than my old firm with quarterly bonuses to boot. 

Also, since I wrote my last journal entry, I ended a torturous 10 year relationship w/my then-fiancee.  Her father was the main obstacle in that relationship and he effectively "freed" me from the situation, which was getting progressively worse. 

Hopefully, things are looking up for me....I might even take a trip to Brazil in 2007. 

I've become somewhat stagnant at my job.  Not somewhat stagnant, actually stagnant.  This past weekend, I billed 12.8 hours on Sunday and 5+ on Saturday.  I gave them a full 8+ hours last Sunday, too.  This weekend, I'm attending a wedding of an old friend in Connecticut and am probably going to go up to Boston for the weekend.  These quick jaunts, however, aren't doing it for me.  Posting my "old" photographs of "old" trips is fun but depressing at the same time.  I see places where I've been and get nostalgic.  Tonight, I went with a friend to hang out and grab a coffee in Edgewater, NJ.  We "bitched and moaned" about our jobs as attorneys and thought about ways to get out from under--you know, gameplans. 

I don't really know if I have one.  Another co-worker of mine gave notice about 3 weeks ago.  She's about 36 years old and in the opposite position to where I am in several respects.  She has no student loans or real debt and nothing--because of that--was keeping her tied to the job.  The money isn't that great--at least not for the time we put in--and she began to see that and plotted an escape.  Because she's more financially stable than I am, she just said fuck it and decided to go to Spain for 2-3 months and see what happens.  She's of Puerto Rican background and wanted to check out La Madre Patria.  She's going to hang out all Summer in Barcelona while I'm slaving away in a 10 x 12 on weekends when the cheap bastards shut off the a/c. 

She never did that sort of stuff while she was growing up or when she went to college or law school.  She felt deprived and decided to "take back" her life.  We only get 1 shot at it and we might as well make it meaningful.  Over the weekend, I got wind that my cousin likely has cancer and is in "the fight for his life."  You see, the thing is, some of my family is secretive as much as it is dysfunctional and no one has officially told us that.  I couldn't get my cousin out of my mind all weekend as I drafted a brief at work.  He's 39, divorced and has a 5 year old child.  It got me thinking about how precious life is and how big of a waste of time being a busy, "no-time-for-anybody" attorney can be. 

Time to plan my escape....