Week in Review

This morning, I got into my car at 8:22 a.m., and walked into my office building at nine on the dot. Which, as my first commute from the new house, was really not as bad as I'd feared: it's about 20 miles over rush-hour highways, compared to the six over back roads from the old apartment, so you can see why I was apprehensive. Even my absent-mindedly taking the wrong exit didn't slow me down too much—though looking at the backup on the exit I would have taken, the wrong exit was probably faster. I still need to learn some alternative routes, but I think this will be manageable. (And yay, E-Z Pass.)

Saturday morning, I also spent a bunch of time sitting in the car, though with less happy results. The movers came to the apartment at about nine o'clock to get the furniture and the boxes we'd managed to pack. I left before they did, to stop at the bank and open up the house. However, neither of us realized that I didn't have a house key until I pulled up at the house. (I blame this on our being chronically short on sleep these days, exacerbated by packing since seven a.m.) I decided to wait in the car, mostly because it was too much effort to go anywhere else. While I waited, I looked at the car clock and said, "Hey, it's 10:00; maybe Car Talk is on at a different time up here." As the radio automatically scanned through the AM band, I heard Columbia mentioned on one station; on the second station, I woke up and listened. No, it's not as shocking at Challenger, but it still made me very sad. [Edited to say: something like what Jim Henley expresses in his blog.] (Oddly, I kept flashing to the book Apollo 13, which gave me such a vivid picture of NASA in crisis mode.)

The movers did come and distract me, however, and it was good. It was *so* worth paying professional movers to do the furniture and boxes: yes, we could have bribed students with pizza, but we've done that, and it's still a lot of work and hassle and dings on freshly-painted walls. These guys had an enormous truck, and excellent spatial ability, and left us just past eleven with everything in place and nary a ding to be seen. I repeat: *SO* worth it.

(I didn't see the delivery of our new king-sized bed, which I wish I did, since looking at it in the bedroom, I have no idea how they got it in. It is, to use a technical term, ginormous. If we ever move out, we have no choice but to get professional movers again, because we can't possibly extract that thing ourselves.

And yes, it's extremely comfy.)

Also this past week: On Wednesday, I officially became an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York. "But wait," I hear you say, "haven't you been working there since September? What were you before Wednesday?" Surprisingly, the answer to that question is unclear, but I wasn't an AAG: you have to be admitted to the bar before you can call yourself an attorney, so before Wednesday, I didn't really have a title. However, I'm now officially admitted, which means I get to sign my own papers and talk in court and have business cards with an actual title and all that good stuff. (I have to be separately admitted in federal court, which ought to happen Friday.)

The bar admission process is a bit odd. You send in a whole bunch of paperwork: every place you've lived since you were eighteen, every place you've worked since you were eighteen, affidavits from every legal employer you've had, affidavits of good moral character from friends, proof you passed the bar, all this stuff. Then you wait. Then you get a letter saying to report at such-and-such time for your interview with the Committee on Character and Fitness.

(My interview was Tuesday, with a single person, and consisted of: "Are you admitted in Connecticut? Did you take Connecticut's bar exam? Do you have a job yet? Well done, congratulations." (The answers, if you're curious, were no, no, and yes.) Hey, it was quick . . . )

After the interview, you sign the official roll of attorneys and get your Certificate of Good Standing, saying you're a member of the bar. At this time, the court workers impress upon you that attendance at the swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday is MANDATORY; their insistence leaves you with the strong impression that no-one would notice if you skipped completely. This turns out to be the case: all 600 plus names get read off, you bob up and down when your name is called, everyone raises their hand and swears, the generic "congratulations, you're a lawyer, go forth and do good" speech is given, and then you leave.

I suppose at some point in the future I would have felt bad if I'd skipped it, but right now it seems like a waste of an hour and a half that I could have used to get some work done. Like the summary judgment motion and set of pretrial papers I sent out on Friday (and was I glad to see them go).

As a final note, the phone in the new house won't be hooked up until Friday, so I won't be around the 'net much this week; I'll be checking a few things from work, but I have neither the time nor the inclinations to do as much as I normally would on a work computer. Catch up with you all when I get back.