"you're supposed to be the good guys. you should act like it."

Yes.

( text, for those of you not registered at washingtonpost.com: )

And before anyone goes caterwauling about the liberal media, let's not forget that yesterday more or less the same points were made by your own George F. Will.

in news that has nothing to do with politics:

Oh, oh, oh. This morning the computer man was here to take away the old computer and bring a new one, to which he attached two (two!) 17" monitors, whereas before I only had one 15" monitor. (The work I'm doing involves having a lot of windows open at once, and being able to put them on two screens makes things a lot easier.) And a new, clean keyboard, not encrusted inside and out with who-knows-how-many-people's crumbs and other detritus! (I'd done the best I could with canned air, but there was a lot of stuff in the old keyboard I'd have had to take the thing apart to clean out.) And a new, clean mouse, and a mouse pad with a wrist support!

I am in a place of work-related hedonism that will very likely last me all of next week as well.

Also, it occurred to me that my old firm (you remember, the place of the devil) had a class of employees called Technical Specialists, who were not (necessarily) lawyers, but did a lot of researchy kind of work. Mostly they were scientists, because most of the firm's work had to do with patents, but my thinking is, hey, is there really a good reason why they shouldn't have a tech spec (as we used to call them) in the trademark and copyright area? Thus freeing up a JD to actually, you know, practice law? And they know me over there, so getting in the door would be way easier. And such a job would pay waaay better than the lit support I've always done for them in the past. [shrug] In any event I've mentioned it to my friend from whom I had an e-mail a couple of weeks ago saying [cool manager] says I should call her if I ever need work. Perhaps I should mention it to [cool manager] as well, being where my friend is only working part time at the moment.

ugh.

This weather is killing me, man. This morning, I was not feeling great. Coffee and then coffee and then soda and then lunch helped; but an hour ago I was feeling utterly like crap, and thinking about knocking off early. But I soldiered through (slowly; like a soldier carrying three people's gear through a particularly muddy field, I suppose) and now there's only an hour until I'm supposed to go home, and I'll get paid for the whole week. Hurrah.

memo

Dear author: Yes, if you tell me your paper is over the word limit, I'm going to bounce it back without looking to see whether it contains the appropriate sections etc. and without handing it up to the chief for assignment to an editor. No, it's not my concern that you had the same experience with my colleague a week ago; if you made cuts based on her communication and then resubmitted the paper without changing the cover note to reflect the correct word count, I'm going to see a declared word count over the limit and bounce the paper back to you. Don't tell me you haven't done the same thing to your students.

signed,
i'm just a temp following the rules