First, the instructor from hell walks into tonight’s class, the last lecture before his final this Thursday, with five boxes of Papa John’s pizza.  Then he pulls out the graded take-home exams we turned in two weeks ago and, low and behold, I got an “A!”  I got an “A-” on the essay part that was filled with very bizarre facts.  Go figure. I honestly thing he’s been abducted by aliens and replaced with a clone, ala Nicole Kidman’s latest bomb, The Invasion.  So although its going to be rough doing his final with one day of study, I have hopes that I’ll actually pass his class afterall and get my certification.  I’m taking the day off of work on Thursday so I can dedicate most of the day to studying for it. 

First I have to get through tomorrow night’s final, which isn’t going to be easy.  Its feast time in the feast-or-famine routine at work, and looks like its going to be that way for the foreseeable future.  Which ordinarily isn’t a problem except I’m so busy at work now that I haven’t got time to study. Looks like I’m going to spend a lot of overtime this weekend getting his filing caught up.  Ugh.

I can feel it happening.  MBH, HM and I went to a Renaissance Faire yesterday and spent most of the day eating various items that are sure to lead to premature death.  Butterfly chips, battered and fried mac-n-cheese bites, cheese pizza, shepherd’s pie, monkey tail, portabello brat thing, deep fried cheese balls, and finally, the ubiquitous gigantic smoked turkey leg (not all of these were eaten by me, it was a group effort).  In between all the eating, we walked probably several miles in all, doing a World of Warcraft quest with many parts.  The quest was a lot of fun, mainly consisting of figuring out which booths we had to go to for specific clues and information, and figuring out who the undercover spy in the Queen’s court was.  All three of us did it and as rewards, we each got a ribbon to wear, a pin with the court jester’s ugly face on it, and a certificate for 40% off any one item in the main gift shop.  HM got a foam sword thing, I got a couple of nice tshirts (one “Pirate Wench” and one with a dragon battle) and hubby got a nice ceramic wine goblet.  In various other booths, I also got a simple little silver ring, a new black suede cowboy hat (the only kind of hat that doesn’t look stupid on me).

I’m a little sad that I didn’t go back and get the nice hair band I saw, or sample the Spanish Fries, which were fried potato wedges soaked in melted butter with grilled onions and whatnot on them.  Although that might have killed me on the spot.  But then no one goes to a faire for healthy food, do they? Even the veggie plate consisted of deep fried veggies!

I spent several hours today at a coffee shop with truly free wifi and great coffee, doing some studying for my two finals this week.  Got a good bit done but I’m going to try to relax the rest of the day.  The end of last week was pretty stressful, what with the new attorney assignment and dealing with a bitch on a never-ending vendetta.  I did discuss the situation with my main attorney, though, and he assures me that he’s not going to let her do anything to me.  He says she’s a rattlesnake, just waiting for any opportunity to strike at me, so I need to completely cut off contact with her.  The only contact I have had up to this point is the occasional business-related email, but he says not to send them to her anymore, period.  If he needs to send her something, from now on, I’m to send it to him and he’ll forward it to her.  You’d never guess she was a grown woman in her mid-50s by the way she acts, eh?  My 12 year old is more mature.

“When life makes you have to put up with mean and hateful people, just think of them as sandpaper.  They may scratch you, rub you the wrong way, but eventually you end up smooth and polished, and the sandpaper, it’s just going to be worn out and ugly.”

That is one of my favorite quotes from the movie, The Fighting Temptations.  Its become my mantra, especially after today.  I’m trying as hard as I can to stick to my vow to not bitch and moan as much, but when you have mean and hateful people around you, it makes it difficult.  Its kind of amazing.  You can be in a room with 50 people and if there’s just one person who is being hateful, they can make the entire room miserable.  Their ability to affect others is exponential, and especially so when they’ve got one person in particular in their sights.

Oh, well, life goes on, eh wot?  And since I’ve decided life is too short to dwell on idiots, I’m building a bridge and getting over it. 

I was assigned a new attorney today, in addition to my current three.  Two are pretty self-sufficient, the other two (including the new one) need quite a lot of assistance.  I worked for him before and we have always liked each other. He likes my work, he’s a nice guy, I was just going through some medical issues and he needed someone who was there more often, so I was reassigned and he got a new secretary. Who turned out to have more issues than I did. So she was replaced, and that one has had serious issues as well. So he’s back with me again, and I think we’re both pretty content about it.  Made sure my main guy was okay with it first, and he was. 

Well the new guy’s files are a mess.  That’s the first order of business.  I got, quite literally, a 2.5 foot high stack of filing that needs to be done. I got it all sorted by client and matter and will spend the next week or so getting the filing caught up.  There’s crap in there dating back to 2005!!  I can’t blame him for being pissed off about it.  Dates are missing from his calendar, everything is a mess.  Hopefully it won’t take me too long to get it all straightened out.  My main guy is going to be out of town all next week, so I can concentrate on doing the new guy’s stuff in-between working on his pleadings and whatnot. 

Oh, and did I mention I have finals next week as well?  *sigh*  When it rains, it pours.

Tomorrow night is our last Research and Writing class.  Tuesday is a review class to cover what we will have on our final next week.  Thursday’s class has been rescheduled (what a surprise) to next week Monday, then next week Thursday is the final in that class.  Everyone is rather pissed about the reschedule, as several will now miss the last lecture before the final because they have to work.  He doesn’t care if it inconveniences anyone else, though.  Its not like we’re paying a good bit of money for his class.  Oh, wait, yes we are.  I wonder if he’s forgotten the connection between us paying for his class and his salary for teaching the class.

I’ve taken a new vow.  I’m always telling my kids to stop being so grouchy, change their attitude.  I think its time I practice what I preach.  I vow to try and complain less and be less grouchy all the time (with the exception of Thursday’s class/instructor).   I generally am pretty happy with my life and with my work, so I’m going to try to reflect that more.  No guarantees though!

The ABA Journal’s Blawg Directory has added a link for this site.  I’m listed under Paralegal and Personal Lives categories.

Boring day at work today.  I was covering for a fellow assistant, but since she was just out for one day, her attorneys managed to get along without her and didn’t give me anything to do.  My main is reviewing 6 banker’s boxes of documents for a new (to us) matter.  But surprisingly, for not being too busy, the day passed pretty fast. 

Found out last night that unless I fail miserably on my final in Tuesday night’s class in two weeks, there’s no way I can pass with anything less than a B.  Its more likely that I’ll end up with an A, as I doubt I’ll do very bad on the final.  Several others in the class are doing just as well, and some are doing even better.  Which I think proves that our Thursday instructor is just an asshat and we’re NOT stupid afterall, eh wot?

I can’t wait til classes end, there are other things I want to do with my free time aside from study and homework.  The final Harry Potter is sitting around the coffee table, waiting to be read (and hubby, who has read it, has no one to talk to about it until I do).  I also have Saira Rao’s Novel, The Chambermaid, to read, although some of the reviews I’ve seen lately pretty much trash it and that makes me a little leery.  I also have Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas sitting around waiting, and preordered Justice Clarence Thomas’ autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir, and The Party of the First Part: The Curious World of Legalese, Adam Freedman’s book, with Battle Cry and QB VII, my two favorite Leon Uris books, due any day now.  I definitely need to get a move on.

We ended up having two classes tonight.  Our Monday night instructor took the time to come in an hour before class, and arranged with tonight’s instructor to use part of her time, in order to give the class more of an in-depth lesson on using Westlaw - how to do case and statute searches, etc.  I’m always amazed at how much difference a good instructor can make, and how much of an impediment a bad instructor can be, from kindergarten through adult learning levels.  The entire class looks forward to Monday and Tuesday classes, while dreading Thursday’s class.  Why?  Because we have instructors on Mondays and Tuesdays who actually seem to like what they are doing and care about having the people who pay for the classes actually learn something.  Thursday’s instructor seems to be interested in neither.  Needless to say, we’ve learned a lot more on Monday and Tuesday nights than we have on Thursday nights, and what we’ve learned for Thursday night classes has come primarily from reading the textbook, not from lectures.  Go figure.

I think rather than the two buying us pizza and beer next week to celebrate the near-end of classes, we should buy it for them. Or at least buy them one round.

I’m finding it impossible to work on my homework today, as my head is killing me.   I’ve had an awful headache all day and, unfortunately, the only thing I can take for it is Extra Strength Tylenol.  Which makes me wonder, is regular strength Tylenol still available for purchase and, if so, why?

I’m not too worried about my homework, though.  I have a couple of doctor appointments so I figured I’d just take the day off work and get them out of the way.  So I should have some time to devote to homework at some point.

BTW, have I mentioned before how much I hate brats (the meat-sausage-strange-stuff-in-a-casing-type thing)?

I’ve vowed not to turn this into a “mommy” type blog, so if it starts to lean too far in that direction, someone please slap me upside the head and say “enough already!”  But sometimes my kids do something that really makes me proud.

Hairy Monster, the 12 year old, has been hanging out with a friend of his a lot lately, going to his house, lending each other games, etc.  We were planning on going to an interactive museum yesterday and thought his friend would enjoy going as well, and since HM tends to be at “Steve’s” house most of the time and eats there fairly often, we figured it would be payback.  

Everything at the museum is geared toward teaching kids, and is very hand’s-on.  There are lots of labs where they can learn to make things or do things, and lots of machinery that they can use in the exhibits.  My favorite part is the aquarium – saltwater varieties, freshwater, jellyfish, seahorses, shark and ray touch tanks, etc. 

When we were talking about what labs they had available, we saw one that we thought everyone would like. In the Prototype Lab, you could design and make an acrylic keychain with lasers.  It sounded like fun and you get a nice keepsake afterwards.  When we asked HM if he thought “Steve” would like it, he said “Yes, probably, but I may have to help him make it.”  We said it wouldn’t be too hard, if he could do it, we were sure “Steve” could do it, too (we hadn’t yet met “Steve”).  He said its not that, but there’s something wrong with “Steve’s” hand, it doesn’t work good. He can’t hold things very good so I’ll have to help him hold it so he can make it.

I was very proud of him at that moment, and even more after we got to the museum and I was watching them interact.  “Steve” said he gets teased at school all the time because of his arm, but HM doesn’t seem to even notice it much.  At each of our houses, they play console games, wrestle around on the ground, bang on each other with light sabers, etc.  HM stayed with him the whole day and helped him use the different exhibits, explained what they were, and just generally helped make sure he had a good time.  He doesn’t care what someone looks like, as long as they can have fun together.

He’s such a good kid.

I have spent most of the day today either working on or bitching about my latest assignment from class.  Its a one-week take-home exam, much like the horrible midterm only longer and harder.  I finished pages and pages of multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, true or false, etc., and only have the essay portion left to do.  However, the essay is probably some of the worst crap I’ve ever seen. Again, like the essay question on the midterm, its filled with spelling and grammatical errors and is badly written.  And convoluted. And a major PITA.  The assignment is to identify and fully discuss all legal issues in the fact scenario.  So far, I’ve identified at least 17, and I’m probably missing a few! 

Are you kidding me?  This is a 14-week paralegal course, not a 3-year friggin law school.  We’ve been in class for all of 2 months, in his specific class once per week, and the majority of people in the class have zero legal experience.  None.  I honestly believe the man has lost his mind.  Actually, I’m more convinced that he fancies himself a law school professor, as he has repeatedly told us he teaches just like one and the tests are just like we’d get in law school.  EXCEPT WE AREN’T. Get a grip already!

That is all. I’m too frelling tired and irritated from class to say anything more right now. Gnight, I’m going to bed.  Will write more tomorrow I hope.