A week ago I thought this was going to be a nice, relaxing holiday weekend. Dinner with family, leftovers brought home for Pongo. Spend some time with the out-of-town relatives. Lots of time for browsing other people’s sites, site maintenance of my own, some filing, and monthly billing/accounting crap on Sunday. Stuff like that. I might hate billing and the other business of law things, but unlike some other things I hate to do, this one I know I must do, so I buckle down and do it. Very few clients seem to pay unless I get those invoices out. But that was supposed to be part of the slow weekend. Now I’ve got two meetings today (thanks to voicemail left on Thanksgiving). I’ve got writing to do before Monday (amount to be determined at today’s meetings). And I’ve still got to get the bills out. At least it doesn’t look like I’ll be missing out on good weather. Wind, rain, clouds, blech.

Oh, and thanks to all who sent PHP references and sources. Very helpful and much appreciated. Still looking for someone to give project support in the form of shoulder rubs though. Inquire within.

I owe thanks to a lot of people. Family, friends, colleagues and co-conspirators: you’ve all been there at different times and all have my constant appreciation. You’ve provided the emotional, psychological, intellectual, physical and financial support. You’ve seen me through the lows and helped me reach the highs. You’ve provided me with opportunities, whether intentional or not. You’ve carried me through experiences, both good and bad, and sometimes against my will, that made me who I am today. You’ve helped me realize things about myself I never would have seen without you. Thank you.

Some of you (OK, those of you who visit way too often) may know I’ve been trying to learn enough PHP and MySQL to implement some changes at the beach law site. There’s some functionality beyond blog-like comments on a specific area of legal interest that I think will make the site more interesting for users, more useful for people with interests in this area of law, and help me pad my law and web resume

It’s coming along, but much slower than expected. What I want to do can be done, but not without more time than I can throw at it right now. Hopefully I’ll have the changes (or at least demos of the changes) online by New Year’s. Want to help? Can you hook me up with an IV caffeine drip? Do you give good shoulder rubs to tired coding lawyers? Can you distract Pongo so he won’t distract me? Submit the relevant info or offers in comments or through the feedback form. Form comments are private unless you tell me otherwise, or the details are particularly *ahem* intriguing. Just kidding. Private unless you tell me otherwise.

That said, the more I learn about PHP the more I see the opportunity for fun little tweaks to this site. Expect more of those throughout the holiday season.

So I blocked off a whole day to sit down and knock out a responsive pleading. Note the word responsive. Some —– filed her motion so I’d be working on this thing over Thanksgiving week. As I’ve said here too many times, too much litigation really screws up the one advantage to being a solo: the opportunity to schedule work around your life and not vice versa. Of well. Good to have the work; it’s been a slow month. But, as I started off, I’m at home writing today. Of course the windstorm last night and this morning has Pongo wound up like a top. And the new neighbor moving in downstairs (with a big lab) is putting a supercharge on the frentic energy levels. Run to the bedroom window to watch the tree move and leaves fly. Then run to the dining room window to watch the big dog. Now back to the living room to grovel for treats. Now lick myself – it’s been five minutes and I’m insatiable. Repeat until Chuck moves away from the keyboard. I just need a little sound clip of Scotty warning about overheating the engines to make the morning complete.

Trying to work. Lots of stuff going on. Drafting and redrafting. Typing and retyping. Going over new evidence and old evidence. Reading really old cases (the really new ones weren’t helping). But getting distracted. Why can’t distractions come up when work is slow?

Busy weekend doing both. Actually enjoyed doing both. Some good things happened. As usual, few details here because they involve clients and/or other live, personally known, human beings. OK, no details. Just take my word for it. There were some negatives: missing Cal kick butt over Stanford because I was pissed and feeling sorry for myself was one. But overall the negatives just served as the contrast that makes the bright parts look absolutely, well, bright. Yeah, that’s weak, but how much brilliance do you expect at 8:00 on a foggy Monday morning?

The State’s Legal Cartel announced the results of the July 2002 admissions exam yesterday. Forty-nine point five percent of the hopefuls failed. California’s passage rate is always a little out-of-whack since attendance at an ABA-accredited school (or any accredited school) is not required to sit for the exam. This is shown in the Bar’s press release, which reported that passage rates of first-time takers were

Laughing too hard to make good comments. Just go read this post at kottke.org.

Water is life. Water makes other things in life endurable. Water cools, soothes, pummels, and pounds. Each in it’s own time; water does all the right things in all the right places. Drifting through the water isolates the senses and removes the distractions. Allows me to focus on things that should be important and ignore the clutter of things that pretend to be important. Pretenders to the throne of relevancy – off with their heads. Form becomes essential to function and acceptable form allows me to move quietly though the fluid medium. It allows me to focus on the body and concentrate on how to streamline the movement of each stroke and each kick to get the most movement for the least amount of expended energy. And once I think I’ve got that down, analogize that process to the rest of life. Try and relearn the lesson that form and function are in many (if not all) cases inextricably intertwined. Time to get away from the mainstream media theory that form is everything (see also Miami Vice, MTV, et al). Ignore the cubicle dwellers who believe they can achieve (or have achieved) function while exhibiting no elements of style or grace. Go slowly for another lap, focusing on the form, and let the function be achieved. Exhale.

I don’t make a secret of the fact that I occasionally turn off the ringers and let the machines deal with the phones. Sometimes I just have to. It’s better for everyone involved. But imagine the luck of glancing down at the caller ID just as one of the few people who could have turned the day around was calling. Very happy now.