February 28, 2005
Cookie Monster
I'm in serious trouble now.
My paralegal just brought me the SIX BOXES of girl scout cookies I ordered about a month ago. What was I thinking? Six boxes. I must've been hungry when I placed that order.
And true to form, five of the boxes are Samoas. Yum. So much for weight loss.
Posted by Kitty at 09:40 AM | Comments (2)
February 26, 2005
What, This Old Thing?
I've been contemplating a redesign for a while and finally got around to completing it. The biggest impediment to the task was my lack of knowledge of html (beyond the basics), CSS and anything remotely relevant to the task. That, and I still haven't a clue how to upload photos onto my site (the guys at Wetwired are thanking God for that, since I don't hog all their server space).
At any rate, I found this fabulous design through Janelle's site and she hooked me up. She put all of the MT code into the files and even sent me a readme file to explain the installation process (which I showed to Pylorns when he did the installation for me :)). So we're now off and running.
If you're viewing this page through Mozilla Firefox, it looks a bit weird at the moment -- I'm going to attempt to figure out what's going on. You can get the full effect of the design through IE, for now.
Posted by Kitty at 11:19 AM | Comments (16)
February 24, 2005
Cheddar X
1. What word or words do you just love?
Interstices.
2. What word or words make you want to tear your hair and run up and down the street with your fingers in your ears going "Lalalalalalalala"?
When I was little, I hated the word "tummy" (yeah, I don't know either). Now I can't say I'm word averse.
3. What words do people commonly misuse that make you mad/crazy?
Mostly legal terms (the use and misuse of which have been covered extensively at Minor Wisdom), but my biggest pet peeve is when people refer to preemption when they mean peremption and vice versa.
4. What's the prettiest word you know?
Serendipity.
5. What word sounds like what it means?
Splat.
6. What word or words just make no sense? (I.e., a word like "whatsoever" is a pretty bizarre word when you look at it).
Commencement. Any word that means both beginning and ending is too out there for me.
7. What words soothe you?
Lullaby.
Posted by Kitty at 04:39 PM | Comments (2)
February 22, 2005
My Squirrel Name
is Major Nutless. Truer words have never been spoken.
Posted by Kitty at 09:26 PM | Comments (3)
February 18, 2005
Income
This story from yesterday's Times Picayune discusses how a law firm where some friends of mine used to work had to close its doors last year when the partners discovered their CFO had embezzled around $770,000 from the firm over a 20 year period. The embezzlement left the firm deeply in debt and was particularly disheartening because it couldn't have happened to a nicer group of lawyers.
My favorite part of yesterday's article is this:
In addition to charging Lee with defrauding the firm, the U.S. attorney's office nailed him for not reporting taxes on the stolen money, or on his legitimate earnings.
"While Lee effectively stole the $769,806.72 from the firm over a period of years, this money is considered income to Lee pursuant to the United States Tax Code," prosecutors wrote to the court in explaining the charges.
So, earnings from embezzlement are reportable income. Huh. Who knew? (besides Death & Taxes -- I'm talking about what normal people know about the Tax Code) I'm gaining new respect for the IRS.
Posted by Kitty at 08:49 AM | Comments (2)
February 16, 2005
Crop circles
Gotta love this crop circle (thanks to Ernie for the link).
Posted by Kitty at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2005
Come Monday
Nine years of grade school/junior high school, four years of high school, four years of college and three years of law school -- what does that add up to? Not much, apparently.
This week, I had to fly solo. That's right, solo. No, Archi-Sapper wasn't out of town. No, I wasn't out of town (well, I did go to Atlanta for a business meeting on Wednesday, but that was a brief sojourn). It was worse than that. My secretary and paralegal went out of town. At the same time.
When they broke the news to me that they were going to be on vacation during the same week, I made a grave miscalculation. I mistakenly thought I'd be able to manage without them. I thought to myself, "I can do this. I'm smart. I'm educated. I know how to use the computer and the phone. Sometimes even at the same time. I rock."
By hour three in the office without support staff, I was beginning to resemble one of the fledgling half-wits on The Apprentice (and while we're on the topic: can someone explain to me why Bren thought it was a good idea to shoot a pornographic commercial of gay men in order to sell body wash to women? I'm still scratching my head over that one.) I picked up my phone no fewer than three times in order to ask my secretary to type a letter for me. By phone call number three, it finally sunk in that she wasn't going to type my stinkin' letters.
I then realized I needed to send a fax to one of my local counsel. No problem -- that's a job I can handle! I tried to feed my papers into the fax machine, and it began beeping at me. Angrily. This was not a happy fax machine. Well, no problem. We have a general services department on the second floor of our building, and they can handle faxes, copy jobs, court runs, etc. I decided I'd just send it to them. Then I realized I have no idea who runs the general services department, or where they live in our building (they moved during our construction).
Ever the intrepid lawyer, I looked up their number in the company directory and called them. After they stopped laughing hysterically at me, they managed to sputter out some directions to their lair. I wandered downstairs and found myself in a construction zone. I was standing on a sawdust-filled floor, surrounded by rebar and visqueen. I finally saw a familiar face, who guided me over to the copy/fax room. I surrendered my documents to the guy working behind the counter, who asked, "Did you get these documents from Ms. Kitty?" I looked at him quizzically and said, "I am Miss Kitty." He looked surprised and said, "What are you doing down here?" to which I replied, "I've been asking myself the same question."
I made it back to my desk (without benefit of a map from the internet, thank you very much), only to discover that I had four days of mail stacked on my secretary's desk, which was about to collapse of its own weight. I sifted through it and found my ten pound stack, and settled into my office to sort through (read:pitch) half of it.
It was then that I started getting the phone calls. These are the phone calls my secretary normally screens for me. There were the typical calls -- solicitors, wanting me to change my firm's long distance service (heck, I can barely make a long distance phone call, much less change our service provider), buy books for our library or somehow spend my firm's money. Then I had the calls from debt collection companies saying certain debtors had listed me as their bankruptcy attorney -- never mind that I don't do bankruptcy work -- and they wanted to have long winded discussions about how those crazy debtors could've possibly come up with my name. And then came the legitimate calls from other law firms -- people wanting copies of pleadings I'd filed, wanting to confirm depositions, wanting documents, etc., etc.
By the time I finally got these people off the phone, had thrown out half my mail and given up on my search for a decent Diet Coke, I'd had it. I shut down my laptop, grabbed my purse and ran for the door.
If I'd only remembered to bring my cell phone with me, I would've had it made.
I don't think I'm going to make it until Monday.
Posted by Kitty at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2005
High School-Era Cheddar
In high school....
What were your three favorite bands?
The Housemartins, Sting and Billy Joel
What was your favorite outfit?
Probably some version of jeans and a t-shirt. My least favorite outfit was the uniform I wore to Catholic school (though that's now Archi-Sapper's favorite outfit of mine).
What was up with your hair?
My hair was definitely up. I went to high school in Texas in the late 80's, so my hair included heavily hair sprayed crispy bangs and the style involved lots of product. I didn't get over that until the summer after graduation when my friend Greg kindly showed me the error of my ways. And that from someone who couldn't even dress himself in the morning without assistance.
Who were your friends?
Various folks from school and the youth group I attended, very few of whom I keep up with today.
What did you do after school?
I usually went to play practice (I was routinely in some musical or other, despite my total lack of singing abilities) or went to the boys' school down the street and hung out (hey, when you go to an all girls' school, hanging out with boys starts to sound like a really good idea).
What did you do in your Summers?
When I was younger (pre-sixteen) I would work at my mom's office, as she didn't have the same issues with child labor laws that the stores at the nearby mall did. Later, I worked at Express in a strip shopping center. Otherwise, I spent time with friends, hung out at Six Flags, made mix tapes and talked on the phone.
Did you take the bus?
Nope.
Who did you have a crush on?
Oh, that list is too long to include in this one small blog, and probably too long for me to recall in its entirety.
Did you fight with your parents?
Sure. Who didn't?
Who did you have a celebrity crush on?
This list was shorter than the list of real people I had crushes on. I can remember the junior high-era celebrity crushes much more clearly, I think because I started focusing on real boys in high school. Right now I can't remember anyone.
Did you smoke cigarettes?
Nope. Still don't. I'm allergic.
Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day because you were too nervous to find your locker?
I was never too nervous to find my locker, I could just never remember the combination, and the few times I could remember the combination, I couldn't open it, anyway.
Did you go to prom?
Yep. I went sophomore, junior and senior years.
Where did you think you'd be at the age you are now?
I thought I'd be a kick-ass lawyer (check), but thought I'd be single and living in a larger city. Had I taken that path, I would be seriously neurotic. Well, more so than I am now, anyway.
Posted by Kitty at 09:24 PM | Comments (1)
February 01, 2005
Hotmail
I'm giving up on Hotmail.
First, they irritated me when I canceled my MSN subscription. The only reason I had it was because I had purchased a new computer and the subscription came with it. When I went to cancel the subscription (which they were "accidentally" double charging me for every month), they immediately decreased the storage in my mailbox precipitously. It was at that point that I moved all of my bills to a gmail account I have (which I love).
Now, Hotmail has graciously expanded the storage capacity of my mailbox for free (as they should've done in the beginning), but my mail is all screwed up. Basically, all of my mail goes in the Trash. Not in the Junk Mail folder, in the Trash. I have checked my filters and they're set to low. The other problem is that any messages in my Inbox simply disappear. They don't go to the Trash, they just evaporate. And, naturally, since my Trash gets emptied every day, it often is emptied of messages I actually wanted to read before I get a chance to read them.
I sent an e-mail to Hotmail tech support, and received a completely unhelpful response. What's more, the response that Hotmail tech support sent me went directly into my Trash!
I give up. I've switched the link on the left to my Yahoo e-mail account. If you've sent me an e-mail recently to my Hotmail account and I didn't respond, I'm not ignoring you. Please re-send it to my e-mail program that actually works.
Posted by Kitty at 09:14 AM | Comments (3)
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