Monday, October 1, 2012

Hillbilly Hide-a-Way

If I started naming "laws" I could probably keep talking for thirty seconds before I ran out. Forty-five seconds if I spoke real slow. Nonetheless, I am now officially a "law clerk" (waiting for bar results to become "attorney") with three cases and a blog post as my responsibilities. And it's not this blog post - it's about real things like the CFTC. All after one day of real, honest to goodness work. Last week's orientation was fine and uneventful. Today all the action got started. And I'm pretttttty excited to dive in.

Not only was it my first day of work, our new office opened its doors today, making it a sort of Day One for everyone. This was to my advantage; everyone else was walking around inquisitively as well. The new office is nice. It looks like a cross between an Ikea catalog and an Apple store. Everything is white and wood. The best feature: my desk can mechanically be raised into a standing desk, or lowered to my comfort. It even has saved settings! Blew my mind!
The downside: for all the technology, my office has a mouse pad, but no mouse. It also has no keyboard, docking station, or monitor. All I had today was a tiny little laptop. And a mechanical desk. The irony.

 I spent the last few days of my stay-cation visiting Erica in North Carolina. It was mostly ranting about menial things (pretty much the best pastime ever) and eating bar-b-cue (the second best pastime ever). Lots of bar-b-cue (bbq?). I mean...LOTS. We went to this place in the middle of nowhere (read: the middle of nowhere) called Hillbilly Hide-a-way for a family-style dinner. It was quite simply phenomenal. To give you an idea, it included fried chicken, fried fish, green beans in butter, cinnamon apples, corn bread, mashed potatoes, gravy, bacon, and more. The next morning I ate a pulled pork sandwich for breakfast. I literally could not eat for the next two days. I think I had...a granola bar and some Diet Coke.  Look at this plate (and note the basket of "whipped spread." As I said at the time, "Oh look, they took butter and made it less healthy").


Seeing Erica was, of course nice. We had a little rage time. Released the fury. For me, that started in the car when I was stuck in an hour and a half-long traffic jam. I tried to leave a calm voicemail saying I'd be late, but I ended up yelling about it. Road rage like whoa.
On Friday morning, Erica was at class and I wanted Starbucks. So I used my handy dandy smartphone to track one down. Turned out my search for caffeine took me to "downtown" Winston Salem. I walked around both blocks of it. It was a slow-paced, quaint place with a surprising about of cultural diversity. And three bars, one of which is apparently the local favorite. I was jealous; nice beer cost about $4. The good life.

Exhausted. Time to sleep.

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