Conference: from the Latin phrase, "Welcome to Hell"

The last day of the conference. On the one hand, I really don't want to be here. This has been terrible. At least one of the speakers here actually made me more stupid as I listened to him. In an hour or so I will be subjected to mandatory sexual harassment... training. And no panda, either. Which is disappointing. I like pandas.

On the other hand, I'm already dreading work on Monday. I have a bad feeling I may well be dragged into a jury trial first thing Monday morning for a client I have not seen--no exaggeration, here--for a year. On Monday, assuming he shows up, he'll want a continuance for me to get witnesses subpoenaed who he might have told me about, oh, I don't know... eleven months ago, six months ago?

But enough shop talk. There are many, many, many good reasons I don't like to write about work, even though I suspect I could draw a loyal blog following as a "lawblogger," dishing about the Constitution and the inner workings of this great sausage grinder we like to call "the justice system." Nonlawyers are fascinated by this machine, I guess I understand why but when you're inside it the noise and grease and fumes tend to give you a bit of a headache.

This might be part of the problem with conferences, you know. I mean, here I am, at the beach, and the shadow of work, the shadow of the machine looms everywhere. Sort of takes away the thrill of being at the beach. It's sort of like a vacation, insofar as I get to wear a t-shirt and sandals and there are no judges frantically calling for me simultaneously from three courtrooms (so I can wait in their courtroom for the DA to get to around one of my cases) even though I'm standing in front of a judge in a fourth courtroom trying to work.

Today I will be driving back. Hopefully the weather will be fine enough to have the top down. I don't know if I'll be writing another entry today--I doubt it, but you never know. Anyway, I'll be driving back: it's kind of odd how being somewhere can be like being nowhere when you're between stations. Obviously, you're passing through places--people live there and work there, there are houses and stores and farms and things. But you're not in the place you ought to be, the place you set out from or the place you're due to arrive, and therefore you're nowhere. You're a mysterious quanta, knowable by trajectory or stopping point, but not by both. And then you arrive and trajectory changes again as you ricochet into the chaotic, indeterminate state of living.