This afternoon the senior partner took me to lunch at his club--- one of the old-guard institutions in the city. We'd just managed to finally get a really obnoxious motion for summary judgment filed in federal court. His secretary is in Colorado for the next week, another secretary left to go have a baby. So I was left not only to draft the motion and its supporting memorandum, but to deal with the district court's whole electronic filing system. Needless to say, not something I'd ever used before. And of course the senior partner only gave me the project on the day it needed to be filed. So the morning was a disaster--- write, file, get a call from the clerk's office about how it wasn't filed properly ("No, De Guzman-san, attachment doesn't actually mean that the document is filed with attachments..."). But I think--- I think that I got it filed. I at least got the judge's docket clerk to tell me it was acceptable. So I got to sit at the senior partner's club and have their blackened redfish and drink lots o' wine. I can only hope that the motion is on track. We can win it. I write good briefs--- that's one thing I can do. I just don't want us bounced on some technical glitch.

Came home from work early, swam laps in the pool, came upstairs for martinis, sat outside and read more of "This Side of Paradise". Kendall--- Trish at kissingverlaine's friend zzzoooooommm ---writes that she's a major "This Side of Paradise" fan, that she uses Rosalind Connage as an alias, and that she's used that name when she and Trish checked into hotels while looking for Scott Fitzgerald's grave. Kendall tells me that these days she's afraid that she's becoming Amory Blaine. I wrote back to tell her that I'd never want to be Amory, but that I do imagine myself as Nick Carraway pretending to be Gatsby in some new city. I used to think that being the hero of Hemingway's "Garden of Eden" would be the best thing (ummm... there's a Mena Suvari fantasy behind that), but I do like the idea of Nick Carraway with a false passport in Gatsby's name...

There was a vur' odd voicemail on my keitai when I came back from the pool. It was a one-word message in a girl's voice. I couldn't place the voice, and the word itself was obscured. It might have been "Cad!" (which I've been called before) or "Dad!" (which would have been scary) or "Thad!" (which would be creepy). I haven't been called a cad in a while; I don't think any girl has reason to say that to me these days. I won't let girls call me Dad during sex--- too many scary and/or depressing thoughts implicit there. And Thad... What girl would ever have sex with someone named Thad? There's not even a Thaddeus Stevens joke there. It's just a creepy name.

The question does remain--- who left the one-word message? And what were they trying to say?

I keep adding more books to my weekend plans. I do want to re-read Murakami's "After Dark". And I want to pull down a copy of Larry Wolff's "Inventing Eastern Europe". Even if I'm not teaching right now, I'm still an historian by training and vocation. I still live for academic research and reading obscure monographs. One of my goals is to be able to talk with Trish at kissingverlaine about the Ottomans in Europe, and about Persian poetry.

The pettable little K-dot at citydress and I talked about the later episodes of "Family Guy". We're both vur' happy that the Adult Swim version of "Family Guy" is increasingly wicked and cruel. My current favourite lines:

Meg: I want a car that expresses my personality.

Stewie: Oh, great-- we'll get her a Bulimic Cuttermobile.

I of course always want to be Brian Griffin. He drinks a bit much, but he seems to have remarkable success with human females.

The K-dot called me this morning at 0630 to watch Noggin Channel together. We watched "Upside Down Show" and "Max and Ruby". Noggin Channel is such a wonderful place to be... The Small Pika knew that, too. There's nothing in the world like reading children's books aloud to a dear friend. The Small Pika read me "The Moonflute" once, and I remember reading the K-dot both Stray Sheep books and of course "Diary of a Wombat".

Kendall at zzzoooooommm made a rubbing of Scott Fitzgerald's grave. I have to envy that. I've never made a gravestone rubbing, but it's one of those wonderful antiquarian things I'd like to do. I'd just have to wonder--- whose headstone should I record? Is there a stone for Richard III anywhere? For Austen Henry Ledyard? The Bas Bleu catalog has a headstone rubbing kit--- it's not a hard skill to acquire. I just wonder where I'd find headstones worth doing.

I'm insomniac a bit, these days. But I will try to get out of here early and go read at the coffeeshop. I want to make time this summer both for the pool and for reading all the things I've neglected since I moved here.