A Time to Laugh

I like to think there is humor in every situation, though it could just be that I am trying to what is not there. Chasing phantoms wearing goofy teeth. This may also be why I don't tell people I have a Juris Doctorate (among many other reasons). After a couple of months (and really not wanting to have to cart it around with me when I moved to Virginia), I finally took my bar admission certificate to LockMart. (Oh, i've decided to ease up on the complete anonymity and plausible deniability. I'm not that important, and really it just gets frustrating after a while. The words are supposed to work for me, not the other way around.) Granted, I also took two Nerf revolver handguns (Mavericks, not Gooses). It is amazing how alluring Nerf weaponry is to the IT field.

People come in, look at the guns, talk for a bit, then see the cert. Their eyes bulge as they read the tiny script, and ignorance dusks, falls dim. I sit and wait. They star, not comprehending. What does it mean? I'll tell you what it means: I'm a lawyer.

The looks are classic.

Then the questions roll on in. Why are you a lawyer? It sucks. What are you doing here? Change of pace. Are you insane? Do you want me to be?

I will grant this, there have been two times in my life now where I felt the Juris Doctorate actually might come in handy. One is for the humor/shock factor. People just don't expect it.

***

As you may or may not know, I'm in the process of becoming a Virginian. The two-and-a-half to
four hours of commute time a day just got the better of me. Now, today, I've spent that time writing, and feel so much better about life, even if I'm still sick and the whole Virginian conversion seems pretty daunting. [Ed. Note: I wrote this longhand the Monday after I moved. It turns out I now have allergy-induced asthma in the spring and the fall. -K] But if J.R. can do it, and if J.L. can do it, then I can do it. (Not to say that I can do everything those two have done. Hell, there are probably very few things they can do I can also. Just that if they could persevere, so can I, I think.)

On average, I was spending fifteen hours a week commuting. Almost two-thirds of a day every week. During the peak, one week I spent eighteen hours in a car. A vehicular vagabond, really. Eighty miles a day, four hundred miles a week. I've been commuting since October. About sixteen hundred miles a month. Roughly eight thousand miles in all, or two oil changes, and a third due very soon.

Now that I've moved, the commute on day one totaled less than an hour. Plus, the Lady Surfer is doing much better. She was starting to squeal at 65 miles per hour. Now, I can limit her to much less driving. Twenty to twenty-five miles per day with luck. Stretch a few more years out of her. [Ed. note - Turned out the Lady Surfer just had a run-down brake pad. No surprise, what with the amount of stop and go traffic I had to put her through. I'm so sorry, Lady. -K]

Not that I won't miss the ridiculous amounts of alone time, me and a million other workers, isolated and completely alone in our own little worlds. [Ed. Note - I found out the hard way that you're really not alone, but that's a story for another day. -K] Time to day dream and envision storylines. But now, I can do that in an apartment, and not be exhausted. Now, I feel rejuvenated. It's also kind of nice not having regular internet access or cable television. Living a stripped down, spartan lifestyle. If they weren't necessary evils, I might end up living without them. At least I got the Playstation 2 and a stack of DVDs. [Ed. Note - As you can tell by this posting, I did end up getting the goods. However, and I'm kind of proud of this, I've been taking care of business for the past few hours without having the television on in the background. Slowly stripping away the extraneous, left with the essentials. Boy, I've got to work on that concept. -K]