The breeze was lovely and the humidity was lower this evening, so I dragged the dog around the lake. He was into sniffing and socializing, we ran into his favorite small humans and a couple of friendly new dogs, so it wasn't that great as exercise goes, but it was better than sitting. I sit too much. When you are over 40 and sit, everything just sort of slides into a permanent sitting position. I crave exercise.

I haven't made it to the gym to re-up yet, other tasks keep getting in the way. Frankly, that's an excuse, I let other tasks get in the way, but the weather is turning very nice and right now I'm happy to just get out and walk. I'm sleeping better lately, too, walking has helped that too. (Speaking of sleeping, a certain small opinionated dog is snoring loudly right now, the walk put him right out.)

Work is freaking killin' me, I come home wiped out, it took an act of will to go out and walk instead of collapsing. We have several new cases, which is good, but they are multi-party monsters, which is bad. In one, we were third-partied into a behemoth of a case with THIRTY-NINE parties. For the sane people who don't work in the legal field, every official piece of paper in a lawsuit goes to all the parties, the court, the client, and the file. Do the math. This is construction work, which means a motion for summary judgment can weigh about a pound with all its exhibits. Not only does this mean it takes all morning to get a pleading out the door, but the incoming mail is a bitch too. That's one of the new cases. In the other one there are only 12 parties. I don't have the file on the newest one yet, so I don't know how bad it is. Such is life in construction law, but this is why lawyers doing this kind of construction law HAVE A FRIGGIN' SECRETARY, and often a file clerk and a mailroom, as well as a paralegal!!! The two of us (because Boss who is not really my boss is a sweetie and pitches in on this crap) are doing the work of four people, and it's wearing us out. We are trying to outsource serving pleadings but so far have been unsuccessful - I don't need "help" that requires hand-holding and prodding and nagging, I'd rather do it myself than deal with the stress of handing it off to people who don't know what they're doing and have to follow up on them all damn day, that doesn't let me work on anything else either.

But we have to do something about this, because copying and stuffing envelopes is strictly secretarial and I can't bill for it, and I can't keep up my billable hours and move all that paper. We now have a form motion we are filing in these cases to ask the court to permit fax service only ("Tradition" dictates that even if you serve by fax you must mail a service copy as well. There is no good reason for this, other than We Have Always Done It That Way). I did this motion in the 39 party case, and saved it as "motion to keep Catherine from quitting (this week)." This is now its official name in our form directory. If we can get blessed to electronically fax pleadings to a preset, pre-programmed service list, that will infinitely improve this situation. Setup will be tedious but after that, things would move fast. It wouldn't help on the incoming side, but right now I can't even think about that.

I mean, I'm a good sport and I'll stuff envelopes, make copies, whatever has to be done to get the work out the door, but there's substantive work going undone while I'm doing that, and I billed, I kid you not, ONE HALF HOUR of time today. The rest was moving paper. This is nuts. I'm glad we are loved, and there has been alot of rumbling about improving the staffing "issues," but no action yet. If these are the kind of cases they're going to give us, which is great with us because this is the sort of thing we know and love, we need the Fantabulous D or her clone in the worst way. I'm waiting to see how things shake out, other, much more influential voices than ours have been raised to the powers that be about staffing us so we can actually do our jobs right, we'll see if it happens.

There, I'm done ranting about my job. There's more, but it's too office politicky and perhaps identifying to go into in public. Rent the movie Office Space. I may clean a fish on my desk before Christmas. And I don't even fish.

Knitting? Nope. I have been crocheting the apricot shawl, because I think it's going to the Fall Festival craft table if I can get it done in time, and it'll be a donation to some other fund raiser if I can't. I want to start something, but I can't decide what. Last night I thought maybe that aromatherapy tea cosy from Mindful Knitting, but right now that sounds too much like work. I need something totally mindless and soothing. I'm thinking it's time to think of charity knitting, and take some of my nice superwash wool surplus and cast on a nice ribbed hat and scarf set for donation. Yep, a nice 4x4 ribbed scarf, a ribbed hat to match, sometimes it helps to think out loud about what "feels good" to make right now. That's all I have in me right now, but it's something worth doing.