2004-09-18 - 1:50 a.m.

i spent the bulk of my week babysitting an overcaffeinated lawyer. i walked through more metal detectors than i can count. i made more than 400 xerox copies. that's right, dear readers: i have a new job.

my job works like this: the lawyer gives me a case number. i pull the file. he wants to research the case. i figure out which pages are pertinent, and xerox them. it sounds easy, and it is. it's complicated only slightly by the fact that i have to cajole undermotivated civil court file clerks to fetch the case files. and that i can't check the files out or anything like that, so i am forced to use the ancient xerox machines provided by the court. they constantly jom and make terrible copies. plus, the copies are twenty-five cents each, which just seems outrageously expensive to me. maybe that's how the state bought all the shiny new x-ray and metal detecting equipment guarding every courthouse entrance in new york. i had to check in my cellphone every time i went to the kings county records office, ostensibly because i have a camera built into my brand new phone and it poses a security risk.

the lawyer is a really strange person. he's an expert in foreclosures and probates, which would make anyone a little morbid, but not this guy. he's in his sixties but he acts like a giddy teenager. he told me he pops prozac the way other men take viagra, and i'm inclined to believe it since he was so relentlessly positive. i watched him melt an entire office full of icy, mean file clerks by reaching into his briefcase and pulling out a bottle of bubble soap. he had those women giggling and running around the office trying to pop the bubbles. he distracted them just long enough for me to take the long fasteners out of a referree's report so i could copy it more easily (this is considered tampering and is strictly verboten).

i was painfully hung over this morning. i'd started last evening with an innocent discussion of ad hoc wireless networking but somehow ended up sipping single malt with a sexy texan. i managed to get to the court at the appointed hour and was happy to find that my hangover did not make reading the cases any more difficult. in fact, it gave the dry documents a kind of brilliance and clarity they didn't have on my more lucid mornings. any job that gets easier with a hangover is a job i can definitely live with.

though i feel now i am personally responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent trees. there is about a ream of paper in my bag right now, and i sent the bulk of the paperwork home with the lawyer.