in the mail

I’m off on a jet plane tomorrow morning for four days of work in northern Nevada . I managed a flight via Chicago (ATA and Southwest) instead of the normally required march through Phoenix; if you’ve done PHX you’ll know how much more relaxing it is to make a run west by passing through the Windy City .

Here’s a quandary for the office gerbils out there: when did the manila envelope become the brown envelope? We’re not talking dark brown but something more like a lightish brown blended into the old manila color. The reason I ask? Well, X is gathering materials for clerking applications (I’ll be printing, packaging and S.W.A.K. next weekend) and the requirements put forth, in cap and bold letters, that all submissions to judges be enclosed in 10 x 13 stick-and-seal MANILA envelopes. As a neighborhood elder, I remember the day when a manila envelope was simple enough to pick out – it was manila. Now the Staples folk don’t say manila but instead have given the nom de guerre as brown. Can we package everything up in these brown impostors? Do the old, grumpy judges immediately call upon aides, paralegals, and personal assistants to decry the just-off hue of law student submission packages? I’m telling you…they are manila, even if some politically correct manager at a global office supply store decided to label them as brown way back in 1999. Update update. The Eleven stopped by Office Depot this afternoon so see if they stocked the 10 x 13 easy seal MANILA envelopes. I'm starting to feel like we might be on a snipe hunt ("Here's your bag and your whuppin' stick!"). We've cornered the 10 x 13 white and the 10 x 13 Tyvek models...but no manila. I have a sneaking suspicion that the next requirement for this application process will be to use ink drawn only from the blood of the golden lion tamarind printed on 53-weight paper produced from the pulp of coastal Oregon Pinus ponderosa. Christ. Law students. Judges. Lawyers. Do you think I’m overreacting? Fine, you can come by and convince X that’s it’s just a color…

Kt is also traveling this week so X and Corey will be left to their own devices for three or four days. The last few times this has occurred the commune on North Park became a beer drinking, pizza eating frat house. The very last time it happened the two ambled over to Willow for dinner and ate so much they couldn’t eat anything else for days. X will have to make her own coffee, breakfast sandwich, and walk to the Metro all alone; Corey will no doubt knock out a few boxes of Lucky Charms and a gallon of milk. It does take a village...

L told me she isolated herself for 4 hours yesterday and finished the newest Harry Potter. From our discussion I’d guess she’d rate it at 3 ½ stars; it apparently falls somewhere between third and sixth favorite of the series. She has her methods.

We attempted to hook up a wireless router for the printer this evening. Like that son-of-a-bitch will work.

Love to all.

T.