2008-10-10 - 9:44 p.m.

I just finished my third week of work at fancy law firm, where I'm toiling (and getting paid!) as if already a lawyer. I won�t know if I'm actually a lawyer until the bar results are released on November 21 (same day the Twilight movie comes out! Team Edward! Woot!). That still seems like a long way off, and I'm not entirely sure of the protocol during the interim. For example, do I settle in and call the office services guys and ask them to hang up my diplomas and art and whatnot, and while they're at it demand some plants? (The other associates keep urging me to demand plants, but I feel bound to my purgatory non-lawyer status, unworthy of making plant demands.) Do I respond to the e-mail from the firm's HQ requesting my bio for the firm's web site? I would feel like a real jackass if I hung up all my Twilight posters and then found out I'd failed the bar. What? You think it's a bad idea to hang up my Twilight posters in my office? Come ON.

Even with its sad, bare walls, I'm in love with my office. It could comfortably sleep like ten people, depending on those people�s definitions of "comfortably." It's on the sixteenth floor of a zillion-floor building. Things I can see from my office (illustrative, not exhaustive): the Pacific Ocean, Palos Verdes, other skyscrapers, the pool at the hotel across the street, planes landing. My office is next to the corner office of a crazed, Republican-hating, high-powered partner. On my first day, he poked his head around the corner into my doorway and said, "What's the difference between Palin and Chaney?" I guessed "accurate marksmanship," and felt awfully pleased with myself for my off-the-cuff cleverness. The correct answer, of course, was lipstick. You might wonder: How does a crazed, high-powered partner spend his days? This one spends his days watching The Sarah Silverman Show in his office and generally yucking it up, making a phone call every once in a while, usually leading off with, "Hey, you sonofabitch!" I love him.

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