It's 10 pm now and sunlight is blazing through my window, which I had to block off with the box from the room lamp we bought at Walmart yesterday. Yesterday? God, it feels a lot longer than that.

I walked to work today past a gorgeous lagoon with snow-capped mountains as a backdrop. Walking back home, I saw a darling family of 11 ducklings and mama duck swimming about. (Dang. Listen to me. Mama duck? What am I writing, a children's book?) The walk takes about 30 leisurely minutes, which is a little longer than my walk to work in DC used to be. it's about 35 degrees cooler than summers in DC were, though. Downright chilly, if you ask me. But I always did get cold easily.

Work's already hopping. No coddling here -- after an hour of introductions and general office stuff, I sat down for a debrief with my supervisor, read background material for a case he has before the Supreme Court of Alaska, went to court for a hearing on a different case, came back to the office and read a little more, got asked to meet with a client alone tomorrow, then chatted with one of the attorneys til about 5:30, when he said, "I'm leaving now and you should too."

I work with the statewide litigation guy, and am going to have to research something for a response due to the Alaska Supreme Court on Monday. Except we are going to file for an extension, because no one can research and write something that fast. Okay, that's not true. But it is true for someone who gets paid what I do. Which is technically nothing, from my employer.

Apparently, my predecessor was "a machine" who would get through everything and ask for more. I actually took work home with me today but haven't looked at it, which was definitely the right thing to do. One lawyer, dressed in a corduroy shirt and jeans (par for the course in the office), urged me to speak up if I was getting too much work -- "it's not supposed to stress you out!" he said. He also offered me the use of his car, which he rescinded once I revealed bigbro's complaint that his stick-shift car never worked the same after I learned how to drive stick on it. (Cripes, it was a '72 VW Bug -- if I'd breathed on it wrong it would have driven funny.)

Everyone is very, very nice, including my fellow intern, who grew up in Bethel. Bethel is 400 miles from Anchorage. It boasts about 6,000 residents. It is "off the road system." I thought that meant that maybe it was off the official paved highway system. NO. It is literally OFF the road system, as in, there's no other way to get there except by flying. Whoa.

I went to court today for a hearing, and decided I had no desire whatsoever to become a litigator. I further decided that my supervisor is very smart and a good writer (the judge complimented his brief), and I'll learn a lot this summer.

Tomorrow I'm going to meet with a client on a bankruptcy case and ask her some questions that my supervisor outlined for me (he's going to be at his son's graduation from kindergarten). He asked me if it was too much, if he needed to back off on the work, and I said no, not at all. I'm not that stressed about it, which surprises me a little. I'll just do what I'm told and do it the best I can. Looks like the confidence-crushing and resultant reality-checking/life-coaching that took place this school year has done its work.

After work, I came home and made myself a beans-over-rice dinner, and then my roommate and I went out to a coffee shop, where I wandered through the attached bookstore and looked for a while at David Mura's account of his journey to Japan as a sansei (U.S.-born grandchild of Japanese immigrants). It would be cool to do something similar with my own journey to the homeland, except that I didn't think Mura's book was all that interesting. Hm. It could be my fatigue, though. I woke up today at 4:45 am, after going to sleep at 12:30. The jet lag must stop! I think tonight's an Ambien night.

Having no TV is going to probably lead to a lot of writing this summer. Could be a good thing. My roommate says she's going to "find herself" this summer. I'd like to find myself, but my track record doesn't lend itself to much hope on that front. I am very, extraordinarily, amazingly, exponentially bad at finding myself. For example, I thought I'd find myself in Korea, and I ended up in law school. Dearie me. I suppose it's worth another try, though.