Full and First Friday

Full: my clinical supervisor told me at the end of yesterday's work day that it had been fairly typical of a young associate's day. (While he said it, I thought -- except that at a firm, the partner wouldn't have been so nice and patient, with billing on the mind.)

I got to work around 9 to finish reading a deposition transcript in preparation for the 10 am depo. The 10 am depo was really quick (just an hour), and then we de-briefed with the client about the deponent's answers and how he presented.

The client meeting took 1.5 hours, during which my supervisor was incredibly respectful and patient (I started zoning out in patches, frankly -- the problem when you haven't been trained in law is that you don't realize what's legally relevant a lot of the time).

I had a quick lunch, and then spent an unexpectedly long time researching a procedural question, which was kind of interesting. (It didn't involve looking at cases, just at rules and statutes. Which you would think would be straightforward and clear, but when the federal rules just say, "Oh, just follow the state rules," and the state rules say, "Oh yah, just do A or B," but you can't really do A the way they say it because the opposing party isn't in the state and B involves getting a third party to do the deed -- well, mud is all I can say. Clear as mud.)

I wrote a follow-up email to our client, reviewed my supervisor's notes from the meeting and added my own, scheduled a stenographer for another deposition, left a message for another client to have her come in, started writing up questions for a deposition next Friday (which I was originally scheduled to do, but found out yesterday that I can't -- sad! but relief as well), and then ran out of time and took stuff home to deal with over the weekend.

So my Friday was busy and eventful and varied, which was great, but while I was observing the deposition and the client meeting, I thought, "Oh, I canNOT do this."

First: The first Friday of each month is a late-night meat market-type event at Crimson City Museum of Fine Arts. I went last semester with some of the girls, and it was pretty meat-market-y, but Joiner and I loved seeing the Ansel Adams special exhibit, so it was well worth it.

Last night, after downing a couple Bombay Sapphire drinks (B.S. is one of the sponsors, I think, so they get a special B.S. bar), we saw another wonderful exhibit -- David Hockney. I've always liked Hockney's California stuff, which to me captures the curiously flat light and cool warmth of Los Angeles, but I didn't know how brilliant his other stuff was until last night. I especially liked the photo collages he did -- inspired by Picasso, he uses slightly different versions of the same person or scene to create a dynamic, living quality to the works. There was a really poignant one of his mother at a medieval ruin in England, as well as the one I thought most perfectly artistic: a 6-photo collage of Billy Wilder lighting a cigar.

But all his stuff was just gorgeous -- the line drawings of his father, so full of affection, his brilliantly executed watercolor portraits, the late-90s oils portraits of his mother and friends in the same electric colors, his 1960s take on A Rake's Progress, the series he did of museum guards using a camera lucida to trace their likenesses on paper. And what was heart-warming was the fact that he used his friends and family members as subjects all the time -- there is great tenderness in many of his works. Man, I wanna be friends with a famous artist.

The centerpiece of the exhibit, but (frankly) one of the less interesting pieces:


One of my favorites in the exhibit was My Mother, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, Nov. 82 #4 (1982). Notice Hockney's shoes in the foreground, reminding the viewer that he's there and creating a connection with his mother, alone as she seems.