Three New Year's Resolutions

1) I resolve to limit myself to two paper cups a day at work

Next to the coffee machine there is a huge stack of cups to use. They are pretty sturdy, and I would imagine they could stand up to a whole day's worth of filling, drinking, refilling, etc. Since I started work, I think I go through an average of 4 cups per day. Sometimes I just forget to bring my cup with me. Other times I switch over from tea to coffee or tea to water and I don't want to mix the two. But invariably, by the end of the day there are 3 or 4 cups on my desk containing half-drunk cold liquids. I can do better.

2) I resolve to go to the gym at least twice a week

We have a gym in our apartment building. Its not the greatest gym, but it has a couple elipiticals, bikes, some free weights, and some other machines. Our soccer season ended long ago, so I'm not getting any regular exercise. And two times a week seems pretty reasonable.

3) I resolve to limit my use of the phrase "you know"

People say "you know," a lot. Other people doing it doesn't really bother me that much, but I notice that I do it a lot too. I'm going to try to cut down, by taking more time to think about what I want to say. Maybe pausing to think a bit more about how to phrase what I'm trying to convey will help me avoid saying "you know" between every other sentence.

As I walked to work today, I looked across the street and saw three people. Each had a gigantic camel on a leash. It was very strange.

This just made me crack up. From The Onion of course.

Vacation is over.

When I started work, I joked that my life was effectively done. I envisioned staying til midnight six days a week doing who knows what. I would get home at six on the weekends if I was lucky. I would have vacation days cancelled left and right. It would be a nightmare.

And then the economy collapsed.

Work dried up for law firms across the nation. The result for me was leaving at six almost every day and laughing at the thought of weekends in the office. Sometimes I got home before Kim.

When I would get concerned about my situation, my mentor would tell me to just enjoy it because it won't always be like this. Bah! Everything lasts forever!

Well the cows have come home to roost. I've had a couple late nights the past few days and will be in this weekend too. And January looks to be a lot more of the same. But I guess I can't complain too much. These last few months have been pretty sweet. Now its time to learn to be a real lawyer.

Christmas came a bit early this year.

This came out of a box of basketball cards Kim got me:



Deron Williams autographed jersey card numbered out of five.

And this was the big gift Kim got me:



A Chase Utley autographed world series picture! Oddly, she seemed more proud of the frame she put it in.

Its already hanging up on the wall.

*We bought our first Christmas Tree. Artificial of course. The description says 6 feet tall, but its probably about as tall as me. It was a good buy though, only 16 bucks (free shipping) from Target. Of course, it looks like a $16 tree, but its good for our apartment. And its not like we have a lot of gifts to put under it.

We went to Walgreens to look for lights and ornaments, but they didn't have a real good selection. For some reason, Kim really wanted to go to K-Mart at Penn Station to look for decorations. I didn't want to go, but I relented. They had a lot of lights, but all of them were of the multi-colored variety. Kim was more interested in the all one color, preferably white, type. I had to get back to work, so I left Kim to make a decision. She got all blue lights, which I like, but the lights are strangely designed to blind you if you look directly at them. They are like minature flashlights. I think the lights will stay off for the most part.

Also, the boxes of ball ornaments don't come with hooks, so I had to use ribbon. That took a long time.

*We're doing a white elephant gift exchange tonight, and the limit is five dollars. White elephant is where the gifts are wrapped, and the first person picks a gift. The second person then can either steal that gift or unwrap a new gift. This is what I'm told, I've never done it before and I don't really understand the rules. In any event, I was stuck for an idea until yesterday. I came up with the best $5 dollar gift ever.

Fishman owes me some large sum of money because of me crushing him in football betting. So I told him he now owes me $7 less. Why? I was creating a $7 Fishman IOU as my $5 white elephant gift (obviously the face value is $7 to reflect the likelihood the bearer will never be paid). He agreed, and I thought about how to represent the note. A simple piece of paper saying "Fishman owes you $7" would not suffice. So I found this great picture on Facebook of Fishman shirtless and copied it into a word doc. I then found some gaudy font and wrote something like "The Bearer of this Note is Entitled to [even more gaudy font] 7 United States Dollars [end even more gaudy font] to be paid in person at any time." I printed it and then put it in a fed ex envelope to make it easier to wrap. I predict this will be the gift that everyone will fight over. Or not.

* I bought myself two early Christmas presents. A box of baseball cards and a box of football cards. The football box netted me autographed cards of Chad Henne and Rashard Mendenhall (not too shabby). The baseball box got me autographs of two guys I've never really heard of, and a dual autographed card of Dontrelle Willis and Mark Fidrych. Old school!

I was sorting through my old emails trying to figure out addresses of where I've lived (for my bar application), and I came across this email I apparently wrote when I was working for Kaplan.

I think you might be a little confused on the way I find teachers and proctors. I need EXACT dates and times when they need to be places. The reason I can't assign a teacher to NB High is you said "9:30AM, 4 days a week, 80 minutes each session" and then did not respond to my email which asked "which four days in the week?" The reason I can't assign an instructor to Red Bank is because I only have 12 dates with no times, and nothing telling me whether this is going to be 3 in 1 or SAT only. The reason I can't get you a proctor yet for NB Health Sciences is because you haven't given me the dates of the tests. I cannot tell my teachers that they "will need to proctor at some point, be ready!"

In the future, please provide me with schedules in either word format or excel, with the dates and times of all sessions. Telling me that NB High's schedule is "same dates as Health Science, same dates school is closed." makes zero sense since NB High is four times a week while NB Health is two days a week

Good times.

On days when I'm particularly dissatisfied with my job, I'll consider buying a lottery ticket. I've done it twice so far. Once when the Mega Millions jackpot was up to like 150 million dollars, and again when it was up to 200 million dollars. I threw five dollars onto the counter of the local bodega and got five quick picks, and of course was wildly unsuccessful both times. The first time exactly zero of my numbers came up. The second time I did manage to get 2 numbers on one of my picks, but that was it. A shame really, as 3 numbers would have gotten me 7 cool dollars.

When the jackpot was up to 200 million, someone won it. So it is now back down to 12 million, which doesn't even seem worth it at this point. 12 seems like such a paltry number - especially considering that would be an annuity over 26 years. The one time lump sum payment would be... something. I'm not sure how much discounted to present value that is, but it could very well not be enough; I'd still have to work given the uncertainty in the world and the lavish lifestyle I would invariably adopt. I wonder how much the jackpot would have to be to entice me to play again.

And yes, I'm well aware of how -EV playing the lottery is. I think of it as entertainment. What was the EV of my 5 quick picks when the jackpot was over 200 million? It actually wasn't that bad considering the odds to win are 1 in 175,000,000 (again, not sure how much the lump sum payment would be). But any negative expectation is just the cost of entertainment. It certainly did provide me with at least a dollar's worth of fun.

Four Movies That Were on TV But We Didn't Finish Due to Awfulness

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

Surprisingly, some aliens manage to overpower a lone predator, causing his spaceship to crash to earth. The aliens then investigate a town full of characters who we learn way too much about. They're just going to die anyway, so I don't even know why we need to find out that this nerdy pizza delivery guy gets picked on by the high school's bullies. And unexpectedly, the head bully's girlfriend likes the nerdy pizza guy! Eventually one predator finds out that the other predator's ship has crashed, and he flies off (alone) to go kill the aliens. We turned it off, but I can only assume that:

1) The aliens kill almost all of the people, except maybe one or two. I'll guess the nerdy pizza guy survives.
2) The predator kills all of the aliens, except maybe one who is getting ready for a sequel.

P.S. I Love You

Kim put this on because I was doing some work on my laptop, and she knew it was a movie I would instantly veto if I was paying attention. The movie starts off promisingly with Hilary Swank in a bra arguing with her husband. Then her husband dies of a brain tumor, but before he dies he sets up all these things to happen to her. So she basically relives her married life with the dead guy. The movie is a crippling 2 hours and 6 minutes, and even Kim couldn't watch it all. After first looking through a bridal magazine and then playing on her laptop, Kim decided the movie was "boring" and she turned it off.

Mr. Woodcock

For a physical comedy, this movie is just kind of weird and awkward. Stifler apparently had some horrible gym teacher who was a tyrant. After leaving town and writing a wildly successful self-help book, Stifler comes back to town to find that his mom is now dating the gym teacher. Predictability ensues, and Kim and I went to bed after 45 minutes or so.

One Missed Call

Megan Good is really hot, but she dies almost instantly. This movie is I guess supposed to be scary, and it might be if there were any consistency in the way the dead girl kills people. For example, she kills Megan Good by pulling her into a backyard pond (she also kills the cat too for some reason). Then she kills a guy by having an explosion send a pipe into him. And then she kills someone just by choking them invisibly. Aren't supernatural killers supposed to have a MO? Apparently not this one, and I don't really know if she's still out there calling people or leaving messages or whatever the heck she does.

I see this picture ad on some yahoo pages, and I can't help but think - Is this supposed to scare me? I had my first drink when I was 14 or so.

We have two different coffee machines on my floor. One is a Keurig K-cup thing which I use to get lemon zinger tea. I sometimes get coffee from it too. But usually I get coffee from the other machine, which looks somewhat like the picture above.

You see, it has a coffee bean reservoir at the top, and it makes this nice grinding noise when you hit the button. Presumably, you are getting fresh ground coffee.

I say presumably, because every time I hit the button, I look at the beans. And the beans never move. Not one millimeter.

Am I getting played? I can't help but think of this case from patent law called Juicy Whip v. Orange Bang. In that case, one of the companies held a patent for one of these types of soda dispensers:



Basically, the idea is that the soda fountain thing is making the drink look all nice and tasty and fresh. However, when you actually hit the dispenser, the drink instead comes from some container underneath the machine. The bubbling fountain of liquid is just to trick you!

I wonder if those coffee beans are just there to trick me.

Momentum is a funny thing.

For every time you remember seeing a team come back from a big deficit and then win in overtime, you don't remember a team giving up a big lead and then continuing to win the game.

Of course, I'm assuming this. Maybe there is some study out there that shows that teams who come back from a deficit are more likely to win the game given an even late-game situation (like say, overtime). But I doubt it.

I say this in reference to today's Eagles/Giants game. If you didn't watch, the Eagles basically dominated the first half. Then, with around 3 seconds left before the half, and holding a 10-0 lead, the Eagles lined up for a field goal try. The Giants blocked the attempt and ran it back for a touchdown. 10-7 halftime score, and all the momentum in the world was with the Giants. The FOX broadcasting team kept harping on the momentum being clearly on the side of the Giants, and that the Eagles basically had no chance.

This despite the Eagles being up by three points and starting with the ball in the second half.

Well the Eagles went on and smacked the Giants around some more, coming away with a 20-14 victory whose score makes it appear closer than it actually was.

So much for momentum.

Of course, there are times when momentum seems to be the most powerful force in the world. We remember when Duke came back against Maryland in the 2001 NCAA tourney after being down 20 in the first half. It seemed like even though the score was tight, Duke had it locked up. But we forget that even though Albert Pujols hit that massive home run off of Brad Lidge in game five of the 2005 NLCS, the Astros promptly came back and won the series in St. Louis during the next game.

Of course, my irrational gambling mind believes in momentum. I have been absolutely wailing on Fishman with football betting as of late. I went undefeated on Thanksgiving, and today we made four bets. I had won the first three, including an awesome money line bet on the Eagles. I was looking to sweep going into tonight's Washington / Bodymore game.

Unfortunately, the fourth game we bet on was Dallas / Pittsburgh. Dallas was getting three points and was up 13-3 early in the fourth quarter. Pittsburgh rallied to tie it up, giving Dallas the ball back with two minutes left in the fourth. The worst case scenario seemed to be a push. Instead, Romo overthrows Jason Witten and its returned for a touchdown. I'm livid. And while I'm up on the day, all the momentum in the world is now on Fishman's side.

I have Bodymore -6 and under 34.5.

I recommend watching the HBO Ricky Gervais comedy special that is currently in the HBO rotation.

That is all.

I remember when I was a summer associate in 2007. One of our presentations during orientation week told us to input our time daily, but if that isn't possible then do it no later than the end of the week. Or the following Tuesday, which is the real deadline. I of course did this diligently because I was a summer associate. Its not like I had very much work to do anyway. And even if I forgot, it was fairly easy to remember things like "mentoring lunch with x," "bankruptcy group presentation," and "professional reading."

I wondered why people had to be reminded to input their time daily and not write down their hours on little sticky notes. "Why wouldn't you just open up the timekeeper and put in your time immediately," I wondered.

And now here I am, with lots of time written down on random things. Post-it notes, legal pads, napkins... you name it, I've written on it at some point in the last week. I've been pretty good about it thus far. I input my time at the end of the day and then throw away whatever I've written on. But I see the future - I'll have 3 or 4 days worth of sticky notes of hours written down, and I'll spill coffee all over them. Then I'll have to spend an hour or so trying to remember what I did for the last 3 days. It will suck.

Click on this and then take a look at Duke through the years. Look at 1998 - we were number three!

And then something happened, apparently in 1998. I'm not sure exactly what happened, it could be a number of things. Fishman, Al, Bon. Anything really.

On my way to work, I walked by a police station that had a ton of video cameras and reporters set up across the street from it. I first thought, another stupid movie? Then I thought, "perp walk?"

Then I remembered that Plaxico Burress was turning himself in for shooting himself in the leg with an illegal handgun. Sure enough, 17th precinct.