wednesday, 4 october, 2000
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Reading: Little Altars Everywhere,
for my very first book club meeting. I actually
finished it in one day, because I didn't want
to go to my first book club meeting without
actually having read the book. Turns out we
spent about eight minutes discussing the book
and two and a half hours discussing birth control
methods.
Watching: Deadline, Buffy, and of course, The West Wing. I'm a little bit behind because of Monday Night Football (go Chiefs!) but I finally finished watching Deadline today. Big, Oliver Platt-sized thumbs up, although I would like to see them focus more on the journalism student angle than the newsroom angle, even though Bebe Neuwirth and Lili Taylor are both excellent. Listening: Vavoom!, the semi-new Brian Setzer Orchestra. Fabulous. The line forms on the right, babe. Also, "She Bangs" on the radio. I like it. Just shut up. Anticipating: How cold it's going to be tomorrow. It was 90 degrees over the weekend. That is not October. It made me cranky. I need October weather in October. Sweaters and scarves and hats and things. Finally. Now we just need to get where Daylight Savings Time is over, and I'll be completely content. Contemplating: Oliver Platt, and how bizarre it is that I find him so attractive, but I find him so attractive. I can't really explain it.
Link of the Day:
All you have to do is click the link. Chrissie agreed to marry Joe
if he gets 1,000,000 hits to his website by December. Considering
that he had 532,000 when I was there four days ago and now
has over 911,000, I think he's going to make it. Help him cross the finish line and
chalk one up for true love.
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So, let's deal with the two primary issues concerning my life today, namely, how infuriated I am with my father, and how satisfied I am that new West Wings are finally a part of my life. (Spoilers will appear in the third section.)
My father. I don't like to think that I have a extraordinarily complicated relationship with my father, but I suppose that I do. My father knows a lot of people in this town, and a few of them are lawyers. He's been slightly persistent, only slightly, about my contacting them for interviews, and I've been slightly hesitant about it, for reasons that I can't really justify. They're stupid and petty. The fact is that my father is responsible for getting me in the door of every single job I had up until I started law school. And since that point, everything I've done, every job I've had, has been me, and only me, and I have felt empowered by that. So, finally, I realize how foolish it is to ignore contacts that could prove helpful, so I ask my father to send me a list of the attorneys he knows, and I will take it from there. I can find out where they are, I can write my cover letter that will mention that my father suggested I contact them. I can take it from there. We had several very specific discussions about the extent of his involvement, and it was to end at the list. I didn't want him to contact them directly, and I told him not to. Why I didn't want him to is not exactly the point, but I knew I could handle it just fine contacting them all on my own. I would get in the door. I checked my e-mail when I was home for lunch, and he had forwarded me both the e-mail he sent on Friday to one of the lawyers, and the lawyer's response. I was livid. I was so livid, I didn't know what to do with myself. I drove back to work in a fog. The only good thing about it is that it took my mind off the crap temp job which is cold-calling businesses asking for people to sign up for a jail and bail fundraiser. I carried on something awful in the car on the way home from work. I was a complete wreck by the time I walked in the door. I called my parents and miracle of all miracles, my mother answered the phone. I ask if my father is home, and she says yes, and I say good, because I don't want to talk to him. She wisely takes the phone upstairs, out of my father's earshot, and I wail and moan to her about it, and she talks me down. She agrees that what he did was wrong and that I have a right to be mad, but she encourages me to look at the big picture, which hasn't really changed much, which is true. I appreciate his motives, I really do, but he went behind my back and did something I specifically asked him not to do, and by doing so, completely undermined my autonomy as a responsible, professional, educated adult. Finally, I calm down enough to talk to him. And God help me, I don't know what the hell I was expecting, because it certainly didn't go well. I got an apology of the "I'm sorry you're upset" variety, rather than the "I made a mistake" variety. I get all worked up again just sitting here thinking about it, so I won't go into the details of this particular conversation, but the whole time, the only image that I had in my head was of me at age six in a white dress with a pink ribbon in my hair stomping my foot and saying, "Mine." Mine. My career is mine, and mine alone, and nobody gets to make decisions about it except me, and I owe no one any explanations about those decisions, and that is something that my father cannot stand. He's going to have to learn. That's all.
My wonderful, wonderful show is back, thank goodness, a bright spot to end my day, even though I had already made myself feel a little bit better by getting dinner at Boston Market, chicken and mashed potatoes and cornbread, a heaping plate of comfort food if ever there was one. Anyway, I was distracting myself today trying to figure out who was going to be hit, and I got it partly right and partly wrong. I figured the President would suffer some kind of superficial wound, but I thought that either Charlie would be seriously hurt or Zoey's secret service agent would be killed. I never expected to see our poor Josh up there, holding his chest together. I liked the flashbacks. I liked seeing how everyone got to be there. C.J.'s story was especially funny. I'm glad Donna made it into the main titles. I'm wondering if they're even going to acknowledge that Moira Kelly is gone, although it wouldn't bother me if they didn't, because she was oh so annoying. I like Stockard Channing as the first lady but I don't think she's very believable in the doctor part of her character. I loved the part where Hoynes was sitting in the situation room conveying all the authority of a duck. I'll die if I have to take a job like the one Sam had before, although the money would be nice. I ended up watching it in bits and pieces, though, because my friend Marissa called to report that she has passed the bar. I decided that was just about the only thing worthy of interruption, and besides, I was taping it anyway, so I watched with one eye while chatting with her, then watched the whole thing over again after it was over. So far, my friends and I are three for three, bar exam-wise. The rest of my friends, the ones who took Pennsylvania, find out Friday. I'll be glad when the stress of not knowing is over for all of us.
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