♪ It's the most... wonderful time... of the year! ♪

Our witness list was due today in a big case in I am co-counsel with Happy Bachelor Lawyer. He's been working this case for more than three years now; I've been on it for a little bit over six months. So where was he when the witness list was due? Out of town, hunting, I think. I did the best job I could and I think I got all of our bases covered. But I needed help wrangling all of the evidence and dealing with everything, particularly the medical proof; Bad Attitude Paralegal was out with her kid being very, very sick, so this left me (again) with basically no support until BAP's husband could come home and relieve her so she could assist me. When we were all but done getting everything together, then HBL calls up and says, "Hey, be sure and include so-and-so, and so-and-so" (which I already had done). Then he calls up BAP and says, "Hey, it'll all be okay, I spoke with TL and he's on it." At that exact moment, I was sitting cross-legged in her office going through stacks of evidence with her. Needless to say, we wer both quite aggravated with HBL at that moment in time.

Now, all the while, I had four three-inch binders of summary judgment motions to read and get back to my co-counsel in a different case on. Since I'm going to be leaving the firm in less than seven weeks, they need my advice about how to proceed with one facet of the case I've been handling. They were supposed to make discovery arrangements with opposing counsel today and I had to defer giving my advice to them until after the witness list was done. Hopefully what I had to contribute got where it needed to be, in time to be useful.

And in the meantime, there continue to be paperwork hitches, bank delays, and generalized uncertainty regarding buying the house. And I'm going to be out of the office basically for the rest of the week -- tomorrow afternoon I'm leaving for Nash Vegas for a litigation techniques seminar, which will keep me out of town until Thursday evening. Then Friday I'm going to Chatty Nooga to explore the possibility of a future relationship with a firm there.

Friday afternoon I'll have to race back up to Knoxhell from Chatty in order to attend the closing on the house. Then Monday it's back to Nash Vegas for the conclusion of the seminar. Why the seminar couldn't be on three sequential days I have no earthly idea. But then again, the fact that I'm killing myself to buy a house that The Wife and I may have to turn around and sell in a few months anyway raises some damn good questions that lack readily-apparent answers, too. I detest chaos in its myriad shapes and tastes, and yet suddenly I'm absolutely engulfed by it. There seems to be nothing I can do but plow my way straight through it and hope I don't hit an iceberg along the way.