Phlegm is our friend, you know.

Gary is an attorney whose office is next to mine. Gary is great. Gary has been very sick for the past week. Does that stop Gary from coming into the office? No. Not one bit.

Whoever designed this office building obviously didn't have sickness in mind. The walls are not thick enough to cover up the sound of Gary's constant hacking, sneezing, coughing and gurgling. Every time Gary hacks up a nice...um...phlegm ball...Rach and I feel like vomiting. We also generally feel the need to call Gary on the speaker phone and give him hard time (yeah, we're really productive). The other day we called Gary and exclaimed "gross!!! Stop your gurgling!" to which he replied "HEY! Phlegm is our friend, you know." After which he broke into a rousing baritone chorus of "Nobody knows the troubles I've seen, nobody knows my sorrows." Normally Gary's voice is not very low, but he was able to achieve the deep notes that day, no doubt with the aid of his nasty cold.

Shortly thereafter, I continued my quest for productivity by updating my facebook profile and grabbing a new fortune. My fortune now reads "You won't dream unless you get to sleep." How appropriate. The unfortunate thing about dreaming is that these days my dreams are often a continuation of what I was doing at work. Editing documents and managing a virtual data aroom doesn't get any easier in my dreams either, especially when my dreams randomly happen to be in Arabic. Note: I only speak 2 years worth of Arabic, so my dreams progress really slowing because I spend a lot of time just trying to say things like "but I need to go to the bathroom before I can go to the post office (darn, what's the word for post office?!)." FATIGUE.

Maybe Gary could sing me to sleep over a conference call...

On a related note: I haven't been grocery shopping for ages. Most meals are provided at the firm, so I haven't needed to go much. However, I like to eat breakfast at home generally speaking. This combination of circumstance and preference resulted in this morning's breakfast of some fruit salad saved from yesterday's lunch, and a handful of sour cream and onion pringles (thank you, Nicole) and washed down with a glass of tap water and a dose of multi-vitamins. MMMM, good eatin'

That didn't end up being related at all. Forgive my digression.

I've been attempting to teach American ebonics to the brits here at the office. I know, I know, how is a small white girl going to effectively teach ghetto speak? I manage. Plus, I be ghetto now that I inhabit DC.

Susie's ebonics are coming along quite nicely. We got all of the partners and the client laughing at dinner the other night when, as we were given a new assignment, Susie slumped one shoulder, lowered her eyes and retorted"I ain't scurred." (sigh) I see my work here is done. Converting the British Isles, one attorney at a time. Feels so good...