Day 322/365 - Kilroy Was Here

For this week's self-portrait we have me sitting in my office behind the sixty-two grant files currently piled on my desk awaiting legal review. To be honest, I had to hunker down a little to get the "Kilroy" effect. When I sat up straight my chin rested on the stack. Hmm, it's looking like I should've put my camera in the 'backlighting' mode.

This is my busiest time of year at work. The government's fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30. The bulk of the money Congress appropriates to each agency (it's sort of like our allowance) is categorized as one-year money. That means you only have until the end of the fiscal year to spend it or it all goes back into the Treasury. Congress can also appropriate multi-year money, which is good for a fixed period of years, and no-year money, which is good forever. Everybody wants no-year money. It's the holy grail of appropriated funds. The only no-year money my agency gets is for our loan programs.

Because the bulk of our money expires at the end of the fiscal year, there is always a mad rush in August and September to hurry up and spend it before we lose it. Each file stacked in front of me in the photo above represents one earmark grant and each is funded with one-year money. These are special grants mandated by Congress that are added to our appropriations bill every year. They are the "pork" projects you hear people complaining about. They funnel federal funds to various congressperson's districts for a host of projects, some of which have some relationship to my agency's mission and some of which have nothing to do with nothing.

In the past, we have been directed to provide grants for such diverse projects as an aquarium on Long Island, a museum of jazz in New York City, a fiber optic cabling project in the Pacific Northwest, a storefront and on-line catalog featuring products made by local craftspeople in West Virginia, and an effort to promote sites related to the feud between Hatfields and McCoys to potential tourists. When I first started practicing grants law, my agency would only get 30-40 earmark grants a year, but the number has steadily increased. This year we received over 240 grants totalling in excess of $80 million.

We hate these things. They're a pain in the ass and Congress doesn't give us any extra money to administer them, so we just keep getting stretched thinner and thinner. There was a moratorium on them in 2007 and we were soooooo happy. Most of the organizations that receive these earmarks have no idea what they are doing when it comes to the federal grant process, so getting them to the point where they are legally sufficient can be pretty labor intensive. In addition to the ones currently piled up on my desk, there are still about 130 more that I'm going to have to clear by September 30th that haven't made their way over to my office yet. This is why I can never take vacation in August or September. I'm the only grants law attorney we've got. Oh well, it keeps me employed anyhow.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 61/365 - Office Away From Office

We have a Starbucks adjacent to my office building and when I need to really focus on something and blaze through my review of it, I take files down there and work. Today it was a grant announcement I'd promised to get reviewed and returned to the program office by COB. This is my favorite table. There were a couple kids sitting there when I entered, but by the time I got my chai they'd left and I was able to claim my usual spot.

I've always been one of those people who focus and concentrate better when there is stuff going on around them. I could never study in complete silence. My mind tends to start wandering if there isn't something going on in the background. Some people need absolute quiet in order to concentrate and others of us are just the opposite. In school I always had to have the radio or tv on when I was studying or doing homework and even now I listen to music in my office.

It seems counter-intuitive that you'd need noise and commotion in order to avoid distractions, but that's what works for me.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 47/365 - Dead Tree Graveyard

This stack of files and papers is my current workload, a sizeable chunk of which has to be completed before COB on Wednesday -- and given that Wednesday will likely only be a half-day that means I have to have it done by the time I leave the office tomorrow. Yay, fun.

Included in this mound of woe are an appeal of a protest determination, two appeals of agency decisions to terminate grants, a new grant program announcement, a demand letter to a grant recipient that owes us some money back, three grant modifications, and the notice of award boilerplate for a new grant program. It's enough to make you wish there were marauding packs of wild paper shredders or woodchippers wandering the halls of my office building looking for files to devour. These people are seriously infringing upon my goofing off time. I demand my inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, dammit!

Today I was able to get the agency response to the appeal of the protest determination filed and got the program announcement reviewed and kicked it back with comments. So that means tomorrow I have to draft and file a brief addressing three legal issues underlying one of the grant termination appeals, review the demand letter (through rain, sleet and snow -- b*tches better have our money), and finalize the settlement status reports for the two grant appeals.

We have no interest in settling either of these appeals, but the judge ordered us to conduct settlement negotiations so I'll listen to what the other side has to say and then file reports saying the negotiations failed and the agency is not inclined to settlement at this juncture. It's largely a pointless exercise, but given that opposing counsel in one of the cases has yet to respond to my email or voicemail, I can report that fact and hopefully score some brownie points with the judge. Every little bit helps.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 19/365 - The Ties that Bind (and Choke and Gag)

The photo is a close-up of my necktie du jour. Every work day I stuff a tie in my bag that matches what I'm wearing and then when I get to the office I drape it over some reference books at the side of my desk to keep it from getting wrinkled. I only bother to actually put it on if I have a meeting to go to, otherwise the tie just lays there until it's time to go home, at which point I stuff it back in my bag.

I hate wearing a tie. Given that fact, I might have been better off choosing a profession that generally didn't require me to wear one. I'm half-convinced that one of my ancestors was hanged at some point and that my aversion to having things tight up around my neck is the hereditary remnant of his sorry end.

When I started work I wore a suit everyday, but then after the first year I realized that was a bit pointless because the first thing I'd do when I got to my office was take my jacket off and hang it up. So then I ditched my suits and just started wearing slacks, shirt, and tie to work. After about 5-6 years of that, I began to question why I bothered with the tie given that I spend most of the day in my office and generally don't see anyone except for other lawyers, none of whom care whether I'm wearing a tie.

That's when I switched to carrying rather than wearing the tie and only putting it on for meetings. And now it's even gotten to the point that I don't wear it to every meeting. Only certain meetings merit the tie. Meeting with regular clients on routine matters = not tie-worthy. Typically I only put on a tie now if the meeting involves people from outside the Agency or if there are going to be fairly high-ranking people in attendance.

Guess you can tell I've never really cared for dressing up. When I was in the Navy the sailors on my ship were only permitted to go ashore if we were wearing collared shirts. Don't ask why, it was some BS argument about upholding the reputation of the command. Whatever. After dealing with that frustration for a while, I finally hit upon the idea of buying a white golf shirt and cutting the collar off it. Then when I wanted to go ashore, I would just tuck the collar under my t-shirt or sweatshirt so that technically I was wearing a collared shirt. Once I was off the ship, I would take the collar off and jam it in my pocket and go on my merry way.

Worked like a charm. When I left the Navy I gave my shirt collar to another guy in my division so he could carry on my legacy of obeying the letter of the rule while simultaneously thumbing his nose at the spirit of it. You know, on second thought maybe I was destined to be a lawyer after all, my distaste for neckties notwithstanding.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 13/365 - My Grindstone

This is where I work. I’m an attorney for a small (and generally ignored) agency of the U.S. Federal government. It’s not as sexy or important as some of the big agencies are, but it’s not a terrible place to work. The pay is good, the people are nice, and the work doesn’t drive me crazy or make me miserable. That’s really all I’m looking for in a job.

I’ve never understood why some people invest so much of their self-image into their job, or why they expect fulfillment or affirmation from their work. For me, a job is just that -- a job. It’s a means to an end and a way to pay the bills. If work was wonderful, they wouldn’t have to pay you to do it.

I show up, I do my work, they pay me, and I go home and do the stuff I really enjoy and that I find stimulating and fulfilling. Work isn’t Disneyland, it’s my ticket to Disneyland.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)

Day 9/365 - Go Speed Racer, Go!

Most weekdays I eat lunch at my desk. Normally I have some kind of wrap (today it was turkey & swiss), veggies (today it was grape tomatoes), and fruit (forgot to pack fruit in my lunch bag today -- bummer). When the weather gets colder I switch from wraps to soup. Eating pretty much the same thing every day has never really bothered me.

During my lunch break, I usually either read, do the crossword puzzle, or watch a DVD of a tv show or old cliffhanger serial on my PC. Today I watched Speed Racer. It was the episode where he had to go up against the Mammoth Car (an all-time classic).

Speed Racer is my favorite cartoon of all time and possibly even my favorite tv show (although Northern Exposure and Jonny Quest are neck-and-neck for a close second place). The movie they released this year sucked tremendously, but the old Speed Racer tv show is tough to beat.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)