For two weeks now, Houston’s been hotter than … well, a mild fever. Which is hot, as air goes. And despite the lack of rain, it’s still a wet, heavy heat. At least the drought is keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Biking to work has become a somewhat icky endeavor; I’ve learned to bring an extra shirt to change into when I get there.

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I saw a car today with three bumper stickers: a Mac apple, a Houston Astros sticker, and a sticker that looked like those oval country/vacation spot stickers with initials in them but actually stood for “Jesus Freak.” I don’t know why the combination struck me as odd, but I kind of want to meet this person.

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Browsing the internet on my lunch break*, I noticed that I’ve been slacking on the blogging front lately. So here I am.

I took Sam to the vet this morning for a check-up and a squirt of something-something vaccine up the nose. I told the vet one of his eyes had been red off and on lately, but it hadn’t seemed to bother him too much. She took him into the back for a tear test and found out that my poor puppy is making almost no tears and has horribly dry eyes. And his cruel, cruel mother had let him suffer all this time. She didn’t say that second part out loud.

So now I have a tube of goop to squirt into his eyes once a day. I have to hold his eye open and squeeze a line of goo the consistency of Vaseline onto the surface of his eyeball. The vet techs managed to do it with two of them holding him still—I can’t wait to try it at home by myself. I can only hope he’ll understand how soothing the nice happy goop is and come running for it every morning. Hey, it could happen.

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Before I talk about work I’d like to share a quick story from today’s evening walk. The story is that a bird pooped on Sam’s head. Better him than me, I thought, since he didn’t notice and probably would have enjoyed it if he did. But then at home when I tried to wipe off the mess with a wet paper towel, he ducked and I got poop on my hand. So I didn’t escape unscathed after all. It figures.

Okay, work. I’m still thrilled to be there, even though I emptied my candy jar in the first two days. I’ve had to bring in and eat *fruit*, can you imagine? I finished my first practice assignment in cite analysis today and will probably get to start on a real assignment tomorrow, assuming I didn’t completely miss the boat on the practice one.

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Today was Day One of my summer job as an editorial assistant at a sweet little publishing house that puts out a series of handbooks for practicing lawyers. If you practice in Texas, you can probably guess who they are, but I won’t name names.

No complaints about the facilities so far. Far from it, in fact. I have my own computer at my own giant desk in my own V-shaped “cube.” It even came pre-stocked with supplies: notepads, tape, tissues, a stapler and staple puller, paper clips, a white-out pen, white-out tape, and a rainbow of pens and highlighters.

The best part? My own candy jar, pre-filled with chocolate goodies. Hey, I would’ve done this editing work for you for free if you’d asked nicely, but now you’re going to pay me AND throw in a few mini Snickers to boot? Dude. I’m gonna edit those manuscripts SO THOROUGHLY.

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