An interesting conversation is its own reward.

You might think that a roomful of attorneys whose intellectual capacities are not fully engaged by the work they are doing might have interesting, thought-provoking conversations. You might think that, but as a general proposition, you'd be wrong.

Today's conversation was about as close to interesting and thought-provoking of any in the past week, on the relationship between the novel "Dune" and the Unabomber. Still, that was a step or two up from yesterday's existential conversation, "Well, what are boogers?"

[sigh]

There's a reason why I jam my headphones on and listen to books-on-tape. (Today, a novel by Larry McMurtry, "By Sorrow's River.")