As I recall.

Ben & Jerry's ice cream has announced a voluntary recall of a quarter-million pints of its new flavor, Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler (Peach Ice Cream with Cinnamon-Sugar Shortbread Pieces and a Peach Swirl). Was the recall for a good reason, like they'd accidently blended in 100 gallons of lubricating fluid or tossed in chunks of tasty broken glass? Um, no. It's because they didn't print a "wheat alergy" warning on the label or mention "wheat" as an ingredient.

Yes, yes; avoiding inadvertent anaphylaxis is doubtless a good thing. But wouldn't you think a little common sense could be applied here?

First of all, wouldn't the flavor's name ("peach cobbler") or its description ("with ... shortbread pieces") be a pretty good indication that there's flour in it, even if "flour" is absent from the list of ingredients? And thus, a good way to avoid an allergic reaction might be to refrain from eating the ice cream?

And second, pulling the ice cream out of the stream of commerce seems like classic overkill. And if consumers have bought any ice cream and not eaten it yet, "they should discard the ice cream and send the base of the empty container back to Ben & Jerry’s for a full refund." Sounds to me like a waste of perfectly good ice cream. Here's a better solution: "they should make sure the ice cream is eaten by someone who isn't allergic to wheat, even if that means giving it to the neighbors."

I bought my first pint of this ice cream about a week ago, and I can report that it's pretty good. Sufficiently good that I bought another pint of it yesterday - a day or two after the recall. The flavor was still on the shelves.

Also in recall news possibly involving wheat, the manufacturer of store-branded cat and dog foods is recalling boatloads of wet food for dogs and cats, as it might be causing kidney failure. They suspect it's related to wheat gluten purchased from a new supplier (a supplier they won't be using in the future, as you might imagine).

This recall doesn't affect my household. No one here deigns to eat store-brand catfood if there's something more expensive at the store that I can get for them.

Not much to say, of late.

Working like a maniac at the job. I'm about to complete Week Four of this "two week" project, not that I'm complaining. And it'll last at least another month. So my mortgage holder and checking account are both happy.

The cats were happy on Wednesday and Thursday: the weather was warm enough (over 80, and high 70s, respectively) that I left the bedroom windows open for them, the better to sniff the outdoors. Didn't do that today though: as I was driving home, it was snowing.

Snow!! You'd think it was the middle of March, for crying out loud.

An unfortunate spectacles incident.

I got to leave work early today. Or, perhaps, I had to leave work early today.

My glasses fell apart.

A screw holding the frame around one lens decided it was tired, and fell out of the frame, causing my right lens to follow it. No amount of coaxing could get the screw back into the frame properly, especially since I lacking sufficient hands to hold the lens in place, squeeze the frame together, accurately insert the screw, and tighten the screw.

You know, it's tough to read a document and type the appropriate information into the database when everything is in focus through one eye and very, very badly out of focus through the other.

I've learned from enough past experiences to keep spare sets of glasses in the car, so I had the choice of driving to the glasses place wearing (a) the glasses with one lens (guaranteed to cause an accident, (b) glasses with a seven-year-old prescription (guaranteed to ruin my depth perception and give me a headache) or (c) my current prescription sunglasses (guaranteed to look stupid - or possibly stylish, but not on me). I chose (c), sunglasses after dark.

Luckily, the woman at the glasses place has far more coordination than I have (okay, not an especially high standard), and they're repaired. And ready for another exciting day at the office tomorrow.

Waiting for news.

One of the things about working on short-term projects is that you're never sure when it's going to be over. Typically, you get no notice - "what you're now working on will be it, and when you're done, you're done" - and sometimes it's worse than no notice at all (a phone call from the agency when you get home in the evening, telling you that the project is finished and don't go back to the office).

So you get to be good at speculating from the slightest of clues: the amount of work left to be done, compared to the speed the group has been working at, or the approach of a deadline which may or may not be extended, or the frequency of visits from the people in charge, or the level of distress on their faces when a contract attorney leaves the project, for instance.

And then there's speculation based on no clue at all, just wishful thinking. ("Wouldn't it be nice if the project lasted until the next lottery drawing, which I would win and then quit this job...." which tends to lead us into other lines of speculation.)

My current project was described as being "two weeks" long. On our first day, we were informed that we were to have everything finished by the end of the month, nine days hence. On Monday of the second week, we estimated that we had about one more day's worth of work, and on Tuesday, we overheard one of the paralegals on the phone: "You mean today's not going to be their last day???"

Through the next couple of days, they kept finding small things for us to do - mostly reviewing and re-doing work that had previously been done (and done badly) by BigLawFirm's associates who had picked up pieces they could work on and thereby pad their billable hours. But the last of the documents kept looming in front of us, signalling the end of the project.

Until today: they swept through the room and announced that they'd next like for us to go back through all the documents, and determine which documents should be used in upcoming depositions. And that this document preparation work ought to last "at least a month."

Well, good. I'll be able to keep making mortgage payments and purchasing cat food, after all.

Slight interruption, clarified.

The new job just referred to is slightly different than originally explained. It's not the same client we'd worked for before, and the job will be complete by Feb 28, as that's the once- (but not twice-) extended deadline for production of the documents we're reviewing. And since we're not even using the same software that we had used for that earlier client, it's not especially clear why the firm was specifically looking for alumni of that client's project.

But it will still keep me out of trouble. Alas.

A slight interruption to my movie-watching schedule.

Yes, alas: a job has shown up.

Not exactly a new job: the project that ended in December (the three-month project that I worked on for two and a half years) is coming back to life. Probably not for too long: the client has authorized a two-week extension, and it sounds like the client means it. But it will certainly cut into my attempts to reduce the number of movies in my Netflix queue.

The Departed has been the best of the movies I've seen lately. Little Miss Sunshine was okay - I'd put it on a list of nominations for "Best Comedy of the year" but not "Best Film of the year."

I am officially old.

What was the clue? Checking out a book from the local library. Okay, perhaps that's not the giveaway. This is: I voluntarily checked out a book printed in large type.

I was looking over the the "new books" section, and discovered something from one of my favorite authors. (Web of Evil, by J.A. Jance.) Looked interesting enough - and then I realized that it was the second book in a series. As I hadn't read the first book in that series, I figured I shouldn't read the second one yet.

I looked in the library's on-line catalog, and found that they had the first book (Edge of Evil) in a number of formats: paperback, audio (CD), and large type. I'd prefer to read a hardbound book instead of paperback, and all the paperbacks were already checked out. So I had to take the one in large type.

I enjoyed Edge of Evil enough that I returned for Web of Evil, which I started last night, intending to read a couple of chapters before going to sleep. Didn't exactly follow that plan - I ended up reading the entire book.

This new series is okay. They're a lighter read than her other on-going series (with Joanna Brady and J.P. Beaumont): a bit breezier style and the plotline is not as finely crafted. But they were a good read. Even in large print.

Winter after all.

I spotted snowflakes today. Not many, and not big ones, but some.

Not enough to stick to the grass, but there was a dusting on highway overpasses. Until it warmed up to above freezing, and the precipitation stopped anyway.

But actual snowflakes.

Fairly impressive, if you figure that less than 70 hours earlier, it was 75 degrees.

Because they can't read calendars.

From the front yard:

This crocus is one of a half-dozen or so that have already bloomed. Clearly, they are putting their tiny little heads together to figure out what to do about tonight's projected low temperature of 25. And tomorrow's of 19.

It can take a certain amount of pride in beating last year's first blossom, and by almost a month.

Flat flip flies straight.

It's Sunday afternoon. NFL division playoff games are on the tube. And yet - it's seventy-three degrees outside, in the middle of January. Most years, "the middle of January" means temperatures around freezing and some variety of frozen stuff on the ground. This year, we haven't had any freezing weather yet, and only a couple of evenings in the 20's back in December. And my poor bulbs are confused: I've already seen one crocus in bloom.

Still, 73 degrees in the middle of January shouldn't be celebrated by sitting inside watching football. That calls for shorts and flip-flops and being outside somewhere, doing something.

And on Sunday, "something" meant that I would find one of the Frisbee golf courses that are located in my county's park system. Well, "disc golf courses" to be precise. Although playing Frisbee golf with something other than an authentic Frisbee seems just plain wrong to me. So I found the closest course on Mapquest, got some general idea of how to get there, and took off. I was about halfway there when I realized I had left my Frisbee on the table by the door. Hmm. Setback. But I wasn't going to turn around and go home to get the Frisbee; not when I had the viable alternative of going to the course and playing a round of zen Frisbee. A round where I was guaranteed not to hook the disc into someone's back yard.

I had an interesting scenic tour of part of the county I hadn't been in before, while searching for the park, thankful that I started out with a full tank of gas. When I got to the park, it was so big that I couldn't find the course right away, so I wandered around. Perfectly reasonable course of action, given that it was 73 degrees. In the middle of January. There's the kiddie playground, with swings and slides. There's the picnic shelter. There's the path through the woods, with carved signs identifying the types of trees; someone's Eagle Scout project. There's the football field; there's the tennis court.

Ah. Way over there is the sign welcoming you to the disc golf course, and informing you of the rules: no alcohol, and you have to be gone by dark. Beside the sign was the path leading into the woods, as they have laid out this course through a small forest, the better to have trees and streams as obstacles. And ten feet down the path is a bench, where someone is clearly waiting for his disc golfing buddy to show up so they can start a round. How could I tell? He was carrying a shoulder bag full of flying discs. There must have been at least 10 of them. I couldn't help thinking to myself, "Holy cow. What a geek." But I kept my thoughts to myself, realizing that I was wandering through the woods that constituted this disc golf course, wearing an aloha shirt, shorts, and Corona flip-flops, and I didn't even have the excuse of carrying even a single Frisbee. Or some other, alien flying disc.

Fine. Well, I could still walk around and look at the layout of the course, so that if I do return with a Frisbee one day, I'll have some idea of where I'm going. The white posts indicating the tee box for the first hole were closeby. It took three or four minutes of searching before I spotted a disc golf "hole" - a pole with a basket underneath it for the disc to fall into. I walked up to it, and sure enough, it was marked hole number 1. Wouldn't you think that the tee box for the next hole would be in close sight? I would have, but I couldn't find it. Fine. Way off yonder, I could barely make out another "hole", so I set off through the underbrush to see what number it was. As far as it was, it was probably number 4, or maybe 8 on the way back. Nope. It was hole number 2. And here was a group playing up to it, from the other side of the hole (and thus not from anywhere near the first hole). I was considering asking them if they had a map of the course I could look at, or if they could generally point out where the holes ran - but then I realized that each of them had a shoulder bag full of flying discs. And hmm, for that matter, so did those guys walking along a "fairway" for what must be another hole.

Wow. I had discovered a flock of geeks, each one intent on selecting the right disc for the shot he wanted to make. Basing that decision on some variation on this table, listing flight characteristics of some 250 different flying discs (only four of which are actually Frisbees).

Each one of them would examine the next shot they were going to take, rummage through his bag for the "correct" disc, line up the throw, and send the disc on its flight. Invariably, it would bounce off a tree about 30 feet from the start or hook into the stream. So much for selecting a disc based on distance and flight characteristics.

I decided I'd done what I set out to do: I found the disc golf course, I had some idea of what the holes were like, and I hadn't been indoctrinated into the odd cult of bag-carrying disc golfers. Time to go find out how the football games turned out.

The new job.

I suppose it's time to report on the new job. Many things about it are a whole lot better than the former job, although there are a couple of drawbacks.

Good things first: They treat us like human beings. The firm has given us honest-to-goodness legal work to do, and are willing to let us make our own "legal" decisions on what we're looking at. (The firm has just taken over as General Counsel for a Fortune 100 company, and the former General Counsel boxed up all the case files and sent them on with a bare minimum of description of what's going on and what needs to be done right away. So we are going through the boxes of case files and writing case summary memoranda: we are to figure out what the case is about, who the parties are, where the lawsuit is located, what motions are pending, what discovery deadlines and trial dates are coming up, and even make suggestions as to what strategy to follow. Possibly four or five hundred cases involved.) The firm even treats us (mostly) as though we were permanent employees - we went through a day of orientation (HR paperwork and videos telling us that sexual harrassment was bad and computer security was good), we get subsidized parking in their parking deck in the firm building, we get our own email address with the firm's address, and they even put us onto their internal website.

And of all that, the best is that they give us actual legal work to do; stuff that would probably be done by the firm's associates if they had the luxury of a bit more time to do it in. But since we were discovering rapidly approaching deadlines (the last date for filing an answer in one case is sometime next week, or a trial in another case the last week of the month, for instance), they really didn't have that luxury.

Just a couple of drawbacks. First, they stuck us into a computer training room. You know, an interior room (i.e., no windows) with three rows of tables with a bunch of computers crammed onto them. The sort of room that you can barely tolerate for a two-hour class on How To Use Outlook. Fifteen of us were shoehorned in there, taking up all the computers. And with no room for the 4 or 5 boxes of case files that we each needed to peruse. (We would ask for mustard sauce, but I'm not sure the paralegals would understand the reference.) Just barely tolerable for a short-term project (and this one is scheduled to last 2 to 3 weeks).

And the other drawback? The project is already over. It lasted about six days. Plus-or-minus a half day, depending on how much work you had left to do when they announced, "This box we're handing out now is the last of the cases. Whenever you're done with what you've got, you're finished with the project." It turns out that at some point they decided that they needed us to look at only the product liability and personal injury cases, about 60 of the 400+ cases they were taking over, but didn't either reduce the number of people needed on the project or tell us that it would be even more limited than originally planned.

So it's back to being an unemployed layabout.

Looking for a new job?

Oh, wait. That's me.

Anyway, here's a job posting to consider, if "Find a new job" was your New Year's Resolution: Chief Beer Officer for the Four Points hotel chain. Part-time and compensation as yet announced. But they'd send you as their ambassador to brewery tours, beer festivals, and random nights out at your local watering hole, and they'd expect you to write a monthly (!) blog entry reviewing beer.

They even have an on-line application form for you.

When one door closes, another one opens.

As expected, Friday was the last day on my document production project. It was a good project: when I signed on, it was expected to last 3 months. It actually lasted 30.

I don’t think anyone was especially sad to see this project end. Sure, it’s been a good, steady paycheck. But the past few months have been so boring and unchallenging that I’ve been afraid my head might implode.

The saddest part of the end of the project was the way BigLawFirm acted. They never directly told us that the project was over: the oblique reference two weeks ago was it. They didn’t tell some of the staffing agencies, either, who had to hear it from us. They didn’t even tell their own employees, such as the Staff Attorney who asked on Tuesday whether his last day working for the firm would also be on Friday – and they didn’t respond to him until Friday around noon. And none of the folks who worked on the project – senior partners, junior partners, associates – ever came by to thank us for all our work or to wish us good luck in future endeavors or anything. Oh well: further evidence that I would never want to work for BigLawFirm or spend any unpaid time with any of its employees.

And the open door? We all found new document production projects, with most of us going to the same project that starts on Tuesday.

Recent reading.

I’ve been listening to Microthrills by Wendy Spero. I happily recommend it. I’d like to write as entertainingly as she does, but she has a head start, as she does standup comedy. And I like the fact that the author was the one to read the book. That seems to make books more interesting to me, as you know that the tone and timing is exactly what was meant. Similarly, I liked the CD version of In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson's book about his trip to Australia, quite a bit more because he read it.

As a timely example of contrary, I’m now listening to Loop Group, by Larry McMurtry. The person reading it is mighty distracting: she sometimes mispronounces words or “reads” the wrong word, and often puts emphasis. In a clearly wrong place. When the reader causes you shake your head and go “Whaaa?”, I’m guessing that’s not what the author really had in mind.

I’ve also recently been reading Awake In the Dark, Roger Ebert’s latest collection of reviews and essays. As always, very entertaining, and well written.

Ho, ho, ho.

Looks like my contract attorney job will be over at the end of the year. I suppose I can’t really complain, having worked 30 months on a 3-month project.

And, of course, I don’t know for certain that the job will in fact be over. The bubble-headed associate who is sort of in charge – although on a project of this size, she really isn’t – came over today for the first time in three weeks, to have us change the procedure we’ve been following for the past two months. “You’re doing too much. There’s no way you can be finished by the end of the year if you do all that. So instead, do this other thing which will accomplish only 1% of what you’ve been doing but at least you can get through all of the material. That way, you can be finished by the end of the year.”

This was, naturally, the first that anyone in the room – including our handlers – had heard the phrase “the end of the year” spoken with respect to this project, and it wasn’t entirely clear that she realized she’d said it. And there’s an outside chance that she didn’t really mean to suggest that the project won’t continue into next year – but no one has come forth to officially make that clarification.

Oh, well. We all knew the project would end sometime, and the end of the year is as good a time as any. And my understanding is that there are plenty of other similar projects out there to jump onto.

Reindeer games.

My neighbors are crazy. Oh, sure: not the “I’m Napoleon” kind of crazy. Or chainsaw murderers, that I know of. But crazy just the same.

Those are their illuminated reindeer above. Nothing wrong with illuminated reindeer, of course. The building I work in is surrounded by 75 or 100 of them. So what’s odd about these particular reindeer? They’re in my neighbors’ back yard. Visible only from their neighbors’ back yards, including mine, although my guess is that the least-obstructed view is coming down my driveway, looking through the gap in the trees that line the back of their property.

Okay, I can hear you saying, “Oh, isn’t that cute. It’s the overflow from their flock of painted wicker reindeer with white Christmas tree lights that they have in their front yard.” Sadly, no. That’s what makes it so odd. They have no decorations at all in their front yard. No lights, no inflatable carolers, no giant sleighs, no fake packages. Nothing.

It’s not because garish holiday decorations in the front yards are prohibited by restrictive covenant. (I could only wish. A neighbor two houses down from me proudly exhibits a 7-foot-tall Santa that looks more like a nightmare version of a South Park Underpants Gnome.) And it’s not because the backyard is their Testing Grounds – they’ve been there for over a week, more than long enough to decide, “Yep, it works, let’s move ‘em to the front.”

Someone at the office came up with a semi-plausible explanation: it’s for the grand-kids. Perhaps the Extended Family is coming for Christmas, and the grandchildren are concerned that Santa won’t be able to find them. So the solution was to put the illuminated reindeer in the back yard and then contact Santa, so he’d know what to look for in order to deliver presents to the missing grandchildren.

Nah, I don’t buy it either.

Time to go bowling.

No, no; not that kind.

The New Orleans Bowl. Rice is playing in a post-season bowl game for the first time since 1961 (in the late Bluebonnet Bowl, conveniently played at the Rice Stadium). A very minor bowl in the pantheon of minor bowl games. Played two weeks before that other bowl game played in New Orleans, the Sugar Bowl. But at least it will be on ESPN2, so I’ll be able to watch it.

And that will be the fourth Rice football game that I’ve watched on TV this year, doubtless a record for their national exposure. They’ve been on national TV sufficiently rarely in the past few decades – perhaps once every five years, most notably with their upset of Texas in 1994 – that starting off this season getting to watch their games against Cougar High, UCLA and Texas was fairly amazing. Of course, this may not be the best of omens: Rice lost all three games. Oh, well. “The fourth time’s the charm.”

The last time I saw a Rice football game in person, they lost to Duke. That was in September, 2003. Since then, Duke has won only five games.

It seems to me that I heard about 10 or 15 years ago that Rice held the NCAA record for bowl game futility – they then were the Division I-A school that had been absent from bowl games for the longest time. I think we're happy to pass that record on to someone else.

Peter Jackson to direct The Hobbit, after all.

Good news for those who like the Lord of the Rings trilogy: it sounds as though Peter Jackson will direct The Hobbit and the oddly-conceived "prequel" movie set between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring (you know, where J.R.R. Tolkien didn't think to write a book). It just won't be done by New Line, the company that produced the trilogy of movies. Their rights to do movies from the books expire sometime next year, and when the rights revert to producer Saul Zaentz, he'll bring back Peter Jackson and all his crew, and do it up right.

Peter Jackson NOT directing The Hobbit.

Nor, for that matter, is he going to direct a prequel to the Lord of the Rings. Yes, two separate movies, only one of which would be based on an actual book by J.R.R. Tolkien. Unless they're planning a movie version of The Silmarillion, which I would pay good money to watch.

Update: See above.

Guess which yard is mine.

Hint: My neighbor is retired, and raked his lawn on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of this past week.