Reading: My new Vanity Fair, with Tom Cruise all naked on the cover. Nothing wrong with that.

Seeing: Ocean's Eleven. I enjoyed this movie immensely. I have to say that I have seen Brad Pitt in movies where I was impressed with neither the way he looked nor the way he acted, but I enjoyed him very much in this movie. Oh, and George Clooney doesn't look so bad either. Neither does Matt Damon. Or Andy Garcia, or Julia Roberts. Talk about a movie full of eye candy.

Maybe seeing: Kate and Leopold. What's the buzz on this? I am an unabashed Meg Ryan fan, and Hugh Jackman, well, see above re: eye candy, but I haven't heard a thing about the quality of this one.

Watching: Old Buffy episodes on F/X. Sadly, they're into Season 5, most of which I've seen, but it fills the void since we apparently aren't going to get any new episodes until January. (And yes, I did adapt that 'see above re: eye candy' line from the episode they repeated on Tuesday. In case it sounded familiar.)

Listening: December, the best Christmas album ever. We finally had our first really wintry-looking day today. It was fabulous. I'm really frightening myself with how much I adore the cold.

Also listening: To the "Pina Colada" song. This is my favorite song from the 70's, I think. It wasn't that long ago that I actually listened to the words for the first time and discovered that it's the sweetest song in the world. (It's actually called "Escape," by the way. Not "The Pina Colada Song.")

Not freaking out about: Turning 30. Surprisingly, I'm really not. I think I spent the whole year dealing with it, and now I would just like to get it over with already. Plus, I keep coming back to something Athena said to me in the airport in Chicago when we were waiting for our flights, which was that she found that her 30's gave her permission to really be herself. That was very comforting.

I spend all day at work putting out small fires while a huge one rages around me, namely boxes and boxes of paper that I can't get filed in any kind of reasonable, organized way because I don't even have a clue how to start. For example, I am working on a case that was filed in 1984. 1984, people. As I told Dora one day, I was flying around my living room pretending to be Mary Lou Retton when this case was filed.

And now it's, oh, seventeen years later and I'm looking at a memo written in 1987 summarizing the status of discovery and I don't know what the hell to do with it. Should I make a file called "Discovery Summaries Throughout the Years?" Should I make a binder called "Mid-Eighties Memoranda?" Is there anything even in this memo that is remotely relevant to what is happening in this case today, and if not, why can't I just throw it out?

Because, I can't.

Here is the problem. Something happens when you become a lawyer, and that is you develop an overwhelming sense that every single piece of paper is important, that someday, somewhere down the line, you might need a piece of information that can only be found on this particular piece of paper, so by God, you better hang onto it.

Back when I worked for a lawyer in Los Angeles, I didn't appreciate this particular idiosyncracy. One day my boss decided to clean out his desk and came across his tax returns from 10, 11, 12 years before. When he was done with the cleaning (which wasn't cleaning so much as rearranging), he began to put the tax returns back in his desk.

Me: "You can probably throw those away."

Him: "No, I can't. I might need them someday."

Me: "You know, the IRS only keeps your tax returns for seven years. The government doesn't even have them anymore."

Him: "Exactly. That's why I need to keep them."

I made fun of him then, but I understand it now. In my office, I am surrounded by seventeen years' worth of case files and I can't even figure out what I can send to cold storage, because, you know, someone might need something right this minute, and since it's my job to hand it to them, I can't send anything off-site, for God's sake.

Well, for crying out loud, I'm going to be a maid of honor again.

(My friend Michelle: "Are you high??")

It's not like I could really say no. Mary got engaged over the weekend, and she's my second-oldest friend, after Elise, so there really wasn't any way to turn her down. And really, I would much happier to be in her wedding if (1) I was a little more excited about the person she was marrying and (2) I didn't have to fly back to be in it. She set a date for August, which means I'll be in DC by then.

Of course, right now, I don't think there's a single person who knows this guy who is 100% certain that this wedding is even going to happen. But I'm not in the habit of writing unpleasant things about my friends here, and I'm not going to start now.

So I will write about happier things! I'm going to see Kay this weekend, Kay who is getting married in April to a boy we all like very much, I'm happy to say. I'm going to be a bridesmaid in that shindig, too, though her sister has the honor duties, so I won't be all in charge this time. I'll just get to show up wearing something pretty and maybe dance with a groomsman or two, which I can certainly handle.

I already told her that I'm really only coming to see her to take advantage of her. Kay went to culinary school in Chicago and became a pastry chef, so I told her I wanted to bake all weekend so I have something to take back for the big family Christmas party taking place at my parents' house the day after I get there, and she actually agreed, so woo-hoo, baked goods!

Okay, it's 12:45 in the morning and as I am on a quest to get to work before 11:00 at least one day this week, I'm going to bed. But before you get back to whatever you should be doing, you should go read this. It's a year-old Craig Wilson column (he writes for USA Today) about tips for holiday eating, and if you've ever read any tips for holiday eating before, you'll appreciate this column. I think #5 is my favorite:

"Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it. Hello? Remember college?"

And so I leave you, with hilarious words that are not my own. Have a good day, evening, night, whatever it is for you.