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: A Season of Mists

Rantings & Ravings

By Alan

Because it's really starting to get to me.

I've been extremely crunched at work of late. Back on Monday 10/29, I billed about 14 hours, working from 6:25am-6:30pm and from 10:45pm-2:30am. This past Thursday 11/08, I billed about 10.5 hours, working from 9:15am-7:30pm and from 10:45pm-2:45am. I've been semi-frantically trying to get 3 critical application drafts out by the end of today. One has gone and the other two are (hopefully) in good shape to be finished today and sent.

In other words, it's been pretty bad of late.

The fun really starts to pile up when I finish something that's critical. See, although I prioritize everything I do (I have to), previously-not-critical things become critical while I'm working on the then-critical things. I'm pretty much in a never-ending pile of critical work that gets worse and worse every week. It's been like this for at least the past 1-3 months, with me being behind on work since May of this year.

We simply don't have enough people at my firm. I am absolutely swamped, yet I keep getting new work. A while back, I spent a Saturday or Sunday just updating up my docket - adding new things to it, updating my time entries, etc. When I tallied my items, I came to a total of 64 things, including about 10 applications to draft (provisionals, nonprovisionals and conversions). While I'm probably down to only--Crap. I just counted. 64 items, including preliminary amendments and random "check this" things, but not including IDS'.

Ugh.

I'm stuck in this horrible work cycle that's really starting to piss me off.

My bosses did higher someone new who started about 2-3 weeks ago, but he has no experience with patent drafting or prosecution so he won't be "up to speed" (i.e., to lighten the aggregate firm workload) for at least a few months (and I'm dubious beyond that, though I won't go further into detail here).

And there's a new secretary starting Monday, which does me (personally) no good at all.

*sigh*

Well, I need to get to work. Hopefully I'll be done in only 5-6 hours, though I wouldn't place any bets.

Oh yeah, since she got back stateside, I've been hanging out with movie.girl at least twice a week. We speak on the phone pretty often. I'm meeting up with her on Sunday, presumably to watch more of Doctor Who Season 3. She just bought a new laptop (after at least 8 phone calls with me about it in the past 3 days).

Haven't been playing WoW since I hit 70. Have been playing MTGO (Magic the Gathering Online) and spending way, way too much on it. Did go to a boardgame meetup last Friday 11/02. Lots of fun.

I really don't want to do work today. Too bad I really don't have a choice.

Full post as published by A Season of Mists on November 10, 2007 (boomark / email).