Love Bites

So at work we've been working on several projects for firmwide distribution since I started in December.  Drafting forms and memos and templates for firm use, then meeting over and over to discuss them, revising them, running them past different people.  After six months of intense work on these items, we are finally getting closer to rolling them out.

As a first step in this rollout, firm management is introducing some of these items at the weekly partners' meeting today.  This will be their first look at things we've been working on for months, and our risk management counsel will be there making a presentation to provide a backdrop for it all.  Once we factor in any thoughts they may have today, we will make (hopefully) one or two final revisions and call it done, then subsequently roll it out firmwide.

So this partners' meeting is a weekly thing, but the guest speaker and the rollout materials are new, and since we were so integral in the development of these items, the billing manager and myself will be in attendance.  We want to hear what materials are presented and how, and to bear witness to the true, first reactions to our "babies".  ;-) 

I've never been to a partners' meeting before since, you know, I'm not a partner, or even an attorney.  But I'm going today, and it's exciting and I'm looking forward to it.  Some of the partners still don't know who I am in person, so hopefully the additional exposure will help once the rollout begins and the questions start.  I fully expect to be the bad guy for a month or three after the rollout...we have made a huge, but necessary overhaul of firm procedures, and it will be a lot of change.

Last night, I had my monthly acupuncture appointment.  I told S, my acupuncturist, that I'd been feeling discombobulated and out of focus lately, so she gave me some additional needles for stress.  A couple of those go right into a very muscled area of the shoulders, near the neck.  I got home last night and had a raised bump and the tiniest hint of a bruise on one side where one of those needles went.  Put some arnica gel on it, as S recommends for these rare occasions, went to bed.

Today, it is a nice, well developed purple bruise.  On my shoulder verging towards my neck.  If I recall, it's kind of a common spot for, you know, a love bite. A hickey, if you will.  And while it doesn't look overtly like a hickey, it doesn't NOT look like one.  My shirt doesn't hide it. 

HI, PARTNERS!  Here I am, your trusty newish person changing everything...don't mind the sexy little love bite on my neck.  I swear, I am a complete professional.

;-)

**This post was about something different than you expected, wasn't it?  Admit it.  :-)