Question Number Eight

Today was a quiet day at the office. I struggled to get out of second gear all day and I don’t think I ever made it. Fortunately it was a day that I could handle in second gear, so it was all good. I spent most of the day doing some application testing, corporate training, and working my way through my backlogged email. T.R. is on travel, so we had a great call about mid-day and then she was back to work. I am looking forward to talking to her tonight. I had dinner with Tony at Holder’s and then came home, where I am catching up on my television (watching Bones).

Let me drop straight into Question Number Eight:

If the average human life was 40 years how would you live your life differently?

Well, first off, being forty nine I would be dead, so the question becomes a moot point. I’ve never been much of a person to dwell on the many different choices that I could have made through my life. We then layer on top of that my faith in an immortal soul. The end result is I wouldn’t have done anything differently. We have all of eternity to do everything. We’ve done many things before. We will do many things to come. Then, if the quantum theory of multiple universes is correct, we ARE doing everything else, now, simultaneously, somewhere in the wilderness of space and time. That is kind of a cool thought.

I don’t have anything planned for the weekend. I have things that I would like to do – I am feeling a desire to head over to the coast and get lunch or perhaps wander for a while, maybe hit a museum somewhere. There are a lot of little things that I would like to do around the apartment to prepare for the fall, so I may tackle some of them. I am looking forward to a quiet and gentle fall, with ample time to spend reading and writing and reflecting. We will see if I can make that particular wish come true.

Oh, that reminds me – let me tell you about a very vivid dream I had last night. I dreamt that I was a District Attorney and that I had been responsible for a highlight profile prosecution of three sisters who had committed a particularly high profile murder. It was a tough prosecution but I was successful. One of the attorneys who worked for me came upon some potentially exculpatory evidence and turned it over to me. A short while later, another of the attorney’s went on an anti-religious rant, harassing various people in the office for their religious affiliations.

I attempted to iscipline the attorney and it became very confrontational, so I started the process of suspension and termination. Then, the first attorney joined with the second attorney and they attempted to blackmail me into dropping the disciplinary action because the first attorney believed I had buried the evidence earlier. They thought they had me. But, as the investigation began to unfold the learned that immediately after the exculpatory evidence was given to me, I had contacted the Office of Professional Responsibility and turned the evidence over to an independent investigator. I swiftly termed both lawyers who had engaged in misconduct and attempted to blackmail me. The independent investigation into the exculpatory evidence turned up a witness – a witness who, rather than providing evidence to free the three sisters – provided the evidence that bolstered my original case.

I awoke glad that I was an ethical District Attorney. It was a strange dream, I am not sure I have ever had a lawyer dream before. I am sure the dream had its roots in a conversation TR and I had about honesty as well as recent Mercury News stories about investigations into the conduct of the local D.A.’s office. It all layered together and moved through my subconscious. It was a very cool and very vivid dream.