I'm sure my memory has faded of some of the Christmas's of 40+ years ago to the point that I can't really compare them on an equal basis with this Christmas. That aside today was a really, really happy day. I could barely sleep last night then after making arrangement in the morning to meet my lawyer this afternoon I had difficultly paying attention in during parts of meetings that didn't affect me.
When I arrived at the lawyer's office I asked if he had looked at any of the stuff from the felons at PNNL/Battelle yet and he said, "No, I figured I'd let you open the box. This is probably just like Christmas for you." He was so right. The package didn't have any pretty paper on it but that didn't matter. I opened it up and did a high level scan of the material. They sent stuff I was certain they would have destroyed and then didn't send stuff that I thought they would give up easily.
We then got down into the details of some of the stuff and we laughed and rolled our eyes. I dug around looking for things and then would laugh and laugh when I found it or find they are trying to avoid sending it. I had so much fun with it. So much like a bunch of new toys to play with on Christmas Day.
They admit to monitoring my blog and web sites until at least mid May of 2006--I was fired in June of 2005. You would think they would have had real work to do. But that's your tax dollars at work there. There weren't any terrorists to catch those months I guess.
Finally my lawyer said that I need to take my toys away and play with them on my own for a few days. He told me how it needs to be organized and what we need to do next.
I left his office, dropped most of it off at Kinkos to be copied so we have the original and a "working copy". I then went back to my room and started going through the CD's and DVD's. More laughter and I had to share. I saw a friend on-line and started chatting with him about it. We finally agreed to meet for dinner and just as I was about to leave Kinkos called back and said my copy job was done. All 1,101 pages of it. Wonderful! We changed our dinner location to be across the street from Kinkos and I picked up my "working copy" to take to dinner with me.
My friend laughed at me as my hands couldn't seem to make up their mind over which to pick up; the new toys or the menu. He said in a whiny little boy voice, "But I don't want to eat breakfast, I want to open presents."
I barely ate as I dug through the pages and showed my friend page after page that kept us laughing; "They think this is important?" Finally when my bladder and his butt could no longer take sitting there we left and now I'm back at my room. I should be going to sleep but my new toys are calling my name...