Okay!

All the work I brought home is DONE! . . . and I still have most of the day to enjoy with nothing hanging over my head.  Wonderful!

You know, I had been thinking how nice it would be to work from home.  But this weekend I felt a lot like I used to feel when I went back to college -- no matter what I was doing, I always felt like I should be studying instead.  Not a good feeling.  

So after working at home this weekend, I've decided it would be better to work four days a week with long weekends instead of working from home.   Then when I come home I'll be able to forget about work.  MUCH better.

I'm very fortunate that my bosses will no doubt okay virtually anything I want to do.  Jeanne is my age and is thinking of working part time herself so she understands perfectly.

And John is just so used to working with me, that he doesn't seem to care for the idea of trying to train someone else.   He's not exactly a "people person."

And it does take some time to train for patent work.  When I went to work for Wood, Herron in Cincinnati back in 1992, they insisted on TWO interviews before hiring me, even though I was living in Texas at the time.  When they insisted on two trips north, they told me they were just being very careful about hiring since, according to them, it always took a minimum of two years to train a patent paralegal.  And I had no IP experience at the time.  But they went ahead and hired me anyway because I had been accepted at Chase Law School at Northern Kentucky University, and was looking for a place to work while I attended law school at night. 

That's not how it turned out, of course.  I got permission to delay law school for a year and bought a home in Northern Kentucky in order to quality for Kentucky resident tuition.  But by the end of that year, I had decided NOT to attend law school, but to continue working as a patent paralegal.  I loved the work.  And I did NOT love the idea of owing a fortune in tuition by the time I got out of law school at age 50-something! 

Turned out to be an excellent decision.  While I was in college in Texas,  one of my best friends got married here in Baton Rouge.  While attending her wedding, I saw her husband's best friend for the first time and now he is MY husband!   I ended up working in Cincinnati for four years, then I married Mark and he moved me back down here to Louisiana where I had lived for 15 years before going back to school in 1988.

So now I've been happily married for almost 14 years.  We have horses, dogs, cats (and a house) that I adore.  And I am NOT still paying back student loans.  Life is good.