Deposed!

I am avoiding reading the deposition of one of our executives. It is a 220 page transcript of a full day of questioning that I already sat through. I have to read it to determine which parts of it are highly confidential (you know, like price terms and distribution patterns) and what is merely confidential that anyone from the other side or another studio who is also a party can read. After 25 years at this, I would rather do almost anything else--except answer interrogatories. Even document review can be more interesting. There is something satisfyingly voyeuristic about reading other people's emails and powerpoints. I learn a lot about our business when I read those types of documents. But I am old fashioned. I cannot read them on a monitor. I need to have paper copies. The young lawyers working for the firms we hire do not understand. I try to explain that one day their eyes will get old and fuzzy too and they will have to give up their contact lenses (assuming they have not had lasik) and wear glasses. But it does not compute for them.

So here are some random thoughts on a Friday afternoon before I go to a meeting which mercifully gets me away from the depo transcript for a few hours.

1. What is really behind the "accident" that injured Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and killed his wife? I hate to be so suspicious and cynical but Mugabe showed up at the hospital very quickly.


2. There was actually an article in the NYT this morning about Hillary discussing her trip to Europe and upcoming meeting with Russia foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. Yay! The major news media know where in the world Hillary is today. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/world/europe/07diplo.html?partner=rss


3. I finished my first book on the Kindle 2- Still Alice which is a novel about a 50 year old woman psychology professor at Harvard who copes with early onset Alzheimers. I will come back to the issue of memory loss in a later blog. We have a meeting this coming Tuesday with psychologists at UCLA about the results of my mother in law's memory testing. Some of the symptoms in the book rang too true for her current condition.


4. At least for Still Alice the TTS feature in Kindle 2 works. It is not that bad. It captures inflections and pauses for punctuation. I tried both the male and female version.


5. I have downloaded the Kindle app to my iTouch and tried that too the other day. It did not sync as well as I had hoped.


6. The only other books I have downloaded to Kindle so far are American Wife and a Kindle userguide. I must say I enjoy the larger font. (see eye issues above)


7. I suppose there is an inconsistency that I hate reviewing docs on a computer screen and love the Kindle. Kindle is definitely easier on the eyes than a monitor. Maybe I should put the depo transcript on the Kindle!


8. I was supposed to go to Portland tonight with my husband and daughter. He was to give a talk in Salem and she wanted to look at colleges in Portland and environs. However, my husband is tired and sick from his East Coast trip last week and it is going to rain all weekend in Portland with temps in the 30-40s. BRRR. I do not fancy leaving So. Cal where it is predicted to be sunny and warm this weekend. Besides, it is daylight savings time this weekend. Who would change the 30 or more clocks in our house?