First a quick non-sequitur: My bounceback week, as chronicled on the right sidebar, has left me all the more confused about whether I got a faulty scale reading at some point, and if so, which point. Bottom line is that I trust today's number now that I'm using flat tile floor rather than inconsistent, tilty hardwood. Also, I'm hopefully a week or two away from celebrating breaking through the 300-lb. floor (no "breaking through the floor" fat jokes please) for the first time in 14-15 years. Excellent times.

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What I really wanted to post about is that this is the season for a grubby, sad, and yet exhilarating annual ritual in the big law firm world: the annual salary memo. This week the ritual got kicked off on Monday when one of the big New York firms announced a $15K raise in their salary structure, including starting salary. Once one firm does this, a few things start happening:

1. Some other firms will immediately match to prove that they are top tier firms
2. Some other firms will immediately match the New York raise but leave offices in other cities in limbo until someone announces in those cities
3. Still other firms will wait around for a few days or even a week to make up their minds
4. Some firms will not raise or will raise less
   

This will spur the following counter-reactions:

1. Some law students and associates will be giddy because they just got a huge raise
2. Some law students will sit around stressing unnecessarily about whether their firm has finally chosen to hold steady, even though it's patently obvious that they're just days (or even hours) slow in their announcement
3. Certain message boards that are filled with hatred, vitriol and some of the worst people in the world (or, at least, worst on-line personas) get a serious uptick in traffic because they keep the closest track of who's getting (and not getting) what

So as of now, all of us working in non-NYC offices of New York firms are waiting for the 2 critical pieces of info--what is the NYC office doing, and how does it apply to the rest of the firm? Last year ours was one of many such firms that raised salaries in New York and raised the other big cities less. That's fine, I get it, cost-of-living and whatnot. But right now I'm spending a lot of time sitting around wonder if I'm going to get anywhere from a $5-25 K raise without actually doing any work. That would certainly help cut through the Midwest winter gloom. I hope they hurry, though, because I don't know how much more I can take of these stupid message boards.

My Christmas miracle turned out to be a fraud. The floor in our house is very uneven (classic student ghetto housing issue), and I've noticed that if I put the scale down in the wrong place I can get a crazy reading. So I've decided to move all future weigh-ins to the bathroom, which has a hard-tile floor and thus is a bit less prone to wackiness than the hardwood. I think last week's reading is the bad one and that this week actually went fine. Still, grrrr.

What you see in the right-hand sidebar under today's date must be one of a small number of things: testament to the power of kickstarting your metabolism, walking an unbelievable amount during the wedding and L.A. portions of my vacation, or Christmas miracle. I don't question it, I just thank the metabolism gods and promise to carry the positive momentum into the year. Good times.

Those of you who have been following the sidebar will have noticed that there's been some stalling. Finals plus holidays has equaled lack of progress, and I'm kinda fine with that. I didn't make it to 300 for my brother's December 30 wedding as I'd hoped, but I'm satisfied. I'm especially happy that I've eaten like crap for a month without really doing any damage, because for the first time in school I kept up the gym routine at the end of the semester. Good times. Hopefully the holidays won't be the carnage that they could--though mom's baking for the first time in years, so who knows. I didn't bring the nifty Weight Watchers scale home with me, so no more weigh-in numbers until I get back to Ann Arbor and back on the horse, so to speak. Not an actual horse--that would suck for me and the horse.

Merry Christmas everyone! And thanks for reading even though I haven't been so good with the updates. We'll strive to do better in 2007...