Every few months there's something called a "no-court week" wherein the judges and other professionals have their conferences. It's productive downtime. Or supposed to be.
Last week was a no-court week. I took my furlough hours so that I'd be available during actual court weeks, so that was 10 of the 40 hours in the workweek. I got a lot of personal projects done, and I was thankful for the opportunity to do so.
So I had 30 hours left to do good stuff. I did some good stuff. Really. A couple of appellate transcripts were edited. Some admin stuff got done - like hitting staples for some badly needed supplies and mailing off shucks to various counties (my court is centralized, but I have to send my work out to the counties of venue) and also dropping the ones for my home county off at the local courthouse. Where, I learned, that the floor all that stuff is usually kept on has been closed for remodel. I was redirected - and in shock. Oops, you can tell how often I get there!
Then a rush call on a hearing. Seems my email address was mistyped and instead of having all week to transcribe a hearing, I had about 24 hours. And that was the last of it.
Did I get my accounting finished? My filing? Even some of my office cleanup? Um, no. Seems I'm more productive when I have my days full of work assignments.
I'm looking forward to the no-court week in October. Who know what excitement THAT WEEK will bring.
