Aside from my supervisor’s chastizing solicitation of a verbal agreement from me to complete 82 fking divorce cases in the next 17 work days in addition to my regular workload, Friday was a DAMN good day. Damn it. Damn, damn. (Okay, so I’m still upset about the fking family law crap.)

In the realm of his work, a friend I don’t see nearly enough popped by the courthouse Friday and we had fun catching up with each other. Brad and Val also visited in the afternoon. They drove in from San Jose early in the day, and as they plan to be in Disneyland all day today, my bailiff was nice enough to pick up 2 discount tickets from the Sheriff’s Dept at lunch for them. Since we’d concluded our court trial the day before, nothing was going on in the department so my judge came out and met them, then donned his robe and posed for some photos with us. I wish I had them to post now, but they’re in Brad’s camera. Since Brad brought his laptop with him on this trip, MAYBE HE’LL READ THIS AND EMAIL ME THE PHOTOS ASAP. =) Brad and Val are both good sports in my cheesy photo antics, as you guys know from the July 4th weekend photos posted on my blog. I’m gonna try to meet up with them some time this weekend, maybe late tonite or tomorrow before they leave to drive home. We were gonna meet up last nite after my dinner plans, but they were too tired and crashed instead. That worked out for me, as I didn’t even come home until almost 6am this morning.

After work, I drove to Irvine to meet up with my cousins Diana and Jennifer at their house in Irvine. They have a really nicely decorated place! It’s very femme and creative. Our cousin Olivia also joined us, with husband Eric and daughters Nikki (5) and Erin (2) in tow. Olivia was so cute. She’s missed her carefree days of romping around with us now that she’s heavily into family responsibilities and real-life issues. When we were walking to the cars to take off to the restaurant, she started toward their car, then paused and said, almost whinily in Chinese, “Aww, I so want to sit with you guys!” We told her she’s welcome to, and she got all excited and said “Okay! Lemme ask my husband.” She ran over to him and asked if she could ride over to the restaurant with us, like a little girl hoping her dad would consent to letting her go out and play. I assume by the way his butt and legs stuck out of his car as he loaded the youngest into the carseat that he agreed, and Olivia came skipping, SKIPPING! back toward us with a huge smile on her face. A few more skips, and little Erin’s audible wail for “Maaaaaa!” permeated the air. Olivia froze, turned around, then back toward us, and the same huge smile came back as she skipped the remainder of the way to our car. Even with their car door closed, we could hear Erin crying. “Ooh, Eric’s gonna have a bad drive to the restaurant,” Jennifer said. “That’s okay, it’s only for a few minutes,” Olivia said dismissively.

We had a delicious dinner at King’s Fishhouse in Laguna Hills. Their something-bikini martini, however, could’ve been a little more fruity, a lot less starter-fluid-y. Blech. We took a photo of the four of us cousins at the table which I hope I’ll get from Olivia soon. The lack of sleep and food coma caught up with me and as we returned to Diana and Jennifer’s house, I was invited in to crash for a few hours and all three of us did, in the living room in front of their TV, until Diana and I woke up around 3:30am and watched the remainder of “White Chicks” which was playing on Starz!. It’s a pretty typical night of falling asleep in front of the TV and waking up in the middle of the nite for me, but I’d never driven over half an hour afterwards before.

Oh, I also missed some calls from some friends at dinner, and one was from my girl friend inviting me to go to a huge party tonite. The birthday boy’s turning 40 (I can’t even imagine!) and has rented out the ballroom of a hotel in downtown LA. That should be interesting.