Sweating and Blushing

IT IS SO HOT, you guys. SO HOT.

My desktop weather thingy says that the temps for the next four days are 97, 99, 98, and 94. Oh, and 60% humidity.

On the plus side I have a nice steam room wherever I go so my skin has never looked better. Unfortunately that goes along with sweating through every piece of clothing I own. Yea, I know it sounds gross, but at least you're just reading about it and not living it.

I'm apparently adjusting, though. I'm not sweating/glistening nearly as much as I was before at lower temperatures.

Okay, in exchange for having to read about sweat I'll give you a story about me embarrassing myself that you can laugh at:

Hot Boss hasn't toned down his hotness in the office despite my insistence that it's out of control (insistence communicated by blushing whenever he says hi to me).

Today he asked for my email so he could either 1) flirt with me without our coworkers knowing, or 2) send me a contract to review (in homage to awesome choose your own adventure books, I'll let you pick the option).

After sending me the email he came out of his office to let me know and then asked how to pronounce my last name, which I pronounced. Knowing that he knows German (what? so I read his bio on the company website. You're supposed to read the website of the company you work for, no?) and knowing that my family does not pronounce our last name correctly according to its origin, I was about to tell him that we pronounce it differently, he interjected asking me if I knew what it meant. I replied that it did, we had a cute little exchange of both saying the meaning at the same time, then him pronouncing it how it's originally pronounced.

He then asked if I was of germanic origin, to which I replied "I prefer Jen", because I thought he had asked me what I prefer to be called - I have no excuse other than he makes me nervous. After his confused look and my realization of what he actually asked I had two response options: 1) a long, very TMI and very 20/20-hindsight-vision-embarrassing schpiel about how I think I am but because of family stuff I wasn't sure and that the last name wasn't a blood relation thing but my mom's maiden name is very German and it IS a blood relation thing so I'm pretty sure I'm mostly German, but not entirely sure, or 2) "Yes."

I picked the first option.

I'm cringing just reliving it in my head. So, so bad. So bad.

In other law firm news: there's this old attorney that works some days at the office. Whenever I run into him I feel like I'm being tested on how smart and cultured I am and that if I'm not smart and cultured enough I'm a representation of all that is wrong with America. I know that's not true, but Americans tend to not be thought of well abroad and I don't want to confirm any "Americans are ignorant and don't care about the rest of the world" bias.

Yesterday he asked me all about films and various languages. He kept asking me if I spoke [fill in language], which I had to reply that I didn't. I said I picked up a bit of German in Germany, to which he replied something in German, which I didn't understand. I said I had picked up a couple words in Hungarian, to which he replied something in Hungarian, which I didn't understand. He asked if I knew French, which I said I don't, and then he said something in French. Finally I said that I spoke a small amount of Spanish, to which he replied something that I finally DID understand and could reply to in Spanish. That seemed to satisfy him for the day and the exchange fulfilled my awkward quota for the month.

Today was a literature quiz. Thankfully I answered well off the bat with my favorite author being John Steinbeck. He started listing off Steinbeck books and I started thinking "dangit, I was not prepared for a literature quiz, what are all of Steinbeck's books?" Thankfully he didn't make me list any. But then he went into his favorite authors, only some of which I had read or even heard of. I think I managed a B.

What? You want to hear MORE about my new office? Okay then!

I am WAY busier at the new office. They have a ton for me to do, mostly including correcting english on documents, but also some very interesting research on EU law.

I kind of freaked out today, though. Yesterday they had me read a contract and write a memo on how our client could get out of the contract. I thought I had misunderstood the assignment, because it was incredibly easy to look at the "Termination" clause of the contract and then write down what it said. Turns out that's what they were looking for and decided to communicate the contents of my memo to the client as a recommendation for how he could terminate the contract. I then freaked out and was like "Dudes! I'm not an attorney! I can't make official legal recommendations, especially on what constitutes serious breach of contract under Swedish law!" I didn't say that, but I had thankfully written basically that in more professional terms at the end of the memo. I think at some point I'll have to get used to people relying on my opinion, though.

Aaaaaaand now I'm going to go home and try and convince myself to put away my clothes, but I'll probably end up reading and then fall asleep instead. Exciting stuff!