Richmond! Richmond?! Richmond!!

I really think I'm going to move to Richmond, Virginia, with only a temporary not-that-well-paying job lined up.

This is not the absolutely most sensible thing to do. The absolutely most sensible thing would be to aim for Baltimore--because my sister lives only 50 miles away and I could save money by staying with her while I study for the bar. And I kinda sorta like Baltimore, despite some of its less attractive qualities. And it's a bigger legal market, with the added option of working in D.C. if necessary. And I know a few people there. The Maryland bar is not as hard as the Virginia bar.

No one I know has been to Richmond, and they don't get the appeal. Well, here it is: For one thing, Richmond has lots of pretty old neighborhoods with pretty old houses. It's almost in the New Orleans/Savannah/Charleston league. Who knew? It feels like a Southern town. Parts of it remind me of Memphis, parts of it remind me of New Orleans. But it has a better economy than any of those places. And it's a hell of a lot closer to my family in PA. It's not a tropical climate, but it has fairly mild winters. It's a good size--big enough to have a city feel and stuff to do, but not huge and sprawling all out of control like the the Baltimore/DC metropolis. You can be in the Shenandoah mountains or at the shore in less than two hours either way.

The only thing is that it is maybe not the absolute best place to build my dream career. The best job markets for environmental lawyers are on the west coast, in Denver, in D.C. and in New York State and maybe New England. Richmond is a relatively small and conservative legal community. But the temporary job in Richmond would be at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which is a great organization. Also, I am told that the Virginia attorney general might be hiring a lawyer or two to handle conservation easements in the next few months, which would be right up my alley. The gamble is that if I move there and pass the bar I will be more marketable than I am from New Orleans. The challenge is that there are many good law schools in Virginia and they don't need to import from Tulane. I'm pretty sure I could at least do contract work and make a reasonable living, the question is whether I will find work that is engaging and fulfilling and makes a contribution to the world's well being.

I've applied for two jobs not in Richmond that I would probably accept if offered. One is in Chapel Hill and the other in Denver. But if neither of those work out, I'm pretty sure I'm heading to Richmond.

You know you're turning into a cranky old person when...

you start saying things like "I remember back in [insert year more than a decade in the past] I saw [insert name of now-successful band] at [insert name of tiny obscure club], and now [insert cranky old person complaint]."

Well, back in the mid-90s in Memphis there was a sort of garage punk band named DDT, which stood for Dickinson Dickinson Taylor, which stood for Luther Dickinson, Cody Dickinson, and Paul Taylor. And then the father of the Dickinson boys, eccentric record producer Jim Dickinson, moved the family out to Hernando and the boys went to hear Junior Kimbrough or something like that, and they decided to start doing more of a blues thing. They changed their name to the North Mississippi All-Stars. And then somewhere in there Paul Taylor left to go on tour with Big Ass Truck, and the Dickinson's replaced him with gospel bass player Chris Chew.

They played my neighbors' wedding. In their back yard. They played at the Antenna Club with R.L. Burnside. One of my very first writing assignments involved interviewing the Dickinsons for the second-best free publication in Memphis. They invited me out to their place in Hernando. I asked them some stupid questions and then we watched wrestling with Jim Dickinson, who gave a fairly rehearsed soliloquy about the greatness of professional wrestling. It was very cool. I had a crushlet on Luther. I wrote that Luther was probably the best young guitarist in Memphis, which was probably true.

Now they are semi-big semi-stars. Or at least they can pack Tipitinas at $25 a head. They look the same. Same hair. Luther looks like maybe he could be in his 30s, but Cody still looks like he's 19. They have only gotten better, of course. Luther is the awesome. Cody's a great drummer plus he seems so preternaturally cheerful all the time that you can't help but like him.

But still, I can't listen to them for more than about a half hour. They're relentlessly set at one pounding setting. They're not really a band of many moods. They have some new songs, but they sound a lot like the old songs that they're still playing the same way they played them ten years ago. And none of them can really sing worth a shit. Back in the day they had a girl named Kelli-something who sang with them sometimes and really added a lot.

So I paid $25 and I stayed for about 45 minutes and I didn't really enjoy it. The crowd was mostly frat-boy douche-bags (to use their pejorative) and hippies (at least I got a free high from breathing the air). And Tipitina's might be world-famous, but it's not really such a great venue. And I knew ahead of time that I wasn't going to have a great time but I felt compelled to go anyway, for old times sake, despite the fact that it wasn't really in the budget. But if I thought I was going to have some cathartic experience or gain some insight into the past, it didn't happen. Or maybe the experience was realizing that I don't need that experience because I'm really over all that.

In a sort-of related development, I exchanged emails with my ex-husband this week. It was the first contact we've had in more than eight years, and it was a total non-event. Even with the potentially volatile reason I had for contacting him: on the bar exam application, you have to disclose everything you ever did in your life, particularly if it was bad. I don't have a copy of the divorce decree, and I can't even remember exactly when it went through. Some time in 1995, I think. He doesn't remember either and doesn't have the paperwork anymore.

Also, I recently heard Jim Dickinson on the radio, serving as the band leader for some Mississippi version of the Prairie Home Companion (sorta) called Thacker Mountain Radio. It was pretty good but nothing to swoon over.

Recent developments

I'd like to think I looked elegant on New Year's Eve...



and cute on Mardi Gras (with my sister the Hot Blonde)



but in the last few months I've developed irritable bowel syndrome, bunions and sensitive teeth. I think I might be middle-aged.

Also, after a half-dozen interviews, at least two of which seemed to go really well, I am still unemployed.

But I'm not at all a gigantic ball of stress. Not me.