It's official, May 2004 has been far and away the busiest month I've ever had as a reporter (hell, as a human), and it ain't even over yet! Besides my staggering page volume, what's made this month a total and utter beatdown is the fact that it's been all experts, all two-day (or quicker) rushes, all realtime, interspersed with too many nights in hotel rooms.

One of my hotel nights was inside the Houston city limits. After getting beaten senseless in Austin by two days of a realtime Ph.D. electrical engineer in a patent case involving the logic structure behind a printed circuit board fab unit, my phone rings as I'm rolling back into the west side of Houston around 9:00 p.m. It's my wife, telling me her depo just recessed, was going to continue tomorrow, and I'd need to cover her 7:30 a.m. doc on this side of town. To save getting up at 4:30 to beat the inevitable suck traffic, I grabbed a room around the corner from the depo, crashed hard and slept until almost 7:00. I love living in a city so freakin' huge that an early morning depo requires an overnight stay.

Anyways, as the throes of burnout began to envelope me, someone sent me a two-minute video depo entitled "Why I Quit Court Reporting" which, through my tears of laughter, put May in perspective. For those familiar with the notorious "Attack Video," this one is even funnier. If you need a career-affirming moment of clarity, download your copy here.

"Humor is just another defense against the universe." - Mel Brooks