Thursday, April 26, 2007

installation

Greetings from Wilmington, Delaware. I flew into Philadelphia 7 days ago. Unfortunately I did not have time to stop in Philly for a cheesesteak, but that is still a goal of mine. I caught a cab from the airport straight to my hotel in Wilmington. The Hotel DuPont is probably the nicest hotel in Wilmington, and it's in the heart of the downtown area. Unfortunately there's not much else around, it is mostly office buildings and at night and weekends the place is totally dead. Working until about 1-2AM each night, walking the block and a half back to the hotel is eerily quiet and uneventful. I had expected it to be colder, but it has actually warmed up nicely since I arrived. Temps are in the 60s and even got into the 80s for a day or two. But now it is raining again.

I gotta talk about the food situation here. The first few nights we went to this place within walking distance from the hotel, and it was great. So good we kept coming back -- it's probably the best bar and grill type place in the area. It's called Washington St. Ale House, and they have some good grub. I recommend the Build Your Own Burger, their buffalo wings, and the crab cakes. My coworkers introduced me to a new beer, called Yuengling Ale. Mmmm good stuff. We also tried a fancy seafood restaurant called Deep Blue that's right across the street from the hotel. Very niiice. But once the whole team arrived it was time to get to work. We set up our warroom on the 16th floor of our local counsel's building, which is the Chase building. Home away from home. My hotel room is just where I sleep. All of our meals are being catered by a company called Movable Feasts, and it's actually pretty darn good. They keep the variety going and we've had everything from salads to steak to crab cakes.

But the real show stopper is the trial snack setup that we have here just outside our warroom -- a complete table covered with snacks and candy. Believe it or not, this is pretty much what we have at every trial we do. Some of my coworkers are super health conscious but this kind of spread is hard to resist. Mmmm gummi worms. You know what, when you work 16 hour days every day of the week for this long, you gotta spoil yourself a little bit.

The view outside our office is fairly bland, but we do get to watch the sunset each evening when the weather is clear and take in the beauty of it all for a brief moment before we turn back to our work. Tomorrow we begin jury selection and on Monday the trial begins. It's going to be a long weekend I know, a lot of work between now and verdict. That's it for now, stay tuned for another update when I can. Most nights I just walk back to my room and fall into bed almost immediately.