Honestly that comment might have done you a favor. I got a similar reality check when someone pointed out my "antique" compass had a plastic bezel that would have melted in the 1800s. Now I actually dig through those flea market bins looking for things that are genuinely dinged up and stained because those imperfections tell a real story. Your fake map could be a cool conversation starter if you lean into it and call it a modern reproduction instead of trying to pass it off as authentic.

Wait, California makes you do all that for each email? That sounds like a nightmare. In Texas it's basically dump everything that might be relevant and sort it out later, no one makes you catalog each single message before handing it over. I did a case in Dallas last year where we just sent over a massive folder of emails and the other side didn't even ask for a privilege log until we were done negotiating. California sounds like you'd burn a whole week just arguing over metadata.

Yeah, start paying attention to the small stuff yourself"... that's basically my whole life philosophy now, just a slow spiral of noticing weird things and then feeling paranoid about it. I've started writing stuff down too, but half the time I can't read my own handwriting from three days ago, so I'm just out here collecting mysteries I created myself. At least if I'm confused by my own notes, I know the patterns are real and not just me losing my mind... maybe.

Oh man, I had a buddy who scrubbed a Mercury dime with steel wool once (yikes) and basically turned it into a shiny piece of scrap metal. So yeah, the water and toothpick thing sounds way safer if you ask me.

Is it really that deep though? Like yeah the fog makes things harder than they need to be sometimes but that's kind of the point of it being there. I mean maybe I'm just too chill about it but I don't see it as making us look stupid, more just a pain in the neck.