Laughter

At the gym on friday, I overheard the following conversation between two guys working out. I didn't laugh out loud, but did amuse myself internally with the parallels to the typical female conversation which guys will complain about whenever they get the chance.


Dude, she's gaining like 3 pounds a week. She's supposed to only gain 1 pound per week, the doctor said so.

Dude, you aren't the one who's pregnant. You can't be telling her to eat less, that's just not cool.

But, it's my baby too. I just want to feel like I have some control in the process. And she's so out of control...


Then, at the post-party to E's company party, I witnessed the conniving actions of many men towards one of their friends. Why? Because they were blocking his view of the date he brought as she undressed a different coworker in the middle, no make that the front entrance, of the bar.

Ahh... the comedic relief of the human condition. Who could ask for anything more?

10 little monkeys, jumping on the bed...

I think I'm the one that fell off and broke my head.

But, my brief re-write is done. My professor gave me the best feedback I could ask for:

This is EXACTLY what I wanted to see. Good Job.

Finally, some positive feedback. Jeez.

Tomorrow, I get to drop the latest version with my TA for the minutia check. If all goes well, I'll only have a few commas and spaces to fix before that item is OFF THE LIST.

Either way, it's out of my hands for tomorrow, so I'll get to go for a long run, take care of other crap on the to-do list, eat a decent dinner with E and pretend to be a human for one night.

Then, it's back to the grind 'til Friday because I have grandiose plans this weekend involving dinner at home with friends one night, a black-tie affaire another night, a goodbye brunch for a friend who's moving to London, and an all-day after-the-black-tie-party barbeque. I can hardly wait.

Also, the sun has returned. Suddenly, life is much better.

Not a Great Legal Writer

A comment on page 12 of my brief (ahhh... Saturday night brief re-write, this is why I love law school):

Work on organizations [sic], your paragraphs read like stream of consciousness.

It's going to be a long night.

Friday Night Fun

Last night, I got a leaking filling replaced at 6 PM. Not exactly a great way to spend the night off. But, my new dentist is cool and will see me at 6 PM on a Friday, so I went. The receptionist is an amazing linguist who wheels and deals in Mandarin, Spanish, and English. The dentist is into high tech gadgets and numbing with a lidocaine swab before giving the novocaine injection (what a brilliant idea, why hasn't any other dentist done this for me?). When I wanted to tune out from the dental work I listened to the medley of Mandarin, Spanish, and English. He even showed me his progress along the way, including the cavity that had formed under the filling (tooth decay is black! I thought it was just those cartoons from childhood that portrayed it as black evil germs). Overall, not a bad experience, which is all you can ask for from the dentist.

My instructions were not to chew on that side of my mouth for 24 hours.

So, E and I had a few glasses of wine and threw ingredients from the pantry and fridge into a pot to make a non-chewable soup. Fortune was on the side of cooking by instinct, yet again. I'm making this the next time we have company over, as it was AMAZING. Sure, if I was planning it, I'd make it from scratch, but now that I know how well it turned out from the can, I'll save the effort.

STUPID-EASY "NO-CHEW" TOMATO BISQUE
1 can tomato soup
1 cup water
1/2 pint half-and-half cream
8 oz. tomato paste
2 tsp. lemon juice
seasonings to taste (we tossed in a bit of black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, "italian seasoning", dried minced onions, and garlic powder)

Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pot and cook on low heat, stirring and smashing the tomato paste against the side of the pan until the color is even. Allow to simmer until it reaches the thickness you desire. Remove from heat, stir and serve warm (seems like it would work cold as well, although it might need different less spicy seasonings for it to be good chilled).

Exhausted Random Bits

I'm the same character as DG. Note, that I am always "insluting" others. [sigh] my work is never done.





What lesser-known Simpsons character are you?

Brought to you by the good folks at sacwriters.com.


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Best line I've heard all week?

But, we're not non-partisan. We aren't, like, "you should vote." We're like, "you should vote, cause you're getting fucked."

From the founder of Music For America.

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Other than that, I'm plugging away on reading and my brief with my sights firmly planted on the post-final-brief weekend of debauchery. The first week of spending one night near school went smoothly, the cheap motel was functional and didn't smell or give me bug bites. Unfortunately, it only allowed me to finish the required reading for the week such that I could be on top of things. I was hoping for some head above water time. Perhaps next week. Or the week following....

Oh What a Difference an Instructor Makes

It's no secret that I hated LWR. I'm also not a huge fan of moot court, but my negative feelings are much lesser towards it than to LWR. For the most part, my lower level of vitriol can be attributed to my instructor.

He's a practicing litigator who used to be a DA. He's logical and provides constructive, easy to follow, and individualized feedback. He comes to campus to meet with us instead of expecting us to go to his office to meet with him. He teaches all of the classes instead of telling the TA to lecture. He actually reads our work before the final grading pass.

I met with him today to go over my brief. For 30 minutes he discussed ways that I could make my paper better. I found myself nodding. Everything he was saying made sense. I felt as if he was imparting years of knowledge and experience to me. I was grateful. I was almost excited to get started on the next draft of my brief. Almost.

Compare that with last semester, where I sat through lectures about keeping each paragraph to 3 sentences and IRAC-ing each element of the IRAC (I'm not kidding, last semester I had to struggle to find a way to include a rule, analysis and conclusion in the Issue "section" of my memo.)

In other words, yeah, the professional skills courses for 1Ls at my school leave quite a bit to be desired. Sure, they are their own separate department with an even worse bureacracy than the general administration. Yes, they actually have a lower level of technical expertise than the general administration (which I thought was impossible). And yes, each syllabus (syllabii? syllabuses?) includes way too much work for the two unit course it supports. But, access to a good practitioner who's willing to impart his knowledge and experience is a wonderful thing. This semester, I think the net effect of the professional skills course will be positive.

On a more superficial note, I'm happy that the brief is due earlier in the semester instead of later despite what it's been doing to my life. Two more weeks of hell. Focus. Eyes on the prize.

Ahh... spring break, I can hear you calling to me now. Sunshine. Alcohol. Sand. Sleep. Ocean.

Joining the Popular Kids

YOU ARE RULE 11!

You were designed to make sure that attorneys in
federal cases make reasonable inquiries into
fact or law before submitting pleadings,
motions, or other papers. You were a real
hardass in 1983, when you snuffed out all legal
creativity from federal proceedings and
embarassed well-meaning but overzealous
attorneys. You loosened up a bit in 1993, when
you began allowing plaintiffs to make
allegations in their complaints that are likely
to have evidenciary support after discovery,
and when you allowed a 21 day period for the
erring attorney to withdraw the errant motion.
Sure, you keep everything running on the up and
up, but it's clear that things would be a lot
more fun without you around.


Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Link thanks to Beanie, JCA, and Miscellaureous among others.

The rule fits. Back in the dot-com days, I once had a business card with the job title, "The Enforcer." Today, I made the obligatory appearance at a female friend's place so that when her ex-husband-to-be showed up to do their joint taxes, he'd know to make it snappy and leave without any trouble. My work is never done...

Possible Good News

The AP and Yahoo News report that the FCC issued a report recommending that Congress allow more low-powered local FM radio licenses.

This would be a Very Good Thing for music, although bad for ClearChannel and the RIAA. (Let's all cry together now). Let us hope that their lobbyists don't get their grubby little hands into Congress before they can adopt the report's findings.

Throwing It Together

Last night, the impromptu recipe turned out quite well. E suggested brussel sprouts, drooling over memories of the southern-style where each bud is wrapped in bacon. Although pork chops aren't bacon, they are close and the drippings do much of the same job. So, try this recipe if you're hankering for chops. It's easy, and for all of the millions of Atkins wackos out there (like half of my school, men and women.) it's Atkins-friendly, although not on purpose. (We're just carnivores.)

PORK CHOPS OVER BRUSSEL SPROUTS

6 Brussel Sprouts per person
1 pork chop per person
1 shallot per person
salt/pepper/herbs
olive oil

1. Pre-heat oven to 400F.
2. Wash brussel sprouts, remove outer leaves, and cut off stems to leave a flat face.
3. Arrange brussel sprouts in a baking pan or casserole dish, flat face down. Drizzle with olive oil.
4. Place pork chops over brussel sprouts, covering as many as possible.
5. Dust pork chops and exposed sprouts with salt, pepper and herbs according to your taste (black pepper, garlic salt, oregano, thyme, and dried basil worked well).
6. Slice shallots as thinly as possible (think garlic from Goodfellas) and sprinkle over pork chops and brussel sprouts.
7. Drizzle pork chops and exposed brussel sprouts with olive oil.
8. Bake for 20-30 minutes.
9. Turn pork chops, re-season with salt, pepper and herbs and drizzle with more olive oil or add a pat of butter to the top of each.
10. Bake for another 20-30 minutes until done. (depends on the size of the porkchops)

Ponder This

R sent an email with the following quote, saying, "I dare you to try to make sense of this."

From the NYTimes article about the "likability" of John Edwards:

"People might start to see him as a touch too polished and smooth," said Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center. "His larger problem is his lack of experience and his youthfulness, which is both an asset and a problem when people are looking for the steady hand of experience."


Wow. And I thought I liked him for his je ne sais quoi.

You Must Be Kidding

I'm so frustrated with everything. I was speeding through life at a million miles a minute to finish everything on my list this past week. Despite being very proud of myself for getting the majority of it done...

I forgot one, small thing -- a very necessary form for financial aid was due this week. I received a grant from the school for this year and it made the finances of being in school much more doable. Now, because of my failure to get the form in on time, it is very likely that I'm too far back in the line to get the grant next year. Add the increase in tuition and you've got one annoyed BT.

I was so focused on working out to stay sane, my classes, reading, and moot court brief. You know, all the stuff that's supposed to be important. But, in reality, I should have had just a bit more attention for administrative tasks, seeing as how my mistake probably cost me about $10,000. The form took 30 seconds to fill out. In other words, the mistake was worthy of an hourly rate of about $1.2M. You'd think I'd make sure that was pretty high on the to-do list...

In other news, no doctors have called with urgent requests for appointments so I guess that means my head check came back relatively normal. I haven't lost all perspective. I AM very glad for that.

Oh, and in a surprise to both E, who's a southerner, and myself, who's a 5th generation Californian, I'm 75% dixie. E's only 65%. Go figure.

Off to put some miles on my running shoes before buckling down for a day of moot court and reading...

Clinical Trial

Sunday to Thursday... that's quite a break for me. Well, we can all blame the ridiculous balancing act of this week. One of the things I managed to fit in was an MRI to get my head checked. [BTW. It's Official. I'm crazy]

Check-in included a 3-page form inviting me to partipate in an unpaid clinical trial.

"Sure," I thought. "It's only 15 minutes of extra time in the chamber. I'll donate my body and time for science."

The form's last page required a signature. It listed a patient's bill of rights, how you could remove yourself from the trial after accepting, and finally, that by signing, you certified that you had discussed the trial with a clinical trial supervisor, who had explained the risks to you.

I gave the form back to the front desk and said, "I'm happy to sign the form after I talk to the clinical trial supervisor."

A few minutes later, the nurse who took me to the pre-scan area said, "I hear you wanted to talk about the form?"

"Yes," I replied "I'm-"

"This form is silly," he cut me off. "We're not putting you in any trial. We just give them to all of the patients because we're kind of doing a trial to see who would sign the form."

"Oh, I guess there weren't too many risks to explain then..."

Connivance

Too many hours in front of the law books, and this new word stumped me. It shouldn't have.

Connivance:

Main Entry: con·niv·ance
Pronunciation: k&-'nI-v&n(t)s
Function: noun
: the act of conniving; especially : knowledge of and active or passive consent to wrongdoing

The Storm Has Passed

I forced myself to take a nap yesterday afternoon. I read my pleasure book. I was lazy.

For the evening's celebration, E and I tried a new Italian restaurant for dinner and then we went to the symphony. I let the strings wash over me. I am always amazed at the power of beautiful music to rip me from my own thoughts and force me to just listen and feel. After 2 hours of bliss, when I returned to my previously racing head, things were ordered, more calm, and much more reasonable.

We ended the evening as a couple should: enjoying each others' bodies, company, and, of course, the "I choo-choo-choose you" episode of the Simpsons.

I slept a delightfully undistiburbed and restful 9 hours.

And now, I can get cheerily back to work on my reading and moot court brief.

Ahhh... Freakout (duh-da-duh-da-duh)

I think I've been building up to my first official law school freak out for the last few days. I'm feeling VERY overwhelmed and incapable of getting ahead. How frustrating it is to be so typically a law student.

This morning I woke with acid reflux and a speedy pulse at 7 AM after going to bed at 2 AM. I couldn't sleep (the acid reflux was the main reason and I can blame the late night zinfandel, but anxiety didn't help). I finished my FAFSA, taxes, and a few other things, went for a 3 mile run and started to make a list of everything I need to accomplish on this long weekend.

I thought that crossing the stuff off my list would help. But, it didn't really. I can see where I'd like to get out of the water, but I'm swimming upstream and the beach is obstinately staying put and drifting further away depending on how much strength I can muster that day.

Friday, I realized that 2/3 of the grades on my transcript for this year come at the end of this semester. I think that may have been the final straw on top of much more school work than last semester, worrying about money, pretending not to worry about my health (MRI results should clear that one out of the picture by the middle of next week), trying to maintain a workout schedule, planning on staying near school one night a week, aranging my summer job and research project, extra-curricular club fundraisers, acting as a mock witness for the local bar's deposition training (which was an awesome experience), and trying to maintain some semblance of a relationship with E, friends, and family.

I hope that my inability to sleep this morning was the apex of my ridiculousness. But I fear that I may not be. I know worrying doesn't help, who doesn't? But, biology is a rough mistress. Too much adrenaline is not a good thing. I know I need to keep things in perspective. But, honestly kids, sometimes it's a little hard.

Here's to hoping that a romantic night with E and a day of no law will set me straight.

Boo-Ya

Taxes and FAFSA are done! Huge weight off my shoulders.

And, I get money back.

Being a student rocks ('til you have to go work on your moot court brief...)

Tales from 2Ls on the Job Search

#1:

A ran into a 2L friend-of-a-friend on the street yesterday. She was in a suit. "You look nice, did you have an interview today?" I asked. "No, I'm externing for a judge this semester," she replied. We talked about her experience with the judge and whether she thought it was worth it.

Then I asked, "So, you're not interviewing for spring OCI, I assume that means you already have a job lined up?" I expected her to quickly answer yes. She's got a great technical undergraduate degree, work experience, and I her grades are quite good.

"No, I did fall OCI, I got a few callbacks and interviewed quite a bit on-site, but none of it worked out. The economy is just really bad right now. I want to work for a big firm and it's really competitive. If I had to do it all over again, I'd send letters to the firms that didn't select me for OCI. Now, it's hard because most of them have filled all of their open positions. In years past at least a third of the OCI participants have gotten positions, this year, it's closer to 25% or maybe even 10%."

She seemed to believe that next year it would be much easier for her with her externship under her belt. This summer, she may just continue her work with the judge. I wished her well and walked away, my head spinning.

Oh, wow. I started to stress out even more at that news. Clearly, I can't give up any of the resume fodder or schoolwork. I had no idea that the market was so much worse these days. Sure, I've been getting my share of the we-don't-want-no-stinkin'-one-L-letters, but I've also received a few that say, send us your resume, writing samples, and we'll call you.

#2:

A friend of mine from undergrad is also a 2L. H and I went out to dinner with him last night. He's more of the chill, occasional pot-smoker type, who you don't see much of in law school. I asked about his summer plans.

"Oh, you know, I gave myself an hour, went to the career center and selected every firm in the city that didn't require a cover letter. I sent out my resumes and writing samples, and did a few OCI interviews as a result of that in the fall. You know, mainly small firms, but whatever, I wasn't about to do cover letters, I'm too busy." (He is.)

"One of them called me back after OCI and offered me the job. I know for a fact that one of my classmates got the offer before me and turned it down. A few other people probably did as well. But, I don't really care. They seem like a cool firm, I was myself during the interviews and I laughed with the associates and partners, so I'm happy. So, yeah, that's what I'll be doing this summer. At least it's a decent-paying position, last semester I made $12 an hour, which was less than I'd made since high school. Ridiculous."

He also warned that OCI rules your life for a few weeks in the fall, regardless of how chill your approach is.

Somewhere in the middle of quality of life issues (#2) and focus on school and all of the herd-mentality resume fodder that I'll be needing (#1) is the rationale for while I'll be spending one night a week near school in the near future. I'm not quite as chill as #2, but I don't know if I'm as driven as #1, either. I couldn't define my search entirely on a low barrier to entry (I am not that cool), but if I hadn't gotten a job with one of my ideal firms by the end of fall OCI, I think I'd be persuing any other option available to me.

Something's gotta give

My workout schedule has been a comfortable 4-5 a week since I got back from vacation.

I have early morning class 5 days a week.

I have to commute in rush hour traffic 5 days a week in the morning.

I have an active social life.

I have a good relationship with E.

I sleep enough.

I eat good food, often cooking for myself and E.

I do all the reading and work on my brief for moot court as much as possible.

I attend extra-curricular activities.

I'm VERY close to being stretched way too thin. And I don't want to give up any of these things.

Last semester, I gave up my workouts towards the end. That sucked. This semester, I'm seriously considering staying one night a week in a hotel near school to kill the commute and give myself one night of optional socializing without the commute after it, serious studying, or whatever else I need. In other words, I'm considering giving up money, or rather taking on more debt, in order to keep my currect quality of life. It's only money, right?

Figures...

I heard through the grape vine that I am a prominent square on the gunner bingo cards in our section.

[laugh] Well... I suppose I should be thankful that I get my own square and am not regulated to the "any one of the 5 chrissy/christy/chris persons" square.

Go big or go home.

Yeah.

I've got to stop raising my hand and opening my mouth. Clearly, it's getting me nowhere. Other than onto bingo cards, that is.

Learned Stuff

Lychee, fruit or nut? Leechee? Litchi?

It was on the tasting notes at one of the wineries we visited yesterday (ahhh... living in California does have it's advantages). We'd all heard of it, but none of us were exactly sure how to pronounce it, or what it was.

Turns out, all pronunciations are correct. It's a fruit, but when dried, it resembles a nut. To add to the confusion, both the fruit and the dried fruit are often called "litchi nuts."

Interestingly, an Irish person in the group used the term Lychee to describe star fruit.

The way it actually is...

L had to meet with the dean over his first semester grades. His goal is to have as much fun as possible in school and to graduate. It's wonderfully refreshing.

Yesterday, he got off of his cell phone during lunch and smiled, saying...

I know you all study more than me and do your reading and get better grades, but...
I just got a paying job for the summer. {Cue Endzone Dancing}


Apparently, he met the lawyer who hired him on public transit. They went for a beer. The guy called him in for an informal interview asked him about what he'd done and decided to hire him without ever seeing his resume or grades. When L asked, "do you need my resume?" The lawyer replied, "What for? You already told me what you've done and I know I want to hire you."

And that, my friends, makes me very happy.

Uggghhh...

This is the second Friday in a row where the morning has been punishment. Typically, I don't relish the waking but I don't detest it like E, either.

But Friday mornings after Thursday law school events involving too much alcohol--Why do they give us Friday classes at all? Or why do they insist on law school events being a Thursday night thing? What's wrong with Friday? I don't like this Thursday-is-the-new-Friday thing. Because it's not. I have to get up and go to class early on Fridays.

Next year, I will do everything in my power to choose my classes so that I get a 3 day weekend.

SCO's Harvard Visit

Eric Jonas took some docs and Knoppix CDs (linux on a cd that you can boot without installing, i.e. try it out without blowing away your current configuration) to the talk. His well-written summary is here.

Engineers in Law School

Someone started a thread over at the PR Boards about how engineers do in law school. That's a good question, and I've had many thoughts about it but haven't tried to put them all into one post. So here's a few things I've noticed:

In my experience, at saturation points, the workload is the same amount of time and brain drainage. You just can't do more than you can do at your max. Engineering school took my max at points and law school takes my max at points. Sure they're different kinds of thinking (one thing I wish was more true about law school is that there's not enough walk-around-and-think type work), but both can give you messed up dreams and leave you incapable of finding basic english words.

In my experience, the period of performance saturation is longer in law school. In engineering, I'd put in a few difficult weeks for one or two projects a semester and then have a rough week before each final. In law school, it's like having projects every week and then finals prep starts 6 weeks before the exam. I think it's a very personal decision though. I suspect it's possible to get by on much less work and be an average student in law school than it is to be an average student in engineering school. But most people in law school are interested in what they are learning and don't want to get by with less, so the point is moot. On the other hand, I think the amount of work to distinguish yourself in Engineering and Law School are roughly the same: all you can handle, all the time.

How engineers perform in law school, I imagine, on average, is fairly well, but I haven't taken a poll. Seems like the engineers who wouldn't do well in law school wouldn't be interested in going. One of my ex-techie friends had some problems in LWR with the writing requirement, but he got it all sorted before grade-time came around.

The hardest thing is that there's no satisfying list of answers to check against. There's no bright line test to know that it's okay if you go to bed because the work really is done, and you got it right. Often, I have this nagging feeling that I haven't completely understood everything because it just doesn't seem elegant enough to be the "actual" solution. Getting over the engineer's desire for an answer is probably the hardest part of being in law school. Other than that, as long as you aren't too quick to wield Occam's Razor, your background should be good for you.

Also, the social activity and club aspect of law school is time consuming and not very optional. That was shocking to me after the loner culture of an engineering program. Organized social activities take more time than you'd imagine, but you learn quite a bit from the legally-oriented ones and you make plenty of friends at all of 'em. Sure, you can opt out, but a complete lack of involvement would be difficult to pull off when there's constantly one-hour seminars with food and drinks between class, parties to go to and cool lectures to attend.

That's what I can come up with off the top of my head...

In my Day...

Looks like we're entering another space race. Only this time around, I'm alive to appreciate it! The geek in me is SO excited.

There's always a filter

I've decided who to interview and hire for technical jobs in Silicon Valley during and after the boom. Too many resumes. Not enough time. Some of the people exaggerate their credentials. Others don't market their skills effectively. What did I do? I trusted people's personal recommendations and threw the rest of the resumes away. I very seriously doubt that I ever got the best person for the job. But it always worked out just fine--interviews would usually catch the psychos and the incompetents, the rest were usually hired. And I wouldn't have been able to do my job if I took the time to figure out who the best person for the job was out of all those resumes. So, I used the filter of people and related job experience.

In law, the filter we hear about all the time is the rank of your school or the rank of your grades within your school. As I said before, I found law school grading to be somewhat arbitrary thus far. But, it's no more arbitrary than your best friend's little sister dating the dog-walker of my cousin's dog. If you are good at networking, you will probably find a better job and eventually, have a more successful technical career in the valley. This seems unfair given the meritocracy that most engineering worlds pretend to be and the fact that networking isn't necessarily linked to the skills you'll be using in your career (the inverse relationship between technical genius and standard socialization being a TRUTH, in my book).

In law school, if you get good grades and/or go to a school with a higher ranking, it is likely that you will get a more prestigious job. This seems unfair if you acknowledge the minute differences in the intelligence, capability, and drive of students from different schools and with GPAs that vary by quite a bit.

But guess what kids--life isn't fair. It's what you make of it and how you handle the unfairness that matters. If you value career opportunities, it is worth quite a bit to work your A** off in order to obtain the ranking and grades that will keep the doors open (see JCA's Post for a more cogent discussion of this point). If you value time, money, relaxation, early retirement, family, or any other number of other things over career opportunities, it may not be worth the effort to buy into the Gospel According to the Law Community.

Me? I love the doors of opportunity. I work hard. I'd love to have the grades and/or ranking to show for it. But I have a fuzzy line that I won't cross. The grades and ranking I don't have may or may not be an indication of my commitment to stay behind that line. That line is drawn by my sanity, E, a reasonably fit body, my family, friends, and a bunch of other things I've decided really matter. So, unless things change drastically, I'll never know just how "great" I could have been in this one area because I'd have to do it at the expense of things I'd never forgive myself for losing.

I've already put myself in the hospital for working too many hours without sleep, exercise, good food, or a social life. I don't want to do it again. What's the point in having doors of opportunity open in the future if you aren't taking the time to go down any of the hallways that are available right now? I don't mean this to say that people who do have the doors of opportunity open to them don't chose to enjoy life at the present moment. Perhaps they are gifted, talented, driven or just plain lucky. I only mean that it saddens me to see how many of my fellow students don't take the time to enjoy the great things about life that they do have because they are too busy wishing for, working for, or wallowing about the lost opportunities due to pedigree. A perfect example of balancing future doors for current opportunities is described in the ever-clever Scheherazade's post about why she {gasp} quit law review.

I understand the grumpiness that comes with a loss of opportunity despite hard work and feeling like you deserve it. But, I also know that the best turns my career took before law school were completely serendipitous. Luck. Being prepared was the pre-requisite, but being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right dog-walker were the final straws. And that's not fair to everyone else who worked to be prepared but weren't in the right place at the right time or didn't know the dog-walker. I suspect that my future career will follow a similar brownian path. And I doubt that the rank of my school or the grades that I get will greatly affect it. I hope I'm right.

Off to go read cases (no sense closing the doors I can keep open while staying behind my line...)

Right On!

Heard in line at the school food counter:


Female1: Oh, I hate this sweater, it's so bulky and uncomfortable.

Female2: {laugh} Did you get it at urban?

Female1: Yes.

Female2: Yeah, that turtle neck is really big. Do you have hickies?

Female1: No. {laugh} (embarassed, high pitched voice) I mean... yes...

Oh, that's where the time went

I know where the time went, and I wouldn't change a thing. Reading, class, workouts, and the following are all things for which I'm thankful:

1. E and I drove to my hometown to celebrate my niece's 2nd birthday. It's amazing how quickly children change. I'd just seen my niece on January 1st, and 3 weeks later she's bigger, has more muscle control in her face, and knows more words. While we were there, my dad gave me a garbage bag full of wild duck and pheasant. As a carnivore, aspiring chef, and child of a responsible hunter, I have to gloat. 4 duck breasts (pre-cleaned, to boot) of 2 varietals (different weekends, different migrating birds), and 4 whole pheasants. Happy freezer full of birds.

2. Mid-week dinner with my sister, E and R. My sister made a delicious asparagus risotto. I made the duck in a butter, red-wine vinegar, and pink peppercorn sauce. Perfection.

3. E and I watched two great movies (Netflix is brilliant) this week. First we enjoyed the soundtrack and explosions of the dork coming of age story October Sky (probably should have been named Rocket Boys). And, we finally saw the light and cute Bend it Like Beckham (mmm... now I want some Indian food...).

4. Then, there was the 1L party where I made new friends, played bad pool, and got to know many of my classmates a little bit better.

Now, if only I could get my moot court assignments finished...

Where did the time go?

This semester is more busy than last at this time. I think it's the fault of moot court. There's also more reading than back when they figured we didn't know how to do it. There's also all the cooking I've been doing because I know that there will be no cooking come finals prep time. Under the same logic, I've got a very active social life right now that I'm trying to squeeze in every spare moment. And, of course, I'm suffering from the early semester work-out ambition (a minimum of 4 workouts a week is the goal for the semester...we'll see how that goes).

Add basic house chores, bills, planning the spring break getaway, and I'm slacking in the cyberworld. All the cool kids are either on or moving to Movable Type. Check out Ambulance Chaser's new digs. But, me, I'm just not finding the time. I barely found time to post last week, and I'm way behind on my favorite blog and news site reading.

If you're not behind, and want a good read, I recommend checking out Business2.com's 101 Dumbest Moments in Business.

raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

The school sponsored welcome back party was last night. It's not usually my thing to go party like a rock star with a bunch of acquaintances (my classmates), but something got into me and I decided to go check it out. It was a swanky shindig in a top-floor penthouse of an appartment tower (amazing views). I was, underdressed, as usual, but many of my fellow students went all out. There are many pretty people in law school. Many of whom I'd never seen before. Where do these people hide?

The evening was a wonderful success, and I arrived at a very giving friend's house to crash around 2:15 AM. I couldn't fall asleep very easily, but eventually fell into that unrestful I-know-I'm-not-in-my-own-bed-and-I-partied-a-little-too-hard sleep.

Then the construction woke me up at 6:45 AM. I must say, that is NOT one of my favorite things...

Thank goodness it's Friday.

Tuesday... off to both a bad and good start

The bad:

Despite leaving 20 minutes earlier than my best time ever on a commute, and well within my "I-can-expect-to-arrive-in-time-to-get-tea-before-class" range, I arrived at school 15 minutes after class began. Stupid Smarch weather.

Yeah, 15 minutes into a 50 minute class is too late to walk in, even for me. What's worse, I gave a ride to my friend T who's never been late or missed a class (yeah... I'm impressed). Until today, that is. I showed up 10 minutes late at T's house because I thought I had plenty of time... First bad judgment call of the day. Here's to hoping it's the last.

The good:

The portion of the Patriot Act that governs charitable gift giving and suffers from some pretty severe vagueness, was declared unconstitutional by a Federal District Judge in Los Angeles. Now that's something.

Happy Australia Day

Celebrate Good Times!

Reality Check

I went to the neurologist today. I have minor migraines. Sometimes.

The waiting room was full of parkinsons, MS, stroke, and other things that made me want to go home and quit my bitchin'...

Lost and Found

I'm VERY absent-minded. As in phone in the freezer, milk in the cupboard, "oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to steal your pen," where-are-my-glasses-oh-right-my-face absent minded.

So, it was no surprise to E when I realized last night that I had lost a small purchase that I made. Wednesday, I went to one of the boutique stores near the art movie house and bought myself a small trinket that I had been eyeing. I managed to keep the bag with the logo of the boutique through the movie and get it back to school. But then, I lost it. Somewhere.

Not only that, but I didn't even realize I had lost it until last night, more than 24 hours after leaving it somewhere on campus.

When you're me, you write off stupid stuff like this all the time. When it's gone, as a general rule, it's just gone. But, much to my surprise, someone turned it in to campus security and I actually got it back today.

I have the most positive feelings towards my fellow students right now. They really aren't bastards, despite how I may feel on a bad day or portray them in failed comedic attempts. They're nice and good and wonderful. So is friday.

In fact, in celebration of the weekend and the beginning of the semester, I'm spending tonight making food and feeding friends. The menu includes a spinach salad, french onion soup, baked asparagus and a chocolate soufflee (assuming all goes well...). Which reminds me, I need to get a run in before I start cooking...

First Time for Everything

I had to get a refund on movie tickets today. {laugh} Yup. Movie Tickets.

My wednesdays suck. 1 hour of class, early in the morning, and then nothing. If I wasn't a commuter, perhaps this would not be so terrible. But, alas, I am. Add the make-up moot court class that was scheduled for late this afternoon and you have a very unhappy BT.

However, all was not lost since H and I decided to go see Monster during the down time.

But, it was not meant to be. Why? Well... you see, the ticket database hadn't been updated. Our tickets said theatre 5. We went to theatre 5. The movie was late starting. Then we sat through the previews. Then we sat through Destino, which was a nice surprise, but not exactly what we were expecting. Halfway through Destino, H got up to ask if we were in the correct theatre, but couldn't find anyone to answer the question (art movie houses...). Smart guy, that H.

Sure enough. After Destino, The Triplets of Belleville started to play.

The guy at the ticket counter, when confronted with our tickets and the fact that we had missed 45 minutes of our movie said, "Oh, I didn't tell you about the theatre switch because the usher was supposed to catch it and tell you. I'm really sorry..."

So, as near as I can tell, instead of watching a movie, I studied, all because the ticket counter guy wanted to make sure that he didn't usurp the job of the under-performing usher/ticket-ripper.

Not Cool.

Oh well, there's more Wednesdays to come. I'm sure it'll be great when I do get to see it. Given the B+ it garnered from the difficult-to-please and discerning Unfashionable Observations, it's got to be worth the wait.

Again?

So, I was surprised that I came up with "The Godfather" on the "What Classic Movie Are You?" test. Didn't totally seem to fit me, but it's a great movie and well... an internet test. But then I saw that Hani and DG had both gotten movies that I would have preferred.

So, I decided to go the Hani route and try for a world leader that might be a little more on par with how I see myself.

Not so much:

What Famous Leader Are You?

The Best of Law School

Today, an overzealous volunteer posing as a question-asker started with, "I'll help you out." The professor quickly said, "Okay, just try to relax...you've got to leave something for me to do. Let me ask the question first, then you can try to answer."

Finally, a professor said what so many of us have been thinking.

The Worst of Law School

is embodied in a line that forms from the door of the classroom 20 minutes before lecture because today is the day we will be filling out the "seating chart." I missed the fun, but was treated to my fellow students' complaints of the cutting in line, cat-calling, and general ridiculous when I finally arrived (to take one of the only remaining seats in the very back of the room).

What? Who are these people? It's a seat in a classroom, people. For a professor who is generally acknowledged as our section's least cogent lecturer...

I don't get it.

{laugh} oh, and it'll probably happen next class too since the prof forgot the seating chart.

What Classic Movie Are You?

Link thanks to nontraditional student.

The Beginning of the Semester

Finals stole my life for almost 4 weeks. Then the holidays kept me captive, and then Egypt. But now, I'm in the beginning of the semester. The time of year when 15 hours of class and keeping up on the reading leaves gobs of free time to enjoy.

So in my spare time, I've been blissfully doing normal stuff. Cheerfully, I filled my car with gasoline at my regular station. Grinning, I picked up and dropped off stuff at my dry cleaners. E and I sleep in the same bed, talk about nothing, watch the Simpsons, and have already put in an appearance our favorite pho joint (after a record breaking absence of 2 full months!).

Ecstatically, I made a grocery list and went food and wine shopping. With my spoils, I made bolognese sauce from scratch and froze 2/3 of it for future use.

With the remaining 1/3 of the bolognese sauce, I made lasagna. I took a risk and tried the newfangled barilla no boil lasagna noodles. The noodles worked fairly well. Next time I use them, I'll go heavier on the sauce, since it appears that they soak up more liquid than boiled noodles (in hindsight, this seems fairly obvious...). Unfortunately, the last lasagna I made, I made the noodles from scratch and the memory of that lasagna put this lasagna to shame. But, we still had company over for lasagna, wine, and conversation that night and we've been living off of lasagna leftovers.

And last night, a group of E's friends and their significant others went out to celebrate birthdays, weddings, etc. Eleven of us sat around a table at Maggiano's and socialized while eating family style. I got to order the wine, because people are kind and like to indulge me. What did I do? Giddily, I ordered a magnum of Querceto Chianti Classico.

Magnums are cool. 12 glasses of wine in one bottle. It's even better when they are reasonable priced and you get both a huge cool-looking bottle at the table as well as decent dinner wine at $4.50 a glass. My selection was a hit and we ordered a second magnum to go with the second course.

So, other than this crazy waking up early thing I've got going on, my life is back to normal with chores, friends, activities, and food. I'm happy.

On Grades

It's undeniable that a huge part of the law school experience is grades. I, like most of my classmates was disappointed. Not terribly, but enough to be knocked down a few pegs. That's probably not a bad thing. Humility is not exactly one of my strong points despite my oh-so-desperate wishes to the contrary.

Coming from an engineering program with a steep curve prepared me somewhat for the letters I would see. I was happy to have already experienced the shock-and-awe that mediocre grades after working your ass off can be. I did not envy my fellow students who were experiencing that emotion for the first time.

However, there is one fundamental difference between an engineering curve and a law school curve. With engineering exams, you can see the model answer and you can see where, exactly, you fell of the train. Step missed here, arithmetic error here, forgotten factor of safety here, modeling error here. Even flaws in your overall approach are easy to understand when confronted with the simplicity of the "real" solution. You get the satisfaction of the slap on the forehead and the knowledge that if you were confronted with a similar problem in the future, you would do it better than the one on the exam.

I had heard the standard wisdom that law school exam grading was arbitrary. But, like most of my fellow students, I suspected it was sour grapes from people who just didn't understand how to take exams. It wasn't going to be arbitrary in my case....

Only, guess what. It really is fairly arbitrary, at least so far in my case. There is no "real" solution. I look at the tick marks all over my essays and I read the model answers and I see that there are a million ways you could approach the answer. There is the professor's way, which she thinks is best, but you may not agree, another professor may not agree, and the professor may not even agree with herself in a few months. After getting your exam back, there is no certainty that if confronted with a similar fact pattern you could approach it in a manner that was better.

With a steep curve at a school where most people are ridiculous over achievers, it's not enough to know all the rules, spot every issue and apply legal analysis correctly. It's not even enough to spot the tricky forks in the fact pattern and analyze where things could turn in either direction. You have to do all of that in the style that the professor wants to see. Knowing the material really well and applying it is a B. B+, A, those are reserved for the people who both know the material really well, AND have a lucky day whereby they organize their responses in a way that the professor likes, plus they write in a style that the professor enjoys.

I make these comments with my statistical sample of 2 grades, an A and a B. I haven't met with any of my professors but I've received two exams and the model answers. I examined them both with a level of detail that betrays my attempted "I don't really care about grades" attitude. I applied the rules/cases etc. in both exams with the same level of proficiency. I missed no major cases or rules. In one, I had enthusiastic comments with exclamation points. In the other, merely tick marks and no happy notes. If you had asked me which exam I performed better on, I would have picked the B.

So, what's the point I'm trying to make here? I've been through enough crap to know with certainty that my grades do not define my worth. And the point is fairly trite: people need to learn that they can't depend on external validation, yadda yadda yadda. My amazement is founded on the fact that a grading system which causes this much strife for thousands of students every year is actually that arbitrary. Sure, some students talk about it, but it's not a well-understood norm about the law school experience.

Perhaps the arbitrary ridiculousness is unique to schools like mine, which suffer from the wannabe excellence complex of a non top-10 ranking while admitting students who desperately believe they belong in the top ten (and probably do, if they'd had a luckier day on the LSAT). These amazingly intelligent workaholics are then placed on a steep mandated curve. From what I understand, employers really care about grades. I'm curious how they can when the difference between average and excellence in a pool of amazing fish is merely luck and style. 3 of my 4 professors spoke on this point, and yet, it seems that the real world is in another dimension where small variations in grades actually do measure something. I suppose employers and judges need something by which to differentiate people, but why not roll dice? Okay, now I've gone a little far with the analogy. I don't doubt that at the far ends of the curve, it is easy to spot the differences, but when you're talking about the middle of the continuum, I suspect that the gradient is minute and unique to each instructor on each given day.

In short, before I received my marks, I thought grades were a useful tool that too many people took too seriously. Now, I'm fairly certain that law school grades are a much less useful tool than I suspected and yet, too many people still take them too seriously.

Oh well, here's to wishing I was luckier and being thankful that I was as lucky as I was...

Jet Lag

Every night since my return, I've woken at some point and been unable to sleep for approximately one hour. Initially, it was 3 AM, then 4, then 5, until today, when I woke at 5:55 AM and was unable to sleep until now. The light is coming in the window and I doubt I'll be able to fall back asleep at all this morning. It's the beginning of the semester, the time when I can sleep in and relax and socialize. But no, my body disagrees...hopefully it'll fall into line soon. This Sucks.

Game On

Vacation is officially over. I showed up for class today without an ounce of information. I relied on my classmates for briefings on the assignments, textbooks, room numbers, and more. I couldn't believe that there are actually students who would willingly give up days of their vacation to come back to school early in order to take care of bidness. But, I'm glad that they exist. They certainly make my life easier.

The new players in my life are:

Professor Kind -- Criminal Procedure, it doesn't seem fitting that the instructor should be someone who seems like such an all-around GOOD GUY, but that's how it worked out. 4 hours a week of rape, murder and theft, all brought to me by a fellow who went out of his way to talk about his personal life and then took about 10 minutes to disparage the grading system, telling us to buck up if we got Cs and to stop thinking we're cool if we got A's, because really, it's all about how good you were on that given day. I like his approach.

Professor Tax -- Federal Income Tax, he's dry, as expected. He's also very big on efficiency and won't be calling on students to give the facts of the case because, "why? when I can do it faster and we can get on to interesting discussions..." The math is a welcome addition to my life, but he claims it's only arithmetic. Bummer...

I fell asleep in contracts today, which provided two of my section-mates with plenty of entertainment, or so they told me afterward. Happy to help. I think I'm on the last bit of my jet lag. So, I'm off to watch simpsons and make an early night of it. Here's to hoping tomorrow I'm less tired.

Best Memory From Egypt

My favorite memory from Egypt comes from our last day in Siwa, despite suffering with a ridiculous bout of intestinal pain and unpleasantness. We walked about 2 Km from our hotel to the base of the Hill of the Dead late on a Friday afternoon. Slowly, because I couldn't move very fast, we mounted the steps and walked around the front of the mountain, examining the exumed tombs which were cut like perfect rectangular prisms from the sides of the mountain.

We rested and enjoyed the view of palm trees, mesas, desert, the town of siwa, and the farther away mountains upon which we'd visited Alexander's (supposed) tomb and the temple of Ammon. A lanky boy came running up the steps--he was in a white running shirt and shorts and barefoot. I clapped for him and shouted encouragement. On his second run up the stairs, he stopped and we exchanged names. I took his picture as he stood there and showed it to him on the digital camera. He asked if I would take one of him running. So, I did. I tried to explain that I would send the photographs to Ali who had promised to distribute them, but my neither my Arabic nor his English was good enough to get the point across.

After the boy left, several Italian women from the previous night's dinner came down from the top of the mountain. They asked if we had seen the locked tombs and if we knew any of their history. I explained that there was some in the Rough Guide and tried to hand it to them. They asked me to translate instead, and although I succeeded in a round about way, I was shocked at just how much my Italian has fallen into disrepair over the last 2 years. One of the women took over translation from me at the end and quickly breezed through the last few paragraphs. I contented myself with a reminder of how much easier it is to translate back into your native language as compared with out of it.

After the women left, we followed the keeper of the Key towards the tombs and passed a man crouching over a fire in one of the caves. He invited us for tea after the tombs, and we accepted. We followed the key-keeper into the four locked tombs and marvelled at the murals of a Grecian-looking merchant, the crocodile, and heiroglyphs. Real mummies and skeletons were in two of the tombs, including a skull with hair still attached (which had later been dated to be roman, not ptolemic or 26th Dynasty). Seeing mummies in the actual tombs as opposed to in a museum was somehow more real and also, more overwhelming. We were silenced as we tried to get our heads around age of the tombs, the multiple uses that had been made of them over the ages by the Ptolemic empire, the 26th Dynasty, the Romans, the Siwans, the Italian troops in 1940...and now us, tourists, visiting with a man who lived nearby and following up our visit with tea.

The tea man carefully laid out clean mats and pillows for us in the cave. He unwrapped a blackened metal boiling pot, a white porcelain serving pot, and four shot glass sized glass tea cups. Slowly, he performed the ritual of making the tea, with each step gently and carefully undertaken as he smiled and smoked. The tea smelled wonderful and we looked over the horizon as we awaited both the sunset and the tea. He offered us cigarettes, oranges, tangerines and bananas. We accepted some of his offerings and relaxed near the fire. Finally, the tea was ready. He poured sugar into the white tea pot and added the tea. Repeatedly, he poured a cup of tea in a long stream and poured the cup back into the tea pot to cool the liquid. The sun kept descending and the sky moved from yellow to orange to pink. Finally, he served us our tea and we sipped on the strong concoction as we watched the sun make its final descent.

I would have liked to stay longer, but unfortunately, my stomach had other ideas, so I had to leave. R stayed behind and talked with the men a bit more. One of them invited us back for native Siwan whiskey, but later, after the cop who had been waiting nearby was gone. R smiled, said no thanks, gave baksheesh to the tea-maker and the key-keeper and walked down the mountain to meet me.

Egyptian Food Revisited

Hani pointed out my very stupid mistake of mixing up fu'ul which is NOT bread, but rather native beans, and shami which is the word for the bread I was disparaging. He also pointed out that shami's a uniquely delta culture bread and it's got a lot of history on its side. Apparently the recipe and manner of making it are older than the ptolemic tombs I saw in Siwa, and older than most of the things I ogled in the antiquities museum. So, that's actually really cool. I think I was perhaps too hard on the stuff because I was more than just a little annoyed with it after the last couple of days of the trip, where it was all that I could eat due to the stomach bug...

Hani also asked for a quick rundown of what else we ate since he doesn't normally hear of people complaining about the food. So, here goes. For the most part, we subsisted off of granola bars, and random sandwiches/pizzas/croissants at cafes. But, we did intersperse a few more memorable meals into the trip, including:

Aladin (inside the Sheraton Cairo Towers) morrocan food. Shami. Grilled chicken/fish with couscous. Good, but nothing to write home about.

A kebab joint in khan el khalili (but unfortunately not the Khan el Khalili cafe, which were were trying to find, but couldn't). The lamb was a very dry mixture of ground meat and spices. R was the only one who ordered lamb and decided to skip it because it scared him. The chicken was good, but not amazing by any stretch. Shami, hummos, vegetables and rice were average.

Cafe Riche (Midan Talaat Harb, Cairo) - good tehina, average to forgetable shami and main courses of chicken over rice and moussaka. The history of the place and collection of intellectuals all discussing politics and philosophy made it a memorable cool experience.

Al Dabke (Inside the Sheraton Heliopolis) - Lebanese food. Good food according to R, I was too sick to eat...The belly dancer was awkward, seemed to have about 5 moves that she kept repeating in various orders and was not very adebt with her hips (believe it or not). But the musicians accompanying the dancing were amazing, particularly the drummer and singer.

Denus (Alexandria) Greek Restaurant, excellent meals of fried perch and fried calamari, pommes frites, tehina, shami and tomatoes/red onions. The staff was wonderfully friendly and insisted on complimenting my Arabic, which was obviously a ploy to be nice to the tourists (that worked!) since my arabic literally consists of 8 words (one of which is not "bread," in case you couldn't tell).

Aethenos (Alexandria) Greek Restaurant, the fish wasn't as good as denus and the same style of meal didn't come with the tomatoes and red onions, but the ambiance, view of the corniche and dedication of the servers was better.

Alexander (Siwa): shami and good native siwan boiled green vegetable dish, flavored with garlic that started with an m/mim. The texture was somewhere near cooked cactus or boiled okra.

Restaurant on top of the Shali Lodge (Siwa): shami, vegetable couscous, grilled chicken, rice, tehina-cucumber-tomato salad. One of the better meals of the trip, both the chicken and the couscous were mildly spiced.

In ground barbeque hosted by palm trees hotel (Siwa): shami, barbequed goat that was dry and unseasoned, tomato/cucumber/red onion salad that was average, and yellow rice that was undercooked. Worst meal of the trip. We agreed before we knew the price and ended up paying way too much. The meal immediately preceding my night of intestinal hell, and most likely to have caused it (although no one else who went got sick... so who knows?)

Quick Recap

I'm back in the USA. Egypt was difficult, amazing, beautiful, scary and wonderful. Classes begin in 2 days and I'll be stuck in early morning classes 5 days a week. Given that I'm not over jet lag or the egyptian version of montezuma's revenge that I caught, I'm not excited for school to start. Oh well.

The short version of the Egypt trip:

• Cairo is huge, full of smells, districts that are VERY distinct from one another, and many, many, many people. The basic tourist sights of the pyramids of giza, the antiquities museum, the citadel, Islamic Cairo and Khan El Khalili are all overwhelming and worth visiting again.
  
• The smog in Cairo is actually as bad as I had read it to be (approximately 30 cigarrettes a day)
  
• Downtown Cairo has the safest feeling streets of any major city I have ever visited. I had no fear of violence, theft, or any of the other nonsense of which I am usually apprehensive when in a major city like London, Paris, Rome, or New York.
  
• Egyptian food, on the whole, is really quite terrible. Their bread is an amazingly coarse pita-like thing called fu'ul. Greek pita bread, lebanese bread, Italian bread, so many nearby countries have much better bread, but the Egyptians have not yet gotten the memo. The same logic applies to spices, sauces and meat. The best food we had was at Greek restaurants in Alexandria (We highly recommend Denus, where you select your fish from the platter of fresh/frozen kills and I had the best fried calamari I've ever tasted.)
  
• Alexandria is a picturesque city on the mediterranean sea, a looser and more open younger sibling of Cairo. It is more common to see women in western dress, and young couples of opposite sex actually interacting with one another, perhaps because of the University of Alexandria and its proximity to the areas we visited. Upon arrival at the downtown train station, we managed to leave out the wrong exit and get lost on the other side of the peninsula in the working class neighborhoods--people were wonderfully friendly and helpful in helping us to get a cab back to where we were staying despite the lack of any common language other than us pointing to Midan Sa'ag Zaghloul in the rough guide. Our first night there, we stayed at the Union hotel on the 6th floor, in a room overlooking the Corniche. The view of the eastern harbour and the walks provided along the Corniche were amazing.
  
• Our second night there, the Cecil Hotel was a grand experience, which provided a much needed input of western water pressure and toilets during my bout with an intestinal bug.
  
• An intestinal bug, which comes upon you in the night at a $2 hotel in an oasis in the middle of nowhere, is not fun. Neither are fever and chills in the desert night and getting up every 30-45 minutes to run down the hall to the shared restrooms.
  
• The Siwa oasis is worth being sick with an intestinal bug. The Siwan people are wonderfully friendly and the culture is still locked into its past although how far back the hold goes is slowly slipping with the onslaught of tourists, factories, automobiles and other trappings of the modern way of life. Additionally, the local sights are some of the best that Egypt has to offer. We chose to go to Siwa over Luxor and Aswan and didn't regret our choice one bit. Luxor and Aswan will be there in the tourist-trapping splendor the next time we go, but Siwa may have completely altered itself by then.
  
• My trip would have been significantly different had I not been reading Palace Walk while in Cairo, Alexandria, Siwa, and on trains and buses surrounded by Egyptians. The book gave me a rich cultural and historical background against which to appreciate current Egyptian culture. I highly recommend this book to Westerners looking for some cultural perspective on Egypt. I had rented a few Egyptian films prior to going and none of them gave me even a tenth of the insight that the character development and stories in Palace Walk did.
  

Other than that, I'm happy to be home and almost recovered from my stomach bug. Now, I've just got to keep myself awake today and beat this jet lag before school begins...

Phase Two: T minus one day

Now that I'm relaxed and rejuvenated, I'm ready for the hard core portion of my vacation. Tomorrow, R and I leave for 10 days in Egypt. Should be fascinating, difficult, educational, and full of great stories. It didn't seem real to me that I was actually going until this morning when I was practicing Arabic phrases. Laughing at myself for my shower linguistics (some people sing, I speak in tongues) I realized that in less than two days, instead of having to repeat after CDs in my car, speaking in the shower, and babbling at friends who politely pretend that they are interested in what I'm trying to say, I would be able to practice these phrases with actual people who might understand me.

So, yeah. I'll be MIA for a while, doing cultural things, eating food, seeing sights, and hopefully, making a few friends.

Another bonus is that while I'm bummed to be away from E for so long, I'm over the hump. More than half of our time apart has passed and the remainder should fly by quickly as I'm traveling.

I'll collect the best stories from my trip for a monster post when I return.

Phase One: Complete

I survived and thoroughly enjoyed the first half of my winter break. A whole month of vacation! I'm back in love with law school again. Sure, finals sucked, but they were worth the entire month off.

The laziness, relaxation, and social life of the first phase included many wonderful things. I am fat and happy.

1. Read great brain candy books that had nothing to do with law:

• American Gods by Niel Gaiman. I grabbed it just before finals because I saw that it won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus (I used to subscribe, cool rag) and Bram Stoker Awards--I figured with that list of accomplishments, either the book was really good or there was a huge sci-fi/fantasy award conspiracy I should know about. It was really good. Fast plot, tight writing, excellent historical tidbit droppings, all the makings of fine brain candy.
  
  
• The Passions of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland. Italy. Art. Hints of the Italian Language. The drama of a difficult and dedicated life. All the things that are so sorely lacking from my law school experience.
  
  
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I figured I should at least know what everyone is talking about. Yup, it too had all the great trappings of an escape. Everything I've ever read about using the device of plot and managing the flow of a story was pulled off perfectly in this book. I read most of it on the last day of last year and I started the new year by waking in a post-party-daze and finishing the last 4 chapters.
  

2. Attended 2 parties and a psuedo-party where a bunch of alumni met up to watch our alma mater win a bowl game at my dad's favorite local deli/bar (we sang, yelled, drank, and celebrated, it was glorious).

3. Caught up with old friends.

4. Ate too much rich food.

5. Attended a wedding.

6. Slept, a lot.

Family Time

My life is predictably boring and wonderful these days. E and I are with our respective families, which does make life a little weird for me. We haven't been apart for this long for 2 years.

But, I'm distracted by my brother, sister, sister-in-law (more or less), mother, father, friends in my hometown, and OF COURSE, my adorable niece. For the last two days, I braved holiday shopping obstacles at the mall and target with a 23-month-old in tow and either her father or mother running interference.

Lots of work. I find that I need a nap when she does. And, since I'm on vacation, I willingly take one each day.

The basic scene is as you'd imagine it: my presents are wrapped (finished that today, thankfully) and under the tree, and my mother is buzzing about the kitchen in her typical ADHD way--making two grandiose meals at the same time while attacking 17 other holiday tasks. The stress of her ridiculous approach to holiday meals is a bit much. But then again, I'm staying with my brother, so I don't have to see it 24-7, and even if I did, it's worth it for the tradition of beef wellington for christmas dinner. Mmmm... beef wellington.

I'm off to perform pie patrol (Honey, can you take these pies out when they are ready before you leave? Oh, and marinate the beef? And wrap this present? And... Oh, I can see by your face that I should stop with the pies. Can you take the pies out?)

And then, I'm off to a much needed break from the fam to spend the evening with one of my best friends from childhood.

Happy holidays, break, winter, etc. to you all.

Totally Crossed Out

See those courses over there? To the left? They are all crossed out. I'm way too happy about this.

I know I'm only halfway done with a couple of the courses, but I'm leaving them off the list 'til classes start again.

So far today, I've slept in, done some christmas shopping, relaxed, and ummm... not much else.

How great is that?

Ahhhhh....

And I'm done. E and I just returned from a nice long Italian dinner at our favorite local joint. We talked about nothing and everything, for the first time in several weeks. Along with Pasto Ceppo and Pasta Norma, we sipped down a bottle of Guiseppe's recommendation: Vigorello. Wow--the perfect way to celebrate the end of the semester. It's light, full bright red fruits, and with the perfect hint of oak, although it was a little heavy on the sediment, if that bothers you. It's my new second favorite Super Tuscan, after Tignanello, which will always claim number one because of the memories from the night in San Gimignano when I first had it.

As for the exam, it's over. The whole semester is over, in fact. One-sixth down. Amazing.

The long story is that H and I crammed as much as we could in our under-prepared heads and compiled as many helpful documents as we could for the open book exam. We managed to cover it all, but definitely not at the level we'd covered everything else. We were scared, actually.

But, I assume we owe a huge Thankyou to the vibes sent my way from Sua Sponte. Yesterday, when it became ridiculously apparent that H and I were not going to be completely prepared for our exam, we had to make a choice. We each named what we thought the essay portion would cover, and we covered those portions extensively. Apparently, someone was listening. It was almost scary how dead-on my guess had been... I called it down to the sub-sub-rule on the first issue and the general topic of the follow up question was exactly what I suspected. A Big Huge Thanks is all I have to say.

So, the next time I have to think about law school is when I return from my two-week vacation in Egypt. For now, it's all fun, family, holidays, gift shopping, bowl games, and getting back into the swing of being a normal human.

And then there was one

Property was reasonable. 3 hours, 3 questions, weighted according to their time allotments. I left feeling better than after Torts. But, that wasn't hard to do.

I took the night off and went to dinner with E and some friends. I hoped to recuperate, and did, some. But morning came too soon.

And now, although I'm still exhausted, I must focus. 53 hours 'til I'm done with the first semester. Civil Procedure seems undaunting after all of the other exams--it's open book, and only 25% of my final grade. But, unfortunately, I'm also less prepared for it than any of my other exams. So, I've got to buckle down, get a ridiculous collection of notes into a workable outline, tab the rules, attend one last review session, and go through several practice exams all before Thursday afternoon.

I can't wait 'til I'm done with this marathon.

Pronunciation

Turns out, it's Kwik-so-tic, not Kee-oh-tic. It comes from Quixote, as in Don Quixote, the book, written in SPANISH. Seems like the pronunciation would follow the Spanish rules, but apparently, the Brits decided that "Kwicks-ote" (think oatmeal) was how to pronounce the man's name and it looks like they were the ones who coined the word quixotic. Cultural imperialism. Lame.

If you're wondering about other words you may have mispronounced (or correctly pronounced, if you asked me) check out this cool article about common English words disagreed upon regardless of dialect or linguistic background.

Reality Check

One of the theories of why Property rights exist says that without private property, people will not speak up for themselves against the tyrant, because they have no guarantee of anything outside of what is provided by the state. If you follow this line of thought long enough, you get to the place where property rights are a pragmatic way to avoid war--and all of the fighting over who gets the biggest piece of the pie.

The difference between theory and reality is that war is already happening. It's merely a question of scale, and whether the fighting is known to the masses. The truth of property is that it's a system to minimize the war, not avoid it.

So, with an eye towards minimizing war, I'd like to offer a blessing to each and every American, Iraqi and international soldier working for peace in Iraq. May the capture of the despot bring you much good will and momentum on the arduous road to a greater peace.

Over the Hump

I've had no social life since classes ended. Other than stopping by K's house the night before my first exam, I haven't seen any of my non-law-school friends since November. 'Til yesterday, that is. After my glorious 11-hour night of sleep, I spent 6-hours stuffing everything I know in property either into my head or onto the cheat sheet for about 6 hours. Then, E and I went to a long-lived and favorite client's holiday party at Morton's in Union Square. Mmmm... Filet Mignon. The size of a small house. Oh, and to top it off, they cleared us out of the private dining room a little early (in exchange for a round of drinks on the house) so that we could make room for a party for Jaws. No problem, man. No problem at all. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Dude is REALLY tall.

So, the event to mark halfway was was great: Friends I hadn't seen in 3 months to a year. Union Square during the holiday bustle. Good Wine. Rare beef. And one of the best James Bond Villains of all time.

E and I came home, watched the Simpons, had a cup of tea and passed out. Although I slept quite well, I did wake at 3 AM with bit of beef-madness. Apparently, I was suffering from beef-inspired property dreams, one of which involved a broken deep-fryer, several of the party's attendees, a huge side of beef going into the fryer, hot-oil everywhere, and me yelling at the landlord about how the fryer was part of the common area facilities and boy, were they in trouble. Guess I'm not getting too far away from Torts, but at least it is somehow landlord-tenant related. Apparently, my subconscious didn't get the memo about the night off.

OOTO

E works with lots of Indian Programmers. Today, one of them sent the following Out Of The Office message:


Subject: OOTO 12/13 - 01/06
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:58:09 -0800

I'll be on vacation in India.

Yes - I'll be checking email when I'm sober.
Yes - I'm going to get my hair cut.
Yes - I'm getting married.
No - I don't know her.
No - I won't set you up with her sister.

Happy holidays,
[name_omitted]

Two Down

Torts. Three and a half hours. Even longer than contracts.

So, studying took priority over blogging for the last few days. Tuesday, H and I boiled our outlines down to the two-sided page of notes that we were allowed to bring to the exam. Turns out this two pages of notes thing was a bit of a farce for two reasons:

1. In order to finish the exam you had to know the material cold and be a very speedy typist. There was very little time to consult your notes, so spending an entire day constructing the cheat sheet of perfection was a bit of a waste of time, in hindsight.

2. We covered way too much in Torts to fit all of the relevant material on two pages. I say this despite the fact that I used crazy MS-Word-Foo and got 3 columns in 6.5 font with margins of 0.2 on all four sides for both pages. After removing so many useful things and staring at the page trying to decide what else could go before it fit on 2 pages, I realized that the two page notes trick was the professor's way of trying to get you to memorize the important stuff. There are easier ways to memorize...sheesh. So, at the end, you have most of it memorized and the stuff that would be really useful on the exam are the random analyses by dissenting judges, elements of minority opinions, etc. that you could pull-out in policy arguments. But, of course, that stuff didn't make it through the filter of importance to earn a spot on the 2-pager. So, basically, it's a security blanket unless you are so confident that you can fill it with random shit that may come in useful. I'm not that cocky.

Wednesday, H and I cranked through a few practice exams and read the model answers. From them, we determined that there's a pretty high reward for pull-it-out-of-your-ass arguments. The more novel and crack-potted, the more likely they are to keep the professor interested as they are grading their 85th essay. Turns out an engineering degree is a bad thing in these cases. It doesn't occur to me that I should develop a theory about explosions, crashes, etc. that goes against the laws of physics. Thankfully, there were no speculation about destruction questions on the exam.

So, I barely used the notes. And, I barely finished. The proctor called time when I was halfway through spell-check. Turns out I don't know how to spell "forseeability", [laugh] oh well. It's halfway correct and halfway not.

Overall, I was a little disappointed in the exam and my performance. It definitely covered more material in two questions than any of the prof's earlier exams did. I believe I identified most of the issues, and I did my best to analyze the important ones. But, there were too many important issues and not enough time to analyze them all. None of her practice exams had dealt with this problem and I didn't know if it was worth it to point out that I saw the issues I didn't have time to get to, or if I shouldn't bother unless I had time to also analyze them. In the end, I had to make some concessions for speed: I took the two sentence approach. One for "here's an issue" and a follow up of "the facts indicate blah-blah-blah, which leads to a insert-case-here-style approach where result will be the outcome. Or something like that.

I'm disappointed because there was too much to do and in the real world, I would have done it all. On the exam, I had to pick the best few issues to address fully and then use the time left to briefly touch on the others. I did all the basic stuff like sticking to the time allotment for the first question despite it's length, and taking one-third of the time to outline my answers before I started writing. But, the outlines identified WAY more material than I could write about in the remaining two-thirds of the exam. I did my best to rank them in order of importance and just go. I guess I'm a little disappointed because when you are so pressed for time that you don't have time to think, it becomes a game of instincts, and not necessarily a test of your knowledge or ability to communicate it. I guess I can hope my instincts were correct. I have to accept that law school sometimes grades on things like test-taking strategy and instinct instead of understanding, and move on.

Because Hey, I finished my first law school class. I spent the remainder of yesterday giving my brain a much needed break. Some of us went out for lunch and drinks after the exam, we avoided discussing the exam as if it was the plague, then I lounged on a couch watching H's built up TiVo collection (Cold Case Files, Law and Order, QueerEye), read some of the Economist, and finally, went out for dinner with E. Italian food, wine, and early to bed.

This morning, I woke refreshed for the first time in at least 3 days. I slept for 11 hours. I can't believe how physically exhausting this extended learning process is. But, Property is over in a scant 3 days. So, I'm off to make yet another 2-page condensed sheet of ridiculousness.

Refreshed...Sort Of

The nap was two hours. It was dark by the time I woke up, so the leaves are still out there annoying our next door neighbor to no end [evil laugh].

I woke intending to study, but took a quick break to call my sister. Turns out my Dad's house was robbed last Friday. Due to finals, I didn't make the weekend family calls (or attend the funeral of my father's best-friend's father) so I was out of the loop.

Apparently, when my dad came home from work for a late lunch, he interrupted them. Have I mentioned that my dad is 6'4" and approximately 290lbs? He went inside to write down the license plate of the woman in the van in his driveway only to watch her partner, "a little guy," run out the front door. He chased after the guy, who left on foot while the woman sped away in the van. The guy got away (my dad's strong but umm... not so fast...). The woman circled back to pick up the guy and my dad CAR-CHASED HER VAN THROUGH TOWN UNTIL HE PINNED IT AGAINST A WALL, with his American 4-door sedan, no less. Then he called the police and waited for them to come pick her up. My dad is hilarious. [laugh]

The story should be better, though. The police let the woman go after 5 hours because my dad never saw her get out of the van or go into the house, she was only parked in his driveway and there was no stolen property in the van. Oh well. Somehow I doubt they'll come back.

Of course, then I had to call my dad and my brother to catch up on the family gossip and yell at my dad for not telling me (I didn't want to bother you during finals). Then E came home, so we talked about our days. In truth I only got about 2 hours of studying for Civ Pro done before dinner and watching Carlito's Way. Another awesome Pacino performance, but at 2h20m, I didn't get to bed as early as I would have liked...

When I woke this morning, I was tired, but I think my brain is capable of going back to full assault mode. It's not happy about it, but I'm not giving it a choice.

One Down

Contracts. Finished. 3 hour exam. Very Long. Most people were complaining about not having time to finish. But, I think that's a good thing. I'd rather have a test that covers tons of topics and have the opportunity to write about what I know in order of best to least. If I missed some of the lessor points, so be it. Tests that seem easy and go for a few key points always freak me out. I wonder if I'm missing things, and end up racking my brain in the spare time to try and make up shit that might or might not get points.

After taking that test, I'm drained. I'm going to take a nap, rake the leaves (workout and chore, all in one), and then... begin studying again later this evening.

Based on today's exam, my studying plan looks like it's working pretty well. My approach has been to get the outlines done. Then get the cheat sheets done. By then, I had a general sense of the material and H and I attacked as many practice exams as we could handle.

In the last 3 days, H and I covered around 15 exam questions in prep for this test. We'd outline under time pressure, allotting about 1/3 of the question length, just like we would in the real test, and then we'd discuss what we found. I can't believe how lucky I am to have found a study partner who: doesn't annoy me at all, asks questions that make me think and learn, can study at my house on a regular basis, and enjoys burritos. What were the odds?

And, then, to top it off--we have very different brains. So, we often we take different positions on things that could go either way. We discuss our respective positions and at the end have a very good idea of how to argue both sides of the issue. All but one of the issues (that I spotted, at least) that showed up on the real exam were things we'd covered in depth on the two days prior. I feel like I'd have worked harder without H and chances are, I would have learned less. That's my advice, find a study partner who has the same work ethic and a different way of thinking than you.

Off to get some recovery sleep since the hotel sleep was fitfull and too short. I've finally come down from the adrenaline high I've been on for at least the last 36 hours and my head hurts. My body is craving the bed and I'm only too happy to comply.

The Good Life

When you're studying like mad, it's the little things, like emails from your friends that really make your day.

A friend told me about going to his high school reunion:


I had a one person to try to corner me and find out my salary,
but I was able to pass this over easily by just telling him that
I'm a director of soft porn, so my earnings vary.
I explained that last year was a down year,
but this year I really expected to...
get it up.


Buh-dum-ching.

Best Left-Over Thanksgiving Idea

Turkey Fajitas:

Sautee some diced onions and garlic in olive oil.
Throw in cumin, paprika, cinnamon, cayenne, salt, chili powder and pepper.
Add a small can of tomato paste and 2 cups of turkey stock and let simmer for 10 minutes, stirring regularly.
Cut up left-over turkey (light and dark meat) into bite-sized chunks, throw them in the pan with the sauce.
Cook 'til the sauce has boiled down to the consistency you like and throw in some diced bell peppers for the last 1-2 minutes.

Serve on warmed tortillas, with pico de gallo and lettuce.

And, now, the turkey leftovers are finally gone.

Failed Experiment

I broke down and rebooted into Windows today. Abiword and Open Office couldn't handle my contracts outline formatting. I'm not a formatting freak, but I guess bullet points, bold, indentations, etc. for more than 30 pages were just too much for open source to handle today. I don't have the time to force it to work right now.

There IS a market for a good MS-compatible word processing suite on linux. I wonder when someone will get around to making one that's actually an option for people under pressure to produce documents.

I hate it when I have to go back to using the monopoly. At least this time, they won the battle on features. But, I'm still grumpy about it.

In other news, I accessed my blog in IE for the first time and realized my fonts were hard to read. Here's the newer version.

Back to contracts.

Tired

Turns out there was a surprise review session today. I really wanted to cut off of campus after class and get some fresh air, and perhaps buy toilet guts, since one of our toilet flushing mechanism died from the abuse of family, turkey, gravy, etc. But, the toilet will have to wait, as will fresh air. The review session was a practice exam of short answer questions for professor Early. He rabidly guards his short answers (the going theory is that he reuses them) so the opportunity to practice on some, even if they were made up by a previous student of his, was something I could not turn down. So, I did what I should have done and studied for a couple of hours, gulped down some food, went to the review and finally took off with H to catch Shattered Glass.

I highly recommend the movie as a study break. Of course, I highly recommend anything that's a study break these days. But seriously, Hayden Christensen did a very good job of playing a clearly troubled young writer, and the story is entertaining. Of course, when he's getting suspended and asked to leave without any of his belongings, the main character asks if he can at least take his law school books with him. The scene involved a book that looked disturbingly like my property book. I just can't escape...

Tomorrow, I've got two timed practice exams: property and torts. Thankfully, my property outline is done. I came home refreshed from the movie and tried to fly through the remaining 15% of my Torts outline. At midnight, I called it quits without winning. If there's anything on the last 5% of class, I'll have to rely on the fact that we recently covered it. I need sleep. Thankfully, E is being wonderfully patient with me and made me tea, ordered dinner for delivery and agreed to come stay with me at the hotel on the nights before my morning exams. I'm very lucky.

Off to kill a few trees by printing my notes and outlines for those classes.

Life According to Grandmother

Gran sent an adorable thank you email for thanksgiving that included the following:


Had a good trip home, no rain. It is cold here today, too cold to
rain, darn it, we could surely use it. Your home is lovelyand I'm sure that you are going to be very happy
there. It is nice that you have so many nice cupboards, you can never have
too many. I fussed around with this computer and somehow it is working, but it
makes me so angry because I don't know what I did to make it work, oh well I
won't worry about it until it won't work any more then I'll really be ticked.
I'm sure it is working because you put a good hex on it. HA, HA, HA.
Thanks again my darlings and both of you have a wonderful Christmas.


No mention of finals or school. Not because I didn't mention 'em but because they aren't important. She's been alive a long time. In her wisdom, cabinets, weather, and hexes (on technology) are important, but not school. I'll keep that in mind.