Delinquent

Wow! I haven't posted forever! I'm becoming one of those delinquent bloggers who only posts like once a month!

Will try to be better in the future.

Well, since there are so many things to record, I'm going to be methodical, and do something I've never done before. Use subheadings!

新年快乐

First thing first: happy Chinese New Year! We are now in the year of the dog. The Chinese restaurant across the street has been giving out "red pockets" with dollar bills inside every since last week. Last night ABS and I went there and they are STILL giving them out. Sweet.

Celebrations

My parents drove up to spend Chinese New Year's with me this weekend. They got here on Friday and stayed until Monday morning. It was a very successful trip. We had a lot of good food (some I made, some they brought from my favorite Chinese restaurant at home), drank 1.5 bottles of wine, walked around B-town when it was in the upper 50s here on Saturday, went to the Harbor, and played a lot of games. Fun fun fun.

On Sunday I also went to a Chinese New Years dinner at AC's boyfriend J's house in B-town. S, JW and her husband N, and J's roommate were also there. We made dumplings (well, AC made the filling and I helped her put the fillings and skins together in a package). AC also made congee (with pork and preserved ducks eggs -- yum! so typically Chinese and reminds me of childhood). I made a brownie with chocolate ganash.

Sadly, my part of the dinner was cut short when my parents locked themselves out of my apartment (while I was with my friends they decided to go to B-town to sightsee, but weirdly the keys that I made for them didn't work). So I hurried downed some dumplings and congee and took a cab home.

Parents and I spent a pleasant evening home, however, having my frozen dumplings from costco (they are actually surprisingly good. You should try them); having wine, and playing games.

School

Now, on to this semester. Grades are not yet out, and I'm determined not to look at them once they ARE out. Let's see how long this resolution lasts.

This semester, we have new classes with new professors! We are taking property, contracts, and my elective which is tax. Incidentally, my elective starts today, and I haven't read the reading assignment yet. Does not bode well for my semester.

For property we have this visiting professor from our rival school, who is so nerdy it is endearing. He is using his draft casebook. I groaned when I heard this, because I didn't feel like being guinea pigs for some professor who hasn't completely worked out the kinks in his book, but the book has been surprisingly good and really enjoyable to read, perhaps even more so than our torts book which I love.

I had also expected property to be boring, since in my readings before law school property invariably involved arcane categories of land conveyance like "fee simple", "fee tail", and other such nonsense that no one is really interested in nowadays except estates lawyers. But this guy's casebook is very philosophical. So far we are talking about questions like "what is property?" "what does property entail?" "How does one acquire property?" and things like that, with interesting cases to illustrate the competing phiosophical views (strangely, most of them involving capturing wild animals and fishing).

Contracts have been boring so far, and I have been playing games nearly nonstop in that class (I know. It's bad of me and I should stop doing that.) On Friday S, AK, AHH, and I played monopoly on games.com, and I hardly heard a single word the professor said. I don't think I missed that much, however, since we haven't even been talking about contracts at all, only how to read cases. I hope we get to the substantive parts soon.

Jobs

Now, here's the real bane of my existence. Since I was in Israel, I hadn't had time to look for jobs like the rest of my classmates. Many of them already have summer jobs now while I'm still starting my search. This is not fun, especially given that I have no real sense of what I want to do (only had, um, one semester of law school), where I wnat to be (both Boyfriend and I are very flexible), and what kind of organization I want to work for. My vague sense is that the Department of Justice and the USAO are a safe and prestigious jobs, very competitive, etc. But there are also so many interesting organizations out there. So anyway, I have just sent out 27 resumes to various DOJ and USAO departments, and my next wave of applications will be non-profits legal organizations. My third wave will be international organizations, which has a much more flexible deadline and seems much easier to get (since we are essentially working for free for them).

Anyway, won't bore you with the minutiae. Will just keep you posted on what turns up, and where I will end up this summer.