Itinerary for the past couple of days...
Yesterday, I went to the Texas History Museum with Boyfriend. We first saw a very amusing short film in the Museum's theater about Texas history. It's a fine bit of revisionist history lauding the "Texas Spirit," which is apparently synonomous with everything that is good, kind, and courageous about the human soul.
The movie, which otherwise would have just been a fine piece of Powerpoint work, was made extraordinary by some of the fun special effects in the theater. For instance, when the narration involves a hurricane, there is not only excellent sound effect, but the ceiling actually simulates lightning, and then mist descends from the sky. Then, at another point, the movie involved rattle snakes. And at the moment the snakes on the screen hissed and struck, something under my seat -- under everyone's seat, moved and the theater was filled with startled screams and then amused laughters.
As I said, very amusing. Very well done.
Needless to say, the children in the audience loved it. I did too.
Then, Boyfriend and I went to the IMax Theater and we saw not one but TWO Imax movies, one after the other. We first saw Roving Mars. The highlight of the movie, surprisingly, was not just about being ON Mars (which resembled many of the other deserts that I have seen, including the ones in Israel), but the intricate process of assembling the Mars rover beforehand. It was a fascinating process, and got me very jealous of the engineers that work for NASA. How come they get to engage in such cool, fascinating projects while I get to be stuck being a lawyer?!?! No fair.
Then, in the evening, came home and had an excellent fresh salad with Boyfriend and Boyfriend's brother, a professor at UT. We then amused ourselves by renting a $1 movie (Flightplan, if you are interested to know) from the local supermarket, because it was one of the few action films that was not out of stock. I did not have high hopes for the film, but it was actually quite gripping. As I said though, I don't really have high standards for films. The only thing they have to do is really to entertain.
Today, Boyfriend and I got up and went to his niece's elementary school to have lunch with her. She is a very prococious little sixth grader, and I am very fond of her. It was macaroni and cheese day, which I'm not crazy about, but I did have chocolate milk and a little salad and a piece of fried cod. Afterwards, Boyfriend and I hung out at a little Starbucks. I read property while he worked, and then we went back to the school to pick up his niece. We had planned to go to the arboretum and feed ducks -- we even had a loaf of bread ready. But today it was so humid and hot that everyone was feeling kind of low energy. So instead we stayed in the cool indoors and watched 4 episodes of Monty Pythons.
In the evening, we had a simple Shabat dinner service, then made a similarly excellently salad, had wine from the region of Germany where Boyfriend's great-grand parents are from, and had lamb shanks.
Tomorrow I leave Austin already! Can't believe spring break is almost over and I have to go back to work again... Sigh...
:D Got a cowgirl hat from Shepler's, the famous Western Wear store in Austin.
:( Allergies...
3/31/2006
3/30/2006
A for Awesome
I'm in Austin, Texas, enjoying my vacation. The weather is in the 80s and sunny. The city is pleasant and filled with fun activities. I'm reading a lot of tax (but not too much) in nice little Starbuckses, and exploring the city with Boyfriend in the afternoon.
Tonight we saw V for Vendetta. Excellent film. I really, really liked it. There is a lot going on in the movie; at time it feels crowded and over-stuffed, both plot-wise and philosophically. But it is a ton of fun and very moving and features a cast of fantastic actors. Definitely see it if you still haven't done so.
The movie theater we saw it in, Draft House, was also awesome! It is a theater that serves a full dinner and alcohol while you watch the movie. Every chair has a table and candle before it, and it was soooo enjoyable feasting on an excellent pizza and drinking a pale ale while watching the action flick. I can't believe this movie chain hasn't gone national yet!
Tonight we saw V for Vendetta. Excellent film. I really, really liked it. There is a lot going on in the movie; at time it feels crowded and over-stuffed, both plot-wise and philosophically. But it is a ton of fun and very moving and features a cast of fantastic actors. Definitely see it if you still haven't done so.
The movie theater we saw it in, Draft House, was also awesome! It is a theater that serves a full dinner and alcohol while you watch the movie. Every chair has a table and candle before it, and it was soooo enjoyable feasting on an excellent pizza and drinking a pale ale while watching the action flick. I can't believe this movie chain hasn't gone national yet!
3/26/2006
Walking Together in the Dark
Got into a random argument with AR today over IM. Among other things, it was about what an "ideal love" is. AR's ideal is to be completely understood, to completely understand his lover; to share everything and to become one with her.
I thought differently. A while ago I read a quote that I really liked. It was in Chinese, but it was apparently a translation from German. Unfortunately I could remember neither the name of the author or the book itself.
I began googling it nonetheles. Fourty minutes later, with a bit of luck and a bit of ingenuity, I have found the quotation in Chinese. Sadly, I could not find the original text.
The author of the quote is Albert Schweitzer, the humanitarian doctor who on the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1950s. He was a missionary and a philosopher as well, and wrote prolifically.
It was from this unlikely source that I found my very favorite quote of my philosophy on love. It purportedly is from Schweitzer's "Memoirs from My Childhood and Youth." I am doing a rough translation below, and perhaps will take out his book from the library when I have time to read random books.
"It is impossible to completely know and understand someone else. Even if were possible, no one has the right to demand this of others.
"There is not only a shame in the nakedness of the body, but also a shame in the nakedness of the soul. We should respect it. A soul has clothes as well. We should not undress it.
"As with the mystery of God, we cannot read and know the mystery of another soul as a book that belongs to us, but can only love and trust it.
"Everyone is a secret to others. Even lovers are only pilgrims walking side by side in the dark, not knowing whether they are walking towards the same city. What we can do is to seek the light within ourselves, and feel the companionship and comfort of those walking besides us. We do not need to gaze into the eyes and search into the soul of others."
I thought differently. A while ago I read a quote that I really liked. It was in Chinese, but it was apparently a translation from German. Unfortunately I could remember neither the name of the author or the book itself.
I began googling it nonetheles. Fourty minutes later, with a bit of luck and a bit of ingenuity, I have found the quotation in Chinese. Sadly, I could not find the original text.
The author of the quote is Albert Schweitzer, the humanitarian doctor who on the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1950s. He was a missionary and a philosopher as well, and wrote prolifically.
It was from this unlikely source that I found my very favorite quote of my philosophy on love. It purportedly is from Schweitzer's "Memoirs from My Childhood and Youth." I am doing a rough translation below, and perhaps will take out his book from the library when I have time to read random books.
"It is impossible to completely know and understand someone else. Even if were possible, no one has the right to demand this of others.
"There is not only a shame in the nakedness of the body, but also a shame in the nakedness of the soul. We should respect it. A soul has clothes as well. We should not undress it.
"As with the mystery of God, we cannot read and know the mystery of another soul as a book that belongs to us, but can only love and trust it.
"Everyone is a secret to others. Even lovers are only pilgrims walking side by side in the dark, not knowing whether they are walking towards the same city. What we can do is to seek the light within ourselves, and feel the companionship and comfort of those walking besides us. We do not need to gaze into the eyes and search into the soul of others."
3/25/2006
Week From Hell Is Finally Over...
Last Sunday, it had seemed that my Ames brief was closed to being done. Who knew that I would then proceed to spend more than 40 hours on it, including pulling 3 (well, 2.5) all-nighters?
Who knew that the damned thing would take so much time?
Who knew that there were still so many cases that I hadn't read, including two cases that ended up being extremely relevant, and on which I basically relied the entire brief?
Who knew that J and I were wrong about who our opponent team was the entire time, and didn't even realize that we had picked up the wrong brief until 11PM the evening before the brief was due. Thankfully our Lawyering professor was forgiving, although not too pleased.
Who knew that bluebooking and making a Table of Authority and Table of Content would take me and my partner like 8 hours?!??!
Who knew that my Internet was going to go down at 3:30 AM on Thursday morning (less than 6.5 hours before the brief was due and 1 minute before J emailed the master file for me to bluebook and proofread). Who knew that I would have to then put on clothes and trek 2 completely deserted and creepy blocks to AC's dorm room to complete my brief there?
(AC was so sweet. She was done with her own brief but hung out with me. She gave me chocolates and was in general so pleasant and helpful. She finally fell asleep around 5 AM and then snored a little. She was the best companion on a very stressful night.)
Well, so that's why I hadn't posted at all for the past week. On Monday, Tuesday and Wedneday I basically didn't sleep, and instead just took sporadic naps during the day. I only went to 2 classes today the entire week. The rest of the time was spent either napping, frantically reading, or frantically writing. With some meals thrown in in between.
On Thursday night (after our briefs were due), I crashed and slept 13 hours. My sleeping schedule is now completely messed up.
This reminds me a bit of my college days, in an unpleasant way. I hope to never do this again.
(Except, well, I'm becoming a lawyer and apparently this is what I'll be doing for the next 40 years or so.)
My only consolation was that ABS and S, for the most part, stayed up with me on those nights, so at least it wasn't as lonely as it could have been.
The sad part is that after all this, I still don't feel my brief was that good. I think I just completely lost perspective at the end. I began obsessing over the minutiae instead of paying more attention to the bigger picture of justice and equity. Instead of enumerating all those "factors" in hardly binding authorities I should have been more eloquent in advocating for our client. I should have addressed the human drama a bit more in my brief, instead of making it into a dry and boring piece of writing. But alas, it's hard to be eloquent at 4:30 AM.
But, I'm glad it was over. Spring break began yesterday and many people left in the morning. A record low of 33 people attended contracts. (I wasn't there to witness this sad spectacle, as I was sleeping and then having lunch in the Square with S and AR.) Later, I heard from J that the contracts professor called a series of 15 people, none of whom was there, before he reached someone who was actually present. Amazingly, in the 3 weeks that I have been absent from contracts, he hasn't called on me once yet.
On Friday, I visited DPP and his mother who was in town visiting, and the three of us played scrabble together. DPP won in the end, and his mother came in second. I was soundly beaten, alas, because of a few very bad strategic plays. I blamed it on the lack of sleep, but that was just a convenient excuse. :)
This weekend, I'm taking care of ABS's cat. ABS is in Chicago visiting his Boyfriend C, and today I got to spend some quality time with the kitty. Definitely the high point of my day...
:D Leaving for warm Austin on Monday!
:( Need to re-orient myself and do some major studying in the next few days, so the spring break won't be that relaxing after all...
Who knew that the damned thing would take so much time?
Who knew that there were still so many cases that I hadn't read, including two cases that ended up being extremely relevant, and on which I basically relied the entire brief?
Who knew that J and I were wrong about who our opponent team was the entire time, and didn't even realize that we had picked up the wrong brief until 11PM the evening before the brief was due. Thankfully our Lawyering professor was forgiving, although not too pleased.
Who knew that bluebooking and making a Table of Authority and Table of Content would take me and my partner like 8 hours?!??!
Who knew that my Internet was going to go down at 3:30 AM on Thursday morning (less than 6.5 hours before the brief was due and 1 minute before J emailed the master file for me to bluebook and proofread). Who knew that I would have to then put on clothes and trek 2 completely deserted and creepy blocks to AC's dorm room to complete my brief there?
(AC was so sweet. She was done with her own brief but hung out with me. She gave me chocolates and was in general so pleasant and helpful. She finally fell asleep around 5 AM and then snored a little. She was the best companion on a very stressful night.)
Well, so that's why I hadn't posted at all for the past week. On Monday, Tuesday and Wedneday I basically didn't sleep, and instead just took sporadic naps during the day. I only went to 2 classes today the entire week. The rest of the time was spent either napping, frantically reading, or frantically writing. With some meals thrown in in between.
On Thursday night (after our briefs were due), I crashed and slept 13 hours. My sleeping schedule is now completely messed up.
This reminds me a bit of my college days, in an unpleasant way. I hope to never do this again.
(Except, well, I'm becoming a lawyer and apparently this is what I'll be doing for the next 40 years or so.)
My only consolation was that ABS and S, for the most part, stayed up with me on those nights, so at least it wasn't as lonely as it could have been.
The sad part is that after all this, I still don't feel my brief was that good. I think I just completely lost perspective at the end. I began obsessing over the minutiae instead of paying more attention to the bigger picture of justice and equity. Instead of enumerating all those "factors" in hardly binding authorities I should have been more eloquent in advocating for our client. I should have addressed the human drama a bit more in my brief, instead of making it into a dry and boring piece of writing. But alas, it's hard to be eloquent at 4:30 AM.
But, I'm glad it was over. Spring break began yesterday and many people left in the morning. A record low of 33 people attended contracts. (I wasn't there to witness this sad spectacle, as I was sleeping and then having lunch in the Square with S and AR.) Later, I heard from J that the contracts professor called a series of 15 people, none of whom was there, before he reached someone who was actually present. Amazingly, in the 3 weeks that I have been absent from contracts, he hasn't called on me once yet.
On Friday, I visited DPP and his mother who was in town visiting, and the three of us played scrabble together. DPP won in the end, and his mother came in second. I was soundly beaten, alas, because of a few very bad strategic plays. I blamed it on the lack of sleep, but that was just a convenient excuse. :)
This weekend, I'm taking care of ABS's cat. ABS is in Chicago visiting his Boyfriend C, and today I got to spend some quality time with the kitty. Definitely the high point of my day...
:D Leaving for warm Austin on Monday!
:( Need to re-orient myself and do some major studying in the next few days, so the spring break won't be that relaxing after all...
3/20/2006
Controversy!
A few days ago I received an email inviting me to go to a "Town Hall meeting" about the Law School Parody that my friends and I saw a few weekends ago. Apparently, the parody offended some people, including some students being mocked about their romantic relationship or their body type, and two black girls who were unfavorably portrayed as "ghetto."
I don't recall this at all from parody, but ABS told me that the black girls stuff was near the beginning (recall that I was about 15 minutes late). Also, since I was pretty much drunk almost all of the time there, my sensitivity-radar wasn't operating at normal levels.
My main gripe with the parody was that it was too long, and that it wasn't that funny. The problem mainly came from the fact that the parody parodied many students, and since I attend a fairly large law school, and no one here can be said to know the entire student body, most of the audience won't "get" at least 80% of the jokes. So for any given joke involving students, perhaps 5-10% of the audience will laugh. The other will not understand what's so funny. The whole thing just seemed kind of lame and unnecessary.
On top of it, people got offended by it, which made it even more not worth it. I can kind of relate. I was not parodied in the parody, but if they had done it, I'm not sure how I would feel about that. If they mocked me in an unfair way, or had presented something inaccurate about me (as some of these people apparently felt) perhaps I would be pissed off as well.
In any event, I thought this would be an interesting meeting to attend, so I went with ABS in the afternoon to the meeting. A LOT of people were there. I think someone must have sent out some rallying email. Almost the entire black student's association was there. The parody cast and crew were there. I think some conservative student groups were there as well. Then there were curious spectators like me. They filled up a very large lecture hall and people had to stand in the back because there were no more seats.
A very prominent black professor moderated the discussion. There was a palpable tension in the air, and there were some ugly moments of shouting at each other. On the whole though, the comments and the dialogue were civil. The parody producers and writers apologized profused, though their apologies were always followed by some super-defense "BUT... blah blah blah..." A few black students spoke very eloquently. One black guy totally got an Obama thing going on.
I made a comment too about how I feel like the parody has the potential of messing with people's reputation, especially since we are a large community and people don't necessarily know the students being parodies personally.
Others made the point that in certain other law schools mocking students in the parody is just not allowed. You can only poke fun at professors. I think I kind of agree with that. I think it smacks of meanness when you poke fun at students, who don't necessarily consent to being protrayed in this way. Some people also suggested an "opt-out" registry for students who don't want to be parodied, or for the writers to ask the students for their permission before writing a parody about them into the show.
Freedom of speech, predictably, came up as a defense. As well as the defense that the parody is just a big joke and a great tradition and people should just let it be, in the name of tradition and humor.
i disagree with that on so many levels, which I will not recount here.
A few people became very emotional during the discussion, and nearly cried. I guess this is a really emotional topic for everyone.
There was also quite a few predictably self-congratulatory "well, at least we are engaging in a soul-searching racial dialogue" "at least something good came out of this" talk. I am very non-plussed by this kind of thinking. I don't think discussions are good for their own sake, unless they solve something or at least lead somewhere. Just pointing out "oh jeez, there's a lot of racial discrimination around the school." is not really that helpful and is even a bit cliched at this point. Not to mention that a lot of the discussions are even less than that. The question is what do we plan to DO about it? How do we make the parody less hurtful and more constructive? How do we respond to the members of the student body who feel insulted? How do we write the parody in the future? How do we build the law school community in other ways that will make all members feel welcome? These are the really pressing issues that need answers. Feeling superiority about one's awarness of racial discrimination is really not that helpful. But unfortunately most people stop at that.
In any case, I thought this was a very interesting evening and two hours very well-spent. I hope we have similar events in the future where we can build on the dialogues of tonight and come to some real solutions.
:D Coffee, dinner, and a lot of catching up with SF, his girlfriend L, DPP, his wife LR on Saturday evening.
:( Ames brief almost due. Still a lot of work to be done on it.
I don't recall this at all from parody, but ABS told me that the black girls stuff was near the beginning (recall that I was about 15 minutes late). Also, since I was pretty much drunk almost all of the time there, my sensitivity-radar wasn't operating at normal levels.
My main gripe with the parody was that it was too long, and that it wasn't that funny. The problem mainly came from the fact that the parody parodied many students, and since I attend a fairly large law school, and no one here can be said to know the entire student body, most of the audience won't "get" at least 80% of the jokes. So for any given joke involving students, perhaps 5-10% of the audience will laugh. The other will not understand what's so funny. The whole thing just seemed kind of lame and unnecessary.
On top of it, people got offended by it, which made it even more not worth it. I can kind of relate. I was not parodied in the parody, but if they had done it, I'm not sure how I would feel about that. If they mocked me in an unfair way, or had presented something inaccurate about me (as some of these people apparently felt) perhaps I would be pissed off as well.
In any event, I thought this would be an interesting meeting to attend, so I went with ABS in the afternoon to the meeting. A LOT of people were there. I think someone must have sent out some rallying email. Almost the entire black student's association was there. The parody cast and crew were there. I think some conservative student groups were there as well. Then there were curious spectators like me. They filled up a very large lecture hall and people had to stand in the back because there were no more seats.
A very prominent black professor moderated the discussion. There was a palpable tension in the air, and there were some ugly moments of shouting at each other. On the whole though, the comments and the dialogue were civil. The parody producers and writers apologized profused, though their apologies were always followed by some super-defense "BUT... blah blah blah..." A few black students spoke very eloquently. One black guy totally got an Obama thing going on.
I made a comment too about how I feel like the parody has the potential of messing with people's reputation, especially since we are a large community and people don't necessarily know the students being parodies personally.
Others made the point that in certain other law schools mocking students in the parody is just not allowed. You can only poke fun at professors. I think I kind of agree with that. I think it smacks of meanness when you poke fun at students, who don't necessarily consent to being protrayed in this way. Some people also suggested an "opt-out" registry for students who don't want to be parodied, or for the writers to ask the students for their permission before writing a parody about them into the show.
Freedom of speech, predictably, came up as a defense. As well as the defense that the parody is just a big joke and a great tradition and people should just let it be, in the name of tradition and humor.
i disagree with that on so many levels, which I will not recount here.
A few people became very emotional during the discussion, and nearly cried. I guess this is a really emotional topic for everyone.
There was also quite a few predictably self-congratulatory "well, at least we are engaging in a soul-searching racial dialogue" "at least something good came out of this" talk. I am very non-plussed by this kind of thinking. I don't think discussions are good for their own sake, unless they solve something or at least lead somewhere. Just pointing out "oh jeez, there's a lot of racial discrimination around the school." is not really that helpful and is even a bit cliched at this point. Not to mention that a lot of the discussions are even less than that. The question is what do we plan to DO about it? How do we make the parody less hurtful and more constructive? How do we respond to the members of the student body who feel insulted? How do we write the parody in the future? How do we build the law school community in other ways that will make all members feel welcome? These are the really pressing issues that need answers. Feeling superiority about one's awarness of racial discrimination is really not that helpful. But unfortunately most people stop at that.
In any case, I thought this was a very interesting evening and two hours very well-spent. I hope we have similar events in the future where we can build on the dialogues of tonight and come to some real solutions.
:D Coffee, dinner, and a lot of catching up with SF, his girlfriend L, DPP, his wife LR on Saturday evening.
:( Ames brief almost due. Still a lot of work to be done on it.
3/17/2006
The Ames Games
It's not fun, writing your Ames brief at 2:32 AM, when you could be sleeping, or watching TV, or playing Monopoly online, or reading for contracts. Yes, even reading for contracts if better than writing an Ames brief on an exceedingly complex area of law that I had no idea about just a few weeks ago, and still frankly have not that much idea about.
Well, I should really go back to work now.
Well, I should really go back to work now.
3/15/2006
Contorty! (Or 19th Century Common Law)
So, gone are the springlike weather and the 60-something degrees temperature. I was woken up today by the sound of wind howling between tree and houses. It sounded like trucks were constantly driving by the house. A little frightening, actually.
Temperature has dropped to below freezing, with a wind chill that made walking to school and walking back really unpleasant. (IH and I have now developed the habit of walking to school together, since he lives half a block from me. Doesn't this remind you of middle school? Hehe...)
In the early afternoon, in spite of the blue sky, we also had some flurries. Gotta love this New England weather.
For no reason at all, I stayed up 'til 2:40 or so last night. So I had expected this morning to be painfuil. Surprisingly, I woke up without an alarm at 9:30 and made it to property without any problems. I'm glad that I went too, since today's discussion was really interesting. We are talking about an area where property rights and contract rights kind of overlap. I love these interfaces between two supposedly different areas of law, like contracts and torts, or property and torts, or torts and contract. It's really quite artificial to separate these subjects anyway, since they all kind of run into each other and have the same principles. Both torts and contracts, for instance, are about duty. And both contracts and property are about entitlements and rights. You can have "tortious interference with contract" that sounds a lot like trespassing upon somone else's property. You can have unwaivable contract duties that look more and more like torts.
I once joked with ABS and S that instead of three artificially separate 1L courses of contracts, torts, and property, we should just have one humungous class that meets 4 hours a day called "contorty".
S objected that property doesn't get equal representation in the name, and suggested "contorterty."
ABS said the mega-course should just be called "19th Century Common Law."
Tax was boring as ever. S sent me an article by Alvin Warren that our professor suggested that we read since it supposedly illuminates a lot of stuff that we talked about yesterday. I read it and it was actually compreehnsible, and I was getting more of a grasp on this stuff. But then came class time and we were once again swimming in a sea of incoherent terms, phrases, sections, and numbers.
I find it so hard to focus on that class. My mind wanders at the slightest distraction. I spent at least 10 minutes cleaning out my inbox without even realizing that I was ignoring my professor. Then I spent another 10 minutes finding the ideal font for my class notes.
Ay...
:D Have two cartons of ice cream in the freezer. Cherry vanilla, and peaches and cream!
:D:D Best friend from college SF coming to visit me in C-Town from NYC this weekend! I'm very very very excited.
:( Have to work on Ames brief, b/c J scheduled conference with our Lawyering professor this Friday.
Temperature has dropped to below freezing, with a wind chill that made walking to school and walking back really unpleasant. (IH and I have now developed the habit of walking to school together, since he lives half a block from me. Doesn't this remind you of middle school? Hehe...)
In the early afternoon, in spite of the blue sky, we also had some flurries. Gotta love this New England weather.
For no reason at all, I stayed up 'til 2:40 or so last night. So I had expected this morning to be painfuil. Surprisingly, I woke up without an alarm at 9:30 and made it to property without any problems. I'm glad that I went too, since today's discussion was really interesting. We are talking about an area where property rights and contract rights kind of overlap. I love these interfaces between two supposedly different areas of law, like contracts and torts, or property and torts, or torts and contract. It's really quite artificial to separate these subjects anyway, since they all kind of run into each other and have the same principles. Both torts and contracts, for instance, are about duty. And both contracts and property are about entitlements and rights. You can have "tortious interference with contract" that sounds a lot like trespassing upon somone else's property. You can have unwaivable contract duties that look more and more like torts.
I once joked with ABS and S that instead of three artificially separate 1L courses of contracts, torts, and property, we should just have one humungous class that meets 4 hours a day called "contorty".
S objected that property doesn't get equal representation in the name, and suggested "contorterty."
ABS said the mega-course should just be called "19th Century Common Law."
Tax was boring as ever. S sent me an article by Alvin Warren that our professor suggested that we read since it supposedly illuminates a lot of stuff that we talked about yesterday. I read it and it was actually compreehnsible, and I was getting more of a grasp on this stuff. But then came class time and we were once again swimming in a sea of incoherent terms, phrases, sections, and numbers.
I find it so hard to focus on that class. My mind wanders at the slightest distraction. I spent at least 10 minutes cleaning out my inbox without even realizing that I was ignoring my professor. Then I spent another 10 minutes finding the ideal font for my class notes.
Ay...
:D Have two cartons of ice cream in the freezer. Cherry vanilla, and peaches and cream!
:D:D Best friend from college SF coming to visit me in C-Town from NYC this weekend! I'm very very very excited.
:( Have to work on Ames brief, b/c J scheduled conference with our Lawyering professor this Friday.
3/14/2006
Things That Make You Go "Mm?"
Hm, well, the tax class today made no sense to me whatsoever, in spite of having diligently done the reading and thinking that I understood everything. Having no finance or accounting background, I seriously fear that I'm at a disadvantage to other people in class. The professor tries to argue that consumption tax is the same as a wage tax (or was it income tax?) and then used a lot of examples and charts to illustrate his point, none of which made sense to me. Hmm... should I be worried?
Anyway, just thought I'd gripe.
:D the beautiful, gorgeous, lovely 60 degree sunny weather! Spring is (temporarilty) here!
:( too many commitments, too little time.
Anyway, just thought I'd gripe.
:D the beautiful, gorgeous, lovely 60 degree sunny weather! Spring is (temporarilty) here!
:( too many commitments, too little time.
3/12/2006
O the Absurdities of Law School
This morning, randomly remembered this funny scene from the Parody:
[After law students woke up and found themselves on a desert island, they began debating what they should do first: finding water, or drafting a constitution?]
[Suddenly, a silver-haired professor appeared carrying stone tablets. It's Professor F., a very famous conservative professor at the school. Some law students (namely those in suits and ties and wanted to draft a constitution first) immediately ran over and knelt down before him. Prof F began giving his commandments.]
[I can only remember a couple of them:]
"Thou shall talk about the exam immediately upon its completion, and point out all the issues that others missed, and thou saw!"
"Thou shall advance the theory that there is no correlation between knowledge and grades, if thou did poorly on an exam, but if thou received a good grade, thou shall speak of how thou want to become a - PROFESSOR!"
[And finally, my favorite one:]
"Thou shall, in the fairest month of May, spend 14-16 hours a day for a week writing a case note and subciting an article, neither of which will be ever published, the reward of which is... MORE SUBCITING!"
:D Getting up relatively early. Interesting article on wrongful death in the NYT. Future research project?
:( Have to read a week's worth of tax now.
[After law students woke up and found themselves on a desert island, they began debating what they should do first: finding water, or drafting a constitution?]
[Suddenly, a silver-haired professor appeared carrying stone tablets. It's Professor F., a very famous conservative professor at the school. Some law students (namely those in suits and ties and wanted to draft a constitution first) immediately ran over and knelt down before him. Prof F began giving his commandments.]
[I can only remember a couple of them:]
"Thou shall talk about the exam immediately upon its completion, and point out all the issues that others missed, and thou saw!"
"Thou shall advance the theory that there is no correlation between knowledge and grades, if thou did poorly on an exam, but if thou received a good grade, thou shall speak of how thou want to become a - PROFESSOR!"
[And finally, my favorite one:]
"Thou shall, in the fairest month of May, spend 14-16 hours a day for a week writing a case note and subciting an article, neither of which will be ever published, the reward of which is... MORE SUBCITING!"
:D Getting up relatively early. Interesting article on wrongful death in the NYT. Future research project?
:( Have to read a week's worth of tax now.
Overcoming Lipsticks
As ABS and I wandered around Best Buy yesterday, the thought struck me that I may HAVE to go into corporate law because there were simply too many cool gadgets there on the shelves that I wanted. A tiny camcorder, the new X-Box 360, palm pilots and hot new cell phones and iPod nanos and iPod accessories and new computer games and softwares...
Nevermind that if I do corporate law, I probably wouldn't have time to actually use any of this stuff that I would be able to afford to buy. There's a peculiar satisfaction that comes from mere possession and not neccessarily use; just the possibilty of use is often enough. Anyone who has seen my large collection of lipsticks knows that this is definitely true for me. At last count I have more than 25 different shades of lipsticks. And since the last count I probably bought another half a dozen. And I don't use them, at all. I probably only use 2-3 of them ever. The other ones are sitting in my purse or standing in my medicine cabinet collecting dust.
There is something pathological about my fascination and need to buy new lipsticks. I'm sure any amateur psychologist would have a field day analyzing this. But the more pressing issue at hand is other things in my life that are similar to my lipstick habit (do I have a new clothes habit? A cool electronic gadget habit? A anti-aging lotion habit? A fancy red wine habit? Am I hopelessly consumerist?) It's scary to think that material things could determine my career and force me to choose certain paths and slave away just so that I can have more and more THINGS, and turn my house into a museum for the possessions that I have but never use (just as my bathroom is sort of a shrine of my lipsticks now).
So, new goal for 2006: weaning my lipstick addiction by fall OCI.
Nevermind that if I do corporate law, I probably wouldn't have time to actually use any of this stuff that I would be able to afford to buy. There's a peculiar satisfaction that comes from mere possession and not neccessarily use; just the possibilty of use is often enough. Anyone who has seen my large collection of lipsticks knows that this is definitely true for me. At last count I have more than 25 different shades of lipsticks. And since the last count I probably bought another half a dozen. And I don't use them, at all. I probably only use 2-3 of them ever. The other ones are sitting in my purse or standing in my medicine cabinet collecting dust.
There is something pathological about my fascination and need to buy new lipsticks. I'm sure any amateur psychologist would have a field day analyzing this. But the more pressing issue at hand is other things in my life that are similar to my lipstick habit (do I have a new clothes habit? A cool electronic gadget habit? A anti-aging lotion habit? A fancy red wine habit? Am I hopelessly consumerist?) It's scary to think that material things could determine my career and force me to choose certain paths and slave away just so that I can have more and more THINGS, and turn my house into a museum for the possessions that I have but never use (just as my bathroom is sort of a shrine of my lipsticks now).
So, new goal for 2006: weaning my lipstick addiction by fall OCI.
The Nice Side of Global Warming!
Both yesterday and today, it was in the 60s. And sunny. Not bad for mid-March.
It's been a busy but fun couple of days. Yesterday, because of the spring-like weather, ABS and I decided that there was no way in hell we would go to contracts. Instead I took Boyfriend's car and we drove to this mall at the other end of town, where he tried (unsuccessfully) to buy the new game Intergalactic Civilization and I bought new batteries for my cell phone and new earbuds for my iPod. (Note: the earbuds from Apple, which cost me $40.95 and looked really cool from the outside, are HORRIBLE. The sound fidelity is really really bad, and they keep on falling out of my ears. Don't get them if you can help it. I'm returning mine.)
The day started out very promising, but by mid-afternoon both ABS and I were a little down, because we had both applied to be resident tutors at these undergraduate residential colleges, and neither of us got results that we wanted. (ABS did not get into the colleges that he wanted most, in spite of high hopes and lots of very positive signals sent by the Masters, etc. I on the other hand, missed most of the deadlines and only ended up applying to one of the twelve, so it was less of a surprise for me to not get any offers. Oh well.)
We did have a nice meal at the Cheesecake Factory in the mall. I have very fond memories of the Cheesecake Factory back in my working days of traveling all over the U.S. My favorite item on the menu is the Jamaican Blackened Shrimp. It's a bit pricey now that I have to pay for it myself, but YUM.
Afterwards, we drove back, ABS still upset so I dropped him off at his apartment and drove home myself. I decided to skip indoor soccer since was scheduled to go out drinking at a firm reception and then to the law school parody at night. Around 6:45 or so J and I met up at the law school with AR, with whom I hadn't hung out in a while, and we headed over to the firm event held at a popular student bar in the Square. It was crazy warm in the bar because of the balmy weather. A whole bunch of people from our section, including S (whose brother is visiting this weekend), IH, AK, AHH, N, RE, etc. Since we didn't have a lot of time, J and I downed as many vodka cranberries and buffalo wings as we could in 50 minutes or so, and then headed back to the law school for the Parody.
The Parody was all right; funny in parts, a bit too long (3 hours!). This year the theme is "Our Beloved Law School on a Stranded Island" with a Law and Order type story mixed in. Lots of "in" jokes where you need to know the people who are being parodied to find funny. My favorite are some professor parodies. Another scene involved a law firm who is interviewing law students on the island "campus." Their cue to the bodyguard for throwing out interviewees is "What can I tell you about the firm?" which I found hilarious. There were also very good parodies on John Roberts, Sam Alito, and Harriet Miers.
There were also a lot of pop songs with changed lyrics, some of which are very clever. Our dean also made a cameo appearance at the end of the parody, heroically (as usual) saving everyone stranded on the island. Although in my opinion, the parody could have been about 30 minuts shorter, it was a very good time for everyone.
After the Parody, we decided to go the bar near my house and have some drinks. A cast member joined us, along with a First Year Lawyering instructor, W, who teaches the other half of our section. W and I got to talking, and it turned out that he spent a year in my undergraduate college, and lived in the graduate student dorms, and had a whole bunch of friends in common with me. He apparently also knew my ex, E, really well, which is a little freaky. I was drunk and think that I revealed a little too much about my personal life (What do you expect when you have drinks with your students after they've already downed at least 4-5 drinks for the night?).
I slept horribly, but woke up miraculously without a headache. J, AC, and I, and our various SOs and spouses, scheduled to go to dim sum this morning at our usual spot in Chinatown. The restaurant was really crowded for some reason, but we got a seat easily and had a very satisfying meal. After that, J and her husband went home, AC and her boyfriend went shopping, and Boyfriend and I walked around in down town, enjoyed the nice weather, and even sat for a while at the wharf on the harbor. It was such a beautiful day. Was very happy that we did this, and went home.
I have been reading property ever since. We are now reading this incredibly complicated section on estates and future interests, with many arcane and barely intelligible phrases and categories. The section that I have been reading this evening, the Rules Against Perpetuties, is so confusing and poorly written that I'm advancing at about 2-3 pages per hours, and have to review my hornbooks just to figure out what the hell the rule is saying. Not fun.
:D rice noodles with shrimp at dim sum! (It's a very hard to describe dish, but one of my favorite!)
:D:D almost done with property reading for the whole week!
:( totally screwed-up sleeping scheules, AGAIN.
It's been a busy but fun couple of days. Yesterday, because of the spring-like weather, ABS and I decided that there was no way in hell we would go to contracts. Instead I took Boyfriend's car and we drove to this mall at the other end of town, where he tried (unsuccessfully) to buy the new game Intergalactic Civilization and I bought new batteries for my cell phone and new earbuds for my iPod. (Note: the earbuds from Apple, which cost me $40.95 and looked really cool from the outside, are HORRIBLE. The sound fidelity is really really bad, and they keep on falling out of my ears. Don't get them if you can help it. I'm returning mine.)
The day started out very promising, but by mid-afternoon both ABS and I were a little down, because we had both applied to be resident tutors at these undergraduate residential colleges, and neither of us got results that we wanted. (ABS did not get into the colleges that he wanted most, in spite of high hopes and lots of very positive signals sent by the Masters, etc. I on the other hand, missed most of the deadlines and only ended up applying to one of the twelve, so it was less of a surprise for me to not get any offers. Oh well.)
We did have a nice meal at the Cheesecake Factory in the mall. I have very fond memories of the Cheesecake Factory back in my working days of traveling all over the U.S. My favorite item on the menu is the Jamaican Blackened Shrimp. It's a bit pricey now that I have to pay for it myself, but YUM.
Afterwards, we drove back, ABS still upset so I dropped him off at his apartment and drove home myself. I decided to skip indoor soccer since was scheduled to go out drinking at a firm reception and then to the law school parody at night. Around 6:45 or so J and I met up at the law school with AR, with whom I hadn't hung out in a while, and we headed over to the firm event held at a popular student bar in the Square. It was crazy warm in the bar because of the balmy weather. A whole bunch of people from our section, including S (whose brother is visiting this weekend), IH, AK, AHH, N, RE, etc. Since we didn't have a lot of time, J and I downed as many vodka cranberries and buffalo wings as we could in 50 minutes or so, and then headed back to the law school for the Parody.
The Parody was all right; funny in parts, a bit too long (3 hours!). This year the theme is "Our Beloved Law School on a Stranded Island" with a Law and Order type story mixed in. Lots of "in" jokes where you need to know the people who are being parodied to find funny. My favorite are some professor parodies. Another scene involved a law firm who is interviewing law students on the island "campus." Their cue to the bodyguard for throwing out interviewees is "What can I tell you about the firm?" which I found hilarious. There were also very good parodies on John Roberts, Sam Alito, and Harriet Miers.
There were also a lot of pop songs with changed lyrics, some of which are very clever. Our dean also made a cameo appearance at the end of the parody, heroically (as usual) saving everyone stranded on the island. Although in my opinion, the parody could have been about 30 minuts shorter, it was a very good time for everyone.
After the Parody, we decided to go the bar near my house and have some drinks. A cast member joined us, along with a First Year Lawyering instructor, W, who teaches the other half of our section. W and I got to talking, and it turned out that he spent a year in my undergraduate college, and lived in the graduate student dorms, and had a whole bunch of friends in common with me. He apparently also knew my ex, E, really well, which is a little freaky. I was drunk and think that I revealed a little too much about my personal life (What do you expect when you have drinks with your students after they've already downed at least 4-5 drinks for the night?).
I slept horribly, but woke up miraculously without a headache. J, AC, and I, and our various SOs and spouses, scheduled to go to dim sum this morning at our usual spot in Chinatown. The restaurant was really crowded for some reason, but we got a seat easily and had a very satisfying meal. After that, J and her husband went home, AC and her boyfriend went shopping, and Boyfriend and I walked around in down town, enjoyed the nice weather, and even sat for a while at the wharf on the harbor. It was such a beautiful day. Was very happy that we did this, and went home.
I have been reading property ever since. We are now reading this incredibly complicated section on estates and future interests, with many arcane and barely intelligible phrases and categories. The section that I have been reading this evening, the Rules Against Perpetuties, is so confusing and poorly written that I'm advancing at about 2-3 pages per hours, and have to review my hornbooks just to figure out what the hell the rule is saying. Not fun.
:D rice noodles with shrimp at dim sum! (It's a very hard to describe dish, but one of my favorite!)
:D:D almost done with property reading for the whole week!
:( totally screwed-up sleeping scheules, AGAIN.
3/10/2006
Random Thoughts About Friends
Here are some ultra random thoughts about friends.
This semester, since everyone has an elective, you definitely see the cohesiveness of our sections disintegrate. Not quite fully yet, but people are definitely off doing their own things more and more.
J and I don't hang out as much as we used to. Partly this is due to our schedules, and our different study styles. J pratically lives in the library, and works very hard (probably much harder than me). But also, we don't have lunch as often b/c this semester I almost never eat at the student cafeteria, whereas J eats there a lot.
We still hang out a lot over the weekend, but we are not as inseparable as we used to be. Perhaps it's a good thing. But I should make more of an effort to eat with her.
On the other hand, ABS and I hang out more and more. We are both contemplative, intellectual (yes, if you can believe it, we both kinda enjoy thinking about legal problems, though I know I don't show this side of me too much in these posts -- perhaps I will eventually), academically inclined, and have very similar temperaments. We are both quirky and irreverent in the same way, and can laugh about little things for hours. Of all the people in the section, he knows me best, and I feel the most relaxed with him.
One thing I do worry about is that we have simliar life goals, or at least similar enough so that we'd be competing for many of the same things. I worry that we will eventually become competitors in something and this will sour our friendship. I also worry that next year we won't be as close as this year, and won't be able to hang out as much. The other day, we tallied up everything we want to do next year and estimated how much time it would take. The conclusion, we'd be working like 70 hours per week!
I have grown apart from S, and IH and AHH and others. Partly it's because they are all a lot younger than I am, and partly I think I am tiring of the constantly drinking constantly drunk life style. I'm discovering my interests in law, and more and more I like spending time thinking about that. I also think that at this point, the "cliques" in the sections have formed enough and everyone is more socially secure that they are now letting their true selves show a bit, and also have less patience with people who don't exactly jibe with them, whereas before they would be more willing to compromise... I think I am definitely this way myself. I am constantly aware of how young (read: immature) S and his friends are. It's not necessariliy a bad thing. In fact often I'm pretty immature myself. But I feel like I"m going through a more contemplative stage right now, and have less patience for some of the antics they pull.
I do miss those times in the beginnign when S and I would have these long conversations though. I suppose all friendshps go through these phases and perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way eventually.
This semester, since everyone has an elective, you definitely see the cohesiveness of our sections disintegrate. Not quite fully yet, but people are definitely off doing their own things more and more.
J and I don't hang out as much as we used to. Partly this is due to our schedules, and our different study styles. J pratically lives in the library, and works very hard (probably much harder than me). But also, we don't have lunch as often b/c this semester I almost never eat at the student cafeteria, whereas J eats there a lot.
We still hang out a lot over the weekend, but we are not as inseparable as we used to be. Perhaps it's a good thing. But I should make more of an effort to eat with her.
On the other hand, ABS and I hang out more and more. We are both contemplative, intellectual (yes, if you can believe it, we both kinda enjoy thinking about legal problems, though I know I don't show this side of me too much in these posts -- perhaps I will eventually), academically inclined, and have very similar temperaments. We are both quirky and irreverent in the same way, and can laugh about little things for hours. Of all the people in the section, he knows me best, and I feel the most relaxed with him.
One thing I do worry about is that we have simliar life goals, or at least similar enough so that we'd be competing for many of the same things. I worry that we will eventually become competitors in something and this will sour our friendship. I also worry that next year we won't be as close as this year, and won't be able to hang out as much. The other day, we tallied up everything we want to do next year and estimated how much time it would take. The conclusion, we'd be working like 70 hours per week!
I have grown apart from S, and IH and AHH and others. Partly it's because they are all a lot younger than I am, and partly I think I am tiring of the constantly drinking constantly drunk life style. I'm discovering my interests in law, and more and more I like spending time thinking about that. I also think that at this point, the "cliques" in the sections have formed enough and everyone is more socially secure that they are now letting their true selves show a bit, and also have less patience with people who don't exactly jibe with them, whereas before they would be more willing to compromise... I think I am definitely this way myself. I am constantly aware of how young (read: immature) S and his friends are. It's not necessariliy a bad thing. In fact often I'm pretty immature myself. But I feel like I"m going through a more contemplative stage right now, and have less patience for some of the antics they pull.
I do miss those times in the beginnign when S and I would have these long conversations though. I suppose all friendshps go through these phases and perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way eventually.
:D and :(
I realized that I forgot to put thsi at the end of my posts. So here's one for today:
:D free dinner, free drinks, and free dessert from Atlanta firm at restaurant bar near my house. Had beef stew, shrimp, several white Russians, and a huge ice cream sundae. Yum. And yes, I guess this is how they convince you to become slaves.
:( slacked off too much and didn't do very much work.
:D free dinner, free drinks, and free dessert from Atlanta firm at restaurant bar near my house. Had beef stew, shrimp, several white Russians, and a huge ice cream sundae. Yum. And yes, I guess this is how they convince you to become slaves.
:( slacked off too much and didn't do very much work.
3/08/2006
What Is Legal Brilliance?
Just had dinner with ABS, where we talked about our professors (as usual) and who among them are really brilliant. Had some thoughts there and then some additional thoughts on the way home.
I certainly don't think our contracts professor is brilliant. He repeats on and on about logic and its greatness, and argues very aggressively with anyone who doesn't agree immediately how wonderful logic is. Don't get me wrong. I think logic is great (after all, I did study philosophy in those hazy days when I was an undergrad). But the bottom line is, logic is a tool. It's a procedure. It may affect HOW we think but not WHAT we think about, and at the end of the day you are still left with important questions such as WHICH legal rules to apply and WHY, and WHAT are the useful objectives a legal system should try to achieve. Our contracts class talks almost nothing about that. We don't even talk about the legal rules themselves very much, beyond asking endlessly whether they are logical and whether they've been consistently applied. It's a very impoverished way of thinking.
Although I liked both my crim law professor from last semester, and my property professor from this semester, very much, I don't think they are brilliant either. They are certainly intelligent, but they seem too safely entrenched in the legal profession, and they tackle small, safe legal problems and seem to lack a grander vision. The work they do is useful -- there are certainly a lot of doctrinal wrinkles to iron out in any given field, and these wrinkles don't always present great problems but often medium and small problems. Still, you get the sense when you read their work that they lack a grand, unifiying vision, something like what Coase had when he wrote his article about reciprocal costs and duties; or on a smaller scale, what Weintraub had when he wrote his opinion that argued that assumption of risk is really just another form of contributory negligence and can therefore be analyzed in the same way; something that is transformative for the field and changes (or expands) the way we look at legal problems.
My torts professor is a legal historian and an extremely popular teacher. I am more on the fence about whether he is brilliant. He wrote some extremely influential books that influenced how a generation of legal scholars looked at American legal history, and which generated a lot of debate and criciticms. He certainly had a unifying legal vision. Perhaps he IS brilliant. I didn't get to personally experience his brilliance much since I didn't have time to read his books to judge for myself. Perhaps I will this summer.
But then, I was bothered by this thought: does one need to be kind of iconoclastic to be brilliant? It seems like all the professors that ABS and I agreed are brilliant are kind of that way, like Professor K, who wrote some seminal doctrinal work in his younger days and then wrote a series of critiques about hierarchies in law schools and how law schools are designed to instill that hierarchy in the students; and Professor H, who started out as a law and econ person but who now has become one of its most ardent and persuasive critics. Does this mean a conservative professor, like Professor F, who believes that the basis of law should be morality, cannot really be "briliant", in the sense that he won't really be transforming a field in a new and exciting and unexpected direction?
Anyway, need to think about this some more.
I certainly don't think our contracts professor is brilliant. He repeats on and on about logic and its greatness, and argues very aggressively with anyone who doesn't agree immediately how wonderful logic is. Don't get me wrong. I think logic is great (after all, I did study philosophy in those hazy days when I was an undergrad). But the bottom line is, logic is a tool. It's a procedure. It may affect HOW we think but not WHAT we think about, and at the end of the day you are still left with important questions such as WHICH legal rules to apply and WHY, and WHAT are the useful objectives a legal system should try to achieve. Our contracts class talks almost nothing about that. We don't even talk about the legal rules themselves very much, beyond asking endlessly whether they are logical and whether they've been consistently applied. It's a very impoverished way of thinking.
Although I liked both my crim law professor from last semester, and my property professor from this semester, very much, I don't think they are brilliant either. They are certainly intelligent, but they seem too safely entrenched in the legal profession, and they tackle small, safe legal problems and seem to lack a grander vision. The work they do is useful -- there are certainly a lot of doctrinal wrinkles to iron out in any given field, and these wrinkles don't always present great problems but often medium and small problems. Still, you get the sense when you read their work that they lack a grand, unifiying vision, something like what Coase had when he wrote his article about reciprocal costs and duties; or on a smaller scale, what Weintraub had when he wrote his opinion that argued that assumption of risk is really just another form of contributory negligence and can therefore be analyzed in the same way; something that is transformative for the field and changes (or expands) the way we look at legal problems.
My torts professor is a legal historian and an extremely popular teacher. I am more on the fence about whether he is brilliant. He wrote some extremely influential books that influenced how a generation of legal scholars looked at American legal history, and which generated a lot of debate and criciticms. He certainly had a unifying legal vision. Perhaps he IS brilliant. I didn't get to personally experience his brilliance much since I didn't have time to read his books to judge for myself. Perhaps I will this summer.
But then, I was bothered by this thought: does one need to be kind of iconoclastic to be brilliant? It seems like all the professors that ABS and I agreed are brilliant are kind of that way, like Professor K, who wrote some seminal doctrinal work in his younger days and then wrote a series of critiques about hierarchies in law schools and how law schools are designed to instill that hierarchy in the students; and Professor H, who started out as a law and econ person but who now has become one of its most ardent and persuasive critics. Does this mean a conservative professor, like Professor F, who believes that the basis of law should be morality, cannot really be "briliant", in the sense that he won't really be transforming a field in a new and exciting and unexpected direction?
Anyway, need to think about this some more.
3/06/2006
So Much Going On!
Had a pleasant week and weekend... Last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I skipped contracts with ABS. Now, lest you think that I am totally irresponsible, (which I fully admit and just not in this instance), I should say in my defense that in all three days, I used the time during contract to read and discuss contracts with ABS.
Frankly, with our professor going off on tangents regarding the greatness of logic and the stupidity of Oliver Wendell Holmes (yes, I'm not kidding. Holmes is like my prof's mortal enemy), the time is MUCH better spent learning contracts on our own. More and more of my classmates are doing the same. From the report of J, only about 25 students (out of 80) showed up to the Friday class. This is the same class where the prof spent about 30 minutes arguing with two people who he thought disagreed with him, one of whom, it turned out, didn't even disagree with him that much. So glad that I didn't have to suffer through that. It really sounds like that class is spiraling out of control. In the meanwhile, none of us are learning any contracts. I can literally say everything we've learned this semester in five sentences.
I could, but I don't want to bore you. :)
Spent a lot of time this weekend reading for my next week's classes and playing online monopoly at games.com. This is seriously one of my greatest discovery ever. You can play 8 differnet types of original board games online with your friends! I'm totally addicted to monopoly and played at least 8 games on Saturday. Saturday evening I took it easy.
On Sunday, J and I met up bright and early and met our Lawyering professor and went over our Ames brief. The message we took away from that was: our brief sucked and it needed a lot of work. Yikes. Back to the drawing board on that one...
Afterwards, J and I had a very nice lunch with her husband and went our separate ways
On Sunday evening, I had dinner with ABS at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant on the Square. I walked home, half-watched the Academy Awards, half-read tax, and half... played monopoly. :) I did finish the reading for tax for next week, but don't guarantee that I understood or remembered everything.
And speaking of the Academy Awards, I was disappointed that Brokeback Mountain didn't win Best Pictures, though I'm sure Crash was a great film. I didn't see ANY of the five movies nominated, although I do plan to rectify that this summer.
Boyfriend has been here for the entire past week. I really love it when he's here, and love vegging with him in the evenings. When the weather gets warmer I do want us to do more activities around C-town and B-town.
There has been many, many firm receptions in the past week, all of which I have signed up for and I have missed, because of the suddenly freezing weather and Boyfriend visiting. I do regret a bit about missing all that fancy food and all that alcohol (although I'm sure it gets old real fast -- at least for now, I'm still somewhat intrigued by the whole concept that someone is willing to give me these things for nothing!). This is another one of those things I plan to do when the weather gets warmer...
Frankly, with our professor going off on tangents regarding the greatness of logic and the stupidity of Oliver Wendell Holmes (yes, I'm not kidding. Holmes is like my prof's mortal enemy), the time is MUCH better spent learning contracts on our own. More and more of my classmates are doing the same. From the report of J, only about 25 students (out of 80) showed up to the Friday class. This is the same class where the prof spent about 30 minutes arguing with two people who he thought disagreed with him, one of whom, it turned out, didn't even disagree with him that much. So glad that I didn't have to suffer through that. It really sounds like that class is spiraling out of control. In the meanwhile, none of us are learning any contracts. I can literally say everything we've learned this semester in five sentences.
I could, but I don't want to bore you. :)
Spent a lot of time this weekend reading for my next week's classes and playing online monopoly at games.com. This is seriously one of my greatest discovery ever. You can play 8 differnet types of original board games online with your friends! I'm totally addicted to monopoly and played at least 8 games on Saturday. Saturday evening I took it easy.
On Sunday, J and I met up bright and early and met our Lawyering professor and went over our Ames brief. The message we took away from that was: our brief sucked and it needed a lot of work. Yikes. Back to the drawing board on that one...
Afterwards, J and I had a very nice lunch with her husband and went our separate ways
On Sunday evening, I had dinner with ABS at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant on the Square. I walked home, half-watched the Academy Awards, half-read tax, and half... played monopoly. :) I did finish the reading for tax for next week, but don't guarantee that I understood or remembered everything.
And speaking of the Academy Awards, I was disappointed that Brokeback Mountain didn't win Best Pictures, though I'm sure Crash was a great film. I didn't see ANY of the five movies nominated, although I do plan to rectify that this summer.
Boyfriend has been here for the entire past week. I really love it when he's here, and love vegging with him in the evenings. When the weather gets warmer I do want us to do more activities around C-town and B-town.
There has been many, many firm receptions in the past week, all of which I have signed up for and I have missed, because of the suddenly freezing weather and Boyfriend visiting. I do regret a bit about missing all that fancy food and all that alcohol (although I'm sure it gets old real fast -- at least for now, I'm still somewhat intrigued by the whole concept that someone is willing to give me these things for nothing!). This is another one of those things I plan to do when the weather gets warmer...
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