Sua Sponte My law school odyssey: three years, three time zones and beyond. |
11/30/2002 The perfect outlining horoscope!
Well, after much angst, I have six pages of something that looks -- at least to the untrained eye -- like a workable Contracts outline.
My two outlining buddies, C. and K., are both compulsive formatters. They will spend fifteen minutes playing with tables and bullets and fancy graphs in Microsoft Word and wind up with a gorgeous study aid for mistake of fact or gradation of homicide.
11/28/2002 No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction. --Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
11/27/2002 Off for a much-needed stay at a cute B&B in Half Moon Bay.
I'm always afraid of saying things like this, since I'm superstitious about jinxing myself, but it appears that my laptop issues have been resolved.
11/26/2002 No sign of my lotions at the lost and found. Row says to give them up for gone. I just have difficulty letting go of these things, I guess.
11/25/2002 Argh, after such a lovely weekendlong break from studying (badly needed, if ill-affordable at this point) I had to go back to school and have hot coffee spilled on the lap of my faith in humanity.
11/23/2002 Blogging will be sparse for the time being while husband and I entertain a houseguest from Australia. thus spake /jca @ 11:06 PM...11/22/2002 G R E E T I N G S Capricorn
A good half hour of notetaking in the Career Services office this morning left me with a list of local judges who might potentially engage a 1L summer clerk after next semester.
11/21/2002 After a phone conversation of nearly two hours with my 3L cousin, and a glass or two of wine inter alia, I'm feeling much better.
Despite my nasty experience in discussion group, I couldn't help but notice that I was getting more and more excited all afternoon. By the time Civ Pro ended (ten minutes early, since we wrote our professor evaluations today and Professor Civ Pro was required to leave the room while we did so), I could hardly stand it any more. The buzzer finally sounded, and I squealed out loud:
Today during discussion group I found myself faced with my very first practice exam for Contracts -- and turned to stone.
11/20/2002 Medical students turn into hypochondriacs; law students alight on something like a sprained ankle like flies to honey. "Causation!" "Breach of standard of conduct!" "Duty to invitees!" etc., when in fact my injury was wholly my own fault for being a klutz and wearing shoes with half-detached heels. Ah well. I got a few stares at the granny boots, but my limp immediately explained them. I think.
Sleeping helped greatly. (Doesn't it always?)
11/19/2002 Husband has come home, reheated some stuffed salmon, and plied me with wine and Motrin. Ankle is still screaming in pain, but I'm not listening. thus spake /jca @ 8:49 PM...Phone rang. Got up to answer it, hop-hobbled across living room. It was husband, checking on me. Told him I was OK. Returned to couch and realized that the effort of fetching the phone had left me no longer OK, catching my breath in agony, near tears. Took the damn thing this long to start hurting for real.
I was a remarkably clumsy kid. Even as late as college I retained the ability to spontaneously fall out of an otherwise-motionless chair. It's no accident that the only exercise machines I use at the gym are ones where my limbs are constrained to confined paths of motion. I can, and do, stumble over thin air if given the opportunity.
Good news: The hotel next door to the administration building of my law school has an Exam Season rate of $59 a night, far less than the $129 advertised on their website or the $89 offered at the Ramada over by Starbucks. I'd been wondering how the hell I was going to manage to get into town for an 8:30 am exam; now I know. I'll already be here. I booked four nights at the reduced rate and will just take the train up the night before. It'll be vaguely lonely, sans husband or pets or stereo, but I'll be glad of it on the morning of an exam when I can get up at seven instead of five and not even have to think about catching a train.
11/17/2002 Preoccupied by a recent post of TPB's, I decided to take a test to determine exactly how much more or less efficient it would be for me as a lawyer to give dictation as opposed to typing my own documents.
I've been carrying St. Daniel's paperback, Civil Procedure in a Nutshell, to the gym with me lately. (If you ever happen by the 24 Hour Fitness in San Antonio Plaza, and there's a woman on a recumbent exercycle reading Civil Procedure in a Nutshell, it's probably me, so do say hello.)
Money quote from the new Harry Potter movie:
11/16/2002 Top Ten Reasons to Hang Out with Engineers
11/15/2002 Dreary, weary, bleary, Erie.
[drumroll]
What, no Boston?
Congratulations, you're New York City, the Big Apple. What US city are you? Take the quiz by Girlwithagun. Link courtesy of Nikki. thus spake /jca @ 7:13 PM... I had a lovely lunch today with Bill Logan -- Sua Sponte reader, lifelong San Franciscan and alumnus of my law school -- who very kindly provided me with two terrific boons. One was a complete set of his El-Dubyar memos, accompanied by the admonition not to stress over El-Dubyar (which shouldn't be a problem now that the class has ended). The other was a remarkably convenient fortune cookie: "You will have good luck and overcome many hardships."
11/14/2002 ...and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil...
11/13/2002 My fingers are stained yellow from pomegranate juice, my fingernails are in sad shape indeed, and the trackpad of my laptop is slightly sticky. It's all good. Ahhh, if only this fruit were in season year-round.
11/12/2002 Recently I've noticed something particularly annoying about myself.
The official end to El-Dubyar has become the talk of the school, and the relief is palpable. It's only relief, though, devoid of real joy or satisfaction. A likely three-quarters of us have de facto failed to earn the grade in this class that Matters To Employers, and since we won't find out our grades until after finals, it's tough to predict whether the luck fairy blessed you this time or not. So no one's quite ready to celebrate, even though everyone's getting drunk anyway.
11/11/2002 Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful: it's pomegranate season, and Costco stocks the biggest, ripest, sweetest poms you'll find in all of California. Or at least, they stocked them yesterday; by today they've probably run out, so good are these babies. Few things are as purely satisfying as having a whole six of these brilliant, wine-red, softball-sized delights beckoning from the kitchen counter. Well, five anyways. Make that four.
11/10/2002 My final El-Dubyar memo is now in its third draft, and I'm growing incredibly weary of the thing.
11/09/2002 CNN headline: California Plunged Into Winter.
*groan*
11/08/2002 Recently the reading in Civ Pro, cases on notice and the opportunity to be heard, has dealt with the constitutionality of a number of different flavors of repossession-type statutes that are starting to blend together in my mind.
11/07/2002 You know, I think that actually worked!
It is raining like spit throughout the Bay Area today, for the first time since February or so.
Someone's cell phone rang in Contracts today, a rather different experience from a cell phone ringing in any other class. When people are quiet in Crim, it's the quiet of a movie audience as Professor Crim fills the room with his lecturing presence. When they're quiet in Torts, it's the quiet of folks watching a sitcom, ready to erupt in laughter or groans at any moment. When they're quiet in Civ Pro, it's because they've been cowed into silence by Professor Civ Pro's intensity of questioning or the implacability of the material. But when people are quiet in Contracts, it's the silence of the grave, or at least of the bedroom at about 4 am. Professor Contracts' pleasant but unremarkable declamation fails to rouse us. Everything slows to a crawl. Papers fail to rustle; the sound of keystrokes is somehow dampened. Focusing on anything becomes a monumental chore.
11/06/2002 [uncharacteristic political digression]
This morning, as I hurried through the Wednesday farmer's market, a shopper spoke to me. I was "wearing my Tenderloin blinders," which screen out any potential solicitations from activists, homeless people, homeless activists or any other such folk likely to be found at any given time on UN Plaza, including farmer's market shoppers. So I didn't stop to chat when I heard this fellow speak, even though he was being quite nice.
11/05/2002 Here's a fun history lesson on famous trials. thus spake /jca @ 10:53 PM...G R E E T I N G S Capricorn
When faced with (a) outlining for Civ Pro, (b) redrafting my El-Dubyar memo, or (c) finishing my briefs for tomorrow's Torts reading, I of course choose (d), complain.
I forgot my laptop power cable again today. Time was, this would have thrown me into a frothing panic as soon as I glanced in my bag and noted the lack of cable. So maybe it's a sign that I'm progressing towards that mellow post-1L haze where none of the little details matter any more; I calmly managed, between judicious shutdowns and borrowing other people's cables, to prolong the weak old battery all the way through the entire day. (Well, not exactly; it finally flickered dead about four minutes before the end of Civ Pro. But that's just a rounding error, AFAIC.)
11/04/2002 I've finished the subject-matter jurisdiction section of my Civ Pro outline (four single-spaced pages at 10pt font), finally. Hours and hours going into this thing; it's going to be huge. I'm going to need it, though, since we have a practice take home test question -- closed book, just like the real exam -- due Friday. I'd rather not wait until Thursday night to do it, but if I must, at least there's no El-Dubyar this Thursday so I'll have some time. Who knows how much of this outline will be done by then. This effort doesn't count towards our grade, but I want to get as much feedback as possible.
After today's Civ Pro reading, Fuentes v. Shevin, I now fully understand the concept of replevin. (Not to be confused with Rep. Levin.) thus spake /jca @ 7:07 PM...Professor Contracts is starting to get annoyed at us. Dutiful laptop-notetakers all, we greet any substantive remark he makes with a flurry of keystrokes. He cut his law-professor teeth in the 1960's, so he'll have none of that. "Hey," he'll say, attempting to draw our attention away from the phrases in progress on our screens, "I'm up here." Or, if he's in one of his semi-regular peevish moods, "I feel as though I'm in a roomful of secretaries. Tap-tap-tap. Would you look up, please?" I guess when people took notes with pencils he had to find some other reason to pick on them.
Enzo is sulking this morning. He'll move around if you pry him out of his little corner of the cage, but otherwise just glares at you, a resentful little ball of fur annoyed that his legs feel funny.
11/03/2002 Bad news: Enzo probably had a stroke.
Perhaps because my karma was begging for a dose of perspective, something really gut-wrenching has happened -- a veterinary emergency.
11/02/2002 San Francisco didn't win the hosting gig for the 2012 Olympics. I'm not sure if this surprises me or not, but this Chronicle columnist professes to understand exactly why they picked New York instead.
Brain soup: I look at res ipsa loquitur long enough and see Lhasa Apso Lipitor. thus spake /jca @ 2:51 PM...Better today; looks like I haven't completely gone to pieces after all. I channeled much of yesterday's upset into some very very long overdue housecleaning. Now the master bathroom is once again safe for human use, and the laundry for the weekend is almost done. My husband took me out for vindaloo and, bless his heart, directed my mind back to where it's supposed to be.
11/01/2002 El-Dubyar is over.
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