divine angst

I’m pretty sure I know this guy. And he’s as douchey as he sounds.

Just when I thought everything was settled…

I had decided that there was no way I was getting into my waitlisted class. So I went trolling for something else to take, and discovered an open section of Legislation. Hmmmm, I thought, I wonder how that would be? I asked a friend who said it was interesting enough—and full of cases I’ve already read—and decided I’d go ahead and add it to my schedule.

Then I needed at least one more hour to not fall behind, so I added a two-hour colloquium to round things out. Then I got really excited about the two-hour colloquium, and decided I’d definitely keep it on my schedule no matter what happened with my waitlisted class.

But I was still convinced I wasn’t going to get into my waitlisted class. So I started getting excited about Legislation. Everything about it seemed good—the topic is one I’ve got some experience in, the time was the same as my waitlisted class, so my schedule wouldn’t be messed up, and several of my friends are taking it.

And then I got into my waitlisted class.

Now I have two hours more on my schedule than I wanted, since I added that colloquium, which I am very excited about and will not be dropping. I am enrolled in a four-hour exam class instead of a three-hour exam class, and the professor has never taught this subject before. (He has good evaluations for his other classes, but still…)

Is it better for me to take a class on a topic I don’t know much about and that will be on the bar—and might provide some useful context for The Task—or a class that will be complementary to an area of law I enjoy and probably not all that strenuous? I’m waffling back and forth.

The worst part is, I can’t attend both to figure out which one I want to keep—not because they meet at the same time, but because one of them won’t be meeting for the first time until after the drop deadline.

I have NEVER had this much trouble in scheduling!

The cable guy has been here today. We’ve been having persistent problems with our HD channels, and with football season—and the fall lineup—just around the corner, it’s become sort of pressing.

The first cable guy came out in June or July and told us we just needed to tighten the coax cable to the box. That didn’t work.

The second cable guy came out last week and replaced the fitting on the coax cable. That worked for two days and then we lost our HD channels again.

Today, we got a third cable guy. This one is on a “special call”—I guess since we have been having these persistent problems. He came in and checked the signal on all our drops, did some magic with the only drop with a TV connected, and then left. Then he came back, right as I was getting out of the shower. I ran to the door in my bathrobe, only to have him tell me he wanted to check something else, since he’d just been down in the basement. Fine. He called again, twenty minutes ago, as I was getting ready to take the dog out, to tell me he needed to come up one more time, “so I can do a good job for you” to check the drop where our cable modem is plugged in.

My scheduled 8–10 am service window has become half a day. I have things I need to do! I have paperwork to turn in at school, and printouts to pick up from Lexis, and books to check out from the library! This is frustrating! And I keep putting the dog in his kennel so he doesn’t freak out when the cable guy knocks on the door! Poor little guy.

So right now I’m just sitting here, hoping he’ll get here soon and that this’ll be the last time he needs to come in. And that whatever he’s doing really is necessary and that when he leaves, everything will be fixed.

The dog is currently being cute to get my attention.

Must…resist…cuteness….

Apparently, my readers like my food posts. How do I know? I get more comments on them. I can’t really blame you—everything else I’ve written lately has been pathetic.

At any rate, for everyone’s culinary pleasure, here’s another food post. We had some pork chops in the freezer and Mr. Angst wanted me to do something roasty and Italiany with them. I went a-searching, and came across this , which I’m pretty sure I remember reading back in 2004 when it was originally posted but never made. It seemed to fit the bill quite nicely, so I dove right in. (OK, I had to go buy some sage first, but the grocery is only a few blocks away. It would have been better if this was Tuesday, when I could have scampered over to the farmer’s market, though.)

With no further ado, then, here’s how to make it.

Important with this recipe: get everything set first. Sometimes you can prep as you go, but it’s easier with this one if you get your mise en place ready.

Collect ten or so sage leaves, and pull the stems off. Then thinly slice a large garlic clove or two medium cloves. Juice a large lemon. Then salt and pepper about a pound of pork chops. I used three boneless “America’s cut” chops.

Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. You could use pure olive oil, but lately I’ve been using something called Olivextra, which is basically olive oil mixed with some canola oil. It raises the smoke point of the olive oil so it doesn’t burn so easily. You’re not getting a lot of that olive oil flavor when you heat olive oil, so you might as well make your life easier and not risk the burning.

When the oil is shimmering, lay the sage leaves in the oil. When they start to curl around the edges and the edges are getting just a little brown, pull them out. I used tongs, and that worked fine, though you could use a slotted spoon or a spider skmmer. Then lay the garlic in, and saute it until it starts to turn golden brown. Be careful here—you don’t want the garlic to burn. Pull it out as soon as it starts to get some color!

Now that your oil is all infused with lovely sage and garlic flavors, place the pork chops in the pan. Mine were a little under an inch thick, and I cooked them for four minutes on each side, which was a little too long (I like my pork medium to medium rare, and they turned out a little closer to medium well). Next time I’ll probably do three minutes on each side.

Once the chops are cooked, pour in the lemon juice and then add the sage and garlic back to the pan. Stir everything in together. If there are any browned bits in your pan, scrape them up and mix into the sauce. I had no fond because I was using a very non-stick non-stick pan, but it still turned out excellent, so no worries if you don’t need to deglaze. Let the juice and all the other good stuff in the pan come together, but don’t overcook it. Once the sauce starts to look a little thickened, pull the pan off the heat.

Place the pork chops on your plates, pour the sauce over them, making sure to equally allocate the sage and garlic, and serve with roasted potato wedges and a nice salad.

A few weeks ago, I read an article somewhere (yes, I know this is terribly non-specific, but I really don’t remember) about cold sauces for pasta. About a month ago, I actually HAD a pasta with a cold sauce. The article made me hungry; the pasta I actually ate was one of the best dishes I’ve had in a while.

A cold pasta sauce is made by mixing ingredients together, then letting them “cook” over hot pasta. Simple, fresh ingredients are best. I made my own cold sauce today, and it was fantastic. Here’s the recipe:

1 medium tomato, very ripe and juicy, but not overripe and mealy, diced. Don’t seed the tomato first.
1 medium to large clove garlic, minced or pressed.
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil.
2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste.
1/3 or so cup baby spinach, torn.

Put a pot of water on to boil.

Mix the tomato and garlic with olive oil and salt. Toss with the torn spinach.

Let the sauce come together at room temperature (the salt will pull the juices from the tomato, which will mix with the olive oil, yum) while you cook your pasta. I used wide egg noodles.

Drain the pasta and immediately toss with the cold sauce.

Variations: add small cubes of fresh mozzarella to the sauce just before tossing with the pasta. Toss a little more thoroughly to allow the fat from the cheese to coat the noodles.

I’ve been working a little on The Task this morning, just running a few Westlaw searches, paging through some articles with some appropriate keywords, and I am a little surprised.

There’s not really much of anything written on what I want to write on.

I didn’t really go into Westlaw this morning intending to do a preemption check—The Task is flexible enough to change if I’m preempted. But now I’m dragging myself through the process of a preemption check because I’m frankly a little astonished. No one has thought to write something similar? No one has tried to draw the connection I’m hoping to draw?

Don’t get me wrong—this is great! It means that, if I can get this thing pounded out, it’ll be fresh, current, and unchallenged. But it also means there’s not a lot out there for me to model my work on, no one whose footsteps I can follow. That’s daunting, folks. The Task just got a little more interesting, though.

Welcome to this week’s (slightly belated) edition of the Law School Roundup. This is the Feelings Edition. Enjoy!

• Fear (The Oratorical Snob)
• Love (Legally Brunette)
• Gumption (Reasonable Expectations)
• Despair (the law according to [josh])
• Pain (Cella Bellum)
• Anticipation (Frequent Citations)
• Exhaustion (Lag Liv)
• Excitement (Peanut Butter Burrito)
• Smelly (pseudostoops)
• Oatmealy (Lawmom)

And that’s it for this week’s edition. Look for it next week at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground. It’ll be right back here in two weeks.

I just had the biggest burger ever, as a reward to myself for finishing my clerkship applications. Whew! That’s done! Now I can focus on…

1. Rewriting my job description for journal orientation
2. Putting together my training presentation for journal orientation
3. Drafting the proposal for my senior research so I can actually enroll in it and graduate
4. Training Himself to ignore other dogs (with some professional help—we’re working with a trainer)
5. Buying books for the classes I am hoping to be able to take this fall
6. Getting older (I have a non-birthday coming up)
7. Enjoying my last week off

Whimper.

It’s not so much that I like getting caught in the rain, but I can at least deal with being a little wet and bedraggled. What I really dislike is getting caught in the rain right after the wind that accompanies the rain kicks up a huge pile of dust and dirt and grossness, which the rain then GLUES to my skin, hair, and clothes. I think I still have dust in my TEETH, for goodness’s sake.

All that time I spent straightening my hair this morning (in preparation for going and having a new passport photo taken—yes, I’m a bit vain, especially since I was 18 in my last passport photo, wearing a Cosby sweater, and glaring at the camera)? Wasted. Usually a straightening can last two days. My crisp skirt? Totally wilted, not to mention dripping wet and covered in dust and grime. My silk cardigan, that perfectly matches the trim on the skirt? God, I’m not even sure the dry cleaners can fix it—I think the dust is ground in. And my shoes may never, ever recover.

Since Mr. Angst is working and I am not (and since my school schedule will be . . . not morning intensive) we have swapped doggie duties—Mr. Angst now gets up and takes Himself out early, and I take him out in the evening.

This evening, I was going to wait till 11 to take him out, since he didn’t need to go out earlier, and that pushes the morning walk back a bit. But by 10:30 I was ready to get into my jammies, pick up a book, and settle in, so I took him down then.

As Himself did his business, I felt a sprinkling of rain—just a bit, just a sprinkling—but by the time we got back to the door, the wind was picking up and the raindrops were just a bit heavier. Whew! I thought. Good thing I decided to bring Himself down a bit early.

Good thing, indeed. Because a few minutes ago, I saw a flash of something out of the corner of my eye, and then another, and another. And then the thunder began. Himself went from sitting on the office couch, which is right under a window, to sitting under my desk, right by my feet, even though the actual difference between the two spots is all of two feet. He’s a little quivery and he’s cowering with every flash and roll. I can only imagine the disaster he’d be if I’d tried to take him out to pee in this.

OK, so sometimes the internet is a really messed up place.

Apparently, I once again no longer sleep.

I made my first pastry crust in our new apartment today and it went MARVELOUSLY. For some reason, the actual pastry turned out better than it ever seems to have in the past. No cracking, no pulling, a nice smooth texture—it even came together in a nice ball in the food processor without any addition of ice water (my pastry dough is supposed to be made with flour, butter, and an egg, plus an egg yolk instead of any liquid). And the benefit of our new kitchen is that we have this great big island with lovely, smooth Corian countertops, so I had a big space to roll out the dough as well as a big space to assemble my tartlets.

I’ll be taking my tartlets to a friend’s this evening for movie night. I hope everyone enjoys them!

I tried to go shopping today, looking for some casual-yet-not-too-casual dresses, because I like wearing dresses. It took me a while to find the right section in Macy’s, the section with all the less-expensive, somewhat trendy dresses, and when I did, I was stunned.

When did it become 1976?

Seriously—Pucci prints, diagonal stripes, PIPING for goodness’s sake! Brown and blue together, red and black and cream with bell-shaped sleeves…holy moly, why didn’t I hold on to those dresses of my mom’s? I could be in style without spending a cent!

OK, OK, it’s not all that bad. Maybe I’m just bitter because it seems that someone else exactly my size has already bought up all the cute dresses in our size. Because there were certainly no dresses in my size in the store today.

Apropos quote of the day:

“Now I wish I had probably gone to another academy because I like computers,” said Akelia, who is 16 and starting her junior year. “When you’re 13, you don’t realize how much work you have to put in to be a lawyer. It’s not like you just go to court, and win or lose, you make a lot of money.”

Just as I finish up (mostly) one task, I take on another. The new task is perhaps nerdier than the one I just completed, and calling it a task is really misleading, since it’s not the sort of thing that just gets done. I’ll be working on it for the next year or so. For now, though, the task (or, The Task, as I think I’ll start referring to it) basically consists of reading a bunch of stuff I don’t know much about in preparation for writing something that will hopefully end up being really cool. I have some leisure time now, so I think tomorrow I’ll be a REAL nerd and take some of this reading material with me when I go get a pedicure. See, you can be a nerd and girly at the same time!

I am just way too easily distracted. Especially when confronted with an overwhelming amount of minutiae. If I just buckled down and powered through it, I’d be done in a couple of hours. As is it, I’ll probably be working on it for several hours because I have to keep checking my email.

Best lolgrims evar.

Our neighborhood has a new Whole Foods, so Mr. Angst and I decided to stroll down there this afternoon and see what special “neighborhood” stuff they have.

Never mind that the store is very spacious, that they have an in-house smoker for all kinds of yummy and different sausages, that they sell wines by the glass, or that they have a really normal floor plan/layout (more like a regular grocery store than a Whole Foods, actually). Forget all of that.

They have the best store-bought flour tortillas I’ve found in this city.

Where I’m from, flour tortillas are easy to come by, usually cheap, and almost always good, even when made in and bought from a grocery store (though the best are always purchased at a taqueria or from someone’s abuela). Here, though, I’ve had trouble finding good tortillas, outside of the Dallas-based chain Mexican restaurant we occasionally eat at. Certainly I’ve never found good tortillas at the grocery store. The best I’ve found were more like the burrito tortillas at Chipotle—serviceable, but nothing spectacular, more a medium for conveying food than a food to be enjoyed for its own flavor.

And that’s the thing. Tortillas should be enjoyed for their flavor. No, they don’t have to be made with lard (as the very best ones are), but they should at least have some texture, some savoriness, some intrinsic yum of their own, separate from whatever deliciousness goes inside them.

Mr. Angst and I have already each enjoyed a warm tortilla with butter. Tomorrow morning (his first day at his new job), I’m planning to get up, make some bacon and scrambled eggs, tossed with some cheese, and assemble the first proper breakfast tacos (or, as they are known in my hometown, taquitos^[1]) we’ve had in this city. And I am really looking forward to it.

1. I have never understood why anyone calls those rolled-up fried things tacquitos….I always called those flautas… ↩

Welcome to this week’s Law School Roundup. No real theme, just some interesting posts. School starts up soon, so look for a future Back-to-School edition.

• Foreboding If it’s this much work just to get started, what’s the actual schooling going to be like? Legally Numb
• Scheduling It’s a good idea to get things organized before it hits the fan Reasonable Expectations
• Pampering Treat yourself well—or, better yet, let someone else treat you well! Knocked Up (and in Law School)
• Relax, OK? Some people actually enjoy law school. the law according to [josh]
• Summer’s End Which means it’s time for things to explode. Fun! Cella Bellum
• Work You’re not the only one, I promise. La Mitotera
• What Law School? This is better, harder, more important. Lag Liv
• Cheese Don’t mess with it, OK? Peanut Butter Burrito
• Up-to-Date A big, and hopefully current, list of law student blogs Clever WoT
• Hahahahaha Oh noes! Y not findz funniez be4 barzam? elephant juice

And that’s it! Look for the roundup next week at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground and then back here in two weeks. And feel free to browse around the archives.

Lasts

Yesterday was my last day of work. Above all, I’m glad I had the experience of working for a law firm, and I very much enjoyed working at my firm. The people were almost universally terrific and the work was, by and large, interesting. Yes, even the really dull work had interesting components. If things work out that way, I will be very happy to go back there next fall and start my career. If, for some reason, the next year takes us in another direction, I will still be very glad I had the experience—and I’ll be a bit sad to have to turn down my offer.

So that’s probably a pretty standard reaction to the last day of a summer associateship. The not-so-standard response is this: even though I still suspect I won’t spend my career at a law firm, I was really surprised at how easily I could see myself doing so, at least where I worked this summer. I learned quite a bit about myself—how I best work, how I prefer to get feedback, how to make my needs known without being a pill—and by my last week, I was feeling very comfortable, very at home. I was a little surprised, frankly; I kind of figured I’d put up with law firm life because of the paycheck and the experience to be gained, not because I actually found the work rewarding.

So, all in all, it was good summer. It’s a pretty sweet gig, after all, and even sweeter to realize it can be enjoyable even without the lunches and the events.

Firsts

Today, Mr. Angst and I rented our first Zipcar. We drove out to the suburbs to buy a piece of furniture we’d had our eyes on. Unfortunately, the store that carries this piece of furniture doesn’t do online orders or telephone orders. So we had to drive down there. Worth it? Totally. We’ll have to go back down next weekend to pick it up, so I’ve already reserved another Zipcar, one large enough to carry it back home.

At any rate, I’m so glad we finally did the Zipcar thing. Getting it was easy, filling it with gas was easy, everything about it was EASY. Easier than renting a car, certainly. I wouldn’t get a Zipcar for everyday use—we’re still close enough to the grocery store to walk there and back with a cart—but for those odd occasions when we need to go somewhere in a car, it’s definitely worth it.

Class selection happened today. I both won and sort of lost. I won in that I got the clinic I wanted—and I am thrilled. So don’t think I’m complaining.

I lost in that I did not get the core curriculum course I need to take. And I missed out on it by 1 point. I bid ONE POINT too low to get the class. And it’s a class I NEED. Or, rather, it’s a class that I should take, given that I don’t know a lot about the subject and it covers material that will be on the bar, and there are a lot of other bar courses I will not be taking.^[1]

There’s still another round of course bidding and I’m the second person on the waitlist, so I’m hopeful I’ll still get in to the class. There’s also another section, at an undesireable time, that didn’t fill, so I might try and get into that one during add-drop if I don’t get into the good time off the waitlist.

Meanwhile, I need to draft something for the research project I’m hoping to do this fall—I think the registrar wants something written before they’ll approve it. Also I need to draft some cover letters. And polish up my writing sample. And do something about my resumes, since some of the judges I’m applying to note certain preferences that I can play up if I modify my resume a bit. And I need to finish up my last duties for the summer issue of the journal.

Basically, I have a bunch of stuff to do. Thank goodness I only have three days left of work, since I don’t know when I’d find the time to get all of it knocked out otherwise.

1. OK, fine, enough mystery. I missed out on Business Associations. Argh! ↩