divine angst

Himself has recently rediscovered the joy that is chewing on the Kong. (I say “rediscovered”—it happened when we took away another of his toys, one made of fabric, because was starting to hack up little pieces of yellow felt.)

At any rate, he gets a little . . . obsessive . . . with the Kong, to the point of not really realizing where he is or what’s about to happen. Right after this was taken, the Kong fell on the floor, and he followed. I say he’s a smart dog, but . . .

I am feeling better today. After writing yesterday’s post, I wandered over to happy hour with some friends, which turned into a late dinner. Perhaps I drank a bit too much…in any case, I got my mind off of things.

Of course the downside is that I really can’t drink like that any more, so I was not as productive as I wanted to be this morning. Oh, I got my stuff done, it was just more of a struggle than iit had to be. I think the hangover is officially gone now, but instead of taking advantage of that and really busting ass on my work, I’m headed to watch a football game at a bar. Stupid ABC, making it impossible to get the football I want to watch at home.

I have this relative who I love dearly, but whose flaws I am deeply aware of. These flaws include being a bit flaky, a bit naive, a bit impressionable, and a bit unable to see her flaws in action. Today I received a letter from her, exhibiting each and every one of these flaws and though the letter was well-intentioned, it hurt my feelings deeply. Frankly, I am too busy right now to be in emotional turmoil, so I’m a bit pissed on that account, too, but mostly I’m just upset that someone who has been so supportive of me and my decisions in the past has chosen to write down all the reasons she thinks one of those decisions in particular was the wrong decision (and, typically, then says she felt she “failed” me by not stopping me from making that decision).

I usually find it amusing that I am so different from my family, and they usually seem to also. We all seem pretty accepting that I’m my own person. Well, apparently not all. Apparently some people in my family wish I was more like them—and more like them in a way I chose not to be like as an adult, over a dozen years ago. The worst part is that, upon reading this letter, I thought of a dozen ways I could respond to it, some of which would be equally hurtful to the letter-writer, some of which would just be inappropriate, and some of which would be logical, rational, and true—yet I know that I will never be able to say any of them, because no matter how clear I was (whether in a calm way or in a mean way), she just wouldn’t understand why what she wrote was so wrong.

I often miss living close to my family, but times like these I’m glad I’m far away so I only have to get these little guilt-trips in letters, instead of in the thousand small gestures of daily interaction.

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Law School Roundup, featuring posts by future, current, and past law students, expounding on surviving the nonsense. Enjoy!

• Coffeecoffeecoffee, mmmmmm Ostranenie
• Booksbooksbooks. Ack! Mommy on the Floor
• Why does just entering law school make us into prestige whores? Gah. Recovering Curmudgeon
• OCI really doesn’t make any sense. A little fish in law school
• I mean, it really doesn’t make any sense. Who Owns the Fox?
• Sounds like she looked goooooood. Frequent Citations
• The last of the back-to-schoolers Lag Liv
• Genius baby speaks in multiple languages! Magic Cookie
• Dying . . . from . . . cuteness . . . Modern Acropolis
• This is what happens when you leave the computer on . . . Peanut Butter Burrito
• We 3Ls really don’t care. There’s No Competition in Law School
• She can haz jobb! Yay! Amicus Curiae

And that’s it for this week! Look for the Roundup next week at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground and, in two weeks, right back here.

Yesterday was not my best day. I don’t think I’d want the outcome to be any different, but how I got there was uncomfortable and hard and exhausting.

Of course, therefore, today would be the day I needed to get started on the next wave of journal duties. This, actually, is good—it takes my mind off of things and lets me do work I am good at, thus building my confidence back up. So, yay! Of course, the things I am doing today are the most tedious things, so, boo.

As a consolation to myself, I decided to make some chicken noodle soup. From scratch. (OK, I didn’t make the noodles from scratch. That would be silly. Sillier than making chicken noodle soup from scratch.) I’m using a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated that lets you make a whole pot of goodness in about 90 minutes with stuff you probably already have (as well as a whole chicken, which you might have to pop into the supermarket for).

The basic idea is this:

By sauteing chicken pieces until they release all their natural juices and goodness, you can make a flavorful and rich stock without standing over a pot all day, skimming off nastiness. You then use the meat from the chicken in the soup, and it all gets cooked in one pot. There are a number of steps, yes, but overall, it wasn’t tough to make at all.

First, you have to chop up your chicken. Remove the breasts, skin and bone, split them, and reserve them. Also remove the wings and leg/thighs. Now you should have two breasts, two wings, and two leg/thighs, as well as the back of the chicken. Chop the back into three or four pieces crosswise, then chop those pieces in half. A good cleaver is probably necessary for this. Chop the wings at each joint, then chop the two larger pieces (not the wing tip, in other words) in half, again probably with a cleaver. Separate the leg from the thigh, and chop both the leg and the thigh into two or three pieces, depending on how big your chicken is. A cleaver is almost necessary for this because the bones are so sturdy in the legs/thighs.

Now you should have a big pile of chicken parts, plus the two breasts. Pull out a big pot. I used a 5 quart Le Creuset dutch oven. Put a tablespoon of oil in the bottom, heat it till smoking, and brown the chicken breasts on both sides for about 5 minutes total. Remove. Then add one chopped onion and saute until slightly colored and tender. Remove to a bowl. Don’t put the onions with the chicken breasts. Then add half the chicken pieces to the pot and saute until they aren’t pink. (That doesn’t mean you have to cook them through; just get them nicely browned on all sides.) Remove, and add to onions. Do the rest of the chicken pieces.

Now add the other chicken pieces and onions back to the pot. Turn the pot down a bit, cover it, and let the onions and chicken cook together for about 20 minutes. The chicken will release its juices and start to smell amazing.

Put a pot of water onto boil with about 2 quarts of water. When the chicken has cooked and the water is boiling, add the water and the chicken breasts to the pot along with some salt and bay leaves. Turn the heat down to low and simmer, covered, for about 20 more minutes, until you have a lovely, fragrant and flavorful broth.

Pull the chicken breasts out of the pot, and set aside to cool. Strain the broth. Set it aside to separate. If you have a defatter, this would be a good time to use it, since you want to skim the fat from the broth. Reserve about 2 tablespoons, though.

When the breasts are cool enough, remove the skin and bones and shred the meat into bite size pieces. Here, you have a choice: you can either discard all the other chicken pieces or you can pick through them for the meat. I did the latter.

Add the reserved chicken fat back to the pot and turn the heat to medium-high. Add another chopped onion, a large carrot, chopped into quarter-inch pieces, and a rib of celery, also chopped into quarter-inch pieces. Cook till they start to soften. Add the shredded chicken and broth back to the pot, and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the flavors come together. Throw in a bit of dried thyme, too.

The last step is to add about 2 cups of wide elbow noodles. Cook them about five minutes, or until they are just tender. Serve with fresh chopped parsley (which I did not have, so I used dried).

Enjoy!

As of right now, the result looks like it will be the same, but I would rather have waited and done it on my own terms.

Probably the silliest thing to be bothered by in a show that seems, frankly, a little formulaic:

Why don’t any of the main characters in K-Ville have a genuine N’Orleans accent? The guy playing the police chief is at least trying, but his attempts are uneven at best. The guy who’s supposed to be the old money? Sounds like he’s from Kansas City. (I.e., no accent.)

Is the show timely? Sure, I guess. Is the style interesting and gritty? Absolutely. Could it be set in any other troubled city in the U.S.? Completely. Too bad.

Mr. Angst bought me this, even though it’s not really an appropriate birthday card from a spouse, just because it’s so damn funny—and so me. Had to share.

Read the rest of this entry »

I got a new toy over the weekend. It’s the kind of toy that’s supposed to aid my productivity, by allowing me to get more done when I’m not at my desk. Instead, it’s encouraging me to get less done on my commute. Instead of reading that book for The Task I’m posting this. Oops.

I guess I just don’t write here anymore—or anywhere, for that matter. Which is a shame, because I’ve had this post in my head for a few days that I really want to get down, but haven’t had time. There’s just so much going on—my 30th birthday, clerkship nonsense, the rest of my life looming before me—that I should be writing about it all, but I just haven’t been able to. I say it’s the time thing, but frankly I do have time to sit down and knock out a post. I just haven’t been able to mentally.

That’s sort of the theme for this semester so far. I haven’t been able to do much. I’m not exactly behind in my work, I’m just not working at a pace that will allow me to stay on top of things for much longer. I’m just in the grip of stasis—I don’t want to work, I don’t want to not work, and I end up just sitting in front of my computer flipping between Google Reader and Facebook, neither of which has anything new to look at. Is this senioritis? Or is it something more sinister? Am I losing myself? I’m starting to get worried that all the vaunted perspective I came into law school with has been destroyed, or at least buried, under the expectations and advice of others who are not me, are not in my circumstances, and don’t really have much to offer me in the way of expectations and advice.

It’s hard, in other words, not to get wrapped up in what everyone else says Should Be, when only I can decide for myself what Should Be—and what, if the Should Bes don’t pan out, Will Be. I dislike having little direction, so I worry that I’ve been taking direction from people who don’t really know how to steer my particular ship.

OK, that’s enough of the painful metaphors.

Basically, I’m feeling a little lost right now. It’s made it hard for me to work, it’s made it hard for me to write, and I’m ready to get past it. Here’s hoping I get past it.

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Law School Roundup! Enjoy!

• Getting Involved Law and Floss
• Managing Time Legally Numb
• Managing Time and Getting Involved Reasonable Expectations
• Ignoring People Thanks, But No Thanks.
• Not Ignoring Time A little fish in law school
• Trying to Figure It All Out Knocked Up (and in Law School)
• Also Trying to Figure It All Out Lag Liv
• Getting Comfortable Modern Acropolis
• This is just funny My So-Called Internet Based Life
• Remembering the Good Times think like a woman. act like a man.
• Getting Away from It All Transmogriflaw

Look for next week’s Roundup at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground. It’ll be back here in two weeks.

There is nothing more frustrating than knowing you have only an hour to watch a football game and seeing the stupid team playing ahead of you fail to stop a touchdown in the last 30 seconds of the game, leading to stupid OVERTIME leading to you missing the first half hour of the game you really wanted to watch.

Stupid Aggies.

Whew! It’s been a week!

The first week of classes is always a little exhausting, between figuring out when you have to leave home to get to school on time, to deciding how you’ll spend your time between classes, to arranging enough time to get your reading done. I think I’ve figured all that stuff out, though.

The problem is that I’m also in a couple of classes that require a good bit of writing, and I’m not really sure yet when I’ll find the time to do that. Not to mention the journal stuff that requires more concentrated chunks of time. My schedule as it is now is very broken up. I’m even contemplating dropping a seminar to make some room for all of my duties—it’s only 2 hours and I don’t need them.

But I’m setting all these little worries aside for the time being because I’ve just finished a sort of important task—that had to be done by this evening—and now I can relax and enjoy myself until my birthday party tomorrow night.

Off to watch Firefly episodes with Mr. Angst!

I am clearly incapable of being an adult.

I spilled tomato sauce on myself twice this morning, necessitating TWO changes of clothes. TWO! And one manic trip downstairs to the drycleaner’s, to ask her to PLEASE save my cute khaki jacket that I love so much that had tomatoes and onions and spices all over it. She scolded me for using water to rinse the stuff off, but what else was I supposed to do? It was chunky! I hope she can save my jacket; I really love it. The other stuff (from the second spill) got thrown into the washing machine in the hopes that quick treatment would be enough to save the top and skirt.

I swear, I am about to be thirty and I can’t even manage to remember to put on an apron when I’m making tomato sauce.

God, how old am I?

Today, I totally tripped and fell getting off the bus, leaving me with a circa-fifth-grade scraped knee and hand.

At least I didn’t tear my clothes, which I would have done were I actually still 11.

With the start of classes comes a slew of other responsibilities that are keeping me from writing much here. I’ve been answering questions for new journal members, chasing down sources for last-minute edits, trying to work out my schedule so I can tell fellow group members when I’m available to meet, setting up my study space, and generally just spinning around like a dervish.

I’ve had one class so far, and it was fine—but we didn’t actually do any work. Today things really start up, I guess. The reading was 13 pages. I also have class tomorrow and Friday, but haven’t heard word one about any work to be done before then. So I guess this is an “easy” week class-wise; if only all the other things I have to do were eased up this week also, I’d be in heaven.

This morning’s to-do list, then:

1) Revise instructions for journal members.
2) Pull and collate materials for the class for which I’m a TA. (Is there a better grammatical construction to describe that?)
3) Do some reading for The Task; maybe write something down, too!
4) Reread for class today—I have scanned pages that I can mark on while I wait for my book to arrive. (I have been using a brand new book that needs to go back to the bookstore and haven’t been able to make any margin notes, which KILLS me.)
5) Walk the dog.
6) Eat lunch before I go to school—I have healthier (and cheaper) options here.

I’m sure there are other things I’ll add to that list as the morning goes on. I post it, really, just to show you that third year they do NOT bore you to death. At least not if you’re me. If you’re me, they really squeeze every last bit of work out of you. (Though, to be fair, the “they” is really “me.”)

I’ve updated my blogroll somewhat, changing the categories around a bit to reflect the new school year. I still have some clean-up to do, seeing as about half of the blogs on the roll are defunct. But that’s for another, not-Labor day.