I don’t know if this is a sign that I’m out of touch with reality or just that my head is full of snot, but a child dressed in a bear suit just got on my bus and it took me fully forty-five seconds to register that he wasn’t just wearing a bear suit.
Happy Hallowe’en!
In an attempt to feed the cold I’ve come home with, I ordered approximately five times as much Thai food as any human being—or two, in this case—could ever consume. Each order of pad thai was enough for a week; my beef noodle soup was also NOT, apparently, an appetizer. Heh. It’s a good thing I like pad thai and beef noodle soup.
I have been out of town. While away, I:
I’m home now, but exhausted.
For the last two and a half years, Mr. Angst has not been able to check in for flights online. (That post doesn’t explain that it’s definitely Mr. Angst who hasn’t been able to check in online, but we very quickly discovered it’s Mr. Angst who has the problem when I was able to check in online for a flight and he wasn’t.)
If we fly American or Continental or any other airline with reserved seating, this isn’t really a problem. We have to get to the airport a little early so Mr. Angst can check in at the ticket counter (no kiosks for us), but otherwise, it’s just not a big deal. Southwest, though, is different. Since Southwest boards in groups by when you check in, and you can check in online 24 hours in advance, Mr. Angst hasn’t been able to board in Group A for a very long time. (Well, OK, he has, but only by piggybacking on my Group A boarding pass, and only if I was able to check in online. Sometimes, when we’ve bought our tickets together, the whole confirmation number gets locked out and even I can’t check in online. That changed about a year ago—I think Southwest upgraded its online check-in system. But still.) Even worse was if Mr. Angst had to travel alone on Southwest (still the cheapest and most convenient airline for flying back home). He’d get to the airport 3 hours early and still be stuck in Group C.
Last night, I got online to check myself in for our flight tonight. I knew I’d be able to check myself in, since my ticket was purchased separately and had its own confirmation number. At the very least, we knew Mr. Angst would be able to board in Group A with me. We’d still have to get to the airport a little early, though, so he could stand in line at the ticket counter to check in.
On a lark, I decided to go ahead and try his confirmation number, because, hey, why not? And guess what? He could check in. Sometimes, he’s been able to check in on a return flight, presumably because being cleared for the first leg of a flight cleared him for the last leg. But Mr. Angst has not been able to check in online for an originating flight in two and a half years—and now, suddenly, he can.
I sincerely hope this means that his name was purged from whatever list it has been on during a routine update. Current news reports indicate the watch list is growing rather than shrinking. But it appears that, at the very least, it’s shrunk by one in the last few months. And I am SO glad.
I have gotten two horoscopes today that were unsettling. Or would be, if I actually believed in horoscopes.
The first was in Allure magazine, and I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something to the effect of, “Because you lack confidence, you accepted a job for which you are overqualified. Tough luck on you.” The second came from My Yahoo, and says, “Step back from a relationship that has become too combative. You need time apart.”
Horoscopes are usually written to be optimistic, like, “Things may seem wretched now, but adversity makes you stronger! Get through this and things will be rainbows on the other side.” Apparently not for me any more, though. Boo.
People who are not from Texas just don’t get it.
They say, “Well, Chipotle is pretty good, right?” And they say, “Have you tried [pick the good Current City Mexican restaurant]? It’s amazing! You should try it!” And then they rave about how good this or that Mexican place is . . . without ever realizing that It Is Not The Same.
Tex-Mex is Different.
The New York Times, of all publications, though, has saved me from having to explain.
Because queso fundido is NOT the same as chili con queso (or, just queso, where I’m from). Enchiladas suizas? NOT the same. I love queso fresco, but no one in my hometown has ever even so much as thought to drop it on top of beans. And, speaking of beans, as much as I love both black beans and refried black beans, they are most certainly, indubitably, NOT the same as pinto beans simmered all day with bacon and then fried up in lard.
So the next time you think “Taco Bell” when someone says “Tex-Mex,” think of this article. Remember that “Tex-Mex” is its own regional cuisine—the tortillas are mostly flour (though sometimes corn), the cheese is always yellow, and the meat is (almost) always BEEF rather than pork. Sour cream is a condiment, not an ingredient, bell peppers are ONLY (and I mean ONLY) a vessel for a chili relleno (which, by the way, I despise—bell peppers are disgusting), and the sauce? Is always brown. No ranchero sauce, no verde sauce, no suiza. BROWN. GRAVY.
Mmmmm. Tex-Mex.
I am officially employed for next year (and beyond). Whew! Cross that item off my to-do list.
Because I largely agree with Dorf on Dumbledore’s sexuality.
I don’t think Dumbledore isn’t gay; it’s just that I don’t care. Harry Potter has never been about the inner lives of the adults he’s surrounded by. Sure, we get flashes of that—as when Mrs. Weasley faces the Boggart—but otherwise, it’s just not relevant. And it is particularly irrelevant when it comes to Dumbledore, who took great pains to separate himself and his own history with Voldemort from Harry and Harry’s experience with Voldemort.
So, while I respect Ms. Rowling’s declaration, I don’t necessarily buy it. I don’t disbelieve her—I just don’t buy that Dumbledore, as written from Day One, was always conceived as a gay character. I think Ms. Rowling has looked at what she wrote—and maybe looked at it a few years ago as she was wrapping up the series—and thought, Huh. Dumbledore could be gay. Much like writers of fanfic did after Deathly Hallows. (I hear the Dumbledore-Grindewald pairing was quite popular in fanfic.)
So maybe I’m really a textualist. If it’s in the text, solidly and without question, then it’s there, part of the canon. It has to fit in the four corners of the text, so to speak. Dumbledore’s sexuality never appears in the four corners of the text. Ever. He could be gay, he could be straight, he could be asexual, completely wrapped up in his work. There’s just no evidence anywhere in the books that Dumbledore has a sexual life. It’s just not in the character. Sure, Ms. Rowling and her readers can look beyond the text and explore her characters and their lives—inner, outer, and sexual. But that’s not canon.
Welcom to this week’s Law School Roundup, featuring posts by law students and recent grads about school, life, current events, and food. Mmmmm, food. Enjoy!
And that’s it for this week! Look for the roundup next week at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground. It’ll be back here in two weeks.
And, done! Second (well, third, really) round of journal duties have been delegated out. I have some revisions to take care of this week, but, otherwise, for the next two weeks, I’m just in standby mode. I am LOVING it.
I will, however, be spending the weekend doing research for clinic. C’est la vie.
I’m enjoying being a student again this week, instead of being an editor who also happens to be paying excessive amounts of money for that privilege. I’ve been digging into some sections of the U.S. Code and learning quite a bit about how federal statutes are constructed, I’ve been reading up on aggravation and mitigation in capital cases, and I’ve been learning about various models for anti-competitive behavior in “middleman” markets. (Don’t actually ask me what that means; I think I just made it up on the spot. It’s for The Task, so I can do that.)
At any rate, it’s been fun, learning again, instead of being a manager and editor—and turning into a crabby old lady. I think I get to do this for another two or so weeks, and I am looking forward to every minute of those two weeks.
I’ve been sitting here doing my B.A. reading, trying to figure out why my study carrell smells like pesticide (like, roach spray, really).
I just realized it’s the commercial supplement I bought the other day. Damn thing’s ink smells like Raid. Gross.
You know those friends you had in college, the ones who were really wicked smart but also smart enough to be funny about it, funny in a sort of nerdy way, like quoting Augustine on how math is possibly of the devil when they were math majors, and who could drink more than you thought humanly possible and do really crazy things on the weekends but then get up on Saturday morning to give a talk at some conference being held on campus, and then go drinking with the other nerdy conference attendees and talk about math or physics but also get really crazy about SEC football? And they might also be the kind of people who make Long Island Iced Tea in giant Gatorade coolers intead of in pitchers and start fires behind their fraternity houses with the old furniture they hated, and do things like watch The Sound of Music with The Wall synced up in perfect time?
How weird (scary, bizarre) is it to discover those friends are college professors now?
Suddenly it’s really fall. It’s dark at 6:30, it’s brisk outside, and I’m in the thick of the semester. I have bunches to do, but it’s all really interesting, at least. And now that there’s no more evening sunshine, my mind understands that it’s time to buckle down and work hard. Thankfully, I finished one big project today, so I’m not stretched so thin, or with the more tedious work.
Fall means good things, like Halloween and Thanksgiving and trips home and visits from family. It also means winter is just around the corner. And exams. And grades. The good with the less good. That’s fall.
Look, it’s just who I am OK?
After wondering what my billables might be if I were keeping track, I decided to, well, keep track.
First, I lucked into finding a pretty handy little time-keeper. It’s a free Mac application called Time Clock[1] (pretty clever name, that!) and it is seriously No Frills. You can’t edit your time, it doesn’t show seconds, but it’s still damn useful. You select “Start Clock” from a handy menu bar, and it starts keeping track of your time. You select “Stop Clock” when you want to stop.
I know, I could get a stopwatch for that. The best part is that it has a “breaks” feature. You tell it how many minutes you want to go between breaks. When you have worked that many minutes, your entire screen is overlayed with yellow, and a big message appears in the middle: “Time to take a break!” If you’re not ready to stop, you just select “Postpone Break” from your menu and it goes away. You can even set how long you want that “snooze” interval to be.
I thought at first that I’d hate the yellow thing–it’s really a vile shade. But it is the BEST thing. Because it gets my attention. You can work under it with no problems; it’s a purely visual thing. But it’s there, staring you in the face the whole time: get up! get some water, go to the bathroom, stretch!
So I used my handy little Time Clock all day today. I “billed” just under 8 hours. I also made homemade chili (not from a mix—we’re talking onions, garlic, spices, stew meat, some beans (though I could have left them out), some tomato puree, some stock, and the crock pot), watched a bit of football, and took the dog on a walk. All in all, not too bad for a Sunday. I didn’t get everything done that I needed to, but I am VERY close. Frankly, I’m not even bothered that I’m not done, because I know how much I worked today. Usually I feel like I dither around too much; today I know that wasn’t the case because, even if I did dither a bit, I did so with discipline.
On deck for tomorrow: a conference call, a bit more of this journal work, some statutory research for two different projects, and hopefully another day of feeling really productive.
Because something is wrong with an electrical transformer at our building, they shut down the building’s power. Each unit still has power but stuff that relies on common power is down. No AC, then, nor water (the pumps are off), nor, for some odd reason, cable. I.e., no internet.
One would think I’d be really productive without the internet. One would be wrong. It turns out, I use westlaw A Lot. And I feel lost without it. I guess I’ll just have to make up for It while I’m at school. At least everything should be back to normal by this evening.
Oh dear God, I think I know what life as an associate at a law firm will be like. I do nothing but work. I work in front of the TV, watching the TWO shows I still insist on watching, I work on the bus to and from school, I even work (mentally) while I walk to and from the bus stop. I send email from my Blackberry while I wait for the bus. The only time I really stop working is when I sleep, shower, and eat. No, wait, I work while I eat, too.
I’ve been wondering lately what sort of time I’d clock if I were keeping track of my billables. I probably don’t want to know.
By the way, I know I’m supposed to get the Law School Roundup posted at some point, but I’m having trouble pulling it together. Frankly, the only thing I’ve been paying much attention to in the law-student-blogosphere this week has been the nightmare Lag Liv, her husband, and son have been going through.
It’s times like these the anonymity of blogging really gets to me. Luckily, not everyone is anonymous, but, face it, most of us are. Anonymity is just fine when we’re all griping about the work, the work, and, oh yeah, the work—or the gunners, the administration, the feeling of being completely lost—but every once in a while, real life comes crashing down and I realize we are NOT just floating along in a bubble called law school.
Perhaps I’m just a little introspective right now because my grand plans for next year didn’t turn out the way I thought they would. Don’t get me wrong—my “Plan B” is just fine, and might, in fact, end up better than the plan I originally pursued. But I’m actually staring Real Life in the face here, when I’m actually not really ready not to be a student any more.
The lesson to be learned is that you can’t manage your life. Oh, you can keep your ducks lined up, and make sure you cross your t’s and dot your i’s, but every now and then someone will come along with some birdseed, and the ducks will scatter, or you’ll knock over the pot of ink, and your t’s and i’s will merge with a sea of messy. I’m having to just let go lately—get through the day, and then get through the next day, and get through the following day—and the only crappy thing about that is knowing that there will always be another day, even when I’ve caught up or finished my work.
I know this hardly counts as a Roundup, but it’s the best I can manage right now.
Go vote for Kim to win the $10,000 blogging scholarship! All of the other nominees are COLLEGE students, for goodness sakes. Have some solidarity! Vote for the law student!
Work, work, work. That’s all I do—in between cooking dinner, eating, sleeping, and sitting on the bus going to and from school. I thought this semester would be a little easier than next—or that’s what I heard from my predecessor on the journal board—but I think that was wrong. How could it not be wrong? I have more to work on this semester for the journal than I will next semester. Oh, sure, next semester I’ll be slaving away with writing, for The Task, but this semester I’m slaving away, writing for clinic. And reading for that four-hour class that I think I’d really, really enjoy if I could just spend a little more time invested in it.
Sigh. Maybe I’m just bitter because I spent so much time in the library today. And I’m about to spend the rest of the day staring at my computer screen, finishing things up.
Ooh boy! If you are interested in employment law or discrimination law, this is right up your alley.
I’ll be interested to see how this shakes out in the legal profession. Good thing for the law firms that it wasn’t a court decision, for what that’s worth.
ImNobody speaks the truth. And I’ll tell you a little secret: even missing 2 points on your LSAT doesn’t have to mean the end of the world. I had been rocking the practice tests in the weeks leading up to my LSAT and I was counting on my average test score as I entered application season. I got a score 2 points lower than my average test score. Still a good score, yes! But those 2 points had the potential to really screw up my admissions chances at a lot of schools I really wanted to get into.
I’m my situation, I managed to get into a better school than my numbers indicated was possible. But even if I hadn’t, I know that my LSAT score would not have determined my experience in law school anyway. It certainly hasn’t where I am—I am very happy with my grades, I have a position on my journal’s executive board that allows me to play to my strengths while getting some excellent experience, and I’ve taken the opportunity to work with some really amazing professors. In other words, I am the student I always knew I was capable of being, LSAT be damned.
Don’t cancel your score. See what happens. If what happens isn’t what you hoped, remember to look at the big picture. Remember that you’ll be spending three years in law school and that “fit” can be more important than the marginal gain in prestige represented by those few missed points. Once you’ve honestly looked at everything, every factor (including but not limited to prestige), if you are still not happy with your options, then you can decide to take it again.[1]
