bagna cauda

3 cans anchovies, coarsely chopped

10 cloves garlic, minced

1 stick butter

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil (then add the oil from the anchovy can)

Melt butter in oil over low low low heat. Add garlic. Cook over low low low heat until garlic is golden. Add anchovies. Cook over low low low heat until anchovies have dissolved into a layer of anchovy paste on the bottom of your skillet with chunks of garlic in it. There will still be a layer of oil above the 'chovies, with some butter lather floating on top.

Have your family cluster around the hot skillet (remember, keep it on low low low heat) and dip vegetables and crusty bread into the bagna. Everyone has to eat some, if only to share in the post-bagna garlic perfume.

Do this on New Year's Eve for good luck in the New Year. It has even been known to work.

rear view mirrors

After nearly an entire Friday spent dedicated to the task, my husband, his father, and his grandfather (and there's nothing quite like three generations of A. men at the same kitchen table, swearing at each other in a fugue) managed to reassemble the damaged mirror and reattach it to the otherwise-undamaged Mitsubishi. My husband is now attempting to convince his dad that the other mirror -- also a replacement after a long-ago incident with a garage door -- was improperly installed by the Mitsubishi guys, way back when. "Come on," he says. "We know exactly how it goes now. It'll take us an hour to fix it."

(Fortunately, my father-in-law is having none of it. At least for now.)

Since that rainy Labor Day when the cab pulled up in front of my sublet, I haven't once dreamed of my old law school. This could just be a by-product of an overfull brain pan; when I'm preoccupied I tend not to dream much about anything. It wasn't much of a visually exciting place, anyway; the buildings were ordinary-looking buildings, the classroom decor was basic beige, and the locales in which I dream are usually distorted and baroque and Technicolor so the old school might not have made it through the subconscious filter.

So it surprised me, the other night, when I dreamed that I was back at my current law school, rushing to campus since I'd already missed the first meeting of my 9:45 Con Law class, freaking out that I still hadn't bought any books and I was going to be late for Tax. (Yes, I've almost completely decided that I am going to take Tax this term. Which may explain some of these dreams.) Then I caught up with a group of people in the student lounge who calmed me down, told me that classes didn't start until tomorrow, and got to chatting about what courses we were all planning to take.

And one of those people was L. from my study group last spring.

She was also a transfer student here, in my dream, and somehow I'd managed to go through all of fall term without knowing she was around. But she didn't mind. She was just there, happily hanging out with the natives, and as glad to see me as I was to see her. I forget what we wound up talking about, but L. and I seemed to be agreeing on everything in that supportive, resonant way that feels almost like a verbal hug.

I never got to say goodbye to most of my studygroupmates. I couldn't figure out how. There is no good way to tell people that you're leaving their school for a fancier one without either bragging or somehow expressing disdain for the place where they still are, and I had no desire to do either. I did email C. to let her know I wouldn't be back, but after an expression of surprise I didn't hear back from her again, and putting myself in her shoes I could understand why. So there wound up not being a going-away party.

I do miss my friends from last year. Even though the sheep's clothing never quite fit me -- on good days I felt like a spy, on bad days like a sad fraud -- they accepted me anyway, and as bad as things got, I was never alone. There is a real bond that comes from firewalking together, gritting our teeth and squeezing each other's hands and not quitting, that's of a different nature than the ethereal philosophical angst experienced over coffee in Nicer Places. It's a solid carbon-steel thing, shared veteranhood. It doesn't go away even once you win the lottery.

Last night, finally, I dreamed I was back there.

It was early November, and I was taking Tax, but Tax was a once-a-week seminar (only in dreams, heh). I'd spent all of October flying back and forth, as in real life, but apparently I had not once shown up to Tax so far this term. I picked up a handout that said "Week 6," then realized that my books were in my locker and I'd forgotten my laptop at the Abigail Hotel. In a panic I mentally ciphered the number of days I'd need to spend catching up on the reading before I could begin my outline. There couldn't possibly be enough time. I bolted the room, ran to my locker, and found it empty with no lock. Of course, I remembered, I'd taken the lock myself.

In search of my laptop, I saw myself dizzy on the stairs and lost in a few dingy alleyways before I finally wound up on MUNI with A. from my El-Dubyar research group. At least it was something like MUNI, but the sunlight was a bit too intense and A. somehow had baked cookies on the trolley and was offering me some. They were excellent.

Undemanding times like vacation take a weight off your subconscious, I guess, and all the stuff that's been pinned down there comes bubbling up and floats away.

I think it's time for me to get back in touch with my old-school friends.

accidenti!

My father-in-law, who has foreseen that his job will be outsourced overseas (granted, he's been foreseeing this for years, but that doesn't mean it'll never happen), has undertaken preparations for a career change. He's decided that he'd like to go back to school from the other side: not studying, but rather teaching high school math. Since he's already got a masters in math, getting his teaching credential is only as difficult as passing a standardized test.

My husband, who thrives on coaching standardized-test victims, has been in his glory this week. Apparently his dad is a lot more fun to work with than I am on this kind of thing, since I loathe standardized tests and constantly make that fact known whenever I have to sit down and prepare for one. My father-in-law, on the other hand, is actually enjoying the preparation. And more power to him.

Driving back to the inlaws' from Christmas dinner at my stepmother's house yesterday, my husband was working through a particular problem that he'd had difficulty explaining to his father.

"You tell me," he said, "how you'd find the domain of h(g(f(x)))."

"I'm the wrong person to ask." I haven't taken a math class since high school, and even then I only ever made it through single-variable calculus.

"No, no, you can do this. You know what a domain is, right?"

We talked math almost the whole way back to his folks' place, as he tried to work out an explanation to defeat the common mistake that both his father and I were apparently making (apparently the domain of g(f(x)) is something other than just the intersection of the domain of g(x) and the domain of f(x); go figure). As we pulled off the interstate, he was pretty confident that he could resolve the error for my father-in-law just as he had for me. And right by the gas station --

-- a brown Jeep in the middle lane decided that it wanted to make a right turn, began to move into our lane, and then flicked on its turn signal.

"Watch this guy," I said as my husband hit the brakes and attempted to escape the Jeep's blind spot. "Watchwatchwatch--"

We were driving a white 1992 Mitsubishi, which had been my husband's car in high school and now has over 116,000 miles on it. My father-in-law swears he'll keep the thing as long as it runs. It's a safe enough car, but for a moment I had a nightmare vision of the entire driver's side buckling in on my husband as the Jeep broadsided us. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the impact and that awful metal crunch, the car-accident noise, the noise that just has no business existing.

I heard the horn sound, and then a crack, but it wasn't metal.

I opened my eyes.

My husband, upright and uninjured behind the wheel, said some things that did not express happiness.

"Pull into the gas station," I said, "and I'll call your dad." Thankfully, the Jeep followed us.

A minute later, after my father-in-law was on his way to the gas station and my husband was over at the Jeep getting the insurance information, it occurred to me to inspect the damage to our car. The driver's side rearview mirror had been nearly torn off; only a bit of plastic kept it attached to the door. But the car itself -- I couldn't believe it -- hadn't sustained as much as a door ding. My husband had swerved out of the way in time. The Jeep's side mirror had clipped ours, and that was it.

Wow.

"Nobody's hurt?" asked my father-in-law.

"Nobody's hurt," we all agreed.

If this had been 2002, we'd both be in the hospital right now.

Earlier that evening, as we said a sort of free-form grace before Christmas dinner, I'd offered: "Thank you for this wonderful year." Perhaps this was, in some odd language, you're welcome.

movable type fails me for the first time

I drafted this huge long post about how everyone who's just finished their exams should now do the exact opposite of what I did (i.e. mope, sulk, and not take any time to recharge before going back to school in January), but then Movable Type didn't publish it and now whatever wisdom was there is lost to the ethers. In fairness to Xrlq, I think it's probably a server issue.

Anyways, this gives me the occasion to repeat myself in a far more condensed and efficient fashion:
Forget the exams! Screw 'em! Quit being a law student for two weeks! You'll go back soon enough. Enjoy your time off!!!

I'm about to do exactly that; we fly out to the inlaws' tomorrow, and it's really time to start packing. Blogging will be sparse through New Year's, unless anything really blogworthy happens.

Happy end of exams to all, and to all a good night!

never break the chain

This is it, kids! Your last exam day of your first semester of law school!

Criminal Law waves to SLA, smallstatic and Cinnamon! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will wipe the floor with burglary and larceny-by-trick ~ ~ ~ ~

Double-plus Torts waves to LR and WS! ~ ~ ~ ~ you may fear it the most, but this will be your best exam yet ~ ~ ~ ~

Contracts waves to Heidi! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will be everyone's hero if you mention Sauron on your exam ~ ~ ~ ~

Property waves to Jane! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will discourse on prescriptive easements and adverse possession with the greatest of ease ~ ~ ~ ~

Civil Procedure waves to Laura, Michael, and SLS! ~ ~ ~ ~ fear no Erie, for the Rules Enabling Act is with you ~ ~ ~ ~

and, since I probably won't be posting tomorrow, early waves go out to the unmotivated 3L who's got an Evidence exam tomorrow! ~ ~ ~ ~ hearsay, wham! ~ ~ ~ ~

Walk out of that exam, realize you're done, and relish it.

continuing the 1L exam chain

I think this is the last exam for most of the 1Ls on today's list -- just a few more hours, guys, and you'll have made it!!

Property waves to Ames and Elizabeth! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will take down adverse possession and prescriptive easements like a rack of bowling pins ~ ~ ~ ~

Torts waves to KJS! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will always remember to look for intent, and you'll spot it at its most secretive ~ ~ ~ ~

Contracts waves to RLP and J.! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will skillfully navigate the vagaries of estoppel and restitution and emerge unscathed ~ ~ ~ ~

Criminal Law waves to Greg! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will approach the exam with a mens rea of knowledge, and midway through realize that your mens rea is actually purpose ~ ~ ~ ~

Civil Procedure waves en masse to Dylan, Aviva, AlfDaBruin, Meme, Transmogriflaw, and BT! ~ ~ ~ ~ stay calm, stay focused, and personal jurisdiction will *happen* for you almost effortlessly ~ ~ ~ ~

no doubt

Eowyn If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Eowyn, Woman of Rohan, niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer. In the movie, I am played by Miranda Otto. Who would you be? Lord of the Rings Test

Link courtesy of Anonymous M.

hey, squire

This one's for TPB, Esq. Luca says hi.

everyone wave to the chain

It's snowing here. Hopefully none of y'all will have weather issues en route to the exam. And just think: once this exam is over you can finally go see Return of the King!

Civil Procedure waves to Matthew! ~ ~ ~ ~ you'll give that exam the ol' 12(b)(2) ~ ~ ~ ~

Criminal Law waves to Ditzy Genius! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will commit justifiable examicide ~ ~ ~ ~

Property waves to WS! ~ ~ ~ ~ you are the deity of takings ~ ~ ~ ~

Pre Trial waves to Ellen and Business Orgs waves to Greg! ~ ~ ~ ~ all your filings will be timely and complete ~ ~ ~ ~

See that light at the end of the tunnel? You're almost there!

santa comes early

My husband's Christmas present arrived today.

We don't officially exchange gifts, since the giftgiving seasons of the year usually coincide with all kinds of other stressful events that fill up our schedules and pre-empt things like shopping. But every so often one or the other of us will want something, it will happen to be right around Christmas, and there's certainly no reason not to go for it.

This year we got lucky: both of us found ourselves in "need" (as much as anyone ever really needs these things) of new gizmos right in the middle of the Holiday Season. My cell phone is in critical condition, and will probably be replaced later this week. Hubby, meanwhile, is on the living room floor right now playing with his new toy.

It's a camera of sorts, but calling it a webcam would be an insult to the item. Make no mistake: this is a Network Camera. It doesn't even need to connect to a computer; it sits right on the wireless network. Hubby is currently configuring it so that we can watch our chinchillas sleeping in real time from any borrowed computer while we're gone on vacation. (Yes, our pet sitter has been warned.)

I'm excited because it apparently sends pictures to your mobile phone, even. So as soon as I upgrade mine, we won't even have to borrow someone's computer to watch the chinchillas sleep.

Yes, it would be far simpler to just watch existing chinchilla webcams, or not to go on vacation at all and just watch our chinchillas sleep in person...but this is far more fun.

waves up to the 1Ls

Can you feel the end in sight yet?

Torts waves to CM and Jane! ~ ~ ~ ~ your brilliance far exceeds their negligence ~ ~ ~ ~

Constitutional Law waves to Jenny and Sarah! ~ ~ ~ ~ you'll give that Commerce Clause what for and leave it begging for more ~ ~ ~ ~

Contracts waves to Laura, SLA and Disputation! ~ ~ ~ ~ you are the champions of applying the UCC by analogy ~ ~ ~ ~

Civil Procedure waves to LR! ~ ~ ~ ~ diversity of citizenship jurisdiction is your oyster ~ ~ ~ ~

And you're on the home stretch! Really!

lazy and lame

I should be more productive right now.

At the very least I should be working on my closing argument for Trial Ad, which is due in a month or so (but very little of that month-or-so is going to be available to dedicate to it). I should be sending out cards, cleaning out my inbox, cleaning up the apartment, Christmas shopping, ticking items off my to-do list.

Instead, I'm not really doing anything except feeling vaguely guilty for not really doing anything.

Enzo is doing better today; he is able to move around and put a normal amount of weight on his bum paw, and I even caught him using it to clean his whiskers this morning (one of the cutest things you can imagine an Adorable Rodent doing -- batting at his whiskers with his paws). He thanks everyone who thought of him yesterday, even though he wound up not needing the vet after all.

I've lit a few jasmine-scented candles around the apartment, which for some reason are aggravating my jasmine allergy (the reason I had to stop drinking jasmine tea). We haven't put up Christmas decorations yet, and at this point probably won't bother. "We're not going to be here for Christmas!" protests my husband, which is true. I may still sneak some little lights up around the windows, just because I like the effect of same.

Or maybe I won't, since it involves actually focusing on a task long enough to complete it...

finally

Mmmmm. Look what exists.

more waves for the chain gang

Another big day for the 1Ls on the exam chain. Today's distribution:

Torts waves to Dylan, Cinnamon, Ames, and J.! ~ ~ ~ ~ your res ipsa loquitur analysis will blow your professor's mind like a barrel falling out of a second-story window ~ ~ ~ ~

Criminal Law waves to Elizabeth, smallstatic, WS, and Heidi! ~ ~ ~ ~ may your path be all ablossom with predicate offenses ~ ~ ~ ~

Property waves to Aviva, AlfDaBruin, RLP, Transmogriflaw, and BT! ~ ~ ~ ~ unlike the Pierson v. Post guy, you will actually shoot to kill and take possession by right ~ ~ ~ ~

Contracts waves to Meme, SLS, and Michael! ~ ~ ~ ~ the Statute of Frauds is your beeyotch ~ ~ ~ ~

Civil Procedure waves to KJS and Ditzy Genius! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will step as lightly through your Erie analysis as a ballroom dancer doing the tango ~ ~ ~ ~

Family Law waves to Ellen and Tax waves to Greg! ~ ~ ~ ~ much though these things may annoy, aren't you glad you're not taking your Civil Procedure exam again? ~ ~ ~ ~

pet issues

(first off: yay to the Fourth Infantry Division for bagging Saddam Hussein, right on Nostradamus' birthday! And props to the tool of democracy and capitalism who immediately put the despot's beard shavings and head lice up for sale on eBay -- metaparody, baby.)

Meanwhile, my chinchilla Enzo, who seems to be seasonally affected, had something like a sleepwalking panic attack last night. He bounced all over his cage and looked quite likely to have hurt himself. But nothing seemed wrong with him when we woke him up and checked him for broken bones.

This morning, though, he is heavily favoring his front left paw, which is a little swollen, and while he apparently can put weight on it, doing so makes him wince. Poor little guy. We don't yet have a vet here, and since we suspect a sprain instead of a broken bone, we're just confining Enzo to the small travel cage right now. He hates it in there, but it's blessedly free of anything on which he could further injure himself. If any of my local readers can recommend a downtown vet who specializes in small exotics, please let me know.

Oddly enough, just this morning Sua Sponte graduated from Flappy Bird to Adorable Rodent status at TTLB. Enzo appreciates the compliment, but harrumphs that he was an adorable rodent yesterday as well and that he never gets no respect.

keeping up the 1L exam chain

Full-on Torts waves to Matthew, who's the only 1L on the chain taking a Saturday exam! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will nail products liability and your hammer won't break ~ ~ ~ ~

(and a word of advice: skip the Sunny Delight!)

uruk-hai out

For all the fans, but especially Heidi: Gollum drop a beat that even orcses can use.

and that's it!

Trademarks, check.

The worst part of it came before the exam even started, when the vending machine downstairs ran out of bottled water and I didn't have time to run to the cafeteria. I punched random buttons on the machine until it yielded up a bottle of something, but the something turned out to be repulsive: this nuclear-orange sugarwater called Sunny Delight. I drank about half of it before giving up, and while the sugar high probably helped during the exam, I know I'm going to pay for it later. Stomach's already going sour. Bleah.

Yes, the multiple choice sucked, but that was no surprise and therefore more annoying than frightening. I haven't a clue how well they went. I haven't a clue how I did on the rest of the exam, for that matter; I might have been too conclusive on some of the questions, too here's-the-law, or I might have rambled appropriately. Who knows? Who gives a damn?

I'm DONE!!

I'm proud of myself for one thing: I'd driven almost the entire way home before I thought of something I might have missed. I'm making progress. Eventually, I'll get to the point where I don't think of them at all.

It was itchy to radio-surf and shuffle through the CDs in my car and not find any appropriately expressive music. "I Am The Highway" didn't work, nor did any of my Vivaldi. But after I got home and went to check the mail, I got lucky: awaiting me was a package from Amazon, ordered long ago and only recently shipped, containing the brand-spanking-new soundtrack to Return of the King. We've got it playing now, and I couldn't think of better Exams Are Over music. (If you have it, listen to the track called "The White Tree" and you'll see exactly what I mean.)

Exams are over!

"I've done it," I chattered to M. as we packed up our laptops. "I've gone through a whole term and taken exams! I go here now!" And however those exams come back, I know this much is true.

Thanks, as ever, to all who sent waves. Hopefully they won't stop with me today, but will transmit directly through the keyboard, onto the page, and straight into the realm of professorial goodwill. It's amazing what waves can do...

I'm debating having an amaro, in homage to the closure I achieved last spring after my exams ended. But it would be a wholly ceremonial thing at this point. Unlike last year, I'm not hurting for closure right now. There's no unhappy Most Likely Outcome to be resigned to. From here on in, there are only possibilities.

Ah, heck. I'll have it anyway, just to toast the possibilities.

Salute!

today's quote

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. -- Phillips Brooks, bishop and orator (1835-1893)

the chain goes on

Today's distribution:

Civil Procedure waves to CM, J. and Jane! ~ ~ ~ ~ minimum contacts will never elude you ~ ~ ~ ~

Constitutional Law waves to LR and Disputation! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will nail the Establishment Clause without resorting to the Second Amendment ~ ~ ~ ~

Property waves to Greg! ~ ~ ~ ~ easements, schmeasements, you've got 'em covered ~ ~ ~ ~

Torts waves to SLA! ~ ~ ~ ~ private necessity is always your friend ~ ~ ~ ~

Contracts waves to Dylan! ~ ~ ~ ~ you are the ace of the restatement and the king of the UCC ~ ~ ~ ~

...and after today, your first week of exams will be over!

on the right track

There's got to be one of us every year. And every year, of course, they get cooler and cooler.

almost there

In a little more than seventeen hours I'll be taking my Trademarks exam.

Last year, before I started law school, at least a dozen people told me what a good thing it was that I'd waited until my late twenties to do the deed as opposed to Going Straight Through [from college to law school]. "You will be so much more well-adjusted," the thinking went, "because you'll have a much better perspective on things like grades."

This was, in fact, the furthest thing from the truth last year. I knew I wanted to transfer schools, and the only way to do that (I thought) was to hammer, hammer, hammer away at anything that could potentially result in an enabling grade. I was not a good role model for little grasshoppers in search of zen.

But now things are different. Maybe this is true for all 2Ls, but now that I've transferred, I'm finding that my grades have all but ceased to determine my trajectory in school. Failure to make straight A's -- not that I ever made them in law school! -- will lose me neither my summer job nor my seat at graduation in 2005. Doing well would be cool, and could get me neat things like a clerkship, so there's still plenty of incentive to work...but no longer any incentive to panic.

The professors seem down with this groove too. Again, this could just be an effect of the change in schools, but I'm getting a completely different vibe from practice exams than I got last year. At my old school, on every exam I took, there was pretty much a Right Answer. It tended to involve spotting every issue we'd covered in the class, including defenses and remedies, but that was about it. With the possible exception of Civ Pro, exams were pretty much an act of straightforward law-spewing. Here, they happily wander all over the map.

Professor Trademarks has released a few old student answers in his practice exam archive. Usually I'd deconstruct these and reverse-engineer a process for nailing Exactly What He's Looking For on my own exam, but it's hard to do that when the A answers have so little in common with each other. People appear to name the rule, apply it, and then spend the other two-thirds of their answer free-associating. I couldn't begin to reverse-engineer that process, and it's going to take some breaking of last year's habits (shut up! What's the rule? Answer the question! Don't you dare miss a case!) before I can do it from scratch.

And yet I think I may already have broken those habits.

I should probably be more worried about the fact that Professor Trademarks is giving us an actual multiple choice section on tomorrow's exam. He has not published any past ones in his archive, and refused to share any with me in response to my emailed request. So it'll be something I walk into, completely cold. "In the past, students who get A usually are able to get about 18 or more correct out of 25," Professor Trademarks says, presumably by way of encouragement.

I hate multiple choice. I particularly hate multiple choice that constitutes 50% of an exam that I'd really like to nail. But -- and this must be the 2L chill thing talking -- I'm not really that scared of the multiple choice I'll be facing in seventeen hours. It'll happen, and I'll do how I do. Hopefully that will be decently. I'll take my outline to bed again tonight, and down with me to the gym tomorrow morning. But ultimately, the exam -- multiple choice included -- is just going to happen.

*om*

wow

Paxil has been banned in the UK. The class action sharks have scented blood.

Time was, I seriously considered taking it...

examhard

At my ex law school, students had a choice: you could either handwrite your exam, which an astonishing (to me) number of people did, or you could take it on your laptop. It had to be your laptop, owned or borrowed; the school would not loan you one. But to keep everything standardized, they did require that all exam-ready laptops run ExamSoft.

ExamSoft ran only on Windows. This left the hardcore coders and the clear-plastic devotees (which groups of people sometimes overlapped) without much recourse. Fortunately, the laptop I was using at the time boasted one of the last functioning installations of Windows 98 that I knew of. Once I fixed its broken floppy drive, the Sony was happy to swallow ExamSoft. The application reset my Windows wallpaper to a plain pale-blue screen after each exam, but that didn't bother me, since I tended to find myself feeling pretty pale-blue and blank anyway at the time.

Other folks have apparently not had such an easy time with exam software. Notably, Wings and Vodka has not yet managed to become one with his own exam software. The friend to whom I bequeathed my old Sony laptop hasn't yet had any issues, but I'm still sending hang-in-there waves to the Sony in tandem with my regular exam waves to its current owner. I feel their pain; ExamSoft exams take you outside your comfort zone, forcing you into a regimented mold, popping up alarming little alarms when you least expect them, and otherwise reinforcing the ironclad frog-march of law school.

My new law school, amazingly, requires no such abomination. While all exams must be taken using a laptop (literally, no handwritten answers allowed), that's the extent of the enforcements. Exams are written using the word processor of choice on whatever laptop you currently own; you save the document both to your hard drive (unencrypted! we ExamSoft victims could only dream of this) and to your floppy drive. If your laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, you march off to an exam-season-official print lab as soon as time is called.

Someone who has never suffered through ExamSoft could never appreciate the glory of this.

Transferring schools, if I haven't emphasized it enough already, rocks.

further along the 1L exam chain

Criminals and tortfeasors beware, the 1Ls are onto you...

Criminal Law waves to AlfDaBruin, Ames and Transmogriflaw! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will nail every silly homicide issue they throw your way ~ ~ ~ ~

Torts waves for a crowd:

~ ~ Aviva ~ ~
~ ~ Heidi ~ ~
~ ~ Meme ~ ~
~ ~ Ditzy Genius ~ ~
~ ~ BT ~ ~
~ ~ Michael ~ ~
~ ~ SLS ~ ~
~ ~ RLP ~ ~

~ ~ ~ your issue spotters will be clear, faceted, and brilliant as diamonds ~ ~ ~

...and Secured Transactions waves to "honorary 1L" Ellen! ~ ~ ~ ~ Article 9 will learn to fear you ~ ~ ~ ~

Wish I were there to give you a hug in person. Especially all the Torts kids. Smoke that exam and avenge my awful grade last year!

*click*

That had to be the weirdest law exam I've ever taken in my life.

I had reason to expect it, given the practice exams I'd reviewed, but it was still strange: one fact pattern for a question, then the identical fact pattern with one crucial fact changed for the next question, and so on. Two continually-modified fact patterns for eight questions in three hours. "Analyze the merits of X's claim." Bleah. About halfway through each set of questions I'd run out of potential claims, and as I approached the end, I was running pretty low on merits at all. Coulda used a Power Bar.

I wonder how straightforward the thing really was. One of the fact patterns tracked a case which was in our reading, but which Professor Corporations mentioned *not once* in class. And a good 50% of the subject matter of the class never turned up in the fact patterns. Or did it? you ruminate to yourself afterwards. Damn, I could have missed anything. Damn! I could have.

Know what, though? I'm OK with that. I'm OK with however this exam comes back (within certain limits, but still). I've now gone start-to-finish all the way through my first class at my new law school and it never sucked, not once, not even during the most excruciating reading. True, my grade in the class may still suck, but that's a bridge I'll cross when I come to it.

Still, I need to get myself past the point where despite my best efforts to wipe my feet, bits of the exam spring forth unbidden in my mind for the rest of the day. Thinking about an exam after it's over is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. I know this as well as anyone. So enough. My grade is sealed now, and I'm zen with it, and I should get back to studying for Friday's exam. (Some other time I'll grouse about exam spacing.)

Thanks to all who sent waves: right back atcha.

Trademarks, ho!

revving

Three hours until Corporations.

I'm going to head out now, stop at Office Depot for floppies and Post-It flags, stop at Subway for lunch, and then head to school. Tab my outline, do some more highlighting. Reread the old exam answers so they're fresh in my mind. Print some things that didn't make it onto paper last night before my printer ran out of ink.

And then it'll happen.

Luck, be a lady tonight.

chain, smoking

For immediate distribution:

Property waves to KJS and Laura! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will rock takings like a hurricane ~ ~ ~ ~

Contracts waves to WS and Elizabeth! ~ ~ ~ ~ 2-207 will cower before the might of your IRAC ~ ~ ~ ~

And a special extra wash of relief right after time is called!

needle on E

This has got to be it...

There's another flowchart I could make, but then again, my chicken-scratch handmade version could also suffice. I am too washed-out to outline any more practice answers (yes, I'm still stuck at 2). Even my husband, who was always there last year to encourage my nose back toward the grindstone whenever I threatened to slack, tells me "You're going to do fine. Just relax."

I believe this is called overstudying. (Not to be confused with overpreparing, which would be a good thing.)

But it's an open book exam. And Professor Corporations apparently does not hide the ball; what he tells you in class is what he gives you. Or so I've been told. The old exams fail to be crystal-clear to me only because he used an old version of the casebook and actually taught the class with different emphasis this year. At least that's what I'm hoping; otherwise the rumors of his exam-writing candor are greatly exaggerated. (The old-casebook theory seems reasonably sound, though; ours is dated 2003, and the old outlines I've seen mention plenty of cases I know we didn't read.)

My father always said that the most important thing to do, the night before an exam, was to put everything away and get a good night's rest. I think it's about time to do just that. Maybe in my dreams I'll meet Van Gorkom and Weinberger and the poor sonsabitches at Paramount, and we'll buy each other scotch-and-sodas and crack jokes about Delaware judges.

Incidentally, this is the most like college that law school has ever felt.

stretching thin

Corporations exam in 20 hours.

I'm at that awful point in my studying where I simultaneously can no longer focus without a break and can't take a break since there's still so much left to do. I just cleaned up the kitchen, which did not help. My chinchillas are wholly disinterested (heh heh, just like insiders protected by the Business Judgment Rule!) in any play time. My husband is still at the office, which "counts" even though the office is in the next room. Some tuna steaks are out defrosting on our kitchen counter, but won't be ready to cook for awhile yet.

And my studying is stalled. Ugh. I have only "done" two practice exam questions, now, at a time when I'm usually down to my last few. I've got one flowchart in decent shape, am stuck on another, and am currently trying to whittle out a checklist for the stuff that's too simple to require flowcharts. Without much success. I guess it'll get done eventually, but eventually has about five or six hours left to happen.

For some reason -- I blame bad Thai takeout -- neither my husband nor I could get to sleep last night. He was up past 3, which meant that I must have been too since I was still awake when he came to bed. He complained of a sour stomach; I, on the other hand, had something else entirely. Hot zinging tension in my chest cavity, a whole big ball of it, and my heart racing up to intense-workout levels. Basically, all the symptoms of a panic attack except the panic.

(So tonight we're skipping the leftover Thai and having fish. But the fifty situps I did to finally fall asleep last night can only have helped.)

I'm not panicking, which is good. But I am starting to get a little nervous. I have my first exam tomorrow at my new law school, and while nothing catastrophic is any longer at stake, it sure would be nice to do decently on it. And yet, even after making a hugeassed outline and gridding all the cases and hacking at my flowcharts, I feel somehow underprepared. Maybe that's the drawback to Prof. Corps' otherwise congenial lecture-only style; this is the first time I've participated in any sort of discussion about the material.

So I lectured Luca on the difference between a de facto corporation and a corporation by estoppel. He fell asleep. Too bad he didn't have Snood to play.

Focus time...focus time...or at least time to start the fish for dinner...

the 1L exam chain gang

Continuing on our trend of spreading good will and good luck among 1L exam-takers...today it's time to send:

Property waves to Dylan and CM — ~ ~ ~ ~ there will be no restrictive covenants on your performance today ~ ~ ~ ~

Torts waves to Disputation — ~ ~ ~ ~ you will stick that standard of conduct to that duty and their defenses will be useless against you ~ ~ ~ ~

Contracts waves to Jane, LR, Jenny, and Cinnamon — ~ ~ ~ ~ may nothing sneak up and surprise you, least of all the Statute of Frauds ~ ~ ~ ~

Elements waves to Matthew — ~ ~ ~ ~ you are the Master of the Elements, you have the Power ~ ~ ~ ~

Legal Decision Making waves to SLA — ~ ~ ~ ~ may you make all the right ones, today and thereafter ~ ~ ~ ~

You go!

Google sez:

Search query of the day: "pig in professor's suit."

Res ipsa loquitur.

setting my clock by it

My circadian rhythms are going *tilt*.

Our bedroom has been completely insulated from any natural light, at the behest of my husband. Soon after arriving here, he found that the ambient city light coming in through our venetian blinds lit the room too brightly for him to sleep.[1] So we went to JoAnn's Fabrics and invested $40 in seven yards of a substance called Budget Blackout. Duct-taped over our bedroom windows, it does the trick nicely: we've gone from a room with a view to a total sensory deprivation chamber.

(The same view is available in the office and in the living room, so it's hardly an aesthetic loss. Unless you're in the bedroom.)

Sure enough, we both started sleeping like logs as soon as the room went dark. But this had a downside: logs don't wake up very easily. For the first few sunless mornings, I found myself simultaneously jet-lagged and sleep-glutted. I'd roll out of bed at 10:30 and lurch into the living room, stumbling over my feet, drunk on melatonin and squinting like a mole. I've gotten a bit more used to it and no longer oversleep so extremely, but every morning when I open the bedroom door, the pallid gray daylight still stings my eyes like lemon juice.

The advent of winter has compounded the darkness problem: it now gets dark out between 4 and 4:30 pm. Add to that the fact that it tends to be cloudy and overcast, if not actually raining or snowing, pretty much all the time here...and eventually your body loses its sense of day.

I thought that clocks would become a less essential part of my life once I stopped commuting by train, but that has not proven to be the case.

But there is, thankfully, one fixed point in my day that never wavers. Several blocks up the waterfront, north of our building, is a large pier loaded with galleries, eateries, theaters, mallish shopping venues and a random full-sized ferris wheel. The wheel is lit up whenever the light recedes past twilight levels (which is most of the time these days). But every night at ten o'clock, it gets turned off.

"What time is it? Six? Eight? Oh, the ferris wheel's dark. Must be after ten."

[checks watch]

Yup.

[1] There wasn't really very much ambient city light in the bedroom, since we face out onto the waterfront. But apparently it was enough.

distractions

Courtesy of ambimb, who recommends this as an alternative to freaking out over Torts:

(I'm flattered by the description, but ewww, aqua?)

I'm switching from Corporations to Trademarks today. I need a break from self-tenders and poison pills, and don't want to save all the joys of 43(a) and dilution for the one (1) day in between exams. There's nothing like spending a few days poring over an outline to make anything else on earth seem oodles more interesting, even if it's just another outline.

1L exam chain, et seq.

Here's a statistical anomaly: today's exam-taking 1Ls on the chain are taking exclusively Contracts exams. (And while many of them go to the same school, not all do--at least as far as I know.) Looks like an auspicious sign to me :)

So today's waves -- all Contracts! -- go out to
~~ AlfDaBruin ~~
~~ *Ames* ~~
~~ Aviva ~~
~~ BT ~~
~~ DitzyGenius ~~
~~ smallstatic ~~
~~ Transmogriflaw ~~

May you rock the house in near-perfect synch.

~ ~ ~ ~ Make mincemeat out of the Restatement, whip the UCC, add a pinch of estoppel and a dash of restitution, and set on fire until done. ~ ~ ~ ~

corporations, going for baroque

I've reached the nasty snarly part of Corporations. (It happens to coincide with Weinberger v. UOP, for those keeping score.)

Professor Corporations runs a terrific class. He eschews (or, more rightly, says "screw that" to) the Socratic method, and does what for some reason seems anathema to most law professors: he just goes ahead and tells you what the law is.

This is beautiful, in a class like Corporations where you could so easily get lost in the muddle of fact patterns. Delaware seems to take particular pleasure in producing numbingly detailed opinions, full of price negotiations and bit players, wholly impossible to skim. You've got directors of one corporation who are also directors of another, which is the majority shareholder of the first, which then decides to merge with the second, and then there's just narrative chaos until you get to the point where some aggrieved minority shareholder stands up and says "Hey, you're screwing me over! This is unfair!"

The nasty snarly problem I'm now facing involves this selfsame narrative chaos, emerging this time in exam fact patterns. I need to remember (and associate with the given example) as many curlicues and filigrees as possible from each of these damn cases, which was never necessary last year. My old study pattern of associating a high-level rule with each case no longer holds: it's not nearly so helpful on a Professor Corporations exam to note that Weinberger v. UOP requires a duty of entire fairness to minority shareholders, as it is to recall that in Weinberger half the directors didn't tell the other half of the directors what they were doing, and that the fairness opinion came from the target company's own investment bank.

Ugh.

Thank goodness it's open book. Thank goodness for Gilberts. By the time I get to takeover defenses, you'll be able to hear the sizzling from my ears.

more study fun

Some more gems for people looking for more things to stare at while they while the weekend away...

Del. Gen. in its entirety

PowerPoint on bonds and preferred stock

and for ye Kontracts Kiddies, my 2-207 flowchart from last year (it helped me, but use at your own risk).

no fear left?

Corporations outline: done.

Trademarks outline: done.

Stack of practice exams: on the couch, awaiting some flowchart action.

My first exam, Corporations, is on Wednesday. That's in four days. Trademarks follows on Friday, which leaves me only one down day in between tests.

Why am I not frightened?

I should be scared witless. I always have been before law school exams. This is my first set of exams at my new law school, the foundation for my performance here since last year's GPA has been (thankfully) zeroed-out on my record. I could screw up, and -- what? Not be able to transfer schools? But I did. Not get a job? But I have one.

There it is: the fear factors are gone. Last year, everything depended on my grades. I couldn't transfer without good grades, faced difficulty finding work, and bore the extra psychological burdens (for the first time in my life) of a calculated GPA and class rank. Now I'm transferred, employed, and happily ensconced at a school that neither ranks the class nor calculates your GPA on your transcript. Accordingly, exam-taking has turned from a mad dogfight into a tennis match.

My husband criticized me last week for "losing focus." He argued that I was entirely too happy to be here, and that blissing out when I should be stressed was a bad sign that I was letting go of my intensity and wasting the opportunities available to me here.

I didn't quite agree with him. I've certainly lost the singleminded kamikaze determination to murder the exam or die trying that left me so drained last year. But, I protested in my defense, I'm doing all the same work: doing my reading, never skipping class, outlining, flowcharting, practice exams. I'm getting the same level of mental exercise I did when all my plans were at stake. I'm just not dreading any of it any more.

Frankly, studying for exams is an atrocious drag. I hate outlining, as useful as it is for me. I hate practice exams, hate trying to figure out why *this particular* answer got the A. And without the hellhounds at my heels, I find that once again I have the attention span of a kitten.

But I don't miss those hounds. And I doubt their absence will hurt me, come exam time. Fear may have motivated me to blitz on studying, but my best grade came when I gave up on the exam and threw up my hands, while the grade that should have been my best got capped by a panic drive-by. That won't happen when the entire point of me being somewhere is just to soak up as much law as I can.

And in that, I don't think I've lost any intensity at all.

the 1L exam chain, cont.

Ondes du Jour:

Contracts waves to CM! ~ ~ ~ ~ promissory estoppel--wham! ~ ~ ~ ~

and LSAT waves to Eric and Natalie, assuming their exams weren't cancelled due to the blizzard! ~ ~ ~ ~ logic games--wham! ~ ~ ~ ~

new parents abounding

I owe congratulations to two more graduates from my "pregnancy pool" who graced the world with two whole new people last week, while the rest of us were outlining and eating turkey:

S., one of my supervising attorneys from this summer, and her daughter M.!

and of course Denise, whom we all know and love, and her son Tyler!

~ whoo hoo! and welcome! ~

outlines, check

I. Corporations outline: complete!
   A. finally.
     1. w00t.
   B. = pomegranate time for JCA.

I'm trying to mine last year's experience for some sort of correlation between grades and time from outline completion to exam. I think the conclusion is that my best grades come on exams where the outline's been done for at least a week (or, if not possible, at least since the last day of classes). My Corporations exam is next Wednesday, and the class ended yesterday, so hopefully I'm in good shape from a statistical perspective.

There are two basic approaches to outlining, among folks who make their own: you can be super-conscientious and keep yours current all throughout the term, or you can wait until the end of class and then outline. After finding myself in something like the second category for most of my fall classes last year, I resolved to move into the first category into the spring. It didn't happen. But it didn't matter.

For me, at least, outlining is per se useful regardless of the state of the ultimate outline. I don't really derive benefit from other people's outlines except as a tool against which to check my own (and, usually, supplement it). The act of going through *all* of my class notes, not just a week's worth, and carving them down into a parseable, overarching organization is sometimes the only way I can fit the whole subject into my mind. More power to people who can do the piecemeal thing: I can't. Outlining in bits and pieces, I found last spring when I tried to do so with Contracts, just doesn't work for me; I wind up doubling back and redoing most of the work I've already done as the big picture becomes clearer.

So the best outlining advice I can give is what works for me: start outlining whenever enough of a class has elapsed that you no longer feel as though you could immediately answer a question on something you covered earlier on. I like to wait until at least halfway through the term, when there's not so much pressure to be up late cranking on the damn things. But last term I didn't really get started until after Moot Court ended, and this term I could only really hunker down once the move and all my travels were over-with. And next term, when I have a full courseload and only eight weeks in the whole quarter, I'm probably going to have to come up with a better plan.

I guess outlining is one of those things that you always tell yourself you'll do differently, better, the next time around, a sort of law student New Year's resolution. But at least in my experience, it almost doesn't matter so long as you do the outlining at all. A delayed or untrimmed outline is still perfectly sufficient so long as the rest of the study process happens in due course: taking practice exams, deconstructing A answers, and developing checklists and flowcharts so that your answer winds up covering the professor's bases.

We'll see if the process holds up at my new school...

the 1L exam chain, part 1

Contracts waves to Matthew at UM! ~ ~ ~ ~ you will nail 2-207 to the wall ~ ~ ~ ~

Property waves to Cinnamon at Loyola LA! ~ ~ ~ ~ yours are the joys of adverse possession ~ ~ ~ ~

1L-rock-the-house waves to everyone else with an exam today: ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ exam waves ~ ~ ~

To all the 1Ls starting exams this week...

I'd like to do something like a prayer chain, without espousing any particular religion that may not be yours. I know how invaluable it was to me last year to know that people were thinking of me, supporting me, pulling for me all through exams. Now I want to return the favor.

Feel free to post your name/initials/identifier, which exam(s) you're taking and when, and as much information about your school as you're willing to disclose (at least so we know which direction to aim our goodwill). On the date and at the time of the exams, I'll send waves in your direction, and hopefully other readers will too.

Best of luck to you all! You can do it!

temptation, frustration

There are six fresh pomegranates the size of softballs in my refrigerator. I am outlining and have no time to eat one.

I need to outline faster.

At least my Trademarks outline is finished. (I either amused or annoyed my husband by cranking Holst's "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" and dancing in circles around him. I know *I* was glad to be done.)

Corporations! And then, pomegranates!

not with a bang, but...

So I guess Trial Ad is over?

Our schedule here is sui generis. We're supposed to be on a quarter system, but professors seem to be able to terminate their classes whenever they feel like it. Trademarks ended a week ago. Corporations goes until Thursday. And Trial Ad, we learned today, is bleeding over into 2004: closing arguments, a.k.a. our final exam, will take place on January 12.

This itches me. I like boundaries on things like school terms. It's strange enough to me that you can take a seminar that ends in March and not have the paper due until June (although that kind of makes sense, since a quarter is too short to research a huge honking paper). But all we've got to do is a closing argument, and not a long one: exceeding fifteen minutes is frowned-upon. I'd much prefer to do mine next week and be done with it.

But I was outvoted. The January 12 date was, as it turns out, a product of the democratic process. My groans of "Nooooo" and "Let's just get it over with" went unheeded. (I call stifling of dissent!) So a week before my birthday, five days before Dan and Shefali's wedding, a scant week after winter classes have started, I'll finally wrap up this term. *sigh*

At least I'll have lots of time to spend on the PowerPoint. I went a little bonkers on the presentation for the opening statement I gave today: started the thing at noon yesterday and finished (interrupted only by a quick trip to Costco) at nearly 1 AM. I think it worked, though; while several people had pulled in a bunch of pictures from the Internet, I was the only one who did any serious Photoshopping thereof. Then again, the instructor probably would have preferred that I spend the time memorizing my speech instead.

S'aright s'aright. It went well. Trial Ad, as a whole, has been fun. Of all the classes to spill over into winter, this would be the one I'd pick. And I'll have three weeks' vacation to memorize my closing argument.

I really, really should choose my winter classes. The online registration system is open, the clock is ticking, and I just need to make up my mind. I found a negotiation seminar in the business school which doesn't conflict with my dreamy e-commerce law seminar, but unfortunately, it does conflict with the textualism seminar. Then again, I'll probably wind up on the waitlist for the textualism seminar (along with everyone and their brother), so it could work. Good ol' Adam has just about convinced me to sign up for the con law section at 9:45. I guess it's not so terribly early. Last year I had Contracts at 9:30 three times a week, *and* a two-hour commute.

(Yeah, but last year was hell.)

(But this year the commute is twenty minutes with guaranteed parking at the end.)

(In the morning there might be traffic.)

(You know there won't be.)

(On the one day there is, I'll say I told you so.)

Tax is kablooey. Rumor has it that Professor Corporations is not nearly so beneficent in his Professor Tax incarnation. Besides, there are other potentially fun things on deck in the afternoon time slots: Conflicts of Law, anyone? Or -- wait for it -- Remedies! *snicker*

How much of a geek am I: those classes actually *do* interest me...

...damn, almost all of it does...

[meditates on the course schedule some more]