Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Do it for posterity

I watched a very moving documentary tonight called 51 Birch Street. I've seen many documentaries that involve children filmmakers interviewing their parents as subjects. I've been one of those would-be documentarians myself. 51 Birch Street sets a gold standard.

The film also inspired me to learn a new word. Did you know that "posterity" means future generations? What a cool meaning for a word that I'd only ever heard in cliches.

Law school continues this week, as it will for the next many, many weeks. I am feeling overwhelmed a bit by the unceasing work. Not that it's so much (yet) but it seems there is a low-level constant pressure beginning to build. (What's that I hear? The sound of 2Ls and 3Ls laughing?) I would have liked for my afternoon to involve much less planning around getting certain reading assignments done, and much more walking around the neighborhood and eating out at delicious restaurants. You know, the kind of thing I could do when I worked a regular day job.

T had a job interview today. His business also officially launched the new website today!! Check it out, because it looks awesome. I'm impressed by how much he's done in the mere week since we arrived. I want to take that as a good sign.

Monday, August 25, 2008

You catch more flies with honey...

Ugh. Comcast. Sucks.

That's all I'll say about that. I'm trying to move on from the phone call that put me in a bad mood. Right now, I'm in the bedroom, which I've set up as a makeshift work-space with my computer on a rolling coffee table, while the rice cooks back in the kitchen. It's hard to use words like "front" and "back" in this apartment, since you enter in the back of the apartment, and the front of the apartment is a dead-end, so everything feels reversed.

Anyway. First "real" day of school was today. I had Contracts and Litigation Basics. We had Lit Basics all last week, so there weren't any real surprises there. Also, that class is really just an introductory thing that lasts only halfway through the semester. Contracts was pretty good too. My prof has a sense of humor and, amazingly, so does the casebook. I actually laughed out loud while reading it yesterday. That's something I wasn't expecting.

School is a lot less intimidating than I expected, though I am refamiliarizing myself with that chronic unsettled feeling that comes with constantly feeling like I'm supposed to be "doing work". Being back in school makes me feel younger, and I haven't decided if it's in a good way or not. I was talking to a classmate of mine on ride home, some guy who was also working for about 4 years before going to law school. He also said that he felt this ambivalence about being a student again. In some ways it feels like being sent back a grade. In other ways, it seems like this amazing chance to do school over again as a wiser, better person.

I have to go. The rice could be burning.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Biden time

Actually this post has nothing to do with Obama's VP pick, except to say that T's phone went off this morning while it was sitting on my side of the bed, so I actually was the one to first read his "First to Know" text message announcing the pick. T learned the VP confirmation via my already half-asleep announcement: "It's Biden."

So what am I writing about here? Nothing really. I just feel the need to seize the computer while I have the chance. (Mine is still in pieces on the floor of our bedroom, to be assembled tomorrow.)

The final bit of orientation took place today. I rode the city bus up from my new neighborhood to the far north of the city, where a group of first year students participated in the annual 1L service project. After a long week of orientation-type activities, I was kind of regretting having signed up for the extra engagement. But it turned out to be a lot of fun. Not only did I get to play a bunch of foosball with some extra-competitive kids, but I also had a pretty interesting tour of the city on the half-hour ride up.

It's kind of cool how many different nooks and crannies there are to discover about this place. T and I explored two this evening. The first was part of a simple search for pizza. We walked up the main touristy thoroughfare that is just a block from our apartment, and after abandoning our table at the first place (it was far fancier than our budget allowed), we settled for Olympia Pizza, a cheap looking joint just up the block. Turned out to be the absolute worst pizza I've ever had. Tasted like cardboard topped with ketchup and cheese product. Still and all, it was one more place to cross of our list, and we discovered a neat little comic book store on the walk over.

Later, our second expedition found us walking several blocks east toward the fabled 24-hour dog park. The park turned out to be a typical city pocket park, with a dog run that was simply left unlocked at night. Neither of the two dog parks we've visited have had grass, and this one was laid with a fine, dusty gravel. It took a while, but we finally convinced E that it was, in fact, a dog park and he was, in fact, allowed to run around. He was skeptical of the gravel and, principe that he is, he daintily walked the concrete perimeter of the place for several minutes before deigning to get his paws dirty. But he came back pooped.

The public interest director and I rode the same bus back to our places after the service project this afternoon. On the ride back, I made a comment about how I'd been lead to believe that law school was going to be one of the hardest things ever. She looked at me in complete dead pan and said, "Being a lawyer is hard. Being a grown-up is hard. Law school is not that hard." She added that I should know, having been a grown-up for the past five years. (Her definition of grown-up being someone who is working and not in school.) Following that logic, I'm hopeful that this experience will be a fun challenge, not torture. I'm writing this post because I'm curious how I will look back on it in nine months, when I'll be a little more qualified to comment on the subject.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Orientation week

We finally, just this afternoon, got internet. It happened while I was finishing up my orientation week with a lovely round of trivia with my new classmates. That's probably the last of the "fun" I'll be having for a while. Just kidding. Life had better not be all that bad while I'm in law school. But, it's definitely going to be more than I expected. Which is why, though I finally have the capability to update this blog, I won't. Every moment of my time right now needs to be spent enjoying this awesome guy I live with (T) and the dog who trails him around to the point of annoyance (E). I'm trying to stick to the things that matter most.

Will write more soon as my own computer is set up and a routine has been established.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Our new apartment

Not that we have left our old apartment. As T so artfully put it, we are "homeful" right now. The old apartment has approximately the following: one extra long couch (hopefully to be purchased by an interested craigslist peruser before September 1st), two CPUs, one computer monitor, a kitchen table (soon to be banished to the curb), some cans of Pringles and a whole lot of dog fur.

As of close of day Wednesday, our new apartment currently furnishes our (same old) queen mattress and box spring, one of our green chairs, a sofa-bed left by the old tenant, our TV, many many book shelves, one very confused dog and a couple of friends who came up to help move. The friends are T's best friend and his best friend's bandmate. They are also considering a move to Oz, which would be cool, though the jury is still out on whether the move will actually materialize.

Not one to reveal my hand too early in the game, I'm not quite sure yet what I can and can't say about this place. It doesn't feel real yet, though in some ways it feels completely natural. Natural in the sense that a really big hotel room in a city where you're vacationing feels natural. Natural, but not permanent; not a replacement for your "real" life, just a nice change of pace. I do enjoy the front windows from which I can gaze into the second and third floor apartments of my neighbors. And stooping is fast on its way to becoming my new hobby (and favorite verb). There are some nice parks within walking distance, and looks like there will be some good places to eat, drink and be (yeah I said it) merry. Though we did accidentally run up an $80 tab at a dive bar around the corner tonight, thanks to a couple of $20 pitchers of beer! WTF.

Anyway, T and E are out on the stoop winding down, A is wearing in our new-to-us pull-out sofa, and I am about to curl up with some exciting reading: Sloan's Basic Legal Research and Writing. Not sure, but I think I have to read the first two chapters for the first day of class on Tuesday. I also have to brief Gideon v. Wainwright. Brief. I already feel like I'm speaking some alienating lawyer language, and I don't even know what I'm talking about. Que chulo!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Gonna be a 1L

In just a week, classes for first year students start. This summer has been both incredibly fast and excruciatingly slow. I'm back from the beach with a sunburn and plenty of ridiculous memories, and now is the time to quit procrastinating and shove all my stuff in boxes.

T and I are moving to Oz this week. We're bringing the first load up in a moving truck and one van on Wednesday, then driving back down to pick up my car and the rest of the stuff. I almost can't believe it, but in just a few days, I'll be a Car-less Callie! No more car insurance (kind of), no more gas (kind of) and no more feeling guilty about all the (actual) junk in my trunk. My car is going to my parents' house, where it will hopefully get put to some good use by my dad, who currently has to guzzle about $15 of gas just to drive to the store in his truck. T and I will be living off of just his car, and with any luck we'll only have to use it on rare occasions.

With any luck, also, the Club that he is buying will be just a formality.

Leaving Kansas has been a tough choice to reconcile. The last couple of months have been some of the hardest for T, and it's been hard to watch him come to terms with the decision. There are times where both of us have wished we had decided to stay here, rather than move to the big city, but given that there is nothing we can do to back out of this decision without my pulling out of law school, we're moving anyway. We'll take it a semester at a time.

Due to the emotional turmoil involved with these decisions, and my tendency to avoid difficult feelings by pushing them away, very little of my energy has been spent over the past summer on preparing for starting law school. I've been vacillating between worrying about T and distracting myself from the mind-numbingness of my job (which I left last week... hooray!!!). Sure, I picked up a few books to read (PLS 2, Learning Legal Reasoning, and Gideon's Trumpet) but for the most part I feel like I am going into this the way I always hated getting into the pool or the ocean: by just jumping in, cold be damned.

Anyway, I'm excited to be joining the legions of blawgers out there whose lives I have been tracking for a while now. It's been interesting to be able to read, all in one place, the journey of so many people from fledgling one-L to hardened three-L, with all the milestones in life that come along the way. I wonder, what will my posts have to say? What will my future bring?