Cosby Show quizmaster

Things I've done to procrastinate in the last 24 hours:
- Baked brownies
- Played Spider Solitaire, sudoku and Klondike
- Read the Wikipedia articles on the entire cast of the Cosby Show
- Sang "I just died in your arms tonight" and "We built this city" on YouTube karaoke
- Updated my other blog and obsessively checked its stats on Google Analytics.
- Scoured Google Maps to get a better understanding of the urban layout of Kingston, Jamaica
- Called lots of landlords about potential apartments
- Napped

I'd say it's been a productive day.

It was a beautiful day.

Let it be known that today was a beautiful day.
The weather outside was undeniably warm. No question about it.
I wore my brown HM t-shirt with the stripes, and my hot pink sweatshirt.
During Advanced Contracts, I discovered the rumor was true: I do NOT have to have all of my supporting documentation in to the State Bar Examiners by the regular filing deadline (Friday) in order to pay the regular filing fee.
I confirmed that with FSIL on the front steps of the law school building.
Although I spent about six hours in the library doing legal research for a client who is at risk of being deported to a country he doesn't know, where he would more likely than not be killed, I enjoyed the work. This makes me think I might actually like being a lawyer.
My life decisions, if only for a day, have been validated.
Tomorrow I have an appointment to look at a very promising apartment in our neighborhood and price range.
There is a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and an episode of Steven King's The Stand awaiting me in the living room.
The windows are open and the breeze is blowing through the house and the noises of passing cars are soothing to some deep down part of my soul that was probably born in childhood when I had dreams of living in a big city.
Let it be recalled, it was a beautiful day.

perfect costs as perfect does

the search is on for our new apartment! t and i have already looked at two this morning. all this thinking about relocating really has me thinking more generally about where we live. essentially, it's the perfect neighborhood, as far as city living goes. it's right in the heart of the city, without being noisy. it's as safe as city living can be. the neighbors are a diverse set of characters: young families, old italians, immigrant workers, all ages and races. within two blocks of my apartment are two grocery stores (including whole foods!), a pet store, two coffee shops, several restaurants/bars, a wine & liquor store, mail supply store, playhouse, bike shop and park. my landlords are on the corner, as is a bus stop. and beyond the immediate vicinity, it takes between 5 and 10 minutes to walk to city hall, to the big shops, the tourist destinations, the subway and train stations. t's walk to work is about 15 minutes. i looked up the walkability score of my address yesterday on walkscore.com. out of 100 points, it scored a 98.

so those are all awesome things about our neighborhood. as you can imagine, it comes with a price that could be easily avoided by moving to a further out neighborhood. there are lots of cool, up-and-coming neighborhoods full of young, creative people doing interesting things, with housing that is significantly cheaper than the housing in our neighborhood. it happened that we really lucked out and it was pure chance that we found our current firetrap through word of mouth before we had even moved to the Big City. we rent from some old-school neighborhood types that don't know about Craigslist and are charging us less than market value. sometimes when i walk through our neighborhood and look at the amazing houses and beautiful street art and famous eateries, i wonder how we ended up here. that's when i start to think we're crazy for trying to get a better deal here in the neighborhood.

we absolutely have to find a larger space, soon. this tiny apartment has been perfect for the three years i've been in law school. if i were honest, i'd say i could continue to live here a little longer and save money, just to keep the location. but we need access to the outside, beyond an open window on the third floor. t routinely talks about wanting a better apartment. and our friends (who have two incomes) live in an awesome place just a block away. so we're searching, and we're putting up more money for it. but a part of me wonders if it's realistic to expect to find the perfect "next step" apartment in our current neighborhood. i also wonder what it says about us that this is where in the city we've chosen to live. we have friends who pay half what we're willing to pay, for much bigger space, in different areas. when people hear where we live, they peg us as yuppies. when i ask around at shops for potential leads in the neighborhood, i get comments about how hard places are to come by here and how expensive they are.

if we can pull this off, it'll be amazing. i just don't want to go broke doing it. oh, exciting times. i can't wait to see where we end up.

zomg i'm almost finished: a freak out

Today I had the sudden realization that I am going to be finished (FINISHED?!) with law school in a month. I mean, I've known that the end was approaching for quite some time. But this was like an out of body realization. *I* am going to be finished with law school? For real? Didn't I just get here? I still sometimes feel surprised that I ended up being a law student in the first place. I don't *feel* like a law student, much less a lawyer. Yet, as swiftly as it began, it is coming to an end. And I can't shake the feeling that I am getting to resume my life, as if it was on pause for a while or something.

The thought of being a working stiff again sends pleasing shivers down my spine. I remember those joyous, carefree days of putting in a good day's work, coming home to our cozy apartment and sitting on the porch with a PBR and a good book. Or maybe T & I would go out for dinner and watch television at a friend's house. On any given weekend, we'd spontaneously drive out on a scenic back road until we hit the mountains. Wait - am I missing life before law school, or Virginia? I seem to have conflated the two.

The reality is that my post-law school life will probably not look similar to my pre-law school life so much as it will be some other unpredictable permutation of "life over the age of 25" (ha!) or "life from 30 on up" as my blog's sub-title should be renamed soon enough. It's not as if I'll magically relocate to our old apartment with the tilted balcony and temperate winters once I've been handed that sweet, sweet JD. We'll still be in the Big City, at least for now. (Although we will hopefully be out of the firetrap, finally.)

But the scariest part of how different things will be once I have my law degree has nothing to do with my lifestyle, per se, or my housing arrangements or where we live. It has to do with work. What will it look like? Will I screw it up? Being a lawyer is much scarier, it seems like, than being a human resources person or whatever you want to call the kind of professional I was before I left for law school. I mean, just to be allowed to do this job, I have to go digging through my past and confess to every little transgression I may or may not have been caught for. (Hello, six stitches on my chin from a bad night out when I was a junior in college. Come on in, various tickets for expired registration! Long time, no see!) Just today I discovered that I owed my college town a bunch of money in property taxes that I had NO IDEA I even had, for a time when I wasn't even living in the municipality. The joys of LexisNexis Public Records searches and nosy bar examiners. Couldn't I just take the pat down?

Ok, I'm rambling. I mean, I just really want to be a good lawyer, and I really want to do this work. To even get to that point, I need to graduate, successfully complete the APPLICATION for the bar, and then, you know, pass the bar. And then I have the rest of my career as a lawyer to be on my best professional behavior - not procrastinate, not forget a date, not mess up my advice, not commit malpractice. I'm just nervous, ok? I can't believe I got this far. I don't want to screw it up

My favorite coffee shop

For the last three years, I have gone to the same coffee shop that is one block away from my front door. On good months, I go once a week. On bad months, I go once a day. But I always go. Yesterday, I cashed in my latest buy-eight-get-one-free coffee.

This morning, I was putting on my shoes and glanced at my blackberry to check my email, preparing to saddle up the dog and head over for a caffeine fix before class. The first email I saw was from Best Woman: "Isn't this horrible?" it said. And below that, an article from our local neighborhood bulletin board.

My favorite coffee shop had been robbed that very morning, while one block away, my husband, dog and I slept soundly. Not only that, but one of the baristas, the lovely baristas that I love so much because they are friendly, unpretentious and always remember my order... one of them was brutally sexually assaulted in one of the spacious bathrooms with the automatic light fixtures. It happened around 6:30 a.m. Right around the time they were opening.

Why should I write about this? It's not my trauma. These things happen around big cities every day. More than that. They happen in small cities, in suburbs, in towns across America. It happened in Richmond just before we moved there, to the family that owned our favorite toy store. It was worse, then.

But this is different because these are people I know. It touched my life. Rape. Robbery. Violence. It touched my life, in a way I've been privileged not to know. And more than scared, I am sad and angry. Why did this happen to someone I know? Why did they have to suffer this way, while just a couple hundred yards away, we were so close by? She ran to the convenience store that shares a corner with my apartment, and the guy who works mornings there called the cops. The cops, the news, they responded right away. And for that, this neighborhood is lucky.

I pray for justice, and for healing, and for repentance.

My unconvential search for a way to get paid to do what I love.

Okay, so I'm starting to get creative with some ideas for what to do after graduation now. Just today a friend of mine forwarded me a Craigslist posting for an immigration firm from another part of the state looking to hire an immigration attorney part-time to represent their clients in the Big City immigration court at Master Calendar Hearings. Duh. I can do that! So I'm not technically an attorney yet (which matters a lot, yeah, yeah) but I could totally market myself out to immigration firms around the state who don't want to make the trek to the big city for something as minor a time-suck as a MCH. Not the most glamorous job in the world, but it could make me some money while I weigh my options, and it beats doc review, from what I've heard.

Another idea floating around in my head that I'm trying to figure out how to put to good use is my serious interest in immigration holds (aka ICE holds, immigration detainers, deportation holds). Check out these immigration attorneys who market themselves to the families of non-citizens who are stuck in jail waiting for federal immigration agents to come take custody:

Here's one in San Diego.
Here's one in Dallas, TX.
Oh! Hello, Virginia Beach, Virginia! This one is in my home state!
And I like this one because it straight up challenges the very legality of immigration holds by ICE attorneys. (Something I have a lot to say about, and wish more of people were examining.)

The point is there are lots of attorneys out there doing what I want to do, and I want to learn how I can get into that field. I'm also surprised and intrigued by the fact that this style of marketing and/or just direct address of the immigration hold problem is not found in my particular area. Let's get on that!

Then there's yet another piece of the puzzle that I'm trying to work into my master plan of supporting myself after graduation. My other blog. I want to rework it, make it more user/search friendly, think about focusing my audience and maybe add some original content about immigration enforcement. Over the three years I've been running that blog, I've certainly seen enough to have a strong sense for the shifts in policy over the last several years. (Hint: Employers and human resources directors everywhere, be on your guard. Specifically those in Southern Missouri, in the immediate future.) It's amazing what you learn just by following the headlines on a semi-regular basis.

Ok, T is back from walking the dog and I need to calm myself down enough to take care of more pressing issues... like completing that pesky bar exam application and working on my research paper. But as I continue my unconventional search for a legal career, I'll keep on posting. Maybe something interesting will turn up. In the meantime, if anyone from any of those law firms ends up on here, I hope you'll consider letting me know. I'd love to talk!

One of these days...

I'm going to return to updating the blog with some sort of normalcy. But for now, nothing feels very normal, and yet everything feels almost TOO normal. I'm in that weird period of limbo that is referred to as senioritis by high schoolers across America, but in law school is merely summarized by the last part of that overused yet strikingly accurate saying:

First year, they scare you to death.
Second year, they work you to death.
Third year, they bore you to death.

I would so rather be working than thinking about how I'm going to pull together a 30-page paper on truth commissions. I flat out refuse to think about what on earth got into me when I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for Transitional Justice in my last semester and fulfill my writing requirement by doing a paper on something NOT RELATED TO US DOMESTIC LAW when it's taken me 3 years to have even a whiff of understanding of that legal framework. Why did I think I could pull off a research paper on an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT KIND OF "LAW"?

Oh well.

At least I'm getting some amusement out of the fact that the two legal briefs I have to churn out for my clinical (aka actual cases, with real life consequences) seem like a piece of cake, a mere inconvenience. Feels like just a couple of months ago that I was terrified and avoiding my first-year memo. Bwahahaha.

It gets better, 1Ls.

Outside of law school and the slow death of my formal legal education (and our savings, which is now devoted exclusively to surviving the Bar), life appears to be at a standstill. I am knocking off things from my 30 Before 30 list (just about done with Revelation, the end is near!) and fantasizing with T about our next apartment and life with two incomes instead of one. (We're conveniently ignoring the part about how it comes with a giant mass of student loan debt.) I'm trying SO HARD to imagine what my future will look like, all the while knowing that I cannot possibly imagine it. All I know for sure-ish is that it will involve us staying in the Big City, for now, which means for the next year at least, and as far as I'm concerned that's all the future I need to think about right now. I can hardly handle that much.

Can you tell I'm overwhelmed? I'm overwhelmed. On the upside (not that any of the above is necessarily a downside) I am looking forward to a kick-a$$ graduation party!