On my walk home from the bust stop today I was buzzed by a butterfly, then I saw a happy yellow/orange dandelion in someone’s yard.

After I got home, Christopher and I went to Mission Valley for me to get new running shoes, since I’ve been trying to jog (I’m pathetic, but this site says that’s okay) and my shoes are crap and DSW was having a big sale. I got a pair of $80+ shoes for $20, yea! We stopped off for some evil In-n-Out Burger for dinner.

All with the top down. 

We haven’t lit the furnaces yet. It’s chilly at night, but only in the 50s…good sleeping temps. 

Today Columbus, OH had a high of 32ºF.

I feel guilty. 

Okay, not terribly, but it does still wig me out to see dandelions in November.

*****

I’ve got big plans for my weekend. I have a ton of reading to do for classes Monday and Tuesday, but I also plan on getting a bunch of flashcards made. I’ve been working on them for Crim, which is where I feel like I really need to spend some effort. Then CivPro. Then Contracts and finally Property. That’s reverse order of “concern” about the exams (I actually feel pretty solid in Property, which I’m fairly sure means I’m deranged). 

My T-Day holiday will be spent in the books, too. I want to get the plans for my studying done this weekend so that I can attack on the holiday break. 

And keep up the jogging. Considering how my chocolate consumption has turned into something close to obscene, I need it.

Do you realize that next week is Thanksgiving? That means I have class this week, next Monday and Tuesday, then the week following, then the Monday after that, then two “reading days,” then I have my first final! Holy crap…I am sooooo not ready!!! I swear it was just mid-trimester like a week ago, and now there is precious little time to learn all the stuff I’ve yet to learn. 

Like Crim. Criminal law is not something I am particularly interested in. I mean, I’m not completely disinterested, but given the choice between doing future interests in Property and writing up flashcards about implied malice and homicide, give me the future interests. So, my outline for that course isn’t where it should be and now it’s going to bite me in the ass.

I’m hitting full-on panic mode about exams. I know I know a lot of the material, but I feel the extra force of having to do better than “pass”–I have to excel to keep the full scholarship. I know there are lots of smart people in this class so that’s a high bar.

So don’t mind me if I’m occasionally in a corner, talking to myself and not communicating with any of you.

I know that many of you will hate me for complaining, but it is too damn hot and sunny here. We’ve got Santa Anas, again, and you’ve probably noticed the fires in the LA area and Orange County. So far, none here, but you can’t help but expect it at any moment. It’s about 90º here, and so dry my skin feels like it is peeling off my face and arms. 

It’s mid-November, football is on, and we haven’t even lit our furnaces yet this year. It’s just wrong. It’s even wrong for the natives who admit that it is hotter and drier than usual. The fire people are hoping the long-term forecasts of rain next year will be right. 

Yes, the sky is an almost unreal blue, but you can only stand to be out in the sun for about 15 seconds before you feel your body desiccating. And the pool is too cold to even think of getting in it. At least in the shade it’s not miserable, but I won’t enjoy walking to/from the bus tomorrow if this keeps up. Ugh.

(I meant to post this weeks ago, but it ended up in my Drafts for some reason…)

Reading for Property class (about the history of estates and land holding from the medieval times) and on page 179 of my text is the following:

One of the persistent themes of English and American legal history is the continuing efforts of the rich to avoid taxes.

I got up this morning and tried to run, again (I tried last weekend to do this too–figuring it would be good for me, even though I suck at running and breathing at the same time). I got up, put on my shoes, and took a very short jog. I didn’t have much time, but I thought something was better than nothing. 

As usual, my lungs hated me pretty quickly. I know I don’t breathe right when I try to jog and I have to learn how to release the tension in my shoulders, but this felt a little different. I got home and, in fairly short order, had a bit of a coughing fit. The same kind of cough I usually get at the end of a cold/flu. And I felt a bit like I had a fat man sitting on my chest which is also how I tend to feel at the end of my colds. Now, I haven’t been sick-sick, but I haven’t been 100% lately. I thought it was just stress/school exhaustion…maybe it was something more?

And so I went to school. Somewhere near the end of my Property tutoring class my head started to throb a bit. Then I got the chills. Crap…I’m sick.

I made it through Contracts, but then came home after that–skipping CivPro, unfortunately. I’m not terribly sick, but I do have a head that feels like it’s full of mercury, I could hardly follow what happened in Contracts, and I’m just tired. I’ve been flopped on the couch since. Achy joints, burning eyes, headache, but no fever according to the thermometer. 

Now this particularly sucks because I’m supposed to go to a study session tomorrow morning and then tomorrow evening is game night with “the girls” from school–something I am so looking forward to! But, I will not go if I think I’m even vaguely ill–I don’t want to get anyone else sick!

We’re getting down to the end of the trimester, so illness now is not good. That’s part of why I left early today–because I thought it was better to rest now and heal sooner than to push it and miss lots of school. I’m thinking that if I stay “down” this weekend, I can get better and be ready to go Monday morning again.

In the meanwhile, it sucks.

I really hope that the results of the costume contest at school are prescient. I came in second.

(the women who tied for first were great and totally deserved it–Wilma Flintstone and the Carol Burnett parody Scarlet O’Hara…curtain rod included)

Tomorrow is Halloween and there is a costume contest at school. Hilarious! We’re encouraged to wear costumes to class and there is also a charity auction (stuff the Profs donate like dinner with them or, well, I’m not sure what all though my Crim prof is offering a very long and rather competitive bike ride).

I LOVE doing costumes, but haven’t in quite a while. This year, I have a doozy! Amazing since I just learned about the contest on Monday. I’m not telling what it is, yet (a few regular friends have heard already…but shhhh), but I promise to post a picture tomorrow or over the weekend.

I have had to do some prep, of course, to make the costume. Yesterday, instead of getting right to work on my Property reading or finishing my assignment for Legal Skills (blech), I played with glue and glitter and, well, I don’t want to give it all away…you’ll see. Today, after class, I finished up a few things before taking a bit of time to veg in front of an episode of Law & Order and watch Obermann. Now, I’m sitting down to my reading so that, in Contracts and Civil Procedure, I can answer the tough questions tomorrow and stay on-point.

(There is a teeny hint in that, btw)

I’ve handed in my 14-page Legal Skills assignment. On Thursday, we have something else due for that class, though I can’t tell the extent of the assignment from the information provided on the syllabus. I think it looks extensive though as it is called an “Outline of the Discussion Section” of our memo. 

This sucks.

I love law school…except for Legal Skills. It is the bane of my existence. Of course, I think we need to learn how to write memos and do research, but there has got to be a better way than how they are teaching it. For me, I’d much rather be taught about the tools for research, then given an example or two of the kinds of things we need to learn how to put together (like memos), and then given an assignment to do it–without all the intermediate steps! 

Take the peer edit we did of our statement of fact sections…they guy who reviewed mine is, well, not my peer. His paper had (I am not exaggerating) probably 100 comma errors. He also got the law itself wrong–the case is about the tort of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) and he called it a “labor statute issue.” 

Then there was how we did the review itself–we had to take our yellow highlighter or crayons (I am not kidding…crayons…in law school?!) and highlight the “thing doing the action” in each sentence. Yes, you and I know that as the subject…why it wasn’t called that, I have no idea. Anyway, then take the pink highlighter (or crayon) and highlight the “action word or words” in each sentence (yes, the verb/s). Make sure the “thing doing the action” comes before the “action word”! Also highlight any “it,” “he,” “she,” “they” etc. and make sure you know what it is referring to!

How about “avoid passive sentences and check your pronouns for clear antecedents” there, Sparky?

Anyway, I’m just frustrated with the class and the teacher makes it so much worse. I tried to give her a compliment yesterday when I ran into her in the hall, but she was incredibly cold in response.

So, anyway, I’m considering blowing of my afternoon class today to play catch-up and work ahead as I can. I also need to pick up a couple of things for my Halloween costume (I’m wearing it to class on Friday).

We’ll see.

It’s 5:30 pm as I write this…and about 85 degrees (down from about 90) with 7% relative humidity and a dewpoint of 16ºF. My skin feels like it is about to peel off, it is so dry. 

It was in the 50s when I walked to the bus stop this morning. Makes it kinda hard to dress.

I loathe Santa Ana season. Chandler (Raymond, not the one from Friends) definitely had it right:

Those hot dry winds that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.

We’re just about half-way through the school term. Professors are starting to suggest trying some of the old posted exams to get an idea of what to expect for the final and they are mentioning pretty regularly that if one has not yet started to outline, well, one had better hop to it!

I’ve got my outlines started and I have been keeping up with them, mostly. Over the weekend I did some Contracts flashcards and got most of them right. I haven’t done any official practice exams yet, but I think that will be on the agenda for this weekend. And I’ve stayed up-to-date or better on all my reading.

None of this is that hard to do. It is time-intensive, of course, but not really hard. Mostly it’s fascinating and sometimes it’s even fun. But it does take time. Still, I’m also regularly blogging for the business and just got my new book out, so it is clearly possible to get the work done. It just takes the doing of it.

What amazes me is that there are clearly students who are not doing the “easy” stuff–the reading. That is the basic step to succeeding in law school! What the hell are they thinking? For example, yesterday, in Property, the prof called on someone to present the case we were to have read (and, frankly, many of us had read the case well over a week ago). The guy selected clearly had not read it (it was an easy case, too) and was trying to BS his way through it. It was painful. And it pissed me off a bit because it wasted my time. Our Property prof is a very kind man who would never humiliate a student (many of us think he’s a bit like George McFly–in a good way) but yesterday I think that lazy student could have used at least a “Well, obviously you are not prepared!” or something.

I should say that I’m still not really happy with my work/not-work balance. I don’t feel like I am being as efficient as I would like and I know that sometimes I put off doing what I need to do (like writing this now is more engaging than doing some reading I could be doing this morning). I feel like I need a better schedule, but I also think that a lot of that has to do with the dynamics of being married and going to school. It’s difficult to find the right balance. Still, I am getting my work (mostly) done and so I’m not really complaining. 

At the very least, you won’t find me BSing my way through a case if I get called on.