One at a Time

11.13 am

Mid-semester evaluations for the Human Rights Clinic this week, which meant sitting down with my supervisor to talk about where we are in the project, where we want to be, and whether I'm getting what I thought I would from the whole thing. After establishing that the best time to have that meeting will be two weeks from now, when R and I are frantically writing draft after draft of the handbook, he asked how that whole social justice thing was going.

Social justice? What? I vaguely remembered mentioning something about having gone into law school with the idea of saving the world. Then came OCIP and callbacks and offers - and the truth of the matter is that when you're worrying about whether you're even going to have a job this summer, after you've been counting on said job to help pay for your semester in Europe, you start to forget that there was anything to school besides a mountain of debt and a BigLaw job at the end.

My supervisor said something that was oddly reminiscent of something I'd heard in one of those summer blockbuster disaster movies. "You can't change the world. Nothing that you or I do can change the world. But you can save one person. And for that person's family, it matters."

My East Coast Interview Tour

10.59 am

After spending a week interviewing in New York and DC, I can definitively say that there are differences between law firms, even in BigLaw. Some of it has to do with size - an office of forty lawyers feels different than an office of two hundred. Some of it has to do with work - one firm I interviewed with did only litigation, while another focused primarily on finance and international arbitrations. What interested me the most was the difference between the people at the firms.

I'd heard some recruiters talk about how firms hired based on "fit" - and I also heard that was a keyword for "we just didn't want to hire you". I'm more inclined to believe the former than the latter now. One of the firms that I was at this week is European based - and it shows. The attorneys I spoke to tended to have a more global view and to look beyond American law when discussing their work. Another firm, this one based in Texas, had more of a West Coast feel - pro bono work counts above the line there, and the attorneys were doing a "wear jeans/donate to breast cancer research" day.

And while I'm trying to sort out which firms are at the top of my list (extremely difficult, given that I only did callbacks at firms I really want to work at), I'm also sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring and reminding myself that it only takes one.

Post-OCIP Bliss

8.57 am

It's officially over. The two weeks of mind-numbing interviews, of sitting by the phone waiting for the firm to call (although I still haven't heard from 14 of the 25 firms I interviewed with), the 6 am alarm clock and the 2 am bedtime. And since I have gone through OCIP and survived, more or less, I provide a few words of wisdom for those contemplating going through the process in the spring or next fall.

1) Do the initial research, especially if there's a particular area of law you're interested in. The search by category field on b-line is helpful, but only to a point. Then, once you've found a firm practices in that area, check out the practice area by office location part of the website. Often, a firm that specializes in a smaller field, like international law or clean tech, will only do it in one or two offices.

2) Do more research before the interview. Find out something about your interviewers from the firm's website. Then talk to fellow Boalties who worked there last summer. If you go into the interview knowing something different and unique about the firm, it will demonstrate that you're genuinely interested, and not just applying because of the fear factor.

3) Remember to keep turning the interview questions around. If you're asked about your experience working with X, when you really want to be doing Y, explain how X led you to/will help you achieve Y. I had some great interviews where the interviewer and I talked about some of the really interesting parts of my resume - but it didn't have anything to do with the areas of law the firm practiced, and I didn't get callbacks.

Most importantly, relax and try to have a good time. You only have twenty minutes to make an impression, but that's plenty of time to connect with someone and convince them you're a good fit for the firm.

10.56 am

Interviews have been going well. It's a bit like speed dating - we sit across from each other at a table that's rather small, in uncomfortable chairs that don't quite pull up to the table, gaze into each other's eyes a moment or two, ask some questions, then go home and breathlessly await the ring of the telephone. Despite that, I've been rather impressed by how not-horrible the process has been so far. I'm enjoying the people I talk to - one interviewer and I talked about the horrible season the Red Sox have been having, and a second interviewer and I compared notes about my favorite professor (she had him when he had just started teaching). Two others asked me what I liked to do in my spare time, noting that they didn't want to hire only the brightest and the best - they wanted to hire smart kids who also know how to have fun. Plus, I got a squishy yellow duck. It doesn't get much better than that.

11.01 am

In non-OCIP news, the boy's sister got married this weekend. The wedding was up in Sonoma, and despite a hellish drive that involved sitting in traffic for almost two hours and a flat tire, we had a wonderful weekend. I think the highlight was watching the best man, the groom, and the bride's father all start dabbing at their eyes during the ceremony. I'm still in shock that I have friends and family who are old enough to get married - two cousins and a college roommate last summer, classmates and the boy's sister this summer, and I'm sure a bunch of weddings after 3L year. As Mr. Woodhouse would remark, it is entirely unreasonable that people should grow up and get married.

Feeders

2.44 pm

The fish tank, which has been sitting in a corner of the room with miscellaneous junk in it for as long as I've been dating the boy, is now set up and going. Last week we went to the hardware store, where he bought some 2 x 4's to make a frame for the tank to rest on. Then we went to the pet store, and spent an insane amount of money on filters and pumps and a heater and so on. Insert gravel, driftwood, some live plants, and the ceramic trees that I made back in college, mix with eco-start and chlorine neutralizer, let sit for a week, then add fish.

I didn't realize setting up a fish tank was so much work. The fish we have in it now are "testers," which means that in a week or so they die and we bring the water into the pet store to see what went wrong. I am resisting the urge to give them names, but they're so cute it's hard. In another week or so, if they're all still alive, we'll pick up some cichlids. The only downside about the fish tank is that it's on top of the dresser right next to my side of the bed. Which mean that a) I don't have a nightstand now and b) if there's a you-know-what in the middle of the night, I'm going to get woken up with thirty gallons of water and some very unhappy fish in bed with me.

2.49

OCIP is coming. It's like that scene in the movie, where you hear the scary music starting up in the background, and you say to the heroine, "don't go down that dark alley all by yourself," and she does and then the monster comes out. Well, maybe not that bad. But the scary theme music is definitely starting to play. I'm narrowing down my list, especially since boy might end up with a job that would require us to be in the Bay another five years or so. Now I'm trying to figure out how much detail to go into in a cover letter, and whether (and how much) to tailor them for the firms I'm really interested in.

And it would be awfully nice to know what my schedule's going to be...

Hills are Fun! (the 5 stages of bicycling)

11.09 am

Denial: No way am I getting back on that bike.

Anger: %@#! this bike!

Bargaining: Just let me make it up this hill.

Depression: I ride so poorly, what's the poing?

Acceptance: Hills are fun! I wonder if this is like runner's high...


11.24 am

I went for a ride yesterday, after sitting at the desk copy editing for eight hours. The plan was to take a spin around town and start to learn where everything is, so that I don't end up so hopelessly lost every time I leave the house. Instead, I ended up biking along Seven Hill Road and then to Lake Chabot. I discovered that hills are kinda fun, especially if there's a bunch of them in a row. Getting up the first one took work, but after that I could coast downhill and use that speed to get almost all the way to the top of the next hill. It reminded me of that golf-ball room in the Children's Museum in Boston - the one where you climb up the stairs, start your ball on the top of the wooden track, and try to drop it so that it makes it over all the hills into the milk crate at the bottom of the run.

6.05 pm.

I woke up this morning to an explosion of cilantro. We had started seeds in one of those little greenhouses, then transplanted the basil, thyme, and watercress to a window box and the tomato to a pot of its own. Then we put down more seeds (especially watercress and coriander, since those hadn't done well at all in the greenhouse). The watercress has been shyly poking its head up for the past two days, but the coriander/cilantro was nowhere to be seen until this morning. Overnight, six or seven shoots came up, and more have come up today, growing so fast I could almost hear them. I wasn't sure any were going to survive, as I had placed the window box on the front porch, where a squirrel found it and happily dug up all the seeds.

It has been an interesting summer. I use interesting in the same sense I would use it if you told me you were going to open a "muffin bottom" shop and wanted to know what I thought. Interesting. We leave the Berkeley house on Thursday. I have mixed feelings about that. One the one hand, I'll miss being so close to school, and the house is gorgeous. On the other, I won't miss waking up at 5am every morning to feed the dogs.

Work is going wonderfully, although since I'm not sure exactly what parts of it I can talk about, I won't talk about any of it at all. Suffice it to say that I am working on a wonderfully challenging memo interspersed with more academic types of things like syllabus writing and article editing. I also got a chance to go to a conference in Dallas, where I met a young lawyer from Argentina who knows several languages and runs a small printing press, a few grads from Boalt who lead eerily parallel lives, and a professor who decided to get into teaching because she realized halfway through a litigation that the case, although intellectually fascinating, was going to lead to the bankruptcy of a developing country. Which proves that not all lawyers are sellouts for the big money (something I was beginning to wonder about).

11.11 am

The assignment has finally arrived. That one. The memo which will consume most of my working hours for the next month, at least. The big one. The one that helps us figure out if we go ahead with the case or not. And I have absolutely no idea how to do it.

This, I think, is the prime example of why force feeding us the information we needed to write the memos/briefs in LRW/WOA is problematic. Sure, I know what the structure should look like. I can CRuPAC with the best of them. Which means I've got a great skeleton outline, set up all pretty with headers that will feed right into a table of contents. (It only took three hours of frustration on the brief assignment to figure that one out.) The problem, I fear, is that I'm not entirely sure what to put in between those headers.

It doesn't help that there really isn't any applicable law. So I've got to write a memo gunning for the law that's most favorable to our client. Not an interpretation of the law. But the actual law itself. Which, theoretically, would make this a breeze - just go through the books and pick the law I want. Not so easy. Because although the law we don't want to use (municipal law) is written down, the law we do want (international law) is not. There isn't even stare decisis in international law, so whatever cases I do find that are favorable to my client are persuasive at best.

It's going to be a wickedly exciting memo to write.

2.05 pm

The dogwalker arrived an hour an a half ago to take the puppies out, just as I was feeding them. Which meant, of course, that one ate too fast, threw up his lunch, and then resumed eating it. Ah, the life of a dog. I have that same feeling of relief parents must get when they send their children off to playdates. The house is quiet and I can actually get some work done. I sat outside to eat my lunch, and I could actually put my plate on the ground instead of trying to balance both it and the computer in my lap.

I've been busy working on a table showing the differences between the current UNCITRAL Rules and the proposed revisions for a conferences that's coming up in early June. The prof says that he'll put both our names on it when it circulates - my first quasi-published piece of international law work. I'm really hoping to at least get a writing sample out of this summer, if not a piece that could actually be published. Even if it's just my name as a co-author. Despite that fact that I thought LRW/WOA was about as exciting as having teeth pulled, this research fascinates me. I'm not sure if it's because this actually matters (there's a huge difference between having a paper due for school and being told that the prof needs something back asap so he can send it off to the other lawyers on the case) or it it's because this is the area that I want to work in (it's not that I'm not for blind people's rights, but it's not what I want to spend my life researching). It may also be because I'm the one in charge of doing the research, and the stakes are real if I mess it up. There's nothing quite like the rush I get after putting the attachment on the email and hitting send.

7.09 pm

A quiet day of work and dogs. I packed nine or ten more boxes in the old apartment this morning, and I'll go back and finish the rest either tomorrow evening or Wednesday. Then there's moving everything out, which needs to be done on Thursday (if I want help from the boy) and must be done by Saturday. The amount of junk I've thrown out astounds me. All this trying to be green and carbon neutral and Berkeley-hippie-esque rendered completely redundant with one move.

Then I get to do it all again (maybe) at the end of June, when I leave this house and go live in the Castro Valley apartment. Still undecided whether or not to look for a place closer to school. The idea of spending over an hour a day to get to school makes me less than happy. Neither does the idea of spending more than a grand for rent.

7.18 pm

The boy and I got seeds, and they're starting to grow. The basil is poking up little tendrils of leaves. They unfurl by the hour - every time I look there are more. The watercress and the thyme have put up little shoots too. The coriander and the tomato seeds haven't done anything yet, but boy says the big ones take longer. What I like most of all is the smell that comes off them when I lift the cover up - heavy and earthy, like fresh turned soil.

Time to light the mosquito coils and watch the sun get tangled in the trees on its way down.

7.00 pm.

Bells ringing at the cathedral. Deep, reverberating, their voices asking me if I can hear it, if I can feel it - that stillness at the center of my heart. I spent today listening to the sound of running water as I worked, the sun gentle on the back of my neck, filtered through the tall evergreens.

This summer may spoil me for office work. A boss who gives me enough projects that I can move from one to the other to the next when I get frustrated or stuck, who doesn't mind giving me a day off in the middle of the week so that my boyfriend-the-chef and I actually have a day together. Who is going to make sure that I meet people from all aspects of the field this summer so that I can start figuring out exactly what it is I want to do.

The only downside I can see is that I'm already covered in mosquito bites - and I've only been here a day.

Slacker!

3.01 pm

But give the girl a break. She hardly had time to breathe during finals, let alone get in some quality internet time.

I am, at the moment, performing a much needed reinstall on my PC. I'm not sure if there was a virus on the hard drive, or if it was cluttered with too many useless programs. Either way, it was slower than a Windows 3.1 system. I've never actually reinstalled an operating system before. This should be entertaining.

I'm also contemplating how I'm going to have everything in my apartment packed and ready to go for the end of the month while fitting in 40+ hours a week for the professor I'm working with and keeping track of two dogs (one of which is prone to falling in the koi pond and the other which likes to escape).

Back to internatinal finance law. When they said IL was sexy, I'm sure they weren't contemplating 200+ pages of proposed rule revisions.

Library of Dust

8.09 pm

In a strange place, a "I've just eaten sushi while talking to an older gentleman who said he was best buds with Justice Kennedy and might actually have been telling the truth" sort of place. Which I suppose isn't really so strange after all, given that everybody in the world is only six degrees apart from everyone else. As Gary was telling me about his good buddy Tony, I was trying to think of the sort of famously witty remark that would make its way back to the justice himself, and failing miserably. Which, probably, is a good thing, as witty remarks alway sound better in my head than on my lips.

Finals season and the start of the racing season. Which means that while boy and Dusty are on the boat, I shall be locked in a large classroom trying to disgorge the past three months of classes. I do wish sometimes that I wasn't such an overachiever, because then I could simply show up on exam days with an outline and the book. Instead I shall be studying, and taking practice tests, and doing other sorts of things which don't teach you anything about actual lawyering at all.

Right. Books, now.

On knives and missing dogs

7.44 pm

My boyfriend bought a new knife Friday night. I've always been somewhat skeptical of $100+ knives. As long as it has a pointy end and an edge it cuts, right? We got home from the knife shop, and he told me, once again, that my knives were scheduled for an appointment with the trash can. I told him that my knives were perfectly good.

He gave me his new knife and told me to cut a very thin slice of tomato. I gave him the "you've got to be kidding" look. He pointed to the cutting board and the knife, so I picked it up and cut a respectably thin slice. Then he handed me my knife and told me to cut another slice. The knife all but bounced off the skin of the tomato.

Global knives, you have a new convert.

7.50 pm

The dog escaped today. I was sitting in the living room, doing homework, the door wide open to get a breeze or two. He was curled up at my feet, pushing his nose into my lap every time every time I stretched out or changed position. I heard some keys jangling outside, and he got up and poked his nose out the door to investigate. I didn't worry because he's such a mellow dog, and he never runs away. Then the rest of him disappeared, and I put on my sandals and grabbed the leash and the keys, figuring he'd be just down the bottom of the steps. By the time I made it outside he was gone.

Did I mention he isn't my dog? I went down to one end of the block, looked around all the corners, and didn't see him. I went down to the other, did the same thing. Still no dog. This is when I started to panic and think that maybe he'd decided to do like the dogs in "Homeward Bound" and find his boy. I was trying to figure out how to explain to my friend that I'd lost his dog because I hadn't been quicker out the door after him when the phone rang.

"Where are you?" my friend asked.

"I'm outside your apartment," I said.

"Someone just called me. They found my dog."

He was more surprised that the dog had gone out than anything else, and the dog hadn't made it more than a few doors down - which was why I hadn't seen him when I'd gone out looking. Moral of the story: when you're watching someone else's dog, keep the door closed or the leash on.

9.09 pm

They just posted the course offerings for next fall. Now comes the fun part - figuring out what to take and when. The idea of stacking my schedule so I have a three or four day weekend makes me almost giddy with joy. So does the idea of taking classes where the readings are more philosphical than nonsensical. I know there's a limit to how much can fit into the first year - but instead of only hearing "this is the law because it's the way we've done it for hundred's of years" I'd like to be able to ask why. In some ways, I'm upset that I'm only in school for three years. There are so many things that I want to do, I'm not sure how to fit them all in. I'm not particularly thrilled about having to graduate and go into the "real world", either.

9.20 pm
J tells me I'm a born lawyer. I'm not so sure about that. It's words that I get excited about, the possibilities of the blank page. The way my fingertips think faster than I can type sometimes, so that I find my fingers flying over the keyboard, in danger of tangling themselves. The novel is calling for me to come out and play. It wants to know why it's been stuck in a binder on my bookshelf for almost a year. It wants to know why I never spend time with it anymore. The problem is, Knightly may well be right. I'm not sure that lawyering and writing fit well together. Law school and writing don't, at any rate.

Sand in my Shoes

9.17 am

I won my first case as a lawyer last week. My first case as a law student, at any rate. Our client was granted asylum on Wednesday afternoon, at 1.47 pm. It's a rather heady feeling. Hours of interviews, draft after draft of her declaration revised and revisited, and it all worked out exactly right. I can see why people would pursue litigation. It must be quite the adrenaline rush, those tense moments between when the jury files in and when the verdict is delivered. It's things like this which remind me that law school is worth getting through, that it's not all about casebooks and class ranking.

9.21 am

Spring break, and the boy and I are off to the ocean for a few days. A nice leisurely drive along Highway 1 and then a cottage by the sea. I'm looking forward to watching the ocean pound and crash outside the car window. Looking forward to feeling sand in between my toes again, hot almost to the point of burning. We're bringing his kites, and I'm looking forward to seeing him silhouetted against the sky, his hands tugging at the strings and the kites struggling to take off, to rip right out off his grip and off into a sky of endless possibilities.

Straight on till morning

11.53 am

I spent all of yesterday with the boy on the boat. It was one of those perfect days, where the wind was blowing steady off the Golden Gate and there were sailboats all out along the water. We even saw two tall ships, both with square sails. One was brightly painted, and the other was all dark and looked like a pirate ship. We sailed out into the bay, past all the piers, under the Bay Bridge, past Treasure Island, and out to Alcatraz. Treasure Island was all vacation homes and brightly painted lighthouses. Alcatraz looked as though someone had packed up and left around 1950 and nobody had ever gone back. The buildings are all falling apart, some of them gutted by fire. Windows are smashed out. Even the trees were brown and dying. The wind died as we rounded Alcatraz and turned back toward the marina. It took a rather long time to get back. Boy said it was because we had forgotten to throw a nickel into the water for the Wind Gods.

Then I opened my email this morning and saw that two men had died in a race out on the Gate Saturday afternoon. Which puts things into perspective - the ocean is beautiful, but she is harsh and she is wild and she will not hesitate to kill.

"A Hope in Hell"

5.01 pm
It’s that perfect time of day when the shadows stretch out into infinity, but the sun is still warm and golden on my back. The wind from earlier this afternoon has died down, and the palm fronds hang limp. The parents in the playground a few yards away are starting to gather up their children. One last push on the swing, one last swing through the monkeybars, one last cartwheel across the grass.

5.40 pm
Summer is coming. It’s creeping across the trees, tickling them until they bring forth their blossoms. The sidewalks from my bus stop to my house are covered in a pale carpet of small, pink petals. The rain has tucked tail and fled, leaving behind brilliantly green hills. I’ve played leapfrog between the puddles of sunlight, chasing them down until the very last one disappeared into a leafy shade, making it too chilly to stay outside any longer.

5.46 pm
This amused me, endlessly. The text is taken from one of Mr. Neil's early Sandman comics. I hope you shall enjoy it as well.

Spare Key Shennanigans

9.21 pm

You know you're part of the family when the sister calls you and says, "We locked our keys in the house" and you spend the next two hours helping said sister retrieve spare key from her brother's (your boyfriend's) apartment. Even better that when you called him to ensure that he did, in fact, have said spare key (because the last time he had his sister's keys, he made a copy of the car key but not the house key) he had you on the cell phone on one ear and his sister on the work line on the other ear. The only way in which it could have been better is if he'd been on the line as well.

9.26 pm

I met up with Sheila Friday night for happy hour. It's almost time for summer jazz to start again. I miss our picnics, with fresh berries and home made whipped cream and a cold bottle of rosé. And since it is increasingly looking like I will be in the States this summer, instead of some exotic third world country like Cambodia or Thailand, she and I will be able to go.

Lessons learned from my summer job search:

1) You can't really wait until December, like they say to. Instead, you should spend November researching and writing cover letters, so that your job apps are ready to go out Dec. 1.

2) Networking matters. A lot. Better to start by getting to know professors, other students who interned in the place(s) you want to work and asking for names, emails, and advice.

3) See point two, supra.

9.44 pm

Spring is coming, summer nipping at its heels. I can hardly stand to wait for it.

driving back from walking the dog, tired from a day of doing nothing but homework, ruminating on the possibiity of disapearing into the night

9.39 pm

I love highways at night. Sinuous ribbons of light and motion. The possibility of driving, eastward, into darkness so deep it becomes sunrise. I took the long way home tonight, so that I could pass by the lake and its hanging fairy lights. It's not beautiful in itself, really. There's too much concrete and broken glass and city grit for that. The attempt to make the heart of the city less sterile is what matters.

I dreamed of T-- last night. Like my own private ghost, hovering round the edges of my consciousness. He was a teenager in this one, or maybe even my own age, but he looked at me with those little boy eyes. It bothers me sometimes, that he still invades my nights. Then I realize how lonely I'd be if he left, and I forgive him all over again.

They say the desert is beautiful because it hides a well.

The Dog Trainer Again

3.04 pm

Lately, I start out every week feeling as though I'm drowning. This one was worse than most. What should have been an easy day of writing a brief turned into an 8 hour marathon at the ER. "Hurry up and wait" was the dominant theme of the day.

It's not that I'm anal-retentive. Really. It's just that I have so little time that I organize very carefully so as to fit everything in. A girlfriend and I were joking about "penciling in" boyfriend time, but there are days when it really feels as though that's the way it works.

J__ says its good for me to learn to let go. Me, I think that all could be solved if I had more hands.

You can take the girl out of the restaurant...

2.55pm

It's gorgeous outside. Why am I sitting outside the law school blogging instead of heading down to the marina and getting on a boat?

As I was walking to Zeb with a friend, a woman stopped us and asked where the restroom was. My friend told her it was "that way" and made a vague pointing gesture. I told her to follow me and started walking.

"Is this like at Safeway, where they lead you to the vegetables?" she asked.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm really bad at directions. Besides, I'm used to working in a restaurant where we lead people to the bathrooms."

Even after a semester and a bit at law school, I still identify myself as "industry".

Letter to Knightly

3.17 pm

It's not that I want to live in Florida again. Really. I don't even like the state. Sinkholes and swamps are the dominant geographical features, fire ants and crocodiles the dominant life forms, and hurricanes the dominant weather pattern. Still, every time I go back I have this strange feeling, as if I'm coming home.

My aunt died at 4am Tuesday morning, Eastern Standard Time, in a hospice in Jacksonville, Florida. We knew she was sick, but we hadn't expected the end to come quite so quickly. My mother called me a few hours later and told me to buy a plane ticket. I stumbled out of bed and to the phone, then went through a whirlwind of a day trying to get everything ready.

We all flew into Jacksonville, then drove to Gainesville, where my mom and her sisters grew up, where their parents are buried. I got in just ahead of a violent thunderstorm, the same system that killed 56 people earlier this week. It threatened and rumbled all night, but waited to break until Thursday, after we'd buried my aunt.

The cemetery she's in is an old Jewish Cemetery, with graves dating back to the 1800's and early 1900's. My mom takes us by every time we're in Florida. People place small stones on the headstones instead of flowers or teddy bears. My aunt's grave is not next to my grandparents' - the space next to them was unusable because of tree roots. The funeral home suggested digging the grave askew and placing the headstone parallel to the others.

3.34 pm

I flew out through Miami. I thought about calling you, but the layover was only two hours. Not long enough to get out and get back through security. Besides, some things are better left undone. I'm not writing, really, but I'm doing well in school. Although I've acquired the reputation of a gunner. You expected that, I think.

Do something for me, will you? The next time you see the wind blow through the palm trees, tucking their heads under their shoulders, think of me.

Sun-dance

8.04 pm

Another raining, miserable day. Enough gray outside to wash away all the promises of springtime yesterday's sunshine offered.

I came across a wonderful quote from Don DeLillo, in a letter written in 1995.

"The novel is different. ... We die indoors, and alone, and I don't mean to sound overdramatic, but you know what I'm talking about."

He's right, of course, brilliantly so.

This time last year I was in Florida, attempting to make good on my claim that I'd written a novel. Which, over the course of last spring, turned into something that should be publishable. If I can find time in between Property and Contracts and CARC and BJIL and suchforth to properly edit the thing.

In one of those CDO-sponsored mock interviews, the lawyer asked me what she couldn't learn about me from my resume. I told her I was a novelist. Her reaction surprised me. Ed had told me to keep my writing secret from the other lawyers, that they didn't respect novelists. The interviewer was impressed, not dismayed. She suggested it be put on my resume, as something to distinguish me from the crowd.

It's a thought.

March of the Umbrellas

4.11 pm

Polka-dots: Some things never go out of fashion.

Leopard print: To help you blend into the urban jungle.

HRC: Because if we gave gay and lesbian people equal rights, everyone else would want them too.

Black: It goes with everything. Even rain.

Cherry Blossom:

Like spring in Japan,
along your metal branches
petal-drops falling.

Red: Boy, you really like to make sure you stand out in the crowd, don't you.

Powder-Blue Ruffled Parasol: It doesn't do much to keep the rain off, but at least it matches.

Word of the Day

11.05 am

Connectile dysfunction: When your computer connects to the network, but can't manage to actually open a web pages. Seems to happen most frequently when you have five minutes before class and really, really need to check your email. Suspected causes: lack of current to the correct circuits, incompetent web techs, or a computer with a truly evil sense of humor.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

3.56 pm

Found in the reading for my property class:

Chabanakongkomuk - an Indian name for a fishing place near Worcester, MA. It translates, roughly, to "You fish on your side, I fish on my side, nobody fish in the middle - no trouble".

Pastry Dough and Politics

10.13 am

There's something nice about getting up early in the morning. I like waking up as the sun is just starting to peek through my curtains. If I time my shower right, the whole bathroom is golden with the sunbeams cutting through the steam like spotlights. Plus, there's usually nobody using the laundry machines.

I made scones this morning, cutting the butter in instead of melting it. It's like making play-doh, but better. You coat the pieces of butter in flour, then squeeze and squish until they end up as small, flour covered flakes. The flour starts to get thicker, almost coming together like a dough as you plunge your hands into it and squeeze.

10.20 am

Notes of interest from the morning paper:

Apparently, experience is not, after all, a desired quality in a presidential candidate. The person with the most experience in the executive branch: Cheney. The presidents with the least experience before coming into office: Abe Lincoln and both Roosevelts.

Foreign investors are rapidly buying America. Citibank had been bailed out by Abu Dubai, Singapore, and Kuwait. Perhaps we should ask Japan to invest in Cal in exchange for requiring all students to learn Japanese and eat only with chopsticks.