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.