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.