4.29 pm
Shortbread crust in the fridge, inexplicably chilling before being baked. Something to do with the consistency of the butter, I'm sure. We're doing dinner for a few people tomorrow night, and it seemed to make sense to get that out of the way before A takes over the kitchen to cook. I'm trying to sell him on the idea of a larger, backyard barbeque type gathering the weekend before I leave. A chance to say goodbye and all that. Also, we'd be remiss if we didn't take full advantage of the gorgeous house we're living in.

4.32 pm
Now that the bar is over, I've transitioned into full-swing wedding planning. The theory is that once I start work, I'll be at the office 12 hours a day with no interest in determining guest lists or seating charts or table linens when I get home.

A and I are slowly starting to figure out what we want and what we can actually afford. We're out in Manhattan and Long Island a little later in the month to take a look at apartments (you'd be surprised what you can't get for $3000 in the city) and wedding venues. A wants to do it in a house, which means renting from someone on the beach, which has turned into probably renting from someone out at the very end of Long Island. The plan is to spend two days and a night out there, and with any luck by the time we fly home we'll know where the wedding will be. If not, it's back to the rental by owner sites, and another mass batch of emails and spreadsheeting.

9.03 am, PST
On the plane, Albany bound. there's WiFi, but I'm blogging into Evernote with plans to upload later. Less distraction that way.

This is the first flight where I can remember not bringing books or embroidery or something to keep myself occupied on the plane. The goal is to work through my MBE flash cards this flight, then do practice questions on the next. 5 hours to Charlotte, an hour layover, then 2 to Albany. And me a captive audience.

10.20 am
3 down, three to go. An hour and a half of flight left. In the queue: real property, torts, and crim. (Query: why does the spell checker recognize torts, but not the name of the program I'm using?)

The people on either side of me are both reading Stieg Larsson novels. I have 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on my iPod. I feel like such a groupie. I bought it after seeing the novel in the bookstore - in several bookstores actually, when the hype was still in promo mode. The conflict between wanting to read the next two novels and hating to read what everybody else is reading...

11:37 am PST/2:37 EST
At least I am guessing we've crossed into the Eastern time zone, since we're only about 30 minutes out and we're starting to descend. Only real property left, and definitely not a case of saving the best for last.

I go from feeling confident that I know enough to bullshit the rest to feelings of certain and impending doom. Like when it takes me an hour to get through evidence which was, when I started studying in May, the subject I knew best. The terrifying suspicion that there's no way I can contain all the legal niceties in my head - that they will jumble and leak until I am left with nothing but a fleeting memory of res ipsas and in personams.

Gulping Air

4.18 pm
Ran my first 9 minute mile yesterday. It was also the first mile I ran non-stop. Today, we did about a mile and a quarter non-stop, and then a two-block sprint uphill. Pandora kicked up one of my favorite songs, and it felt incredible to stretch out my legs and fly. Until, of course, I got midway up the hill and began gulping air.

I thought about doing track in high school. The coach for the track team asked me to be on the team in 8th grade. I didn't, because I couldn't stand the thought of all that running. Junior year, a friend informed me that I would be playing lacrosse with her. Probably the best part of high school. The joke was on me though, because we did more running for lacrosse than the track kids ever dreamed of.

4.18 pm
I'm at the point where I just want to take the darn test tomorrow and I want the whole month of August to keep studying.

I am off the paced program. I have been reliably informed that I am crazy for even contemplating sticking to it. I have a pile of index cards, color coded and arranged by subject, and an even bigger pile for all the subjects I haven't made flash cards for yet. Sometimes I am breathing. Mostly I am gulping air.

8.12 pm
Exactly two weeks until the Bar Exam. Which means that exactly two weeks from now, I will be asleep in a hotel room in Albany after having completed the first day of the test. I should feel excited that I'm going into the home stretch. Instead I feel a numb sort of terror mingled with utter despair.

I stumbled upon this last night, and watched it with the sound on this time. It may become my mantra for the next two weeks.



8.22 pm
I am looking forward to August. Here is my list of things I plan to do after the bar:

• Tan the back of my legs (I have the inverse farmer's tan - the fronts are tan and the backs are white as a dead fish)
  
• Read "The Help"
  
• Learn enough French to pronounce menu items without embarrassing myself
  
• The novel
  

Yes, They're &!*%ing Sweet Potatoes

9.12
The restaurant I used to work in did not attract the high-caliber, discerning diner. Mostly, we got people who only went out to eat a few times a year, for special occasions, and therefore didn't know what they were talking about when they complained. Like the woman who got mad at me for bringing her a glass of sparkling wine (which, by the way, was what she ordered) because "sparkling wines aren't white wines." Lady, have you looked at a glass of champagne lately? My favorite is the one who wanted to complain to the chef because her sweet potatoes weren't orange. The chef came out, listened to her rant, tried to explain that only yams were orange, and even brought sweet potatoes out of the kitchen to show her the difference. No dice.

All this is to say, BarBri is making me feel a bit like the chef at the moment, standing at the table with sweet potatoes in my hand and hearing MPQ1 tell me "Nuh-huh, those aren't sweet potatoes, and I knows them when I sees them." I mean, really. Isn't there a line between "the bar examiners are going to try to trick you" and "absolutely ridiculous"?

If the bar examiners need to resort to calling a yam a sweet potato, then I think it's fair to question the utility of the whole exercise.

6.44 pm
A and I drove up to Napa today in search of sunlight and wine. We found both, in ample quantities.

About 15 minutes outside of Napa, we turned off into a Sunday Flea Market. In between the faded DVDs and the table of rusty power tools and the frilly polyester first communion dresses were tables heaped with tamarind and dried chilies. We might have been the only white folk there.

Then up to Sattui, where we discovered that the wine we'd come up for had been discontinued and that the last bottles had been sold about 2 days ago. We consoled ourselves by tasting a few of their whites - none of which came close to the bottle we'd wanted - and buying a Syrah.

We also went by Grgich, which is run by the man who produced the bottle that beat the French reds in the Paris Tasting of 1976. The wines were pricy, and quite frankly, I wasn't that impressed. But the Chardonnay... it was delightful. We bought a bottle and will drink it on a suitably special occasion.

Then back towards the Bay, taking in a car show and the Napa Outlets along the way.

6.58 pm
We are in the fog. I can see wisps blowing through the tops of the trees. It hasn't quite descended yet to brush against my window, but it will.

It was good to take a day off, just the two of us. I suspect that my free time is going to become more and more tight as we get closer to the bar. Next week is the last week of lectures (only 3!) and then it's about 2 weeks of self study. Two weeks which will be a frenzy of memorization and outlines and perhaps even flashcards.

And then it will be over, and it will be August, and if the fog deigns to clear I will finally have my summer.

3.51pm
After two days, the sun has finally broken through the fog. I can almost see the beams of sunshine fighting to come through the window. I know some people find it easier to study when its gloomy outside, I suppose on the theory that they'd spend the day indoors anyway. I try to do most of my studying out in the garden, though, and that only works when there's sun. (For those of you unfamiliar with Bay Area weather, July is not summer. Note even close. Trust me on this one.)

4.17pm
And it's gone.

I discovered Bar Bri 1.5 today. I guess there is something to be gained from trolling ATL after all. Someone mentioned it to me yesterday, while we were at the break between sections of the simulated MBE.

On which topic, all I have to say is that my brain still feels scrambled. I went through and self-graded, which was something of an exercise in frustration. I haven't read through any of the analysis yet - I'll save that for this weekend, while I'm watching all the lectures. I haven't gone through to see if the questions I thought I knew were the ones I got right or the ones I bombed yet, either. Again, saving it for the weekend. I figure that will be less depressing, since I'll have had a whole week to recuperate.

4.30pm
Small dog is gone for the next bit, back to his family. It was somewhat strange to wake up this morning and not hear his nails clicking on the floor. He was given a bath yesterday so he'd be clean for them, and then got some quality time with the blow dryer because it was so miserable outside that left me covered in dog fur and him still not completely dry. For a small dog, he's got a lot of fur. A swept the house this morning and there was enough dog hair in the pile to stuff a small pillow. Which is amazing, considering that he swept the whole house about 3 days ago, and I did the bedroom day before yesterday. I wouldn't be surprised if dog fur continued to accumulate in his absence.

10.09 am
I took a day off yesterday. It felt wonderful. Breakfast in bed, afternoon at the beach, evening of doing nothing at all. Today, of course, it's back to the salt mines, and tomorrow is 6 hours of Scantron-bubble-nightmare.

In some ways, I'm in shock that June is over. I feel like the whole month flew by without bothering to wave on its way out. Something tells me July will be much the same. I haven't looked ahead yet to see if there are any more scheduled days off. Somehow I doubt that there are.

10.09 am
I found a meditation chimer online. Several of them actually, but I only downloaded the 15 and 20 minute ones. I've been trying to get down to the meditation group at school Tuesdays, but have only made about 2 in the last month or so. Which leads to the problem of my trying to meditate and having trouble actually meditating. Too many surface thoughts skittering across the surface of my mind that refuse to be swept away. It's amazing how much clutter develops in the head, and even more amazing how persistent it is.

11.29 am
A shower and a phone call with a broker later, and it is more than time to get the day started.

6.30 pm

Found a great typo in my property notes today:

ANALYSIS OF RAP PROBLEMS
1. Determine which future interest has been created by the conveyance
2. Identify conditions precedent to the vesting of the future interest
3. Find a measuring life
4. As if we will know, with certainty, within 21 years of the death of the measuring life

Which really seemed to sum up real property in a nutshell: as if we could ever know anything about the subject with certainty.

I've found it best to budget a whole day on the weekend for the "cumulative review". Trying to memorize this much material makes my head hurt. Going through the subjects that are related to each other one after another seems to help, as does taking my time. The goal: to get each set of notes down to 5 or 6 pages, which I then print out and attempt to completely memorize. Right now I've got Agency/Partnership, Torts, and Con Law down to size. I'm feeling hopeful that Crim, Corporations, and maybe Contracts will cooperate for next week. It's all a matter of not deleting things from my notes until I'm absolutely sure I can remember them either spontaneously or with only a brief prompter.

7.00 pm
The church bells are ringing 7. Not exactly sure how that happened. Still have 2 and a half subjects to go through. One of which is still in "full" form, meaning that this is the first weekend since the lecture and it hasn't been at all summarized yet. Not that I copy the handouts verbatim, but...

If I can get everything done by the time it gets dark, we're going up to Chabot to look through the telescopes tonight.

8:35 pm
Crash and burn. I think I finally hit a BarBri wall. Which is a little bit funny, since the "intro" to this morning's lecture was a ten minute discourse on how instead of pushing ourselves too hard to get all the practice essays and MPTs done (because there will be plenty of time to do those in the two weeks we don't have lectures), we should be sleeping with the essay and MPT books on our nightstands so we can read them before bedtime.

WTF?! Mixed messages, much?

At any rate, I put in 12 hours yesterday and 12 hours the day before and was at 10 today when my brain stopped functioning. I stared at Essay # R-32 and couldn't for the life of me figure out what the questions were asking.

So I shut the book and decided I was done for the day, ignoring the voice in the back of my head that said I should go ahead and keep working, just so I would know what it was like to freeze up on the bar exam.

It is June 22. Over a month to go. Plenty of time to practice freezing up and freaking out. For today, I'm done.