Previously Unpublished

Earlier, I drafted a post about people in the law library conducting last minute study for summer finals and I was going to include a line of ants that have taken up residence along the wall where my carrel is located. The post was mainly to complain about the ant problem because it was a little out of control and some of them had migrated further onto the chair and desk and subsequently got on my books and legs and even in my computer keyboard. It wasn’t beyond tolerable, maybe 2-3 per hour actually drew my attention, but there were a hell of a lot more along the wall scouting for food.

Well, anyway, I had sort of forgetten about them as I sort of began to work on my outline. After getting about a third of the way done, I went and bought some gum so I’d stop nervously shaking my leg against the desk in front of me (the transition theory of nervous habits). Well, with my legs now calmly resting against the bottom of my own desk, ants started to crawl on me and so I found a new low in procrastination. You see, I have always been fascinated by ants. I prefer them to be outside and not bugging me while studying, but I used to play SimAnt for hours. I did reports on them in science class. I imagine my interest in insect organization and heirarchy was a small stepping stone towards my eventual degree in politcal science which in turn led to law school. So I know a thing or two about their scent trails.

Because my final is on Tuesday and I work all day Monday and so this afternoon will basically equal the sum of my study effort for professional ethics, I thought it would be a good idea to do an experiment with the gum in my mouth. I took it out and places it a little to the side of the ant trail. An hour passed and nothing. Okay, so they can’t smell very well and aren’t good at investigating, so ants would not make good lawyers (and apparently neither will I at this point). Then I take an ant with the gum wrapper and move it right next to the gum so it is almost touching it. The ant investigates and then get excited.

Another hour passes, the ant line has now curved over towards the piece of gum. I have reached a new low in procrastination.

-jd

When I am prepping for a final exam in law school, I have an “anything goes” rule or the “gobble” rule that overrides any health or financial concerns I might normally consider and allows me to buy anythings I feel like eating.

For a more popular example, think pregnancy cravings. (Which relates well to my post describing a 1L’s first experience with finals being likened to the early symptoms of pregnancy.) Couple this with the current heatwave all across the country that is causing grocery stores to slash prices on all frozen desserts and you have the makings of a mini-shopping binge last night around 11.

And it was beautiful. All my favorite, freezer-necessitating desserts were on hand; often for half-off or more. First, I came across the ice cream section. There is always one brand or another that is half-off and this time, the lucky selection featured spumoni flavor. It is a type of gelato that I first had in Italy and was pleased to find years later as a holiday flavor. But lo and behold, here it was in my grocer’s freezer section, in the summer. Oh happy days…or nights as it were.

Then came the popsicle section. They always offer just about every type of popsicle imaginable for a buck each box. I like the pineapple-cherry Big Sticks. The Great White popsicles are good too, but they’ll always play second fiddle to the big guys. Finally, my old standby, the Drumstick was in the house. (Yes, that link goes to a wikipedia entry, it’s that important.) I almost went with the relatively new version that features peanutbutter ice cream inside with fudge, but decided to go with my usual vanilla and fudge.

I delivered the goods to the closest freezer I could find, promptly had 2 Drumsticks, a couple scoops of spumoni ice cream, a Big Stick, plus a couple of Jujyfruits as I pondered the attorney-client privilege. Then I looked at confidentiality. Then I looked at bed and next thing I know, it is morning and I’m writing this blog…as I devour another Big Stick. I’m going to the library since there’s no freezer there.

-jd

(Yeah, I know summer school is not supposed to be as hard as regular law school, so maybe the rule shouldn’t apply, but there are a lot of recently promoted 1L gunners in the class who I’m afraid will raise the curve enough to give me a detrimental grade in professional responsibility…in the summer…which wouldn’t look good. It also doesn’t help that I haven’t opened the book since day 2. Thank god for my commercial outlines and briefbooks.)

I love the smell of paint. Recently, an office down the hall from our law firm was being remodeled and so the walkways were filled with the distinct smell of adhesive-color-from-a-can. I probably made twice as many trips out to the balcony to take a break, just so I could waft in the nice-ness of it all. It probably reminds me most of when I was young and my mom repainted rooms in our house in a never-ending effort to “fix up the place.” It just smacks of renewal and starting over and change.

Normally, I balk at change and then within a day, I’m over it and thoroughly embracing the new. So I guess the paint smell reminds me most of that. This affinity is brush and can-only mind you - I don’t share the same fondness for spray paint smell - so don’t worry, I’m not about to ruin a perfectly good legal career by huffing. Although I do find I have the same reaction to the smell in ice lockers at gas stations, however that probably has more to do with whatever chemical is in those rather than any fond early memories I might have of picking up ice.

Anyway, look for a ton of posts this weekend as I study for my ethics class final at the beginning of this next week, and then the state bar ethics exam at the end of the week. I’ll slowly wittle away at all the post-it note ideas for posts that I’ve been collecting from work, as mentioned in a previously.

-jd

I haven’t posted recently, or very often at all, over the summer. I have a crazy amount of yellow post-it notes stuffed into one of my briefcase pockets with ideas for posts I come up with at work, but there is no time to edit them into interesting material.

I also have stuff from my summer class that I thought was sort of funny since newly minted 2Ls do the most hilarious things in class and as a newly minted 3L, I finally have some perspective on it all. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten very good reception recently by my seat in that class, so the posts and web surfing are only sporadic. This is probably good since I have to take the state ethics exam in next week and we also have the final coming up as well.

I do want to say good luck to the bar-takers. I have a post devoted to the bar exam which I’m still editing, but it’s already 2 days late, so I imagine I’ll post it sometime after they are all sitting on the shores of beaches and lakes, sipping alcoholic beverages, and not giving a crap about anything.

The main reason for this post was to recognize the girl who sat in our review class today, defiantly not taking notes or doing anything but listening to the professor. Everyone else was frantically trying to get down what the professor was saying verbatim since every other sentence began: “this topic is likely to be on the test.” However, this one girl was in the middle of the room with her arms crossed as if she had merely shown up just to confirm that she already had everything memorized. It was pretty amazing, especially since she only recently became a 2L, I think.

Actually, I’ve never seen her before, but she was drawing too much attention to herself, to be anything other than a new 2L. Just an observation. Hopefully her computer just broke and she was too frustrated to do anything other than just fold her arms and pout. That way, the curve is possibly brought down, and I won’t have to study too hard when I open the book for the second time this weekend. (I call it subtle defiance…or my first below passing grade.)

-jd

Recently, I was reading one of my favorite blogs that was recommending a twisted new book called The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson. It is about the lives of people who obsess over the obituraries and much like the author of the post, I found it almost comforting to know that there are people out there with such a quirky pastime. So this morning I was looking up the book on Amazon, just to see whether I could get it used at a cheap price. Instead of the usual portal to the book search engine, there was a notice to visitors of the Amazon site introducing their new online grocery store.

Well, there are certain items in recent years that I’ve become fond of, but that have disappeared from the local physical stores in my area. Well, I’m just passively listening in class after staying up half the night to finish our mini-term paper, so I decide to peruse the virtual aisles of the friendly neighborhood Amazon grocery. And lo and behold, this little miracle store built out of the ether of the net has my large pearl couscous. Not only that, it is much cheaper buying it through Amazon in bulk than it was when I bought it one or two at a time in person. Like half price, actually.

Needless to say, I once again gave thanks to the powers that be which hurtle us along towards an integrated and globalized world. Now, when it comes to civil liberties, I’m all for supporting the rights of the “little guy.” However, I tend to be economically conservative and very pro free trade, especially when it delivers hard-to-get goods to my neck of the woods. Couscous is not a standard staple in my area of the map, but I could use it on a daily basis just as people use rice, noodles, or potatoes. Large couscous is a different and wonderfully-textured animal from the little crumb-like stuff most people imagine, if they know what couscous is at all. Thankfully, the net is making it possible to grab the best of every region in an accessible and cheap manner that was not possible even five years ago. Now, I just need to find a bonafide source of quality marzipan.

-jd

Adjacent to my office building is a little restaurant, or more likely diner, that is called Fathers. It is housed in some sort of modern art-converted boxcar deal that actually looks sort of cool. When I’m in it I always imagine that I’m in one of the post-apocalyptic novels I like to half-read and real buildings have been destroyed and the remainder of humanity is surviving by converting things like old railcars into diners.

Anyway, in the shower this morning, I was thinking about the name Fathers. The people that work there are all immigrants and I’m pretty sure they’re all related. They seem to work very hard and they have sort of a sense of ownership over the place that results in good food that is prepared quickly and at a very reasonable price. They seem to have pride in making the food and getting to know the customers. So I’ve imagined all along that perhaps the patriarch of the family owns/runs the joint and they all work hard to make their American Dream work for them.

The name of the place was what helped fuel my little fuzzy fantasy the most. I had somehow got it into my head that the head of the family had perhaps come over and named their boxcar diner after the dreams of his father and his father’s father who dreamed of one day owning a restaurant and making quality food for patrons. Then it occured to me that in reality, it is probably very likely that the place is actually owned by (and the profits actually go to) some rich real estate magnet who got all his money through inheritence and just bought this quirky place to impress some girlfriend. His last name would of course be Fathers.

I guess it really doesn’t matter either way why the joint has the name that it does. If anything, it was probably a brilliant choice just because it might provoke people to assume it is family-owned and operated even if that is not the case at all. I’ll still eat there either way. I guess I’ll just assume next time I see one of the counter guys just sort of run in, make a wise-crack and wink at an older lady, do what looks like punching his time card, and then run out, that he’s just screwing the owner as every good employee is likely to do now and again, as opposed to just having sweet-talked mom into telling dad he had to skip his shift because he had a hot date.

Ah, misperceptions.

-jd

I’m sitting in lawyer ethics class and within an hour I will be at work for my first full work week, minus the 6 hours of class each week that are scheduled to cut into my time, since I started working a little over 3 weeks ago. Every week up until now has had some sort of break or off day either because I was on a family vacation or because of the 4th of July holiday. So Monday through Friday this week I will be toiling away at the old brickyard. Lifting one brick at a time, splashing mortar onto the bricks below, trying to build this small wall of experience into the foundation of a career.

I woke up this morning early so that I would be in class on time. I hate this routine of flopping out of bed before you are fully rested and then stretched and then satisfied that you are as done sleeping as artichokes should be when they come out of the steamer and are laid out for presentation on a table. No, when you get up for work on Monday morning, even if you went to bed by midnight, you are never fully prepared to tackle the day properly when you are awake before 8. I know I’ll get used to it eventually: the shower where the water seems to be doing more work than you are, the morning news where nothing the anchors say seems to matter and you get tired listening because they seem to be working so hard to make it big and move to a bigger market, the english muffin that makes you feel comfortable, but at the same time is deceptive as to how easy the rest of your day will be.

And I like my job and I don’t mind going to class.

I can’t imagine what people do who hate their jobs. The All-Star game is tomorrow night. Sure, I’d love to watch baseball all day and then maybe blog about it or write a daily column on baseball and just live in baseball utopia forever. But even that would have drawbacks because I’d have to either move to Connecticut to work for ESPN or else write for our smaller newspaper and have to write about other sports as well. For instance, about the great Italian football team and the great French team and then their captain who is good at giving head. But, other than the small, sadistic, and paradoxical love I have for the mechanical nature of toiling at work everyday, there is no way getting up on a Monday morning to go to work for 5 days just to get to the reward of a lightning-quick 2 days is ever going to be something I look forward to. I’d like to write a book about it instead.

Anyway, since I’m in class, I guess I’ll try to pay attention. Even if it is the beginning of the week.

-jd

I had the day off of work today so I spent it watching patriotic programming on television, doing cite checking, watching the space shuttle liftoff, writing a memo, hanging out, BBQing shrimp, and watching fireworks.

Pretty busy, huh? I have my first class in two weeks tomorrow morning, so perhaps I can catch up on blog entries then! I didn’t abandon the blog!

-jd