Tools

Every year for Christmas since the year I was twelve, I've been given a tool. The first year, I got a toolbox and a few screwdrivers and a hammer, and the tools have just rolled in each year. My parents haven't had to get too many tools for any of their children as their other children have all gotten married and moved away to do their own things for Christmas, but I always go back for Christmas, so I always get a tool. I have ratchets, I have wrenches, I have a power drill...I have it all.

This year, my parents asked if there were any tools I needed, since they couldn't think of anything they hadn't already bought me. (Like I said, I've been given far more tools than any of my siblings.) I asked for a box cutter or utility knife to use around my house. My wish was granted, and I got a really nice utility knife. I packed it up and shipped it home to NYC so that I wouldn't have to worry about trying to get it home (and in hindsight, I'm glad I didn't pack it in the suitcase that I checked which then took off on a cross-country adventure).

When I opened the package it was in today, I grabbed the utility knife and ripped it out of its package to put together and put in its place of honor.

Problem with this? I can't figure out how to get the blade into it. I got the extra blades into the blade-storage compartment, but I can't get the blade I want to use into the blade use part. (I'm not a rocket scientist--I don't know what all the parts are called. Don't judge me.)

If only my utility knife had come with another tool that enabled me to put it together.

Sigh. Maybe that's what I'll ask for next year.

Offices of Post and Other Errands

I had my mail held while I was on vacation, since my vacation was a long one! To my surprise, when I got home, I had mail in my mailbox, including some package slips. (When you live in an apartment without a doorman, you have to pick up your packages at the post office). So I headed to the post office where my packages were. After some griping from the postal worker (my packages were heavy, but that's what they get for offering flat-rate boxes), I found out that only my packages were there, but the rest of my mail was at another post office. (What? You don't have two post offices within a quarter of a mile of your house? Hmm.) So, I headed to the other post office as well for the rest of my mail.

When all was said and done, I got lots of lovely things: bills, packages, books, a variety of pieces of mail for a variety of combinations of my brothers' names, and a couple of post cards from a vacationing relative.

I also did some grocery shopping and other quick errands to prepare myself for the first day of the semester, which is tomorrow!

Alas, my suitcase is still somewhere else, although the current word on the street is that it's going to show up at some point between 9 and 11 this evening. I hope it's closer to 9, since they say I have to meet them on the street to pick it up, and I hate to be out late in the cold!

Other than the wandering suitcase, however, I'm ready for the semester to begin. Here we go again!

Lack of Blogging

I owe you all my apologies for my lack of blogging; I've been traipsing the country on a fabulous winter vacation! I'll write some of the details later, but suffice it to say for now that I had an absolutely perfect winter break. I've never had a winter break before, as I worked full time during undergrad, but it turns out that I'm a pretty good vacationer.

Today, I'm back in the city after a long day of delayed flights. Yesterday, I was supposed to arrive in JFK around 7 pm. Instead, I arrived in LGA at about 9 pm, which wasn't hugely tragic; I just had to take a bus instead of a train to get home. I missed my connection in Minneapolis (not my fault--my inbound plane was super tardy). I ran as fast as I could to get to my plane, but alas, it was gone.

Sadly, my suitcase continued to attempt its journey to JFK, and weirdly, it felt that heading to Atlanta was the solution to that.

The prodigal suitcase is yet to return. Other than hosing up my plans to take my suitcase to the post office to wheel back all the mail they're holding for me, I'm not really suffering.

I had the perfect vacation, but it's good to be home.

New Year

Well, 2010 is over, and 2011 is upon us. In 2010, I published the fewest number of blog postings in the history of More Bacon Than the Pan Can Handle. Sorry about that. I'll try to do better this year!

2010 brought more changes than any year in nearly 20 years. Some changes in my life of note:

• Got accepted to lots of law schools
• Rode the subway for the first time
• Rode in a taxi for the first time
• Quit my job of over 7 years
• Traveled around the country looking at law schools
• Picked a law school (so difficult, incidentally, but I definitely made a perfect choice)
• Sold my car
• Moved to New York City
• Started law school
• Survived my first semester

Really, I can't imagine 2011 being any more eventful. Truthfully, I'm kind of looking forward to having a year where I'm a bit more settled in. I'm not planning to make any big changes in my life for the next year, but I suspect there will be one or two things that happen that I didn't plan on. Isn't life funny that way?

True or False in NYC: Footwear

In movies and on television, characters living in New York City wear extremely impractical shoes. Even though they walk long distances, ride subways, and trudge through puddle-filled streets, the footwear is often pointy, delicate, and inordinately expensive.

So, True or False: New Yorkers wear shoes that completely do not fit their lifestyles.

This one is much more true than you'd expect. Although there are some people like me who wear tennis shoes and other comfortable walking shoes around the city, there are a lot of people who wear footwear that shocks me. Tiny, high heels, open toes, even in bad weather. When I have to walk a long distance but need to be in dress shoes, I wear practical shoes, carry the dress shoes and wait to put them on until I reach my final destination.  Living in the city requires navigating staircases, slippery walkways, puddles, running to catch a train, etc., but this doesn't stop people from wearing shoes that make these activities impractical, if not impossible. New Yorkers are fearless though. Really, the only exception to this pattern is when it rains. If the day calls for rain, you'll find all New Yorkers in rain boots. I had to buy some, as I am from a land with very limited precipitation. But basically, people just wear whatever they think looks good, whether or not it's logical.

So, next time you're watching some show with fashionable people living in Manhattan, wearing silly, impractical shoes, and you're tempted to think, "No one would wear those there," think again!

Four Months

Well, the end of my first semester of school means another thing: I've lived in Manhattan for a whole semester! Here are some things that I've learned in my time here so far:

• I still can't find good Mexican food. I don't have enough money to really put a good effort into the search, but I'm doing my best. I have a little place in Spanish Harlem scoped out for my next Mexican food adventure. I'll update you when I try it out.
• I've been to all of the cool, touristy places in New York that you might see on TV. However, the only one that I (or any local people, really) go to is Central Park, and I don't go to the particularly touristy parts of the park, either. I only go to Times Square if I absolutely have to. 
• It's actually illegal to honk ANYWHERE in the city except for in emergencies, even though not all of the streets have signs indicating it. On streets with the signs, there may be slightly less honking, but really, everyone just honks all the time. Day, night, doesn't matter. 
• NYC is incredibly safe. Incredibly safe. I know that some of you worry about me, but really, I'm not sure I could live anywhere safer. Each day, about six people are robbed in the subway. That sounds like a lot, but you have to remember that 5 million people use the subway each day. Not too shabby.
• Tourists love all parts of Manhattan. Sometimes, when I'm walking to the subway from school, I see busloads of tourists taking pictures of the block where I'm standing next to school. There's really nothing to see on that block, but that doesn't stop the tourists from loving it. Cracks me up.
• NYC has five boroughs: Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan. I've been to four of them (seriously, I've got to get out to Staten Island...) Everyone in the metropolitan area refers to New York City as "the city." Most people who live in the city but in any borough besides Manhattan tend to refer to going to Manhattan as going to "the city." I live in Manhattan, so I never say I'm going to the city. If I'm going downtown, or to midtown, or to Chelsea, or to Hell's Kitchen, I just say that. I'm always in the city.
• Manhattan is full of neighborhoods. I live in one neighborhood and go to school in another, but they're really all connected to each other (although the neighborhoods I frequent don't border each other). So although I live in a gigantic city with millions of people, it's really a lot like living in a small town where you know the local grocers, just with the benefit of access to basically anything you want.
• You see lots of dogs here because people are out walking them, but cats are a total mystery. I believe that they live in the city because I see cat litter at the grocery store, but a real, living cat, well, I've only seen one in four months. One day, when walking around, I saw a cat. Then, a few hours later, I saw a three-legged dog. It's tough to say which one surprised me more. On the one hand, the dog only had three legs, but...

Done!

Well, folks, we did it! One semester of law school is completely done! It is really sweet relief to have finals done. Although I actually really enjoy my classes, I don't enjoy the stress of exams, and I'm glad to have them behind me for a few more months. I may spend a bit of time hoping that my professors like my answers, but since there's really nothing I can do about it, I'm just going to try to not think about it at all and just relax and enjoy my winter break.

Leaving the final exam today, the air felt cleaner, the city felt brighter, and things just felt extra special. Not having to worry about exams is really a weight lifted from my shoulders.

Hooray for a completed semester!

And Then There Was One

Well, I survived my second final, and now there's just one left! Technically, the exam tomorrow is a midterm, since the class continues through the next semester, but it's still a hurdle in getting to the end of the semester.

But I'm almost there! I finished yesterday's final a bit early and got home in time to collapse into a sleepy ball of non-productivity. I had already done most of my preparation for tomorrow's final, so I made dinner, did a bit of reviewing, and then headed to bed.

I'm still quite busy today getting ready for tomorrow, but I just wanted to check in and say hello. Hope all is well with my lovely blog readers, especially those of you in Utah who got piles of snow last night!

Hope you all are looking forward to a relaxing, happy Christmas holiday! I know I am!!

One Down, Two to Go

Well, my Torts final is done. Whew! Glad to have that one behind me. Everyone was pretty nervous about it, and the tension and stress in the air was palpable. Thanks for all your kind prayers and nice wishes. My next final is on Monday, and my last final is on Wednesday. In the meantime, I'll be doing lots of studying. And going to the laundromat. Sheesh, I'm running out of clean clothes!

The test was okay. It's difficult to explain what it's like to take a law school exam, so I'll just share one little story that's easy to understand. My exam today happened to have a few multiple choice questions, which is somewhat unusual for the format of these exams and extraordinarily unusual for my professor for this class, who has taught at my school for over 30 years and couldn't remember when/if he had done multiple choice questions in the past. Yikes...Anyway, there was one multiple choice question that was very short, and it referenced a case by name. I had made a chart of all of the cases we had read for the course (about 120, in case you were wondering) and which pages they were on so that I could quickly flip to them in the textbook if I needed them. I didn't remember the case name off the top of my head; in fact, the name wasn't familiar at all. So I looked on my chart, and shockingly, the case wasn't on my chart. I took a deep breath and tried to not panic. (As my cute nephews can tell you, panicking gets us nowhere.) I then looked in the table of cases (sort of like an index/table of contents thing in the textbook) for the name of the case. Crazily, the case wasn't in there, either. My heart was racing. There was a reason I couldn't remember the case--we hadn't read it! My mind was spinning: was it a case the professor had handed out in class? I flipped through my class handouts. Nothing even close to that name, but one thing with no name on it. Was that it? If it was, there wasn't enough information on it to answer the question. Judging from the multiple choice answers, I figured out the general topic that the case must have covered and flipped to that section in the textbook. There are lots of cases in that part of the book, and I flipped furiously through the pages, trying to find any reference in the pages in between cases or footnotes that might give me an insight into what the case was about. I was flipping and flipping aimlessly when I realized that I was getting frustrated and panicky, so I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and said a quick prayer. I had done my best to prepare, and here I was, unable to find a case. How could I answer the question without the case? I asked for help and clarity of mind to find the case and do my best, since I knew I had done all I could do to prepare. I took another deep breath and opened my eyes, still looking down at my hands. Then, as I slowly looked back up to my textbook, I saw the name of the case buried in a paragraph near the bottom of the page that my textbook was open to. It jumped right out at me. I was shocked, really. I'm still somewhat surprised I saw the name. It wasn't highlighted in my book or anything, and the professor had only mentioned it in passing as we were discussing the case that cited it. My textbook was open to the page where the language from the case I needed had been quoted.

I said a quick thank you for my little miracle, and got back to the rest of my test. Sometimes, we have to just close our eyes, recenter, and allow ourselves to see what's right in front of us.

The Final Countdown

Tomorrow is my first final. (2:00 pm EST, in case you want to commence some praying/finger crossing/positive thinking/whatever).

I don't really have much to say, so I thought I'd post a picture of a funny sign I used to walk past every day in the subway, until someone (with no sense of humor, I suspect) took it down.

Note the helpful edit someone made to the yellow sign.

Also, for the record, it still looks like this here.

But it's pretty cold. But still, pretty fabulous, right? Plus, the other day, the Simply Orange people were handing out free individual juices by the subway stations all over the city. I got an apple juice. And the next day, they were there AGAIN. I got an orange juice. It was the best week... I know, I know: you're jealous. It's okay. I understand. I have much to envy.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

One thing they have in New York that I'm still adapting to: wind.

Brrrr...

Good excuse to buy more cute hats and scarves, though. In Utah, I always felt like a scarf was just a winter accessory. Here, a scarf is a winter necessity.

Really, I think it's NYC's sweet way of getting me ready to go visit my family, who all live in the chilliest places around!

I plan to drink lots of cocoa and snuggle up in blankets for the next few months until I defrost.

Who Knew?

I've been emailing with my sister about my upcoming finals. One thing I've been telling her about is this sort of brain barrier that all of the 1L class hit right when we came back from Thanksgiving break. We are all still in classes, all still have reading assignments, all still supposed to be learning new things, but our brains have just turned off, probably due to total saturation.

Anyway, today when I was emailing LL, I told her that I was struggling but closing in on the end of it all, and LL wrote back to me:

"You're so close I can TASTE it! Tastes like tacos."

Yes, yes it does, my friends.

(Jealous that you don't have a cool sister who can taste the taco-ness of your impending victory? Tough. She's all mine.)

And You Thought Law School Was Boring

Funny things said by two of my professors this week:
"I was raised without a TV. That's why I'm so peculiar."
And my favorite, during a discussion of some really complex procedural law:
"So note: we've taken this up a notch in the area of frustratingness."


It may be hard at times, and it can be frustrating, but law school is certainly entertaining.

Checking In

I know, I know: it's been a while. But in my defense, you all have done very little blogging in the interim, so I don't feel terribly guilty about it. However, a recent posting by one of my brothers who hadn't blogged in a year or so compels me to give you all a quick update.

Things here are good. Really good, in fact. Finals are rapidly approaching, but I'm still able to maintain my cheerfulness, which has been a huge blessing. I'm still getting plenty of rest and time for relaxation. I'm busy, but not oppressively so. The only reason I haven't done much blogging is that although I have some free time, my brain tends to be quite fatigued after a long day of studying, and the last thing I want to do is read or write, so you all get left behind. Sorry. Here's a quick update:

The weather here is fantastic. It was 60 yesterday. Jealous? It was also 100% humidity, so don't be too jealous. All of the city trash cans along the sidewalks were filled with umbrellas, as they were all breaking in the wind. I spent the day a bit soggy, but not cold. Today it was somewhere in the 40-45 range, so quite pleasant. No snow in the forecast for the next 10 days, nor any weather that would make it cold enough to snow. I keep thinking that winter is around the corner, but it doesn't seem to be.

I'm still loving living in the city. I love to ride the subway, walk in Central Park, shop at the little stores, etc. Living here is like living in a giant metropolis and a small town all at the same time. It's really great.

I had company! My parents came out for a quick weekend to see a show, attend an event at my school, and to buy me some wonderful meals at some restaurants here. I generally don't get to eat at the fancy places in my neighborhood because of the cost, but my parents spoiled me rotten for the 72 hours they were here, and it was fabulous. Then, right after they left, one of my uncles came into town for a couple of days to do some deal-closing for work, and he took me out for ANOTHER fabulous meal. Between the two visits, I got lots of catching up on all of the people at home, good food, great company, and lots of hugs and encouragement. It was wonderful.

Preparing for finals is pretty intense. I like to do most of my work from home, because the people at school are all really stressed out. The tension is just palpable, so I like to return home right after classes end for the day, turn on some instrumental Christmas music, and hunker down to get some work done. My first final is in twelve days. Finals in law school are a tricky thing--each one will be a three to five hour exam, depending on the course, and will be made up of short answer and essay questions. The exams are all graded blindly, meaning the professors won't know that I'm the one who wrote the exam they're reading. This can be good or bad, depending on the class. My entire grade for the course is based on the final. No pressure, right? The school uses a mandatory curve for all of the classes, so most people will get Bs of one form or another. It is extraordinarily challenging to distinguish yourself from the pack.

Truly, I'm pretty excited to just take them and then have them done. I'm looking forward to a holiday break!

It's Hanukkah around here. Go out and have yourself some latkes (potato pancakes) or some jelly donuts - both traditional Hanukkah foods. No particular religious significance, but traditional significance for the Jewish culture to eat lots of oily foods for the Festival of Lights as it has some oily nature to its origins.

So get out there and eat some fried food, even if you're not Jewish! I'm not Jewish, but really, who can pass up an excuse for some delicious fried treats?

When I Was Your Age

I just watched the first thirty minutes of a documentary about Manhattan parents working to get their children into preschool.

Preschool.

Apparently, the right preschool is the key to the right private school and the right university.

Just getting the application is extremely competitive. These parents are pouring over applications, whipping out a thesaurus to figure out just the right word to describe their three-year-old, and forking over thousands of dollars just for application consultants. If they get the privilege of having their toddler attend one of these schools, they'll spend about $20,000 in tuition for a year. I imagine that the process will continue for the future admission to other private schools and universities.

I never went to preschool. I went to public schools through high school, and then attended a local, large, public university.

Now I attend a private law school, the first private school I've ever attended, but it is true that most of my friends here attended private schools before they came here.

When did just being a regular child become not good enough? I feel like I did okay for myself without all of that craziness...

I had to turn the documentary off after 30 minutes. Just watching it was stressing me out...I wonder if those cute little toddlers feel any of that stress, too!

Welcome to the 21st Century

At my law school, students have to do their first big legal research assignment in the library.

Without the use of a computer for research.

Using books

LOTS of books.

When you're writing a legal research memo (not to be confused with an office memo, which is short and easy), you have to use statutes and cases that have already been decided. These are contained in about a million books, all by series of publisher and jurisdiction, etc.

For my first legal research memo, I had to use seven different sources. I probably ended up looking at 25-30 sources to find the ones that would best support what I needed to say. For each case, you generally have to look in 2-3 large books to find the necessary case information, and that's only after you've looked in 2-3 other books to discover that you want to find the case at all, and then figure out how to find it! And sometimes, someone in the library has already taken the book you want, and some people keep the books for a long time, perhaps as some sort of table. Who knows...anyway, it can take a while to get what you need.

Really, it's not terrible, and I think it's very useful to know how to do legal research in a library, as many of us will work in jobs where our employers can't afford to use the online legal research systems (they are extraordinarily expensive).

We're in the middle of our second research memo now, and we're allowed to use the two research systems, LexisNexis and Westlaw, to do our research. The process is all the same, but it's so much faster when you don't have to run all around a library to find the different books. Click, click, click!

This new ability to use online research has enabled me to do my legal research from the comfort of my bed. This development is both good and bad: I love being able to snuggle into for a bit of reading on the requirements for administering psychotropic drugs to patients against their will, but how will I get my exercise without having to lug all of those books all over the place?

Should've bought a carton of ice cream at the grocery store that I could do some lifting with.

You've Got Mail!

As we've discussed in previous postings, I love getting mail. I like email quite a bit, but I especially love regular ol' United State Postal Service delivery.

I open the mailbox each day in eager anticipation of what might be inside. 

Some days, it's empty.

Some days, it's full of bills.

And some days, it's full of actual mail addressed to me sent by people who aren't asking for money!

Lately, it has been full of mystery.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a piece of mail for my father. It was addressed to his name, but to my address. It was an actual, legitimate, valuable piece of mail, addressed to him at my address. I was able to make sense of it due to a mutual relationship with the company, but I still thought it was funny.

Yesterday, I got a piece of mail for one of my brothers, with his first and last name and my address. It was junk mail from a bank, urging him to open an account with their institution.

Today, I got another piece of mail for that same brother, this time with his middle initial in his name as well. It's a letter from an expensive gym in the area welcoming him to the neighborhood and offering him a deal. 

My brother has never lived in New York. He definitely doesn't live in my apartment. It's a big apartment, but I'm pretty sure I would have seen him if he had moved in with me. It's not THAT big. In fact, I don't think that this particular brother even has my address, now that I think about it.

And weirdly, he's getting appropriately high-end junk mail. It's way nicer than the junk mail I got when I first got here.

Apparently, anyone who knows me should now just expect their mail to come to my apartment. 

I'll start a box for each of you.

Cold Called

Today, I was cold called.

For an entire class hour.

The professor never called on anyone else.

It was a long class.

People afterward told me what a great job I did. They all said that I did well and was very funny. (Not really my goal in law school, to be funny, but maybe it's just a bonus? Who knows...) 

I felt like there were some awkward parts, some parts where the professor and I weren't using the same words as each other so there was some confusion, but I managed to even it out fairly quickly.

Anyway, I survived.

But at one point, after he asked me to evaluate a hypo he had presented and decide if it was the same as the cases we had been studying, I told him it wasn't. He asked me why, and I went through a quick set of things that I thought made it different, and why it didn't conform with the model we had just established. 

I ended this with words to the effect of, "It's not okay to kill people just because you think they might be about to die."

It's awkwardly stated, but I stand by that rule.

Everyone laughed pretty hard, including the professor. If nothing else, everyone but me really enjoyed that class today.

Crash

Most of the time, walking around NYC is pretty impressive. People are coming and going basically nonstop, all managing to not run into each other. It's almost balletic in its appearance. This is especially true in a subway station. Sure, sometimes a performer or disoriented tourist can throw the dance into chaos, but it quickly resumes as we all quietly slip past each other, each passing hundreds of other people each day.

It takes a while to get into the swing of it, but you just get used to how people move and how to move around them as you all try to get where you're going very quickly.

Today, my train was being held because of a sick passenger, so people were disembarking and trying to get on other trains, or trying to squeeze onto the already crowded train.

Circumstances like today's make the dance less beautiful. People are bumping, jostling, stopping abruptly, making sharp, unexpected turns, and basically throwing the whole thing off.

So, in these circumstances, today I ran into someone.

Literally.

When I say I ran into her, I mean my body ran into her body.

When I say her body, I mean her shoulder.

When I say my body, I mean my cheekbone.

It hurt.

Unsurprisingly, I now have a headache.

I hope it doesn't leave a bruise or anything. That'll be awkward to explain. I feel really bad for the other girl. Her shoulder is probably achy now. I was talking about it with the guy who sits next to me in my first class today, and our teacher was listening and started talking to us as well. The professor asked if I had some pent up childhood anger or something. I told him that I was pretty sure that was it.

In related news, I'm thinking about investing in taller shoes. Or stilts.

Random Thought of the Day

When men wear suits, the suits are just called suits. They have pants and a jacket.

When women wear suits with pants and a jacket, they're called pantsuits.

When women wear suits with a skirt and a jacket, they're called suits.

Am I the only one who finds this totally bizarre?

I think that suits with pants should just be called suits, no matter who wears them, and that suits with skirts should be skirtsuits, no matter who wears them.

Spread the word.