Monday, August 28, 2006

The apartment

Finally, after much anticipation on everyone's part, I'm sure--the long awaited apartment picture post. My apartment actually looks like this most of the time--with the exception of the area around my desk. As I'm sitting here right now, I have a binder and three books open and surrounding me, and I'm typing case briefs on the computer.

Oh, and for those of you with this sort of sensitivity: I know I have very little on the walls. I know I should remedy this. I need more artwork before I can know where to put what I currently have.


The kitchen

The living room/dining area

The bedroom

The study area (in the bedroom)

The bathroom

Getting through life by making the best of it:

Transcript of part of an AIM conversation that occured this evening:

M: okay
M: go brief
M: that sounds fun! :-)
k: oh yeah! i love learning about contracts!
M: i know you do!
M: hahah
k: hooray
k: have fun cover lettering
k: b/c that sounds like fun too!
M: thanks!

Why I rock...

...I just set up Outlook on my desktop computer so that I can send/receive e-mail from both my Trinity and my U of H e-mail accounts. I also got it to receive e-mail on my G-mail account, but I can't get it to send anything. I may end up deleting that account anyway (just in Outlook, not the actual account), because the amount of junk mail that I receive there is incredible. We'll see.

I'll probably try and do the same with the laptop tomorrow at some point. Hopefully that goes well.

This makes for much more efficient procrastination when I'm checking e-mail. (Is this a good thing?)

Okay, perhaps this is something that I shouldn't get that excited about, but hey. I'm excited anyway. It's nice when random attempts to do something on the computer go well.

Pictures of the apartment will probably go up later tonight, when I'm tired of reading cases.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

A sentence in my Contracts casebook that made me laugh (and this probably won't be funny to anyone else, but that's okay):

"For the student attempting to grapple with the niceties of consideration theory, developed over centuries of obscure and often inconsistent case law and commentary, a spoonful of Legal Realism may at this point help the doctrinal medicine go down." (p. 51 in Knapp, Crystal, and Prince's Problems in Contract Law: Cases and Materials, 5th ed.)

Made me start singing. And then I wanted to watch Mary Poppins instead of reading.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

I can tell I don't want to do my homework when...

It's obvious to me that I'm back in school/homework mode. Why? Because I'm checking e-mail every 2 minutes. That's what I do as an excuse to get away from whatever work I'm doing, even if it's just for 10 seconds. This is almost as bad as it was last year when I was experiencing the most extreme symptoms of senioritis. I wonder how much it would be if you add up all the time I waste checking e-mail. Too much, I imagine. Okay, I think I figured out that if you assume 12 waking/working hours in a day, that's about one hour per day. Of course, I'm not checking e-mail every 2 minutes during class, so...we'll say that's a conservative estimate of about 30 minutes per day. Spent checking e-mail. (And that's not counting any time I spend reading and replying to e-mails). That's half an hour when I could be doing so many other things. Amazing.

Uh, and feel free to enlighten me on any math errors I made. I did have calculus in high school and all that, but that was (oh my goodness) over four years ago. Plus, doing calculus doesn't mean you can do basic math. I'm in law school, and I'm one of those people who doesn't do math very well.

Scary day ahead tomorrow (all three of my main classes: Civil Procedure, Torts, and Contracts). I need to do a little more work before I'm prepared. At least once Wednesdays are over, it's a lot better for the rest of the week. So...back to work for a little while longer, I guess.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Procrastination

Don't want to do more torts reading right now. Don't care that much about whether poking someone in the back during a fire drill is battery or not. So, procrastination ensues:

A weird phenomenon that I experience--and that also seems to run in my family (right, everyone?)--is sneezing when I come into contact with bright light. Or, similarly, if I need to sneeze, sometimes looking at a bright light helps me to get it out. Now, most people seem to think I'm crazy when I tell them this, but a few understand and are right there with me. For example, last time I was in San Antonio, we took a quick poll on the subject while at Freebirds. Of the ten of us that were there, two of us experienced this (yay for Anne and me). According to an Internet search, this phenomenon is called the photic sneeze reflex, and exists in anywhere from 10-25% of people--the number varies depending on the web page you're looking at. Some sites go so far as to call this a disorder, and state that it can be dangerous if you're driving or if you're a combat pilot (seriously, this site mentions that). It apparently is basically a problem of crossed wires in the brain.

What I want to know is, is this related to the fact that I often sneeze when I am eating corn-based cereal? I first noticed that I do this while eating dry Corn Pops before finals my first year at Trinity--the cereal had come in my finals care package. I noticed recently that I sneeze when eating Honey Nut Chex (a cereal that is both corn- and rice-based), and today when I ate a Frosted Cheerio before putting milk in the bowl--you guessed it, I sneezed. I looked on the box, and sure enough, it is partly corn-based. A quick Internet search won't tell me why I do this. I'm thinking that the wires in my brain must be even more crossed than regular photic sneezers. I sure don't know what else would explain it.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Fun words

Favorite word I've read so far while preparing for class on Monday: tortfeasor.

Orientation and all that

Hmm, at the risk of this entry being more “blawg”ish (Examples of "blawgs" can be found here) than I would want it to be, here’s a list of randomness containing some of my impressions and experiences from orientation on Tuesday and Wednesday:

  • Stats for the full-time U of H Law Class of '09 (from what I jotted down--sorry if I heard something wrong): 254 students, 38% female, 3.53 GPA, 160 LSAT. I can't remember the exact percentage of minorities--somewhere in the upper 20s, I think. 8 of us are from Trinity.
  • We get our own study carrels assigned to us in a room near our classrooms. That's kind of cool, and I wasn’t expecting anything like that.
  • I think I lucked out being placed in Section C. We may have the "slacker group" stigma based on years past, but...that’s okay. We seem like a nifty group of people.
  • I don't like writing diagnostic assessments that determine whether we're going to be going and getting help with writing once a week all semester. Couldn't I just go ask for help myself if I thought I needed it?
  • I broke my personal best bowling score of around 50 for like the first time ever at the SBA party on Wednesday. After insisting that I could not bowl at all, ever, I promptly rolled the ball down the lane and got a strike on my first frame. Yay. I can’t remember the final score, but think it was in the high 60s or lower 70s.
  • I now own a nalgene bottle with the Westlaw logo on it, courtesy of the library.
  • Larry J. Doherty, of “Texas Justice” fame, is an interesting person. He’s also kind of scary, insisting that we find out who we are and all that. And calling on people randomly during, like, the first hour of orientation—not cool.
  • Man, I should decide pretty soon if I want to proceed with being licensed in Texas. Will start reflecting on that.
  • Hooray for free printing in the Law Center.
  • Ummm, figuring out financial aid is weird. And complicated.
  • This semester I am going to be reading a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot.

That’s about all I can think of for the moment. I think I kind of wish it was about 6 weeks from now—then I could be all settled in and know what I’m doing. Hmm, or maybe 6 months from now, and then the stress of this semester’s exams will be behind me. Or maybe three years from now, when law school—and hopefully the bar exam—will be finished.

Nah, never mind. Don't want to miss out on the experience. Guess I'll get through it one day at a time, like everyone else.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Settling in, getting ready

It's been a busy but productive couple of days. I am now officially moved into my apartment. It is not completely set up yet, but I'm getting there. I often look around, and think "Wow, I'm really blessed to be able to live here and have all these things."

Yesterday, I took at trip to Super Wal-Mart to get things I needed for the apartment and today I went to get my hair cut and to buy books. I've been getting lost (well, not lost, I usually have some inkling of where I am) just about every time I venture more than 2 miles from my apartment. One day I will figure out how to get to and from the places I want to go without taking random detours that slow me down.

Question: why, when you go get a haircut, do they turn your chair around when they start to dry your hair? Are they giving away essential hairstyling secrets if I see what they're doing in the mirror? Just wondering.

I am happy to report that my books for this semester cost no more than an average to slightly expensive semester in undergrad would have. In fact, in the several years that I worked at Trinity's bookstore, I can think of many occasions when I rang up people's books to be several hundred dollars more than mine came out to be for this coming semester. I do miss that discount I used to get, though. That was certainly a nice perk to that job.

The plan for the rest of today is to work a little more on getting this place organized, and baking a chocolate cake. Because cake baking makes me happy: