One down...

and five more semesters to go! Hurray! I must say, it's a very feeble kind of hurray, but there it is. I don't think I felt this mentally and physically drained in a really long time, if ever. Somehow, I'm actually looking forward to next semester though. I get to start con law, and carry on with property, both of which really interest me.

Anyhow, I made it back to CA without too much trouble, the flight out ended up being delayed but I made my connection, barely, and here I am. Tired, somewhat beat up feeling, but here. It's sort of nice not having anything to do but rest and visit and relax, but I feel like I should be studying something still. This will pass I am sure, especially since I have an interview for a summer internship up in Marin next week. Eck. Hopefully I will be able to speak coherently by then.

Will post more later when I have something sensible to say and hopefully pictures to post...

Schedule for the Week

Monday:
7:00 - get up, get dressed, get somewhat presentable
7:45 - make coffee and toast
8:00 - Work on torts
11:00 - Take a break and eat lunch, relax
12:30 - Drive to campus, try to avoid other students, try not to hurl
1:00 - Contracts exam
4:00 - Go home, try to recover sense of dignity and self
5:00 - Attempt to clean kitchen, eat something
6:00 - Back to torts
7:30 - Visit with S. and relax
10:00 - bed

Tuesday:
7:30 - get up, shower
8:30 - make coffee and toast
9:00 - start on torts
12:00 - break time, have lunch
1:00 - back to torts
6:30 - Dinner, knit, relax
8:00 - review torts outline and notes
10:00 - bed

Wednesday:
7:00 - get up, get dressed, get somewhat presentable
7:45 - make coffee and toast, relax
8:30 - drive to campus, try not to hurl
9:00 - Torts exam
12:00 - Go to bookstore to sell torts and civ pro books back
1:00 - Go home. Stare at ceiling and bond with cat
2:00 - Eat lunch
2:30 - Laundry, packing, house cleaning, and general recovery
6:30 - drinks with L in celebration of the end of exams
10:30 - Bed

Thursday:
Noon: get out of bed, shower, and finish packing
3:00 - drive to E's
3:30 - Leave E's for airport
5:20 - Plane leaves for CA

Not dead yet/Happy 200

Or at least not quite...two exams down, two more to go. Half-way done is a nice thing, when I can remember to stick my head up above the mess of papers and notes and see how far I've really come anyway. Thinking about how far I have yet to go makes me want to cry.

This time next week I'll be back in California, finals will be over, and I will not have to do anything except sit around, relax, knit, and try to get back into some sort of exercise routine. If only I wasn't so utterly broke, it would be a nice break. Money sucks. Rather, the total lack of money sucks. I was less broke than this when I was unemployed. Of course, I also had people who would take me out and feed me and didn't have to worry about exams on top of it all, but still, the sad reality of it at this point is that I had to ask Daddy to bail me out for December rent, I have no idea how I am going to make January rent, never mind pay the power and phone bills, and I get the spend the whole break sponging off my boyfriend. I'm grateful that I have such a kind and supportive daddy and boyfriend, but I feel like shit having to be so reliant on them.

Anyway, enough of my school and financial woes...this is my 200th post. Huh. Not sure what to make of that exactly, but there it is. If I were a TV show I'd have gone into syndication 100 posts ago!

In between exams, outlines, and bread baking, I've actually been get a bit of therapeutic knitting done. I know, I need pictures, I should have time to get them uploaded and posted after exams are done. I made a pair of felted boot things for my dad for Christmas (here is the patters) and a moebius scarf thing for myself out of a skein of really beautiful manos yarn a friend gave me before I came out here. Moebius scarves are my new favorite knitting trick. Plus it's a great way to get something useful out of a single skein of yarn! I also finished a pair of fingerless mits I've had on needles for 100 years at least, one is knit looser than the other, but that's ok. I designed the pattern myself, and at least now I know it works. Being able to follow my own cryptic instructions is the first step I guess.

Anyhow, back to contracts. Hopefully I can get this outline done today so I can spend tomorrow on torts.

The end is nigh

My first exam, ie phase one of the apocalypse, is Tuesday at 1 PM EST. Sweet lord save me now. At least it's a subject I sort of think I might understand, which for law school is saying a whole lot.

And it's going to snow. Soon. Within hours even, and will certainly snow tomorrow afternoon, which leaves me wondering if I will be able to drive to campus on Tuesday to take the exam, or if the world will have turned to one scary slick, frozen carnival of scary roads and ice. Probably not, but I'm from California, where cold is 52, and we have none of this ice stuff I've been trying to figure out.

Actually, winter is kind of cool. I like sweaters, I like hot drinks, and I get to have as much of these things as I want right now. Hurray! Probably I'll get sick of all this eventually but for now I'm really having a good time. I just would rather be decorating a Christmas tree and knitting warm cozy sweaters than reading about landlord tenant law and whatever the hell we've been doing in contracts for the last 3 months.

In other news, I found both my camera and the cable, so as soon as I can I promise there will be pictures of various knitting projects.

For now, I need to make some tea and get back to these holdover things.

What a difference a day makes

I'm feel much better today for some reason. Last night, I baked bread, worked on my property outline, read torts, knit, squashed a huge spider, watched trashy TV shows, and had a wired dream in which someone stole my TV. For whatever reason, this all resulted in me waking up feeling much more focused and less terrified this morning. I was able to get some more torts reading done and put together the first 48 of my resumes and cover letters, 22 of which I was able to send out on my way to class. Hurray! I hope someone hires me. And pays me. It's the paying part that I'm most concerned with actually, working for free just isn't going to work.

Now I just need to pick my new knitting project. I'm sick of scarves. Getting back to the little lace bed jacket I started awhile back might be a good plan. Either that or getting some of the patterns I have designed into a presentable state so I can finally *gasp* publish them. What an idea.

Exam time horror show

There's the usual kind of anxiety and panic that comes from stuff I can silence for the most part. Things like school, getting lost, and not being eaten by wild turkeys because I have failed all of my exams. Then there's the other stuff, the real stuff that I can't deal with in a practical sense and that is just get more and more horrific the longer you ignore it. This would be stuff like paying rent, keeping the heat turned on, and figuring out how to feed myself and the cat (though I have enough leftovers from Thanksgiving I should be fed for awhile at least).

I suck at being poor. I suck at not knowing how I am going to manage to get through the next month, and I really suck at being in a position where there is no room for a misstep. Right now, I have no safety net at all. If I get sick, or hurt, or the car dies, or my laptop or printer takes a nosedive, I am completely screwed. And I cannot deal with this. It's driving me nuts. There is not one little thing I can do about any of it, but I have to do something, because the rent won't pay itself and neither will the power or phone bill. The stress of looming exams just makes it harder to cope and keep the terror at bay.

I just wish I knew what to do. I wish I knew how to focus on exams and studying when I am so terrified of these other things.

Nothing much else is going on, I actually got some decent studying done yesterday, which felt like a bit of a miracle. I'm no where near where I wanted to be at this stage, but at least I took some decent steps forward last night. It's just a matter of keeping that momentum going and trying to set aside my money worries until I have time and bandwidth to figure out some solutions.

Off Center

Last night I was asleep by 8:30. I woke up briefly to log off the computer and haul myself upstairs, and slept like the dead until 7 this morning. I wish I could say I feel more rested and relaxed for having slept so much, but I don't. I don't exactly feel worse though, so I guess that's something. These exams are really freaking me out a lot more than I want to admit to myself.

Trying to avoid the whole I'm-going-to-fail-and-live-in-a-box-and-freeze thought spiral isn't working out too well, but I'm really trying. It's just exhausting. I know this will get better, exams will be over soon, I'll live through it, and then I'll be home for a few weeks to do nothing but rest and knit. It's just hard to get rid of the niggling fear that I will fail or do really badly and I have no back-up plan, no safety net. If I fail, then what? There's no one to catch me if I fall out here. I'm just stuck and broke and it's really scary.

I have been knitting though. The Charm sweater turned out really well, and got lots of compliments, even though it remains unphotographed. I'm working on a feather-and-fan scarf for my mom for Christmas, using some handspun I had from when I got my drum carder. It's a really fun blend of silk and wools, originally dyed red and purple, but I carded it all together so it's more uniform and tweedy looking. I'm quite happy with it and I think she'll like it. I'm not getting anywhere on the weaving project for my grandma. Mom said she likes blues, but I have no blue yarns in my stash. Part of my doesn't give a rat's ass and wants to just use whatever I have, but there is still a part of me that wants to please her. A futile goal, but there it is. I think I'll just pack up whatever I have and work on that the first week of break. I can do the machine sewing part at mom and dad's, or just handsew the back of the pillow on, or I could crochet it together, that might look neat. We'll see.

Must get back to torts. We're reading about proximate cause. Anything with the phrase "in the bosom of time" has to be interesting. I wish all my case books were as much fun as this one.

Oh Sweet Jebuzz

I have a week left of class. Then exams. Somewhere in there I have to send out several dozen resumes so I can hopefully get some interviews lined up while I'm in California for the holiday. And take exams. And I did no outlining at all this weekend.

I feel woefully unprepared for this. It's just overwhelming at the moment, and I hate to admit it but the whole holiday break really didn't help much. It was all for the best really, but I wasn't able to relax and regroup like I'd hoped. I didn't get any real studying done, didn't really sleep enough, and somehow feel even less safe and more uncertain than I did before.

On the plus side, I got my second memo back and did really well on it, and I just met with the career center people and they were pleased with my resume so far and had lots of helpful things to say about my job search for the summer.

I just feel really overwhelmed, terrified, and a bit sad, if not a little hopeless. This whole being poor and cold and lonely thing is really more than I can take right now, what with school related stress building up so much because of finals, having to find a job, and everything else. I have some hope for the Christmas break, but after this last "break" I'm not so sure it'll be as restful as I need it to be. We'll see.

The turkey has landed

I'm getting far too excited about cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Mom and dad got in on Saturday and we went and picked up the turkey last night. I've named him Bob, and he is resting in the refrigerator while I decide exactly which method of roasting him I will go with. There seems to be some debate between use tin foil or wine-soaked cheesecloth to protect the breast in the first half of the roasting process. I've done the foil hat method, I might get creative and try the cheese cloth. We'll see.

because I'm insane, I have decided to bake the bread for dinner myself. I love baking bread. Something about the yeast and the dough in my hands as I knead it seems almost like magic to me. It's the same sort of thing I get when I spin actually, the joy of creating something so full of life and energy from nothing, with just the strength in my own hands. There's something elemental about it that I find very satisfying.

The Charm sweater is done, washed, blocked, and ready to be worn and photographed. I am really happy with how it turned out. It's nice and light and warm, perfect for these cool autumn days. As long as it doesn't get too windy anyway...

I've been working on a few scarves for Christmas gifts, and have decided to weave a pillow cover for my grandmother. She doesn't seem to like anything I give her, or use it, which really bothers me. I made her some knit washcloths a couple years ago, and she never used them. She never uses the chain for her glasses that she said she wanted and I got her either, so I fail to see the point in even trying but one has to do something. The plan is to use the small diagonal looms I got at Stitches West last year and make a sort of quilted cover out of scrap yarns, kind of a crazy quilt look but woven. It should be a fun little project.

Now if I could just channel some of the weaving and breadmaking enthusiasm over to my homework, I'd be in good shape. Motivating myself to read is just not working. I fall asleep whenever I open my casebooks. Is situational narcolepsy a real thing?

What I've learned so far

I've been trying to review and outline for final exams, which are in 2 weeks. Ack. How did that happen? This is what I've leared so far, for two of my classes:

Torts:
1. Stay far, far away from rail road tracks
2. Learn to swim, especially if you plan to work on barges or tug boats
3. Don’t mess with Texas
4. In Texas, it is not necessarily a bad idea to shoot your neighbor's mad boar.
5. Texas scares me
6. People in California like to throw furnature out windows. This I cannot explain.

Property:
1. Never get into a land deal with relatives
2. If you own a house with a ghost
a. The house isn’t vacant when you sell it.
b. Haunting is a latent defect. Disclose it.
3. My family is far more functional that I had thought (for example, my inheritance, such as it is, is not contingent upon changing my name, marrying some guy I've never met, or naming my first child after the family dog)

Knitting progress, finally!

My homework avoidance project the last couple of weeks has been a snuggly warm sweater from Knitscene (the Charm Wrap if you really care), using some of my handspun yarn. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it's done! Mostly. I still have to sew it all together and do a few more inches of belt, but the knitting is done. Assuming that all goes well this week, I should be able to wear it next week. Hurray! I'm really happy with how it's turned out. The pattern was easy to do, though I don't like they way they wrote or formatted the directions for the side shaping. It was really hard to follow, mostly because it was impossible to read. The end result is nice though, and looks like it should fit well. I did a size larger than I actually need because the yarn worked up at a slightly tighter gauge, so it'll be a little roomy but that's ok for this sort of thing I think. I'll post pictures once I get it sewn together, and find the ever elusive cable for the camera.

In other news, school carries on. Being a grad student seriously sucks. I had yet another panic attack last night after catching site of the latest pile of bills I have to pay. The being in school part isn't so bad, it's the whole not having any money and having to eat beans and rice and ramen noodles that I can't quite get over. It's scary. I'm more frightened than I have been since I was out of work and my unemployment ran out. That was an all-time low point in my life so far, and I keep finding myself back in the same head space these days, which does not help things at all. I know intellectually that this is all just temporary, it'll get better soon, and that I won't starve, but I hate the feeling that the bills are piling up, the debt is mounting, and for every bill I can pay there are 2 others waiting someplace that I've either forgotten about or simply don't have the ability to deal with. Objectively, it's probably not as bad as all that, but I'm seriously looking perspective when it comes to the whole money thing.

I am at least adjusting to life in Virginia. I've fallen completely in love with the fall colors. They tell me this year is rather drab, but to my eyes it's spectacular. Every day on my way to school, I marvel at the changing shades of red and amber. The trees near my house look like every shade of amber there is right now, not brown, but rich gold's and bronzes and dusky reds and fiery orange. It amazes me to see these colors on living things.

Now I must go and write a lease. For parking spaces. Which, given that I moved here from San Francisco, where there is no parking to be had for love or money, seems rather appropriate. But still, a lease? I have no idea what to put in a lease.

Well there you go

Your Superhero Profile

Your Superhero Name is The Danger Monkey Your Superpower is Demonic Your Weakness is Water Your Weapon is Your Turbo Stinger Your Mode of Transportation is Cable

What's your Superhero Name?

Now if only I could use my fabulous demonic superpower to get out of this civ pro class and back to knitting my sweater...

We've got major grad school burn out going on here. That and some sort of freakish flu. blegh.

Poopy

It's been a crap week for some reason. Maybe I'm just having a hard time adjusting to the time change and all the darkness, but I've been feeling really low energy and just blagh.

Yesterday hardly helped, but I think I have identified a huge source of my law school related anxiety. We had a negotiation practice, and the opposing council we went against flat out lied about some material facts. The first thought I had when I found this out was "well, you'll make great lawyers." I don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to be lumped together with that kind of person. It's unprofessional, unethical, and goes against everything I hold to be true and sacred. And part of me is terrified that law school is going to turn me in to that kind of person, one I wouldn't want to sit down over a beer with, nevermind be forced to maintain a professional relationship with, or trust.

Have I changed? I know I have become busy and stressed in new ways, but has this all changed the core of who I am and what I believe? I hope not. Lawyers do not need to be, and in fact should not be, the kind of people who lie. In negotiations, sometimes information is not shared, that is understandable, but when a direct question is asked, isn't the honest and ethical response to answer the question truthfully? I still think that it is, but I realized that I had this knot of cold fear, terror really, someplace in the pit of my stomach that 2 years from now when I graduate, I won't think so, that I will have become one of the deceitful, dishonest, and corrupt people who lie and cheat and steal.

I simply lack adversarial motivation. To my mind, a negotiation is supposed to be a meeting of the minds, both parties should walk away feeling good about the deal struck, not that they fleeced the other side or were in some way cheated. For one thing, I will never negotiate again with a lawyer who I feel has lied and cheated me. For another, what could possibly be served by such an antagonistic relationship?

Anyway, I'm bitter and angry about this, and need to let it go. grr.

Instead, I get to spend the weekend studying. blegh. I think I'm going to drive out to Yorktown after class this afternoon for lunch, just to get out of here.

Where did the month go?!

This whole being a law student thing is doing strange things to my sense of time. What the hell happened to October? How in the world did it get be to Halloween already? Ack!

I had a very dull weekend doing lots and lots of homework and outlining, but I did manage to start another knitting project. Really, I need to finish some projects, but all of the other UFO's I have going are on tiny needles and I wanted something on big needles that would go fast. Plus, it's cold, and I need a new cuddly sweater. I'm knitting a sweater coat thing that looks something like a bathrobe out of Knitscene but I'm using some of my handspun. I have the back just about finished, and so far and very happy with it. I even have an outfit planned for it. It's a fairly mindless pattern, perfect for an overwhelmed student.

I'm getting very excited about the holidays. Someone and my parents are coming out here for Thanksgiving, and then I am going to back to California for winter break. Hurray! I'm going to be in the Bay Area with Someone for most of the vacation, down at my parents for Christmas, and just relaxing and visiting friends and not reading law books for 3 whole weeks. Yay! And I've already found someone to look after the cat for me. It's good to be on good terms with your neighbors.

Lots of Llamas!

I meant to post this awhile ago, but what with one thing and another I forgot.

(sound warning) - Llamas!

Some people have far far too much time on their hands...including me it would seem.

In other random news, it's spitting down wetness and the fire alarm went off at school this morning so we got to stand out in the wet for an hour while the police made sure the building wasn't about to fall down or whatever. Excitement I could do without, but it gives form to the day I suppose.

Now, I must stop getting distracted by llamas, fire alarms, red leaves, rain, and small shiny flecks in the carpet and work on this damned memo.

Yeah. Right.

A few observations

1 - My backpack is wider than my ass. I really have no idea what to do with this revelation.

2 - Autumn. We don't have this back in California. I now know and understand why that is true. There is a tree near campus that is the most amazing fire orange and red, like no tree I have ever seen. It's pretty amazing.

3 - Actual Mexican food does not involve anything called "cheese sauce." Anyone telling you otherwise needs to lay off the crack.

4 - Plastic surgery freaks me out.

5 - It disturbs me deeply that one can assume that someone around here has "a patch of woods" in their yard and be right 99.9% of the time.

Sleeeeepyyyyy

It is enough to say at this point that I have finished two Christmas stockings and felted 18 mice. I even took pictures, and I swear I will post them, but right now I am freakishly tired. Ever so tired...which sucks because I have a lot of torts and property reading to do, and a memo on adverse possession and easements to write.

We seem to be reading a lot of very strange cases from California just now in torts. We have one where some enthusiastic revilers decided it would be a swell idea to throw an arm chair out a window and injured a pedestrian, which is interesting, because this is not the first defenestration of furniture case we've seen. Then there was a whole line of cases about drunks in California, including one in which, as best I can tell, the judge decided San Francisco streets should be kept safe for the average drunk. It entertaining being asked to explain my home state, but some of this stuff has me mystified.

I just wish I wasn't so tired.

I also wish I was not having strange nightmares about contracts and future property interests and failing out of law school or getting crap grades and being unable to find a job. I'm not kidding either. It's awful. But it'll get better, it's already getting easier.

What this woman wants

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I want, in a meta sense, lately. Negative lists of all the things I don't want aren't that helpful, or healthy. I want a family, I want companionship, I want time to spin and create things, I want to cloth the people I love, I want the means to care for myself and my family and enough left over to feel secure and maybe take nice vacations. I want to feel like these things are in reach, like I am not sabotaging it somehow, like I am moving towards them and not farther away...

In the short term, I want a suit, new glasses, and a larger financial aid check so I can fix the car, eat and pay rent all at the same time. I want a weekend to spin, and friends to spin with. I need people around me, and damn it I want a child. So much for being some liberated independent woman.

On the iPod

Ewww!

For those of you with a weak stomach, run now...

Harold popped. Well, more like exploded. It's gross. I figured he'd blow sooner or latter, he never did stop getting bigger and more deformed looking.

So, now what do I do? My medical expertise sort of falls apart at this point. And my mom isn't at home. How sad is that? I'm nearly 30, and I still call my mommy when I get a boo-boo.

Puffendorf and Barbeyrac, meet Harold

I'm working on property outlines today, and had forgotten how entertaining some of these legal philosopher guys names can be. A few of these cases read more like something from a Harry Potter book than anything else.

My wrist is killing me. Somehow, the blister is actually getting bigger, which makes no sense, and has got to the point where I really feel I need some way to refer to it. I've been calling it Harold. Harold is massive and more misshapen then he used to be, but mom claims he will settle down eventually and go away. I can only hope. He's making it hard to do things like type and pick up books, two critical features of my daily life right now.

In actual fiber news, I finally made my first trip over to my local yarn shop. Oh hurray! It was lovely! They have a great selection, a nice open space with good places to sit and look at books or work on your project, plenty of light, and a nice classroom space. They two women I talked to were really nice and welcoming and immediately offered me a job teaching classes at some point after I mentioned that I used to teach. Even better! Hopefully I'll be able to get on the class and workshop schedule in a month or two, it would be a nice bit of extra income and keep me in contact with people other than law students. I'm getting excited about starting this Christmas stocking now, it should be fun.

Maimed!

I should not be allowed to cook. In a sad attempt to make soup yesterday afternoon, I not only broke my stock pot, but sustained a large 2nd degree burn on the inside of my left wrist. Ouch. The blister is large and disgusting, and T (who came for dinner with his wife H last night, hence the cooking) said it looked "like a snow-globe." Nice. All I know is that this hurts in a dull achy kind of way and keeps getting bigger.

Other than that, it was not a bad weekend. I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but I did accomplish things, got some rest, and should be in good shape to kick the ass of the second half the semester. I'm just trying to focus on the process of learning the law, and not worry about anything else (like grades or jobs or children or impending barren-spinsterhood a la Bridget Jones).

Tomorrow I get to make the trip over to the yarn shop to pick up stuff for this Christmas stocking project, which should be fun. I'm actually looking forward to it, strangely enough. I'll get to work on intarsia, which I have not really explored much as a technique, so that should be useful. I really want to make argyle socks for Someone for some reason, so this will be a good introduction to the techniques I'll need for that.

Why state the obvious?

So, aside from having nightmares about property interests and defeasance, and getting somewhat annoyed about consideration doctrine in general, school isn't really that bad. It's not easy by any stretch, but I'm feeling pretty ok with myself at this point. We're on fall break this weekend, so I'm spending today and tomorrow working on my outlines for the first half of the semester, and for the most part I feel like I'm starting to see some patterns and direction. All of which are good things.

It's all a matter of staying focused on the process, and not getting too freaked out about my actual grades. That and studiously avoiding the Big Questions, like is this going to cost me my chances of having a family? Will it cost me the people I care about? Will I ever be able to retire? Is this a price I am willing to pay? I've been trying really hard to keep those issues at bay and not freak out about my impending barren spinster-hood, trying not to second-guess myself and every decision that has led me to this point. When I can do that, I can focus and get my work done and feel pretty good about this thing, but when I can't, which has been most of the time recently, it's impossible.

Anyhow, since I got back from my brothers wedding, I've been doing pretty well with Big Question Avoidance, I think seeing my family and spending some time with Someone really helped with that. Those people love me and support me and believe in me, it makes it easier to have confidence and faith in myself in that environment. But yesterday I was talking to a second year student, and he suddenly had this revelation that I would be 32 when I graduated, and had I thought about whether or not I wanted to have a family and if giving that up was something I was willing to do for this? Yeah. Thanks guy, that was really helpful. I really need to hang out with the older women, they don't ask questions like that, they already know the answer (which in most cases isn't an answer at all, and that's why it's such a difficult thing).

So last night was a bit rough, and today has been kind of tenuous. I'm getting a lot done, I have gotten my Civ Pro outline well under way, I have a skeleton for Contracts, and I have a whole day and a half left to work on this, but the panic is there, just on the edge, waiting to pull me into the crazy place if I don't keep a close reign on myself. This is the point at which I start to question and doubt and wonder, and I just haven't got time for that right now.

Maybe I need to go for a walk...

Fee simple subject to a condition subsequent?

So the general consensus seems to be that I am too hard on myself and overly self-critical and that this is leading to or contributing to a great deal of my current stress and anxiety. Dad says I've been like this since I was kid. He likes to remind me that I came home from my first day of kindergarden in tears because I hadn't learned how to read yet. Not "they didn't teach me to read yet" but "I didn't learn how to read yet" which is a subtle difference but I suppose makes all the difference in the world. I do kind of feel like whatever I do is never really enough, however hard I work or try, it's never good enough. Good enough for whom exactly I don't quite know, but it seems like I could, and should, do better. Classic over-achiever perfectionist type stuff I guess, but it's a bit strange to have people who have known you for 2 days point this out.

Anyway, it turns out I am not as caught up with my reading as I thought I was. I'm up to date with contracts, will be up to date with stupid old civ pro after lunch today, and am pretty much up to date with torts, assuming I don't fall asleep at my desk this afternoon. But property, oye vey. I missed a bad lecture, with lots of definitions and things, and in trying to get cought up with that I got behind on what I needed to read for today, so I now have 3 days worth of reading to get done for Friday's class, as well as some supplimental stuff to clarify what I missed last week, so I can ask intellegent questions when I go talk to the professor during office hours next week, as opposed to something like "So, what's the deal with this whole defeasible thing? and what about those future interests?" Certain parts of this class are very painful, but for some reason I actually find it really interesting. They just seem to use far too many words.

At least we have a long weekend coming up. It's fall break, so I have no class Monday or Tuesday. The current plan is to do some cheesy tourist stuff with a friend (H, who Someone introduced me to, she's a grad student in the CS department and her husband is from the Bay Area and hates it here too so we all rant and bitch about ignorant hillbillies together, it's very therapeutic), then lock myself in the undergraduate library and start outlining.

Somewhere in there I need to find the local yarn store. I have a commission to knit a Christmas sock for an old Dickens Faire friend and will need to track down the yarn for it. It should be fun, and it'll give me a bit of extra cash. Anything to keep me in latte money. Hell, if anyone else wants something knitted, let me know.

Home again

I just got back from my baby brother wedding back in sunny and not too hot California. Between getting a sister, spending some quality time with Someone, and catching up with a bunch of family, it was busy but quite nice.

Of course, it didn't exactly start off right. I had a 6:40 AM flight out of an airport about an hour from house. Which means that I had to get up at 3:45. I set my alarm, got to bed early, and woke up all nice and gently only to realize it was 6:17. Ack! Several minute of blind shrieking panic latter, I pulled it together long enough to call the airline, find out about stand by options, and race out to the car where I called first Someone, to tell him I would be coming in latter, and them my parents, to tell them I would be missing the rehearsal diner. Of course I was hysterical, and it was only 3:45 in the morning on the West Coast, but what else was I going to do? I'll never this one down, that's for sure.

It all worked out ok, I made it, I got picked up ok, and it was all fine, but I had a really hard time sleeping for the rest of the weekend, terrified as I was that I would oversleep and missing the wedding/family BBQ/plane back/whatever. Oh well.

Anyhow, I must get unpacked and unwound. I'm starting a new little lace bedjacket/sweater thing for myself, the pattern got here while I was gone and I can hardly wait to start. I love lace knitting. And this bedjacket thing looks like it has some serious potential.

Suicidal Canadians

Canadian geese that is. There's a whole flock of them living in a pond down the road from my house that I drive by every morning on my way to campus. Lately, they have taken to spending the earlier part of the morning, when the road is busiest (which isn't that busy by San Francisco standards, but is a near traffic jam for these parts), hanging out in the middle of the road. Stupid geese. You can pull up within a foot of them and just sit there, and they won't budge at all. They just stare you, all creepy like, until you figure out how to get around them.

I actually like the geese. I hear them honking in the early morning, when the light is still misty, and there is something comforting in that. Of course, it makes harder to get out of bed. That time of morning always makes me a little sad when I am sleeping alone. The world is still, my mind is as calm as it will be for the day, and I drift into thoughts of the people who are far away. The longing is gentle and soft, but somehow worse when I want to be held so badly I can almost feel it.

Anyhow, I'm still behind with my school work but I'm slowly getting caught up. I have to catch up with torts and then all I have left today is the reading I need to do for tomorrow. With any luck I'll be able to get it all done this afternoon and tonight. Luckily my skills class got moved back to 5 tonight so I should have just enough steam left when that gets out to get another 20 pages or so done tonight before falling asleep. I've decided that taking RSI breaks is a good thing, just like it was when I was doing tech work, and that I can use my spinning wheel as incentive. I may move her up to the office, right now I'm doing my work at the kitchen table and I don't like that, having my school books all over the living room just isn't a happy thing. Confining my schoolwork to one room in the house seems like a better idea than having it scattered all over so I can never escape it.

Besides, if I'm downstairs near the kitchen I get up every 10 minutes to find a snack of some sort, just to get away from the books. No good for the WW thing. So far, that's been going quite well. I'm not so sure about this week though, it's been a bit difficult the last few days to stick with core foods, and my brothers wedding is this weekend, so the food situation is going to be a bit sketchy. Oh well. I'll do the best I can, that's all I can do.

Just breath

Some actual fiber content! Sort of...


You are Shetland Wool.
You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a
little on the harsh side. Though you look
delicate you are tough as nails and prone to
intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are
widely respected and even revered.


What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

The whole inability to focus thing has not been getting much better. It's actually been getting much worse, but I have some hope that things will improve there some in the next few weeks.

I did manage to sit at my wheel a bit in the last few days, and I found out that there is a Trader Joes in Charlottesville, only a 2 hour drive away! Only two hours, how sad is it that I have to drive 2 hours to get to my favorite store? I just need to find some kind of half-assed excuse to head out there, then I can get my tea and tasty hippie foods in peace.

School work is getting interesting. I've been trying to write a legal memo for my sills class for days and days, and it's turning out to be far more difficult than I had thought. I can't seem to separate my own ideas about the issue from the decisions I'm reading. I'm trying really hard not to put too much of my own interpretation into it, but it's difficult. I guess you can't help coming at an issue from your own particular angle, this is why we have judges and appeals courts after all, but when they don;t actually tell you what the question is, it's difficult to find the answer to the problem without putting too many of your ideas in there.

Collateral damage

I don't think this whole school thing is worth the price...maybe I'm just not so willing to pay it at this point. I don't know. All I do know is that my options are drifting away one by one, I can't focus on anything, and I have no safe place to run to.

I can't even spin. You know it's bad when not even my wheel can hold my attention, when I can't find that simple, elemental rhythm.

More obsessive knitting

I finished the little neckwarmer thing from Knitty last night. Hurray! It's actually quite cute, but I am not altogether happy with the way the flower is designed. I've worked out a different way, crocheting the center instead of using the stupid looped and twisted stitches which will pull out all over the place the moment you snag the scarf on something, like your jacket. These things are quick and fun to knit, so I've started another one and will continue figuring out modifications for the center of the flower.

Knitting flowers is way too much fun, sort of like knitting the little felt mice for the cat. I found a few other flower patterns on line last night, if nothing else this should be a good way to get some scraps of yarn used up. I think I'm going to try felting some of them too, and work out a few alternate neckwarmer designs.

I need to find a job. Maybe I'll write up some of the patterns I've worked out and see if I can segue that into some kind of small business. It's more labor intensive than I would like but I think once I get things up and running a web based business should be pretty easy to manage. Having no income at all is just exacerbating the stress I'm under as it is. Last night, as exhausted as I was, I ended up unable to sleep after talking to Someone and nearly falling asleep on the phone. It's not good. I have some hope that I get some sort of income producing venture to work out but without compromising what's left of my dignity, but if I keep having these restless panic filled nights, I'm not sure how long that will last.

Avast!

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day! How could I forget! I should go home and make myself a cabin-boy/girl outfit and figure out to hoist the mizzen or something. Arg!

My pirate name is:

Bloody Bess Flint

Every pirate lives for something different. For some, it's the open sea. For others (the masochists), it's the food. For you, it's definitely the fighting. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Lots of blaghs

Not much to report today...last week was kind of rough. I didn't so much have a lot to do as I had zero motivation to do anything. I seem to lack focus in a really profound sort of way. I wish I understood what that I was about.

I feel very isolated and alone here for some reason. I miss Someone. I feel silenced. I have a lot of work to do, but I just can't seem to focus on it. You would think that focusing on school work would keep my mind too busy to worry about everything else, but it isn't. Maybe I need a job. Having some sort of income would be really nice, I'm just not sure I can bring myself to work in a crappy retail job for minimum wage. Somehow it feels as though doing that would rob me of my dignity. Which is just absurd, but there it is. Part time consulting work for my old job would have been ideal, but oh well.

Anyhow, I finished the crocheted scarf, knit another scarf, and have started on a little neckwarmer thing from the latest Knitty (the pattern is here) out of some left over yarn from my stash. Hopefully I'll be able to get a few other small things knit so I have less Christmas shopping to do. Being able to make most of the gifts for this year will be a very good thing, seeing as I can't really afford to buy any.

Being a student sucks. Well, ok, being a student is ok, but living off loans sucks. Maybe that's my problem, I feel very insecure and uncertain whenever I have to spend any money on even the stupidest things, and I don't know if I can deal with this for all 3 years.

Fiber lust

The Bellwether, my favorite place to get spindles, is having huge fleece sale! Oh how I wish I still had income!

The fleece sale has got me thinking about a special project I've had swimming around in the back of my mind for ages. One of those things best not to talk about, if you are a fiber junkie who runs towards the superstitious, but all the fleeces on sale have got me wondering and planning and thinking and that's never good.

I've utterly failed to finish knitting a gift for my soon-to-be-SIL. The wedding is at the end of this month and I haven't got anything to show for it, but oh well. Maybe I can get one project or the other finished in time for Christmas, that might work out better anyway since neither one is exactly right for the wedding dress.

Not so very bad?

Well, the WW meeting wasn't so bad. Not so good either, but considering that I'm all bloated from PMS, it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it might be. I still feel like an old lady with a wide ass, but at least I'm doing something about it. I've decided to try the Core plan this time, I think it might be easier to measure less, and I still think it's easier to maintain on the Core plan. Or at least it should be in theory. We'll see. I'll give it a few weeks. That's probably the best thing about the program right now, having a choice between plans is nice and gives you a lot of flexibility. I realized this morning that part of my issue with the whole weight-loss thing lately is tied into the general inability to finish anything recently. I feel like I left everything half done at work, my knitting projects are getting nowhere, why should I do any better with WW? It's a bit absurd, I have the ability to finish this if I just stay focused and don't let myself get into a fug about it, and would probably help with the feeling of incompletion.

Anyhow, it occurred to me this morning that WW meetings were also a good time to do some knitting. I brought my scarf with me and got the first lace panel done and a decent start on the second. Having some time to really focus on myself and my state of being is a good thing. My No Law Friday Afternoon's probably won't last now that I have No Law Saturday Morning, but that's ok. The idea is to have time to do things that aren't related to school, it doesn't really matter what day I pick to do it.

In school related news, my loan finally got straightened out and the check is supposedly on it's way. Hurray! I have to call the loan people on Monday to find out what the exact deal is, but I should be ok in a few weeks. It's nice to know that that's worked out for now at least. I'll worry about the loans for next year in the spring. With any luck I'll be able to establish residency or get a fellowship and my tuition will be less. I can only hope. Now I just need to decide what to do with myself over the summer. It seems silly to worry about this now, but from what I've been told if you want to get paid over your 1L summer, you have to start the hunt early.

I still feel like crap, but the cold seems to be more or less manageable. As long as I don't move to quickly it's ok. Hopefully it'll be better by Monday, and Ophelia will go someplace else and I'll be able to ride my bike to school next week. Getting some physical activity in will help my state of mind tremendously. And it certainly won't hurt the WW thing either.

Happy Blue Pills

I love the blue pills. I can sort of breath now, and should be able to make it through my property class without too much nose-blowing. Hurray. Having a cold sucks. Really, I am an embarrassment of a sick person. All I want is someone to tuck me in, bring me tea and soup, and rub my head. Instead, I have to go to lecture and the cat keeps trying to sit on me, and I whine.

Anyhow, I have finished one lace panel of my crochets seamans scarf, and have decided it is too short so I'm putting on a couple extra rows at some point today, then I can start on panel two. Hurray for progress! It'll be nice to have finished something. I've been suffering a pretty major case of Project Interuptus lately, both at work and with my knitting and fiver stuff, so it'll be nice to have something to put in the Finished pile.

After I'm done with this scarf I think I'm going to start on some baby things. My legal skills professor is having a baby in March, so I thought I would make her something. Might as well get started now while I'm all motivated and inspired.

I have this song stuck in my head for some reason. Not terribly applicable, but there you go.

Drained

I seem to fighting off either a cold, allergies, or possibly West Nile. Ugh. I hate being sick. Stuffed up and sort of warm is the worst kind of sick there is too, if you ask me. Oh well. At least today and tomorrow I just have one class, so I can sleep in a bit. Not that I slept in this morning or anything, but I did go to bed relatively early and will be able to rest some this afternoon.

Somehow, in spite of being totally unmotivated to do homework, I have not fallen horribly behind. I'm not as far ahead in Torts as I would like to be, but I should be caught up for today's class, then I can get ahead over the weekend.

My birthday was a bit depressing, but I did go to the one and only pub in town with a couple of people from skills class after we got out. That was kind of nice, certainly better than pouting at home and eating every single piece of chocolate in the house.

Progress on my little crocheted scarf is slow, but steady. Getting used to a slower pace of project completion is going to be difficult but I think I'll manage. Not having chunks of time to sit and work is a big adjustment. Or at least chunks of time I can sit and work and not feel like I should be reading property cases or civil procedure or something.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit this, but I have totally fallen off the WW wagon and I feel like crap about it. I seriously need to get my widening ass in to a center this weekend. I think I'm just embarrassed to do it. Which is patently absurd, and I know it. Of course, part of me is also terrified that I won't be able to stay on plan while in school, but again, this is a bit absurd. If anything, it might actually be easier. It's not like we have any really tempting food on campus, the one cafe place with food does have salads, and I can (and really should) pack my lunch. In fact, that might save me money in the long run. Besides, taking a bit of time on Sunday to plan out my meals for the week might be a good study break. Paying attention to my body can only be good for my mind.

Yeah. So I am going to screw up the courage to face the scale again on Saturday and go back. Again. Sigh. I just want to be thin and able to maintain. Is that so much to ask?

But this I vow, I will be at goal by my next birthday. So there.

A weekend not without Fiber!

Finally, I was able to do something fiber-related this weekend. In between shopping for a suitcase, working on the courtroom relief website, and homework, I managed to make some really good progress on a crocheted seamans scarf that I started a really long time ago. I think my problem with making progress has been the smallness of the yarn and interminable single-crochet ribbing section. That's finally done, and I'm on the lace panels. I like doing the lace part. It's fun, it goes quickly, and it looks really impressive even though it's a very simple stitch pattern. I'll post pictures once I have something reasonable to show for it.

I got to school this morning early to do some reading in the student lounge, only to find that the place has been plastered with asinine student elections posters. It looks slightly less dignified than class elections in junior high. As if I needed anything else to make me feel more out of place with the student body here. Whatever. I view the student bar association as a big joke. All they do is plaster the place with moronic posters and sponsor weekly drinking binges at local bars. Surely, there is more to life than that, it's just the SBA hasn't figured that out yet. Oh well. Whatever happened to dignity?

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm not at all looking forward to it. Maybe I'll get lucky and kind of forget about the whole thing. Surely I can come up with enough extra homework to do to keep me distracted.

What more can I say?

This rant just about covers it.

Getting better all the time...

Well, in light of everything that's going on the world, it seems silly to start off a post with that sort of thing. But at least I'm able to help in my own way. I'm working with the Courtroom 21 project at school, and we've been asked to put together a website so that state courts from all over the country can enter in whatever resources, equipment, people or money they have available so that it can be redistributed to the courts in the affected areas. I'm really excited about getting to work on this, it'll give me a lot of really great visibility with the administration and faculty, and I get to do something for the rebuilding effort. I'm just a bit nervous. My web building skills are somewhat rusty, but I think I'll be ok once I get going.

Anyway, the 1L trip to Colonial Williamsburg was quite fun. I talked to a guy who is in my torts class and an actual adult for awhile, and he's, dare I hope, not a Republican! Hurray! It was nice to have a politically un-guarded conversation for a chance. After that tour, there was a little reception, and I talked to another woman who is my age, and it turns out we're both having the same sort of "issues" with the 22 year old bubble-heads. Yay again! It's not been easy but I think I'm starting to find some people with similar outlooks and backgrounds, which is a very good thing.

This weekend I have maybe 6 hours worth of homework to do, and depending on how much I have to do for this website, I should have time to knit something. I don't even know where my knitting projects are at this point, it's sad. I sort of want to make socks for some reason. Not like I need more knit socks or anything, but they might be a good Christmas gift for somebody. Actually, doing some gift projects would be a good idea. I have a stash of hat and mitten sets I've been working on for that. Might as well get a few more things done. I've found several patterns for knit and crochet flowers that might be kind of fun to do with some scraps. They look cute on hats, but would also be cute as little pins for sweaters or blazers.

By the way, if anyone is looking for a new project and a chance to help with the relief efforts, KnitWhits is donating 20% of the proceeds from all sales between now and the 10th to the Red Cross. Tina has some great patterns and wonderful kits, and she's a reall wonderful person to boot.

Know a mechanic?

So, I have become the proud owner of a 1996 Pontiac Grand Am. Which is wonderful, I'm very glad not to have to walk and bike everywhere in the insane heat, and I get to feel like an actual grown up with a car, and insurance, and registration and all that other good car-owner stuff. Except that there is a mysterious puddle on the floor in the front seats. Nice. I posted a question to the Car Talk website and the theory is that the AC evaporation drain tube is clogged up and that this is a trivial and inexpensive thing to fix. Great news, except now I to find a mechanic who will not screw me over, or find some mechanically minded person who can help me fix this in exchange for a beer.

The funny thing is, if it were an electrical problem, I'd be more or less ok with figuring out the problem on my own. But AC mystifies me.

School is moving along. I had drinks with another grad student from the CS department and her husband last night, and we bemoaned the high rate of scary conservatism in the area and the general lack of decent ethnic food (except, oddly enough, Indian and Japanese food. Go figure). I'm actually done with my homework through tomorrow, so tonight I'm going on a tour of colonial Williamsburg with the law school dean, and I should have time to, gasp, knit and/or spin this weekend. Hurray! That'll be the best birthday present to myself ever. This afternoon I'm going to start on my reading for Monday, I'll try to get everything for Monday and Tuesday done by the end of the day tomorrow, and then I can have a halfway decent semi-celebratory weekend.

Which would be a lot more fun had I not just balanced my check book. Yeesh. Buying Clovis was a huge financial disaster, but what choice did I really have? I wonder if my landlady will take a constructive rent check?

Perfect fit

Can someone remind me again why I am here?

This song fits my current state of mind on so many levels it's scary.

I miss him. It's ridiculous. Somehow he feels impossibly far away, further than the 3000 miles warrant. I miss a lot of people actually, people I know how to relate to and understand and have things in common with, people I don't have to hide from. Out here, I feel like I can't really be honest about who I am or what I believe in, or really anything to do with my former life. I feel very removed from everyone around me, in ways I really wasn't prepared for. It's isolating. And I really don't feel like I belong here. How can I really contribute to the "school community" if I feel like half of who I am has gone into hiding? How can I make friends if I am hiding?

Oh you must be joking...

My principal difficulty with this whole law school thing isn't so much the amount of reading, or the size and weight of the pile of books, or even the insane spatula sized bugs who are attempting to establish a property interest in my house by hostile occupancy of my porch. It's not even missing Someone. Nope. It's the cheesy 22 year old bubble headed dingbats who sit in Civ Pro class, I shit you not, shopping for shoes online. What the hell is that about? Then they giggle and flip their hair and talk about the next trip to the bar and the frat party and how they haven't done any reading for torts yet and ask me what the Federal District courts do. Isn't that funny?

Ugh. I hate irresponsible people. Especially when they drive off campus in Z3's and go shopping every weekend and I'm stuck at home doing homework (god forbid) and wondering how I'm going to make rent since I had to buy this stupid new computer.

I'm grumpy. What can I say? I always get kind of grumpy around my birthday actually, it just seems to piss me off. Not really helped by the disastrous party planning that has historically come along with it. Or the sad fact that I have my stupid skills class on my birthday until 8:15 at night. grr. Oh well. It's not like I have anyone here to do something special with, or enough of a social life to warrant an attempt at an actual party.

Oh! And my blog is getting comment spam. WTF?! I've been deleting comment spam right and left all week. Really annoying.

Enough pissing though. I actually did really well with the homework this weekend so I can conceivably not study tonight. Amazing. I could do more torts reading if I wanted to, but I'm caught up and probably have done just about all I need to do for the rest of the week. Contracts and Property can wait till tomorrow, and Civ Pro is quick and can wait as well. Of course, Wednesday gets kind of busy so I might as well get further ahead. We'll see. Once I work out what I want for dinner I will decide how much homework to do tonight. What a life.

Maybe I'll just read one more torts case and then knit something. That might help with my general state of mind.

Picture me growling

The more work I do trying to my new laptop set up the more pissed off I am getting at the poor dead POiS iBook, may he rest in peace (after giving up the rest of my files that is). All, and I do mean all, of the photo CDs I made from that thing are corrupted in some awful way and will not open on the new laptop. Clovis and I tried, we really did try, but no joy. To make it worse, it turns out that all my portfolio pictures, pictures from the road trip, and god knows what else, are still on the iBook, which still won't boot even in safe mode. Gah!!

Really, it is not beyond my capacity to figure out how to fix this, but I hardly have the time, or the emotional energy, to deal with it. I have got to get my homework situation figured out. This stupidness with laptops and pictures and missing files and reripping every single damned CD I own, that's all just seriously distracting and stupid but it's still pissing me off.

Oh well. I did manage to get off my ass and ride my bike over to campus today, just to test the route. Quite a nice ride actually. Takes about 20 minutes each way, has only one small hill thing, and is very pretty. The plan is to ride to school at least 3 days a week, weather permitting. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are the easy class load days, so I'll try to ride then. Maybe do pilates or something on the other days. Getting in a bit of exercise should help me to keep my mind focused where it needs to be. Which is to say, not the stupid iBook.

I've got to go forth and find someplace to study that is not my house. I'm finding things to be far to distracting here at the moment.

Salvage rights

A few bits of clarification...

Clovis was one of my favorite historical figures when I was doing my under grad work. Gregory of Tours wrote about him, and I named a snail after him when I had the goldfish (named Odovacar, Theodoric, Boethius and Mo). The POiS iBook was called Heroditus, and my iPod is called Boethius. Now I have Clovis back. Someone rather more war-like seemed like a good plan to carry around to law classes.

Clovis is still running XP, but I'm purging him of all unnecessary MS products and replacing them with other things, so that the only thing I have to run that's MS is the actual operating system. I will probably partition the disk. Once I get up the nerve to do it anyway. I'm a bit terrified of messing with it at this point.

Someone, who is the best boyfriend in the world, was a huge help in the whole salvage and recovery of data of the POiS iBook. I called the poor guy in a bit of a panic and he got himself online and walked me through all fun and exciting alternative ways to start your mac (which of course I can never remember, and are included in all the useless online support materials I have no access to when the POiS is broken). He's getting very good at rescuing me, which I actually don't exactly mind, strange to say. I miss him though. He left for California on Monday. Getting home from school was strange, the house felt so empty, so expectant. Part of me keeps expecting him to walk back through the door and sit down and carry on as usual. It's amazing how quickly I got used to having him around. More than used to it actually...Though I suppose it make some sense given that I'd spent a total of 2 nights in my new place without him when he left.

A constructive posting

So, yesterday I read the following footnote in my property casebook:

The word constructive, a modifier familiar to all lawyers, will appear regularly in this and other courses. One could say that the word is a way of pretending that whatever word it modifies depicts a state of affairs that actually exists when actually it does not. The pretense is made whenever judges wish, usually for good but often undisclosed reasons, a slightly different reality than the one confronting them. One might call this reasoning by strict analogy: situation A is magically transformed into Situation B by incantation of the word constructive. Then the rule governing Situation B is applied to Situation A because the two situations are, after all, identical!

WTF?! I might as well stop reading this now, decide that looking at the text book is constructive reading, and take a nap. I wonder if this would work with my grade? "Yes, I know I blew the final, but that C is really a constructive A, so you see I still have a 4.0."

Anyway, I am feeling totally overwhelmed by homework. The POiS iBook finally died in a grand and catastrophic way on Wednesday, so I spent more of Wednesday night and Thursday freaking out about lack of a computer and my sad inability to pull my class notes off the iBook. The notes got salvaged, and I broke down and bought a new laptop, but it wasn't very much fun. Especially since I up and broke the first one I got last night when I tried to put Linux on it. It wouldn't book with Linux, so I tried to go back to XP, and it wouldn't boot after the recovery process either, so I had to take the thing back. Luckily, they exchanged it without any problem, but they were out stock on the same model so I ended up getting a different one that cost more and had fewer rebates. Grr. I really can't afford this thing, but at least it's functional and light and will get my through school. I've named it Clovis. Clovis is a Toshiba Satellite M55-S325 with a 100 gig hard drive (and a pretty blue case). So far I like it, except for the whole running XP issue, but with some luck I should be able to get it to dual boot so I can use Linux. I hope anyway. I'm a little afraid to try.

All of this computer drama has got me more tense and stressed than I need to be, even more broke, and seriously exhausted, but at least it's Friday. I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and spending at least some time this weekend knitting or maybe spinning. I want to go check out the LYS, which would be fun, but possibly less than a good idea given the wad o' cash I had to drop to get this laptop problem dealt with. We'll see. I might be able to resist more yarn purchases if I get my projects out so I can see all the fun stuff I should be working on.

How time flies

All is well out in Law School land. I continue to wonder how in the hell the bugs here got to be so big. Last night I came home to find that a giant praying mantis has taken hostile possession of my door, which wasn't very much fun but thank god C. lives right around the corner was able to come remove the squatter so I could go inside. Very bad.

I've discovered that I have really got to get over my totally insane San Francisco attitudes about parking spaces. Some butt-head in my complex keeps parking in my space, which is really that tragic as there are plenty of visitor spaces, but it irritates me on principal. These crazy Southerners have no idea what they are messing with here.

Anyhow, I have lots to post to about Law Boot Camp last week, and my first week of classes, but I have to get going and get to my Skills class in a few minutes. Night classes stink. Who thought that a class at 6:45 at night was a good idea? It wouldn't be so bad except that my other class on Tuesdays gets out at 12:40, leaving with plenty of time to do tons of reading and pass out at about 4. Not such a good thing really. I will find my stride though and get into some kind of a routine before too long.

Oh you have *got* to be kidding me

The paycheck saga carries on in typical French farce manner...

FedEx showed up, on time, and the package even got to my desk without incident, a minor miracle seeing as I don't actually work at this office, so the mail room had to be notified and some internal routing magic had to take place for the envelope to find me.

But, the paycheck didn't actually pay me for all the hours I worked. Nice. That'll get adjusted next week, but it's that much more bookkeeping I have to track on this end.

So I sprint off to the new, non-crappy bank, and am able to make a nice deposit, but they have to put a hold on the funds, since the check is from out of state and I've just funded the account, blagh balgh blagh. So no cash. The ATM card and checks should show up in "7 to 10 business days." Nice. Not actually that much worse than sending the fsking check to the old crappy bank, but still, annoying. At least they have a branch at home so I will be able to go in and get money the old fashioned and slow way, so I'm not totally screwed, just inconvenienced.

sigh.

When will the insanity stop?

Sushi cures all

I'm still feeling panicked, stressed and upset about this whole stupid paycheck problem, but I think I've found a work-around. I hope anyway. Since my old (crappy) bank hasn't got branches out here, I opened an account with a new (less crappy, we hope) bank here, but due to a wire-transfer fuck up it hasn't been funded yet. They have a branch office right around the corner from the office I am at this week, so with any luck I will be able to take my paycheck there once the FedEx guy shows up and deposit the check and get enough cash to get me through the weekend. Hopefully they will be speedy about getting me things like a check card so I can deposit the other checks that are on the way and buy my books next week.

Now if they would just approve my expense reports from last week I'd be in good shape. I can't wait to close this stupid old bank account. Having money and not being able to get to it is pretty much the worst thing ever.

Anyhow, last night my hot date for the evening took me for sushi in Manhattan. Yum. Just yum. Something about salmon nigiri makes me insanely happy. After dinner, we walked around midtown, and ended up at the Empire State Building, for which there was a huge line, so we said to hell with that and went and had beer and desert at a brewery, then walked back to the hotel. It was quite a nice evening out actually, and Times Square sucks way less at night than it does during the day. It's almost fun at night actually.

This morning I'm just trying to stay focused enough to get through the day. My really and truly Last Day at Work. It's a bit sad, in some ways, and I feel like I'm not so much leaving as just fading away, which is really kind of sad, but I'm moving on to bigger and better things. And with luck I'll be able to come back here and work in the legal department someday. Hopefully as an intern over the summer, which would be just about the best thing ever.

Tomorrow Someone and I are driving back down to Virginia. I'm really looking forward to this actually. Not so much the loading up of the car, but the driving part should be fun. I get to see two new states (New Jersey and Delaware), and spend 7 + hours in the car with my sweetie just existing. Somehow, that's very appealing.

Life goes nuts when I get back though, I have to figure out all this bank stuff, and get myself together for Monday. My sad PoiS iBook is going to have to see me through classes for the time being, I can't really afford to get a real laptop at this point, which totally sucks because it hasn't got any hope of having wireless. I've got way too used to wireless networking. So now I have to get in a war with the cable company, since the cable outlet in the office doesn't work and that means I have to either get them to fix it, or run some combination of cat-5 and coax upstairs from the cable outlet that does work, but which is in the living room. Should be fixable but it's annoying.

Secretly, I just want to go sit in Bryant Park with some nice tea and knit and write for the rest of the morning.

Because the world is *that* perverse...

My contracting agency is staffed by morons. They somehow heard “I need to talk to her before she leaves” as “No, don't pay her this week” and now I am not getting my regular direct deposit or the reimbursement for my travel last week, which I desperately need for stuff like rent and food, never mind books, until god only knows when a f*ing paper check shows up. What the hell?

In and of itself, this would not be so bad, except that my bank, which also sucks, hasn't got branches out here, so I can't deposit the manual check they are mailing me into the account from which several bills and automatic payments will be coming in the next few days. Damn it. Will this shit never end?

Between loan screw-ups, time-sheet approval screw ups, outstanding travel expenses amounting to more than a weeks pay, and all the crap I need to deal with in the next week, I am royally boned and more than a little cranky. No wonder I couldn't sleep last night.

Why these agency shits would be so astonished that I actually *need* to get paid on time and in the regular way is totally beyond me.

At least I get to see Someone tonight. That always helps somehow. Not that I expect him to solve my problems for me, but somehow it doesn't seem like anything can really hurt me when he's around. Maybe drive me a little nutty, but not really hurt me.

Oh well. I guess they are snail-mailing me my regular salary, which I can, admittedly, deposit into my new bank here, but I'm not sure what the hell I'm going to do about the outstanding stuff with the old bank. Now I just want to go home and cry though.

Giant killer bugs

Things I am stressed about

1. The last 3 days of this f*ing job
2. Student loan drama
3. Money in general (see item 2)
4. Buying books
5. First day of class
6. Brothers wedding and associated West Nile related drama
7. Not much else really

This is a bit of an improvement. #1 will be gone in a few days, #2 and #4 are getting worked out, #5 is will be over on the 15th then the 22nd, and will then be replaced by finals and homework and however many hundreds of case briefs I have to do, but once I get going I think it'll all be ok. #3 I think I am kind of stuck with for awhile, being a grad student and all. This is just going to be life for the next couple years so I had better get used to it. Or something. And I find it interesting that I am not really stressed about Someone moving away, at least at the moment.

#7 is a funny story. This morning I got in to work to find an email from my mother explaining that the wedding has to be moved because there has been an outbreak of West Nile virus at the site my brother and his fiance had reserved for the wedding. Great. So if they want to have the wedding there still, every single guest has to sign a release of liability stating that they will not sue should they contract West Nile while attending the wedding. Even better. I guess they are looking at alternate sites, which is good, but seeing as the wedding is on September 30th, this is not a good thing and causing some bit of stress for everyone, in addition to the usual impending wedding drama. Doom!

Anyhow, the weekend was quite nice. I am ashamed to admit it, but I didn't get any further from my house than the mailbox (which is about 20 feet from my front door) the whole time, and it was sort of nice. Friday I did a bit of running around and had dinner with Someones mom, E, and that was it for outside activities until Sunday evening when she picked me up so she could drop me at the airport this morning. Mostly I unpacked and sorted things and cleaned. All but 3 boxes have been eliminated, my office is in an almost functional state, my bedroom is still a bit scary but I need a dressing table and small bookshelf before that's going to get much better, and my living room and kitchen are looking quite nice. I'm just glad things are getting settled.

Saturday I found a huge, massive, disgusting spider in my living room. After doing the girl-with-spider hopping dance and squealing while begging the spider to "please just die, will you!", I attempted to squash it with my shoe, which failed miserably, so I tried to call Someone. Who was in New York. What in the hell I thought he would do about this while in New York is beyond me, but I was panicking. He didn't pick up, so I got out the vacuum and eventually managed to suck the spider up. Had it politely died in the vacuum all would have been well, but I did more squealing and hopping when I tried to empty the canister only to find a still-alive giant spider crawling around. Ick. The whole episode was pathetic but probably entertaining in a sit-com style way, and Someone eventually called back and had a grand time making fun of me, though I probably deserved that.

I hate spiders.

Sunday was less exciting, as far as huge disgusting bugs go, and I managed to sit down and spin for the better part of the afternoon. I now have 4 bobbins with little one once samples of nicely plied rare breed fiber on them, waiting for me to wind off into skeins when I get home. Hurray! The wheel survived the move quite nicely. I had to re-hang the wheel and adjust the alignment a bit, but aside from some oil that was all she needed to start humming along as usual. Spinning was quite satisfying. Of course I can;t remember when I was spinning exactly at the moment, but I did one one-ounce sample thing and plied 3 other bobbins of singles that had been sitting around for ages. I was ashamed to discover that I had no clue at all which way I had spun the singles though. My wheel will do either scotch tension or double drive, and I couldn't remember which was I had set up when I did those samples, which made it had to figure out the plying direction. I have no idea why I couldn't tell Z from S twist, but there it is. My spinning fu is in a woefully depleted state at the moment I suppose. The plied yarn seems to have some out ok so I think I figured it out, but I really need to focus on the technical aspect of spinning for awhile I think.

I even got to knit! I'm working on a bead-knit purse for my brothers fiance. With any luck at all I'll actually get the stupid thing done. My progress so far is rather shameful, but I have faith in my ability to get this thing done. It's going to be pretty. And not white. The thread is a sort of salmon color and the beads are a rich champagne. It's an odd combination, but very striking and will go well with her dress. Once I get going on these things they tend to go fast, so hopefully I'll maintain focus and get some work done on it over the next couple of days.

Lust!!!

Look at all the pretty shoes!

Serious shoe-lust issues. Damn this grad student lifestyle.

Somebody to lean on...

I am very much looking forward to a quiet weekend I can devote to fixing up my apartment and knitting. Maybe I can even sit at the spinning wheel for a bit and get her tuned up again after the move. A small bobbin full of some unusual fiber would be a very satisfying thing to hold in my hands at the end of the weekend.

I don't know about any one else, but I absolutely love these little one ounce samples of interesting fibers. I have gotten a lot of them from The Bellwether, in sampler kits that come with information sheets about the animal and the fiber. This makes me very happy. The little baggies full of fiber look very enticing, and learning about new animals and new fiber preparations is a lot of fun. Besides which, an once of fiber is just about the perfect amount to tune up your wheel and give you a sense of satisfaction and completion.

For some reason I've been having a really hard time in New York this week. Staving off major panic attacks is getting to be pretty difficult, especially when I'm stuck down in the subway waiting for a train. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's the sense that I should be at home working on my house, maybe it's the stress of uncertain student loan approvals and impending financial ruin, maybe it's fear and trepidation about starting school, or some combination of all these things, but it's been a really stressful week. I feel like I hate, really and truly loath, this city, but I don't think that's so. I think the city amplifies whatever you're feeling or trying to process, and since I'm stressed and a little anxious about the rest of my life, it's that much worse being here. Thank God Someone has been here. He's about the only thing keeping me grounded at the moment. I'm so afraid this stupid panic is going to drive him away though. Which doesn't help matters at all.

I had no doubts, but he got the job with my current/former employer, but they want him out in California. So he's leaving for the other side of the country in a few weeks. I'm happy for him, and proud of him, this is a great opportunity for him and he'll do well and be happy there, but I am not doing so well with the idea of him being so far away. I don't know how it's possible but I've grown used to him being close by, being there when I need someone to lean on, and for that to get taken away so quickly, well...it just sucks. The bitter part of me that is still angry with work wonders how much more I can give them, how much more will they take from me? But part of me is satisfied knowing that I have left one thing behind me there that will make some kind of lasting impression. It just happens to be the part of me I am least willing to give up.

Of course, I'm probably getting a little PMS'y too, so that's not helping. My coping mechanisms are pretty maxed out as it is, and never at their best when I'm dealing with that too.

The First Week (more or less)

Wednesday was hot and humid and fairly unpleasant, just like Tuesday, but we managed to get the rest of the truck unpacked after having a nice big breakfast at someplace called “Mama Steves” where Someone explained the finer points of grits making and consumption to Dad and I. Who knew grits were that complicated? After unloading all the boxes, and unpacking as many as we could, Dad and Someone took off with the rental truck to take all the sad empty boxes to a recycling center someplace out near Yorktown. Putting my boyfriend (and a fairly new one at that) and my father in the same truck, alone, for any length of time, was a bit scary but it went off quite well. They apparently had a grand old time looking for this dump place and driving around historic Yorktown. It's good when you father spends several hours alone with your boyfriend and no one comes back in an ice chest. That's all I have to say about that.

After Dad and Someone's little adventure, we all went and had dinner with Someone's mom. Quite a day for compressed relationship milestones, but it went quite well. We stopped at Lions Bridge on the way to her house to see the James River and all the Canadian Geese. Now the James is a serious river. There are a few points where you can't actually see the other side of it. Of course it was still impossibly hot and humid and the air was kind of hazy and misty, but it was a lovely spot. It would be a great place for a romantic picnic at sunset. But possibly not in the middle of the summer heat.



Thursday we went out to the Outer Banks in North Carolina and visited Kitty Hawk and had lunch at a really good Bavarian restaurant and brewery called the Weeping Radish. I will not be suffering for lack of good beer while I am here, that's for sure. The Outer Banks were really neat. It was warm, but not too hot and miserable, we got to see and stand in the Atlantic Ocean, and learned about drive through beer stores called Brew Thrus which I have to say is about the strangest thing I have ever heard of (except for the drive through margarita stands I am told exist in New Orleans).





We got back kind of late, but still had time for a quick trip to the local CostCo for food supplies and a stop at the grocery store, where we ran into Someone's mom, the only other person in the whole state that Dad and I actually knew. Kind of funny coincidence, but it was nice to see her and to meet her boyfriend.

Dad wanted to see Colonial Williamsburg (as did I), so Friday we went dresser shopping down in Newport News or Hampton or someplace that direction, had lunch with Someones mom, huffed the dresser back to my place, and went and walked around CW. Dad seemed quite impressed. It was kind of overcast and damp that day, but it was still a lot of fun to walk down DoG street (see, I'm going native already! DoG St. is how every one refers to Duke of Gloucester Street, the main drag in CW), look at the old buildings, talk to some of the people who work there, and just absorb the place. It's pretty neat. Sort of a Ren Faire version of colonial life in some ways, but it's informative and gives you a new appreciation for how hard it was to live back then. We even got to see them muster the local militia and shot off the canons. That was quite exciting.



After our colonial adventure we all packed ourselves up and Someones mom cooked up dinner. That woman can cook. It was a very nice evening, lots of good food, a little too much wine, and a really good time. The families get along frighteningly well. I'm not really sure what that means, or what I should do with it, but it's nice, and comfortable, and I'm not going to worry about it. Why worry about something that feels so amazingly right?

Dad had an early flight out of Richmond on Saturday, so we got up early and drove to the Waffle House, a chain of rather greasy little restaurants common most of the way between Texas and Virginia. Not the worst food ever, and they make good grits (who knew I would ever become a grit connoisseur, but there it is, I have gone native), and Dad really wanted to go there so we did.

After we dropped Dad off, Someone took me over to Short Pump. Strange, ill-considered name aside, this is a fun little place. There is a big shopping center/mall thing there, with an Apple Store (which Someone loves), so we wandered around a bit and once the shops opened I was able to find some really nice business slacks and a blouse for the first day of classes. We're having pictures taken or some crap and have to show up in proper business attire. Whatever. At least I have proper business attire now. The idea of wearing it in 98 degree heat with 90 percent humidity sounds like a crappy thing to me, but I only have to keep it on till noon or so. Supposedly. The pants are really wonderful. Black with pink pinstripes, very subtle, but enough to not be boring, and they make my ass look amazing so everyone was happy.

After shopping we met up with a couple of Someones friends for lunch and coffee and some general hanging out. It was a lot of fun. S and A are marvelous people with really adorable kids, and they are moving to Yorktown this week, which is right down the road so I hang out with S and the kids when school work starts to make me insane. Nothing like baby toys to get you over insane logic problem related stress.

We eventually got back in to Williamsburg, had a light dinner, and went to the Green Leafe (or just the Leafe) for beers with another of Someone's friends. H was amazing too. This guy really has some wonderful friends, I feel a lot better about being so far away from everyone I know at this point. They have all been so warm and welcoming and genuinely kind people, I'm pretty overwhelmed actually. I'm not sure what I find more comforting, knowing people here, or knowing that Someone cares enough about me to make sure that I have good people around me here. Either way, I'm feeling pretty good about all of this.

Anyhow, Sunday we slept late, finally, and had a fairly leisurely morning just hanging out at the house and watching movies and not doing much of anything. We eventually got ourselves motivated, and Someone took me to the long promised sushi restaurant. Hurray! I am not going to die for lack of sushi. There is good salmon sashimi to be had, and I am a happy kid. No toro on the menu, but I think with some exploring I can track it down someplace. After sushi, we went and met some other friends and former co-workers at a Mexican restaurant and had beers and hung out with them. Goes without saying that these were also wonderful, kind, warm, welcoming people, and one of them came just short of offering me a testing job should I decide that I want or need one.

Being back at work after all this is a bit depressing in some ways. I want to be at home, not holed up in a cold office working on a project I have almost no interest in at this point. At least I get to spend my evenings with Someone, before he gets sent out to California. Ironic thing, that. Here I meet this amazing person who is smart and talented and sweet and kind, do him a favor early on by sending his resume to my boss, and now it looks like he'll be getting a job offer from my current employer. But on the wrong coast. And in the mean time, we get more attached to each other, things fall into place like they were never out of place, our families hit it off, and now he might be making my move in reverse. I'm sad about this, of course, but oddly unconcerned. I'm going to miss him terribly, but we'll both be pretty wrapped up in our work for the next few months so maybe it's just as well we'll be on opposite ends of the country. It'll make the time we do have together that much more precious. And no one will have to watch the other person go insane. At least not all the time.

Besides, New York kind of sucks. It's hot, it smells bad, it makes me cranky and bitchy, and my feet hurt. I honestly don't understand how anyone can deal with the subway here every day. It smells like a sewer, and I come out of there feeling like I need to be decontaminated.

Finally home

Moving Day Four: The best way to fall in love with a place is to see it at sunrise. Sunrise over the Blue Ridge Mountains was beautiful. The sky turned every color of pearl the world has ever known. I watch it go from the dark purply grey of a black pearl to the warm golden shades of white pearls as we drove through my new home state, past places Someone had told me about and promised to take me someday, and somehow I knew I was finally home.



It took most of the morning to get through the mountains, but we got to Richmond, and someplace called “Short Pump” (I ask you, does no one think about what they name places these days? Please. First Toad Suck, now this) around 10 or so, and were in Williamsburg by 11. Dad and I ditched the truck, met my new land lady, got the quick tour of town, signed the lease, and started unpacking the truck.

I love my new house. It's spacious, has tons of closets, a nice little kitchen (sadly, electric, but I can live with that), a beautiful view over a field from my living room and bedroom window, and a laundry room and dishwasher. We walked in to the place, let the cat out, and it instantly felt like home. Even Maya, who wouldn't get out of her crate for love or money anywhere along the road (except the hotel in Oklahoma), took to the place as if she'd been there her whole life.



Dad and I started getting things unloaded from the truck, and then Someone got there to help, bearing cold water and Big Gulps. I've never been so happy to see a person in my life, and not just because of the cold water. He and Dad and I worked on unloading until we couldn't take the heat any more, but had got out all of the wine and the furniture and enough of the other stuff so we could make up beds for the night before giving up on unpacking for the day and taking the best showers of our lives.

Once we were all clean, Someone drove us to a BBQ place someplace in the area for dinner. That was good. I don't generally like pork, but that was some tasty pig, that was. Dad wanted to do as much “regional” food as we could, this seemed to fit that bill pretty well.

After we all gorged ourselves on tasty meat, we went back to my place, watched a movie, drank some wine, and passed out.

Gotta love the South

Moving Day Three: Sleeping in an actual stationary bed is a good and wonderful thing. Especially when that sleep comes after spending something like 36 hours on the road. Of course, I think I only slept for about 4 hours, between FTP related rage, Dad's snoring, and just generally being unfocused and distracted sleep wasn't working out well. Oh well. We had crappy coffee in the hotel for breakfast and were on our way again.

Oklahoma is a rather pretty state. The parts we drove through all seemed to look like well-manicured (if somewhat due for a mow) golf courses. I've never seen so much open grass and rolling hills in my life.



I fell asleep at some point and woke up in Arkansas. Not a bad state, as long as you don't actually stop anyway. The signage here was strange to say the very least, and we say every stereotypical type of southerner along the way. They actually have a place called “Toad Suck Regional Park.” Toad Suck? I'm not really sure I want to know how this places ended up getting called “Toad Suck” but there it is. We also saw a large number of billboards advertising adult book and video stores with convenient truck parking. I know that San Francisco is supposed to be some sort of den of iniquity, but I have never in my life seen a huge road-side billboard for a porn shop touting the stunning trucking parking and wide selection of titles available in a convenient road-side location. But there it is. So much for the Bible Belt I guess. When we finally got to this place, it was, I kid you not, a huge massive bright red barn by the side of the highway. Scary.



We finally got to the Mississippi River and Tennessee around rush-hour. The Memphis sky-line was beautiful. I'd like to visit Memphis someday, it seems like an interesting place. The architecture is interesting anyway.



Actually crossing the Mississippi was a huge mile-stone for some reason. Up to the point, even after we had more than half the distance behind us, I felt somehow as though I was still able to go back. Once I got over that river though, I had no way back. The other side felt very Other somehow. I don't know why I work things up in my head this way sometimes, but finally crossing that river made the whole idea of starting my life over seem very real. Plus it was the first real, large river I'd seen so far. I saw the Potomac when I was in junior high, but California has nothing in the way of rivers like the Mississippi or the Potomac or the James.



I have to admit that I slept through most of Tennessee. We stopped for dinner in a town near Dixon I think, and Dad had enough coffee and sugar to keep him going through the night. I have never seen him that wired actually. It reminded me of Beavis eating too much sugar and turning into Cornholio.

What I did see of the state was beautiful though. All tree, billboards for porn, rolling hills and eventually mountains. Not like the Sierras, but still mountains. Somewhere in the night, it became Tuesday and we ended up in Virginia.