No more Greg?

I just saw on the Today show that Greg - the yellow Wiggle - is leaving the Wiggles due to health problems. Here's the official press release. My nephew loves the Wiggles, and it's one of the few kids shows that I enjoyed watching with him. Let's face it, the Wiggles are fun, and Greg was the cute one! I know they replaced the guy on Blue's Clues a few years ago, and kids seemed okay with that, so I guess replacing Greg will be okay.

And in other news, NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) has ended at last, so I will be returning to my less regular posting schedule. Thanks to all of you for your comments. And I'll try to post more often in the future, although not every day.

Television

I admit it - I'm a TV junkie. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there isn't much worth watching these days. So, another list:

What I'm Watching

How I Met Your Mother - not as funny as Friends, but it definitely has it's moments.
Medium
Project Runway - although after Jeffrey won this last one, I may not watch anymore
Battlestar Galactica - I can't say enough how much I like this show
Re-runs of Buffy and Angel - I missed these shows the first time around
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report - I have a serious crush on Stephen Colbert.
I love when he makes himself laugh at his own cleverness.


What I Wish I had watched from the beginning:
Heroes - I guess I'll wait for the DVD, or summer reruns (if they show them in order)
Daybreak - This seems like a clever premise


Shows I wish I hadn't bothered with:
The Nine
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip


Shows I wish hadn't been cancelled already
Smith
this is why I didn't watch Heroes: I was sure it would be cancelled as soon as I started liking it. Go figure.

I'm sure some of you agree and disagree with me: post in comments!

Cost of Christmas

According to the Christmas Price Index, the cost of buying all of the gifts in the Twelve Days of Christmas carol is at a 22 year high: $18,920.56. The items with the largest increases are the pear tree and the labor cost of the dancers, etc. The website is really quite clever.

Christmas Season

This is my nephew's favorite time of year. Not because of the presents, but because of the Christmas lights everyone puts up. He loves to be driven around to look at all of the lights, and he keeps track of who has their lights up already, and who has the ones he likes the most. More people than I would have thought already have lights up, and it seems more and more people have elaborate displays in their yards: light up reindeer, those big snowglobes, trains, sleighs, etc., etc. When I was a kid we would drive around town one night to look at all of the lights, and sing carols along with a tape in the tape deck.

I love Netflix

I watched An Inconvenient Truth on DVD yesterday - I highly recommend it. Who knew Al Gore could be so interesting? I also finished the first disk of How I Met Your Mother - Season 1, which I also highly recommend, for different reasons. Each episode is only 20 minutes long, for one thing, so you can easily use it as a study break. Don't do what I did, which was watch 5 episodes at once. Are there really 10 minutes worth of commercials when it airs "live"? Unbelievable.

Mall Madness

I went to the mall with my mom this morning. It actually wasn't very crowded, which was nice. I bought some new headphones to connect to my laptop, in the hope that that will inspire me to chain myself to said laptop and work on my outlines. I did finally start yesterday, but honestly, you'd think I didn't have any finals at all with my work ethic. So now I'll try bribing myself with music.

Outlines

I'm starting my outlines today, for real. After I post to the blog, and check bloglines, and do a little shopping, of course. Seriously, what happened to my motivation? If you see it, send it back to me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. We're off to a friend's house for the big dinner.

22

Only 8 more days of the posting every day business.

Classes are over, so all that's left is the outlining. And the actual exams, of course. I have one more paper to edit for Law Review, and then that is over for the semester as well. Today I'm going to the bookstore with my nephew, and then we're having lunch downtown with my sister (his mom, of course). So homework will wait until this afternoon, I guess.

Jury Duty!

I received a summons for jury duty in superior court yesterday! The report date isn't until after finals, so I don't have to postpone it for that. A few weeks ago I got a summons for federal court jury duty that would have required me to be on call for all of December. I asked for that one to be postponed until after school and the bar, so now I have to report in August, 2007. That seems a little strange, but okay. I have actually served on a federal jury, back in 2001. It was the week after September 11, so security was very tight. The trial was 3 weeks long. Since we couldn't discuss the trial until it was over, we spent our time solving the airline security problem, etc. If only someone had asked us.

3L

Tomorrow is the last day of classes, and I have yet to start my outlines. I guess that's another thing that is different about third year - I know (or at least have some idea) how long it will take me to outline each class, and what I need to do for each one. They are all open book, for one thing, which changes how I do my outline. Rather than something to memorize, it is a reference to use during the exam. We get a whole reading week next week, so I know I'll have plenty of time. But part of me knows I should at least start this week, although maybe not today...

Favorite Books

I love books - I have for as long as I can remember. A highlight of the weekend when I was little was to go to the library on Sunday afternoon, and stock up on a big pile of books. I would then spend the afternoon reading, usually finishing at least one of them before the end of the day. I am still a fast reader, especially of fiction, which is a blessing and a curse. So today, I thought I would give a random list of some of my favorite books. Feel free to agree, disagree or add your own in the comments! So, in no particular order:

childhood books:
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Little House on the Prairie books (my mom read these aloud to us)
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeline L'Engle
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov (the first science fiction I read - I was in 5th grade)
The Dark is Rising series - Susan Cooper
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott


Other books:
The Day for Damnation series by David Gerrold (still waiting for book #6)
The Harry Potter books
Bellwether by Connie Willis (sheep, chaos theory and romance!)
The Doomsday Book - another Connie Willis (the best time travel book)
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer (not fiction, I know - so?)
The Amber series by Roger Zelazny (I would love to make the first one into a movie)
Beggars in Spain - Nancy Kress
The Foundation novels - Asimov (also the Robot ones)
Pride and Prejudice - Austen
Jane Eyre - Bronte
Memoirs of a Geisha

That's all off the top of my head right now...

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my nephew! I was there when he was born, and he's been a joy to me ever since. Today he's 4, and he's having his party here. 14 or so 4-year-olds with pizza and cake? Should be pretty fun!

Cookies!

My nephew is over her for the morning (he's almost 4) and we are going to bake pumpkin cookies - yum! Outlines? What outlines?

Last day of (some) classes

Today was the last day for two of my classes this semester. The only one left is my Monday class, which will meet next Monday and Tuesday, because Tuesday is a Monday. Like that's not too confusing for us. Anyway, we clapped for one professor, but not for the other - but I don't think that was because we didn't like him/her. I think it was because...no one started to clap. You need that one bellwether person to get it going, I think, and that person wasn't in our class.

Day 15

Well, it's day 15 of posting every day in November. And I'm out of material for today, so I'll just give you a link to a fun game: Subpoena Power.

Kid's say the funniest things

Today my nephew described one of the teachers at his preschool as "Mrs. Something-body else from the other-one class."

Mock Trial

Well, the trial is over, and it went pretty well. We actually won the case, which wasn't really the point, but fun nonetheless. We won a pretrial motion to exclude evidence, which was awesome. I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be, but I did learn that it's really important to know the hearsay objections like you know the alphabet - just automatic. Maybe that's just something that comes with more experience.

Law School Roundup

Thank you to Evan for the inclusion in the Weekly Law School Roundup. Some of the other entries are hilarious, so go check it out!

Trial Ad

Spent most of today working on the problem for basic trial. We get to make a motion to suppress some evidence based on what we think is a bad search, and we get to ask for the judge to take judicial notice of the fact that the moon was not out on the night in question. Cool, eh?

Mock Trial

I have my "mock" trial for my basic trial advocacy course on Monday. It'll be in the real courthouse, in front of a real judge. Too bad I don't feel more like a real lawyer. We get to work in pairs, which is good, but I'll still be very glad when it's over. We have the defense side of a criminal case - couldn't be further from what I intend to practice, but oh well. Anyone have any tips?

Out of material

This posting everyday business is harder than it looks - my life is not that interesting. Today all I have is the crazy lady talking loudly to herself on the bus (this is not the first time I've seen her). I'm afraid to tell her to hush because then she might think I want to talk to her, and I really don't. I think she's only partly crazy, because she does carry on conversations with people, but the rest of the time she just addresses the world at large. And then there's the little old guy who carries two satchels stuffed with papers - I've seen him several times on the bus. Are the papers a physical manifestation of his emotional baggage? I wonder.

What will they think of next?

I went to the dentist for a cleaning today, and I had this new kind of flouride treatment. They squirt what looks like hair mousse (you know, like for styling?) in your mouth, and you have to swish it around for what seems like forever but is supposedly only 4 minutes. What is that? When he said he was going to do a fluoride treatment, I thought "Great, with those stupid trays that make me gag." But no - no trays, just the gagging! Very strange. This is why I hate getting my teeth cleaned - there's always some new torture method.

Speaking of torture...I'm so glad the Dems won back at least the House, and I hope the Senate. Here in my state, I'm proud that we rejected the proposed amendment to ban gay marriage, and passed a hike in the minimum wage. Of course, we also passed some unnecessarily punitive statutes regarding illegal aliens, but I guess one step at a time.

Election Day!

I love election night - the endless speculating on the television, the results with 1% of precincts reporting, etc. I voted by mail, and I'm a little sorry I did. It's so fun to go to the precinct. I would have been pressed for time today, though, and we had a million propositions to vote on.

Where is everyone?

Where are all the panicked 1Ls and overburdened 2Ls? Did everyone stay home today? Seriously, the library is almost empty, and the people I do see are all 3Ls. Very strange.

Ethics

Yesterday after the MPRE several of us were standing around talking, and one of our professors came over to chat as well. He asked us why we were at school on such a nice Saturday, and we told him about the MPRE. This led to a discussion of ethics classes in general, and we tossed around some ideas for improving the way it's taught. One idea was to have small sections teach it - very small classes rather than large lectures. Another was proposed by the professor: have each professor in the core subjects teach part of the rules of professional responsiblity as well. He suggested that if the ethical issues were simply incorporated into hypotheticals regarding that subject, we might get a "real world" exposure to how the issues really arise in practice. He admitted the drawback was that the professors would have to talk to each other to be sure the coverage of the topic was complete. Personally, I liked my ethics class because it was so small (8 people) and because she let us watch movies. Summer school is the way to go, people!

Whatever

Well, the MPRE wasn't quite this bad, but it was not fun. At least it was only 2 hours. And we have to wait 5 weeks for the results, so by then I should have forgotten most of it.

I also managed to edit two note drafts for "my" writers (did I mention I'm a Student Note Editor). So now all I have for tomorrow is reading for classes, and preparing the whole mock trial for my basic trial class. Fun!

MPRE

Well, I guess I'm ready for the MPRE tomorrow. I have my pencils and admission ticket (with passport picture attached), so I don't think I need anything else. It's only 2 hours, so I don't need snacks. I'll be really glad when it's over. And I pass, of course.

Can you tell I'm trying to post every day? My life isn't very exciting, though, so I'll have to come up with a gimmick...

Spring Schedule

It's registration time again, and I know you are all wondering what I'll be taking for my final semester in law school. (Ha ha.) So here's what I registered for:

Antitrust
Family Law
Separation of Powers
Elder Law
The Supreme Court (1 week seminar)
Pretrial Litigation
plus Law Review.

You might notice the absence of Corporations/Business Orgs. I really intended to take that this semester, even though I don't purposely take bar classes. However, they decided to offer Bus Orgs on Wed/Thurs/Friday. Yes, Friday. So that was the defining thing. I've become accustomed to my long weekends, which I know will end as soon as I'm gainfully employed, and I wasn't about to give them up for a class I suspect strongly I will hate anyway. My schedule as it is now gives me Wednesday (except the evening) and Fridays free. I intend to enjoy that.

Also, it looks like a lot of classes, but two of them are only 2 credit, one day a week seminar-type classes. And I've promised myself I can drop any one of them if I wish.

So, any comments? Am I missing anything?

November!

I cannot believe it is already November. If time is going this fast for me now, what will it be like when I'm 80?

The MPRE is Saturday, and I feel about half-prepared. I just don't want to have to take it again, even if there isn't a penalty aside from the registration fee. And the personal humiliation.

I decided to take a stab at NaNoWriMo (I won't link because the site is seriously overloaded today), and so far I have 1792 words toward the 50,000. It's terrible, of course, but I really wanted to try to have the freedom to write whatever I felt like. It's fun going for quantity, not quality, and telling whatever story happens into your head at the time.