You are finite, Zathras is finite. This..... is wrong tool.




Sunday, February 28, 2010

Nathaniel did a lot of sleeping today, but I didn't take as much advantage of it as I should have. I did get a few of the cabinet pulls installed, but those I did while he was awake and watching me from the high chair. I feel tired like I did a lot, but really I didn't get much done today. I guess I'm tired because we went to the grocery store and then I ran to Menard's as well.






Apart from installing the half-dozen or so more of these that I need to put in, and the other child-proofing projects to figure out, I've got a few more things to do this week both around the house and legal. With luck, Nathaniel will let me get some more work done tomorrow and I'll be able to put on an audiobook to listen to while doing all of it. I'm going to start Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar, I think. I also need to start eating better; too much snacking while at home without a structure is going to lead to my weight starting to go back in the wrong direction. Especially if the current trend of not having time to get on the exercise bike continues.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Dim Sum

For lunch today, Nathaniel and I went to Mandarin Kitchen with Calder and Ivy for dim sum. It has been too long since I had a good dim sum and I was happy to get my fill of shumai, lobakai and all the other foods.

Nathaniel and Piper got to see each other again. Nathaniel was very interested to meet Piper, but she wasn't too impressed. I think she was a little overwhelmed with the noisy restaurant, and Calder told me she'd been having a rough day.





When Stephanie has some time off hopefully we'll all be able to get together a little more and relax. Relaxing is something that all of us, especially Stephanie needs to do. Everyone's been a bit keyed up lately, me for the bar, Stephanie for trying to let me study and getting everything ready for her grandparents anniversary, and all the other stuff that's been going on. The party for Oma and Opa is this Saturday, so hopefully things will settle down, even just a little, and we can rest a little bit more.F

Friday, February 26, 2010

Testing

Forgot to post something before I shut down my laptop tonight, so trying out a program on my iPod touch. Spent most of the day cleaning--I cleaned out the gross stuff that I spilled on the shelf in there a week ago as well as the ring from the months-forgotten pickle jar. Hopefully this level of productivity will continue for at least a little while into this year off.

Tomorrow lunch at Mandarin Kitchen. Been too long since dim sum. Looking forward to it.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Back in town


Back from the funeral in Cloquet. Funerals are odd things; there is so much talk before hand where people are forcing a degree of normalcy and humor and happiness to see each other, then a solemn and sad service where people cry, and then afterwards, for a few minutes the solemnity reigns, slowly ebbing away until a child or a younger adult ends up brushing away the last remnants with laughter at something or other. The sadness is still there, but people are able to move past it, at least while all together immediately afterward. I suppose that is the point of funerals.
This particular funeral brought up an assignment I did around fourth grade. I was interviewed my great-grandmother for it, and all this week I had been wondering whatever happened to that assignment. I had typed it on an old mac Powerbook that my dad had from work. Of course that computer was generations gone even when my dad left that employer, so I assumed it was lost unless I could find a hard copy in the stacks of old stuff that is (actually pretty nicely) filed in my parents' basement. When we arrived at the funeral home, though, relatives were looking over this very assignment and trying to figure out who had written it. It was odd to find it in such a way, but I am glad that despite my not being able to find it, someone was able to get a copy for the funeral. Funny how things work somehow.
Tomorrow is my first real day off, though, and I intend to do some cleaning up around the house. I've got a nice little honey-do list which undoubtedly will not-so-slowly grow to be much longer. Hopefully I can keep up with its growth!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Day two done.

Well, done with the bar. I felt a lot more confident last night than I do tonight, but oh well. Done and will find out how I did in April. April 15, supposedly. Not much that I can say right now; need to get ready for bed as I'm heading up to Cloquet for a funeral tomorrow morning.

Went to the Sweetwater after the exam to watch the USA v. El Salvador game. Pretty poor game, but I can't remember the last time I had 3.5 beers in a night (1/2 because I dropped one....) Good time to see everyone, and hopefully I will be able to be more involved in things this year.

Off to bed! Hopefully I won't be hung over tomorrow for the drive.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

One day down


Day one of the bar exam complete! One more to go. To the left is a picture of where I slept last night. If you look closely, you can see the desk where I did the majority of my bar studying. This is the spare bed we have in the large spare room upstairs in our house. I decided to sleep there last night in order to try to get a better night's sleep than I might with Nathaniel waking me up a couple of times. In the end, although I'm informed he was indeed up a number of times throughout the night, I had a poor night's sleep anyways. I had difficulty falling asleep in the first place, and then woke up two or three times having had bad dreams. Oh well, it was worth a try, and I think I'll sleep up there again tonight since he seems to be having a lot of pain from his incoming tooth. Hopefully I will sleep better tonight with the worry of the exam at least partially gone, and the ostensibly harder portion (or at least the portion about which I was more worried) is over.

So when I got home from the exam, I discovered that I had a package waiting for me on my front steps. I was confused by this as I hadn't been expecting anything, and only more confused when I discovered it was from Oppenheimer. Upon opening it, I found a little Bar Exam survival care package. I immediately ate a bag of M&Ms and stashed the rest for later eatings. Yum.

Monday, February 22, 2010

21 hours to go

The bar starts at 9:00 tomorrow. Registration up to two hours before that, requiring me to register, go into the secure area, set up ExamSoft and then. . . sit. For up to an hour and forty five minutes with nothing to do. I'm not allowed to have anything with me, not allowed to run anything other than SofTest, or anything. For 105 minutes. How cruel is that? Just make you sit there and stew in your nervousness for over an hour and a half. Seems to me that this rule can do nothing but actually hinder people's performance on the exam.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the need to protect the accuracy of the exam and prevent cheating, but this all seems a bit overboard to me. It's a law exam. How exactly am I going to benefit by having anything short of a huge sheet of crime elements with me? I really am at a loss as to how I could surreptitiously cheat on this exam. The whole security thing just seems a huge overreaction to me.
But then, so too does the actual exam in many ways.

So two and a half years of law school, seven weeks of studying culminate in a two-day exam beginning tomorrow. I can't wait for Wednesday evening when it's all over.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

New Blog - My Year Off


Setting up this blog to (hopefully) update regularly during my year off after law school and beginning firm life.

So far this year has consisted of studying for the bar exam, which I take in six days. As such, this blog won't really start until at least next Wednesday or Thursday.



Hope is that each day I can at least upload a photo. With luck, more.

But we all know it will be an update per week for about a month and then ignored.


I note that the Picasa Terms of Service provide:

Your Intellectual Property Rights
Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Picasa account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service.

So I hope that this is true, and will protect my rights, and will hope to be informed of any changes to that policy promptly.