I ♥ Sleep!

You know you're an adult when you keep a running countdown in your head to track the hours left before you can go to bed.

Ok, so maybe I used to count down to bedtime as a child too, but that was just because I was worried I wouldn't get through my stack of library books before my mom made me turn the light off.

Mmmm... sleep.... only 11 hours and 16 minutes to go!

Oh Canada

So unlike several fortunate cousins of mine, and practically half of my classmates, I am not enjoying/will not shortly enjoy being able to gallivant about Europe :( On the bright side, however, I am having a splendid vacay this week in a super swanky condo on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, with Mike and his parents.

(picture from the website of the unit we're staying in... it looks exactly like this)

In fact, from where I sit right now, I can see the Pacific Ocean... the beach seriously starts twenty feet from the back door.

The crazy part, though, is how close we came to not being here at all. First, there was the unfortunate combination of math errors, the lack of a map, and Chicago rush hour traffic that got us to the boarding gate at Midway right as they were announcing the last call for "Shaw, party of two" over the loudspeakers.

We got on the plane with seconds to spare, flew too and navigated through Seattle, and then stood in the longest line ever known to mankind at the Greyhound station, where we wolfed down our only real meal of the day (tacos from the shop next door) and watched a drunk homeless man get ejected from the women's rest room by a harried security guard.

(not the actual line at the Greyhound station, obviously... ours was much longer)

When the bus stopped at the border, we assumed the process would just involve a simple check to make sure we both had passports. Turns out Canadian border patrol officers are a bit more hardcore. We were grilled about our plans, and only cleared to enter the country with great trepidation - the officer was worried that we were indigents who would spend what little cash we had in Canada and then be stranded in the country and drain their welfare system dry. Two of the other people on our bus, both of whom had passports, were actually turned away. We certainly would have been if we weren't going to meet Mike's parents, who, as we assured the security guard, had a car and enough cash to fill it with gas and drive us back to the States.

The Greyhound dropped us off in Vancouver (beautiful city, by the way) where we had to navigate the bus and metro system with all of our luggage, making a series of connections that brought us 100 kilometers outside the city and took us several hours.

In the meantime, we befriended a British med-student/rock-climber, who desperately needed the twenty dollars of cash we had to be able to pay the airport security fee to get home (sort of sounds like a scam, I know, but we have his phone number and email address and talked with him for forever... he was legit). Then, penniless (well, we did have debit and credit cards and a Canadian nickle we found on the floor) we took a ferry over to Vancouver Island, where we were picked up by Mike's parents and got back to the condo at 1:30 in the morning. Which, Eastern Time, would have been 4:30 in the morning... which is impressive considering we had gotten up at 5:00 that day.

But we made it! And it's beautiful here! And although it may not be Europe, the people here do have cool accents, and I get to see a bunch of stuff on loan from the British Museum when we go down to Victoria tomorrow. Plus, I'm betting Europe doesn't have Nanaimo Bars...

Ill (or at least feeling guilty) over ILL

Normally, I hate to Interlibrary Loan (ILL). It's nothing against the books themselves... they're lovely. I just feel so guilty making the non-profit library spend several dollars of their limited budget on getting a book sent just for me, instead of being able to put that money towards buying new books that lots of people, including myself, could read.

This summer, however, I've had to ILL quite a few books for the professor I'm working for, and I started to feel more comfortable with it. When I discovered a book that I needed for the research I'm doing for him, and found out on WorldCat that there were a dozen libraries in the country that had a copy (as opposed to the book that was only owned by a single library in the Netherlands) I went ahead and ordered it. "I pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition," I thought to myself in self-justification. "Surely they can spare to spend $2.50 on shipping for a book that's likely to be a goldmine for my research project."

The day after I put in the ILL request for the book, I got an email from the school library saying that none of the other libraries in WorldCat actually had circulating copies. I was somewhat dissapointed, but figured there was nothing I could do about it, and decided to proceed with the project without it. Today, however, as I was running another search through the card catalog, I found out that this library owns the book I requested.

Feeling somewhat dumb and wondering why the librarian hadn't said anything, I went ahead and clicked on it... only to discover that it is still in processing, after having arrived yesterday. So forget about feeling bad about having the library spend three dollars on shipping for a book... I now have a major guilt complex for inspiring the acquisition of a new book, which had to have cost at least 30 pounds (I checked), plus a ridiculous shipping charge from Europe. The worst part is, the book's a 500 page volume, in French, on a narrow topic of European constitutional adjudication, so it's not like anyone besides me is ever going to read it. *sigh*

Ye Olden Days Lacketh Convenience

Ordinarily, I'm a big fan of all things medieval.  

In fact, I even got up the courage the other day to visit the medieval collections at the library here at Notre Dame - an entire floor of non-circulating books, many of them very old and most of them in Latin.  Unfortunately I couldn't stay long - I was worried that one of the Medieval Studies doctoral students studying there would suddenly yell something like "Hey, you can't be here... you're just a law student."  Plus, more rationally, I neeeded to hurry back to the law school so I could actually get some work done that day.  But I intend to go back, scary Ph.D. candidates and all.  It was too wonderful to stay away from long.

But this post isn't about the impressive medieval collection here, or my love for crumbling Latin texts written a thousand years ago.  It's about the medieval period I'm going through in my own life, and how much I dislike it.  Turns out, I couldn't have been happy in the Dark Ages.  Or even the 1980s (although, if you ask me, the decade of big hair and Prince was the real dark age).

Last weekend, one of our neighbors moved out of our apartment building.  Normally, we probably wouldn't have noticed, but this particular neighbor happened to be the only person around with un-password protected wireless internet.  We'd been mooching internet off him all year, and now it's gone.  Mike and I decided not to sign up for our own account at this point, because we are moving at the end of next month (to a "real" apartment, with a separate bedroom and living room and a kitchen that will have more than 18 inches of counterspace, even after we move the microwave in - so exciting!).

So now, anytime we want to look up a recipe for dinner, or check to see where a Facebook event is happening, or need to look through recent decisions by the Supreme Court of India (my task for work, of late) we have to pack up our computers and either walk 3 1/2 blocks to the grocery store, or make the 20 minute walk to the law school building (despite the added distance, the law school building is usually the more attractive option - it's quieter, and has sofas).  

I know I shouldn't be complaining, especially because we conveniently had free internet for the entire school year.  But still... I miss the twentyfirst century!!

*thump**thump**thump*

As I type this (and for the past several hours), a herd of elephants is parading about above me.  Ok, so maybe they might actually be roofers with nail guns, but the unpleasant effect on my sanity is the same.

In the good news, I'm not dead - just lazy.  I'm enjoying my new job, but working full time has left me with considerably less free time than I was envisioning for this summer.  Plus, the monstrous law review packet (which finally arrived) may not have taken up all my spare time, but it has done a pretty good job of ruining those free minutes with gnawing sensations of guilt.

I did finally see Benjamin Button.  I don't know why I'm so drawn to stories and movies that explore the brevity of life and the tragedy of mortality - I always end up in tears almost from the start.  It was pretty good, though.

And I just finished reading The Prophecy of the Stones.  Maybe it doesn't quite count for my literary accomplishment for the summer, but it was really good - and written by a 13 year old, to boot.  It makes me so old to realize that I'll never be a teenage author... or an Olympic gymnast... or tall.  That's probably the best part about being a kid - your life has infinite possibilities, and there doesn't seem to be any reason that you can't grow up to do and see and be everything you want.

Well, I need to go figure out what we're having for dinner.  I'm really in the mood for some cake, but it's much too hot in here to turn the oven on.  I might have to settle for some ice cream (we just bought a tub yesterday, so it should hopefully still be icicle-free, despite our evil freezer).

Summer!

After 2 semesters as a lowly first year student, I'm now officially a 2L.  Unfortunately, unlike levelling up in a video game, this hasn't appeared to give me any special powers or even made me aware of any previously-locked secret areas.  I guess that must not happen until you become a 3L...

My exams went alright(ish).  As mentioned earlier, I forgot about the First Amendment during my Con Law exam.  My Torts exam was so severely word limited that I couldn't really explore any nuances.  The exam I'm most worried about, though, is Property - I started getting a migraine half an hour before the exam, and even though I loaded up on Excedrin when I realized what was happening, I know the first third of the test was consequentially a probable disaster.  But enough about that... there's no point in obsessing now, considering that I won't get my grades for at least 3 weeks (some rumors have even suggested that they won't be in until late June!  I don't think my sanity is that patient). 

Almost as predictable as my impatience for my grades, the end of the semester has also filled me with grandiose plans for this summer:

1. Do the law review write on (of course, this goal might be a little bit easier to accomplish if they actually gave us the packets with our topic assignments - we were expecting them 62 hours ago).

2. Assuming I make law review, start working on research for a note topic

3. Travel (visit Utah, Chicago, Michigan City, the Amish, Canada, and hopefully D.C.)

4. On campus interviews

5.  Try to get a jump-start on coursework for semester

6. Move to a bigger apartment (meaning one that actually has a bedroom).  Furnish/decorate it adorably.  And keep it clean.

7. Write another novel.  Maybe actually let someone besides my mom read it this time.

8. Find a recipe for brownies from scratch that I like as much as the box kind (a surprisingly difficult struggle, to be honest... I've already been working on this one for several months)

9. Read something literary.  I'm not sure what yet... any suggestions?

10.  Watch all my DVDs with the French dubbing on, in a probably-too-late attempt to remember the language.

11.  Start hitting the gym again.  Law school killed all those good exercise habits I built up in grad school.

12.  Actually use the pool at our apartment complex, at least once

13.  Get caught up on movies and TV shows.  Especially want to see Benjamin Button.

14.  Write letters.  And actually mail them.

15.  Take pictures of me and Mike doing all these fun things.  Maybe even blog about it.

And, of course, (16.) work.  This summer is going to be epic.

Random Ramblings of an Exam-Fried Mind

I may be in the midst of the most grueling finals week of my life, but, hey, at least one week from today I'll be free!*

Although, truth be told, as demoralizing as exams are, there's a little part of me that kind of likes the insanity.  If only that little part of me would have chimed in to remind myself about the existence of the First Amendment during my Con Law exam this afternoon...

I had the first Gyro of my life today, and thought it was delicious.  Plus, an excellent excuse to get bakalava... mmmmmmhmmm! 

*Working on a twenty or thirty page paper and an exam on citation forms for the law review competition.