Inside the Kitty Fort

Forget the expensive cat toys and multi-story scratching posts. What Jenna loves more than anything else is an empty box left in the right spot. She gets inside and crouches down so that the only thing that sticks up over the sides of the box are the tips of her ears. Her eyes get all wild, like they do when she’s been hitting the catnip. She occasionally peeks up over the edge of the box, watching whatever is happening in the room intensely, as though waiting for her chance to pounce out of the box and hunt us all down, exercising her divine right to domination over the lesser life form of homo sapiens.

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me

Forgive my elitism, but a third year law student really ought to know that it’s not pronounced “kreem day la kreem”.

Crunch Time

As always, I’ve entered that state of pre-exam panic that robs me of my ability to do any actual work.

I have somewhere in the vicinity of 6000 pages of reading to review and/ or catch up on. I mean that quite literally. If anything, that’s an underestimation. I feel especially worried about Ethics and Mental Health Law because I don’t feel that we learned anything substantive in either course this semester and cannot begin to imagine what we’re going to write a three hour exam about. But I also worry about Commercial Transactions because there is so very much material and about Estates and Trusts because the professor has a reputation for being an extraordinarily hard grader.

Who is the idiot who let me register for seventeen credit hours, all of which culminate in an exam during the two week exam period? I should have looked for some classes with papers or in-class exams.

I am vaguely weirded out by the fact that this will be the last time I prepare for exams in the lead up to the Christmas holiday. I remember that the first winter I lived in Buffalo seemed to last forever because I didn’t have to squeeze tree decoration and shopping for presents and holiday parties in between reading and taking exams. How much stranger will it be after three years in the crucible of law school and law school exam writing?

Note to Professor Marx

If it’s supposed to be a “joke” and no one laughs, there’s a bit of a problem—and it’s not with the audience.

Thankful

... First and foremost, for my incredible circle of girlfriends. They are amazing women in their own right and I would be grateful for the good luck to call them my friends on that basis alone. But this year, I am especially thankful for them because they saved my life, perhaps literally. If not for their strength and love, I'm not sure how I would have made it through the first terrible weeks after Finbar left.

... For my health. Not having your health for a while makes you learn not to take it for granted. This is the healthiest I think I've been in a long time, paradoxically because of how devastated I was this summer. It forced me to take a good, hard grip on my physical health and it's paid off. I'm in terrific shape, I've lost a significant amount of weight (almost 25% of my initial weight!), and my asthma hasn't been this well under control ever. I've also gone almost two years without a bout of pneumonia, which feels like a minor miracle, especially after the horrible stretch where I got it three years in a row.

... For the opportunities I have. Not everyone gets to have the education they desire. Even though I will be in debt for the rest of my life to pay for this, I am still thankful that I've had the possibility to get this far.

... For my parents. They worry about the fact that they never had the money or the education of some of my peers' families, but I see many of my peers and classmates who are seriously messed up and unhappy because they never had the kind of love and support from their parents that I had. They put their own futures at risk to help me prepare for my own future. I hope that one day I will be able to repay that sacrifice.

... For new beginnings. And for one beginning in particular. I'm so very happy that our two planets have collided. He makes me laugh like a loon and smile so brightly that my friends say they'll have to tether me to the Earth or I'll float away soon.

... For the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, whether here in the US or elsewhere. I hope you all have as much to be thankful for as I.

The Deepest Bonds Transcend Space and Time

Weeks of anticipation left me too excited to sleep properly Thursday night. It was only a matter of hours until Luneray would finally be here. We hadn’t seen each other since she waved goodbye to me from a train station platform in Stockholm, tears in both of our eyes.

There are just some things in life that are right. Cities that feel like home when you step off the plane. Jobs that you seem to be able to perform intuitively. Our random assignment to share an apartment in Uppsala was one of those things. In the space of a few short weeks, Luneray became one of my closest friends. We spent night after night sitting in the kitchen of our apartment talking about everything and laughing ourselves silly, lulled by the midnight sun into a place where time seemed to stop and it was eternally 8 p.m., the day’s work done, a cup of hot tea on the table, relaxed and content in the warmth of the slanting sunlight. On several nights, the only thing that seemed to stop us from staying up all night was the sudden realization that, even though the sun hadn’t set, it was well past midnight.

Since leaving Sweden, we’ve been in constant touch via email and IM. She’s been there for me through this whole difficult summer and fall. I was dying to see her in person again. Professor Cameron earned my ire by rescheduling a cancelled class for the morning that I was supposed to pick her up from the airport. I had to show up for it, thanks to the wonderful law school attendance policy, but planned to stay only long enough to sign the attendance sheet or until half-way through class, whichever came last, and I got antsier and antsier as the minutes ticked by with no sign of the attendance sheet. Finally, I asked the girl next to me to sign my name if he remembered or was reminded of it (since Kim is in that class) at the last minute, and flew out the door.

The moment that I finally saw her coming toward me was... well, I cried. I’m sure I babbled like a madwoman the first twenty minutes or so. And as we drove to my apartment together, it just seemed right that she was there with me. We knitted and talked and went to the museum and ate and I introduced her to my friends and my cat loved her (more than me, apparently, since she came to Luneray when called and ignored me almost entirely) and oh, this visit was far too short and she lives far too far away.

I miss her already.

How Can This Possibly Be Effective?

I just spent the entire two hour immigration law class deleting spam comments from my blog in between taking notes on asylum. If my numbers are correct, I deleted 86 comments. Therefore, I am turning on the word verification feature. I believe anonymous comments will still work, though.

Who are the people who actually click on these links and then follow through with a purchase of whatever product they're selling? They wouldn't do this if it wasn't effective on some basic level, after all. You would have to be incredibly stupid to fall for their tactics.

She Should Be Glad We Don't Have A Playground Here

The law school attendance policy is a source of continual irritation to me for reasons I’ve already gotten into on other occasions, both on the blog and in person. Over the course of the semester, I’ve added another reason to the list: it gives Kim (who, by the way, is at this very moment squeezing a zit on her chin in the middle of class) one more way to be an annoying suck up. At least once a week, one of my professors “forgets” to pass the attendance sheet. Some of us suspect a minor rebellion against the policy—I’ve heard several professors complain about the policy. It seems they don’t like it any more than we do. If this happens in a class that Kim is in, she makes sure to raise her hand, always in the middle of a good discussion or a particularly interesting bit of lecture. The professor calls on her, thinking that she has a question, or is going to contribute to the discussion, and she whines something along the lines of “I didn’t get the attendance sheet. Can someone pass it over to me?”, as if she wasn’t fully aware that the attendance sheet hadn’t gone around at all.

It’s like the kid in elementary school who would raise his hand a half hour before the end of the school day to remind the teacher that you were supposed to have a spelling test that day and even the kids who’d studied and were ready for the test wanted to challenge that kid to meet them at the flagpole after school and beat him up.

Why on earth does she care so much about the stupid sign up sheet? It’s not like they compare the number of times you sign the sheets and the number of times you don’t; the only thing that matters is how many of the scheduled class meetings you miss. If the professor forgets to pass the sign up sheet, it’s like landing on Free Parking in Monopoly. Nothing bad happens, nothing good happens. For the people who are absent that day, it’s like landing on Free Parking when there are hotels on all the orange properties AND all the red properties: you dodge the proverbial bullet. Unless Kim is in your class, in which case, the banker just informed you that you miscounted and in fact, should have landed on Kentucky Avenue instead of Free Parking. More importantly, she destroys the flow of class when she does this. The discussion is always derailed and the professor loses his momentum in the lecture. It takes a few minutes to get things back up to speed again. If all she cared about was making sure that she signs the sheet and doesn’t get counted as absent, she could do what the rest of us do if the sheet doesn’t get to us during class: you walk down to the front after class and ask the professor to sign the sheet. No harm, no foul on any side. Oh, that’s right: if she did that, it would mean behaving like a normal human being instead of a slimy worm.

I'm Not Mean, I'm Just Right

So Professor Strap thought it would be a good idea to set up a series of "debates" (and here, we are using the term in the loosest possible way) in place of an actual lecture for our immigration law class this week. If we'd been given the topics in some organized fashion and given time and direction on preparation for these debates and NOT told that we shouldn't work too hard on it ("no more than one or two hours"), maybe this wouldn't have come across as a way to get him out of preparing a lecture for class. The topic I was assigned to debate together with War against an unnamed opponent was (and here I paraphrase to 1)properly phrase the question for debate, unlike the professor, and 2)remove the jargon for you non-legal people) "Resolved: That temporary student and visitor visas should be prohibited for all people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia". We were against this proposal.

War and I did some half-hearted research, found a bunch of statistics and numbers and quotes and such from such sources as the Department of Commerce, the National Academy of Science, and the Institute of International Education; we also found demographic information showing that immigrants from the region tend, on the whole, to be well-educated, with lower than average rates of criminality and higher than average rates of applications for citizenship and of home ownership. In other words, exactly the kind of immigrants that our laws do (and arguably, should) favor.

All of that went out the window in the first few moments of the debate when our opponent argued that John Locke's Heirarchy of Values showed that the goverment should do whatever it takes to guarantee the national security.

I'll wait just a moment for you to soak in all the things that are wrong with that sentence.

Have I ever mentioned how I was all into Speech and Debate in high school? And how the hallmark of my stint on the Mock Trial team was the fact that I literally made at least one witness per competition cry on the stand? (Hey, Hulio: "Jess was already an adult and therefore not subject to the curfew law, wasn't he?... Do you remember giving a deposition in this case?... Hmmmm, may I approach the witness, Your Honor? Thank you. Please read the second paragraph on page 3 of your deposition... Eighteen is bigger than seventeen, isn't it?... So, were you lying then, or are you lying now?" Or how about this classic: "Yes, this case is about values as fundamentally American as apple pie: the freedom to worship whatever god you believe in, in the manner you see fit... You gonna cry, private school boy? Huh? Are you?") Chica was going down.

I was all set to jump on the fact that John Locke is not only not the philosopher associated with the Heirarchy of Values-- a fact which would have been revealed by a thirty second visit to Google, together with the fact that Chica has no actual understanding of Maslow's philosophy-- but that the philosophies with which he is associated actually support our side of the argument. Had this been an actual, orderly debate in which each side got a set period of time to present their arguments followed by rebuttal, instead of the I-Think-I'm-Chris-Matthews-Free-For-All "debate" that Professor Strap was conducting, I would, in fact, have gotten to this point. But nooooooo, Chica had to follow up with this gem: "Since we're at war with two of those countries, we shouldn't be issuing visas to them anyway."

It was on.

I turned to War and gave her a look, then turned back to Chica and replied "Oh? Which two would that be?". Being the moron that she is, she didn't hear the warning bells ringing loudly. In the snottiest voice possible, she replied "Afghanistan and Iraq" and though she didn't actually add "Duh!" at the end, you could practically hear it. I raised my eyebrows and turned back to War, asking "Did you know about that? Because I must have missed that announcement. I was under the impression that Afghanistan is our ally in the War on Terror and that Iraq is also a friendly nation that we are helping to rebuild," making air quotes around that last phrase. Professor Strap jumped in and tried to stop me by commenting that "We're not here to discuss the war in Iraq", but I was having NONE OF IT and turned on him instead, letting him know in no uncertain terms that Chica opened the door to exactly THAT discussion and I wasn't about to cede the ground. In fact, War and I jumped up and down on that point for several minutes, pointing out that exposure to positive Western influences could only help in the "war to win hearts and minds", while punitive measures could only drive people into the arms of extremists of all sorts. After all, if you don't have the opportunity to get an education and improve your life that way, why would you turn down the opportunity to get ahead (though perhaps only in the afterlife) or at least fight for the chance to improve your children's lives via the only means available to you? The whole time, Professor Strap kept trying to stop us by insisting that we weren't there to debate the war in Iraq (and for the second time, I just had to go back and correct my original phrasing, in which I wrote "the war on Iraq", which should give you some indication as to how I feel about the subject.) and it took all the self-restraint I could muster to keep from yelling "Well, then maybe you shouldn't have written a question involving eliminating visas to citizens of IRAQ, you effing idiot!". He ended the debate shortly after.

Now, all pretext of civiility will be lifted. THe last three classes are going to make him sorry he ever set eyes on me and War. It's time to participate in class, my friends. And boy howdy, do I plan to be an active contributor to class discussions from now on.

Moron.

The Entire City Must Be Communist

I have spent the entire afternoon trying to find butternut squash. What kind of a city is this that they don't have butternut squash at the grocery store so close to Thanksgiving? And it's not like they're just out of stock. There weren't even any empty spaces where the butternut squash would go, if it had been in stock. Spaghetti squash, yes. Acorn squash, also yes-- but damn, it was expensive. Well, for squash, anyway.

I bought 6 medium sized acorn squash in the end, completely guessing on the quantity needed for fourteen or so people. I've never made acorn squash before, so I'm a little squeamish about this. But really, once you roast it and mash it up with a whole ton of butter, how can you go wrong? Right?

It's Really November Now

I could smell it in the air as I walked to my car last night around 7:30, that unmistakably crisp edge that you can almost taste. Then, I got up in the night last night to go to the bathroom and the wind was howling in a distinctly snowy kind of way. The first snowflakes of the season started falling as I was on my way to school this morning. They're still coming down at a decent pace, but nothing is accumulating just yet. It looks very pretty and feels very Thanksgiving-y, with all the piles of leaves along the side of the road and the occasional bright patch of leaves still clinging to the branches of the trees.

This is one of the few snowfalls I truly enjoy. As a rule, I think snow should be illegal. I hate winter. Hate. It. But the first snowfall of the year always feels... festive, I guess. I don't know why that's the word that came to mind, but it is. I am also in favor of snow during the week before and after Christmas. Other than that, forget it. It would be nice if snow in real life had more in common with the snow in a snowglobe: always white and fluffy, not slippery, never causes people to drive like drunken baboons.

Still, the snow is just in time to set the mood for Fakesgiving this weekend. I'm going to try my hand at making cranberry sauce from scratch and maybe whipped butternut squash. I want to make something yummy, but traditional. Stuffing and mashed potatoes are already being taken care of by someone else. There is always the allergy issue to think about, especially since I'm always afraid that people will think I'm attention seeking or something. I hate having to ask to read bread wrappers and cracker boxes and "Are there any nuts in the cake?". Hate. It. If I could have one wish, it would be to get rid of my food allergies. Well, actually it would be for a billion dollars, but if I can't have the moolah, I'd want to be able to eat rice and nuts again.

Let the Joyous News Be Spread

The tunnel connecting my street to the very large bus depot on the other side of the train tracks is finally open! Months of waiting in hot anticipation, watching the tunnel be built and painted and lighted, then week after week of watching the seemingly completed tunnel taunt me with a chain link fence and a "TUNNEL CLOSED" sign, and now the tunnel is finally open! I can't wait to use it tomorrow.

Things I Bet You Never Knew

According to the speaker on Lawyers and Substance Abuse, if you claim to drink alcoholic beverages of any description because you like the taste, you are LYING and need to “get honest with yourself about why you consume alcohol”.

It Will Take More Than An Apple a Day

PBS is running a very interesting series on global public health and the rise of “superbugs”, and I’ve caught a couple of segments. It’s both incredibly interesting and very frightening. We all know that you shouldn’t stop taking antibiotics before the end of the course. We also know that you shouldn’t take antibiotics for a viral infection. Yet we don’t worry about adding Triclosan to everything from toothpaste to hand soap to dish detergent. We don’t get fussed about demanding the latest and greatest powerhouse antibiotics when we get sick and doctors with closets full of samples from the pharmaceutical companies and too little time per patient to reason things out with them just hand the drugs over, even though it’s entirely possible that good ol’ penicillin or erythromycin would do the job just fine. And so we all contribute in some small way to the growing problem

The debate over pharmaceutical companies and the prescription drug market in the United States flares up around election time, is hotly debated for hours on CNN and MSNBC while FOX News runs segments on how the pharmaceutical industry is a driving force behind the “booming” American economy, aaaaand then it fizzles out and goes away. But the detrimental effects of the current paradigm for development and distribution of prescription drugs go beyond the astronomical prices for those drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are, as a general rule, no longer developing antibiotics. Not because there’s no need for new antibiotics, but because they are not profitable enough.

I can hear the voices now: “What are you, a communist? You can’t expect a company to do things that aren’t profitable! I mean, if they had to do that, they’d go out of business and you wouldn’t have ANY drugs, so how would you like that, Miss Socialist?” But I say that companies ought to have a certain level of social obligation. We often require companies to do things that aren’t profitable or that eat into profits for the greater good-- for example, restrictions on emissions for factories or requirements for certain types of safety equipment on cars. Why shouldn’t pharmaceutical companies be required to devote a certain percentage of their R & D budget to development of drugs for the public good? And to be perfectly frank, I also favor caps on the prices of drugs as well as corresponding caps on salaries for the top echelon at pharmaceutical companies. (Actually, I’m also in favor of similar measures for all industries. There is no reason on earth why any company should pay its executives millions, then complain that they can’t turn a profit and have to slash the salaries of their workers on the ground or declare bankruptcy. Lest you think I’m picking on the pharmaceutical industry, rest assured that my righteous anger/ Robin Hood complex extends far and wide.) I know, I know... I’m just a commie pinko. Still. I ask you: when the next big epidemic hits, be it caused by bioterrorism or just the normal natural cycle of disease outbreaks, and we discover that Cipro doesn’t cut it any more, don’t you think the public will be screaming in disbelieving rage that you can’t just pop a pill and get better?

Case in point: every one of us has had to go for a TB test at least once in our lives. I know that I’ve had many of them, given my globe trotting habits and my insistence on continuing to attend public school in between trips, and yet I never really thought it was any big deal. A quick jab in the arm and a week of comparing the little bumps to the pre-printed card, then a phone call to the nurse at the doctor’s office to confirm that the bumps didn’t match the ones in box 7 or box 8. And I remember reading about how people with tuberculosis used to be sent to a sanitarium to prevent the spread of the terrible disease, and how these sanitariums had become a relic of the past with the advent of antibiotic treatments. In fact, I had the vague idea that tuberculosis was kind of like polio: something horrible that happened to my grandparents or maybe my parents, but could never happen to me, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine.

So what would happen if I met with a client next year who came in with a racking cough... you know, the way half the public walks around in January and February... and we spend a few hours looking at documents for the immigration service, bent low over a shared table, breathing the same air... soon after, I wake up feeling under the weather and suffering from a raspy, hacking cough... that won’t go away, even after massive doses of Robutussin... so I go to the doctor’s office, where I sit in the waiting room, hacking away and feeling miserable... and it turns out that I’ve contracted multi drug resistant tuberculosis from that client. Contracting regular tuberculosis would have been bad enough—the standard treatment is a six to nine month course of antibiotics, which may or may not be covered by my health insurance and might cause major side effects, especially given the fact that I’ve already had allergic reactions to at least two antibiotics in the past. MDR tuberculosis is a whole different circle of hell. I am now facing a very uncertain future, including ever-increasing courses of antibiotics with higher and higher levels of toxicity, possibly even requiring treatment with experimental drugs. And there is always the possibility that this particular strain of tuberculosis will not respond to any of the drugs available, approved or experimental, and then I am facing a slow, wasting death.

And so are a lot of other people who I’ve come into contact with, from the other clients who’ve been in for a consultation, to my family and friends, to the woman in line in front of me at the supermarket when I stopped by to replenish my stock of Kleenex and Robutussin, to the neighbor I spoke to at length in the stairwell, to the child who sat next to me on the hour long bus ride to work, to the other patients waiting for the doctor to see them, to the nurse who took my blood pressure and temperature, to the people riding in the elevator with me... One of the reasons tuberculosis was so feared is the ease with which it is transmitted from one person to another. Think of all the people that you come into contact with in an ordinary day. Suddenly, drug resistant tuberculosis isn’t a Third World problem anymore.

One of the reasons The Stand is so frightening is that, at least in its first half, it’s not actually far-fetched at all. Captain Trips probably does, in fact, exist. And even if it wasn’t created by the military, it’s entirely possible that it could have entirely natural origins. We have been lulled into a false sense of security by the seeming ease with which modern medicine handles so many of the diseases that used to spell certain death for millions. Bacteria and viruses are far older and in many ways more ingenious than we humans could ever hope to be. Yesterday, it was smallpox; tomorrow, perhaps Bird Flu or something else terrible and unimaginable. Rather than cowering in fear and wallowing in sensationalized news reporting, we should be marshalling all of our resources to prepare the best possible arsenal for our defense. Instead, we’re fighting over flu shots and worrying about shareholder profits.

Begging For the Sweet Release of Death

Another Tuesday, another mind-numbing Mental Health Law class. I feel a little guilty thinking this today because instead of a regular lecture, today we have student presentations. Obviously, everyone had to put work into the preparation of their presentations and we all know how scary it can be to stand up in front of a group of people to speak. But it’s incredibly boring to sit here and listen to presentation after presentation. I’ve caught myself grinding my teeth and I could gladly put my head down on the desk and go right to sleep, even though I had plenty of good sleep last night. I cannot wait to go to the gym tonight and burn off this frustration.

I Love Riding the Bus

On my way in to Our Law School today, I sat near the front of the bus. The seat was at just the right angle to see the bus driver's face in his rearview mirror. Idly glancing up at one point, I watched in fascination as he used his tongue to slip his dentures in and out of his mouth, much like a bored student might click his ballpoint pen or drum his fingers on the desk without really being aware of it.

Happy

Well, there was no reading in the sunshine with a bottle of wine and the Certain Member, and although we went to the park, it was for a lovely nighttime walk. And we did have coffee and pastries in the sunshine. Really, I wanted to completely blow off school and other responsibilities and spend the whole weekend with him, talking about Gott und die Welt and maybe smooching a little (a lot), too. Stupid grown-up obligations...

I had really been dreading dating again, but now I'm not sure why. This is fun. I'm enjoying getting to know the Certain Member better and he makes me feel like the most beautiful and interesting woman. It's been a long time since I felt like that. It's amazing. He's amazing.

Tipping Point

It's that point in the semester where people are starting to shift into Hyper Law Student Mode. 1Ls are especially vulnerable to this illness and large groups of them can be found frantically paging through their copies of the Blue Book and quizzing each other on promissory estoppel. By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, the tension in the library will be thick and oppressive. Feng sui is not nearly enough to counteract that kind of mojo.

It's hard not to get sucked into that whirling vortex of despair and stress, especially as a 1L when you're a)facing the unknown and b)most likely in a city where you have no contacts outside of law school. The second part is the most important. Having only law school friends means that many-- or in some cases, all-- of your conversations center around the latest torts reading or the fearful first open research memo. It's not healthy.

Not that this is limited to 1Ls by any means. 2Ls are either trying to recover from the stresses and disappointments of OCI or they're stressed out about finding a summer job on their own. 3Ls are similarly stressed about finding permanent employment. This semester's grades are the last ones that really count for most of us, since the transcripts we'll be shopping to employers along with our resumes all Spring semester will show those grades. Therefore, you still have to keep your game face on.

All of this means that people are starting to get possessive about study carrels and cranky about other people talking in the library. More and more people are riding that ragged edge with the result that the "Straw-Camel Snap" is becoming more and more common. Even people you would never suspect are susceptible. A girl that I associate with the most vivacious, contagious laugh like cold water bubbling out of a mountain spring on a hot summer day was shooting homicidal laser beams from her eyes yesterday.

The only cure for this is... well, there is no cure. It can, however, be treated with large doses of alcohol and meaningless conversation in which the phrase "res ipsa loquitur" never once pops up. Sunshine and unseasonably warm days are also helpful, especially if you don't insist on staying in the library to study. The great part about books is that they are portable, y'all! There is nothing more that I would like right now than to combine those things and sit in the sunshine under a tree somewhere, drinking a lovely red wine while reading whatever crap is on the agenda for Business Organizations with a certain member of the class. Maybe tomorrow...

Disturbing Commercials, Part 1

Why would a mini-van type car be targeted at ricers? The car goes through a series of conversions involving tiny tires and odd colored flames at an incredibly fast pace, making it look like the car is exploding and imploding. I have no idea what car is is supposed to be because they never actually tell you. What a strange commercial.

Hooray!

Mental Health Law (a.k.a. The Worst Class Offered at Our Law School) is cancelled for today! That makes me want to boogie down right in the middle of the student lounge.