Despite the fact that I had no warm feelings about Christmas at all this year, I did celebrate Christmas — three times! — with various members of my family. I don’t really think law school is wholly to blame for my bah-humbug-iness this year, but I’m sure it played a part. Anyway, it was bad. Really bad. Not only did I not put up a tree this year, I didn’t get out any Christmas decorations. At all. None. My poor, traumatized child. I fully expect that when she grows up and has kids of her own, her house at Christmastime will look something like this:
Except she’ll remaster the soundtrack to replace “Mr. Grinch” with “Momma Grinch” and she’ll have a plastic me in the yard instead of the Grinch in that video.
Anyway.
So I did cook, and it was pretty delicious, so I thought I’d share. Ninja Pops was here for a few days and I cooked a pot roast and mashed potatoes. Yep, that’s it. Meat and potatoes. What?
Newcastle Pot Roast
adapted slightly from Cooking Light
2 T butter
2 pounds sliced onion
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
cooking spray
5 lb roast (I used two chuck roasts, 2-1/2 lbs each)
salt & pepper
1-1/2 to 2 cups beef broth
1 T fresh thyme leaves
12 oz dark beer (Newcastle)
3 T cornstarch
First, you melt the butter in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.
Then, you put the chopped onions and garlic into the pot and sauté for about 12 minutes.
After that, you turn the heat down to medium-low and cook for about 40 minutes or until the onions and garlic are sortof carmelized. Remove the onions from heat and transfer to a bowl. Preheat your oven to 300°.
Next, season the roast with salt and pepper on both sides.
Then spray cooking spray on the bottom of the Dutch oven and turn the heat up to medium-high again. Brown the roast for about 5 minutes on each side.
Assemble your remaining ingredients: beer, broth, onion mixture, and thyme leaves. Add them to the pot with the roast.
Bring this to a simmer, then cover and bake at 300° for 2 hours, turning the meat over after 1 hour.
When the roast is finished baking, remove it from the pan. Over medium-high heat, add the cornstarch to the pot and stir constantly until boiling for 1 minute. Then serve over the roast.
And here’s the finished product:
Okay actually that looks kinda gross or something. Let’s try again:
Hmmm. Not much of an improvement. Maybe a shot from farther away?
That’s a little better. Anyway, regardless of how it looks on camera, it was delicious.
Trust.
Oh, and here are my best mashed potatoes of all time.
And when I say “best mashed potatoes of all time,” I do actually mean “best mashed potatoes of all time.”
I have lots of pet peeves. Truckloads of them. Some of them are reasonable, some of them aren’t, although I’m fairly well attached to all of them. My newest one is this oh-so-typical conversation, which I’ve had approximately 8342 times already since the semester’s been over:
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: So, how’s law school?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you like it, though?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Well, how were finals? Do you think you did well?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: When will you get your grades back?
ME: Um, I don’t know.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you know what kind of law you want to practice?
ME: Whichever kind somebody will pay me to do, I suppose.
Okay, so maybe it’s a little unfair to label this as a pet peeve. It’s not every person in the world’s fault that I’ve grown weary of answering (or not answering, to be more accurate) these questions. The thing is, there’s really no way to properly answer them. Either you lie…
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: So, how’s law school?
LIAR ME: It’s fantastic! I love it so much I get up every morning at 5:30 just bursting with pride and joy. I even sleep with my casebooks!
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you like it, though?
LIAR ME: See above. Also, if I could just win the lottery, I’d choose to be a law student fo-evah.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Well, how were finals? Do you think you did well?
LIAR ME: Oh, finals were so much fun! Like seriously, I studied all throughout the semester and I took copious, relevant notes during classtime, plus I developed the most kickass outlines of all time. So, yes, I think I did really well. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna ace this thing. It was so awesome to get to put all my good knowledge to work!
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: When will you get your grades back?
LIAR ME: Well, actually, my professors have already graded all my exams and emailed the results to me privately. But shhh! I’m not supposed to tell anybody because everyone else is waiting impatiently for their grades. I got all A++++++’s!
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you know what kind of law you want to practice?
LIAR ME: Oh, definitely. I mean, I’m not really in it for the money. I just want to help people. That’s what it’s all about. So probably I’ll just concentrate on pro bono work for the homeless midget population.
… or you sound like a whiny emo whiner.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: So, how’s law school?
WHINY EMO ME: Oh. My. Gawd. It’s so so horrible. I hate its guts. Every morning I wake up and I wish I had the swine flu so I didn’t have to go to class. I can’t even find my casebooks.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you like it, though?
WHINY EMO ME: Are you kidding me? Let me try to think of something remotely similar in terms of brutal torture and sheer horror… Well, I got nothin. It takes too much energy and law school has consumed all my energy.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Well, how were finals? Do you think you did well?
WHINY EMO ME: Well? By “well” do you mean something better than the lowest grade in the class? Because I think *maybe* there’s one person who could’ve scored lower than I did, and that’s because he just didn’t show up for exams at all. Exams were horrible. Four hours in a cold room with a computer screen and an empty brain. I bombed. I’m flunking out of law school.
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: When will you get your grades back?
WHINY EMO ME: Never, I hope. I’ve heard they send grades out in descending order, so every day that goes by without grades is just another nail in my job-finding coffin. *deep sigh*
EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD: Do you know what kind of law you want to practice?
WHINY EMO ME: I’m not even so sure I want to practice law. Assuming that I flunk out of law school this semester, I’m just gonna find some menial job in some boring cubicle somewhere and shuffle papers. Or perhaps a career in retail sales at the mall.
You see, neither of those approaches is really a winner. So I just stick with the standard, “Um, I don’t know.” Eventually they stop asking questions. Anyway, it’s kinda pointless to try to talk about law school with people who have never been to/aren’t currently in law school. It’s just impossible to understand.
So, people-of-the-world-who-aren’t-in-law-school-currently-and-have-never-been, a word of friendly advice: If you start asking your local law student friend/relative/acquaintance questions about law school and you start getting a lot of this look…
… save your local law student the trouble of having to try to figure out the appropriate answers to those questions. I have all the answers right here. And my fellow law students, feel free to refer your friendly inquiring relatives/friends/acquaintances here for the answers they seek. They mean well, so don’t be rude.
Law school is law school. Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes it sucks. It’s just varying degrees of suckage. I don’t know that it’s ever particularly pleasant, except on those days when certain people get what’s coming to them. Those days are satisfying.
Obviously I like law school to some degree; I haven’t dropped out yet. If I hated its guts for real, I wouldn’t waste my time. “Like” is probably not the best choice of words, but I’ll say this: It’s definitely challenging, and I like challenges. Sometimes it’s interesting and sometimes it’s not, but overall the experience has been more positive than negative.
Exams are hard. Some are harder than others, but they’re all hard. I have no idea how I did. And really, how well I think I may have done on the exams is completely irrelevant. It’s all up to the professor and the other students in my section. So, no, I have no clue, and in fact I’d kinda like to maintain my blockade of those thoughts.
Grades will come out sometime within the next several weeks. I don’t know when that will be. I refuse to sit at my laptop hitting the F12 button every few minutes in anticipation, although the urge to do that is sometimes very strong. Please, please don’t remind me that I haven’t checked for grades in a few hours.
Honestly, I don’t have any idea what kind of law I want to practice. After one whole semester in law school, I can say with full confidence that I don’t want to draft contracts for a living. Although I will do just that, if it’s the best job I can find.
So I haven’t posted in like two weeks. Terribly sorry. I really haven’t even been all that busy, although I’m supposed to have been busy this whole time. My motivation has flown out the window and I’ve been waiting for it to come back.
Okay, okay, I cannot tell a lie. The truth is, I bought Parasailin’s new book, Glowing Rouge, and I just couldn’t put it down. Such wordsmithery! Such esoteric writing! Such depth of knowledge! Such… such…
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Just kidding, you guys. I’ve just had a severe case of the lethargies.
Today I’m not going to complain about how horrible law school is because really it’s not so bad right now. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve had a lot of canceled classes (Contracts for almost a whole week, Legal Practice for almost two whole weeks because of individual writing conferences, Torts for one day) so my life hasn’t been as hectic as probably most other law students’ lives have been.
Ninja Kid did have a birthday and Ninja Pops (that’s my dad) was in town for that weekend, so that was fun. I can’t believe my little tiny baby ninja will be a teen-ninja next year. Zoinks!
Anyway, I think that late last night I may have found something that resembles my motivation. I did start my CivPro and Contracts outlines. I haven’t started one for Torts and I’m thinking that I may not do one at all. We can’t take anything in the exam so I’m thinking that just doing a bunch of hypos in the E&E and reviewing notes might be sufficient. Also, I bought the Acing Torts and Acing Civil Procedure books. I can tell I’m going to like them because they’re done with more of a list concept, which appeals to me on all sorts of OCD levels.
Aaaaaand, what I’m most excited about is that I may — MAY — have a lead on a paying summer job with a local family law attorney here. But ssshhhhhh — at this point it’s all very, very preliminary.
So, just wanted to touch base with you guys and let you know I’m not dead and I haven’t dropped out of law school yet. I promise to do better with posting. Guess I just needed a little coma time.
It’s a milestone kind of day here at Chez Ninja. This is my 100th post! Hard to believe. So, to celebrate, I’m completing a half-finished post from a long time ago while watching Get Smart with Ninja Kid and eating tons of leftover Halloween candy. Hey, don’t hate me cuz I know how to par-tay.
So we have about five weeks until exams. Five weeks! That’s 18 classes. Almost time for this:
We started some study group work on Saturday morning and I think it was helpful. We just worked on Torts and we went through some of the hypos in the E&E and answered them as a group. I haven’t really started doing any outlines yet and I guess it’s time to get that underway. I think I said that a couple of weeks ago here, and somehow I’m not any farther along now than I was then. I blame the open memo from hell.
How much fun is this PicApp thingy? Oodles, that’s how much.
Okay. So I’m realizing that there are some things I don’t know (shocking!). For example, will the world come to an end in December of 2012, absolving me once and for all of my law school debt? Hey, I strive to look for the silver lining. Half full, baby.
Ha ha ha.
No, really. I do have some questions.
1. How can you tell the difference between dicta and reasoning in an opinion, and is this really important? It all seems like reasoning to me, like the judge is just building a case and then making a decision. I didn’t think this was a huge deal until I watched the 2L/3L Moot Court final round and there was all this debate about the nature of a judge’s comments in a previous case. The justices were arguing that it was persuasive precedent, but the appellants were arguing that those comments were just dicta. I mean, I know what dicta is, as far as the definition, but to me it just blends in with the reasoning. Discuss.
2. The tutors keep telling us to mark up our FRCP book and our UCC/Contracts Restatement book, since those are the only things we can take into the final. (For Torts all we can take is a pencil or a computer, no books at all.) What does this mean? What am I supposed to be writing in said books? I mean besides copying my outline onto the blank pages at the back.
3. Is it normal that I’m still completely lost in Contracts? He lost me right after promissory estoppel and we’ve never gotten back on the same wavelength. Will I have a eureka moment for this class like I did for CivPro? Surely I will, right? Shirley. Anytime now, I’m ready.
Also, I’m going to start Getting to Maybe this week in my spare time. Haaa. After exams, I’ll do a book review. Don’t let me forget.
Last week in Contracts we had a practice exam over the Statute of Frauds. Prof. K told us from the get-go that we’d probably all fail it but that he’d spend a few days the next week (this week) going over the proper way to take one of his exams.
So one of the deals is that if you choose to type the exam, you’re on a word limit. Or, you can write on the lined paper he provides and you’re limited to that space. He prefers the written exam so I’m sure that’s what most people will do. The point is that he doesn’t want to grade a bunch of BS. He just wants to know if you know something about Contracts. Me likey.
Anyway, today he spent a long time talking about how to look for cues in the question. For example, if the question says that a contract has already been formed, you don’t need to discuss offer, acceptance, and consideration. Makes sense, right?
Then, in a classic Prof. K moment, he turns to the chalkboard, says, “You all are familiar with IRAC, right?” and writes:
Issue Rule Analysis Qonclusion
“Whatever you do, do not go to IRAQ in your answer. I do not want to see that in your answer. If you do, you will find yourself caught in a bloody morass that you’ll have a heck of a time getting out of.”
Wait. Is it Parasailin’ or Sarah Palin? I’m so confused.
You know who I’m talking about, right? That mavericky mom who can see Russia from her backyard?
Yeah, that one.
Okay, anyway. She “wrote” a “book.” I think they finally settled on the title Glowing Rouge or something like that.
Let’s review.
Remember, whilst apparently in the midst of a dyspeptic episode (I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt here, people), Senator John McCain picked her to be his running mate for the 2008 presidential election. Also, she used to be Governor of Alaska until she quit like such a quitter. Now, ostensibly she quit in order to pursue a public speaking gig and to write and promote this “book.” That she “wrote.”
Today we learn that Parasailin’ has posted her resumé on LinkedIn, which is, well, a place where one can post one’s resumé. Here’s the link.
Ha! Just kidding. That one’s fake. Turns out I’m not the only one who likes to poke fun at the Killa from Wasilla. Here’s the real link.
So is it just me, or is this weird? I don’t know, really. Maybe it’s normal. You tell me. Anyway, it’s a side issue.
You’ll recall that Parasailin’ was a beauty queen, non?
Ha! Just kidding again. That wasn’t really Parasailin’ or Sarah Palin but just a really good wannabe. But do you see now how I keep getting so confused?
It’s even more confusing because I came across an exclusive excerpt from the first chapter of Parasailin’s “book” today and that plus the whole beauty pageant thing and the Iraq, such as, U.S. Americans, and now I don’t know who’s who anymore. Also, notwithstanding the title Glowing Rouge, it appears to have absolutely nothing to do with makeup tips. Here’s an example:
Say it ain’t so Joe! My name is Sarah Palin. Recently several year I the State of Alaska had the pleasure, north the hugeness, am the zealous public servant! My husband and I have blessed with many attractive children. In 2008 I even has the pleasure is presidential candidate’s John the McCain running mate! I enjoy the hunting wolf and the moose. Is the wife and the mother also.
…
My father is feels very much proud. Joe the Plumber! Later I will go to the Hawaiian am the graduation from the high school the institute in Honolulu. I leave, in a semester later and will shift to the north Idaho institute Community college. Moose. I in 1983 year two semesters, a generality have studied major. In 1984, I won Miss Wasilla Pageant, then completed third in 1984 Alaska young lady!
Seriously, you guys, you just have to read the whole thing. So so so so so so funny.
Finally, I stumbled across this YouTube gem today and I just had to include it. I’m not sure if this is Sarah Palin or Parasailin’ or just that wannabe chick. I report, you decide.
Faster than you can say “hideous monstrous rabbit squishing a young girl,” we’re halfway through our fall 1L semester. Can you believe it?
No, that’s not Ninja Kid. I have no idea who this poor little girl is BUT GOOD GOD LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT RABBIT!
Anyway.
I forgot previously to write about the Negotiations competition. The competition was actually two weeks ago. So I partnered with another girl in my section and we signed up for the Negotiations competition. Nobody really knew what was going on or what to expect, so we were all on a pretty level playing field. There were 74 teams competing overall and three preliminary rounds to be held before any scores were tallied. Once we got our problems, my partner and I got together and worked out where our firm limits were, areas where we had some wiggle room, and our initial offers.
So maybe we weren’t the best negotiators evah. Okay, maybe we weren’t even in the top 16 best negotiators evah. Or even in the top 16 best negotiators in the 1L class at Ninja School of Law. But still, I’m glad I participated. Obviously it was a great learning experience. Like I said, I certainly had very little understanding of how the process would work, and after going through it three times I think I’d be much more comfortable with it in the future. It was tons of fun to play lawyer for a little while and represent a client’s interests. I was surprised at how un-nervous I was before our first round, and by the time our third round came along I was downright relaxed.
For the preliminary rounds we were judged by 3L students. The judging was pretty inconsistent. One judge would tell us not to do a certain thing, and the next judge would count off for not having done that same certain thing. For example, we were on a 40-minute time limit as far as the actual negotiations at the table. In each of our first two rounds, we finished early and each judge told us it was no big deal. For our third round, however, we finished early and got chastised for it. I happen to know one team got criticized for sitting next to each other rather than across from each other during self-analysis with the judge.
I heard quite a few of my classmates complaining about this and I must admit I did my fair share of griping, too. It’s frustrating not to know what is expected of you and then to get corrected on it.
And then, whilst in the midst of a deep conversation with my good friend Billy, I had a minor epiphany.
I mean, this is how it’s gonna be. In real life. Doing the lawyering thing. There are going to be times — in fact, probably lots of them, especially as newbie lawyers — when we aren’t sure exactly what’s expected of us, or exactly where certain lines are drawn, and yet we will still be expected to perform to the best of our abilities.
Actually, all of law school is kindof like this. For example, Prof. CivPro hates it when someone uses the words “clearly” or “obviously” because, her thinking goes, things are rarely clear or obvious. The first time a student used one or both of those words in CivPro, he or she (I can’t remember who it was) got corrected and treated to a mini-lecture. Now, obviously, I have a disagreement with the professor on this, because clearly there are a lot of things that are both clear and obvious to me:
Brad Pitt is the hottest man in the galaxy EVAH. Trust.
My dog understands every word I say.
Jokes told in the quiet section of the law library inherently carry a funny quotient of x100.
Cats and dogs are irresistibly drawn to sit upon open casebooks.
I could go on; the list is lengthy. But I digress.
The point I’m trying to make is that the law school experience wouldn’t be authentic if there weren’t a high degree of uncertainty involved. Someday you’re going to go up in front of a judge and you’re not going to know beforehand that he hates some specific words and here’s how it’s gonna go down:
YOU: Your Honor, I object! This is clearly speculation and whatnot.
JUDGE: Overruled. Counselor, please refrain from using the word “whatnot” in my courtroom.
YOU: Apologies, Your Honor. Obviously, I was unaware of your disdain for that word, etc.
JUDGE: Counselor, you would do well to never utter the word “etcetera” in my courtroom again.
YOU: Your Honor, would it be possible for me to get my hands on some sort of list of words that are disfavored in this courtroom?
JUDGE: COUNSELOR I’M HOLDING YOU IN CONTEMPT.
YOU: But, sir! Would you please just make a ruling on the law? I’m correct on the law.
JUDGE: [hammering wildly] BAILIFF!!
See? That could so totally happen in real life. This is what law school is preparing you for. Prepare to be unprepared.
Fair warning: As you get older, this type of meal will disagree with you more and more. After feeling totally grody to the max on Monday night and all day Tuesday, I’m not sure I’ll ever eat pizza again.
