Briefing

One thing that every law student many times over the course of his or her law school career is to write a brief. One of the worst experiences of last year involved the appellate brief I had to write for my LWRAP course. It sucked. I stayed up for more than 48 hours straight working on it. It really wasn't fun. By the time I had to go hand it in (as I had just completed it an hour or so before), I was in a serious state of delirium. I handed it in and went over to Constitutional Law, where for some reason I thought I was at the dentist's office. After that I had about a two hour break before my property class, so I literally passed out in the student lounge. Luckily, by the time I had property, I regained some form of coherency.

So what am I doing now? You guessed it... a brief. This time for the moot court society. The topic is far more interesting than the crappy subject we had for LWRAP last year, but the process of brief writing is tedious nonetheless. I'm doign research, wishing I was outside enjoying the nice weather instead.

So last night I went out to Loca Luna with some friends. I hadn't been there in about a year. That place is pretty fun, with a decent amount of salsa dancing / merangue (whatever the difference is), and a pretty fun atmosphere. I really needed to go out this weekend.. otherwise I would've gone a bit crazy. Fun times.

And apparantly, my sister wants to get a pedophile.

Day of your life...

Assuming the average life expectancy of the average American is something like 78 years, (adjusting for lead years), most of us on average will live about 28,450 days in our lifetime. That's a lot of days. So looking back, especially since most days seem to blend into one another, how do you know which days were the best and worst days of your life?

Worst days of my life - hard to tell. The stresses of law school are definitely putting this period of time towards the worst category. But it really is hard to say. Sophomore year of college was pretty miserable... not having the right group of friends, having problems with roomates, general malaise. Yeah, that period of time really sucked. The time period immediately following college was also really crappy. Before I was paralegalling, I worked in the restaurant and catering business for several months. That was also a particularly downtrodden period.

Best days of my life - also hard to tell. Al-Ummah during the summer of 2004 was definitely up there. Just so many good memories from that month. For some reason, the one I remember most vividly was just lying down on the grass on the grass during an unstructured hour, staring up at the clouds, hearing the participants in the background just relaxing and chatting with one another, enjoying the feeling of the sun on my face and the prickly feeling of the cool grass beneath the back of my ears.

So why do I bring this up? For some reason, in the middle of the day, I had the feeling that today was the worst day of my life. The specific reason - I don't know.

Law school has gotten off to a rough start this year. I've fallen into a rut that I'm trying my hardest to break out of. For some reason, for no particular reason, everything seemed to culminate in a big pile of crappy feelings today. After classes were over, despite the amount of work I had to do, I just had to go home and pass out for about an hour or so. I didn't want to see anyone or anything. I didn't even want to be here. So after my nap, I got up, not feeling any better, and came here to the library to work. Sounds fun doesn't it?

I remember hearing a while back some words of wisdom about how when you hit rock bottom, it's actually pretty liberating, because you are free to go anywhere (thank you Fight Club). But I'm not sure if I've hit rock bottom yet. How do you truly know when you've hit rock bottom?

I keep trying to think of how lucky I am in certain regards. Supportive family, good deal of security from them, constant support, truly a wonderful gift from God. Which is probably why I feel so crappy everytime I think of it. With so much luck and the tools to truly go anywhere in life, I've managed to squander it and do virtually nothing. After college, I was pretty much doing nothing useful with my life. Making pocket change while working in the catering business with people who didn't speak English, to being a paralegal barely making enough to officially be above the poverty line (considering how I wasn't living a lifestyle reflective of my meager sallary, makes me feel even worse). Then I came to law school, which would hopefully give me something better to do with my life. And what did I do afterwards, I worked for free at a law office this summer helping to practice a form of law I don't want to practice myself later on.

So that's probably why today felt like the worst day of my life. It was the first day I decided to be truly honest with myself.

Familiar tv faces.

Ever have one of those moments when you're flipping channels, and someone who used to be on TV when you were young, but has since gone into oblivion, all of a sudden appears on TV again? Although it is entirely pointless and meaningless, it's funny when you recognize one of these personalities. For instance, a few years back, I was flipping channels, and saw a news anchor named "Cora Ann Mahalik" or something like that. She was on the UPN 9 news, I think. I remembered way back in the day, she used to be an anchor for Fox 5 News. When I was little, I wasted away god knows how many countless hours staring at the TV. So these memories, of absolutly no consequence to anyone, have sunk deeply into my brain. I think I also saw the guy who played "Proctor" from the Police Academy movies on some other show one time. Most of the time they're always these obscure characters.

It happened again yesterday. When I got home and finished some studying, I made some food and started flipping channels. I was watching the Food Network, and they had some program about Olives and how they're processed and made into the pickled form. The host I recognized right away as Marc Summers, formerly of Nikelodeon's "Double Dare" fame.

I remember that show fondly from my 'tender' years. Every day, coming home from school, and watching Nikelodeon while having some lunch. Probably watched for several hours before being forced to go do homework by my irate mother who didn't want us to be stupid. The format of that show was pretty entertaining... one pair of kids doesn't know the name of some figure in history, they "dare" the other team, and if the other team didn't know it, they would receive a "double dare" in return (if they then answered the question properly, the points received would be higher), and if they didn't know it, they'd take the "physical challenge." The physical challenge inevitablly involved getting very messy and dirty, which was the entire thrill of watching the show. Every kid secretly wanted to go on the show and take the physical challenge.

So I got reacquianted with Mark Summers. In this episode of whatever it was on the Food Network, he didn't get dirty, nor did he put anyone through any interrogation, and to my expected disappointment, no physical challenges. Although I am somewhat glad to know that these guys do have a chance at life after hosting children's television programming.

Which also reminded me of the other strange show from the 80's, "Steampipe Alley." Never used to watch that show too often, mainly because I found the host to be really annoying. And low and behold, around 2000, he appears as a semi-regular on "Sex and the City" as one of the girls' gay friends. Despite the show he appeared in moving up in the respectability category, his character was still irritating and strange. He also appeared on a segment of "Chappelle's Show" called "Ask a gay dude."

Thus, one of my modern quirks, the result of watching way too much TV as a kid. I miss Ducktales and Thundercats. Those were quality cartoons.

My Shiny Red Bicycle

Thank you Katrina. Now I'm officially self conscious about the amount of gas I burn on a daily basis. Not because I care in the least about improving the environment, but because it's getting pretty damn expensive. So for the past few weeks, I've been contemplating getting a bicycle. I figure that I only live about a mile from school, and on a bike, that ride would only take about 10 minutes or so max. So today, I went over to costco and bought myself a shiny red bike.

What I didn't realize is how I've managed to fall out of shape this summer. After working so hard last year to drop a lot of weight and get fit, this summer I managed to regain a good portion of the sluggishness I spent months obliterating. I didn't gain all my weight back, nor did I fall entirely out of shape. But that one mile ride to school from my building is full of hills and some other terrain that's not exactly easy to ride over. Not to mention, I forgot that I'd be riding with a laptop and several heavy books in my bag. So while I was riding on the private road between Clairmont and Asbury Circle, my laptop bag kept slipping from my back to my side, causing me to hit it with my knee and have to pull over to readjust. So this bike thing is going to have to take a little getting used to.

All in all, I got here to the library a sweaty mess. Not to mention, the bike lock I got isn't long enough to go from the bike frame through the front wheel to the bike stand. So now I'm at risk of some jerk stealing my front tire. I just hope that doesn't happen here in Atl all that often.

Other than that, things have been annoying here lately. School is extremely busy, and the brief writing competition for moot court is currently going on. I've been in a rut lately and I honestly hope I can snap out of it sometime soon. If not, life will suck royally. Last year, my life had some of the best and worst moments I've ever encountered. But overall, it was good. I hope I can recover a fraction of that goodness from last year. That'll be enough to satisfy me.