Dear Employers. Please Hire Me

Well, I'm back in DC and I just finished finalizing twelve cover letters for summer internship applications.  As I was researching the organizations and writing the letters, I realized how legitimately excited I was about each of the places I chose to apply.  This was nice.  I hope to get an interview with... maybe one or two of them.  That might be asking a lot.

Last night I got to see Absi and Kayface and Brian for dinner, which was lovely.  Kay and Brian got me season one of the BBC series Sherlock and have assured me that I will love it (which, since they know me reasonably well, is probably true).  David is coming over tonight to start one of our traditional multi-day pizza and video-game fests, and I am very excited about that.

Ghost of Christmas Past

Merry Christmas everyone!  We had a great (if unseasonably warm) one in Burlington.  Last night Rachel and I made a vegetarian Moroccan tagine as Christmas Eve dinner.  It was a great success. 

 

She did not shove her hands in the hot skillet.  I'm so proud of her.

Today I received many wonderful gifts, including a bottle of Glenlivet (my first holiday liquor gift- I feel like such an adult), a framed photo montage of Curtains, tickets to The Book of Mormon, a donut-maker, and a photobook full of pictures from my childhood that I have never seen up until today.  Most of them are... extremely embarrassing.  In lieu of an actual post, I will just scan in a few of my favorites.

The Mike in this picture WISHES someone would mistake him for Harry Potter.

 I am Batman. (Read that in the Christian Bale Batman voice.)

 Rachel remains normal looking in almost all these pictures.

 

But not everyone is so lucky.  At least I know from whence I got my general nerdiness.  

Thanks, Aunt Deb.  Uncle Bob- I have lots more of these.

 I did not scan in the many, many pictures of naked-infant-Mike. You're welcome.

We Were Students Once, and Young

My brief trip to Williamsburg was delightful, as always.  Absi and Zan picked me up at the train station and we went out to our traditional Mexican place, La Tolteca.  The owner still recognized us, I think!  Meimei and Absi's mom joined us and we had an excellent time.

The next day we went into Colonial Williamsburg to eat at the Cheese Shop, as is tradition, and then walked around.  Some of the shops had hilarious holiday setups.  One included an angry polar bear.

 

Absi and Meimei were scared.

 

I really don't know why we thought the polar bear was such a great picture backdrop, but it's really the only place we took pictures all day.

That evening Absi told me that I wanted to watch Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas.  Well, how could I say no to something that I was told I wanted to watch?  It turned out to be a very sweet Disney movie and vastly exceeded my extremely low expectations.  

Today I took the train back to Burlington, where I went out to Thai with Mom and Rachel.  Back at home Rachel decided to make some sort of chex-based dessert.  It involved melting chocolate chips in the microwave and then pouring the melted chocolate onto the chex.  I'm not sure that Rachel realized that molten chocolate fresh out of the microwave is... sort of hot... because she just shoved her hands right in the bowl in order to mix the chex and chocolate and ended up burning her hands and screaming.  It was hilarious.  In my infinite compassion I pulled out my phone and took pictures.

One day I think Rachel will forgive me for putting this online.  One day.

(No sisters were harmed in the making of this post.  She's fine.)

On Really Good Things

Hugo is a really good movie.  I highly recommend it.  I got the chance to go see it while celebrating Chris L's birthday on Monday.  The birthday party also involved fish and chips (the BEST fish and chips), chocolate cake, and champagne, so obviously it was great.  The night before I finally made it to an Evensong service at Chris's church and I got to hear him play the organ.  Absolutely gorgeous.  I realized about halfway through the service, though, that this was the first Anglican service I had been to and that I had no idea what everyone was doing.  I figured things out through context.  Guy is swinging an incense ball at your head?  Bow.  Then he'll bow back and swing the incense ball at your head again.  Then you nod at him once more.  I heard this was originally used in temples to mask the smell of animal sacrifice.  At the sound of the bell, everyone kneels.  Why a bell?  No idea.  Didn't get the historical reasoning behind this.  Maybe an angel gets his wings.  Anyway, the real takeaway is that my friend Chris is ridiculously talented at playing the organ and is also a year older. 

Last night I went to hang out with the remnants of GULC and David Husband, who is on break and who I convinced to come into town and sleep on my air mattress.  I often stay up late.  When I don't have a given schedule my body reverts to owl mode and and I find myself up at 3AM and sleeping until noon.  I can't explain why.  That said, it is very rare that I ever stay up past 5AM.  I did so last night though.  Why?  I'm going to go ahead and blame David Husband and the remnants of GULC.  I think the last time I legitimately stayed up until five I was also with David.  And it was in college.  We may be getting too old for this. 

Right now I'm on a train heading for Williamsburg.  The plan is to meet up with Absi and Zanzibar and Meimei and have a colonially good time.  Then on Friday- home for Christmas!  Safe travels to everyone who is traveling over the next few weeks- I know there will be a lot of it. 

Shockball

Sometime around 2AM the night before my last exam I decided that it would be a good idea to buy myself a small present.  It came in the mail the other day.  It's called Shockball.  It is a small ball that emits random electrical shocks every ten to thirty seconds.  That's what it does.  The fun lies in the constant fear of not knowing when the next mini-electrocution is going to occur.  I think I like it because Shockball is sort of like law school, in a way.  Also, on big letters on the front it says "This is not a toy."  

I took Shockball to Sarah's party Friday night.  Tyler Brown and Josh L came with me, which was awesome because it meant I had people from high school, college AND law school all at the same party. Anyway, back to Shockball.  The most common way to play Shockball is via a rousing game of Hot-Potato.  But the fun of Shockball is in inventing new games to play with it.  "Here, hold this," is a classic game, for example (No, I didn't do that, I'm not THAT mean).  The best games were the ones that piggy-backed on other games.  In Shock-Taboo, you play Taboo just like you normally would, except in addition to making people guess random words you're also holding the Shockball.  It ups the stakes a bit.  

Saturday morning (by which I mean afternoon) I went back to the National Gallery for more caroling with Ben and Jeff.  You can't do enough singing of Christmas songs.  I did notice, though, that very few Christmas songs are written in keys which are... singable.  A Capella people tend to do fine singing things like "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night," but throw in an instrumental accompanist playing the song in its original key and people just lose it.  After that Jeff and I accompanied Ben to the train station where he departed for Rhode Island.  Then I researched internships.  It was super fun and/or terrifying.  Like Shockball.

This is the view from the Capitol around Christmas- it is beautiful and multi-colored and deserves much better treatment than my terrible built-in phone camera can offer.  I took this picture when I was meeting Rachel for dinner this past week.  I'm not sure I actually mentioned it in the blog.  I should have... I, of course, love seeing my little sister.  AND we went to a great barbecue place.

Saturday evening I went over to Josh's new place for an official housewarming.  We played Beertrek (rules found in a previous post) and ate pizza, which is pretty much the best Saturday evening ever.  But then it got better, because we invented a new game to play with Shockball (yes, I brought it.  Yes, I also have the perspective to see that it seems like I'm being a bit obsessive with Shockball.  I am going to be embarrassed of this post one day, but I'm okay with that).  The game is called Shock the Dealer, and is a variation on what is usually a drinking game played with cards.  All you have to do is guess what card is on top of the deck.  You get two tries.  After the first try, the person holding the deck (and who is looking at the card) tells you whether the actual card is higher or lower than your guess.  If you guess correctly, you get to hold the cards and they have to guess.  If you guess incorrectly, you have to guess again.  Oh, and you're holding Shockball.  Best game ever.  And Trevor and Stephanie W were there, which would have made the entire evening awesome even without Shockball.  

This note was on Josh's refrigerator.  It says "Welcome Home Josh" and is signed "Josh."  As it turns out, Josh was the name of Josh's apartment rental agent.  The note is much funnier and also much sadder if you don't know that fact the first time you read it.  We purposefully placed all the liquor in the apartment on top of the fridge for this picture to play up the "much sadder" angle.

I'm very glad to be able to officially welcome Josh to DC.  The House never had a better historian and we're going to have many excellent times together in the next three years.  Maybe longer.  I do like DC quite a bit, and as I hear it the city has a shortage of lawyers (it sounds like a joke, but people keep telling me this fact like they're serious and once enough serious people tell me something I start to believe them.  Character flaw, I know).  

Final Countdown

I'm officially a half-L.  Or a... 1.5L?  I'm not sure how to put it.  I finished exams for the first semester of 1L year.  If I passed, I'm 1/6th the way to a JD.  I hope I passed.  I'm pretty sure I passed  everything but torts.  There are no words for what may have happened with torts.  Actually, there are words, but I can't blog them.

This morning Ben and I went down to grab donuts (free food all the time- really) and then came back up to prepare for our exam at 8:30.  He had relabeled a half-gallon of Bojangles sweet tea as "Civ-Pro Fuel," which I appreciated.  We started our exams.  I attempted to care for about seven hours.  I did my best at caring about Civil Procedure.  Then I went to a law office party that Cate G invited me to.  She works there in HR.  None of them cared about Civil Procedure, I don't think.  They did, however, care about having top-quality well drinks.  Like... Grey Goose was their crappy vodka and Bombay Sapphire was their crappy gin.  I accepted this in as gracious and appreciative a way as I knew how.

I'm going to apply to internships over the next few days.  Or sleep.  Whichever comes first.

My Second Contracts Exam

I'm pretty sure my torts teacher just trolled the entire class.

Troll: to purposefully do something WAY outside the bounds of reasonableness just to laugh as others freak out about it.

Our three-hour Torts exam is meant, like all of our other exams, to allow us to show what we learned over the course of the semester in order for the teacher to allocate to us 100% of our grade in the class.  I imagine that's how that works, at least.  So imagine our surprise when we opened up our exam to find one (1) two-page question entirely about contracts.  To clarify: a question for a torts exam in which absolutely no one gets hurt or claims to get hurt.  Two people got up to ask whether we were given the correct exam.  Everyone else just looked sort of dazed.  When we received word that it was indeed the right exam, we proceeded to do the greatest making-stuff-up session ever.

Marginally reasonable things I said in my exam: there could have been, according to the question, a very weak argument for a tort involving economic harm (which we studied for about five minutes).  I took that and ran with it.  I also introduced a lot of "well, if someone HAD gotten hurt, then..." hypotheticals, even though the question did not ask for any such things.

Completely unreasonable things I said in my exam:  I claimed that a blueprint was a consumer product which consumers expected to be able to "operate" safely.  I offered up the possibility for a strict liability regime based on the negligent product design of blueprints.  I said (in my most passive-aggressive moment) "I would cite the cases which allow for voiding a contract in this case, but those cases are in my outline for Contracts."  I made arguments for affirmative duty (which you make when dealing with strangers who are not in privity of contract) in a case in which everyone was in contract with one another, simply because I had run out of other things to say.

At one point I had deleted everything else on my exam and started a new answer about negligent infliction of emotional distress on students by giving an unforeseeable and nonsensical exam.  At another point I had written down "if this question seriously wouldn't be better answered through a contracts analysis, then please please fail me out of this class because I obviously missed something hugely important."  I deleted both of those, which is probably for the best.

Afterwards the entire class got together just to assure themselves that everyone else felt the same way.  Even the most hardened gunners in the class were perplexed and admitted to just making up terrible theories in order to fill pages.  So on the one hand, I guess it is good that we are all in the same boat.  On the other hand: what happened???

No real time to think about that now, though- I've got Civil Procedure to study for.

"The Timorous May Stay at Home"

More review for Torts today- and I think I'm starting to see the big picture.  Here it is: as more and more forms of injury become more readily identifiable and quantifiable through advances in medical technology (and as new types of injuries emerge through the globalization of society) courts become increasingly willing to make up new rules in order to allow injured parties to recover in order to be "whole" again.  And corrective justice is served.  There- a whole semester of Torts in one sentence.  

Grossly Oversimplified Timeline of Rulings in Tort Law (Negligence Regimes- as imagined at 3AM):

???BC-1600's- Oh, there was an accident and you're hurt?  Sucks to be you.

1600's-1800's- Well, maybe if your neighbor threw a log at your face he owes you some money.

... And if he tossed the log in front of you right as you were walking by and you trip, he owes you for that, too.

Mid-1800's- Barrels of flour don't normally fly out of windows and smack you in the head if everyone is being awesome at life.  They owe you money for that.

... but if you're beating dogs and accidentally poke out your friend's eye, that's cool.  I mean, it's cool to beat dogs.  We don't want to discourage that activity.

Early 1900's- Don't swing metal things at exposed electrical wires.  Sucks to be you.  Also don't get hit by trains.  That's totally your fault.  Also, don't break the law.  If you get hurt while you're breaking a law, it sucks to be you.  

Mid 1900's- Okay, maybe it's not ALWAYS your fault if you get hit by a train.  And maybe if you're breaking a law that isn't all that important you can still have money.

... but you shouldn't leave your barges unattended in the middle of a busy harbor.  Come on, guys.

1970's-1980's- You can't compare a person who has seizures to a defective product.  Nice try, though.  Also, if you're a hospital you shouldn't give people bags with severed legs in them.  You should know better.  You aren't liable for the emotional distress of a kidnapped baby's parents, though.  I mean, it's a big hospital.  Stuff happens.

1990's- Someone hurt you physically or mentally?  What do you want?  You want money?  Take it.  

Wait a second, not so fast- guy who jumped off a boat into one foot deep water.  Or you, people who want to sue school districts for failing to protect children in various and sundry ways.  And ESPECIALLY not you, people who were only economically hurt and have no physical and mental damage.  Sucks to be you guys.

2000's- You can prove that a doctor negligently lowered your chance of survival from a disease from 49% to 0%?  Enjoy 49% of your regular damages.  I mean, you would....  your estate will.

You went snowtubing and signed a waiver of liability and then broke your foot on their negligently maintained mountain?  Sure, sue away.  Waiver?  What waiver?

A catheter exploded inside your heart and caused catastrophic internal injury?  Well that sounds terrible but....Whoops.  Federally preempted.  Sorry.  Oh, you don't know what that means?  Well you can't sue because.... we said so just now.  Also something about Federalism.  

So- that's Tort law.  I do actually know the cases (and there are a lot more), but it's fun to generalize.  In between studying today, I went to the National Gallery (favorite museum?  possibly) because they were doing caroling in the rotunda.  They had a mandolin orchestra and programs with all the words to all the best Christmas songs printed out.  

Davia and Jeff singing Jingle Bells or something.

The rotunda is all decorated for Christmas- there are lots of trees everywhere.  It's difficult to get a picture of a three-dimensional hemispherical area, but it's very pretty, I promise. 

Then I won some more games of Battleship (superior strategy, clearly) and have been studying ever since...ish.  

Exam on Monday.  Yay. 

Haircuts and Study Breaks

My hair has been long-ish for a while.  This is all well and good, but I have been occasionally annoyed by how often it gets in my eyes and, oh yes, how it inspires people to compare me to Harry Potter.  So on Wednesday, as a study break (because all I need are more study breaks), Davia took me up to U Street to the girl who cuts her hair and who just got a job a salon which caters to the lawyers and such on Capitol Hill.  She spent about an hour on my hair in an attempt to make me look professional and decidedly anti-Potter.  I am pleased with the results.  

I have since walked past about six of my classmates, none of who recognized me.  I'm a chameleon.

Wednesday night, Ben L was kind enough to invite me on a Mandate to share with him a groupon for a bourbon tasting.  Bourbon tasting?  Sounded like a good study break to me.  And we know I need more study breaks.  

It was very fancy. (And for Ben, it was Suit Wednesday.  Before you ask: yes, every Wednesday.)

After sampling three different bottles from the same distillery, we got to pick our favorite to be put into a cocktail.  I got a Manhattan made with Evan Williams 1783.  I do not normally like Manhattans, but it was excellent. 

When we got back we decided we needed a study break (we did not) so we watched the original movie version of Arthur... which I was surprised to find is a really good movie.  Yay early 80's.  

Thursday I tried to study a bit and I went to a study session for Civil Procedure which seemed to do nothing but terrify us all.  If I felt good at all about Contracts, all that good feeling has now gone away.

Then I went out to Rosslyn to meet up with Greg C, an old friend from Burlington and quite possibly the only person from my elementary school class I ever talk to.  We went to a barbecue place because we wanted to highlight our distinctive southerner tendencies.   I forget what the place was called, but it was actually very good.  The waitress asked us if we worked for the State Department, because "you look like guys who would work for the State Department." Wasn't sure what to make of that.  Had a great time with Greg, though.  

When I came back Ben and Davia called me down to the lounge for a study break (like I needed it) and I proceeded to play many games of ping pong and one very long game of Monopoly.  In what everyone thought was a hilariously ironic moment, I had to sell off four houses each on Boardwalk and Park Place (where no one had ever landed over the course of fifty+ turns) to pay off a debt to Ben, only to watch people land on Boardwalk the next two turns.  It was a bitter, bitter $100 that I collected from each of them.  Then they refused to take my money after I landed on their monopolies because I looked so dejected.  It was not my finest game.

Still Alive

Well, one exam down and two to go.  People have been asking me how I did, but the truth is... I have absolutely no way of knowing.  I think I did well for myself, I suppose.  I feel like I spotted the issues and did a reasonable job articulating them.  But did I do those things better than a majority of my classmates?  Since it's a forced curve, that becomes the overriding question.  I come away from the exam knowing one thing, though, and that's that studying more would not have helped me at all.  So I am okay with how it went.

Seen in a totality of circumstances, law school exams are neither harder nor easier than I imagined them to be.  They simply... are....  That's why they let you see all the past exams and why they let you bring in whatever books and materials you like- because nothing is going to change the fundamental questions and no amount of black-letter law is going to definitively answer the most difficult ones.

In spite of all the people going crazy over exams, this past week has been almost like law school summer camp again.  They've set up the lounge with board games and hot chocolate- I played with Lincoln Logs and bested Davia by one shot in a game of Battleship the other night.  They gave us s'mores last night.  There's breakfast food tonight served by the faculty.  There were cupcakes yesterday.  There's coffee in the alumni offices.  I went to a birthday party over the weekend on the 12th floor.  Other than the dealing with the consequences of worrying about whether this one exam on this one day is going to make or break your entire future legal career, I sort of wish more of the year was like exam time.

"Are you guys all siblings?" "...sure, we'll go with that."

Today was a day a long time in the making.  It involved weeks of study beforehand and the concerted efforts of many.  It had nothing to do with law school.  It was, of course, Mike Makeover day (part one).

Since my first days of college there have always been a few intrepid friends who have made bold attempts at making me care how I look.  It has always been a difficult job, since I have never been able to imagine many things I cared less about.  Still, they have tried and many small improvements were made over time.  Some of you reading this blog are among their number.  Thank you, as always.  I know I can be difficult.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when it was suggested (suggested is such a nice way of putting it...) that the time had again come to go to the mall and play dress-up.  Davia, Ben L, Steph, and Micah constituted the design team.  We met at 11 this morning at the Pentagon City mall to strategize.  Really. There was a legitimate planning session involved.  Micah quickly took the reins (he had given me the homework of reading the entire GQ Style Manual- he knows his stuff) and organized the day.  Work from the bottom to the top.  Shoes first.  We went to DSW and found two nice pairs of shoes- one brown and one more casual and blue- at a steep discount.  From there we took an epic tour of the clothing stores of the mall.  The entire group would enter and each member would start tossing me items at random.

For example: Davia going for the jeans.

I would go into the dressing rooms and put on things as I was told to do before coming out to their general derision or adoration, whichever was more appropriate.  This was repeated many many times before every one of the four was happy with every single piece.  And me, of course.  They did at least pretend as though I had a say.  The four of them standing directly outside my dressing room caused some traffic jams and occasional questioning from the employees.  "Are you all siblings?" One of them asked.  "Is this for a TV show or something?"  said another.  The answer was always yes.  Because... why not?

Ben trying to find me a vest.

I walk out, they take a picture, I walk back in.  Over and over.

In the end it was a very successful shopping day.  I do not like shopping, but I had a great time because it's impossible not to have a great time with such a group.  I ended up with a couple of jackets, a couple of sweaters, a couple of shirts, a couple of pants, and a couple of shoes.  Well, a couple of pairs of shoes.  Four shoes.  

Then Davia and Stephanie took it upon themselves to go through the clothes I already owned to try to find things to get rid of.  They made a good case that a few of my things... might be a bit too big for me...

Case in point.  

By Steph's face you can tell they were having a good time with this part.

I feel I have made significant wardrobe progress.  For now, at least.  Mike Makeover day (part two) is on Wednesday and involves a haircut of some sort, I've been told.  I'm actually okay with that, as I was called Harry Potter (again?!) while walking down the street the other day.  I am not Harry Potter.

Many thanks to Ben, Davia, Micah, and Steph.  You are all wonderful people and you deal with me so patiently.  

The Amazing Timewaste

Studying in Ben L's room last night.

Me: "We'd make a good team if we were on the Amazing Race."

Ben: "We WOULD!"

Me: "Let's apply."

Ben (on computer): "Due date is tomorrow.  We need a video.  Here, let's wear matching sweaters."

So then we spent ten minutes standing in front of Ben's ipad being silly.  Then Ben edited it.

http://youtu.be/Rli7X-SEcFk


So, we did that...

Then Davia and Jeff went out to get ice cream at midnight and we all had our own pint of ice cream.

Obviously, sanity has left the building.  Yay exams!

EDIT: The sweaters are Ben's.  He just owns two sweaters that look similar.  He had them and he brought them out.  That's the sweater story.  Since you were all so curious.

Buzzsaw

Back in DC after three days at home- not a very long break, really, but a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving.  Got to see the family, got to go running with Uncle Bob, got to eat lots of good food, etc....

When I got back I got to have a Mandate with Brian (Kayface was under the weather- sad, but Brian and I get so few Mandate opportunities, so there was a definite silver lining).  We had sushi ("let's order everything with shrimp since Kay's not here" -Brian) and then went to get drinks.  It was great.

We decided it was a true Mandate once we ordered a dessert called "Bieramisu" to share.

For Aunt Deb, in honor of her leaving her first comment on my blog, I will post one picture from the Jeff's fancy Birthday soiree a week ago.  

Emily, Me, and Davia.  

No pictures from the actual party, but everyone was very dressed up and it was very fancy and very crowded and many toasts were made.  Jeff made the best one.  It was something along the lines of: "Everyone... I can't believe you all actually showed up to a party at 11PM on a Monday dressed in formal attire.... thank you."  

And now the important part of this post.  I think that the entire 1L class realized as a collective today just how difficult exams are going to be.  I did a practice Contracts exam question tonight and then discussed it with some other people in my class.  Somehow, and I'm not sure how (but I confirmed it with roommate Ben) the practice test and followup discussion managed to both comfort and terrify me.  Perhaps it was comfort because I understood the question and did manage to spot a lot of the issues and terror because I failed to spot another lot of the issues.  A panic seems to be sweeping the halls for similar reasons to my own.  

In spite of the looming terror, though, I come away with three things today:

1.  The next few weeks are going to finally justify the name of this blog.

2.  It is 3AM and I have class today that I have yet to do the readings for because I was too busy doing practice tests and/or talking with others who share my general fears.  And I'm okay with that.

3.  There is nowhere that I would rather be.  

This is... exactly what I signed up for.  

PineappleSnack

Last week while ordering groceries Ben and I agreed to buy a pineapple as a post-memo celebratory snack to be eaten on Monday.  Well, today was that Monday, and we had our pineapplesnack (Steaklunch 2.0- when you don't really have time for steak).

The rules of pineapplesnack were twofold:

1.  We must eat the entire pineapple in one sitting.

2.  We must only use our hands and ridiculously over-sized knives.

Which is all to say that memo week is over.  I'm sure I spent far more time procrastinating than actually working on the memo, and I also learned that my personality is really geared to the exact opposite of what is required while editing a memo ("eh, this citation looks pretty close").  Still, though, I got through the week with what I think is a very solid memo and without stressing out or forgoing any fun. 

My favorite section of the memo goes something like this:

"Though South Carolina has not ruled on the status of a rolling pin, it has categorized other commonly used tools and in every case has ruled them to be a deadly weapon.  See State v. Scurry, 473 S.E.2d 61 (S.C. 1996) (a tire iron is a deadly weapon), State v. Johnson, 198 S.E. 1 (S.C. 1938) (a hoe is a deadly weapon), State v. Smalls, 17 S.C. 62 (S.C. 1882) (a barrel-stave is a deadly weapon), and State v. Beadon, 17 S.C. 55 (S.C. 1882) (a shovel is a deadly weapon)."

So that's how that works, if anyone was wondering what my legal writing looked like.  The idea is that if you cared you could take those citations and read all about why the Court thought a tire iron could be used as a deadly weapon.  Since, you know, it's not obvious.

Last night I had a brief reunion with some WM Wind Symphony people and it was awesome, though I did discover that it takes forever to metro to the end of the line.  Since, you know, it's not obvious.

The night before that there was a surprise party for one of my high school friends, Hunter.  I tricked Davia into coming with me and we had a good time hanging out with Tyler Brown.  Someone also used my name as an alias (because they had to sign in at the front desk and, well, it was supposed to be a surprise).  Everyone had a good laugh when I introduced myself to that guy.

Tonight I'm going to a fancy birthday soiree for Jeff, who is playing Rosencrantz to my Guildenstern and who also happens to be Ben L's roommate.  The invitation is pretty much the greatest thing ever:

"Please note: Those who do not choose to attend will be considered poor friends and will be Dismissed pursuant to Rule 19(a)(1), for failure to join a required party."

And I realized, when I thought that was legitimately funny in a non-ironic way, that I need to lay off the law school for a while.  Good thing I leave for Thanksgiving break tomorrow.

"I hope you realize that you're insane."

Quite so.

Tried out for R&G this week because... well, because I did.  I don't need reasons.  Annnnnyway as it turns out I'm going to be Guildenstern.  This, like Cioffi, is another one of those roles that just makes so much sense to me personally, so I sort of have to do it.

Rehearsals don't start til January, so I have plenty of time to learn my lines this time.  And I will learn them.  Before January.

But today I will keep working on my memo.  It's amazing how much information I can find that goes directly to the points I want to make.  It's also amazing how strong my desire is just to hang over all of my sources, give a one sentence answer to the question, and say "if you don't believe me, read these cases."  Efficiency!

To prep for memo writing, Davia and Ben and I had brunch and a movie this morning.  Surprisingly, it did not motivate me into wanting to write a memo.

Erie Doctrine

This post is intended entirely to help me understand this topic by trying to explain it in a semi-cogent fashion (but I'm gonna go ahead and capitalize things that shouldn't be capitalized for emphasis- that doesn't count against my cogency).  It somehow manages to be simple and incredibly difficult at the same time.  Here goes.

The first rule of the Erie Doctrine is that we don't talk about Federal Common Law (because there is none).

The second rule of the Erie Doctrine is that we DON'T talk about Federal Common Law (this is very important).

There IS Federal Statutory Law.  When seeking Federal jurisdiction because you are applying a Federal statute, then GREAT, the Erie Doctrine doesn't apply.

However, you can also get Federal jurisdiction if you and the opposing party have:

1.  Diversity of citizenship (you live in different states).
and
2.  A disagreement worth more than $75,000.

But once you get into the (Federal) District Court, which law applies?  The Erie Railroad case from somewhere in the 1800's says that the answer is the STATE law of whatever jurisdiction the court is in.  Huzzah, this seems easy!  And beneficial!  If the same law applies no matter what your forum (Federal or State) we successfully stop forum shopping AND ensure uniformity in application of the law.

BUT WAIT BUT WAIT

There's no Federal Common Law (CRAP, I forgot not to talk about it) but there IS an entire BOOK of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.  NO NO NO BAD BAD.  The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were written in order to ensure uniformity across all the Federal Courts, but if they have to apply State law in diversity cases it ENTIRELY DEFEATS THE POINT.

Guaranty Trust Co. v. York (1940-somethingerother)- established the "outcome determination" test.  Would applying a Federal procedural rule rather than that of the State significantly change the outcome of the case?  (Of course, you can look at ANY rule in such a way that it significantly changes the outcome of a case, so Guaranty Trust RUINED EVERYTHING)

This analysis continues until 1958.  Byrd v. Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative, Inc.  Does Byrd get a jury trial in Federal Court when the State procedural law would give him a judge trial?  SEVENTH AMENDMENT TRUMP CARD!  Sorry, Guaranty Trust.   Guess you aren't as cool as you thought you were...

But now where do we stand?!

Hanna v. Plumer- NEW TEST.  TWO PATHS.  COLLECT THEM ALL.

Hanna path 1- If the issue is Federal procedural common-law ("But there IS no Federal common-law," you say.  SHHHHHH)  then we must adapt the test to suit the goals of Erie. Think about what the plaintiff would do BEFORE the litigation commences if they knew about both the Federal and State options.  Would they be driven to forum shop?  Then it is outcome determinative and State law wins.  See how easy that was?

Hanna path 2- There is a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure in place and a State law is conflicting.  In this case, Erie doesn't apply.  Ever.  Don't even start thinking about it.  Federal Rules trump.    

Yaaaay Hanna.  Now everything makes sense OH WAIT WE AREN'T DONE YET.

What if, for example, we don't know if the Federal rule and the State rule are conflicting?  I know, it should seem obvious, right?  RIGHT?  But noooooooooooooo.

In Shady Grove Orthopedics v. Allstate, NY law said that no class action could include punitive damages.  Federal Rules of Civil Procedure merely detail the way in which class actions can be certified.  IF the class action is certified by the Fed. R. Civ. Pro but would then be IMMEDIATELY shot down by NY's procedural rule tossing out class actions that involve punitive damages, do the Federal and State laws conflict here?!  The Supreme Court gave us a rousing answer of "no-ish" in a plurality opinion that substantially changes nothing but that puts a lot more focus on figuring out what the heck the legislature meant when establishing a new procedural law.

That's what I've got so far.  I'm sure this is entirely wrong.  I'll revise later.

Logical Progression

Me from August:

I'm going to be serious and study all the time!  Look- I can get all my homework done for next week over the weekend.  I will do this every week so that during the week I have time to start outlining.  I will also run and work out every other day.

Me from September:

This isn't so bad!  I'm going to be in a musical.  But just this semester.  I definitely won't do the Winter or Spring shows.  I can still get half of my homework done over the weekends and then I can finish the rest of it the day before the class.  I don't need to worry about outlines now because exams aren't til December and I was just being silly talking about that before.  I'm still going to run and work out every other day.

Me from October:

See?  I can survive doing a musical and doing law school at the same time.  Sure I may have to cut back a bit on the running and working out in order to get everything done, and sure my weekends are now taken up with tech crew so I can't really get work done in advance, but I'm still functional and getting a reasonable amount of sleep.

Me in November:

I seem to remember a time when I ran and worked out.  I would do that again, but first I have to finish my homework.  I'll just wake up a few hours early to get it done.  I don't need to do briefs anymore- I'll just... remember the cases.  I have to write a memo for 30% of my LRW grade?  Sure, I can learn absolutely everything there is to know about South Carolina law on this topic while still doing everything else.  Oh, Ben is directing the Winter show?  And it's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead?  Well now I have to at least go audition for that to show my support... I miss being in a show.  Exams start in two weeks?!  When was I supposed to outline for all this??  What IS an outline?  This should end well.

Me in December (Predicted):

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Me in January (Predicted):

Well, I'm not going to let that happen again.  I'm going to do all my homework for the week on weekends.  And I'm going to start outlining now.....


Also, since a few of you wanted an example of a fun proximate cause case, I'll give you the general details of the one most famously used to explain the issue to law students of the past hundred years or so.  Here are the generalized facts:

At a railroad station, a man is running to catch a train as it is pulling out.  He is carrying a bundle wrapped in newspaper.  He runs up to the train as it is moving and tries to jump on.  Two employees of the railroad, one on the train and one on the platform, try to help the man onto the train.  During this process the employee on the platform negligently (and the negligence is not in question here- we know that it was negligent) knocks the bundle wrapped in newspaper onto the ground.  The bundle is in fact filled with fireworks.  They explode.  The concussive wave hits a large set of scales some thirty feet away and the scales fall on someone, injuring them severely.

If the man carrying the fireworks has enough money, he will certainly be sued.  However, if the injured party also sues the railroad, should they win on the basis that the employee negligently knocking the bundle on the ground created the proximate legal cause which ended in the injury?

Some things that may be helpful-

1.  Employers are often sued for actions of their employees.  This legal doctrine, respondeat superior, exists to create an incentive for the proper training and supervision of employees.  The main requirement is just that an employee was acting within the scope of his or her duties for the employer.

2.  Also assume that there were no markings on the bundle wrapped in newspaper to indicate in any way its contents.

And So It Begins

I have my first exam tomorrow morning.  My first real law school exam.  It shouldn't be too terrible- just twenty multiple choice questions answered over the course of an hour.  That's three minutes per question, and the exam is open book and open internet.  If I can't find the answer to any question that legitimately has an answer within three minutes, then I don't think I deserve to find the answer.

This week I threw myself back into the law school work.  While visiting last weekend Brian and Josh and Kayface expressed concern that I wasn't actually doing any law work because I never mentioned it in my blog.  That's mostly because, though it is interesting for me, I'm not sure how many people for whom it would be similarly engaging.  That said, we did go through an interesting chapter about causation this week in Torts which I'll share part of just to prove that I do law things in law school (I would talk about CivPro because we discussed the all important Erie Doctrine, but then I realized the Erie Doctrine sounds really really boring if explained in any detail).

Here's the causation issue: we, as a society, would like to deter people from acting in a negligent (outside the realm of normal care that a normal person would exhibit) way.  One way in which we do this is to allow people to recover when they are injured due to the negligent acts of others.  If I am hunting in the woods and I accidentally shoot you, thinking that you are a deer, then you should be allowed to sue me.  I didn't mean to shoot you, sure, but clearly I shot you and it will cost money to fix you and I should be responsible for bearing that expense.  Right?  This example would be direct causation.  Obvious and easy.

The fun part comes in when I set off some sort of Rube Goldberg chain of events which results in your injury.  Assuming that I was still being negligent, we then have to sort out whether I was the legal proximate cause of your injury.  Given all the possible configurations of chain-of-event injuries, this results in hundreds and thousands of cases which straddle the line between a claim that succeeds and a claim that fails.  And many judges have come up with their own systems of determination of proximate cause throughout the years.  Yay ambiguity.  Also yay- I'm discussing law on my blog!  Okay, now I'm bored (I enjoy it, I just have to do it for many hours every day anyway).

Socially, the week was really excellent.  Despite being out of production, I still managed to see plenty of Davia, Emily Goo, and Ben.  We even had a steak dinner and watched White Christmas on Wednesday because we're all in the holiday spirit.  Steak dinner is different from Steaklunch.  Just wanted to be clear.

Monday (I know, I'm out of chronology) I went to see a Chinese panel discussion about the future of China's power as viewed through the lens of ancient Chinese philosophers.  I had almost forgotten how much I loved hearing Chinese academics talk, because something hilarious always gets messed up in translation.  I just about lost it when one of the speakers said: "China find that as it get mo' money, it have mo' problem."  (if you don't get it, you missed the music of the 90's.  Sorry.)  I also really enjoyed the following logic (paraphrased):

Questioner: We know that Chinese power is growing, but what about India?  Does China view their economic growth as a threat?

Answer: No, India is not a threat to China.  You see, let's say India's economy is about one-tenth of the US economy.  Now, if India continues its growth of 10% per year, which we think is very ambitious, then all the US has to do is continue to grow at 1% per year in order to always stay 10 times bigger than India economically.

Now I know that this very smart man probably understands how compound interest works and I know that somewhere in his head he was thinking of an example that actually made sense.  But it made me sort of sad as I looked around the room of distinguished academics and realized that no one seemed to notice that, using his numbers, India's economy would be almost twice as large as ours within thirty years.  Clearly- mo' money, mo' problems.

Today I got to see Josh and went out to get some Thai food for lunch.  Weekly tradition?  I think so.  While over near his offices, I also ran in to the House office building to see Emily Goo because she was letting me borrow some sheet music.  Never thought that my first time in the House office building would be justified by musical theater, but I guess that's not too surprising...

Fun day planned for tomorrow after the exam, and it should be because starting tomorrow I have ten days to write a memo that will be worth 75% of my grade in Legal Research and Writing for this semester.  Best to start those ten days on a high note.

"Oh, I saw Curtains the other night! It was GREAT! Were you in it?"

Whew, well that was fun.  I heard from the producer that Curtains was the highest grossing/highest audience size show that GGSS has ever done and that now we have lots of money with which to make our winter and spring shows awesome (I have taken a possessively-worded stance with GGSS because now I realize this is my group of people and I am obligated to stay with them in some capacity for all three years).

Who wouldn't love these people?  Just look at the faces.

I also love everyone who came to see the show.  It was so great to see Mom, Dad, both sets of grandparents, Pete, Josh, Brian, Kay, Brent, etc, etc, etc....  it was lovely to have my own dedicated claque each night, and better still to be able to see everyone (however briefly) afterwards.  I am pretty certain, and I may have said this before, that Lt. Frank Cioffi is the best possible role that I could ever hope to play in a musical theater context.  Unless there's another character who sings in my range and is actually SUPPOSED to dance awkwardly.  It was a blast saying every single line every single night.

I've got some more photos from the show that I'll put up here:

SHOW PEOPLE

I couldn't actually steal the fedora because it is Ben's fedora.  Sad.

I especially love Ben's face and Sarah's face in this one.

Because GGSS is a ridiculous group, we had full cast parties every night after the show.  I'm not even remotely sure how my body survived the weekend on the amount of sleep I gave it.  On Friday evening it was a full formal party.  That's how we roll.

Me talking with Marie, who made me look pretty.

I put of the picture of me and our costume designer because I blame her for making me so unrecognizable onstage that no fewer than six people came up to me while I was either wearing a Curtains t-shirt or sitting at the Curtains ticketing table or standing next to someone else who was in Curtains and asked whether I was in the show.  After having seen it.  Apparently I need to buy some vests and do my hair like Don Draper because people like me better when I am from the 1960's.  A disturbingly high number of people told me as much.  

After strike on Sunday we went out as a cast and got burgers at Five Guys.  Delicious. 

As of now I'm replacing all rehearsal time with social time because there are people I've been meaning to hang out with more.  In approximately three weeks I'll shift that social time over and add it to my studying time.  Should be fine for exams by doing that.  

We Can't Picture Being Anything But Showpeople... and Lawyers, that too...

Opening night last night apparently set the GGSS record for number of audience members on a Wednesday.  We were functionally sold out, as the only remaining seats were exceedingly crappy.  I think the final count was around 200.

The show itself went really well.  Adrenaline was high and the audience was really responsive and fantastic.  All of my fellow actors were on their A-games and turned in amazing performances.  We had been worried earlier in the day that Steph was losing her voice, but she rallied and still (as always) had the strongest sound out of the whole cast.  I am very proud to be involved in this production and I'm excited that we have three more nights.

I thought I'd take the hour I have between Civil Procedure and Torts to put up some photos that are supposedly on facebook but which don't show up on my profile and which I also don't want to lose.  The costume/set/lighting department did fantastic jobs, as you can see.

See?

Me and Steph before "Coffee Shop Nights"

I love this coat, even though I only get to wear it for five minutes...

Playing Mack the Knife during "Show People"

I love the reactions here.

 Yay kickline!

 The entire company (except for me, because I haven't been invited to be a real showperson yet).  They are all ridiculously talented and lovely people.  And they're basically all either law students, lawyers, or congressional staffers.  Who would have thought there were so many musical theater people within those groups?

Only had one relatively small mishap on opening night- at one point I pull my gun from my shoulder holster and give it to another character, but for some reason the gun was stuck in the holster.  After a few quick tries I just took off the entire holster and threw it while saying "You know what?  Take the whole thing."  Hopefully will be able to fix that tonight.  

Show people go on!

"I'll See You in Fake Court"

As of now, we are officially in production week.  I feel pretty good about the show- we had some bumps in the runthroughs this past week but nothing I haven't seen happen before.  My personal problem is that whenever I start feeling comfortable with my lines is also the time that I start feeling terrible about my delivery.  Oh, and dancing.  That's my problem too.

In spite of all the craziness with rehearsals I had a very successful academic week as well.  Last Wednesday I got to participate in my first fake mediation of a case.  My co-counsel and I dressed up in suits and met with our two also-well-dressed adversaries and a 2L trained in mediation to try and sort out an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim between our two fake clients.  Since negotiation has almost nothing to do with law (it wasn't that difficult of a case and both sides knew the applicable law quite well) and everything to do with psychology, I spent the mediation trying to confuse the other team in order to throw them off.

I did this by (gleefully) calling my own client a dumbass multiple times (during otherwise very formal negotiations- probably not the best thing to do in the real world but very useful here) in the hopes that they would implicitly agree with me so as to undermine their own contentions for one of the elements they had to prove.  My co-counsel and I also agreed beforehand to make several red-herring demands which would sound reasonable but had nothing to do with our client's actual demands.  The plan was to use these as negotiation chips later to bring down the settlement cost, but we also ended up just getting our client extra things that he never asked for.  I think the tactics worked, as I have yet to hear of another team arguing on our case who got a lower settlement (which is what we wanted), and it was also a lot of fun.  

Friday I spent a good fourteen hours in the theater building things and then doing a full run.  Most of my time building was spent with Davia, who was very offended after she internet stalked me and found that I had mentioned Ben L on this blog multiple times without also referencing her.  Among the set crew minions, we are the most competent, so Ken the set designer used us as his Seal Team 6 and sent us to go do the things that actually required creative problem solving to figure out.  Our greatest achievement was figuring out how to move a giant six-foot-diameter globe flat that weighs a couple hundred pounds from the parking garages up to the balcony of the auditorium.  Earlier, Ken had nicknamed Davia "Wonder Woman" and after we finished one of our seemingly-impossible tasks he nicknamed me "Aqua Man."  I heard it as "Awkward Man" and unwisely repeated it back because I was confused.  People seemed to like it more, so now in certain circles I'm Awkward Man.  That should really be no surprise to... anyone.  

Friday night we had a Halloween party at Emily G's house (she is also awesome and one of my new favorite people).  I brought my detective trench-coat and someone suggested I just go ahead and be a flasher as my costume since everyone else actually put some forethought into their outfits.  To anticipate any comments: yes, I was wearing clothes underneath.

And then I hung out with Steph the Pirate Queen, Ben (as Brad Majors), and Ke$ha.

On Saturday I had grand plans for doing my homework for the week, but instead I ended up playing board games and watching movies all day (which I didn't have time for, but which helped relax me for production week).  I shared The Room with Ben and Davia, and immediately afterwards I showed them this and this.  (Thanks, Absi.)  We've since invented a game I'm calling joke-chain, in which the goal seems to be to start a joke by quoting one source and answer that joke with another logically following quotation from another.  Half of mine tend to come from lines in the show because I've reached the point where I can't stop thinking in lines. It's getting bad.  

Sunday we had a tech rehearsal that got us halfway teched with the show, meaning that we'll do another tonight and then have one dress rehearsal tomorrow before putting it in front of an audience on Wednesday.  Chance of randomized disaster on Wednesday is high.  But that's okay, it'll still be fun and the techs are worth it because the set and lights are really beautiful.

After rehearsal, instead of doing homework (which I did eventually get done) we had an hour-long debate about the following picture and all of the possible answers given certain sets of assumptions and meanings of the words.  Every time I forget I'm in law school something like this happens.

Yes, it's obviously not meant to be taken seriously or analyzed.  

We decided to ignore that and take it seriously and analyze it.

Stress-Test

This was the view from the party Friday night.

The roof was equipped with giant gas grills, and the group managed to put away about eighteen pounds of Korean barbecue.  I think I may have eaten three pounds just by myself, because it was delicious.  Our resident Korean (who was the host) also made some amazing yogurt/juice/sake drink combination that I didn't understand but which I nonetheless enjoyed (it tasted as though, if served at a restaurant, it would have fruit and umbrellas in it, so of course I liked it).

On Saturday I went and hung out in Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan, which was really really fun.  They're great areas and sometimes I get landlocked in the Chinatown-Union Station region so it was nice to branch out.  I especially love that DC has multiple shops that only sell cupcakes.  I mean, how can you not love cupcake shops?

Saturday and Sunday involved more set building.  I super-sucked on Saturday and ending up doing more damage to our set than good (I really disappointed my past-tech-director-self) so today I was extra competent to make up for it.  After seven hours down in the parking lot where we do our work without having had anything to eat, I started to fray at the edges just a bit.  It made me realize that the next two weeks are going to be very difficult.  Luckily, I've been in this situation before and know how to navigate it.

I'm fortunate to have put myself through enough ridiculously stressing situations so that I know my limits very well.  The high-water mark, I think, would probably be going through the weeklong rehearsal of Tragedy! for its NYC run.  One night I realized that the show was running ten minutes too long, so after the full day of rehearsals I stayed up all night making cuts, slept for about an hour on a mountain of stuffed animals (which were used in the show), and then did more rehearsals the next day, silently wanting to die the entire time.  And I think that was the second day and it got worse from there. Fun fact: of the couples who were together during Tragedy!- three quarters of them are married or getting married now.  I like to think that if they got through that week, they figured they could get through anything.

The point is- getting through production week of Curtains is going to be about five hundred times easier, so I can relax.

Oh, also, to anyone who is coming to see the show: don't buy your tickets yet, because I can reserve tickets that will be sold to you at the discounted $12 student rate.  Just let me know which day you are coming and I will reserve as many tickets as you like.

Also also, if you'd like to buy an Ad for the playbill, $25 bucks will get you a quarter page and you can just about say anything on it.  Our treasurer has been harassing us to get the word out, so I'll consider this mention to be a job well done.

Onward to hell week, part 1!

I Got a Haircut

I told the barber to make me look like I was a detective in the 50's, but at the same time to make sure I didn't look ridiculous in the present.  I couldn't take any decent pictures of it, so I'm not going to post a picture.  Really, I tend to like my hair a bit longer.  It works for the show, that's the important thing.

I got my very very slight October cold this week.  It hasn't been bad at all, but since I rarely get sick whenever I even have a little sniffle I feel the need to drown myself in Nyquil and Sudafed.  I feel much better now, though the last few weeks of any musical production always start to really wear me out in general.  Of course, the last few weeks of rehearsal are also the most fun, because that's when you get to be really active and creative.  It's a balancing act.  Opening night is two weeks from today! (I should really finish memorizing my lines....)

Everything else has been going pretty great.  Classes have been hitting some high points lately as we've been getting to some more advanced beginner stuff.

To close this brief update, I just wanted to add that I'm glad I've been able to keep in pretty good touch with all of my non-DC/law school friends since I've been here.  You have the ability to turn a good day into a great day with a well-timed text or instant message.  Special thanks to Kay, Brian, and Absi for some especially good ones this week.

There, out in the darkness...

This weekend was excellent.  I won't talk much about Thursday and Friday, beyond saying that on Thursday I was mistaken for a Latino (... really?) and on Friday I had Innocence Project training and went to the best GGSS party so far.  The guy whose house we went to used to be a bartender or something, and he had all of the most professional-looking ingredients that you could possibly have.  It was more like chemical engineering than drink mixing, and it was awe inspiring.  In general, I've found it amazing how accomplished everyone is at everything here.  If someone pulls out a guitar, they actually know how to play it REALLY well.  If someone sits down at a piano, it's a safe bet that you can start a three-hour singalong.  If someone mentions offhand that they used to do pageants, it'll turn out that they were legitimately in the Miss America pageant representing an entire state.  

You were a physics major in undergrad?  Oh, you worked for Fermilab.  Of course you did.  

Also on Friday our director surprised us with beer and cupcakes before rehearsal.  

Aren't we a fun cast?  We're a fun cast.  

The perspective of the shot also makes it looks like I have an enormous hand.

On Saturday morning, like on most Saturday mornings, I had no plans for Saturday evening besides doing homework.  This quickly changed due to Mike's Three Laws of Law School:

1.  Mike will do all his law school homework but will never use it as an excuse not to do something else.

2.  Mike will accept all fun-sounding social invitations, except where such invitations would make the application of the First Law absolutely impossible.

3.  Mike will protect his sleep schedule, as long as such sleep does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.  

So while building something in set crew, one of the girls in the cast asked if anyone would like to go see Les Mis with her and some other people because she had an extra ticket.  For free.  At the Kennedy Center.  I raised my hand and offered to fight anyone who wanted to go more than I did. 

Two minutes later I got a text from Wallace Hornady saying he'd be in DC all afternoon.  I went home, took a shower, put on some theater clothes, and booked it to Chinatown where I met Hornady and Chris L. for dinner before heading over to the show.  

I've wanted to see Les Mis since I first heard the soundtrack sometime during Freshman year of college.  I sang the Stars for my audition for Curtains.  My expectations were extremely high, and I was not disappointed at all.  The set was amazing, the cast was great, they did things with integrated scenic projection that I didn't think were remotely possible (internal monologue: "What's Javert doing on that ledge?  There's no trap door... he's not wearing a harness... NO WAY! WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?").  

After the requisite post-show drink and discussion, I made it back to the apartment around two and got right to sleep in order to start building sets again this morning.  And now it is time for that homework I've been planning on doing... yay learning.    

But before I go, I'm just going to leave this right here....