"It's been a long Monday." "It's Tuesday." "Right."

So to preface, I just wanted to say that my thoughts are with all those who I care about who are having a crappy week.  There are multiple groups of people who that applies to, because apparently the start of this week was just not good for anyone.  Here's hoping next week will be better.

This guy is also having a bad week.  The car was parked on 395 right outside my window and just started burning for no particular reason.  No one was in the car.  Exciting and unexpected things happen on campus daily, it would seem.

Things have been relatively good up here in DC.  Ben and I got a shipment of food delivered from the grocery store today, and that is always like Christmas.  As a special treat we bought ourselves a big steak which we plan on having for lunch on Thursday, because steak is even better at times when you know for certain no one else is eating steak.

I've been trying to figure out some way to occupy myself in classes when people are asking questions that I don't care about.  I finally came up with a great game that should help with my case distillation process as well.  What I do is take the case and then figure out what the opening of CSI Miami might look like if the show were about that specific case....  Not that I've ever watched CSI Miami, but it has a classic formula which is easily adopted in this situation.  If you have never seen an opening one-liner for CSI Miami, go watch one and then come back.

Example: Leonard v. PepsiCo- a famous case in which a kid in 1996, upon seeing a "Pepsi Stuff" commercial featuring a Harrier Jet offered at "7,000,000 points" embarked on a quest to get 7 million points and hence the Harrier Jet.  When he actually did (he sort of cheated, but you'd have to) send in the points, Pepsi did not send him a Harrier Jet so Leonard took Pepsi to court alleging that the advertisement on TV clearly offered a Harrier Jet at 7,000,000 points.  The judge wrote a hilarious opinion in which she slowly explained, point by point, exactly why the commercial was not an offer and why no reasonable person could possibly take it seriously.  Here's how I boiled down the salient points, CSI style:

I'm going to pretend that this is going to help me study later.  The concept has already gotten some very favorable reviews from other people in class who want to take shots at writing their own for a study-guide compendium of CSI analyses of famous cases.  At least when I'm not paying attention in class I'm still doing something law related...

Went to a public interest dinner tonight and it was great- the panel was obviously very passionate about public interest and had lots of helpful things to say about how to go about it.  Also there was free food. I'm never going to turn down free food.

"I Laugh at Mike All Day"

The title of the post comes from another great zinger from my director.  I was telling a joke or something, and so someone was laughing.  The director just walks up and says "yeah, I laugh at Mike all day."  Love him.

The past couple of days have been very exciting.  Right after I posted my last blogpost, I found out that I had been accepted to work on a Case Team for the Innocence Project.  These are competitive spots, so I'm really lucky to have the opportunity to work on an actual case.  In addition, my case team is (as far as I know) the ONLY case team which has a brand NEW case this semester.  This means I don't have to deal with someone who already knows everything about the case and it also means I don't have to play catch-up.  I have no idea what I'll be doing with this, but I'm really excited and I'll have more info about it once it gets started in mid-October.

Also, I signed up to be a tour guide (after the show is over) because....  I'm incapable of saying no to things I am even marginally interested in, so why fight it?

Today was very exciting.  I was studying with my torts group when campus police started running around frantically telling everyone to get inside.  Already inside, we calmly walked to a stairwell- because if there's a reason to be inside, it probably doesn't hurt to get even more inside.  The text message emergency alerts started lighting up our phones:  "Armed person on campus, stay inside."  "Black mail (sic) armed with a firearm has been spotted on campus." We went up to the ninth floor study lounge to see if there was actually anything going on outside.  There was not.   Later, after receiving the "all clear," we got another e-mail explaining the following: "There was never a man armed with a rifle spotted on campus."  Well good, because I'm not sure why we would have ever thought that... aside from the multiple texts and e-mails.  Apparently there was a man spotted a few blocks away, so that was enough to put the campus on red alert.  I'm glad that our campus security is as efficient as it is, but I feel the incident was best summed up in a friend's facebook update: "There's a man who may or may not be black and who may or may not have a gun somewhere in Washington, DC.... SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING."

After that excitement, I got to attend my first moot court.  This, again, is where an advocate about to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court gets to argue the case in front of a mock panel of judges in a room that we built to replicate the Supreme Court almost exactly.  I sort of signed a confidentiality agreement so I'm not allowed to talk about anything that was actually said, but it was a solid two hours of mind-blowing intellectual gladiatorial combat.  Just when I think I'm starting to get some of this "law" stuff, I go to an event like this and remember that I have a long long way to go.

This evening was another good excuse for Ben and me to wrangle some people together and go out for happy hour sushi at our favorite (only) happy hour sushi place.  As always, a delicious decision.

Were you suddenly expecting good pictures?  That's not going to happen.

Afterwards I met Maria and some of her friends at another happy hour place, and then I went to rehearsal and then to the weekly cast party.  Tomorrow I have to get up a bit early and do some tech work.  Perhaps with power tools.  I thought I had given up that life, but it seems to follow me....

Really excellent week, overall.  No complaints.

Minor Victories

I keep forgetting that on Wednesdays there is free beer and food in the lobby area of the fitness center.  Every Wednesday I put on my workout clothes after class and have to walk past tables and tables full of fellow law students drinking free beer and eating free cupcakes (or whatever they have) in order to get to the gym.  Since I forget, the experience is equally painful every week.

The week went by quickly- studying on Sunday, classes on Monday (including a guest lecture by a magistrate judge whose case opinion we had read and who asked for us to tell him what parts of the opinion were weak- he had no takers for that line of questioning), classes on Tuesday (after which I spent far too long working on a research project for legal writing), classes today (options contracts- exciting- not really), and of course rehearsals.  We got a new music director this week (our previous one got a gig in NYC that she couldn't turn down) and he is fantastic.  Really knows how voices work and how to get people to sing the way they should be singing.

Tonight I had a day off from rehearsal, so I was able to go to a floor-wide potluck dinner.  Where I ate many free cookies to make up for not having had beer and food this afternoon.  It all evens out.  I also got to read notes that my professor made on my first legal memo.  It seems my organization and objectivity is good but I need to restrict myself to the issue at hand and stop trying to litigate an entire case in 1300 words.  Seems less fun, but fine.

If time keeps passing as quickly as it has been so far, I'm going to graduate some time before I'm actually aware I'm in law school.  

All In

I'm starting to become what I imagined I would have to become while studying law.  This means I had my first study group session (for Torts) on Friday.  And I also went to an optional seminar about how to do Westlaw and Lexis searches (I mean, I knew, but I wanted to know how to do them faster/better/stronger).  And I've signed up for several moot court sessions (to watch the actual attorneys who are going to argue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court).  Oh yes, I'm doing this.

At the same time I spend a good portion of my days doing absolutely nothing related to law.  Most of this time is spent rehearsing for Curtains with GGSS.  This is time very well spent because it allows me to keep both my sanity and my identity intact.   Last night, of course, we had another cast party.  Because that's what we singing lawyers do.  Pete came by, too, and we went and got a drink at the bar down the street.  A very good evening.  

Today I did a bit of work and then went for a study break to a few museums with some guys in my class.  My favorite is still the National Gallery.  Having gone through it extensively with Absi a few months ago I practically felt like an expert (Dutch guys over there, Renaissance over there, etc...).  There are always gems to be found... like the realization that Renaissance painters are incapable of drawing children, or the fact that certain statues look like they're going to kill you.

Case in point.  You really have to zoom in on the eyes.  Phil does a great job here.

This guy just went to a painter and said "Make me look badass."  I'm not scowling nearly well enough.

So there's a "Wish Tree" in the Hirshorne sculpture garden, and it invites people to take tags and write their wishes on them and then tie them to the tree.  Most of them are "I wish for world peace" or "I want to be a fireman," etc... but there are some real winners in there, too:

"This Branch on Sale This Week Only!  $9.95"

This sculpture is called "Lady on a Bench."  Really.

After the museum I went and played poker with Justin and some other guys.  Justin was at one point a professional poker player of some sort, so it is with no small deal of pride that I say I won.  My stack of chips was referred to as "The Death Star" from about the midpoint of the game onwards, and I mostly used it to bully the smaller stacks until they were no more.  

Now I'm going to study, because that's what I do on Saturday nights, apparently.  I take comfort knowing that I had my fun earlier in the day.

Nobody Expects the Socratic Inquisition

I've been having a good time in classes so far- and for the most part, with so many people in (at least two of) my classes I never really worry about getting cold-called.  Today was my first day getting grilled in one of the large classes, Civil Procedure.  And it was about reading we had done last week and which I had basically forgotten, so I employed some of my tried and true delaying tactics: specific vagueness ("It sounds like that would be unduly burdensome to the defendant"), humor (which isn't funny unless you are also studying Civil Procedure), and misdirection ("can't we analyze this under Rule 11 just as well?").  After a couple of minutes I figured out what the professor was actually asking me and think I did okay from that point on.  After fifteen minutes it was over and she was on a different topic and my friend Chelsea leaned over and said "good job."  Just when I thought I had escaped the professor started on me for another ten minutes.  It was fun fun times.  Everyone in my class was very nice to me afterwards.  Probably they were glad it wasn't them.  Also, it seems to be policy in my section that whenever someone gets inordinately grilled everyone else has to go offer encouragements.  We're all very friendly.

Sunday night I went for my longest run ever (7.25 miles) with my new running friend Will.  He sets such a good pace and provides such interesting running conversation that I feel as though I could have gone twice as far.  We hit all of the major monuments and I tried to take pictures as we ran past.  As you can expect with pictures taken while running and with a phone, they did not turn out well.  However:

 See?

 Not very good.

Right?

Last night we had an excellent rehearsal ("Climb over the box seats.  Don't fall.")  and afterwards I went and had a drink with the director.  If I could have invented a director in my head, I don't think I could have done much better.  That doesn't mean he's nice- he's very mean- but he's also very funny and knows how to direct well, so I respect that.  Also there was another guy in the show, Ben.  He drinks scotch, knows how to Tuvan throat sing, and was in a mime group in college, so I like him. (link goes to example of Tuvan throat singing.  Not him.)

Today after my in-class grilling I had a grilled cheese sandwich.  Seemed appropriate.  After Torts I went to Ritas and then out to dinner at a fantastic Thai place, which was an excellent payback for the morning.  Afterwards I went and sang for two hours: yay rehearsal!

Of special note today (now that it's past midnight): it's Rachel's birthday!  She's the best little sister ever (19, wow!) and I'm just going to leave this here to remind myself to call her tomorrow....

"You're Going to Blog About This, Aren't You?"

Last night I was fortunate enough to attend my first Gilbert and Sullivan Society after-rehearsal party, and I came away from it certain that joining up was a good decision.  As it was explained to me, a lot of members in GGSS get their best grades while doing shows because rehearsal creates an artificial studying schedule (whenever you aren't rehearsing) that you sort of have no choice but to follow.  Not that I care about grades, but it's also interesting that out of the past three years, two of the valedictorians (out of a class of 500) have been from the GGSS (total membership around 20 per class year).  At the very least, they know how to throw a good party.  A til 5AM sort of party, at least.  We played games, of course, and I learned a couple of new ones.  My team won.

Earlier in the day I went to a meeting for the Innocence Project.  It's an on-campus group (part of the larger national organization) that takes cases for convicted inmates who maintain actual (not technical) innocence and attempts to verify their claims, usually through record-combing and DNA analysis.  It's one of the few opportunities for a 1L to actually do something hands-on that is law related, so I'm considering possibly joining a case team.

While walking back to my apartment from the meeting, I ran right into David Husband.  Literally.  I didn't know he was going to be in town, but he had come down for a firm interview for the summer.  It's looking like he's definitely going to be in DC over the summer, and if I pull off getting an internship somewhere up here we would consider being temporary roommates again.  How fun would that be?

I'm purposefully omitting the part of this story where I make fun of David for an hour because he didn't tell me he was in town.  He bought me a buffalo burger and a beer, so that made it okay.

Dance Better

I should have been able to predict that my struggle in musical rehearsals was going to be dancing.  I was not able to predict my character having a five minute fantasy dance-break with the female lead.  Everyone is being wonderfully patient with me.  Also with my Boston accent... because I've never had to do a Boston accent before and somehow everyone else in the cast either lived in Boston or knows so many people from Boston that in their minds it is a really easy accent.   I'm working on it.  Struggling is important if you want to do something worthwhile.

Classes were great this week, and now they are over.  Of particular enjoyment was a set of cases in Civil Procedure that had to do with initial complaints and pleading.  The first case, from the 30's, established that you didn't have to say much in initial pleadings because the point of pleadings is just to let the defendant know that you're suing them.  The second case, from the 50's, reiterated this point and added that you didn't even need to include facts within your pleading as long as there was a conceivable way in which you could be correct in your assertions against the other party.  Then there were sixty years of silence on the issue.  In 2007 and 2010, our current Supreme Court issued two cases which are almost impossible to decipher and which effectively overturn everything we've thought about pleading (which should be easy, but now in a lot of ways really isn't) up to this point.  I'm not saying it wasn't for good reason, but I am saying I should have gone to law school a few years ago so as to avoid this issue entirely.  I just know there's going to be an exam question about this.

In Torts my professor told us a story about a lecture she gave to an auditorium full of doctors called "Malpractice Suits: A Doctor's Best Friend."  In addition to being hilarious, she has a keen sense for marketing, I think.

People have become bolder in class about making up hypotheticals that don't matter.  One day I really want someone to raise their hand and say  "Professor... but what if you took everything about the case you just raised and changed it so that it was a completely different case?  Would it still be the same?"  Because that's basically what they're doing.  I don't mind for the most part- it gives me time to write my notes without rushing.

Last night Ben and I got a group together and went out for happy hour sushi at a place in Chinatown.  $1 nigiri and $2 beer is a pretty decent deal in this area, so we did well.

Normally I wouldn't have class on Friday, but I've signed up for a mandatory library information session about something or other, so I'm about to go to that.  Afterwards I have to go get a tetanus shot and a TB test to finish out my "no really, I'm immunized, stop bothering me" initiative against Georgetown health services.  Then a couple of meetings, then rehearsal, etc....  Weekend! (studying)