3 Years of Trouble

I feel as if my last 5 or 6 straight entries have been predicated on the fact that it had been a long period of time since the preceding entry.  This is not one of those entries.  I must acknowledge that it has been a couple of weeks, but not for lacking of time in which to write.  To be honest, law school does provide one with more time than your overworked lawyer uncle, underappreciated law school advisor, or overly stress inducing pre-law professor would have you think.  To be honest, life hasn’t really changed all that much, it has just changed entirely.

I wake up earlier, I actually eat breakfast (yes I know, I was a bit confused about that early meal people kept talking about, surprisingly just about everything on toast is delicious).  After those two events that were non-existent in my previous life (yes, I believe in reincarnation as I died on August 18th and was reincarnated as an overworked and underappreciated law student).  I have since spent entirely too much of my entirely too slim budget on coffee during the day and beer at night.  Actually, that carried over from undergraduate life.

Otherwise, I spend my time in a single building between the hours of 8am and 5pm and take a bit of work home every night.  This used to be tedious work.  I was not really sure what anyone was looking for and I certainly was not sure what I was getting out of all of this.  That has since changed.  Cases read like Harry Potter books and when you can find a bit of humor in a case about burglary and attempted rape (even if you know nothing about the law, you should still look up Regina v. Curran, its like a Dane Cook story, only funny).

I have found myself neglecting all of my friends from home, of which I am not even sure I have anymore.  I have found scarce time for my good friends from BU and I do not see much of a reprieve in the near future.  Family, well they have been neglected as well.  Surprisingly, people don’t seem to mind so much, a sense of pride or other seems to placate any ill feelings and everyone is generally interested in what it is like and how I am getting along (I have learned to keep law school stories to a minimum as the things we find funny/interesting are certainly not the things that real humans do).

I would like to say that I will be more active on this blog in the near future but as you and I both know that is not going to happen.  We will see.  R.I.P. Ziggy.

Its official, I have survived the first month of law school.  Intact.  The horror stories are not true.  Don’t get me wrong, it is not easy in any means and my life style has completely changed to accommodate the new schedule.  However, it is completely different than undergraduate classes.  Each class has you on the edge of your seat, both because they are interesting and there is a bit of nervousness inherent with a class where at any moment you can be called on and asked to perform.

Law school has made many fear hearing their last names.  Mr. Grimes, can you explain the reasoning of the court in granting a motion for summary judgment.  Um… crap.  Just keeping up on the game will not get it done, you have to get ahead and rework what you have already learned.  One month down, many more to go.

I can’t think of a more apt title than a reference to World War II.  The Allied forces counted the days running up to D-Day and referred to those after it as D-Day plus how ever many days followed.  September 18th was my personal D-Day, well perhaps with less bloodshed and loud noises.  The day signified the first day I set foot on the law school beaches and it has been a pressing journey ever since.  Unlike the real D-Day, my pill boxes and defensive tank formations have not really been that overwhelming.  To be honest, the workload is actually pretty enjoyable.

Don’t get me wrong, I have never worked this hard in my life (I don’t think) and I am certainly not someone who avoids hard work.  I wake up early and I fall asleep exhausted earlier than I have fallen asleep in my life barring the days when I had a curfew and I went to school with a plastic lunchbox.

In a lot of ways law school is a mix between a 90 hour work week in a law firm and a 1st grade classroom.  The workload is full but we keep our books in cubbies.  We wake up early and persist solely on coffee but we take all of our classes with the exact same people.  We read cases about murder and rape but I write with 5 different highlighter colors in each of my books.

I have certainly grown up a lot maturity wise to be able to handle the new course load but come weekend it is right back to the same fun and excitement that memorialized our childhoods.  Maybe it is all fun and games as long as you are responsible about it.  Maybe.

So far, so good.

Today, I woke up at 6am, went for a run and then headed off to class.  Let’s just say this process is nothing like being an undergraduate.  The case being that I arrived at around 8:15 this morning for a 12pm Legal Methods class.  If this was undergraduate scheduling I would have shown up at 8:15 for an 8am class.

I am not sure I am entirely prepared for the amount of work I will be doing for at least the next year, but so far so good.  I am ahead of the game and I seem to be absorbing this material in a sense and am prepared for each class.  Enough so that I am not nervous to be called on and at times I am even jumping into discussions to get the right answer across.  Don’t get me wrong, I will get burned at some point.  Everyone does.  But today was not that day and tomorrow does not look good either.  Here’s to getting it done.

I feel like I have been in a haze.  In the past month I think I have only posted one other time.  It isn’t that I have been away from a computer in some remote area of the world.  And its certainly not that I have nothing really to say.  To be honest this past month I have done and seen just a little bit of everything adding up to some pretty wild times.  I think thats just it though.

I haven’t been thinking about this blog at all.  Not in the slightest.  I won’t use today to recap the past month of activity instead lets just leave the last month as some enigma.  4 weeks until my first day of orientation and I feel like it might as well already be here.  I have the next 4 weeks of my life planned out to various parties or the arrival of friends and so many other things that I really feel like this summer has culminated and passed with just about a month left.  What a weird summer it has been.

So in any sense lets treat this as an apology and keep up because big things to come.

Watching each stage of the Tour de France (its kind of my thing) there are so many things to think about.  Starting with at this time last year I was in the middle of a fantasy world traveling Europe among other things.  Reading about the tour in French newspapers is not nearly the same as watching it on a television but I suppose watching the last stage as I did last year in Paris trumps them all.

Just a few observations on this year’s tour:

1) Mark Cavendish is ridiculously fast (unfairly fast).

2) Team Astana is the Yankees of cycling.

3) Lance Armstrong is back.

4) Rooting for Armstrong and Schleck and against Contador has been course of action for me.

5) Americans doing well.

6) Mark Cavendish is FAST

I had planned on writing an entry on each location along my journey but as Nashville was next on our list this would pose problems.  Some of you may know that a certain popular whiskey is distilled on the outskirts of Nashville.  That particular whiskey happens to be Jack Daniels.  This would not be so much of a problem had the bartender who served me my FOOD not been from Barrington, RI.  Once this realization was made, the rest of my adventures were free and as the bartender put it, I was not leaving until he had to point me in the direction of my hotel.

One shot led to another and lets just say I was fully invested in Nashville culture.  Luckily I made it out of the bar intact and went back to the hotel for 5 or so hours of sleep before the 12 hour hall to Virginia Beach.

Once in Virginia Beach I was able to see my best friend growing up.  Jason who was always on the “right path” now is a US Marshal and recently purchased his first home, where he and his present girlfriend live.  This might sound very aggressive for a 23 year old currently in the first few months of his job but then you wouldn’t know Jason.  I was amazed by how far he has come from most of my friends and how much responsibility he has thrown on his shoulders.  Sure the house is a fixer upper but in the right location and the right man at the helm, the place will be incredible by the next time I make it down to Virginia Beach.  Not sure if you read this at all Jason but congrats on everything man, its really great to see you towards success.

For me, Jason’s early on-call status left us alone around 7am and we hit the road for home.  The last day of driving would be the most ruinous with NYC, Bridgeport, New Haven, and Providence traffic to contend with.  And we would hit it all.  What should have been a 9 hour drive turned into nearly a 12 hour drive and once alighting the Newport Bridge I was nearly overwhelmed by a feeling of “what the hell did I just do for the past 5 days?”  The days mended together and the trip felt like it had taken years.  Not in a bad way, but our remember whens took place in episodes only occurring periods of 24 days earlier but they seemed like distant memories.  It is strange how the mind works.

Home, sweet home.  Oh wait, a phone call and once again I am back in a car (mine this time) to visit family at a graduation party.  When will my trip end?  Another phone call, and dinner and beers with a good buddy.  Finally 11:15 or so I am back home and in my own bed.  Sleep, the trip is finally over.

After leaving the southwest for the heartland of the US, we entered the monotony that is “middle America.”  For those of you that have not traveled the 500 or so miles on I-40 E from Santa Fe to Oklahoma City, I would preemptively tell you to avoid this trip.  Some of the trip included such thoughts as “too bad this town only lives for high school football” and “if I don’t see a roadrunner, then this entire leg of the journey was a waste of my time.”

Unfortunately we did not see a roadrunner and I deemed this trip to be an entire waste of time.  There are interesting things to contemplate when your passenger is passed out cold and only the road and the music lay out in front of you including but not limited to…

1) Thinking about the plains indians that used to roam these landscapes and the buffalo herds that once ran wild here.

2) The fact that this highway we are traveling on was probably an old westward cart path back in the day before asphalt existed.

3) Behind us lays amazing California, and in front of us lays sweet Rhode Island (along with a reprieve from the trip)

4) Man oh Man I can not wait to have a beer.

So with all of these things running through my mind and a entire bag of Peach Rings keeping me going, we made it to Oklahoma City and its 98 degree weather at 5pm.  I left Kasey at the hotel and walked around town for awhile before finding a local dive bar and ordered a couple of local brews.  Amazingly the world is so small that the guy sitting next to me at the bar was from Warren, RI and his band plays regularly on Wednesday nights at the Gas Lamp in Newport.  This trip has taught me that the world is large and so is my country, this encounter taught me that the world is small and I will never truly escape my routes no matter where my life takes me (and I am coming to the realization that that is a good thing).