linky dinkies

Today was a good day for time-wasting, entertaining links. I share now, so you may also waste time.

1. Courtesy of John Scalzi, the F3110wsh1p of teh R1ng.

2. From a friend of mine, justification for feeling that the clutter around our house isn't that bad.

3. Actual, legal British postal stamps that made me want to rush out and fly to London so I could use them. They're vegetables! With accessories! Scheherazade will have to promise to use some for me when she returns from Sri Lanka.

the tyranny of elastic

Maternity clothes, particularly professional maternity clothes for women in their third trimesters, come with expand-o-waists. They are voluminous affairs, with extra cloth and elastic everywhere.

Before I got pregnant, if you had told me that I would be spending the working part of my pregnancy in the professional-dress equivalent of leggings, I would have been thrilled. I've never been a fan of shopping. I prefer jeans to fancy dress, and I can't imagine spending hours looking for the perfect skirt or just the right pair of black pants. I like looking professional, but I would prefer that process to happen automagically.

I never, ever thought that I would miss zipping and buttoning my tailored black pants and skirts.

But I've now had a month of professional wear where I haven't zipped anything. There is no room left to zip; my waistline disappeared ages ago. It's been all elastic, all the time.

The problem is that all elastic, all the time makes me feel like a large, professionally attired walrus. It's irrational; my weight gain has been normal, and, for goodness' sake, I'm pregnant, so I don't have an excuse to feel like a walrus, but there you go. Nobody said you have to be rational all the way through pregnancy. A large, professional walrus it is.

This weekend I went on a walrus counterattack and bought a little black maternity dress. It's solid black, not the flowery reupholstered couch look that most maternity dresses have. It's little and black everywhere except the belly, where it's not little in the slightest. I can't wear it to the office, as it is decidedly not office attire, but I'm inordinately pleased to have added it to my closet. I may not have zippers anymore, but at least I have a little black dress.

taking sides

I saw a Ford Focus today with a gold license plate frame. The license frame read, in fancy, scripted letters, "He calls me Princess." For a fleeting moment I thought it was a gift from an overindulgent father to a teen daughter, but the woman driving it was distinctly past the prom years.

I thought of Ms. Ditzy Genius immediately. DG hates Ford Focuses (Focii?) because they hate her. They are on her enemies list. I, however, have been neutral on the Ford Focus issue until this point. 

However, I think that license plate frame pushed me over the edge. I'm on DG's side now.

it could be worse

My torts grade still hasn't shown up despite the fact that the exam was held over a month and a half ago.

"I hope he hasn't, like, keeled over from the shock of the exams or something," I complained to my fellow judicial extern, F.

"Oh," she said, "my civil procedure professor did. It was awful."

"Did what?"

"Died."

"He died?" I thought I had misheard.

"Yeah, three weeks before the end of the semester. He had a stroke, though not in class."

I suddenly felt very guilty for joking about Prof. Torts' demise due to our exams. At least my professor is still happily shuffling around in this mortal coil.

if i were seven months old

One of the most entertaining aspects of having a kid on the way is that you get to spend a lot of time playing with kids' toys and books. Now that I actually have a visible belly I don't get funny looks when I do it, either.

My husband and I haven't begun to decorate the nursery. I am afraid to admit that we have a very sketchy understanding of car seat technology at this point. My son's wardrobe is, to be polite, rather haphazard. But we are all over the toys and books.

It's hard, in a way, to pick out toys and books for somebody whose personality is yet unknown, but we're betting on genetics here. Therefore our evaluation consists of us sitting down with the toy or reading the book and asking the question, "Would I, if I were my X-month old son, like this?"

Experimentation is required.

My husband and I are innately attracted to things like 'Baby's Little Periodic Table' or 'Spaceships for Babies.' Sadly there is a dearth of these products, but we keep looking. I haven't yet found 'My First Binary Counter' yet, but we're totally teaching our kid binary. I think we'll hold off on teaching legal concepts for awhile, though. The last thing we'll need is a six-year-old who argues like a lawyer over his bedtime.

oh, the pain

Today on my way to work, I was flipping around the radio dial, looking for music.

There was nothing wrong at first. The radio played one of my favorite Jane's Addiction songs. I happily sang along to Jane Says.

I'm going away to Spain, when I get my money saved... gonna start tomorrow...

The song ended. That's when it happened. I realized I was singing along with the local "classic rock" station. More horrifically, that station often plays "lite rock."

I was going to tell you Jane's Addiction concert stories from back in the day. Then I realized that, given how far back in the day these stories actually are, maybe the classic rock station was the right home. Ooooooh. The pain.

time flies and all that

My time at the judiciary is marching on. I'm almost halfway done, which is hard to believe. Yesterday I was given my second assignment, which should occupy about two weeks of my time. It's a knotty criminal law issue.

I'm delighted that I'm doing mostly criminal law at the appellate court. Given my engineering background, it's not something I have spent much time working on before, unless you count occasional exposure to annoying hackers trying to break into the various places I worked or a server we had at home. There just wasn't much work with that huge segment of society dedicated to crime.*

One of the lawyers I work with mentioned that by the time I take criminal procedure, "You're going to know a lot of it already." Maybe so, though if there is anything I've learned over the years it's that I can't ever underestimate my lack of knowledge in a particular area. There's always more to learn. I do suspect, however, that classes like civil procedure and criminal procedure are easier and more intuitive if a student has a little exposure to how the system really works ahead of time.  

* Not just criminals! I include all those who work to prevent crime as well. Software engineers, unless they are either working on scary huge government spy projects or have secret identities as crime fighters, don't spend too much time on that activity.

discovering the weekend

One advantage of working is the lovely concept of the weekend. During finals, weekends disappear. There is the time that you are taking exams, and then there is all other time, all of which can potentially be used for studying. It isn't all used for studying, of course, but studying is always hanging there in the background.

In the judiciary, on the other hand, my work is done when the weekend comes. It's not hanging over me at all, though I have been thinking about it. But I'm not obligated to think about it, which is very nice.

In celebration, I went on an actual date with my husband. We had dinner together then went to the Harry Potter movie. I hear that once the kid arrives this sort of thing will seem strange and exotic, the sort of wild and crazy goings-on that hip childless people engage in, but then again, law school exams had the same effect.

the judiciary

Life in the judiciary is wonderful. It's all the good parts of law school, minus the annoying exams. Well, also minus the wild, inebriated parties. But as tradeoffs go, that isn't a bad one.

I work on cases before the appellate court. This means either civil or criminal cases. I have already learned more about criminal procedure in three days than I did in a semester of criminal law, though to be fair my criminal law course wasn't about criminal procedure. Still, though, it's a lot of new material to absorb. The beauty of the appellate court is that each case is a new issue, a new set of facts, and new law to learn. I'm learning new-to-me law every day.  It's fantastic.

back to work

Tomorrow my eleven month vacation from work ends. I know that 1L year is not usually considered vacation, but now, sitting in the face of a 9:00 am start time and (horrors) pregnancy pantyhose, it feels like I've been on a vacation.

Not that I'm not excited about work. I am very excited about it. This is my first foray into the outside legal world, the world in which people get paid for their legal knowledge rather than paying to acquire it. I can't wait to see how it all functions.

I don't know how much blogging I am going to do about my summer work. Probably it won't be a lot.

However, here is the high level plan. My summer work is in two distinct phases. Part One: Adventures in the Judiciary, begins tomorrow. I have a six week externship for a state appellate court judge. Part Two: The Summer Associate begins in July. I will work until late August for a law firm. I will start in their IP group but the firm is a large firm and summer associates move around to multiple areas, so I may not do all my work there. I would be happy either way; IP law is fascinating but exposure to other areas would be interesting too.

tivo knows all

When I wrote this entry, I was pregnant but I didn't yet know it. But TiVo knew. I'm a little scared of our TiVo now. If it starts recording shows about the Black Plague, deadly asteroids, or infomercials on home organization appliances, I'm totally turning it off and maybe getting a shaman to purge the house of weird future-knowing spirits. Shamans are probably cheaper these days now that Angel is off the air.

The baby is due in late September. My husband and I are both over the moon about it, interspersed with moments of "We're going to do what?!?!?" and, for me in particular, "It's going to come out of where?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!"

Apparently yes. The baby does come out of there and women do survive birth these days. Speaking of which, I've never been much of an idealist of the past – I'm rather fond of my ability to vote, speak in public, not be considered property, thank you very much – but my search for more information about birth has convinced me even more that I am very pleased to be giving birth now and not, say, one hundred or even thirty years ago.

I will be taking off next semester and possibly next year. We'll see how it goes. One of the huge advantages of having a kid in law school is that my time is much more flexible than it is at a paid job. I don't have to make the decision now. I have all the time in the world and I love what I'm studying. It's a good feeling.

the quickening

I felt the baby move for the first time in the middle of my last Torts class of the semester. Prof. Torts was reviewing strict liability. We concentrated on him; the exam was approaching quickly.

Then there it was. A small leg, not even the size of my smallest finger at that point, deep inside. Poke, poke. Here I am. Then a somersault, performed deep inside my body by an independent little being, my womb the platform for his – and I know now it was his – watery acrobatics.

I stopped thinking about strict liability.

My husband, also logged into AIM, found out less than five seconds after I realized what had happened.

“I just felt the baby move!!!!!!”

“WOW!!!!”

Excessive exclamation points and capital letters, something I usually abhor, were warranted.

I IM’d my friend D., who turned and grinned broadly at me, and then my friends A. and J., who frantically IM’d me a series of smiley faces and electronic hugs. J. IM’d her neighbor. The word spread silently through the classroom.

They rushed up to me after Torts, a few of them giving me spontaneous hugs and peppering me with questions.

“What’s it feel like?”

“How do you feel?”

“You can tell it was a somersault?”

“Really?”

“Is it like Aliens?”

“That’s sooooo weird.”

One of the captivating aspects of the study of law is the history that lies behind every word, phrase and ponderous sentence. After years of working in a transient medium, endlessly tinkering with ephemeral code, the weightiness and permanence of the cases is a thing of beauty to me. I read a case, and there I am, joined by a piqued Mrs. Palsgraf or the stentorian Justice Cardozo. Law is nothing so much as an elaborate ghost story.

Yet in the face of the quickening, the crusty old law phantoms are but babies themselves. The quickening is primordial. One tiny kick and I am part of an ancient inheritance, immediately bound to my own progenitors by a silent and intensely intimate dance.

It is astounding.

those of you starting law school

Heidi Bond has done a series of posts about what she did in her first year, what worked for her, and what she wished she had known. The most recent post is here. I think they're good reading for those coming into law school.

Over the past few months I've had a few emails requesting engineering specific tips for law school, for students entering law school with a background in engineering. I promise I haven't been ignoring you, but during the build-up to finals I had a hard time writing anything that took more than a short amount of time. I'll post something soon. The bottom line, though, is that I had a great year, I'd do it again in an instant, and engineering is not a liability in law school. So don't worry. You'll be fine.

really and truly done!

My 1L year is really, truly, honestly, no-I'm-not-lying done! I submitted my law review write-on paper today, that sneaky little coda to finals that turned out to be as much work as preparing for another final. I have recycled all of the scrap paper that had grown near my desk. There are no more practice exams lining the floor, no notes, no first drafts of my paper, no citation scraps. It was an intellectual archeology dig; my sample civil procedure exams were at the bottom of the pile. Was my civil procedure exam really only a month ago?

This past weekend I also moved out of my little apartment near the school, the den where I spent a few nights a week to eliminate a long commute. My husband and I were both nostalgic as we carried out my lumpy futon and cheap Ikea desk. Having the apartment was like having a dorm room that I didn't have to live in permanently; neither one of us expected to get so much fun out of what we originally considered a utilitarian requirement.

My poor husband, taking one for the team, has come down with the nasty cold that I usually get after finals. I am tired, but not sick. He, on the other hand, is sniffly, tired, and sounds like a bad Janis Joplin impersonator.

We were going to go out and celebrate, but the most we managed was a walk and then a chicken noodle soup dinner. That's okay. A quiet evening at home with my husband and assorted pets, with no finals or law review hanging over me, is glorious.