Favorite Thing #4

My apologies for the long gap in posts as I wrapped up my final papers and got settled in a new house with no Internet yet! At the moment I'm sitting in the sunshine and 88-degree warmth on the beautiful lakeside patio at Mozart's Coffee Roasters in Austin, taking advantage of the free wireless and trying to get a little tan on my arms and legs so people at graduation will believe I spent three weeks away from Cambridge, where it's 49 degrees today.

Weather aside, though, as graduation grows nearer and nearer, I definitely find myself thinking of my favorite parts of living and studying there. A big one came to mind recently when the Dean of Students Office sent its weekly e-mail about graduation logistics. And fortunately, it's one thing about Harvard that I will NOT have to miss: my law school e-mail address.

It may sound minor, but I have to say how much I love that student e-mail addresses at HLS are assigned for life, so I will never have to surrender mine the way I did after finishing my bachelor's at Texas. There is something so great about the fact that, as long as I live, people can contact me by typing in my first initial, last name, and the domain "jd11.law.harvard.edu." And that I can contact my classmates the same way for as long as they live, too.

Harvard will quit storing e-mails sent to this address and instead forward them to another one we provide, so I finally had to set up that Gmail account I'd been avoiding, enjoying the simplicity of having just one e-mail address. But this was obviously for the best, and I know it's the only way Harvard could feasibly allow their alumni to keep their e-mail addresses forever. It still adds to the sense that by going here, I have joined a community with which I'll want to stay connected my whole life. Cheesy, like so much of what I've written here the past three years, but true.

Ridiculous luck

As spring finally comes to New England and the sun is actually starting to shine (which is weird to say today because it's cloudy, but more often than not it's true), I'm baffled not only by how little time I have left in this place, but also how far out of its way the universe seems to be going to remind me what an amazing opportunity it's all been.

For one thing, hard as it is to believe, the lunch with Sonja Sohn I mentioned last post turned out not to be the peak of my celebrity spotting this semester - not by a long shot. A few days later, I got an e-mail from one of the teaching assistants for the same class, proclaiming, "Congratulations! You have been selected to attend the dinner with the cast of The Wire this Tuesday, April 12, 2011!" I was one of ten winners of a lottery that students in the class could enter by writing a paragraph on whether or not we supported drug legalization. Amazingly, my good friend Nancy won as well. So after the cast spoke in our class Tuesday afternoon, and after another event open to the public that evening (where my friends were all ecstatic just to be in the same 300-person courtroom as the cast), the two of us hopped into a van to join Sonja, Donnie Andrews and Fran Boyd, Jim True-Frost, Jamie Hector, Andre Royo, and Michael K. Williams for dinner at one of the undergraduate houses along the Charles River.

Some things about the dinner weren't ideal. Our group of law students was outnumbered by guests of the professor and undergraduates from the house where we were eating, few of whom seemed to know the show like we did or appreciate the magnitude of the opportunity they were getting. Watching some of them sit closer to the cast members and barely speak to them was torture! And sorry for the tangent, but the lack of vegetarian option for the appetizer was just bizarre.

But all was forgiven when people began getting up and mingling, allowing Nancy and I to march up to each cast member in turn, introduce ourselves, and have a real conversation of substance. Without fail, each one of them was warm, funny, and receptive to our questions. Nancy's paper for the class is about the presence and absence of hip-hop music in the show, so she wanted to know which rapper each of them thought was most similar to their character. Meanwhile, I got an enormous hug from Andre Royo after Nancy let slip that I'm always saying I want to hug his character, Bubbles, every time he comes on screen. And I bashfully confessed to Michael Williams about the cat I named after his character, Omar Little. To my great relief, he was unsurprised and actually pleased to hear it!

I wish I had photos or autographs to show you, but Nancy and I decided early on not to join the people badgering the cast for those. My friend Ryan has some great shots from the public appearance, though, if you want proof that they came. And we've gotten a little media attention as well.

However, that wasn't even the only great thing to happen on Tuesday. First of all, I finished a paper for my Law and Social Policy course that was my last official assignment for the academic year. Now I'm free to focus on my final papers, which won't always be fun, but is much better than having them loom in the distance causing added anxiety as I try to get through more urgent, but less important, things.

And second, also on Tuesday, we got a really amazing and long overdue piece of news about life in Austin after graduation. It's the culmination of a really long, dramatic, and mostly miserable story I promise to tell here later, but I can't right now because (a) I can't possibly fit it into this one post, and (b) given the aforementioned long story, I don't want to tempt fate into seizing what tiny opportunity still exists to ruin this for us.

But I will say that it looks a little bit like this:

Cliffhanger enough for you??

OKAY, SERIOUSLY.

ENOUGH OF THIS WINTER CRAP ALREADY. I AM NOT KIDDING.

No, seriously, it's getting really old. Early spring is the worst time for my seasonal issues anyway - there seems to be some cumulative effect after the long winter that the longer days can't reverse all at once - so all the bundling up and trudging through the snow and taking lukewarm showers because the water heater is on overdrive running the radiators is pretty much adding insult to injury. The effort it takes me to do basic things is unreal. I was so proud to have washed dishes, sent a bunch of e-mails, and ordered a passport photo for my admission ticket to the MPRE this morning. Studying for that thing is going to be a whole other story.

SO SERIOUSLY, CAMBRIDGE, KNOCK IT OFF.

In other news, I've managed to make more progress toward my obscenely high paper-writing page count this semester: I wrapped up another five-pager for Law and Social Policy last week and a seven-pager for Law and Social Movements this Monday. It's funny to type out both those class names and be reminded that they're so similar, when the classes themselves couldn't be more different.

Unfortunately, those papers were just two of the many balls in the air for me right now, from a meeting for TAP tonight, another for my journal tomorrow, and this MPRE business on Saturday to planning for graduation, signing for a bar loan, and getting health insurance for this summer. I'm definitely banking on my experience so far in law school that no matter how much it seems like things will never fall into place in time, they usually do.

But in case all this sounds too depressing, I want to highlight a couple of things that are GREAT in my life right now! The first is my upcoming trip to Alabama for a reunion with my mom's fabulous family. Russell is coming along, and it will be his first time seeing the family's home base in a cluster of little towns on the Tennessee River, not to mention meeting my zillions of great-aunts, great-uncles, and second cousins, all as loud and raucous as you could possibly want, who will be converging there. I'm so excited and ready for this break from school and the cold, I can hardly stand it.

The second great thing, which I've been meaning to share here for a long time, is the Law and Mind Blog I've been working on for my Monday night seminar at school. Almost all the assignments for this class are blog posts; each week the professor takes volunteers to post about the reading, connecting the reading to current events or other fields of study, or about any other mind science topic we like. Don't be turned off by the jargon in some of the titles - the result is a pretty cool assortment of silly and serious takes on how our psychology influences our lives and our laws. I really hope you'll check it out - especially the post I wrote about Born This Way, whose creator commented to thank me for my thoughtful discussion!

So it's not all work and crappy weather. Mostly, but not all. (:

Move over, April

I'm firmly convinced that February is the cruelest month around here.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the way this month jerks you around with the warm weather, then cold weather, dry weather, then wet weather is just evil. Last week we had temperatures in the 50s, most of the snow melted, and I was able to walk to school without a coat on two separate days. This morning, big, fat snowflakes are pouring from the sky like someone is shaking out a giant bag of powdered sugar up there. It's beautiful, as always, but really? I had kind of hoped to be done with some of my winter gear.

Luckily, I didn't hope too hard. I saw this coming, since it happened last February and the February before that. Last week, when even professors were starting to hail the coming of spring, I was making sure to soak up the sun but not to get too used to it. Fool me three times, and I start to look pretty pathetic.

Update fail!

Hey, remember me? That friend/relative of yours who's in the middle of what's supposed to be the easiest year of law school? Yeah, about that...

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the past few weeks have been some of the craziest of my life! Not because anything incredibly major has happened, but because of the incredibly relentless stream of minor things that just keep cropping up. Once I realized I was three days away from going a whole month without posting here, I knew I had better clue y'all in on some of the hubbub. So here goes:

Winter term success. The extra three weeks in Austin this winter were amazing, and not only because I got to accompany my mom to both her latest MRI scan and the visit where her doctor announced there had been no growth in her tumor since surgery. No, the work was also fantastic - being back at my summer employer felt like starting right where I left off, even though the issue I worked on was different from before, and I got to help out with incredibly fun things like co-hosting a roundtable discussion with Elizabeth Warren and Holly Petraeus in San Antonio. I was ready to be back at Harvard with Russell and my cat by the end, but I couldn't have picked a better way to spend the term.

Snow like whoa. This is easily the snowiest winter since I came to law school - it's actually the most snow Cambridge has had in something like 15 years. At least a foot covers all the front yards, huge icicles are hanging off the buildings, and there are enormous person- and even two-person-high drifts in some of the places where the big, industrial snowblowers have cleared the sidewalks and driveways at Harvard. I think it's beautiful and mostly have no complaints - what an extravagant send-off for someone headed to Texas! But it is a little treacherous how it can hide ice on the ground. No real wipeouts yet, though - keep your fingers crossed.

Bar application blues. The postmark deadline for the Texas bar was today, so several friends and I have been scrambling to get our employers, character references, birth certificates, applications to law school, and everything else in line this week. It's exhausting and tense, so much more than it probably needs to be, because the instructions are as vague as possible and the website is positively archaic (truly, check it out yourself.) But we are finally done and can breathe a sigh of relief, at least until the fingerprinting cards come.

Last first week. Although the start of spring semester is never quite as exciting as fall, I'm so psyched about my classes that it still feels like the start of something momentous and special. It occurs to me that I never did post my schedule, so here it is now:

Monday

1-2:30 Race & Justice: The Wire with Charles Ogletree

5-7 Law & Mind Sciences with Jon Hanson

Tuesday

1-2:30 Race & Justice: The Wire

Wednesday

1:30-3 Law & Social Movements with Lani Guinier

5-7 Workshop on Law & Social Policy with Anne Alstott & Ben Sachs

7-9 Judicial Process in the Community Courts with Judge John Cratsley

Thursday

1:30-3 Law & Social Movements

Friday

1:30-2:30 Law & Social Movements

Of course, all that involves A LOT of reading, and even though I found all the assignments interesting, it was difficult not to fall behind the very first week! Add in the 15-page paper I had to write for my winter clinical - which was literally impossible to squeeze in with working full time during the term, so it all got done in the last week before the deadline, today - and I was about ready to start pulling my hair out.

Graduation around the corner. Did I mention this is my LAST year of law school, meaning I am going to GRADUATE in just a few short months??? I spent a good chunk of time in Austin, and a little more since I've been back here (with much more to come, I'm sure), juggling the travel and lodging plans of at least a dozen excited relatives I can't wait to see in May. This has been fun and, with some welcome help from my mom, pretty manageable. But between this and the bar application, the future is quickly becoming all too real.

Back in the fold. Well, hopefully just enough of all that is behind me now. The excitement of winter term and the craziness of this past week are over, I have an amazing semester of classes ahead, and life with Russell and the cat is lowering my blood pressure by the minute (and will do so even more once I clean up the disaster zone I made of the apartment while I was so busy). Granted, there is the usual ramp-up of responsibilities for Tenant Advocacy and my journal. But that's the regular (for Harvard Law School) amount of stress I feel confident I can handle, so I look forward to getting back to it very much.

Old enough to know better

Well, here I am, almost two full weeks into getting to focus my energy on school, work, and friends now that my post-graduation job search is over. Or I would be, if I had any energy or could seem to focus at all.

This started with the pretty terrible cold I developed soon after getting back from Austin, which I tried to deny for a few days because the symptoms were so much like extreme allergies, but eventually had to acknowledge when my usual antihistamine quit even making a dent. I switched to a regimen of Dayquil and Nyquil so extreme that attending class and preparing for class basically became an either/or proposition, and I mostly chose to attend class in hopes that copious note-taking would compensate for spending every spare moment asleep or close to it.

That was the start of my lethargy and my saying really dumb things, but it definitely wasn't the end. My cold is long over, and I still find myself coming home from school so incredibly tired that I literally can't bring myself to do schoolwork - or even cook, which is my usual favorite way to avoid schoolwork I don't want to do. I find myself getting grumpy over pretty much anything that requires me to lift my arms, making long to-do lists instead of taking care of little things at my usual clip. And I find myself, just like when I was on Dayquil but with much less excuse, drifting around in a fog that somehow obscures my self-censor so I wind up volunteering the most wandering, badly put, or just plain incorrect information in my classes and group meetings ALL THE TIME. All the time.

I'm so grateful for patient and generous professors, like the ones in my Modern Capitalism class who breezed past my inexplicable, crucial mistake of a famous author's identity like it was understandable when it absolutely wasn't. But I'm also still embarrassed enough to consider this a wake-up call. I know the symptoms of seasonal depression when I see them, and confusion is a big one I just haven't happened to experience before. Fatigue and irritability, meanwhile, are a pair about as familiar to me as the gray, rainy skies we've had outside all week.

So I'm calling a stop. I'm committing myself to do whatever it takes to keep this from happening. This is my third and final year at law school, and if I can't enjoy it - and be good at it, which I had really started to feel like I was - I'll never have another chance. I'm not certain what it's going to take, because I've used my phototherapy lamp nearly every day for the past two weeks and this backslide obviously still happened. But I know this much: if I can't pull myself out of this by sheer force of will in the next few days, my mental health care provider is getting a visit. I know that at Harvard, we don't mess around.

First and last

I can't really believe it, but my first full week of school is nearly over, and I've had all of my classes but one (a seminar that only meets every other week) at least once now.

All in all, it's going well. The first couple of days were rough, because I had trouble getting organized and finishing readings in time for class, and I was desperate to get off on the right foot and make sure that scattered feeling didn't linger on all semester. It didn't help that the temperature spiked for a few days there, so without air conditioning I was feeling much too sluggish to do any of the things that would have made me feel better. Luckily, that wrapped up around the end of last week - the weather is gorgeous now, and I somewhat have my act together.

Which is a very good thing, because this week the meetings for my various organizations started up, meaning all kinds of new responsibilities just for me. At TAP, I'm the chairperson of the Intake Committee now, so I run the meetings and train the new members instead of just bringing in cases to discuss (although I'll have those, too.) And at HLPR I'm a member of the new reigning Masthead, responsible for making actual decisions instead of just listening in and learning while others call the shots. Which makes it a little bit harder to use those meetings to eat lunch.

Classes are great, though. My Taxation and Administrative Law professors are old favorites, like my Modern Capitalism seminar professor will be, but my Environmental Law professor is about as new and exciting as they come. Fresh from a stint at the White House, funny and friendly but aggressively Socratic, she is pretty much my new hero. If my head doesn't explode from picking apart the extremely technical statutes she's already fond of assigning, it should be an excellent semester.

Meanwhile, a little bit of nostalgia has been attaching itself to everything I do these days. I sit down to start a post, and soon I'm thinking about my decision to start writing this blog two years ago. I remember being pretty nervous and uncertain about airing my experiences for the whole Internet to read, thinking this was some giant undertaking I might regret or not be able to maintain. Instead, of course, it has been such a welcome way to document this time, organize my thinking about it, and get just enough feedback to know I'm not crazy. Most things are like that these days - completely changed from how I knew or imagined them then.

Part of me misses that summer, when this whole adventure was still ahead of me and the questions weighing on my mind were mostly "Will my financial aid application get finished before I leave for Europe?" and "Will the registrar's website lock me out for mis-typing my student ID number one more time?"

That's probably an overstatement, because "Will people like me?" was a big one as well. (Hopefully, a couple of rousing successes at pub trivia lately signify the answer to that one.) But the biggest one now is "Will people hire me?" And it's the most anxiety-producing of all. Under the federal clerkship hiring timeline, my applications were released to judges this Tuesday, and they can begin calling to grant interviews next Monday, September 13th. Of course, enough of them are known for jumping the gun that there's already reason to be nervous if the phone isn't ringing. And of course, mine isn't yet. The universe would never make it so easy!

Faced with that, even my readings from the Internal Revenue Code are looking like a pretty attractive distraction. I guess it's a good thing I'm still a law student, if only for now.

Into the swing

It's finally here: the first week of my last year of law school. Classes start Wednesday, but to pick up textbooks, course packets, and a check from financial aid, I went up to campus yesterday for the first time since May.

Langdell Hall was decked out in crimson banners for 1L Orientation, and the trees on Holmes Field were impossibly huge and green compared with the crunchy dryness of Texas plant life this time of year. It was wonderful to be back and totally bizarre to think it would only last eight more months. I was literally looking forward to the reunions already.

Of course, not every part of my day went smoothly. I got to Financial Services only to realize I had never filled out some necessary Web form and would need to do so, then wait two hours for them to process it, before I could pick up my check. Luckily, I ran into a friend who also needed to go textbook shopping, so we did that in the meantime. I was happy to see that my Administrative Law class uses the same book I already bought for 1L Legislation and Regulation, but less pleased when the "abridged" version of the Internal Revenue Code I needed for Taxation was still thicker than my fist. In hindsight, I guess I was naive for expecting otherwise.

On the bright side, my new schoolbag proved itself worthy by carrying half my haul back to campus very comfortably. But I was still pretty hot and sweaty when I got back to Financial Services, where my check wasn't quite ready yet. Unlike heating in winter, air conditioning in summer isn't something folks in Cambridge always get right. So I continued to sweat while waiting and catching up with several classmates who were doing the same.

To clarify, this check contains the balance on my student loans and grants after tuition, student health insurance, and some other fees are paid. Harvard takes what it's owed and gives you the remainder, in my case around $10,800, for living expenses (which are an acceptable purpose for education loans - who knew? This was all Greek to me when I started at Harvard, since my parents were able to pay for undergrad at my relatively cheap state school with no help from financial aid. But by now it's old hat.)

Once the check was finally ready and I deposited it at my credit union in the Square, I couldn't help but lug all my books to the new Anthropologie on Brattle Street to shop. It felt SO GOOD to have money again after my incredibly cash-strapped summer. I didn't buy anything, but being able to try on several things in earnest was a breath of fresh air on a hot, sticky day.

I also wanted to pick out a good notebook, since laptops won't be allowed in 2-3 of my classes this semester, but for once my favorite stationery store let me down. There are other good places to try, like the enormous school-supply floor of the COOP, but I decided to go back when I didn't have half my weight in case books in tow. So I headed home to cool off, watch some Buffy, make tofu with couscous and generally enjoy one of these last lazy nights with Russell.

With that stuff out of the way, today should be a little more fun. Some friends are having a picnic on Cambridge Common in a few hours, so I'm about to get cleaned up and put together a lunch to bring to that. And tonight I have a shopping date with Anush at a classy little mall we like near MIT, which should take care of the last of my back-to-school needs. I may just be ready to start this last year of law school out right.... Gulp.

Jiggity jig

It's weird to think of myself as having come home, when that's the same feeling I overwhelmingly had about returning to Austin to start work back in May. But a lot of this week has felt like a homecoming, too, because some parts of living in Austin did NOT feel like home.

For one thing, I was subletting an apartment, which feels a little like living in someone else's dirt for three months. I doubt I'm actually a cleaner person than the regular tenants, but it can feel that way when someone hasn't prioritized cleaning the things you would never tolerate being dirty (and has probably left spotless some things you don't even notice because you don't care if they're clean.) Before long, I was desperate to get back to my painted countertops, shiny white bathtub, and easily swept and mopped wood floors in Cambridge.

Of course, living without Russell also made Austin feel like another planet. He's so fun and silly that I find it much easier to get bored living alone, or at least to feel unproductive and lazy for taking what he'd probably help me recognize as well-deserved breaks. Plus, it is so much harder to finish groceries before they spoil without him, and there's no way to divide labor so that I'm spared my least favorite household chores while doubling up on the ones he hates but I don't mind. We're such a good match in this sense that he's officially the best roommate I've ever had, and I've had some good ones. It's so great to be living with him again.

And Ramona! Smart kitty, she recognized me from the moment I walked through the door (which we weren't really sure she would) and ever since has been every bit the fun companion I remembered. Russell is right that she mellowed a little over the summer, which the vet did say would start happening on the other side of two years old. So she's been more affectionate and tolerant than when I left her, which is great, but she still has distinct bad moods when she wanders the apartment literally grumbling and whining. Hilarious, but it's best to stay a few feet away when it's happening.

So I'm settling in, and I've already checked off some important back-to-school duties like finding a weekly planner and a school bag for this year. Russell and I joined a classmate for brunch this morning, then helped him find a place in Harvard Square that sold water guns so he could stock up for a city-wide water fight this afternoon on Boston Common - I can't wait to ask him how it went. Russell and I were a little more practical and went grocery shopping, which was desperately necessary since he left the kitchen mostly empty (and yet surprisingly messy) before coming to get me in Austin. (I can't blame him, though. Just like my poor record with taking out my trash this summer, I think stocking the fridge was something he had grown accustomed to letting his roommate do.)

Now I have just over a week to enjoy Cambridge and Boston before classes start again, and I plan on milking it. The weather these days rarely tops 80 degrees and is mostly sunny, although we're in for rain tomorrow night. So I'm planning a lot of walks and meals outside, and I may even hit up the beach a time or two - with an Environmental Law or Federal Income Taxation textbook in tow, of course, because it won't be long before those first reading assignments are due. Wish me luck and enjoy the end of your summer!

Spring at last

I've said it before, but spring in Cambridge is glorious. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, the flowering trees are flowering. And my friends Jen and Albert recently won their election to be president and vice-president of our student body after spending a week campaigning outside the Hark. Outside!

I'm trying to use this time to refresh and recharge before the big crunch at year's end. With two weeks left of class, this means staying on top of my readings, getting ahead on some research for my Housing Law and Policy paper, and tying up loose ends with things like my journal and incredible Community Action project with those Boston teens. But it also means taking care of myself: getting some sun, taking a hot bath, finishing The Girl Who Played With Fire - highly recommended - and making a long-overdue haircut appointment at my luxurious new favorite salon on Newbury Street. Can. Not. Wait.

Around this time last semester, Russell and I both restricted our diets to the very healthiest tier of things we usually eat. This was supposed to keep Thanksgiving and Christmas from rolling together into one endless stretch of indigestion and weight gain, but the unexpected result was a huge improvement in my focus and well-being over past exam seasons (when I'd always justified scarfing whatever processed junk was around as "comforting" or "rewarding" myself, without realizing the effect on my energy level.)

So we've decided to do the same this semester - to spend some time together cooking when I might otherwise be too busy to talk, hopefully lose a little weight gained at our various birthday celebrations, and generally not let the hell of final exams make our bodies feel like hell, too.

I really do want to update you on that project for Community Action, so stay tuned for another post soon. In the meantime, wish me luck approaching it all in the most Zen-like state possible.

Not snow much

In a recent admissions blog post, I commented on our weirdly dry weather as the "snowpocalypse" hit elsewhere on the East Coast the other week:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/2010/02/19/not-snow-much/

It got me thinking how much less snowy this winter has been than last year. I remember a lot more white on the ground, a lot more of the time, the first time around. It's been nice to avoid how dingy the snow gets when it sticks around too long, but the beauty of a fresh coat is something you start to miss. So the couple days of heavy snowfall we did get after I wrote that post were pretty welcome.

Of course, we're moving into the annual craziness that is February, so most of that has melted by now. It's been getting warmer, with a peak in the mid-forties today that I celebrated with a long, sunny walk to lunch in the Square. It was important to take advantage because (did I mention it's February?) we're due for at least ten days of snow, sleet, and the dreaded wintry mix starting tomorrow.

At least this year I know what to expect!

Lazy Sunday

Views from where I spent the afternoon reading, basking in the sun, and enjoying some of our last 60-degree weather of the year:

Today might be more of the same, because thanks to the end of my Sex Equality class, weekends now last until about Tuesday evening. There's usually homework and sometimes some TAP work to be done, but generally it's exactly the reprieve I expected from an intensive class ending in October.

Russell, who's still at work with Disability Services as we speak, is so jealous he can hardly stand me.

Ch- ch- changes

So I pretty much hate this time of year: the time change just pushed sunset forward an hour, and a good portion of each day seems suddenly plunged into darkness. It's messing with everyone, but for obvious reasons, it's especially messing with me. I wake up easily enough with sunrise also an hour early, but by noon it feels like late afternoon, and by four o'clock it feels like nighttime.

Luckily, while it's been a busy week, it hasn't been too busy for either a quick nap after lunch or a couple of hours watching TV with Omar most afternoons. These chances to recharge may be the only reason I don't collapse prior to 8 p.m. every day - I am seriously dragging fanny! So forgive me if this post isn't the most comprehensive update on my life.

Right now Russell is out getting a haircut, and I'm hanging out in bed with Omar, which is a perfect opportunity to blog except that I don't feel like writing very much. So maybe a few cute pictures from the past week or so will suffice?

Some shots of Omar I've been taking in the afternoons

Results of our pumpkin carving party

Monsters I carved (hard to see because they go all the way around)

Skull Russell carved

Anush's scary robot

Albert's very impressive HLS shield

Aftermath

In love with Omar yesterday

Well, readers, that's all I've got in me. Hope you're satisfied for now!

Weather overview

Another post for the admissions blog - a tad controversial, perhaps, as you can tell from the editor's note afterward!

I think I was fair and encouraging, but you tell me:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admissions/2009/10/20/braving-the-elements/

White & early

You'll never believe what went on outside my window yesterday afternoon (unless you tuned into a national weather forecast around then, I suppose.)

I bounced back and forth like a pinball between being tickled and outraged by this, considering it waited until December to snow last year and no one wants the four-month New England winter to be more like six. I also had to walk to a meeting for my Community Action for Social and Economic Rights class in it, which was charming on the way out but not so much on the way home in the dark.

Either way, it didn't stick, so this morning the sun is shining and the ground is dry. And the forecast tells me our temperatures will be back in the sixties later this week, so maybe this was the pleasant fluke we all hope it was.

Crazy as promised

Yes, it really is high time you heard the story of my crazy week.

It actually began the Thursday before last, when my work for the Tenant Advocacy Project ramped up suddenly and immensely. I'd had a horrible time getting in touch with the client in my new case, leaving multiple messages over a two week stretch, and we were even considering rescinding our offer to represent her when I finally heard back.

This gave me exactly five days to prepare for her hearing, since asking for a postponement would only have left her without housing assistance longer. So with classes and career planning phone calls and blogging for admissions and meetings for my journal going on just like normal, preparations to save this lady's housing also went into overdrive.

Plus, on Friday I had a paper due for Sex Equality. For my topic I chose Supreme Court Justice Scalia's infamous dissent to the United States v. Virginia decision admitting women to the ultra-masculine Virginia Military Institute in 1996. I knew I hated that dissent, but had no idea how much or for how many reasons until I started writing. So I had to balance my TAP work with a paper that was growing longer and more important to me by the minute.

After my morning classes Friday and a quick visit to the TAP office for some phone calls, I spent several hours in the library finishing my paper. At 4:30 when I slipped it under my professor's assistant's door, I was positively braindead and bound to be useless at any work for the rest of the day. So, magically, Russell and I found two hours to see Zombieland at the theater in Harvard Square. It may have been my exhaustion talking, but I absolutely loved its funny and unexpectedly tender take on the zombie genre, and I can't recommend it enough (to anyone who can stomach a little gore... strangely similar to my feelings about law school.)

After that brief refresher, I spent most of Saturday writing a letter related to my tenant's case and preparing questions for her hearing. It was around this time that Betty, the administrative assistant at TAP, utterly saved my life by finding a volunteer to help with some of my legal research. Joe, a JD/MBA who joined TAP as a 1L and had recently been asking for work with them again, was a total godsend. As I told him many times, I probably could have handled this case myself, I just wouldn't have had time to eat.

In fact, because he stepped in I was able to spend Saturday night seeing Whip It with Russell and Anush. Yet another movie I recommend with all my heart, partly because it's set in Austin, which I wasn't expecting and which bolstered my mood through many of the tough days ahead.

Sunday, for instance, was a bad one because just as I was leaving home to meet my TAP client for the first time and co-chair the first meeting of my article team for my journal, I got an e-mail from my supervisor full of harsh criticism for those questions I'd spent most of Saturday preparing.

But Monday was a bit better, strangely enough. There was class to balance with about a million last-minute phone calls and faxes, but as things started to fall into place for the hearing and the remaining tasks became smaller and more discrete, I reached that place of artificial confidence and calm that comes with running on pure adrenaline. Sure, I had never done a housing hearing before and a whole family's finances would depend on my performance, and sure I had a runny nose and sore throat that allergy medicine didn't seem to fix anymore, but it would all be over soon.

Which is exactly what happened. The next morning, in a small meeting room in an office building very near where I worked all summer, I met my client and supervisor, a very supportive Joe, and a couple of people from the agency for the hearing. My client's leasing officer read the case against her from a prepared packet. I coaxed the important answers out of my client, then made our legal argument to the hearing officer, who seemed receptive. It all seemed painfully slow and awkward, but somehow it was over within an hour and a half.

Tense, but uneventful - that's how everyone who knows tells me these things always are. And you can never be sure until those 30 business days are up and the decision arrives, but over coffee afterward to debrief, my supervisor seemed fairly hopeful. For all her harshness, she had hardly any criticism to give, thank God.

So Tuesday morning was gone in a blur, and Tuesday afternoon was a blissful six hours alone in the apartment playing catch-up on sleep, Omar time, and some cleaning and decorating I'd been desperate to do since the move. That evening in my Community Action class, my study group had to give a half-hour presentation, but we'd prepared a week in advance so it was a breeze. Or maybe it just felt that way compared with that morning.

Things were quieter Wednesday and Thursday. I had a doctor's appointment and another couple of meetings for my journal, but these were a manageable, typical kind of hectic unlike what I'd been through the prior few days. The only problem, and one I should have seen coming a mile away, was that the nose drip and sore throat I mentioned earlier spiraled into a full-blown head cold as soon as I slowed down. In windy, chilly weather with a cough I couldn't control and either a sinus headache or a serious buzz from DayQuil at all times, I was almost as grouchy as if that hearing were still days away.

But it's Saturday now, and that too is wearing off. Especially since we have Columbus Day off school, making this a three-day weekend, making Saturday the perfect time for me (and Russell, who obviously caught this thing and is just at the peak of it now) to take a full sick day complete with crepes for breakfast and lots of television, napping, reading, playing board games, and watching Texas football on the folded-out futon. In our giant living room. With our awesome, grouchy cat.

A sick day! If that's not proof my crazy week is finally over, I don't know what is.

Fleeting perfection

My second anniversary with Russell is today, but we celebrated over the weekend with possibly the most flawless 24-hour period of my life.

We had been throwing around ideas for fun ways to celebrate, but didn't settle on anything until last Thursday, when we decided to book a hotel room and escape our tiny cat-dominated apartment for a night of room service, pay-per-view, and general luxury. Short of travel or some large piece of furniture (both a joke to anyone who's seen our home or my schedule), this might be the most expensive thing we could have chosen. But it couldn't possibly have been more worthwhile.

With fall in full and gorgeous swing here in Cambridge, even the walk to our chosen hotel - the lovely Sheraton Commander across Cambridge Common from my school - was too picturesque to be true. The people in sweaters playing soccer and frisbee, the handful of trees changing color too early, even the spectacular view from what turned out to be our top-floor room all seemed to be celebrating our two years of adorable couplehood.

So we ate an extravagant meal in our pajamas, spread out on the king-sized white comforter while the sunset blazed outside. We rented "Caprica," the feature-length prequel to our beloved Battlestar Galactica, then caught the last three quarters of the Texas football game with more enthusiasm than we could never have mustered otherwise. And slept nearly 10 hours without one interruption from Omar. And took long showers in a bathroom about twice the size, with about five times the water pressure, of our own. We were as sad to leave in the morning as if we'd stayed for six weeks.

After a quick, free breakfast in the hotel restaurant, we headed home to drop off our things and check on the cat. But the weather was so gorgeous we headed straight back out for frozen yogurt and a chess lesson in Harvard Yard. I humored Russell as long as I could, but really have no patience for chess. So we moved on to window shopping in the Square until a matinee showing of the glorious new Star Trek at the Brattle Theater, which screens "recent raves" a few months after they leave other cinemas.

We had been excited about Star Trek (you'd have to be, to see something a third time) but we honestly forgot just how much we both loved it. From the moment that booming, exuberant music of the opening scene started up, we enjoyed it as much as the very first time. It was like a metaphor for the entire weekend... barf, I know.

Anyhow, after so much activity, I wrapped up Sunday as quietly as possible: a long study date with Anush, fresh corn from the farmer's market for dinner, and an extra-dramatic Mad Men episode I spent curled up with Omar. It was the perfect way to wind down from the last long break before the real bulk of my semester.

Still, I expect it's too much to ask for an easy transition from this fleeting perfection into the daily grind of school. If I don't get too swamped, I'll write again soon and let you know how it goes.

End of the tunnel

A lot has happened in the week-plus since I last posted, enough that I feel a little guilty for not writing sooner. I’ve seen the greatest fireworks of my life, for instance. And I’ve been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I have no clue how to portray this as the positive thing it absolutely is, except to say that if you periodically felt exhausted, hopeless and overwhelmed at the tiniest obstacles, and sad for no reason at all, it would be your dearest wish for someone with a prescription pad to tell you why.

This happened to me last week, after the sunshine I’d written about here was long gone and I was having a really hard time again. Everywhere I went, I trudged. It felt like a different person was at the controls of my emotions, making lousy choices with no relation to my life or who I am. Fed up and partly inspired by this woman, I marched up to the Mental Health wing of Harvard University Health Services for a walk-in appointment.

For too long, I had been reluctant to see someone because I wondered how many hours we would have to play tell-me-about-your-mother before they believed that I was healthy and happy aside from this reaction to the rain. Now I wish I’d gone much sooner, because the answer turned out to be… about one and a half. After a brief intake appointment and a single, perfect session, I was literally sent home with a prescription phototherapy light. It’s a loaner until my own comes in the mail—free of charge, of course, thanks to insurance. Proof, once again, that Harvard does not kid around.

This may be the most personal I’ve ever gotten with this blog, and part of me is sorry for the overshare. But the moral of this story—if you feel crummy, TELL SOMEONE—just seemed too important to keep quiet. I also wanted any of you who were worried by the tone of my recent posts to know that things are looking up.

So to balance out the drama (and prove that I am in fact functioning) here are some nice, everyday details of Cambridge life!

Both Russell’s office and mine were closed Friday, so after a leisurely breakfast we trekked out to the Target in Somerville. We needed some things, like a new alarm clock and a specific size of fluorescent lightbulb, that our tiny neighborhood grocery store doesn’t have. We also replaced about half our bathroom towels. I thought picking out colors was super fun. Russell disagreed, but can’t deny that the bathroom looks awesome now. Isn’t that how it always works?

Saturday, we cooked out on the patio with great success, despite extra uncooperative charcoal. Then we headed for the Charles River to watch fireworks. We joined thousands of people (and Cambridge is the less crowded side!) sitting on blankets, listening to Neal Diamond sing with the Boston Pops, and then watching some of America’s best fireworks literally yards from the boats where they launched. I have never oohed and aahed harder in my life!

Tired as we were the next day, with my mom’s visit and the one-year mark of our tenancy approaching, Russell and I agreed to a huge clean-out of the apartment. I bleached half the bathroom, polished everything I could reach, and literally spent time on my hands and knees wiping out dusty corners with Windex. Russell took all the rugs outside for a good shake. And our Mr. Clean Magic Eraser—buy yourself one right now, I cannot recommend them enough!!—made the kitchen counter look like it had never touched food.

The place feels so amazing now that Russell and I can’t stop remarking how worthwhile all the effort was. It’s like a fresh start, something I’ve also received at work because a beloved administrative assistant just retired and everyone, sensing my need for sunshine, insisted I move from my cubicle into her giant-windowed office.

She has great style, and a lot of her belongings are still around, making the place already feel like home. Even on cloudy days like today, my new city view manages to lift my spirits. All things considered, it seems the universe is finally conspiring to help me get well.

Better days

Maybe I should have blogged about our horrible weather situation earlier, because it has been better every day since I did.

On Thursday afternoon, I worked from home (or rather, the patio just outside of our home) because we had FOUR WHOLE HOURS of incredible, impossible, glaring, blazing sunlight that day! Here I am basking in it:

Can you tell I have NEVER been so happy to see the sun? Russell certainly could, so when he got home from work, he offered to bring dinner outside. He chose take-out from our favorite bakery/cafe up the street, and here he is after dessert.

Friday's weather was similar: a few big, serious clouds in the sky, sometimes raining, sometimes making way for the sun. So I worked partly from home again, brushing up on my legal research and writing skills to check source citations for a couple of our advocates who had court briefs due this week. I like the work- it's satisfying and makes good use of specific lessons from my year of law school. Most importantly, it can be done anywhere.

Of course, things got even better once the weekend came. This morning, I saw blue skies outside our bedroom window and immediately sold Russell on a trip to the beach. When we got there, a serious blanket of morning fog was still lifting off the water, reminding us that we aren't free of this vicious nor'easter just yet. I wish I could convey how strange this looked: bright, hot, sunlight coming from one direction and cool, swirling, white mist coming from the other. It was awesome, but I'm glad it burned off and gave us a more traditional beach experience before long.

We had two amazing hours- easily two of the best hours of my month- before the rain clouds rolled back in. We had known they would, so we went home happy- and sunburned enough that it's probably best we didn't stay much longer.

It's so funny how "partly cloudy" has become a MIRACULOUS state of being around here. The whole city seems to proceed in bursts of spontaneity, trying to get out under every ray of sun the sky will give us. They're forecasting rain again next week, so I guess we're going to need it. At least I am, if I ever plan to post here about anything else!

My so-called summer

You know, I honestly thought all this writing about weather would end along with my first New England winter. We all knew the cold climate would be a huge part of my adjustment to Harvard Law, so I didn’t feel too foolish making post after post about fall colors, snowstorms, skiing, or that miserable slushy period that stretched on into mid-April. But it’s late June now, and the amount that our weather has continued to affect my quality of life—and therefore my blog—is frankly becoming an affront to my pride.

All of which is to say: I haven’t seen the sun since a half-hour stretch last Friday, and not since Wednesday before that. The Boston area has been trapped under a layer of fog, cloud, and misty rain so thick and for so long that you’d think it was the start of the next science fiction or horror movie plotline! And it doesn’t look to be letting up anytime soon.

Just over two months ago, I posted our local forecast from Weather.com to show you how depressing the tail-end of a Cambridge winter could be. Well, bafflingly, I believe we now have that beat:

I’ve been working on this post for a while, but it’s been difficult to finish because work has really ramped up just in time for the climate to render me record-breakingly inefficient. Also, I have mostly tried to be funny—thinking up jokes about how to hide the onset of webbed feet, telling stories about my supervisor’s umbrella repeatedly turning inside-out on our way to a meeting the other day, things like that—all the while sensing that humor was a dishonest way to handle this.

Because ultimately, unfortunately, I have to admit that this weather is making me seriously depressed. Which doesn’t feel funny at all—in fact, it feels a little too much like this:

http://tiny.cc/allsummer

Everyone from around here assures me that this weather isn’t normal, that it’s the worst summer since something like 1903. Why am I supposed to be comforted by this? In my slightly irrational state, I can only conclude that SOMEONE IS DELIBERATELY OUT TO GET ME. Why else put this weather in MY summer, the desperately-needed summer after MY first winter north of the Mason-Dixon line? What's more, in terms of my law school career, this will officially make ONE-THIRD OF ALL SUMMERS partially ruined by rain!

Combined with my grades and withdrawal from my incredible little sister, this gloominess has proved too much for my body. Despite weekly yoga with some women at my office, I feel like a flower wilting without sun: body aches, weakness, nausea and recurrent stomachaches. (Don't worry, Mom, today I finally called for a doctor's appointment.) We aren't sure whether my immune system is just shot and I'm having trouble shaking some bug, or whether the rain is actually doing this to me. I don't know which is worse.

Okay, enough whining. Partly because the sun is actually supposed to come out for a few hours tomorrow afternoon, so I might feel completely different by the time you read this post. So long for now, and I apologize for all the doom and gloom—wait, what am I talking about? There's probably sunshine where you are! You can take it!