The Law of Encroachment

Tomorrow is December 1 and I am three classes and five exams away from being finished my first semester if 1L.

Law school is encroaching on my ability to do laundry, or bake muffins (I need to invite people over for breakfast more often), of my budding career as a blogger (but what would I write about if I wasn't in law school); I've spoken to my husband for maybe 25 minutes over the past four days and I haven't seen my kids on the webcam since they dropped me off in Ottawa on Monday. I have spent more time in the library this past week than in my entire four (or five if you want to count it that way) years of undergrad.

But one of my friends said something to me tonight. She said she knew she would be at my funeral many years from now. It kind of surprised me, in a nice kind of way. I've met more people that I like personally and intellectually over the past 12 weeks than in my entire life before. These are the people who will be my friends for the rest of my life. I find this comforting since coming to law school was the first undamaged, real decision I ever made for myself.

It's overwhelming at times to feel as if I've found my way.

Food for thought (cliché but apropos)

There's this scene in the movie A Bug's Life where the praying mantis is doing his magician thing and he points to the Chinese takeout box and says, "Transformation, transformation, transformation..." and the butterfly emerges. That's kind of how I'm feeling right now about me and cooking.

This weekend I actually cooked a whole chicken! With creamy mashed potatoes and a really good looking mirepois and "the best tomato salad" one of my guests had ever had. That's pretty cool for me. I've had a complex ever since someone started baking brownies to win over my sister. And then went to chef school. And now cooks gourmet meals at home just for fun. How does one like me live up to that?

By moving to Ottawa. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. No money to buy take-out (and I just can't even handle that anyway, since living with a chef has made my standards a tad out of the ordinary), so it was either cook or starve.

It's pretty simple usually, but I'm up to a nice stew, chicken cacciatore, a perfectly rare pepper steak, and my whole chicken (rubbed with olive oil, coarse salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary, then slow-cooked in wine and chicken broth). Plus I'm pretty good at omlettes.

And this morning I even baked muffins. Muffins!

Transformation...

Awkward Web Moment, Part I

I don't know why we (as in my favourite partner and I) decided this, but Friday night we thought we'd leave the webcam running, I guess so we could just holler at each other across the ether.

Lesson #1 on why people on reality TV do really ridiculous things in front of a camera: it's easy to forget about the camera.

That's right. I forgot about the camera. I was getting ready to go out, and I turned on a little Hawksley Workman and, of course, I started to dance. Because you can't listen to Jealous of Your Cigarette and not. And then, bizarrely, I sort of felt like I was being...watched. And indeed, my charming monsieur, attracted by the loud music coming across the ether, came to investigate and saw me gettin' down. It was very similar to secretly watching children play acting - it's beautiful but they're frequently embarrassed when they're caught out even though they shouldn't be.

At least it wasn't his parents! That would have been the end.

Gotta love those judgments

This is the best line I've read all day (of course, it is only 8:45 a.m. and there's always a good chance that things will get better in torts):

"Such circumstances can easily be distinguished from those of a corner store that carries the odd porno flick among an othersiwe unremarkable video collection."

I feel the need to share that kind of line with those of you who may not spend any time reading case law. It just wouldn't be fair to keep these gems to myself.

Wordsworth Repeating

Okay, it's only barely like me to be poetic, but given the title of this post, I thought I should make an attempt at finding some actual Wordsworth. Here's what I've got:

A BRIGHT-HAIRED company of youthful slaves,
Beautiful strangers, stand within the pale
Of a sad market, ranged for public sale...

That part of it kind of made me think of law students and law school and my law future, but in the bad way. (The rest of the poem is here.) Sorry to the Wordsworth fans and scholars who I've insulted by totally misinterpreting this for my own selfish uses.

In any case, I’m going to deviate from the norm and post excellent words from the law paper of a true friend and colleague, instead of my favourites from judges. Anyone who can use these words in a criminal law context is okay by me.

conundrum n. 1 a riddle, esp. one with a pun in its answer. 2 a hard or puzzling question or issue. How law appropriate. And, if I could be defined in any way, I think it would be as 1, though sadly, I don't really think I'm that cool.

consternation n. anxiety or dismay causing mental confusion. Also conveniently law relevant.

surveil v. not technically in the dictionary, but clearly the verb associated with surveillance n. 1 close observation or supervision, esp. of an enemy or suspected person.

vestige n. 1 a trace or piece of evidence; a sign. 2 a slight amount; a particle.

contrite adj. 1 penitent; sincerely filled with guilt, regret, etc. and desirous of making amends.

trope n. a literary or rhetorical device consisting of the figurative use of a word or phrase.

Thank you for your most worthy use of the English language! You get an 'A' for awesome.

Counting sheep

I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night and not even reading about contract law could put me out at 1 a.m.

What kind of a sign is that? That I actually like contract law?! On the plus side, it may mean that I'm not going to fail (and I mean that kind of indulgently. As if I'd actually fail) and that law school is a good place for me (as if I had any doubt).

On the con side (ha ha, the con side of contracts) , how am I supposed to get to sleep now? It's tough being too interested in what I'm learning. I could try the property book next time, but I think my general resistance to the topic may just agitate me.

Maybe I'll take to singing Twinkle Twinkle, Stars Come Down, Suzanne and You & the Candles. Just like home...

This is what law does to you

The effects of law school on one's life are legend, perhaps.

This weekend I went home and I failed to pack any clothes. All I brought with me were 4 textbooks and my laptop.

Then, on Saturday, I visited my friends and their beautiful new baby boy, and I somehow got drawn into a discussion about prior conferral of benefit ("past consideration is [usually] no consideration at all" and following my Contract Law epiphany re: Pao On v. Lau Yiu Long) and how I could never claim they owed me any money for the baby stuff I gave them for free.

And then, on Sunday night about the time I'm normally getting anxious about leaving my family behind, I started to feel anxious about the fact that I wasn't studying or doing law stuff. Not that leaving my family didn't suck as much as it usually does, it was just a little overshadowed by the mounting anxiety of first year law exams on rapid approach.

And tonight, I started work on my first law resume and my first law cover letter and I have an appointment tomorrow to have them critiqued at the career centre.

I don't know what all of this means. I just felt I should get it off my chest.

Woe be the half-caf coffee

So, about a two weeks ago I was in the grocery store scrutinizing tins of coffee. Shopping always poses a bit of a dilemna for me because at home I don't normally do the shopping. I couldn't tell you what brand of coffee we drink if my life depended on it. (Well, I could now - I asked after this episode).

There I am, puzzling about which brand I should by when an older European-type man approached me. I thought he was asking advice (and I thought, 'woe to you, because I have no idea'). But alas, it was conversation he was seeking (and perhaps more, but I try not to assume these things). After a while, I just needed to go, so I sort of cut the conversation, picked up a tin without careful attention, and dashed.

This morning I was up around 6:00, had two cups of coffee and did some reading. Then I had to have a nap. I was lying in bed and, in the absence of any kind of caffeine kick, I thought to myself, 'Did I buy decaf or something?'

Lo and behold, it's a can of half-caf. This could explain why I've been feeling a little sleepy the past couple of weeks. And I thought I was coming down with something...

Baroque & spirit

I was back in T.O. this past weekend to see my family after two weeks without being home. After a while being away was just distracting, so I was happy to be home.

Mon bonhomme and I went on Saturday night to see Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir at Trinity-St. Paul's United Church. He's been taking girls to Tafelmusik since he was a teenager (though apparently the first concert he ever went to was with Uncle Wayne. He's such a sweet nerd at times!). I'm the only one who fell for this, of course, and Shakespeare in the Park. I like the intellectual boys, I guess.

Whenever I go to Trinity-St.Paul's I think of my grandfather, George, who was ordained there years ago (he passed away when I was 18 years old). There's something I like about the fact of being in the same place as my grandfather, but separated by years.

When he died, I remember one of his oldest friends saying that he moved spirits. He was that kind of man.

If nothing else, law will be good for my vocabulary

I'm not even kidding you! People (read: lawyers and judges) use these words! This is the problem with journalism - I'd never be able to use "exhortatory" in that field.

Exhortatory: adj. of exhort: to urge or advise strongly or earnestly.

Leitmotiv: n. 2 any recurring theme, symbol, image, etc. Any kind of appropriation from other languages is fine by me, ja doch!

Detinue n. 1 a. An action to recover possession or the value of property wrongfully detained. b. The writ authorizing such action. 2 The act of unlawfully detaining personal property. [gasp! Not found in COD, but from dictionary.com. How common!]

Tortfeasor n. Law a person guilty of tort. Obviously! But it just sounds so fantastic. If I could say this word every day, I would.

That's it for now. But don't worry, there's more where that came from. Next up (as in, sometime in the future): if I can, I'll mine the judgments of my in-law Sir William Buell Richards, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Kevin Sylvester, Where Is Your Wisdom Now?

Kevin Sylvester is, in my opinion, the best sportscaster in all of radio and television. I admit that I don't have an extensive knowledge of sportscasters, but the reason I say that he's the best is because he's the only one I don't have the urge to turn off when the sports news comes up. I'm not one of those people who is crazy about sports. Anyway, Kevin (who is on leave from the CBC for a year at U of T as a Massey College Fellow), is a serious cyclist. One of his major irritations is people who ride their bikes on the sidewalk. In Toronto, only idiots and children ride their bikes on the sidewalk.

Now, I'm not one of those stuck up Toronto-is-the-centre-of-the-world people. I like Ottawa. I'm enjoying myself here. But I have to say that there are a lot of adults riding bikes on the sidewalks here. Who thinks it's a good idea to ride a bike in an area with heavy pedestrian traffic, like on or near a university campus with more than 31,000 students (http://www.report.uottawa.ca/2005/en/facts_figures/)?

I've almost been run over like, once a day since I got here three weeks ago, trying to avoid bikes coming in both directions. I don't ride a bike in Toronto becaue I am sort of afraid of the cars (whereas I only rode a bike when I was in Italy and the drivers are crazier there but know how to deal with bikes). There's not that much traffic in Ottawa! If you're too afraid to ride with the cars, please get off the sidewalks. It's called a sidewalk because it's that part on the SIDE of the road where you WALK.

Idiots.

I Love Katherine Barber (even with a "K")

It doesn't matter to me if I sound like a nerd. I did get in to law school, after all, and that must mean something. So I don't care if I sound like a nerd when I say: dictionaries are wonderful things. I myself am partial to the Canadian Oxford and if you don't know who Katherine is, you can google her.

A list of the words I've looked up in the past 24 or so hours, pretty much in the order I found them:

Fiat: 1 formal authorization. 2 a decree or order. [Latin, 'let it be done']. I love this word for so many reasons (but I never fail to forget its definition)!

Vitiate: 1 impair the quality or efficiency of; corrupt, debase, contaminate. 2 make invalid or ineffectual. I looked this one up to confirm that the first 't' was pronounced "sh". I was right.

Blandishment: flattery; cajolery. Who knew? McLachlin J, that's who!

Buss: n. a kiss * v.tr. kiss. Is a kiss by any other name still a kiss?

Oleomargarine: N. American dated = Margarine. Apparently there once was (and probably still is) a Canadian Statute that dealt with oleomargarine productions somewhere in Atlantic Canada.

Lodestar: 1 a star that a ship etc. is steered by, esp. the pole star. 2 a a guiding principle. b and object of pursuit.

If I ever want to become a judge, I must absolutely start work now on my own collection of obscure-ish words. But welcome to this, the first ever post of Interesting Words I've Found In Case Law, a collection of other people's obscure-ish words.

What a law degree may get you these days...

I listened to The Rain Song on the way home from FTX. It was raining.

I stopped to buy coffee at the convenience store. The clerk, once it was established that I was a law student, told me that he too had a law degree.

I momentarily wanted to kill myself. A job in a convenience store is not one of the legal careers I have hitherto considered. And, frankly, a law degree to work in a convenience store seems a little bit like overkill.

The moment passed. I presume the fellow was working in the convenience store because his law credentials are not recognized in Ontario/Canada. I have been told already, by one professor or another, to never make assumptions. For the sake of my sanity I am going to assume that he got his law degree in some foreign jurisdiction, but when I see him again I promise to ask him where he got his law degree from.

The skin of the teeth

In my pretend life as a university student, this is an especially bad time of year.

I say pretent because being a student is not really like being in the "real world". (And for the record, this is no time to talk about simulacra, Baudrillard or anything that is "realer than real." I don't care.) It's this bizarre state of being where the work is never done, there is no time off and you can't tell your boss to fuck off because they're grading you. Which is not unlike a real job, but instead of getting paid to put up with the working conditions, we pay them AND go into debt for the privilege.

Anyway, for all my complaining, I'm planning on going back for morel next year, once this degree is finished. There is something still more palatable than the real world, even if university requires me to put up with a lot of bunk.

In my capacity as editor and project manager, this is a little homage to my colleagues who are working (perhaps desperately) this weekend to meet deadline after deadline that I am personally not responsible for, but must enforce. I KNOW YOU'RE SICK OF IT! I KNOW THERE'S NO TIME! I KNOW YOU'RE AT THE END OF YOUR ROPE.

Believe me, I feel what you're feeling. And I'm symapthetic. And I have no answers; I don't know the way out except to finally get to that day where it's just all done.

Hang in there.

C'mon Baby, everyone's doin it...

Blogging is sort of like sex: Everyone seems to be doing it. I've been getting peer pressure lately to blog. Just like virginity, here goes nothing.