Barrister Ball

was tonight at Confluence Park Restaurant. This is like a formal for law students where we get to dress up & go out for dinner & dance. I realized today how much I don't like hanging out with law students outside of the law school. The food was ok - I had prime rib which was served rare but they were nice enough to take it back & put it on the grill for a few more minutes. Dessert was outstanding & there were free well drinks. Dinner was generally nice. I made a few new friends who were all dates of the law students.

It was the after-dinner-part that was boring. The dance floor was way too small for 400+ people so folks were packed like sardines while the rest just stood around & watched. So unless you were drinking, there was really not much else to do unless you were willing to brave the dance floor crowd. I wasn't doing either so I left. I'm glad I experienced it but will not be making a repeat appearance next year!

Go Bucks! Kicked some Georgetown Hoyas' a$$. Final OSU v. Florida. Mon 4/2 CBS.

Update: Ohio State got beat.....yet again.....by Florida 84-75! Waahh....

Close but No Cigar!

Today I went to visit with my Civil Procedure prof from last semester about my exam. I'm thinking about taking him again for Civ Pro II this fall so I wanted to review my exam to help me decide. So I go into his office & he asks me for my exam number (our exams were anonymous) & when he looked it up, he told me that he had put a red circle around the number. "Why?" I asked. Because I had set a record......in his 22 years of teaching......for leaving the most objective (multiple choice) questions unanswered! 50 out of 150.

It was amazing to him because all the ones I had chosen to answer were all correct! Perfect score. So he told me to have confidence in myself. He could clearly tell I knew the material from my 'very good' essay & all my correct answers, so he could not figure out why I had not answered more questions. "Ummm.....negative points for wrong answers," I answered. "Well, you knew the stuff so you weren't completely guessing therefore, more likely than not, had you answered a few more, they'd have been right & you'd have gotten an "A". I don't mean to make you feel bad but I'm just telling you the truth. Be cofident in what you know," he answered.

Moral of the story: I'll be retaking him for Civ Pro II in the Fall.

Sanjaya Furor

Sanjaya is still alive & kicking after making it through tonight's elimination round. The only people to blame for this fiasco are the American Idol Judges (Randy, Paula, Simon) who allowed him to keep advancing in the rounds before America was ever able to vote for him.

So don't hate the singer, hate the judges.....for unleashing him & his hair on us, the unsuspecting public!

Update: 4/4/07. Sanjaya makes it through yet another round. His hits on Google have increased from 5 million last week to 6.27 million this week. Stop the madness America.....and India!

Update: 4/11/07. Not even in bottom 3. Was channelling an Antonio Banderas who hadn't shaved in 4 days.

Re-Correction

My legal writing prof is going off the rails. We have 2 writing assignments for the course; a memo & a trial brief. For both of these, you begin by writing a draft, which the prof corrects, and based on these corrections, you rewrite a final draft. So I turned in my memo draft, got feedback & made adjustments accordingly. Was very confident until I got back the results of the final draft. All the corrections he had asked me to make......& I did......had been re-corrected to what I had originally written! Huh?!

I was up until 4 am writing my trial brief draft which was due this morning at 8 am. When I get it back, I'm going to ignore all the corrections he makes & just resubmit my draft as my final submission. Then we'll see what corrections he's going to make.

Stood Up!

Got stood up today at my first ever business lunch! Students get no respect whatsoever. It was very annoying to get a cancellation voicemail just as I was stepping into the restaurant. Unless your office is right next door, you must know at least 30 minutes ahead of time you're not going to make it. Also got a text message asking me to eat in or take out anything on the menu & to put it on his tab (must be a regular)! What do you think I did?

Contracts Exam

Recap: 3hrs 40 minutes. 3 essay questions. 26 multiple choice questions. Closed book. Thought it was a very hard exam. My problem was the time alloted (Prof includes an extra 10 minutes for prayers!)

Essay I. 75 minutes. Was a 2-part exam with the first part dealing with preliminary negotiations & if one of the parties sued for breach what the result would be & why. Second part dealt with a contract being made after the preliminary negotiations. Problem was with performance so one party sued & the other countersued for breach. What result & why. There were so many issues it took me about 2 hours to complete the question instead of Prof-suggested 75 minutes.

Essay II. 45 minutes. Dealt with Seller's remedies. Agreement was for sale of sausages where the Buyer didn't cancel her order & refused to accept the goods. Sued for breach & the other party countersued to get the deposit back. I was hard-pressed for time so I didn't have ample time to look carefully at the UCC (which was provided by Prof) so I sort of did it from memory. Prof likes direct quotes but just didn't have time since I was compensating for the extra time I took in Essay I.

Essay III. 35 minutes. This was a policy question. We had to pick one of two questions. First one had to do with Emotional Distress damages & why it's difficult to get them under Contract law. Second one had to do with Parol Evidence Rule and Contract Interpretation & how the Courts want to move towards the strict Williston approach. Discuss how this is good/bad & which you prefer. I went with the 2nd one. Had plenty to write but again, had to rush to make it for multiple choice questions.

Multiple Choice: 1 hour. Ridiculous. There was a reason why he gave only 26 of them. These were the most complex multiple choice questions I've ever read. Probably half of them required damage calculations & the rest had fact patterns that you needed at least 3 minutes to understand(& this is pretty fast reading). And then all the choices given were plausible so it was just daunting. Didn't help any that I only had 45 minutes left when I began this section. The upside was that no negative points were being given for wrong anwers. So I ended up bubbling about 5 questions w/out reading because I ran out of time.

Totally stoked this class is over! I hated the Prof's teaching style altho' he did give us quite a few laughs. He never called on me the entire year so he gets brownie points for that too!

March Madness is here & my bracket is off to a rocky start. Four of my teams have lost so far - Texas Tech, Duke, Gonzaga & Georgia Tech. I have Ohio State losing to Tennessee in the round of Sweet 16 & Kansas Jayhawks winning it all.

Spring break is Mon 3/19-Fri 3/23. I have a brief due Mon 3/26 so will be hitting the books towards the back end of next week.

Nothingness

I got yet another settlement notice today from Equifax. It's a class action settlement that will be final sometime in June although I'm not sure what the suit was about. A few years ago I requested a copy of my credit report & my FICO score from Equifax. I'll be getting 3-6 months of free Credit Score Watch once the settlement is final.

Today was the late Oliver Wendell Holme's birthday (a supreme court justice) & so as an ode to him, my Contracts prof brought to class noise makers, birthday hats, & miniature cakes for everyone and then he conducted us as we sang Happy Birthday to Justice Holmes. It was fantastic. I haven't had such a good laugh in a long time. Turns out the Prof is an accomplished musician & conductor...who knew!

A year ago this weekend, I (along w/ good friend J) visited Moritz as a prospective student. Everyone we met associated with the school was really great & to return the favor, I'll be visiting with the prospective class this weekend. How time flies.

Other activities planned for this weekend: I'll be moving this summer so I'm going to look at a townhome nearby; I'm getting new speakers installed in my car (belated christmas gift to myself); I'm going out Saturday night for a few hours; and of course studying for the Contracts exam.

Property

is kicking my a$$ royally! This past week we've been talking about Future Interests & Rule of Perpetuities (don't worry...I don't know what those words mean either). I've gone through 4 classes w/out having a clue about what we're talking about. You realize how much you don't know when you get called on to explain something which made complete sense at home the night before but now in front of 80 students, all rational thoughts completely escape you. I have a new found respect for probate attorneys.


Contracts exam is next Friday & I'm worried! This is a year long class (5 credits) & the final is cumulative. It's then added up to last semester's grade & averaged. Problem: 1st exam is worth 20% of the final grade so this exam is a whole lot weightier. Amount of material we've covered this semester is astronomical & difficult. On top of that, I have to draft a contract & turn it in on Monday which is worth very little towards the final grade but is taking a lot of time. Don't forget Legislation, Constitutional Law, Legal Writing, and Property are still going on.....& on.....& on.....&....

Double Standard?

American Idol has allowed Antonella Barba (right) to stay on the show even after racy pics of her were posted on the internet. Frenchie (left) on the other hand got booted off the show in 2003, once topless photos of her surfaced on the web. Idol's justification is that Frenchie got paid to pose for her photos but Barba didn't (supposedly her friend posted the pics). Weak. I think if Barba makes it past this week, Idol will really be put on the hot seat. Tune in Thursday Fox 9/8c.

Update: America to Barba: Hasta la vista baby!

"Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream"

The new Ben & Jerry's ice-cream flavor.
Bringing balance back to the freezer!

Movie Review

Babel: B+ Interesting story although I should've watched it as soon as it made it to the theatres before it was publicized during the award show season. Felt like I was one step ahead the whole time.

Breach: A- Really liked it. I remember following the real life spy story back in 2001 when Robert Hanssen got caught & was surprised I was engrossed the entire time even though I knew what the outcome would be.