outlining; desk attaching

right now i am pretty tired. finals are coming up and i have been studying very hard. possibly not as hard as last semester, and for not as long. it's spring, and that makes it hard to focus. i skipped an ultimate tournament this weekend, and this morning when i walked into the law school to make my way down to the windowless library basement, it was sad.

in the library, i usually study in a carrel that looks something like the one pictured here. that way, i have a minimum of distractions and can spread my books all over the place and just focus. the library is a pretty safe place, and one has to pass numerous security guards to get into the school and then into the library, so i have felt pretty safe using my precious laptop in there and leaving it for bathroom breaks, etc. however, one of my t.a.s recently had her laptop stolen, a disaster of quite immense proportions, so i decided the security efforts had to be redoubled.

my college-era laptop lock has been sitting in my locker all year, so i busted it out and brought it down to the library, only to realize that carrels like the ones we use have absolutely no poles or other protrusions around which a lock can be fastened. i sat there musing for a while, got to work, and finally decided that i absolutely had to go get lunch. i didn't want to do that without locking my computer (his name is Milton), and that's when a bright idea hit me. i looped the lock cord around the arm of my desk chair, below the desk, and through the small hole in the desk designed for power cords. i am not one to creatively problem solve when the problem has a physical/three dimensional component, so i was exceedingly proud of myself.

then i came back from lunch and realized that i could have just locked it to the chair without further maneuverings; it would probably be difficult to filch a laptop attached to a large wooden chair. the setup looked pretty sharp, though.

exactly

i know i'm not actually writing a lot in these blog updates; i'm trying to stay focused on studying, but at the same time the fact i'm studying makes me more prone to browsing the interweb.

i happened along this photo in a times article about isiah thomas's plans for the offseason, and it struck me as kind of perfect. there were many good things to take from the season--the success of the two young players in this picture certainly amongst them--but the knicks were somehow more heartbreaking this season than last, because at a certain point i think many fans believed they had a chance to make it to the playoffs, to be a fun and respectable team. though they may have maintained some of that respectability, the painful losses just kept piling up, and the season came to a close with nothing more than platitudes for the potential of next season.

i write only to tell you to read someone else's blog post

on the recent Supreme Court decision on "partial birth" abortions.

tragedy

it's hard to say anything meaningful in a blog post (though there are some interesting points being made on the tomog), but i just wanted to send out well wishes to everyone at virginia tech. there's no way to really explain or even comprehend a terrible event like this, so all i will hazard to say is that i'm thinking of the families of the victims, all the students and teachers at tech, and the family of the shooter who must be suffering their own bewildering grief right now.

swimming through life

today was a tired day. and it's kind of inexplicable, since i've been getting reasonable amounts of sleep for the last two nights. i guess things just piled up while i was preparing for icwa. but that's all over now!

anyways, in tax class this morning, normally my most engaging class (who would have thought?!), i could barely keep up with the class. it was like everything had to penetrate clear jello that was surrounding my head before i could process it and write it down on the old laptopper. ultimately i woke up, though, and was able to participate in class--just in time for the metaphor comparing capital gains and ordinary income to trees and fruits. it was enlightening i must say.

anyways, now i'm doing a little better, but still, it's been one of those days. just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

oral arguing

i have thought several times about posting this past week, as i prepared for my oral argument. this is the culminating exercise for my lawyering class, which is a series of exercises in which we pretend to be lawyers in a variety of situations--mediating, negotiating, interviewing clients, etc.--doing research and writing as we go. at most times the whole thing just feels silly, since we're dealing with actors and not people or issues. but this time, i was arguing an issue before a real judge. i am definitely not a public speaker, in fact speaking in front of people generally terrifies me, but i still wanted to have the judge not think i'm a complete idiot.

in the end, i decided not to post, because no one likes a whiner. so now i'm done!!!! and in celebration, i'm watching my treasured wednesday night shows. i didn't actually win the argument, but the judge gave me a lot of really positive feedback and assured me that it was really just a decision based on the facts at hand.

but whatever. it made me feel like an actual lawyer, i wore my pretty new suit + shoes, and now i can relax and...focus on outlining.

bumbumbumblebee, bumblebee tuna!

the thing about being in school is that there is kind of a painful amount of talk about the FUTURE. everything you do is in preparation for the FUTURE. if you don't complete this assignment or get accepted into that clinic, the FUTURE will be bleak.

if there's any argument for never going back to school, it's the freedom of not having to think about the 5- and 10-year repercussions of everything you do. you can just kind of assume that things will keep humming along and you'll find things to do until either you screw up badly, the economy tanks, you find a better thing to do, or the planet explodes. then again that might be a pretty bleak way to look at the FUTURE as well.

judging by the title i think i intended to write about something else, but my brain was just headed in a different direction.

everyone needs a good theme song

i always used to pride myself on not being caught up in the reality show craze, but i've since come to face the harsh truth: reality shows are awesome. especially elimination shows a la project runway, which was possibly the first great one, but just doesn't quite do it for me, possibly because my sense of fashion is boring at best.

one of the newer of these shows, top design, combines my two great tv loves, elimination reality shows and interior design. it's fabulous. at the end of each show, jonathan adler says to the eliminated contestant "see you later, decorator!" this is both the best and most painful moment of the show week in and week out.

but why do reality shows consistently pick such reality theme songs? the top design theme song starts out sounding ok...generic, but has something of a beat. but then this crazy voice comes in going "heey heey heey heeeeeey, heeey heey heeey heeeeeey" and it's almost too much too handle. who writes these songs? this becomes even more of a problem when you try to enjoy your reality elimination in marathon form. over winter break i was dedicated exclusively to killing brain cells and i watched like four seasons of antm on the vh1 marathon. i didn't stop singing "i wanna be on top (nananananana)" for weeks. i think tyra banks sings that theme song, so what exactly is top design's excuse? i know that crazy voice singing heeey at me is not todd oldham.

good sunday

today was a good sunday. we had ulimate practice with our team crafty for the first time this season at 9:30 am. i wasn't dreading the practice (as i have been known to do in recent times), but i was seriously not looking forward to getting up that early. and i was nervous to get out on the field since i really haven't exercised very much lately (read: at all) and i haven't played ultimate in quite some time either. however, it was great! i didn't play amazingly well, but i remembered that i enjoy playing with all these people, and just generally that i enjoy playing ultimate. in fact, i used to be mighty obsessed with it (those who knew me during college can definitely attest to this), but somehow as i got less and less good compared to the people i was competing with, and as i got busy doing other things, i just wasn't as focused. but playing with crafty during sectionals and regionals of last year (we joined late in the season for reasons that are too complicated to go into) was a great experience, and this was a good reminder that it should be fun to play with them again this summer. so yay! i am sore though. i will really try to go to the gym this week. really.

after we got home from frisbee, we had lunch, showered, and i read the sunday styles/took a nap. i've been slowly moving towards completing my homework assignments, too. very slowly. i really, really need to get out of slacker mode and kick it into high gear, but the spring just makes it so hard!

writing/pulling teeth

i am currently working on a brief for my lawyering class. this is a class in which we essentially are pretending to be lawyers who are much more responsible to their clients than we probably will be for years, unless we get involved in some non-profit direct service work (i do want to do public interest, but not so much direct services). in this exercise, we are writing a brief about the indian child welfare act, specifically its implementation in california, and then arguing it in front of a "judge." the judges are either actual judges or established lawyers, and i am lucky/unlucky enough to be arguing in front of an actual judge. i think it should be really interesting, and the topic is really quite compelling, but i have been trying to write this brief over spring break and it is incredibly slow going. i don't even remember the last time i've found it this hard to get words down on paper. i think it's a result of there being so much material to research that i am struggling to synthesize it into actual arguments. i wish i could just argue what i think about a case instead of actually have to provide information to back up what i'm saying--that would be much better for me.

at least there's plenty of basketball to keep me distracted.

in happier news

this doesn't exactly describe this season, since i've always been a knicks fan and maintained a ridiculous optimism that things will start to look up, but this article still captures something of the way this season is going.

what's your major vonage, heather?

this morning was the first weekday of my FULL WEEK OFF!! that's right, i'm on spring break, and despite the fact that i have really quite a bit of work to do, i'm determined to enjoy it if possible.

my mission was put on hold as i attempted to call vonage to cancel our phone service. we used vonage out in new jersey, and it was just fine...not too expensive, worked pretty consistently, etc. when we decided to move into the city, however, we discovered we could get a land line for the same price from the company providing us with cable and internet. being a fan of paying as few bills as possible, this seemed like a no-brainer.

and so, shortly before we moved, i called vonage in what i will refer to as Call 1. after pressing a few buttons i talked to a sympathetic gentleman, and after only a few minutes of confirming my name, billing address, phone number, pin number, etc., he launched into his diatribe of "well we can offer you this deal" and "you know vonage has the best blah blah blah." after i convinced him that we were already at the cheapest level of service, and were quite sure we wanted to cancel, i then told him i wanted to cancel three days later, which he informed me was impossible: once they cancel, it's a final cancellation and you can't schedule a cancellation in advance. not wanting to be without phone service for the next few days (cell service in our apartment was mysteriously spotty), i decided to wait.

a few days after the move, perhaps a week after Call 1, i made Call 2. i got halfway through the a second person's discussion of vonage's myriad billing options and enticing qualities, when my cell phone cut out. wanting, at this point, to simply be done with it, i made Call 3. Call 3 was the most successful call, in that i got a very nice operator who seemed to take me at my word when i told her i had just gotten cut off from someone else who was ready to cancel my account, that i was sure i wanted to cancel, and that she should just go ahead. she got ready to cancel my account, but when she finally got to the last screen, noted that it was three weeks before a full year had passed since i started the service, and so i would be charged a cancellation fee of $42 for cancelling before then. given that i only pay vonage $19 a month, i decided to wait the extra three weeks.

and that brings us to this morning, when i made Call 4. for some reason, vonage decided that it would remove any direct links to general customer service from its main customer service number (hmmm...), and so i was ultimately forced to press 1 to identify myself as someone with internet service, after several fruitless attempts to press zero. this lead me to Operator 1, who was polite, took my information, asked me why i wanted to cancel, and when i had explained, transferred me to customer service. after a good 5 minutes on hold, i got to Operator 2, who asked me all my information and why i wanted to cancel. after i told him, he said he would transfer me to management at corporate headquarters. when i asked why i had been transferred to him when i had told Operator 1 i wanted to cancel, he explained that corporate does all cancellations. feeling that arguing the point would get me nowhere, i agreed. then i sat on hold for 10 minutes. when i finally got to Operator 3, i told her my name and number and address and PIN for the third time this call. she asked, surprisingly, why i wanted to cancel. i tried to explain that i had gone through this twice and that i really, really just wanted to cancel my service. she snapped at me that since she was the one who was actually going to cancel the service, now she was asking the questions. that explained everything. she literally would not cancel my service until i had admitted why i wanted to cancel and told her there was absolutely nothing vonage could do to get me to stay with them. i may have also mentioned that after my experience trying to cancel, i would never consider going back to the service, even though i had been reasonably happy with the way my phone actually worked. she finally, begrudgingly, cancelled, and i hung up, at which point the counter on my cell phone read 21:35.

i don't understand! i thought when that guy taped his aol cancellation call a few year's ago (remember? the one that took forever even though he repeatedly begged to have the service cancelled) everyone sort of agreed that this was not the way to run a business or to hold on to customers. i also cancelled cable and utilities, and both companies not only made it very easy for me to cancel, but recognized that people move and change services. it's not generally a personal affront. not to mention that making it harder to cancel will not generally stop people from cancelling. i mean is that just me? doesn't being put through the ringer generally make you hate a company and want to stop paying them immediately? why can't there just be a button on your online account?

so, thanks blog, that was very cleansing. the ultimate message here is beware of vonage.

we're home

the move is officially over! we have made it into our new apartment, and with only about 6 boxes left to unpack (out of an uncountably large number), we are making serious progress towards being comfortably settled into our new home.

thank goodness for tom. true to my propensity to under-think commitments at the time i'm making them, i signed up to help print publications for the convention of the national law democrats council, which my school was hosting. this took far, far more time than i could have realized and basically meant that tom had to take care of the move himself. he is a champion.

you can see pictures of the new place over at tom's blog. i will post some more once i get things cleaned up and have a chance to load the pictures onto the computer.

now i'm off to eat some re-heated chinese food. it feels really good to be home: )

open letter to isiah thomas

if you trade david lee, nate robinson, or jamal crawford before the trade deadline, i will have a meltdown. please don't.

thank you,
concerned knicks fan

p.s. to clarify, this applies even if you are trading them for kevin garnett. just don't do it.

packing it in

so we got our apartment, officially, which i am so unbelievably psyched about. t-11 days until the move!

but what this means is that, especially since we have to paint two rooms back to their original white, and especially since the week we move i have a huge school project and a conference i am helping to organize all occurring at one time (not to mention i have tickets to the knicks two nights before the move, which we all know i am NOT missing), we have to pack now, while we have the long weekend.

packing is such an intense process. every time i have packed all my belongings i have started off with a minimalist attitude, thinking that it would be a great opportunity to weed out all the things i don't need, organize my essential remaining belongings into easy categories delineated by different boxes. and yet, three or five boxes into the process, i end up just letting it go. i try to keep on throwing out stuff i don't need or use (or giving it away or recycling it), but i just pile the stuff into boxes as quickly as possible, and wind up flabbergasted by how much stuff i actually own. so this time i'm trying to accept that i'm no longer a college student (not like this was true when i was in college), that i can't think of everything i own just by putting my mind to it; no matter how hard i try, i will forget stuff. so i need to just pack whatever i find, and accept that there are always more boxes if i can't fit it into the one i'm working on.

tune every heart and every voice

as a pton grad, i take a special pleasure in the following most-emailed list from the times:
1. Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying
2. Health Plans: A Chance to Pick Hospice, and Still Hope to Live
3. Editorial: The Build-a-War Workshop
4. Day Out: Time-Traveling in Oxford, England
5. State of the Art: Breaking the Myth of Megapixels
6. A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors
7. Harvard Plans to Name Its First Female President
8. Down and Dirty
9. 36 Hours: Sedona, Ariz.
10. Your Money: Figuring Out Gift Giving in the Age of $2,000-a-Pound Chocolate

though to be fair, we've had a woman president for four years now.

see? i write on this blog!

one day later, and here i am again, loyally typing on the blogger. today i was reading about google and how they are scanning books onto the internet and its raising many copyright issues. i can't decide what i think about this; i mean it seems great to be able to do a web search of the text of EVERY BOOK IN THE WORLD, but on the other hand--is nothing sacred? i spend waaaay too much time on the interweb as it is.

the article also alluded to something i've noticed, which is that, even though google is clearly an enormous juggernaut with the capacity to buy out any startup it thinks is worthy (i.e. youtube, that writer program), it maintains its down-home, grassroots feel. i feel like i'm doing something happy and non-corporate by buying into every program they create (love that blogger software!), but really i'm probably selling my soul to the devil. maybe they'll eventually turn evil (in direct contravention of their unofficial motto "don't be evil") and start making all the information stored on any of their programs publicly searchable in a meta effort to make "all the world's information searchable." food for thought.

wisdom...tooth

my top right wisdom tooth is hurting. i don't think this bodes well for my Plan to Never Have My Wisdom Teeth Out.

hello world, there's a song that we're singin

hellooooooo blogworld. i'm not going to bother going into how long it's been, since i seem to consistently stop writing for long stretches at a time. however, i recently noted that julia posted on my blog, which means i may have not one but TWO readers, and even though one of them only saw fit to announce that they were bored, i'm still going to write--just for them.

it is second semester already, and i'm well into several classes, including one on tax, which is far less boring than it sounds, at least to me, though i may be unique in my capacity to find the tax code interesting. recently i was at a firm reception, during which a partner told me that the vast majority of tax lawyers are "really boring." so that was an inspiring piece of advice that i will carry close to my heart as i move forward in my law career. not that i especially want to be a tax lawyer, just that to me it seems more interesting than mergers and acquisitions. or AT LEAST as interesting.

another reason for coming back to the blog is an excuse to post pictures of my beautiful new apartment, once they arrive. tom and i are moving march 1 (actually, hopefully feb. 28th) to an upper east side hi-rise (at least, 95% certain that we are--i won't get into the nasty ny real estate details), and i am very thrilled. it will be beauteous. i will post many pictures, in fact this blog may become an homage to my view.

and now i will end this freeform exercise in procrastination. next time i will have an actual topic to write about, fret not.

straw poll

the holidays are coming up! so i'm taking a poll.

what should i get tom?

because he is the only one who reads this blog, i am optimistic that the results will be very illuminating.