The Run Is Over

Another week flies by, and this puts us 2 weeks and 3 days from final exams. Even though I only have three they seem a little daunting because they are coming quickly and all at once (Friday, Monday, Tuesday). I'm thinking that because I'm not starting work until the following week I may petition to get Tuesday moved back to Thursday...but I'm also thinking I may just suck it up and get them over quickly. Trademark shouldn't be too bad, just like copyright. Evidence I need to work on as I kind of let that class go here recently, and BA is a nightmare for everyone but we'll make it through (just like accounting for lawyers).

Watching 24 right now and the jaw-dropping twist from last week turns out to be lame and not really true as Presdient Palmer sends a fake nuke to get a message across to the terrorist loving arab country. Of course CTU is about as effective as a butterfly net at keeping Fayed in their control so no surprise they managed to let him go again this week. But with Jack on the attack (and just how do you hold onto the undercarraige of a trash truck for miles???) the threat is averted. What a brutal finish. But in rote 24 style, one crisis averted and another starts up as the Chinese are going to use Audrey to get to Jack. Go figure.

Lost was good last week too. It is funny how Sawyer gets a heart and a leadership role this week, just in time for Jack to come home and steal away leadership. At least Sawyer can be Sawyer again. I thought we were going to see a big battle between the others and the Lost, but perhaps this season is not like the first two (which stood alone as the "survivor mystery" season and "the hatch" season). Perhaps this is the grand final story ark at its peak since the others did appear in season 1 to ruin the raft plans of Michael, Sawyer, Jin, and Walt. I hear the Lost writers envisioned the series as reaching a logical ending after 4-5 seasons, so perhaps this series will not drag on into mediocrity. The beginning of this season was pretty poor though, but at least it has gotten better.

Ohio has been lovely this week ever since we came back from Newark. Freezing temps again and snow with little accumulation. It does make for a funny story though watching the Indians cancel an entire 4 game series because there is a FOOT OF SNOW on the field over the weekend. So they are playing this week's series in Milwaukee against the LA Angels. Now that's a hot ticket! Two way out of town teams playing in your stadium...enjoy that Brewers fans. The Reds started 4-2 winning both of their opening week series, so as usual let's get optimistic that I'll have something to watch in Cincinnati this summer (something other than Bengals players getting arrested for a rainbow of felonies).

Well the title of this blog entry refers to bowling (I know, shocker!). The semifinals proved why bowling playoffs are a great thing and a terrible thing at the same time. The great part is that any team can win and "binary elimination" makes for some exciting bowling. The terrible part is that there is little reward for doing well all season. We ran into kryptonite again in Bring Clovis Back and Bill Browne, but at least their team bowled regular average games this time...no 200 game beatings. Kelley was off her game and so was Brodie, but in typical MFR fashion Daniel had the best week of his career and I bowled well also. We lost by 2 pins in the series, winning game 2 by 30 but losing game 1 by 32. It was infuriating for 3 of us because Brodie and Kelley bowled poorly and were blaming themselves while I had a chance to put them away in the tenth frame of the second game (working on a double strike, I went 9-miss which is agonizing). Still, this season was better than all before and we had our chance to make the finals. Maybe in our 3L year we'll be lucky enough to get one more shot. The professors went down in flames to cinderella also, so that sets up a battle of titans:

(16) Bring Clovis Back vs. (14) Pinning the Blame

I'd have to guess PTB completes the cinderella run and bowls above average to slay another opponent. But Bill Browne would like one more title before law school is over :-) To put a wrap on our season, we were 24-9 this season and 22-2 against teams not names Bring Back Clovis (2-7 in three weeks against them). Pretty good. I noticed another statistical fluke that probably rarely happens in this many weeks of bowling. We never went 2-1! 3-0 seven times, 1-2 three times, and 0-3 one time the first week. I could see not going 3-0 or 0-3 in eleven weeks as sweeping is hard, but no 2-1's??? As I'm sure all my readers don't care so much about this statistical anomaly, we'll move on.

The week at school otherwise was pretty uneventful. Finished up Acc-Checking/Final Reading the third issue last week and sent to publisher, the bibliography issue this week. Which means we are almost finally done with Volume 22. JDR Banquet is this week and we'll find out who won staff member of the year (my pick would be Larry if I had one) and which 6 of us will be published next year as student notes. This also determines which 6 (or 5 if I'm published) of you JDR members will get to be bugged by me next year as authors instead of ME's or whatever job you will be doing. Fun fun fun. I am curious though to see if people who really tried hard and cared about note writing get what they deserve (yes Larry and Xavier and whoever else I missed in this category, you deserve to get published). Classes were kind of blah, but our second evidence paper was interesting. Binary elimination of hearsay exceptions, which is silly but March Madness was in season and it did help me and probably many others learn just what the hearsay exceptions were. The third and final writing assignment even more silly as we have to take a movie or book or TV show and use the plot to bring up how evidentiary issues would come up at trial. Not nearly as much educational value but we need a fun assignment right before finals or else people would go BAT-CRAZY (as if they don't already).

The weekend was good, very relaxing in Marietta. Spent all weekend at Kelley's grandparents' house, but did spend Friday night with Sarah and Kelley at Pastor Steve's place. He has this Burmese Mountain Dog who is the most adorable huge dog you've ever seen. Chip had a lot of fun bouncing around his legs and playing with the big guy. We chatted it up over pizza and quality beer (Steve is quite the conissour of dark beers) before playing the Wii that we brought over for the weekend. Steve is quite the character as he is a young divorced pastor who is not afraid to talk straight to you. I'm sure he would put off quite a few more traditional Lutherans with his ways, but the man is young and he has to live you know. He just wouldn't fit in the Missouri Synod (but then other than my Dad, who does?). Easter Sunday at church amuses me...300 people packed in at our church which is double normal. Communion took FOREVER but I finally took communion with my wife for the first time ever (she hardly ever takes it because she plays background music during communion usually and I am hardly ever at church anymore...so you can figure it out). The grandparents sent us home with our usual hefty helpings of leftovers from the Easter feast and another hefty plate of guilt trip (we hate to see you go etc...Kelley's more than used to it though). Another successful weekend of relaxation though.

And finally, let's get to the subject everybody seems so eager to talk about: Brian and the Newark trip. First, let me say that while I do not intend to ever work with Brian again on anything professional or not...I hold no ill will towards him. He has some problems (whatever they may be) that he needs to work out and I hope that someday he does get everything straight. I'm not patient enough (unlike some of my other friends) to deal with him, and I also feel like I'm in a unique position because very few if any of you will spend 3 straight constant days with him with no breaks. So perhaps my view is extreme because extreme things happen when you spend that kind of time in close quarters. If you have ever read the great existential novel No Exit (Huis Clos) by Jean Paul Sartre, you'll have an appreciation for why this kind of thing happens.

In response to some of the comments, I do have a few things to say. First this is my personal blog and I will air whatever I feel like here, you do not need to read it and I do not expect you to (unless you are stalking me in which case you need to find someone more interesting to stalk). That being said, I state the facts as I see them and I will not sugar coat things...but I also refuse to make truly petty and senseless attacks on colleagues. I vented for two and a half hours to create that last lengthy entry and I was perfectly OK with the world after that. You'll understand that I did not want to relive the weekend over and over to my many friends, so I told them to check the blog. Most of them did, and some told their friends. It's law school so word spreads. If you read this entry as offensive, you either (i) do not know Brian well enough, (ii) do not know me well enough, or (iii) don't understand what a vent on a blog is for. Simple as that. I've heard the gamut from "I was offensive and petty" to "I was nice" in my representation of how Brian can be. But that misses the point either way. This blog is a factual recollection of law school that I plan to look back on later. Making what I consider to be one of the worst weekends of my law school career (when it should have been one of the happiest) sound peachy keen is just plain wrong.

Thanks to all you friends and unknowns who support the common sense in the blog. Some of you did get petty and out of control with your comments and I have to say something about that. People think they are invincible and invisible when commenting anonymously on these blogs, so perhaps my only sin in the matter is opening up the door for all of you to make comments that degrade or attack Brian unfairly. But that's your perogative and the attacks on my "ethics" or "professionalism" for the blog entry itself should be directed at the real problem. That being the practice of people not having the balls to say what they truly feel and sign their name to it. I'm not ashamed of what I wrote because it is how I feel and Brian should know that. It is unfair to hide my true feelings from him and talk behind his back...but don't get me wrong I am just as guilty as many other Section 1-2 people from last year in talking about Brian and Pamela. Nevertheless I will tell these people how it is and like one anonymous poster who had a little class eventually after wrongfully personally attacking my wife (nice low move my friend) in a previous comment..."we agree to disagree." Better words could not have been spoken. I do not think Brian is commenting on here, but if he is more power to him.

Responding directly where it needs to be done:
1. "you should be ashamed of yourself." - And so should you for not signing your name to the comment.
2. "stating that a colleague has a mental illness on your diary might be a tantrum worthy of a 3-4 year old" - Number 1, there's a big difference (and you'd know that if you knew me) between having a screw loose and true mental illness. I do think he has problems to work out and I have a lack of words to adequately describe it, but I also in my rage of blogging that day made it clear I do not think mental illness is to be joked about. There's no joke when it comes to Brian. Just cold hard facts. If you find them funny, that's your perogative. Number 2, you need to back down the silly comments if you don't have the balls to sign it. I would actually respect you and would agree to disagree if you were not so cowardly.
3. "BAS and Dave can both seem pompous at times." - Well welcome to law school. Just be happy you did not meet high school Dave, who should've had a ego-trip blog back in the day.
4. "impressed with the implications of a psychology minor" - Hmmm. I almost shut down comments because you people were getting so petty and personal and stupid. It hurt to watch, and again you want to attack my wife...say it to my face or her face.
5. Of course I hold back some opinions I have of law school people and events. Some things should never see the light of day, while others such as last weekend deserve to be spoken. Not only is a moot court competition weekend a once (or twice) in a lifetime opportunity, I gave Brian my apology and he continued to make an issue of things. He pushed me too far so I wouldn't cry too hard for him. In a way he brought whatever I wrote on himself.
6. "rodney king" - nice. I hope you go on all kinds of blogs and make that same comment because I'm certain you will find crazy petty little fights on half the blogs out there today. And who doesn't like a little more Rodney King in their lives?
7. "I can assure you that none of the comments have been from Brian." - Care to share how you have this nugget of knowledge? Are you some god who can pierce the veil of the anonymous tag? If so, you are a god.
8. Furthermore, I am not surprised at the readership. It's law school. I don't know about any dismay other than those of you who don't have the guts to come face to face with me, someone who indeed has the balls to say how I truly feel. I do not care if you do not read my blog or comment on it, as really before this post only 10 of the probably 100 people who read it this week had read it before and only 5 people regularly. That's just fine with me.
9. I can barely respond to the rest of that comment, as it is just so spineless and senseless. Plus the next comment said more eloquently than I ever could how you are wrong about your high and mighty ethics. "I am not going to give you favorable treatment in our contacts beyond Moritz in the legal community." Who the f^%$ do you think you are? You will probably have no professional contact with me outside of this school because I am in such a narrow field that maybe 3% of our graduates will go into. I have no idea what you think your unfavorable views of me will do, but it certainly will not affect my legal career. But whatever. You want to act all high-and-mighty and pretend like you have a say in my life, go ahead.
10. And finally, yes rampant use of alcohol and illegal substances is bad. Now that we have that cleared up...

You may continue to comment on that old thread if you wish, but it is yesterday's news and nobody has the balls to come out against me in person because they know I was not attacking Brian and I really was in no way unethical or unprofessional. So that's that. Shut the book on Brian. I'm finished with that.

Have a good week, and don't GO CRAZY over outlines and upcoming exams for god's sakes! No reason to have an insanity outbreak.

One final note: our evidence professor has a lot of respect from me. He's buying a round of drinks (alcoholic or non-alcoholic, whatever your pleasure) for whomever wants to join him at the end of our evidence exam. No exam talk allowed. Now that's what I call a good idea, get the people rested up a little bit and get them to take a short break from the rigors of law school exams. Should be good for the mental health of all involved.