End of the 2L Era

It's been a couple of weeks since I blogged last, but it has also been a busy couple of weeks. Now as of Tuesday I'm finally into my last year of schooling (year 19 if anyone's counting), a 3L or rising 3L, whatever your fancy. I definitely understand the mindset of 3L's now in law school with not caring about classes as much and just wanting to get to the bar exam and get into their jobs. After taking the whole IP suite my 2L year, the only course I'm taking in my area of interest is a once a week 2 hour International IP class next year. There's always the patent bar if I want more to do, and I really do not have a large classload. Executive Editor of JDR will keep me plenty busy otherwise and moot court in the fall as well. The 2L year is over though! Hooray!

The first thing to talk about is exams, now that they are over. What a crazy week of studying before exams and through them. Studied Evidence MTW and then finally turned my attention to Trademark on Thursday, but I knocked that class out in one day. After Evidence on Friday I turned my attention to Business Associations for the rest of the weekend before Trademark on Monday and BA on Tuesday.

I don't want to invoke any honor code problems, so I will speak in generalities only about the exams (and I ask that people like Aaron not read the following paragraph). Evidence went OK, but I have no idea where my grade will end up because it is like a big multiple choice test where all you do is see if you can make correct evidentiary rulings. Tests with significant multiple choice portions also have no consistent track record for me, with my highest grade in law school coming from Federal Income Tax and my second worst coming from Criminal Law, both like Evidence. Of course I ran out of time on the Evidence exam as well, but it's OK because god only knows how Simmons will differentiate the class on the final question. I think I knocked Trademark out of the park as everything was easy...and all I have to say is wow Professor Lee, American Idol contestants making a porn video...wow. The BA exam was a little tough as expected, and I wish I'd spent more time on corporations. Nonetheless, half the exam was a softball expected question where you knew exactly how to answer if you attended half the classes in there. I still think BA will be my worst and Trademark my best. We'll see. At least they are over and blissfully quickly.

Since exams ended, I've been busy grading mech eng midterms and I'm dropping those off later this afternoon. Nice to be done with school and my school job, now 2 days of relaxing and prepping for the Sunday evening move to Cincinnati. Hard to believe I'll be earning real money being a lawyer on Monday (well a summer associate but still). Looking forward to seeing what they put me on in the first week. I'll certainly be reporting in from time to time this summer to let you know how it is going. For those in the C-Bus this summer, I will be up most weekends spending time with the wife when she's not working so we can still get together and have some fun. Fun fun fun!

Been playing tennis as much as possible with Tom and Heather the past 3 weeks. I think we've had 6 sets of completely different scores as Kelley and I try to get up to speed (they started a couple weeks before we did). Our first outing was a 2-6, 3-6 loss and our second was 1-6, 4-6. Had a bad outing in the middle of my finals where we started 0-6, but we won the second set 6-4 then oddly enough. Back on tonight and maybe we're finally even again. We're hoping to play every weekend both couples are in town this summer. We'll have to fit it in around all the ridiculous movie blockbusters just like tonight, as we are all going to see Spiderman 3 after tennis to kick off the movie season. Reviews were not great but I think this is just because the first two (and especially the second) were clearly better than almost every other superhero movie in the last 10 years. Seems like too many storylines to me with 3 separate villains and an internal battle as well, but we'll see tonight.

Looking ahead to the summer of the sequels, Shrek 3 looks iffy in the previews to be quite honest. Ocean's 13 will amuse me but will be hard pressed to live up to the original. Fantastic Four 2 will be missed by me as I have no desire to see another good comic book series shafted by terrible movies. Pirates 3 kind of reminds me of the Matrix trilogy in that the first one was excellent and the second was just OK because it's a setup for the third movie. For the Matrix the mediocrity continued, but I have a feeling Disney will have a solid third Pirates movie here. Speaking of Disney (and getting out of the sequel run for a second), kind of wanting to see Ratatouille because Pixar movies always seem good. The end of the summer will bring the end of the Harry Potter book series and the fifth Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix. The end of the fourth book is where the series got incredibly dark and adult, so it will be nice to see the first really dark movie in the series. The previews for this movie look outstanding too. We'll hope for the best. It's a popcorn filled summer for sure.

Speaking of movies, bought and watched the two best picture frontrunners in 2006, The Departed and Babel. Babel was OK but it seemed kind of boring and was a bad Crash knockoff (the 2005 best picture winner over that movie with the Ga-ays). The Departed on the other hand was a very well done artsy flick about cops and criminals and rats. The movie was a joy to watch and I recommend that for everyone's movie collection.

The NBA playoffs has been feast or famine in the first round. The east was unbearable to watch as the three central division teams with the three best records in the east all coasted to sweeps (Detroit over Orlando, Chicago over Miami, and Cleveland over Wizards). The boring and irrelevant series between the Nets and the Raptors has a game 6 tonight nobody will watch outside the state of New Jersey or the state of Canada. The Nets might have a chance to knock off Cleveland, but probably not. The Bulls-Pistons series should finally bring some excitement to this side of the bracket. In the west there were no sweeps thankfully, but the Spurs and Suns (both 4-1 over the Nuggets and Lakers, respectively) were never in doubt. It's still entertaining to watch guards without help fail miserably in the playoffs, and yes I mean Kobe, AI, and Carmelo. The shocker of the first round ended last night as the Golden State Warriors blasted the best team in basketball (Dallas) out 4-2. Not that surprising given the way the Warriors finished the season 9-1 just to squeak into the 8 seed and the fact that the Warriors had the Mavericks' number all season (3-0 against Dallas in the regular season). The last series is going to Game 7 Saturday night with Utah visiting Houston. This has been a very good 4-5 matchup and will be a good game 7. So the west has been entertaining in all 4 series and the east has not. At least the east has one good series next round while the West should have two very interesting and competitive series.

Predictions certain to go wrong: Pistons over Bulls in 7, Cleveland over Nets/Raptors in 5, Spurs over Suns in 6, and Utah/Houston over Golden State in 7.

I find it funny that this Saturday is a huge day for two sports that used to be tops alongside baseball in this country but now suffer miserably: horse racing (Kentucky Derby) and boxing (Oscar De LA Hoya v Floyd Meriweather). The problem with boxing is easy to figure out: ultimate fighting is more entertaining, no heavyweight bouts of note in 10 years, and every fight of any relevance at all is on pay-per-view so nobody can see them. If you want fans, you have to be accessible. The problem with horse racing is that it only happens 3 times a year (the top level racing) and you can go bet on horse races every day of the week at your local track. Sports of the past are the name of the game this weekend, and I'm guessing Jazz-Rockets game 7 gets more attention.

TV has been top notch the past 2 weeks. American Idol has removed three ass-clowns who did not deserve to be there anymore (Sanjaya, Pasty Phil Stacey, and Chris). The last male singer remaining should be gone this week, but I'm sure one of the female trinity will probably have a bad outing and go home. House has been top notch as well, but now with 2 weeks left we are left asking...are they really going to write Omar Epps (Foreman) out of the series? That would suck but I guess if there was a replaceable character it would be him. Still hope House turns it around on us. 24 unfortunately stands out as not that great the past 3 weeks and with 3 weeks to go I just hope the end is OK. I really feel like this season they ended the main storyline with Arab terrorists 6 weeks too soon and crammed all the major 24 threats into one season to try and make it more bad-ass (Nuclear weapons, Russians, Chinese, and Arab terrorists). But we all should have known it was going downhill when Wayne Palmer became president. What a joke. Lost is back in primo form again and appears to be poised to take back the TV crown going into next year.

Time to go run some errands (getting Spidey tickets, undershirts for work, and maybe a windshield repair quote). Nice that the day after finals a crack on the truck windshield grew about 8 inches long and Kelley cut a tire that ended up needing replaced. Sigh :-)

Have a good week. Reports from Cincinnati coming!