Vacation, or I SURVIVED!

Well after telling everyone I was going to the boondocks of North Carolina and being out of touch with society and the internet for over a week, here I sit in our rented house which has internet. Nice. Anyways, the trip down was quite long because of a short night beforehand, but we made it by around 5 PM and unloaded the four vehicles. There are 11 of us total: Angela, Stephanie and her twin boys, Aunt Hope, Kathy and Bruce, Zach and A.J. his friend, and Kelley and I. Yes, all but A.J. are in-laws. It's funny because Angela was asking Kelley if I could go take a surfing lesson with her and Kelley, knowing this vacation was right after the bar, said "sure if you can get him sober enough to go." Well Angela told her mom Hope and Hope asked Kathy (mother-in-law) about being worried that I have an alcohol problem. Heh. Thankfully not yet, and hopefully never. These vicious rumors...

Speaking of vicious rumors, apparently everybody at Moritz thought I was working all up through the bar exam and just studying in the evenings. Apparently that was the rumor because most of my friends I had not seen all summer asked me about it. Ummm, no. I've been off since June, and it SUCKED for the 3 weeks of overlap. But we are insured now and they are covering the birth in case something happens while we are away from Cincinnati. So that's awesome.

So the doomsday...the bar exam. As it turns out, not so much.

Tuesday morning I roll out of bed and go grab a very light breakfast at the hotel and show up at the Vet around 8:30. I knew being number 1224 would likely be towards the back of the room, but I did not anticipate being the next to last table in the back corner of the entire building. 1207 people took the exam total (numbers went to 1307), and I could see them all because I was on the side of the table facing them. Also right next to proctors so my papers were picked up basically out of my hands every time. Still feeling a bit nervous, we go through tons of instructions and finally it's time to go.

The Ohio essays were first, and the first one was on Criminal Law, specifically defenses and the burden of proof. I sat there kind of stunned for a bit because I could not come up with a defense to 2 of the 3 crims committed. But I remembered necessity in torts and since those subject overlap I just made it up, and turns out that was correct. Beyond that oh crap moment, the morning went very well. The second question was all about privileges in Evidence which are very broad in Ohio and easy to talk about. The next set of two were what I had nightmares about, a Constitutional Law question all on First Amendment and mostly speech and the hardest question of the bar exam coming from Civil Procedure. Still, the speech regulation was all content-based and so that was easy. Nobody knew what the heck to talk about in Civil Procedure, but I feel like I had a better handle than most on the question. The highlight of infamy was whether a Motion to Dismiss for failure to state a claim could be treated as a Rule 56 motion for summary judgment. Eh, didn't study that this past semester. The final two questions were home runs though, a Corporations question limited to duty of care and loyalty and a Real Property question on estates. The last hypo of the session in the Real Property question brought up the Doctrine of Worthier Title, and I came up with the name of the rule out of the darkest reaches of my brain. Thanks Morgan! Anyways, I felt like there were no questions I would score worse than a 3 on, and most likely all were 4's or higher. I took my hand off the pen to rest during the sixth question and my fingers started throbbing so bad and probably swelling, so I immediately put the pressure back on the pen and kept going. Silly bar exam.

After lunch I found out OSU was offering free food at a tent for breakfast and lunch each day and free massages, so I guess I can stop complaining about how lazy they are to not mail diplomas in June. On the power of lunchables for the first time in over a decade (yeah those Lunchables), I go back in there for the Tuesday afternoon session. This session was the MPT, which is a "practical skills" test. Basically you have a 15 page case file and library where all the law you need to know is located and facts from your client, then you have to write a memorandum or a will or jury instructions, etc. What's funny is that this is not practical at all...you are never going to have to pick up a case file and write a damn memo by hand in 90 minutes. But anyways...the first MPT was all about a child custody case and civil procedure jurisdiction laws determining which state can host the case when the parents are in neighboring states. The problem with that one was the second half of the objective memo to write was a SIX PART BALANCING TEST! Let's just say the last two factors got about one sentence and there was no real conclusion, just half a sentence. That's kind of diappointing, but oh well. The second MPT was a fraud case where you had to evaluate a few statements made in the course of an auto repair shop bending a guy over and screwing him for about $2000. That one I got through although it was close. I don't think I did perfectly and I know this was thre part of the test where I was at a big disadvantage compared to faster writers and all the laptop users. It's only worth 13% though.

Tuesday night I grabbed AK and Daniel and we escaped to Quaker Steak and Lube for cheap wing night. I tried the Buckeye BBQ and they are not all that hot. The Cajun wings were good and we talked the bar exam to death before relaxing and talking about lots of other stuff for two hours. It was a blast and we got back to our hotels/houses and hit the sack.

Wednesday morning I was up earlier and went to the OSU tent for breakfast. It was nice to chat with the friends before tackling Day 2. The MBE is all day Wednesday and every state and territory (except Louisiana and Washington) take this 200 multiple choice test on Contracts, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Procedure, Torts, Real Property, and Evidence. 100 questions per 3 hours, so you have about 1.8 minutes a question. Unfortunately the first 3-4 questions of my test form in the morning were killer, probably some of the toughest all day. Bad way to start and I had trouble staying on pace for thre first half. The back 50 went better and so the morning was probably average or a little below. The afternoon questions were much easier and I finished with over a half hour left to sit there and nap or do whatever. I certainly was not going back and changing answers, a sure way to failure. The guy who finished with 30 minutes left in the morning finished a little after me in the afternoon and glared at me for the remaining 30 minutes. Dude, sorry I finished before you, don't let it get to your manhood. Anyway, I think I did not improve on my BarBri practice test but I should be good to go. It's hard to really say, and if I were to fail it would probably be the MBE that would be the culprit.

Wednesday afternoon I met Tom on the Park of Roses tennis courts and sweat through my first two sets of the summer. He's usually a little better than me, but he's been in practice and beat me 6-2, 6-1. I was doing respectable but could not win a service game to save my behind. Eventually Kathy and Kelley showed up and we all drove to meet Heather at Applebee's for dinner. That was nice, and it was again time to get another restless night of sleep. This time with Kelley.

Thursday morning I was confident after rocking the first six essays and having my two strongest subjects lefts in Ethics and Wills. Questions 7-8 were an Ethics question where there were 8-9 issues and you could really excel, and then Commercial Transactions which was a mostly Commercial Paper question with some Secured Transactions details thrown in. I'm sure I did OK despite only having about 27 minutes after really espousing on Ethics. The second set included a pretty tough narrow Torts question on wrongful death standards and NIED, and an Agency question that I think I punted a little bit. The final two questions were Wills which I absolutely rocked and Contracts which was only about consideration and exceptions (not even promissory estoppel). So another pretty successful session and I think I've done more than well enough on the 53% alloted to the essays to carry any deficiencies on the MBE and MPT.

So that's it. I survived the bar exam, and I expect good news on October 31 at 7 AM (Trick or Treat bar examinees). We all went out for drinks at Eddie George's after picking up diplomas and that was good fun. Got sloshed there and some more at the in-laws Thursday night. Had a minor headache for not drinking enough water before bed, but not much else. Back to vacation now, but wanted to get that off my chest.

Doomsday Cometh...

Here I sit, 10 PM on July 28, 2008. The next three days will determine if one of the worst summers of my life was effective. OK, so it was not that bad. I never had a chance to burn out because the way I study, I could only do 6-8 hours a day before quitting. I worked most of the days and took some reasonable time off, especially early in the 3 months. My breaks were:

Origins Weekend - spent all weekend in Columbus, 2.5 days at Origins (Sunday with Kelley and oh my did we buy a lot of new board games...come play with us!), 1 day and night at Villa's with Tom and Shep. It was really good to reconnect with Shep and see the guys, but it was time to get serious as the lectures were almost over for BarBri.
Fourth of July Weekend - My Mom finally came over to see the new house in Cinci and we went to Newport Aquarium (the season passes will be great to walk Paige around when we need to get out of the house), IKEA, and a Reds Game. Finally saw Griffey hit a home run, so that was awesome. And the Reds won, which sometimes is hard to catch.
July 19 Weekend - Lisa and Thomas came down from Cleveland to see the house and visit her grandparents. They stayed all weekend and while we did not do anything amazing, it was good times. I did work on one of the weekend days, taking the Simulated MBE.

So what was my study plan? No flashcards, no outlines, no listening to tapes over and over. Just my usual. Read, and then read again, and then read again. I could not handle the "big outlines," so I just memorized most of the Conviser Mini Review. And I did TONS of practice essays and a good number of practice MBE problems. At the end of my MBE prep, I was hitting 75-80% correct and my simulated MBE which is supposed to be hard ended up with 151/200. Anything close to that on Wednesday and I'll have lots of extra points to blow on essays if necessary. This last week was mostly essays and reading things over 2 more times. I was hitting 95+% of the issues presented and had a pretty good handle on presenting the law. Maybe not every exception to every rule or perfect legalese, but more than enough to pass. So I feel pretty good heading into it and hope that out of the 12 essays, we don't hit more than 2-3 I feel uncomfortable about. We will certainly see, as "doomsday" arrives. If nothing else, vacation is coming up and I'll be sipping some liquor on the beach all next week before having to go to work officially full-time. And then it will be over except for the waiting, until late October presumably.

As for the baby stuff (the only other major thing going on in life right now!), we got a scare today. Kelley has been measuring right around where she should based on our due date from her last period all this time, and even the ultrasounds were within a half a week. Well today we go in and she's at 33 or so weeks and she measures at 37. That means Paige in 3 weeks or so. Well they shcedule us in for an emergency ultrasound and it turns out while the growth spurt did happen, it's more of a 2 week jump. So maybe end of August instead of mid-September. In any event, doesn't look like we have a ton to worry about on vacation but Paige is measuring so that she will be "full term" and could be delivered normally this weekend. As it is Kelley's first, I highly doubt it. We will see. Everything else is OK with the baby.

So that's life, and after watching some Star Trek and the Mole, it's time to get as much shut-eye as I can manage in 8 hours. Hope I can funnel my good Magic-playing days at the Veterans Memorial and have another success this week.

To all my friends who will not read this until after the bar exam, best of luck! We'll see in October!

Guitar Hero - The Correct Moves

Lots of good vibes today. First was the official 88th credit hour added to my law school career, officially graduating me (late last night, entry below).

Then I get to work and call Bexley Woods again. Got a manager finally and talked her through the situation. She finally admitted fault and dropped the June/security deposit charges. Yay!

Then I go get Disturbed's new album after work. Almost listened to it once through and more opinion later, but it seems much better than the last albums by my two other favorite bands Metallica and Linkin Park. Maybe not as good as Ten Thousand Fists, but close.

And the best news of all - when Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was announced, I immediately said "What the hell...why pick them when Metallica fits so much better?" But Activision said they would likely bring out at least 1-2 more artist-specific releases before or just after the next big Guitar Hero game (was GH IV, now called GH: World Tour). Well today it was announced that the next "expansion" game after GH: World Tour in November 2008 will be GH: Metallica in Q1 2009. Ever since experiencing the joy of playing One on GH:III, I've longed for this announcement. This could be my favorite video game of all time. Also GH:IV will have a pack-in drum set and will be pretty much a full competitor to Rock Band. No real surprise there, but I'm happy to see we'll be able to add the very fun drums to GH in the future. Plus, by waiting to bring out GH:Metallica until now...it will definitely benefit from developers learning from mistakes and feedback in making the original spinoff GH:Aerosmith, and it will almost certainly include all 4 instruments. Simply awesome.

So a great day. But now today is over, and we move onto hump day!

It's Official Now - I Really Graduated

The final grades of law school are in, and I'm very happy with the results. The most important part is that I officially now have 88 credit hours to my name with grades, and that is enough to officially warrant a diploma to be picked up after the bar exam. When I stepped into the fine halls of Moritz College of Law, I had the same goals/expectations as I had when making similar transitions from Frontier district grade schools to Marietta High School, and again when starting at OSU for undergrad. That was, to do my best and hopefully stay within reach of the top of the class. In law school, that meant I wanted to avoid any C's. I feel like sometimes I could have given more effort, but that extra effort would not have provided much more than diminishing returns I think. I sort of struggled with the system first year and split about evenly between A's and B's (high point being Property and low point being Contracts), but after that I managed through a lot of work and a good bit of luck to run through second and third year with nothing lower than a 91 A-. I finished up with a 91 in Professional Responsibility, a 98 in Civil Procedure II, and a 99 in Wills, Trusts, and Estates. This puts me (apparently) at 3.75 GPA and a 94.7 average. Definitely in the Top 10%, might crack the very bottom of Top 5% if someone above me got 3L senioritis. That determination will come later, but it's finally over. No more grades, one more standardized test...and it's finally done!

Now back to that little standardized test prep...

Moving and Switching Gears

So where did we leave off? I believe it was driving down with a truckload of stuff on Sunday and putting a bed together. We also put the big screen TV and the entertainment center/stand back together as well as they needed to be put together for the Dish guy. So Monday morning comes and the Dish Network guy shows up, looks around and determines that the previous tenants or cable guy were amateurs. There's cables just sort of hanging from the basement ceiling and nothing is securely tied down or hidden, the highlight being a 13:1 cable splitter hanging in the path of a door in our basement. These guys seriously had cable running to each room! He gets to working on that, which takes quite a while longer than I thought. Kelley and I were going to Moe's for lunch, but he stayed so long that she ended up just having to hit the road without Moe's. The packers from the moving company were coming into the apartment around 1 PM to pack the breakables. I end up just sitting in my camping chair (the only chair in the house) and making some more calls to cancel utilities in Columbus and change addresses on accounts, etc. Apparently Dish Network's front-line sales crew and their install crew are having some communication problems, as it takes multiple calls to their home office to set up the dish to receive...and they tried to install a regular box when we bought a DVR box with DVR service. Thankfully the guy had a spare DVR box in the truck, or it would have been more waiting. I finally got to take off for work in the afternoon, and spent over 3 hours doing administrative things like getting my stuff from the law clerk station moved down to my office, after finding out just where my office was. Turns out I'm moving down to our bottom floor, floor 22. The office is HUGE for an associate though, and the rumor was Adam got moved out of it because it was too big for an associate. Maybe they recanted on that idea, especially considering the seemingly more important consideration is getting associates and legal assistants together and that's the only office on 22 where my new legal assistant (and the other associate she works for) is located. We're the party floor, let me tell you. But the first day at work was a wash.

It was an interesting first week, as Monday and Tuesday nights I went to Home Depot after work. It's funny that once you have a house (albeit rented), you start going to Home Depot more than you ever have before in your lifetime. I bought lots of stuff including those expensive new mercury lightbulbs (I'm sick of those burning out so often and there are a ton of fixtures in the new house so they would burn out probably at least once a week), a lawnmower and weedwacker which would eventually go back thanks to more gifts from the in-laws, and tons and tons of curtain rods. On Monday evening I put the sound system together for the TV and did the small stuff like shovel out the back steps so our drain back there does not block. On Tuesday I put up countless curtain rods after purchasing a new cheap power drill to put them up and fighting with the old walls of the house. Meanwhile in Columbus Tuesday and Wednesday were spent finishing the packing and loading the semi-trailer. I guess Ms. Sweet Marcy from the rental office showed her other side when she came to tell the moving company they couldn't have the semi truck in the apartment complex. I hear she was a complete bitch, which just shows that some people are very two-faced depending on what you are doing. The moving company worked that out and got everything loaded up, then Kelley came down on Wednesday evening.

Although I hate being locked into a contract, the Dish setup is pretty nice. It also has the NFL Network and the Big Ten Network, so Time Warner can chalk up another lost customer to that. I'll still buy their Road Runner (and phone service so we can get an alarm system in a little while), but adios to cable. It all costs the same whether you get Dish or TWC, so it's really a wash. Subtle changes at work too evidence how big a change it is to go from "law clerk" or "summer associate" to "associate." You actually get quicker service from the staff or at least it seems that way. Partners definitely start expecting more of you, like the first week I get asked to call a client to check on them sending us more information. As I've rarely even been in the room for client conversations let alone doing one myself, that was kind of exciting. Even though I'm still learning the art of patent applications, partners seem more trusting and let me complete a full draft after prepping claims instead of doing each piece step by step. Instead of just doing research memos for the litigation partners, I'm drafting motions to the court. One partner who is a primarily electrical engineering partner randomly gave me an application to do, but he calls me into his office and goes on a 40 minute stream of consciousness conversation about the invention before telling me exactly what he wants me to do. I like a challenge though, and so I'll muddle my way through this one (plus it is in a new and interesting field, GPS). I had thought that it would be tough billing 1850 a year and work goes so slow sometimes, but now that I've gotten a short taste of being an associate...I can see that I'll quickly be buried with work like everyone else at the firm and that makes the days at work fly by. All in all, the transformation to associate is pretty neat.

The movers showed up earlier than expected on Thursday morning of that week, and Kathy and Bruce stopped by to surprise us and help us start the unpacking process. I escaped to work after most of the unloading was done, and Bruce worked in the yard while Kathy and Kelley worked inside. By the evening, most of the new bookshelves were assembled and the yardwork was caught up. We went to IKEA, the Swedish superstore sensation...and looked around for quite some time. On Friday Kathy and Bruce went home and Tim and Granny showed up to help. Once I got home Friday, it was time to work all weekend. Tim did lots of stuff outside like clean out the gutters and edge the walkways and driveway. Granny set up the kitchen and dining room before turning her attention to the living room. I tackled the basement which was quite an effort (there was no path between the storage space underneath the garage and the rest of the basement thanks to a half-basement full of boxes. Over that weekend we hammered out all the rooms except for the office, the upstairs, and other small details that will undoubtedly take quite a while to get all the way through.

So in the past 2 weeks, work has gotten busy as previously mentioned and we've kept working on the house little by little. Kelley's been doing OK, sleeping a lot due to being sick the past couple weeks. We've gone in for a second ultrasound and now they want to do a third. Hopefully the hospital doesn't screw us over financially on these extras, but I guess they have to be done. The previous landlord is trying to screw us out of our security deposit and an extra month's rent for failing to give them 30 days notice of moving out. We're fighting that one, but the manager apparently refuses to call me which is just so mature (as is completely lieing and claiming they did not give us an eviction notice or lose our rent check for May...which they did). Landlords are so scummy, and they really have no reason to be. I'm sure a place like Bexley Woods has serious problems with certain tenants, but that's no reason to try and screw the people who follow the rules and the people who are generally not trying to screw them over. We'll see where that goes, but I'm not going to hop up and send them a check for $1000 just because they say so. Even Patrice was not that much of a bitch, although she took out a good chunk of our security deposit making "necessary repairs." So the first weekend was unpacking from moving with the in-laws, and the next weekend we went up to Columbus to clean the old apartment and hang out with the Burtons and the Villas. We watched some UFC, and had a great time after working on the apartment most of the day to get it nice and clean. We're hoping to keep in close contact with the Columbus friends, either by going up for the occassional weekend or in the case of the guys, emailing each other at work all day (you should see some of the topics we get on...)

I've managed to not play a softball game yet. Every week it's been rained out, or lack of interest (which should stop now that we've got 3-4 summer people and myself back in the mix), or one week they changed the field and the person supposed to stay at the original field and tell us where to go did not stay long enough to tell me. I'll try to bring some stories once we have something to talk about. It's a nice Tuesday night diversion. We also had our partner-associate dinner for May and it was at Primavista, which as the name implies, sits on the hill overlooking Cincinnati and the river. Very lovely view, and the food was OK. It was good to catch up with some of my co-workers in an informal setting. This weekend Dave D. from work hosted all the associates and spouses/girlfriends over for dinner. That was fun, lasted far longer into the evening that I would have expected. Of course we showed up first, and we were 25 minutes late! Apparently that's how people roll on the weekend, just showing up 30-45 minutes late to come in fashionably late or whatever. Next up on the firm calendar is the Attorney-Spouse annual outing, this year it's a dinner cruise on a riverboat. That should be interesting.

It finally feels like things are settling down (financially as well as otherwise). Bar exam classes started this past week, and so I tried to go to the live class I signed up for. There's only like 5-6 people in there and all are from UC, so I'll just stick with the DVD's. Plus it saves me lots of money on parking at UC garages and eating dinner out every night. Let the diligent 8 weeks of studying begin this week, as I tackle Contracts and Torts. What fun!

If you don't watch Lost, you should really borrow or buy the DVD sets of the three seasons and the fourth when it comes out this fall and catch up. It is definitely the deepest show on TV right now, and this past season you could tell the writers have found their direction in storytelling again. In addition, House had a fantastic finale as well. Guess those writers had some good ideas percolating while they went on strike! Now it's on to summertime, where TV is terrible so we watch a lot of movies and Reds games.

So that's all for now. Don't know how often we'll update this blog, but hopefully some house pictures once everything is truly settled. Onto bar studying!

Hooding Weekend

And this ends a journey, from August 1989 (first day of Kindergarten) to 2001 (high school graduation) to 2005 (OSU graduation) to May 9, 2008. Nineteen full years of being a student all culminating in one ceremony where you change what you've done for the vast majority of your life and switch it to a productive career. It will be fulfilling to finally stop racking up huge bills and start paying them off, and to do what I enjoy every day as some class schedules are nothing but training. But in the end, graduation is a ceremony for families to enjoy and celebrate one of their own and their accomplishments.

Wednesday after my last final ever, Kelley and I went to Melting Pot. We had an awesome dinner and the special dessert of the month was Bananas Foster which was different and good, but not the same as their more chocolate-y dishes. So Thursday when Kathy got in, we finished our goodwill runs and then went to Melting Pot for chocolate. It was good stuff, and we had a server who was one year away from applying to OSU law school. Good luck buddy.

I actually had trouble sleeping due to a little excitement. Hard to believe, but you don't get many celebrations like this one. We wake up bright and early and get down to Palace Theatre for the Honors Convocation. Looking over the list of awards, I thought I was definitely getting a useless certificate for the top grade in Legal Writing (the better part of that award was the nice Black's Law Dictionary we got over a year ago), but I had no idea if anything else. I knew I was in the running for one of the top Appellate Advocacy briefs, and I thought I was almost a lock for the top student in Intellectual Property coursework. Then follows one of the longest 1.5 hours in my life, as countless awards and pieces of paper get handed out. As it turns out, I had forgotten my volunteer time for Moritz Ambassadors (admissions office) 1L-2L years, so I got a certificate for that as well as the Legal Writing. No AppAd award, but I was thrilled to see Larry take home a Top 3 finish. Also did not get the IP award, which went to Bart and Steve. I knew I was screwed when Professor Lee said the award was going to two people who survived all four of his IP classes (which means they did not take patent law 2L year and so I guess all of us who were truly interested in patent law got the shaft on that one). But let's face it, they are all cute little certificates that don't mean a ton and they should be spread around to the most people possible. the cutest moment was when Keener went up to accept an award and his little kid yelled out "Daddy!" when he was accepting the award midstage (Keener smiled and waved out to him). The best moment outside of Larry's award was definitely the big AK taking home a nice plaque for a prestigious award (the name of which escapes me now). We escaped the convocation and went over to a little pizza place to blow the brunch hour. The place was dead, which was just fine. Once we got closer to noon, we trekked back to the car to get the cap, gown, and hood.

Met up with Mom and Steve and Bruce at the Theatre, then walked around back to go to the graduation staging area. We then gathered over 200 people in the hottest little "hospitality suite." You can imagine what the biggest room in the back of a theatre looks like, and it's not that huge. Eventually we line up down a very long hallway leading to the ceremony, where we proceed to stand in alphabetical order for way too long. The highlight was greeting OSU President E. Gordon Gee on his way into the ceremony. That guy is amazing for the university (again) and is a vast improvement over that bitch Holbrook. More waiting, and then we got to finally go in. I couldn't find my family thanks to the ridiculous amount of waving families out there, so whatever. Got to the seat and in for the long haul.

To start us off, Brian Smith showed off some outstanding pipes in the National Anthem. He should really consider singing because those are his gifts, but whatever. The higlights of the ceremony were definitely the speeches. E. Gordon Gee gave a nice little rousing speech, and then at the end he says "you all have a great day" and walks off the stage. Exit stage left. I guess he had some more important things to attend to, but it was definitely funny watching him just leave the building. Professor Oesterle got best professor award, and he gave a nice speech making fun of a lot of the more interesting aspects of our class. He especially bashed on Alexis which was funny yet surprising. Then Phil Eckenrode gave the student speech and it was absolutely fantastic. I knew he would knock it out of the park. The LLM student wasn't that bad either. The only real downer was the infamous Brewer speech, which failed on its softer moments and ended with an unforgiveable disaster (NEVER EVER end a speech "Class of XXXX, We Did It!" at a law school graduation after Legally Blonde...that's just plain jane and overdone). Maybe I'm jaded, but you know what it's over and who cares at this point the exploits of Smith, Miller, Seifert, and Brewer. We are all moving into our careers and let the firms or government deal with the various personalities. The top 25% stood up for recognition, and a lot of surprises in that lot. Top 10% was pretty expected though, and I'm happy to have my name in the graduation booklet for that (even though that's only for 5 out of 6 semesters). Got the hood fro Oesterle and that was that. Took some pictures in the super-crowded theatre and alley outside before returning the cap and gown and running off for dinner.

The 8 of us (James, Dad, Mom, Steve, Kathy, Bruce, and Kelley and I) went to Logan's Steakhouse and I got a big steak for celebratory dinner. I received a nice OSU watch and an OSU clock for the office as well as other small nifty nick-nacks. My Dad is getting me some nice diploma and bar admission frames. The usual nice take for graduation. After going home and relaxing for a bit, Dad and James came over and we actually got some four-player Rock Band going. I never would have thought my Dad would play drums and sing, but we rocked it out for a couple hours. Then we finally got to bed and man was I exhausted. Between the finals and the prep for moving and graduation, I was already beat before the real moving began.

Sunday we packed up the big new TV and sound system as well as the spare bed and covered it all with plastic (it was raining of course) and finally hit the road for Cincinnati after 8 PM. We got in and unloaded in the rain and dark, then put the bed together. Another restless night of sleep and off to my first day of work the next day. This leads us to the move, but we must wrap up the law school entries here before getting into that (which will be later as there's much more to catch up on and not enough time tonight to write).

So law school. Over $100K in debt that I did not have, but I have a very lucrative job close enough to OSU football, right in town with my favorite baseball team, and close enough to family for them to reasonably visit and us to reciprocate. I think I will be tons happier as a patent lawyer than I ever would have been as an engineer...and I'll make a lot more money doing it (a nice bonus on top of the most important thing, happiness). I accomplished everything and more of what I set out to do as a student, including nothing lower than an A up through high school, high school valedictorian, summa cum laude in Mechanical Engineering, and top 10% in law school. Those things are nice and they sure make my Mom and Dad proud, you can just see it in their eyes as they were grinning more on the day of Hooding than I've ever remembered seeing them. But I just hope I can translate the successes of my past life (and make no mistake, it is now the past life) into professional success and success as a father and husband. That's where the road of life leads now, and I can only hope to have as good a time as I had the past three years, despite the hard grind that is law school.

Thanks to all the friends and sometimes foes who made law school entertaining and somewhat life-consuming. I'll miss most of you as only a handful are moving to Cincinnati, and we'll catch up whenever we can. Thanks also to all the readers, who have survived the much-too-long breaks and given supporting (or disagreeing and not-so-supporting) feedback. I will continue to write as the scary world of being an associate, passing the bar exam, and becoming a father come up on my horizon.

In all things there is an end and a beginning, and while we look back sadly at the days long lost, we must dwell on the bright future that those days in the past have paved the way for.

Or in the words of a character I admire, we journey through life "to boldly go where no one has gone before."

The Finals Season

Well it's been since mid-April, and wow how things have changed since then. We will start with an entry on finals season, which flew by. I finished up the bibliography issue and turned my attention to three days of work before starting the focus on finals. On Saturday I sat down with some fellow JDR peeps Julie and Larry and I ripped through Larry's outline in 2 days, making fixes and changes along the way. Monday morning Larry and I met with Nick and Jeff at Caribou and I got another cup of the magic Earl Grey. We hammered out some fine points of law and went to Wendy's for another gastrointestinal-safe pre-finals meal of chicken nuggets and such. I honestly did not feel 100% prepared, but we had a great outline for the class.

So we get into the exam and the multiple choice section is an absolute nightmare. Professor Johnson puts a state code in the back where only parts of the Uniform Trust Code and Uniform Probate Code are adopted, and even those are changed in some circumstances just a little bit. Everything left out is common law. What this means is for every single stinking question, you are forced to double check the law in the back of the 40 page exam packet and then your outline before even thinking about answering. I spent too much time on this and rocked into the essays. The first was an in-depth trust question which I rocked I think. The second was a four-part wills question. I got through the first part, sped through the second, and wrote about a sentence total for the last two parts combined. Ick. So much for time management. I think maybe a solid B on this one, an A if I rocked the multiple choice (which is my strategy, but this multiple choice was a nightmare).

The next exam was on Friday and it was Professional Responsibility. With having to study for the MPRE twice thanks to snow and Greenbaum's exam being on the exact same subject material, I knew spending more than a day would be killer. So I went to work two more days to get away from it all, then came back and really just breezed through a JDR outline, changing it enough to fit my own needs and make it my own. This only took about 4 hours. So I definitely blew off this exam, but it was not that hard. We had at least a half hour too long on this one, but I wrote to the gun because that's what you do. I felt like I covered everything except reporting requirements in the essay (which literally covered about everything in the course, a real disaster of a fact pattern), and did OK in the multiple choice. I figured a solid A.

Now the final exam of my law school career I took more seriously than any other since I ripped through Business Associations in 4 grueling days. Again it was Larry and I, and this time I spent four days meticulously ripping through his outline while he stayed a little ahead of me each day outlining the course. After 4 days of rip-roaring discussion including a lively debate on supplemental jurisdiction and the limits imposed. It's funny how absolutely giggly and ridiculous your sense of humor gets after 4 days of intense studying. The bar exam is going to be a trip...but I was finding the funniest mis-spellings in my class notes. That makes sense, considering I spent more time in that class playing Tecmo Bowl and Scheherazade than taking notes. There's just a limit to some professors, and while I love Greenbaum...by the second session every day he did not really have enough to keep me interested. Plus Civil Procedure is pretty simple...there's just a hell of a lot of topics covered. I cannot imagine the old days a decade ago when Civil Procedure I and II were combined into a year-long 6 credit hour first year class. That would be a nightmare! Anyways, we were rocking longer than most as Civ Pro was on the last day of regular finals. It felt good just to finally get to the final exam.

I thought it would feel special or like an accomplishment to go to your last final, but we got in there and it felt like just doing business. By the time we got to this last one, as a 3L you just go in there and laugh at all the super-serious 2L's while rocking the exam out as best you can. More scantron multiple choice goodness, and these were much harder than his Professional Responsibility questions. Unlike PR, I thought our outline was key to rocking the essays as well. There were some gray areas, but this should be another A.

So the finals were over, in a blink of an eye. We had decided after a couple breakdowns that we should have the moving company pack the majority of our items once we found out the estimate was a couple hundred below what the firm was willing to shell out. We still spent the Thursday after finals going through boxes and getting rid of over a truckload to goodwill and half-price books as well as countless bags of trash. Moving is a big pain, but at least it gives you a chance to go through and cut down on the useless belongings, of which we probably still have too many but we got 80% of it out this time.

So on to Hooding weekend...

The Final Dance and Baby News

Umm, before I begin I have to share the good news instead of burying it in a long entry. If you have not heard, our first ultrasound was Thursday and we will be welcoming a girl into our family in September. Paige Elizabeth Fitzgerald. We're keeping the boy's name in our bank for later as I think we both like it a lot, and we'll have a lot of time to think up a good middle name and another girl's name for the next time around. We also adopted Zach's dog P.J., a boston terrier to be Chip Dip's sister. So the conversion from independent newlywed couple in school to full on family and career couple is really beginning to take shape.

Sorry for missing my normal American Idol blog and this part of the blog for the past three weeks. Let's just say journal and life got incredibly busy. Lots to cover, but before I forget...I totally called KKK Kristy Lee Cook going home again and she finally delivered. VFTW has moved on to Brooke White, which is easily my pick for the worst remaining. More on Idol tomorrow when the Top 6 compete. In other news, real TV (House, Lost, etc.) is back this week. Awesome.

Speaking of awesome, there have been a few things I could bitch about from this crazy world the past few weeks, but this one takes the cake. Crayola announced they are renaming 8 of the crayons in the 64 pack to appeal to a "new generation" of kids. Here was what that great online poll left Crayola with:
1. Laser Lemon is now Super Happy
2. Wild Tangerine is now Fun in the Sun
3. Screamin' Green is now Giving Tree
4. Beaver is now Bear Hug
5. Turquoise Blue is now Happy Ever After
6. Hot Magenta is now Famous
7. Orchid is now Best Friends
8. Wild Watermelon is now Awesome

What the hell Crayola? Just when I'm about to bring a child into the world, I find out that Crayola is now going to teach them that Awesome, Famous, Super Happy, etc. are COLORS? Crayola was doing a great service keeping things like turquoise, magenta, and orchid in the list of names because that helps children learn difference shades of primary colors. I can envision 25 years from now, someone going to Lowe's/Home Depot or a car lot and asking for Awesome house paint or a Giving Tree car. Seriously? Makes me want to go buy some 64 packs while sanity remains on the shelves for my future children.

Speaking of seriously?....so Burger King has a huge ad campaign now with a robotic king and people from the future saying what a hassle it was to eat with fork and spoon. Then they show an honest-to-God breakfast Burrito as the food of the future. That would be fine if BK actually invented something, but McD's has had a breakfast burrito for like 20 years. Breakfast of the future? BK needs a time machine and some common sense in the marketing department.

Today was an exciting day, for multiple reasons. First, this was the final day of regular classes for upper level law students, and this means my final two law school classes were today. What started with Contracts and Crandall in August 2005 (or to take it back farther, Mrs. Montgomery's kindergarten class in September 1989) ended today in April 2008. Hard to believe it's all over with a few finals, but that's how quick law school passes you by. For the record, I will keep this blog address and just change the title...to something yet TBD. The final two classes were Wills with Johnson which was rushing through 4 final cases to try and cram more material we could cover on trusts in the final, followed by Professional Responsility with Greenbaum. Art gave us a nice little speech about ethics and going out there in practice at the end of the class, and it's always nice to have a professor invite us to stay in touch. He's one of the few I will keep in touch with thanks mostly to his interest in my sportswriting (assuming that continues). Daniel summed it up nicely at the end of class, "How Great Thou Art." Indeed, and now I get to see two of his exams in the next couple weeks.

So the end of the class era was one big thing today, the next being finishing something that has plagued me for too many hours the past 3 weeks. I finally finished up the bibliography issue for JDR and now I am done except for reviewing the bluelines when Issues 3-4 come back from the publisher (and that will take 5 minutes). Issue 3 is still not at the publisher thanks to one author yet again making lots of last minute changes and not understanding the concept of a camera-ready copy inspection. Everybody runs into tough authors on all journals, but we've had some doozies on JDR this year. Issue 3 took slightly under a month longer than I originally anticipated to push through, despite being overall much better than Issues 1-2. Issue 4 only took a couple of full days of work, but I was incredibly upset. I cannot imagine how you can do a bibliography issue for the field of ADR and not include a single article from the second-best journal in the field from Harvard and another in the top 5 from Cardozo. So 18 pages of article entries (45 pages last year) was expanded to 26 or so by me. Furthermore, I really expect the ME's and the bib editor to give their respective articles and issues to me in publishable quality. Based on what the bib editor told me about her tough travails getting things form Excel to Word, it might have just saved us all time had I done the transferring. Not my job, but when I have to waste 3 hours alphabetizing all the entries, another 3 hours fixing the index, and 6 hours writing up new entries or fixing poor effort ones from the staff (of which there were too many)...I begin to question what my job really is. But a ray of sunshine today when Issue 4 was done, after 3 weeks of pretty intense work JDR is ready to publish and done as far as my desk goes.

[Before I forget, the JDR Banquet was boring as snot. Interesting table with Kyle and Mark (2L's) as well as Guy and Xavier (3L's). Sat in the back, got called a teddy bear under my "tough exterior" by the new EIC and got another useless certificate to match the staff member one from last year. I actually got more accolades last year because I got another sheet of paper announcing that my note was being published. At least Larry and Kate won the important awards, although Erik deserved one and I might have got one if not for going against my best friend and the sweetest guy on journal (yes that's a man-crush). But one last rather incompetent attempt at running a social event from JDR this year, and they have lots to improve upon for next year...you'd have to hope someone learns how to care or acc-check. Good luck Kevin, Keith, and Kyle, because you'll need it. Congrats to Erik and Paige on making it through this year as well, even though there are a couple loose ends to tie up.]

And the final thing making today awesome (and I don't mean watermelon) was the Issue 2 advance copies hit our desks at JDR central today, meaning the subscribers and JDR will have the published Issue 2 in the next couple days. I finally have one copy of Issue 2, where my note is...and it's great to feel the accomplishment of having 2 issues officially published as well as having my note published in the leading journal of the ADR field. After completing the bibliography issue for last year, I really think IP Phil and my article (both on IP) in Issue 2 will fill a gap in the field from the past couple years and may actually get read or cited. If nothing else, I will always have a written work in the annals of legal scholarship forever. That's cool even though the club is large. So the final day of classes was made better by finishing journal work and being officially published.

My finals schedule is pretty easy. This week I'm working W-F, next week Wills is on Monday, work T-W, Professional Responsibility on Friday. The following week I have Civ Pro II on Wednesday and hooding is Friday. I'm sure it will fly by. Speaking of hooding, so OSU Bookstore in all their wisdom lost my cap and gown and invitation order. So I cannot get invitations (they offered to rush order some I could have by May 2, but I told them that is ridiculously too late), and I have a gown size a couple inches too short. Not really noticeable, but I'll have to wear black pants and shoes on the ceremony day to look OK. How annoying. I just don't like the feeling of being forgotten...but at least they had a back-up cap, gown, and hood for me to take.

All of a sudden we are a little over a week away from getting the keys to the new house. Moving in less than a month is scary when we haven't truly started packing things seriously. Kelley is finally getting over some morning sickness by the looks of it, so she should be able to focus better once she stops working on Saturday. Also have to figure out which moving services I want to bring in for a moving quote. The firm is paying, as long as we keep it reasonable overall. Speaking of the firm paying...I cannot imagine not working for a few weeks out of school. Lots of my friends are taking the summer completely off to hammer on the bar stuff right away, but I know I would burn out too quickly with that. So I'll earn the extra money to get us through the summer (although the bar exam loan is a nice backup despite using half of it to pay off Kelley's credit cards - 7.5% is better than 16-20% interest - and some new house purchases / graduation presents to myself). In addition, working 5 weeks will get us on insurance for the time I'm off for the bar and beyond, which should cover any special problems we run into late in the pregnancy. Let's hope those don't happen, but I like having the insurance blanket.

Speaking of work, so apparently an email goes around saying Chuck Figer and I are looking for a legal assistant. As usual, I find this out from other people who got the email that wasn't sent to me. I'll be happy to join the "Attorney" file this summer or fall so that I get all the relevant emails lol. So now I've got 5 resumes in my inbox for interviews with Chuck. First, this probably means I'm moving down to 22 with him to keep us both close to the new assistant. Second, this should be fun...a legal assistant and a new associate both not knowing exactly what the heck to do together, woohoo go team. I've never looked at resumes to try and hire people, so this will be a different experience. I'm looking to help out actively on the firm hiring committee anyways, so a good learning experience. Plus, I'll get to know Chuck better. Softball starts tomorrow, but I'll obviously miss the first month due to finals and whatnot.

Just like last year, Kelley had the final two teams right in the NCAA pool and lost her money in the finals when her team lost. But the highlight of the Final Four was our last poker and games party where we are playing Tribond (clues are three things with something in common, you have to find the link to answer correctly) and Daniel and Aaron are in a challenge showdown. In these challenges you read clues one at a time and the two people shout out answers trying to get the link. Well the first clue is basketball...and Daniel says "Hoops," which is the correct answer. Aaron losing to Daniel (who hates sports) on a basketball question while watching the Final Four is priceless. But it gets better. We are all giving Aaron hell for that, when he blurts out..."it's like that old song, Hoop, Jump It Up." And we all look unconfortably around the table until we figure out he's referring to Tag Team's "Woop, There It Is." So now if you see him in the hall or elsewhere before he leaves for Philly, call him Hoops (Jump It Up) Applebottom. He'll love it.

The last full week of class was interesting. I was a witness for Paige and Holly's trial practice trial, and that's a great class for future litigators. More work than I anticipated, but I was not terrible (I hear the judge was asking who I was because I did a good job and he hadn't met me, he's a Federal District Court Judge who teaches the class for OSU) and Paige and Holly won. The only downside was that the judge ran into a full day trial which lasted to 6:30 instead of 5:00. So their trial ran to 11 PM, part of the reason I couldn't liveblog Idol last week. But it was Mariah week so who cares.

The Reds have opened their season with a highly disappointing 8-12 start. Already 5.5 games behind the streaking Cubs and Cardinals, now is the time for the offense to wake up and actually support the decent pitching our new rotation has put out there. We'll see if they can do better now that quite a few game sin the next 20 are out of the division. Other than that, the NBA Playoffs just started so that will be something to keep an eye on (my call is Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Orlando, LA Lakers, New Orleans, San Antonio, and Utah moving on).

One final thing - another awesome bit of news came in last week when the MPRE Scores came in. I got a 125 (need an 85 to pass in Ohio) which puts me in the top 10% approximately (according to what I've read). Cool. Hopefully I can parlay that knowledge into a good grade in Greenbaum's PR class on the same subject material. Daniel and Chad also passed when we checked scores together, so congrats to all who made it through the small first part of the bar. Now there will be no drive to South Carolina or distrating MPRE study during post-bar vacation. Yay!

Oh fine one more before I go - my graduation present / gift for the new house. So our big TV blew up over a week ago. We went to replace it and got a Philips LCD 42" from WalMart, but took it back the next day thanks to a problem with a couple pixels broken. Unfortunately we had to visit WM two more times and get Huntington Bank on the phone while at WM to force them to give back the money in a reasonable amount of time (not two weeks). Damn Wal Mart. Anyways, we went to Circuit City and decided to upgrade for the new house as well as get a graduation present for surviving law school. We walked out with a not-broken Toshiba 42" LCD TV and a new Sony surround sound speaker system, as well as a PS3, Rock Band, and all the necessary cables. I found out Rock Band on Wii will be the broken PS2 version, and I'd like to be able to play some DLC, especially if Metallica keeps releasing songs on there. Plus I don't really care for Xbox 360 after seeing their first two years of game releases. I thought this purchase would also open up the catalogue of games to the literally thousands of PS2 games now available on the cheap, but the current model of PS3 (the only one you can get) is not backwards-compatible. Sigh. Still happy with the real version of Rock Band and the blu-ray player, but the PS3 will need to come out with more games to make it better. I've only got about 10 games to finish on the Wii, so no rush! Everything looks great and works great, so while we had to splurge quite a bit, it's nice to have some new stuff to watch or play with.

Well this entry has gone on forever, but now that we're moving into finals I will not be able to speak much about the actual goings on of law school until after hooding. Honor Code be damned, honor code be damned. Have a good week and we'll see you two Idol fans tomorrow!

The End of a Career

Call it Consistently Inconsistent, Men's F'ing Rea, MFR, MFR minus Judas, Middleton Forever Reigns, or The Well Hung Jury...the names have changed but the good times never did. And now the career (which started as two guys begging for two random teammates after the deadline for signing up) is now over. Daniel and I could have ended up with anyone from Bart Keyes to Brian Smith, but the two people daring enough to sign up were Abbie and Brodie. Friendships locked in forever, even though Abbie moved on to an estrogen-laced team and we added Kelley.

The semifinal opponent was The Blev Stube, and the game essentially was a mirror of last week for 18 frames. We won the first by a slim margin again (this time 11), and we were essentially up by 15 in the 8th when the foundation frame came up. They rocked it, we did not. It hurts when they string together 4 in a row and then a double in the last couple frames...but I'm sure Eckenrode knows how I feel lol. So no magical run to our first final. Before we shut the book on it, I kept track of how we did over time and it's interesting to see how much better we've gotten over time.

1L Fall Semester
Team Record: 11-10
Team Average: 438.6
Dave - 139
Brodie - 140
Abbie - 90
Daniel - 70
We were the #15 seed in a 16 team playoff, won the first round, lost in the quarterfinals (13-14)

1L Spring Semester
Team Record: 13-11
Team Average: 461.5
Dave - 140
Brodie - 143
Abbie - 98
Daniel - 80
We finished in 11th place, but missed the 16 team playoff because the league manager decided to stack the playoffs with the top 8 in the standings and the next 8 highest team averages (which we weren't good enough for)...the king of bowling league bullshit there. (13-11)

2L Fall Semester
Team Record: 13-8
Team Average: 488.1
Dave - 154
Brodie - 132
Abbie - 106
Daniel - 95
We finished as the #1 seed in an 8 team playoff. Lost in the quarterfinals. (14-10)

2L Spring Semester
Team Record: 17-7
Team Average: 473.7
Dave - 136
Brodie - 140
Kelley - 118
Daniel - 82
We finished as the #2 seed in a 16 team playoff. Won the first round, won quarterfinals, and lost in the semifinals (24-9). One note is that we went 22-2 against 8 opponents and 2-7 in three weeks against eventual champion Bill Browne's team...how painful.

3L Fall Semester
Team Record: 17-7
Team Average: 489.8
Dave - 145
Brodie - 142
Kelley - 110
Daniel - 93
We finished as the #4 seed in an 8 team playoff. Lost in the quarterfinals. (18-9)

3L Spring Semester
Team Record: 17.5-9.5
Team Average: 499.5
Dave - 147
Brodie - 145
Kelley - 114
Daniel - 95
We finished as the #6 seed in an 8 team playoff. Won the quarterfinals, lost the semis. (21.5-11.5)

So with the interesting setback of 2L Spring Semester (which was really our most dominant performance of a season), we improved the whole way. That's enough of the stats, and it's time to officially close the book. Grand total: 103.5-64.5. I'd call that a nice career friends, especially for a team that was made up by random chance!

Props
MFR, the designer line by Alan Michaels
Everson's sniping ability
The Sleeping Giant
Bullshit pin action
Long Sleeve
Middleton
Cane's Chicken Fingers
Awesome costumes
1 Tall Blue Moon, 1 Large Pepsi (or a Rum and Coke), and 1 order of Fries
And many other inside jokes to numerous to mention.

Slops
Inconsistency
Bill Browne's consistent 220 games against us
Plumber crack 1L-2L year
Pocket shot splits and Brodie's 10 pins left
The playoff system
The people who ran the league
Neck cramps
Inconsiderate opponents starting practice at 9:00 or before when hardly anybody shows up before 9:10-9:15
Lane 6, and every other lane which messed up constantly
Having to move on to a real adult league next year (well that's kind of a split decision actually)

The Hellish Weekend Begins

This weekend, we are driving from Columbus to Cincinnati tomorrow morning, doctor's appointment in the morning, work all day, drive to Valparaiso Indiana tomorrow night, wake up for a 7:30 tipoff of my little sister's first game of nationals, leave first thing Saturday morning and drive all the way to Marietta. Back Sunday night. Somewhere in there I need to knock out a bunch of final reads for JDR Issue III so I can focus on MPRE prep and JDR Note Selection next week. I hope C.J. does well in the two games we are able to see. There will be 13 of the Fitzgerald clan there, so we get to see more than just my siblings and Dad and Patti. That should be fun, even though it's too short. Then we get to see what Kelley gets for her big 25th birthday, other than the Ped Egg, telescoping camera lens, and dinner I'm getting her.

So I was going to post a poll before tonight to ask whether the Buckeyes would go farther in the NIT or The Well Hung Jury in the bowling playoffs. The debate still rages after both quarterfinals tonight, as the Buckeyes are going to NYC for the NIT semifinals, and good news - we are back in the semifinals again. That's as far as we've ever been (one semifinals loss, three quarterfinal losses, and one missed playoff appearance before now), and this time there will be no Bill Browne team to fret about. Tonight's results were as follows:

The Blev Stube (Ben Rose, Steve Hood) def. Penal Servitude (Bart, Avonte, Christy, Jen) 3-0
The Well Hung Jury (us) def. Prima Facial (Eckenrodes, Kominsky) 3-0
Pin Pals (Constantine, Glankler) def. Motion to Strike (Dobyns, Kyler, Derek Smith) 2-1
We Use Fingers (Spangler, Rich Helm) def. Capital Pinishment (1L's) 2-1

I have absolutely no idea who plays who in the semifinals, but the careers of the solid Eckenrode and Bart/Avonte teams is over. Three primarily 3L teams left with the 2L Pin Pals, and someone must win. None of the quarterfinals was particularly close except for ours. We won the first game by 1, and then lost our handicap edge in the second game within 3-4 frames (which is very bad news). We managed to hang tough through the 8th frame where we were practically tied going into the 9th. Then we had the most amazing and clutch foundation frame ever. Even if we don't win it all, this frame was one to remember, as we all but clinched with strikes by Daniel, Kelley, and myself and a spare by Brodie. A couple of splits and opens on the other side left it pretty much done. Way to have the killer instinct team. I bowled average (144-151) despite a staggering 4 splits in game 1 and 2 more in game 2, so that's OK with me. I think the most fitting final would be Spangler's team against ours, so hopefully we don't get paired next week and we have a chance to do that.

Two more notes: first, UPS blows big goats. So they show up sometime on Tuesday when Kelley is not home and leave the note saying the second attempt will be Wednesday and they check off the boxes for 2 PM - 5 PM and after 5 PM. OK, well we had no problem with that as Kelley was going to be home during that gigantic time window. Well nothing came and at 8 PM I call to see the status. They told me they showed up at 12:17 PM. What the fuck? So now they get to hold my package until Monday when I'll go pick it up. It just better not be returned to California.

Second, I called Chikezie leaving on AI. Yay on being 2 for 3 on who's going home. KKK Kristy, enjoy your one week out of the bottom three. And for the record, I'm going to stop putting Syesha in my Top 3 if the tween-tards insist on disagreeing with me about her every week.

See you after the hectic weekend, and next week...we have NIT hoops, bowling semifinals, American Idol Top 9, and the MPRE take two. Exciting!

Oh and before I forget...

Since I cannot do it justice, here's a link for you all to see. Go to 0:00-0:58 of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7aUxGK4WqM

'Nuff Said.

Bracket Busted?

Is your bracket busted before the first weekend is over? Yeah me too. As usual, my upset reads did not come in during the first round and I fell a couple off the pace. Then yesterday the coup de grace: thanks West Virginia, now I can cheer for Big Ten teams and underdogs the rest of the way. Back in high school, I used to run the regular bracket contest and my tennis buddy Brandon would run a Sweet 16 pool for those whose bracket is busted by the first weekend (that being 80% of the people who try to pick the Madness). Like many other years, it would be good to have one of those again...

Speaking of basketball, the Lady Buckeyes choked for the third straight year in March Madness last night. Two years ago they were a 1 seed and lost in the second round to #9 Boston College, last year they were a #4 and lost to #13 Marist in the first round, last night they were a #6 and were upset in the first round yet again by #11 Florida State. Jim Foster knows how to win Big Ten titles (4 in a row), but he's got to figure out something to do for the dance. I was correct about Ohio State's men's team being in better shape to learn for next year by going to the NIT, and after a solid game against UNCA they get California Monday night. I've got another credential, and Larry and I have tickets to the game as well (we're dragging along a third to sit in my paid seat). Should be good times, and hopefully next week we'll be looking forward to another trip to NYC for a NIT final four (the Buckeyes made the preseason NIT final as well this season).

Oh, before I forget...I promised this comment to a couple of people...

FUCK YOU TWEEN-TARDS!

Just when I thought American Idol fans had some modicum of taste and wanted some different styles of performers this season on the summer tour (the top 10 make that tour), they go and cut my girl Amanda this week. Well I hope all you tween-tards enjoy KKK-Kristy Lee Cook and her absolutely awesome Dolly Parton remakes of rock songs. Plus, the tween-tards inexplicably put Carly in the bottom 3...did we forget about her this week? So inconsistent...we'll hope the Top 10 does a better job this week than the Top 11 did this week. Wait, what am I saying, with the exception of Archuleta it simply has to be better!

Oh and one more thing, the result show seriously needs cut down to a half hour, or even better, a 3 minute press conference. The Idols they bring back to sing show how poor this season's contestants really are, and the quirky phone calls to say things to Simon or ask wank-wank questions to wank-wank contestants like Ramiele and Jason. Please stop.

On the bright side, REAL TV IS COMING BACK NEXT MONTH! Lost will be wrapping up its short season, House finally comes back for some regular episodes with the new team (which I will call Team Kumar now that I've realized one of the three is Kumar from Harold & Kumar), and the Moment of Truth will finally not be the second best show on Fox.

Watched I Am Legend last night. Pretty solid performance in Will Smith's version of Cast Away. Definitely worth watching a few more times. Also finally got through The Break-Up (bleh), Hot Fuzz (slow at first but pretty funny), and Michael Clayton (OK, need to see again to fully appreciate it) this week. Stick with the Blockbusters, and not the ones according to the Oscars, at least for now.

Spring break from law school was very relaxing, and now we'll be in the stretch run for the MPRE re-do in a couple weeks and then finals in 6-7 weeks. I ignored journal work too much while watching basketball, oh well. Just makes for busy evenings. We'll get Issues 3-4 out eventually. Everything seems calmer now that Issue 1 is in the hands of the subscribers. It also did not help that the first of 7 notes I have to read for good faith did not meet good faith at all. I swear sometimes people forget that writing a note is for a credit hour...I mean, how could you turn in something that has clearly never been spellchecked, let alone proofread? How unprofessional.

Spent last Sunday with Aaron and Larry, playing 4-player Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The game is very good as a party game, right up with the high standards of the other Wii titles so far. Now if they could just get some good sports and third-party support. Yes I mean Rock Band. The real reason we had them over was to hear about last weekend's ABA moot court competition (the other top moot court teams, along with our National teams from the fall). Well they have a lot of stories, which happens when you do moot court and especially with Brian. I'm not going to tell the stories myself, but needless to say the experience more than lived up to what happened at the Gibbons competition last year. At least I have five more people who completely understand what I wrote this time last year...big middle finger to Ms. Brewer and all others who decided to pitch a fit about speaking the truth in your own personal blog. Some people take small stuff too seriously, while neglecting their duties to investigate the real problems with the moot court program. But before I forget, props to Tiffany and Chad for Top 10 oralist awards and kudos to Aaron/Tiffany/Brodie for almost overcoming the inevitable crappy first round judging.

Bowling playoffs were pushed off a week very late on Wednesday, so only the teams who anticipated being in the playoffs showed up for the final regular season week. We swept without Brodie because we were going against Aaron's absent team, so we are in the Top 8 for sure and I think we'll bowl against the Eckenrode team. I think we've only bowled against them once if at all, so that will be nice to get in one battle against a fellow 3L team before hooding.

Roadtripping to Valparaiso Indiana this week for Lutheran March Madness. The national Lutheran invitational basketball tournament for 7-8th graders is next weekend, and my little sister C.J. is playing in her final games before high school. (Plus, it's as close as her traveling team gets to Ohio for games) She was pretty good the last time I saw her, and apparently she's tops on her team. We'll be able to see her first two games, and hopefully they place well in the 32 team tournament. So that's the big thing on tap for this week, that and Kelley's second doctor's appointment.

One more thing before I go: I promised a little about the house, and now we have the lease signed. It's over on the west side of town, about midway between I-74 and US-50 south of Cheviot. The drive is about 20 minutes to downtown, which is reasonable. The house has a nice big fenced-in yard and a paved patio to put the grill and a table on. The house itself has two floors and a basement. The first floor is relatively small, featuring two rooms and one walk-in closet. We'll use those rooms as the master bedroom and the baby's room. On the main floor there are four main rooms all connected to each other and a bathroom. I think our plan is to make a formal dining room, a living room similar to our upstairs living room now, and a regular dining room with our casual kitchen table and the piano. The kitchen is the other room. There's also a very small one car garage on the ground level, connected to the basement. Downstairs is like a cave, with winding passages a lots of room. Half the basement is finished, so that will be the second living room / poker and game room / bar. It actually has a bar in the finished half, so perhaps that will be a place to store our liquor. The unfinished half has a small back storage room under the garage which should be able to suit our storage needs, a laundry room, and a large unfinished space which can be more storage or utility space (since the garage is so small).

We've just started the process of prepping for the move in a couple months. Kelley is going through all her clothes and donating a bunch she doesn't wear anymore. My first downsizing project was video games. There's a lot of NES/SNES/N64 stuff I'm never going to pull out again unless it's right there on the shelf, so I ordered a NES/SNES retro duo combo system this week and pared through my collection of games to keep the best and the ones I will play again (plus a lot I can get rid of thanks to downloading them on Wii's virtual console). So that's over one storage tote gone for me sometime in the next two weeks once it sells, and we'll finally have a retor gaming system out that we can play with friends. Yes this means I'll have Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam Daniel and Larry, so I'll expect regular visits to Cincinnati to relive our Nintendo closet days in the journal suite. I think the next thing after that will be clothes for me as well, as there's definitely some stuff that can go for me as well. Then it will be onto storage boxes in the storage space...there's got to be stuff packed away I don't want anymore. One thing that will be nice once we get to the new house is buying 3-4 more bookshelves to put out all our books instead of storing them in boxes. But enough on that, back to the super-exciting Villanova blowout of Siena. I love when the CBS schedule fails miserably...

A Long-Awaited Update

Well I couldn't just have an American Idol blog entry, so here's a brief update on the past month and a half. As usual, things have gotten busy around the law school world but not too busy like last semester. Journal work is the primary background busywork that some days makes me want to scream…but other days it's actually entertaining. On the whole, Issues I/II were nightmares and led to what I figure is a yearly "Do Better!" meeting like we had in January and like Dave Shelton had the year before. I'm just starting Issue III accuracy checks, but the Witkin Note (which got moved up to Issue II due to problems with an Issue II note) was done really well so I have high hopes. It seems like the ME's really put in the extra effort even if the staff did not. Issue I finally shipped out last week, and it's nice to finally see a JDR journal that we brought out. It might be a couple months later than usual, but hopefully it's a good one. Larry and I found quite a few errors when just paging through it, but most of them will not show up online because they are formatting things. And quite frankly, I did not do the formatting on Issue I so that's not really making me feel bad (other than the fact that I should have probably manned up and done that on all the issues...but at the time Erik offered to do the work and I was only too happy to let him take it). Issues II/III should be better anyways because Erik and I are getting better I'm sure.

Issue II is at the publisher now, so we should have a Blueline by the end of this week and get that turned back around so printing can start and maybe finish by the end of March. If I write a little more often (say weekly if I liveblog American Idol), perhaps I'll let you know how those Issue III final reads are going.

Picked up Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Wii 2 days ago. Definitely a fun fighting game for parties (which means I'll suck at it compared to the general gamer), but the one-player mode is pretty fun so far. Pit/Kid Icarus kicks serious ass with his arrows from long distances and smashes up close. I still think the Ice Climbers are the best, as you cannot get more annoying than them. Also picked up Super Monkey Ball for GCN, which has an OK single player mode and a great bowling mini-game Kelley and I played for hours two nights ago.

Speaking of bowling, nearly the entire season has passed by without a peep from me. Our final chance for MFR to win the championship (although I argue being the #1 seed going into the playoffs twice counts as "real" bowling league victories because no regular league has a playoff) was a little bumpy, as we hit teams on hot streaks seemingly every week. We could never put 3 wins together in a week, but we limited the damages and sat at 11.5-9.5 going into last week. That was a half-game out of the playoffs, but last week was position week so 3rd and 4th were bowling each other (both 12-9) and we could pass one of them for sure with at least a 2-1 against the 6th place team, Larry's team. Brodie rolled a 180+ the first game and got 4 strikes in a row, and combined with my 150+ game...we won the first by a decent margin. Generally this has brought out the best in our opponents, but we were not to be denied this time. Everson rolled one of the best games of his life (140+) and I rolled above average again to carry the team...Everson beat everyone else on the 2 lanes scratch but me which is amazing. We finally got our 3-0 and improved to 14.5-9.5. The half a game was a classic 3 weeks ago as well, as I had a spare in the 9th and we were down by 27 with only me left to bowl. I go up and get a 7 with the first ball, meaning I will need the spare and a strike to tie. I deliver the spare, and then pull a Brooklyn strike out of my ass to get 2.5 games that week [over Abbie for the last time].

So the playoff picture looks like 8 teams, and it's a pretty loaded field. The usual 3L suspects are there (all of this assumes the bowling league gets the standings right...), a couple of 2L teams, and one 1L team. The big misses are both the finalists from last semester, the neo-Middleton squad and Dobyns & Co's Motion to Strike...but you cannot make it every time. We only made the playoffs 5 times out of 6. The first two times there were 16 teams and we made the quarterfinals once and the semifinals once. The last two times there have been 8 teams and we've lost in the first week to the eventual playoff champion both times. I'd like to think we can get to at least the semis again, so hopefully fates smiles on Longsleeve and Company this week.

Watched the Grammys and the Oscars in recent weeks. The Grammys were pretty good this year, especially considering they went outside the box and gave the highest award to a Jazz musician for only the second time in 50 years (yay Herbie Hancock). Kanye West is a certifiable psychopath, and you know you've hit rock bottom when Vince Gill makes fun of you as he accepts the best Country Album award. I had to pull out my Carlos Mencia Season 1 and show Kelley his parody of Golddigger. It is one of the funniest bits I've ever seen on TV, and so true as it turns out. "He's not Jesus...He's not Jesus, yeah." The Oscars on the other hand...hmmm. I'd like to blame it on the WGA strike, but that is just not true. As usual, have not seen any of the Best Picture nominees (but watching Michael Clayton as we speak). Juno looks fantastic, but did not win the awards. There will be Blood and No Country For Old Men just do not look all that great to me, but they took the major awards. George Clooney and the girl form Juno got robbed in my opinion. I have no opinion on Atonement. Crash and The Departed were both very good, spanning the distance between artsy and good to the normal consumer. I don't know if No Country For Old Men can say the same. Maybe we'll buy it used someday and find out.

The Columbus Blue Jackets are such a joke. Ten years and no playoff appearances. This is the NHL, where half the teams in the league make it...but the ol' CBJ cannot get it together for enough of a season to make that happen. I love having the NHL in town, but you have to do something eventually or else we'll stop watching. If I want to suffer, I'd prefer to watch the Reds. Speaking of terrible, how bout my Knicks? Worst franchise in NBA history is not out of reach as long as Isaiah runs things in NYC. Moving onto teams I care about that actually do well, congratulations to the Packers on getting one last good run with Brett before he retired. I wish they would've knocked off the Patriots instead of the Giants, but as long as Sunny-Side Up Belichick doesn't win, we all win. Actually I'm going to broaden that...as long as Boston in general doesn't win, we all win. Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots...ugh. Even the Yankees are better than the Red Sox, and that's hard for me to admit. Here's hoping the Reds get it going in my first summer in Cincy. At least there's one team in that town I can cheer for.

March Madness is upon us, which means it's time for the bracket pools. I ran one every year from high school through undergrad, but stopped in law school thanks to not wanting to compete with a friend's pool. Kelley came in 4th I think last year, so maybe we'll break through and win some cash this season. No clear front runner like Florida was last year, and tons of mediocre teams from seed line 4 to seed line 12. Maybe some real madness a la George Mason again this year, after last season's super-chalky finish.

We got over 20 inches of snow in Columbus Friday and Saturday. 16 inches in 24 hours is the most ever for the town, but as it turns out it was not all that bad. The weather is pretty warm this week so things have melted nicely in the three days post-snow. We've gone from knee high snow down to boot high, but you should've seen Chip bounding through the snow. That was absolutely too funny. I'm pretty happy it occurred right before spring break so that the warm temperatures can work on the snow and ice and I only have to deal with one week of hellish parking on campus this school year. That's a lot less than last year, when we got 3-4 inches of snow but then it would freeze and everything would be icy for weeks at a time. At least it gives everybody something to talk about (The Blizzard of '08, as it were).

The blizzard knocked out the MPRE which was supposed to be this past Saturday. Sigh. I still have one undone pratice test I'm saving for the rescheduled test week, and I may have to redo one of the 3 I've already done to get ready again. What a pain, but at least this helps me get ready for the Professional Responsibility law school exam in May. Yay BarBri. The rest of law school is going well, spending more time in the Journal Game Closet with Larry, Brodie, and Daniel than before which is good bonding in our last few weeks together. Brodie and Cheggs are ridiculous at Mortal Kombat, and Daniel, Larry, and I are a second tier. Some NBA Jam also occurs in said closet, but to save Daniel's eyes from rolling too far into the back of his head...we'll start talking about other things such as how tasty milk is.

There are funny moments all the time, but one happened today in class. Greenbaum calls on me in Civil Procedure and asks if I will help him, to which I respond "sure, why not" in a very unenthusiastic voice. Greenbaum them says "that's the spirit, even though I know you probably would like to think about basketball instead right now...let's talk about the work product doctrine." Larry starts busting up laughing beside me because I was looking at Ken Pomeroy's college basketball articles and rankings leading up to Selection Sunday right then, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face as Greenbaum had me pegged (whether he knew it or not). Also, VNES has made class far more bearable, as the Java game requires no solid internet connection which is good since my computer has trouble with the law school network. Looking through my collection of Nintendo systems, I really don't want to get rid of all my old games but I also will likely never set up a singular old Nintendo system again (Wii plays GCN games, so I have like 75 games playable on Wii and Xbox with another 20 or so downloaded on Virtual Console). Then I saw in the past 2 years new hardware has come out which plays SNES and NES games and has improved hardware for reading the games...so no more fighting the old equipment. These systems are super-cheap too, so I think I'm downsizing to one of those and getting rid of NES, SNES, N64, and GCN. The only real loss is N64, but I've got the most important games [Zelda, Mario] on a GCN disc or on Virtual Console. The only ones I will miss are Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but those types of games are kind of a dime-a-dozen now. So that's the plan...and maybe save whatever I make on the deals for Wii Rock Band, supposedly coming out later this year.

Anyways, gotta get back to jumping through hoops to take the bar exam, and all other interesting stuff in the law school life. PS - got a house in Cincy, more on that next time.

Breaking Political News

Just when things started to get interesting in the presidential primary, news has broken which simplifies things considerably. First, Mitt Romney has decided to "suspend" his candidacy after the dismal Super Tuesday showing. Based on the differing state laws, many of his delegates will now go to John McCain, solidfying a nearly insurmountable lead on Mike Huckabee in the GOP primary. The so-called conservative block will now not be split between Huckabee and Romney, so expect Huckabee to gain some ground in future primaries. It will not be enough to derail McCain, especially with all the delegates he will inherit from Romney. So the GOP goes to McCain.

All that doesn't even matter though, as we have late breaking news from an undisclosed location between Columbus and Belpre, Ohio. At 5:02 EST, Aaron Applebaum, famed editor of the Ohio State Journal on Criminal Law, has formally announced his endorsement of Barack Obama for the presidential race. With $7.2 million dollars raised in the 48 hours following Super Tuesday and this blockbuster endorsement (as well as Hillary running out of money), Obama will be the first black, oops I mean African American president in US history in 2008.

When asked why he endorsed Obama, Applebaum was kind enough to elaborate: "Well I was kind of leaning toward McCain as a centrist candidate, but then I went to his website looking for his stance on the issue I care most about, that being education. In the list of Issues on the McCain homepage, there are 13 separate listed issues but education is nowhere to be found. This troubled me too much to ever think about endorsing Mr. McCain. Huckabee is a religious right psycho, Ron Paul's supporters scare me, and as for Clinton...well if Bill were running then OK but this country is not quite ready for her to be the first woman president, as my good buddy Oprah Winfrey says."

There you have it: the most important endorsement of the campaign trail has come in, and Obama should certainly expect another jump in fundraising following this monumental achievement.

Stay tuned tomorrow as we cover: Indiana Hoosiers, fraud or contender; and we have an insider scoop on where Bob Knight is going next (heads up Kelvin Sampson, better get the resume going). Until then, this has been breaking news brought to you by ANN, the Apple-Bottom News Network.

Happy New Year

Let's face it everyone. There's nothing better than my entries concerning moot court competition weekends. But alas, I've heard from many quarters many times over that it is just time to move on. So where to start...lots of fun in two months to report. After finishing up moot court duties, it was time to turn right into exam preparations. I had fallen behind in reading in some classes which is the first time that it had happened in law school, so I did not know how cramming would go. Spent about 8 hours preparing an outline for the back of my Sales supplement, and really could not see wasting more time on the exam. I have been brutally honest on professor evaluations ever since I got sick of them third year of engineering at OSU (the law ones are the same), but I've never written anything so mean as I did to Creola Johnson. To reflect my true feelings on the class, I wrote "taking this class makes me wish I left learning Sales to Bar/Bri." I could not sum up my feelings better. Although I still kind of dislike Professor Crandall for quitting on his class and giving us an unfair final exam, I have to give him credit for teaching us the UCC way more than a normal contracts professor. Sales ended up being a waste of time in part thanks to him. The Sales exam was a 75 question multiple choice test, with an extra essay question "optional." It was not very optional as I think everybody but one person in the class took the essay. Professor Johnson only reads your essay if you are borderline A/B or B/C or if you've failed...but everything in law is a gray area so you never really know how well you will do on a multiple choice test. She says she tests this way to prepare you for the bar (a portion of which is multiple choice), but I just call it lazy. Not only is the teaching in the class simply reading the answers to textbook problems, but then exams are not even graded by her...it makes me question what she gets paid for on some level. I know she's probably great in Consumer Protection law, but for Sales it's just bad. I got through 73 of the 75 questions on the multiple choice, which was farther than most people I talked to. I figured I would do OK in there, but it really could be anything from a high A to a C.

The next exam on deck was Securities a week later. I worked the two days following the Sales exam because money around Christmas-time was a little tight (and to get away from exam stress), which left me only 4 days to prep for the exam. It does not make sense to me how we learn probably more than 10 times as much information in one 3 credit hour class (Securities) as we do in another 3 credit hour class (Sales). I had another study break on the Saturday before the exam for my first Magic tournament since Regionals 2007 in June. The format was Lorwyn limited and the PTQ was for a Pro Tour in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, which would've been awesome because I could have seen family over there. Still, I did not really study the format and the Marietta boys (Shep, Joey, etc.) had been going to a few PTQ's before this one and knew the format much better. Still, I managed to start 4-0 before running into a couple of buzzsaw decks that my mediocre card pile could not hold up to. The highlight was my first ever feature match against the 2006 Ohio state champ and 2007 state runner-up in Round 1, who I bashed 2-0. I played two people who ended up in the Top 8, so it was a better than expected performance and a nice study break. I left after 6 rounds instead of playing it out to drive home in the foot of snow that had fallen in 2-3 hours that afternoon and study some more. Aaron, Derek, Dom, and I got together for a little study group on Sunday, but it only lasted a couple hours since Derek and I needed to outline the second half of the class still. I spent the rest of Sunday doing just that. The exam was about as expected with a few in-depth essay questions touching on some major themes in the course. Professor Rose's policy question I did not really get into, so I figured that would sabotage my grade...he said he values consistency over 3 goods answers and one incomplete answer (which is exactly what I delivered...sigh).

I had one day to prep for International IP law, but that did not seem problematic as we covered even less than we did in Trademark and Copyright, and I know how to study for a Lee exam quickly. Everything seemed straightforward, and doing a lot of practical international patent work at WHE helped during the semester to reinforce what we learned. The exam was typical Lee, some short answers that were very easy and an essay which was long, involved, and tough to finish for a methodical thinker/slow typer. I had a great answer outlined in my head, but just like Securities, I could not quite get it all out before time was up. I figured I did OK, but no better than Copyright and Trademark (both low A's). At least exams were over, and only one more semester to go. Worked for another couple of days and on Saturday, it was off to Iowa for Christmas.

Another interesting thing during finals was getting new phones. We shopped around at T-Mobile and Verizon before settling on staying with AT&T. Kelley got her Blackberry Pearl she's been coveting and I got a Blackberry Pearl. It's really not much bigger than the Pearl, and it has a full QWERTY keyboard to make texting easier. I highly recommend it even after a month, and the Blackberry internet service was a life-saver in the internet wasteland that is visiting our families at Christmas. Yes, there are people not connected to the internet...and we're related to them.

My Dad called early in the week to ask if we could drive out on Friday instead of Saturday since Iowa was under a winter storm warning for Saturday. Unlike Ohio, in Iowa a winter storm warning is a big deal. We could not change the plans, so we drove on Saturday and hit nothing but clouds and rain until a few miles into Iowa. It literally turned from rain to snow in a little under a minute of driving, and the effect was dramatic. We stopped for dinner and new wiper blades at Coralville mall just outside Iowa City, and in the hour we were stopped...the roads went from clear to nearly impassable. I drove the rest of the way to my Dad's, and it took forever due to the road conditions. It snowed all night so we likely made it just in time. The next day we were supposed to go to Grandpa Norm's, but the snow was blowing with the steady 30 MPH winds and drifitng over the roads quicker than it could be dealt with...so the family gathering and church was cancelled the next day. Kelley and I ended up staying just at Dad's the entire 3 days we were there with the exception of one escape to Wal-mart and Half Price Books for cold medicine. The siblings are doing well, and they absolutely LOVED the Wii. Kelley and I are thinking we'll try to get Dad and Patti to go in with us on a Wii gift for the siblings next year. Nevertheless, it was fun watching them play Warioware and Guitar Hero. The roads were finally clear enough on Christmas Day and the plans to have people over to my Dad's got the whole family out for games and a big dinner. Nothing special to speak of, but it's always good to see the Iowa family and sit around the Fitzgerald game table. That reminds me, we need to track down a copy of Tribond. As for Christmas, we got the usual gift cards from the Iowa family. Moving on...

Cleaning out the Cavalier was fun thanks to the snow. Those 30 MPH winds I was referring to, completely packed the car with snow so that I had to dig the wheels out from the undercarriage and opened the hood to find no engine, just a bed of packed snow with an engine hidden somewhere inside. Still, we got on the road to Ohio the day after Christmas to continue our busy week. We started at Kathy's place (mother-in-law), and had a fun evening with the 4 dogs all trying to find purchase on one little full sized bed with Kelley and I. Thank God for the nighttime cold medicine to knock us out. Kathy and Bruce always get tools for me for Christmas, and this year was no exception. Got myself a power drill and a craftsman jack and jack stands for a car. Kelley also got me a nifty four bottle liquor shot dispenser that will go well in the future bar. Next it was my grandparents in New Matamoras, and we had a nice afternoon with some snacks and discussion with them. Left with some more stuff from the auctions/sales they go to all the time as well as our Christmas present (hand-made placemats). Then it was off to Kelley's Dad's and grandparents' house. Got the usual lot of nice house stuff from them, the big present being a wine cooler that now resides downstairs in our apartment as a shortcut to going upstairs :-) The final stop on our whirlwind tour was my Mom's place, which was more fun than last year when the weddings abd fallout were still a raw wound. Mom and Steve seem to be doing well, and it was nice to see my old cat Muffin again...I swear Siamese cats refuse to die for like 20 years. Muffin was one day from being put down at the vet's this year, but is now recovered. My Mom actually gets us some fun gifts which is a nice alternative after getting house stuff and tools and gift cards all week (balance is good). The truck was stuffed full to the brim when we made our trek back to Columbus a week after starting for Iowa.

It was nice to be home, and I decided to take the whole next week off from work to relax and detox from life basically. We had a small New Year's get together where we played non-poker games such as Dirty Minds, Trivial Pursuit, and Apples to Apples. Also hammered through the last of the final reads for JDR Issue 1 (way overdue, but oh well). Then it was time to go back to the routine of school 3 days a week, work 2 days a week, and weekend days. We had another small party for the OSU-LSU game, which obviously was about as exciting as last year's National Title game. What I find funny is how people have lost perspective and forget how awful it was to lost to Michigan basically every year and almost every bowl game under John Cooper. Now we get 5 BCS bowls (3 title games) and a 6-1 record in 7 years against Michigan, and sportswriters and other Columbus geniuses want to run Tressel out for not being good enough to win the big one. I've never seen so much whining about losing a game we really should not have been in, but in this crazy season a rebuilding Buckeye squad was just as good as most teams. LSU was just better, and thanks to all the juniors coming back the Bucks will have another good chance in 2008. That September road trip to LA against USC will be titanic!

Also went to see the basketball Buckeyes with Mom and Steve, and they are doing decent for how young they are. The Northwestern game we went to was a joke, as the Buckeyes played like crap all game and still had so much more talent than Northwestern to win by 11. We'll see if the basketball Buckeyes can continue the Big Ten title streaks the football and basketball teams have put up lately. It's a great time to be a Buckeye, even if we cannot win national title games against SEC teams. Oh, and for the record, anybody who thinks the SEC is faster than the Big Ten...please put the tape in of the LSU game and watch Beanie Wells burn the whole LSU defense in the first quarter. Now if Tressel can get Terrelle Pryor away from Rich Rod and UM, we'll be set for years.

Work has been about normal, with more international appeal briefs and office action responses. Also got to supervise a meeting with opposing counsel in a document review for a litigation, so it was nice to do that. I defnitely get most of my work from my mentor now, so I'll probably get really good at bedding systems and mechanical processes to make storage systems. I realize why they brought in 5 new associates last year and at least Jim and I this year...they promoted 4 associates to partner this year at the Holiday party. In a firm of 45 attorneys, that's a big swing. All the new associates passed the bar exam, so hopefully Jim and I will have the same success this year.

The new class schedule is nice a breezy-easy. Most of my friends seem to be loaded up, but then they did not all do the full-on moot court and journal together run that got me 10 credit hours. I only need 9 more credit hours, so I managed to only take 3 classes: Professional Responsibility, Civil Procedure II (both with Greenbaum), and Wills (B. Johnson). Both professors are pretty entertaining, and both go methodically through the material. Not too much reading to do, and the subject material in the classes is not too bad. Should give me plenty of time to do JDR stuff to finally get some issues published and also time to relax that will not exist this summer thank to the bar exam. Signed up for Bar/Bri with the DVD upgrade last week, and starting to look at the Ohio bar exam application to take the exam (not to be confused with the ridiculous character and fitness application). So I'm planning on working 5 weeks after Hooding and then taking 8 weeks off. 6 to study for the bar, 1 for the bar exam itself, and 1 for vacation with the in-laws in North Carolina to unwind from the bar on the beach with beer and sunshine. There might be a little overlap from BarBri and the last couple weeks of work, so I'll have the DVD's just in case. It should be a real fun couple of months. But for now, the classes are easy.

Got grades finally this week, and ended up about exactly on my average for the semester. Managed somehow to get low A's in Securities and Sales, so I kept the "no-C" streak going. The seminar grade was no surprise, and I did get a pleasant surprise in International IP by getting a CALI. This is my fourth CALI (Legal Writing, App Ad, and Federal Income Tax being the others), and finally I get a super grade in my practice area! All in all, another successful semester at Moritz, made even sweeter by the fact that it all does not matter anymore. I guess I'll have a chance at top 5-10% at graduation, which would be cool. Law school is definitely a hard challenge academically, but our class is finally within breathing range of being done with it. That will be a sweet feeling.

Finished up the publishing files for Issue 1 this weekend for JDR, and that feels like a big accomplishment. It hopefully will be all downhill from here as nothing could be as bad as symposium articles. Plus, Issue 2 has my own Note in it...so I have a little special motivation to make that issue a good clean one. About a month from now we'll finally have replacements picked from the staff for next year, and then I can share how much fun it is to be exec ed with a poor 2L! Also went to a Magic pre-release this past weekend with Shep to play some 2HG team Magic...Villa and Burton (also retired from the game) also played, and we all stunk it up but had fun doing it. Got home in time to watch both NFL conference championship games go opposite how I wanted them to...damn you New York Giants!

Bowling started this past week, and MFR (now called Well Hung Jury) will make one more grab for the title. We started with a solid 2-1 against Aaron and Chad's team...and we may have a lump or two in the coming weeks due to minor sandbagging at best. I've averaged over 150 with the new bowling ball which actually hooks, and it looks like I'll be able to be more successful without throwing my arm out of whack like I did with the old ball.

Well now comes the juicy part of my entry...there are three things more I'd like to write about but the fun one where I bitch out things in the world I hate (Al Sharpton, Global Warming, and the WGA strike included) will have to wait for another entry if ever.

So first we'll have the bad news. Finally figured out why Tom and Heather basically cut all their friends off from contact including us since September. Turns out Tom cheated on Heather and there are some tough consequences he has to face. It's really unbelievable, but he's really remorseful and I don't think he'll make the same fuck-up again...whether Heather stays with him or they move on to other people. It makes me happy to be in such a stable relationship where I don't have to deal with life ruining crap like that. He'll make it, but it's a tough time. He also finally quit Magic and I'm selling his cards on ebay for him. but that's enough of the bad news...

The good news is absolutely awesome. I'm sure it will take some of you by surprise, and others may already have guessed what it is. Kelley and I found out this past weekend that we will be parents in about September 2008. Kelley has had baby fever for years, so it's a very exciting time. It's almost perfect timing as well since a month and a half after the bar exam gives us some leeway for early deliveries without me having to miss it for the bar exam or something crazy like that. So in the course of 2008, I will go from student and newly married to working man and father. It should be a great and interesting year with all the changes.

That's all I got for you for now. I need to get the six hours of sleep I've left myself to function on a Tuesday at Moritz. We'll see you around, and I promise more frequent entries with all this time I have. After all, one cannot look at JDR articles all day!