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!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7aUxGK4WqM
'Nuff Said.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
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...
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...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
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.
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.
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