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)