Life in Moo Town
Senate meeting with the Dean
The craziness of today more than made up for the lack of activities yesterday (only 3 meetings). I'm really rather proud of today's multitasking exploits. I was on time for a rare change this morning to torts though I spent most of the class on AIM. Survived civ pro without getting called on once again. Then craziness. I was triple booked for lunch. I put my stuff in JGH104 and ran over to JGH101 for a meeting of the environmental law society. They weren't there yet, it was 12:15 and their meeting was scheduled for 12:30. Back across the building to 104 for an exam soft workshop that was supposed to start at 12:15 (exam soft is the program we use to take our tests on laptops so we can't cheat). The meeting hadn't started there yet either. Back acoss to 101. Hooray! The pizza was there. I signed the mailing list, got some brief info and a sheet to run for 1L representative and then ran back across the hall to 104 with pizza in hand. The workshop had already started. I sat through it until I finished my pizza and learned very little. I decided to make a run for it. 12:33 and I ran back across the building to JGH 103 for a student senate meeting with Dean Schizzer. I was only 4 minutes late. We got an address from the Dean and had an opportunity to raise our concerns and give him input. I chipped in about the intolerable housing system and how some 1Ls didn't get housing assignments in a reasonable time period. Then it was time for contracts. Then Legal Writing. Then staff training for the Journal of Gender and Law. Then at 5PM finally a break. Went home in the rain (it's pouring here) and got some ramen and a bit of contracts reading done. Then it was time for dinner and a movie with the other Jewish grad students at Hillel. Stayed for an hour and had to run out. You guessed it, late for another meeting. The movie was 3 hours but didn't look that exciting. Dinner was more pizza, raising me to a 5 slice count for the day. I shlepped across campus in the rain to JGH Annex for an article review meeting with JGL. I rejected an article on sodomy law, it was terribly written and unoriginal. I also made recommendations after the meeting with the editor in chief as to how we could conduct meetings in 1/4 the time in the future. My proposal was rejected. Oh well, I tried. Some people just don't appreciate efficiency ;-) Back home to start reading again and do my laundry. What a day. Oy.
DVP at Fordham
Had another fight for the shower this morning but got it in time to not be late to the subway. Took the 1/9 down to 59th street and walked to Fordham Law School. I'd never been in that part of town before. It was really nice. Pretty buildings. The law school wasn't as nice as Columbia but it was ok. I went through a 5 hour training on how to represent battered women in court. We got free lunch too. Giant sandwiches and salads. Made me a little ill though. Probably because I fasted yesterday. Tummy wasn't ready. The training was pretty boring but I have a trial date now. I'll be in court October 29th for my first case. Assuming I don't take an unemployment action case before then, which is a distinct possibility. I did some studying after training but I read ahead accidentally and skipped what I needed to read for tomorrow. Then it was time for CSI, Columbia Students for Israel. Just like Aggies For Israel in Davis. I helped out as I could. Then lots of reading and IMing. Pretty standard day all in all.
Yom Kippur
Went to the chabad rabbi's house for pre kol nidre dinner. I think he had magic honey cake. He gave us some shpiel about not having to beg for food in the coming year and that if the honey cake was the last thing we ate that night we would have an easy fast. I wasn't hungry or thirsty at all during the fast so maybe it worked. Or maybe it was because I was sick. Guess I'll never know. I should try to get the rebetzin's recipe though to be on the safe side. Services at JTS were ok, nothing exceptional as usual. Got home at 8:30ish and broke my fast with tuna on wheat bread, carrot sticks, and rice with melted cheese. Had some juice too. Pretty lonely but that's the norm here these days. Don't really feel like going out in any case. Too tired.
Drat, Caught a Cold
Missed all my classes yesterday because I was writing my memo. I feel somewhat guilty. I went to a seminar on the WTO and NAFTA in the afternoon. Learned about product origin stuff. Not the most exciting thing in the world. Then I went to visit a sick friend and stayed longer than I intended, missing my other afternoon activities. I went to a panel on pro bono work in big firms in the early evening that was pretty boring. Then I got sick and didn't feel well enough to go out to the parties I had scheduled. Sadness. My throat is pretty sore this morning. Didn't get much sleep last night even though I went to bed at 11:30. Couldn't sleep and people kept calling until 2AM. My circadian rhythms are all messed up anyway. Need to start sleeping right, working out, and avoiding a steady diet of beer and pizza if I expect to emerge from law school in reasonably good condition.
Memo
Continuing my non-sleeping trend. Did the class thing. Had lunch with the mock trial folk, they didn't convince me to join. Free pizza though :-) I blew off work for the afternoon and relaxed a bit. Went to the West End for a bar meeting with other Jewish Grad students. Free beer, but I wasn't impressed. Stayed an hour then made myself a pot pie for dinner at home. Then started working on my memo. Darn thing is due tomorrow at 4PM. I'm only about half done. Guess I'll skip class and finish tomorrow morning. I'm such a terrible student....
President of Bolivia
Got no sleep last night...too much work...crashed at 4AM...very tired right now. Suffered through class this morning and went to lunch with my legal writing professor. We went to an asian fusion place on Broadway and 116th. It was ok but a definite step down from the place Greenawalt took me. Lunch was rushed because I had to get back to Contracts class at 1:30. That wasn't too exciting. Had legal writing after that and we went way over time so I had to run back to my apartment to drop all my stuff just to run back to the Low Library for the address by the Bolivian President. It was kind of cool. He spoke in Spanish so I got one of the little ear piece translators like they use in the UN. I felt very special. Until I fell asleep. Three times. I didn't feel too bad though. The provost drifted off too and he was onstage :-P The speech was pretty boring by and large but I learned a ton about South America in general and Bolivia in particular. Especially all their turmoil over gas and relations with Chile. People asked questions after but I didn't have any so I just listened. Then it was off to finish my reading for the Journal of Gender and Law. Got through most of the 100pg article before the editorial meeting and sat through that for about 2 hours, critiquing the article. It's on the lack of justice for rape victims in the Dominican Republic primarily. I was the only male at the meeting. A lot of 1Ls dropped. There were about 20 of us altogether. Not too exciting but I contributed more than most so I felt like I did my part at least. Now I'm back to slaving away over my real classwork. Need a vacation. Preferably on the West Coast...
AG
Went to class, survived. Had a lunch meeting with my advisor. Couldn't find him at the cafe. Went to a JLSA lunch instead. More class. Then a break. Watched stupid online movies. Reminded me of old times. Met with 6 atourney generals at 5PM. Ohio, Rhode Island, Idaho, Iowa, Arizona, Vermont. Most were really tall. I don't think I want their jobs. Wine and cheese party was nice though. Free pizza at UAC training. That's unemployment action something or other. Got trained to go to court for poor people who can't defend themselves and are being denied unemployment benefits. Hopefully I'll have time to go to court next week. Remind myself why I'm here...doing all this reading. So tired...so much more reading to do. I'm done with Torts and Civ Pro but I haven't started Contracts or my reading for JGL tomorrow. *sigh* Here comes a late night...
BBQ on the Upper West Side
Woke up and went to a BBQ at 2. It was good. Lotsa food, chill people, little talk about law. Stayed for about two hours then went home to get work done. Skimmed torts and civ pro because I had no motivation to read closely or brief cases. Just too much volume right now. I had to take a few power naps just to stay even minimally focussed. I ended up doing most of my work in the Drapkin lounge to put sufficient distance between myself and my bed. I did my reading for the Journal of Gender and Law too, very dissappointing article on sodomy law, not up to par as far as writing quality. More like a really long undergrad paper. Still so much work to do. Busy week ahead.
Impact Training
I finished up my contracts reading in the morning yesterday so now I have to do Civ Pro and Torts. Oh, and write a 10 page memo. And read and critique a 40 page article for the Journal of Gender and Law. Yikes. Today will be busy. Anyway, yesterday afternoon I did Impact training, learning how to be a poll monitor. I'm going to Pennsylvania on election day to make sure African Americans and other minority voters aren't wrongly disenfranchised. The training was actually pretty boring and useless. There were speaches from a couple deans, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense, and some other random people. Nothing too exciting though. After that I tried to get some work done while eating my leftover gnochi but I kept getting distracted. Ended up just going for a walk with a friend. Then it was time for a pizza dinner with the JLSA at Cafe Roma. No funding though, we all had to buy our own. Then we went to a really lame country bar. Not a good event. Only like 10 people even showed. Sadness. So I started walking back with a couple other 1Ls who felt the event was sufficiently lame (we were on 80th so it was 25 blocks), and on 110th we found some of our friends at another bar so we stopped in to say hi. Turned out to be some kind of happy hour or sometheing, $2.50 well drinks, which is the cheapest I've seen them in Manhattan. We stayed for quite a while and I walked home alone at about 1AM. I was going to get some work done, but once again I was distracted. I got a little further on registering to vote in NY but I started getting a zillion IMs and all productivity ceased. In the end I wrote up by-laws for a new Jewish group, which some friends are creating for budgetary purposes and I didn't finish until 3AM. Why do I always end up drafting by-laws? Hehe, kind of random.
Depressing Shabbat
I went to lunch this afternoon with a professor because I agreed to do so a long time ago. What I didn't know at the time was that training for the Domestic Violence Project was also this aftenoon. I'll have to make it up at another school if I want to work on the project. For lunch we went to a cafe on 110th and amsterdam. The food was only so-so, with the exception of a salmon entree I ordered which was quite good. Prices weren't cheap. 5 of us racked up a $150 bill. Fortunately it was on the dean. I hung out with some friends in the afternoon and then went home to get work done. My laundry took too long so I missed Friday night services. I walked over to Hillel anyway since there was supposed to be a dinner there. It was raining. Not just raining but sticky out. Very humid. Not pleasant at all. When I got there, Hillel was closed. I walked back again. Not a good shabbat at all. I miss Davis. More accurately I miss the life I had in Davis. Things were pretty good. I'm tired of New York already. Bad weather, lots of boring people. I need to get back West.
Rosh Hashanah
I slept last night, which was a distict improvement, but since I went to bed at 3AM and was awoken at 9AM by my alarm clock, the quantity of rest still proved insufficient. Services actually started at JTS at 9, but by the time I got over there it was 10:30. Right on time for the torah service as usual. I'm blaming it on the 7 block walk. I went to the main traditional service this time and it was a little better, but I'm still not really feeling the community. The sermon was really good at least. It was given by a Columbia professor of Jewish History. He talked about how conservative Judaism has the problem of maintaining traditions while denying the accuracy of many events that are still believed by orthodox Judaism, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. He didn't really propose a solution though. At least it was a good statement of the problem and the pusuit of truth definitely spoke to me. Too bad I already know where it leads though. I went to lunch at Barnard, sponsored by Kesher. It was pretty much the same as dinner last night. I went from there to tashlich where I expected to find the rest of JTS. They said they were meeting in riverside park on 99th street. I walked almost the whole length of the park without seeing any sign of them. I finally gave up and went down to the hudson by myself. I'd brought some challah along but had no prayer sheet so I just made something up and thrw bread crumbs in the river. It's the thought that counts, stupid ritual anyway, probably derives from the pagans. It was pretty hot by this time (about 4PM and 80 something degrees) so the walk home wasn't too pleasant in a suit. The wind kept blowing my kipah off too, I need to get some clips. When I got home I was pretty tired and there were two hours until services started again so I decided to take a quick nap. Turned into 3 hours. Missed services. Oops. Was kind of upset to have done that, but not the end of the world. I kicked around my apartment for a while and made myself some dinner. Alone. Didn't want to go back to hillel. Kinda wish I had though. Pretty sad to be alone for the new year. I must be the only one with no family out here. *sigh* Did some dishes instead of going to bar review. I didn't feel right about going partying on a holy day. Not a very cheery day all in all. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow will be better.
Erev Rosh Hashanah
Sludged through classes again and had a free pizza lunch on the human rights faculty. There was a pizza shortage. Fortunately I had strategically placed myself at the front of the line. I was starving but I still felt guilty eating pizza when some people didn't get any. It was like the third world problem but in a microcosm. I met with my legal writing professor after school to get my memo outline back and then had a session with my contracts TA. Long day, 9-5. I went to the gym to keep running from my problems after I finished my school business. I decided this is no way to enter a new year. Made a phone call when I got home. See if I feel any better now that I've at least minimally faced my problems. I went to Rosh Hashana services at JTS. There were three services there. I went to the service in the basement. The cantor had a beautiful voice but the crowd wasn't what I was looking for, seemed like mostly older grad students. I'll try the traditional service tomorrow. After the service it started raining. Hard. We're getting the tail of Florida's hurricane. Being a California boy, not only did I not bring an umbrella, I don't even own one. Fortunately I ran into a fellow law student who lived nearby and had an umbrella. We got back to her place (it was halfway) and she dried off a bit (we were both soaked). We then took her umbrella back to my place, where I stole some random umbrella and went to a reform dinner at Barnard (she went home where she had family waiting). It was a really small crowd at the Hewitt Dining Hall (maybe 15), but I should have figured. Everyone has family that they go home to here. Well almost everyone :-( It wasn't very uplifting in the big empty hall but the people were nice. Even though I only had 3 days of school this week it seemed long. *sigh* What am I going to do with myself?
Feeling Crappy
I got called on in Torts this morning. Good thing I stayed up late briefing those cases. Civ pro and contracts were both dull, got breakfast during my lunch break and then suffered through contracts. Extra long day because then I had legal writing. That's when the headache started. I don't normally get headaches. It's still here 9 hours later. Not good. I was going to do my reading in the afternoon but I got caught up with other stuff and didn't accomplish anything. Then I had dinner with faculty discussing human rights work followed by a meeting with the Journal of Gender and Law. The article that I reviewed was soundly rejected. I was the only one who voted in favor of it. At least I took a stand. I was going to go to a Hillel learning session after but we'd run overtime and I needed to do my reading. Still haven't finished and pushing 1AM. Drat. Stupid Civ Pro. I did get the two committees I requested on senate, which was nice. I'm pretty sure most of the strain my body is under is mental, not physical. School just isn't that bad. Gotta do something about it. The brain pain that is. Ugh. Back to the books, here's to midnight oil...
Couldn't sleep again for the last two nights. Got up this morning early and went to the gym. I know I'm just running from my problems but I don't feel like I have other viable options right now. The nightmares need to stop. Anyway, I forgot to Blog yesterday, so here's a quick overview of the day. Was late to Torts...again. Oh well. Had a senate meeting at lunch so I missed lunch and learn at hillel and a shofar making workshop on the quad. Double darn. Had lunch at a friend's place at 3 after classes and did a little work. Then went to a kickoff party for tzedek at hillel. Then went back to studying, watched the daily show and studied some more. Very exciting.
Teva Meeting
I couldn't sleep last night. Nightmares. Still being bothered by that phone call. Got some painful cramps at about 5AM that didn't help. My stomach hasn't felt very good since. I guess I have PMS or something. I went to a Koach brunch at 11 (I didn't get there until noon, but who's counting) and did the social thing for a while. Ate some bagels and lox. Tasty. There were a couple other law students there and we went for smoothies afterwards. The smoothies sucked. I did my reading for contracts and torts then went to the bookstore on 112th for some Civil Procedures stuff that I was missing. Still studying that now. Took a break at 9 to go to a Teva meeting though. It's the Hillel environmental group. We supposedly had it at Davis too but we didn't really. Here there aren't a lot of active people either but at least there's a few. We're going to see if we can get people to stop using disposable plates around Hillel. It's a start. Back to Civ Pro...
Cleaning for Rosh Hashanah
I woke up late this morning again, in spite of the best efforts of my alarm clock to rouse me. I was only up until 2:30 or 3 last night so it was a relatively early night. Oh well. I'm out of food so I did some shopping online. Cleaned my room and some of the bathroom too. It's nice to have a fresh start for a fresh year. Also I can see the top of my desk again which is refreshing. Refreshing. That's a good word for today. I feel very refreshed now. I cleaned out and answered all my old email. Then I went to Koach at Hillel for mincha and seudat shlishit. I was too busy watching a foosball game to notice I was missing maariv but it wasn't a big loss. Then came havdallah of course. I think I'm going to do my contracts reading and then go over to JTS for selichot at midnight.
Shabbat with Yavneh
No class this morning. It's Friday. Good thing too, I was up until 4AM. My alarm still went off at 9 (I turned off one but forgot the other) but I managed to sleep until almost noon. Then I threw together my outline for Legal Writing, which was due at 4PM, and emailed it off. I'm setting up IM lists for my Contracts and Civ Pro classes so I spent an hour working on that too. Then I went to get a haircut. Here begins the adventure. So I was going to this place recommended to me by a friend in the environmental law group (or was it youth justice?). It was on the ultra-down-low. Under cover. All that jazz. I found the building pretty easily by the description. A big curved place on 116th street before Riverside Park. The front door was locked. Couldn't even get to the intercom. I went around back and down a small flight of stairs. No signs anywhere indicating a barbershop by the way. At the bottom of the stairs was a buzzer with the name above it almost completely rubbed out. I took a gamble and rang. A moment later the door opened and I entered the building. I took a left down a narrow hall as per my friend's instructions and found it, Encore Beauty Salon. It was like entering a time warp. The haircutting ladies were ancient and spoke poor English. They used scissors exclusively, no electrics. Everything was very slow paced. Snip snip snip, pause...snip snip snip, pause...it was like entering another world. The haircut wasn't too good unfortunately because the lady didn't understand what I wanted. But I have a feeling if I'd wanted a cut from the '50s she could have done an amazing job. The weirdest thing though was the price. $11 and they don't accept tips. Even Supercuts is $18 in New York City. So odd. Anyway, I went to the gym, picked up some wine for shabbat on the way home (I chose a spicy merlot to go with the steak and pasta salad and a dessert wine for kiddush that we ended up not using sadly). Got dressed up and went to Hillel for services, the orthodox ones this time. The place was packed (I was 30 minutes late). There were at least 300 people there. It was crazy. Wasn't feeling it any more than I did at the conservative service though. Then I went to Danny's for dinner. Small crowd this week, just six of us. Tons of food. Spirits seemed a little low though. Better luck next time.
Wine Tasting (among other things)
So today was the first day of real classes. And as usual I was late. And torts is a really small class (like 30 people). Oh well. It isn't the first time and it won't be the last as they say. The prof went off on some intro stuff so I checked my email. I won a senate seat. No surprise really, but nice to know that I'm popular. Or a big enough loser to volunteer to do more work. Take your pick. After torts was civil procedure and the professor talks really fast. I can't take notes at that speed. I think I'll set up a note sharing forum with my new power. Solve my own problem and help out the class. Two birds with one stone or something. I went to lunch at the Barnard cafteria with a couple orthodox friends (it's a kosher buffet). It wasn't bad, kinda like the DC at Davis. I managed to be late to contracts after lunch too. Why can't school run on JST? After contracts I did a little work and then went wine tasting with De Vinimus. We went to a cellar that deals only in New York wines. And they have over 200 bottles available for tasting. We tried 8. For those of you who care, 3 of the 8 were good. A Riesling from Soho Cellars (2003), the 2001 Standing Stone Pinnacle (90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Sauvignon Franc), and an amazing ice wine from Casa Larga Fiori Delle Stelle Vidal (2003). The ice wine was so good I had a second glass. For the record, the NY chardonnay was terrible (it was a $20 special reserve too) and even cheap California chardonnays would put it to shame. Anyway, even pouring out most of the wines I didn't like I had the better part of 9 glasses so I exceeded my daily alcohol ration. And that wasn't the end. I went to a Hillel pizza dinner at the Kraft center and watched The Apprentice with some other Hillel folk. It wasn't terribly exciting. Never seen it before. Then it was time for bar review. Every Thurday night Columbia Law invades a different bar and gets good drink deals. I'd promissed a bunch of friends I'd go but I wasn't looking for more alcohol. I went and ordered two glasses of water. Then I walked around looking like I was double fisting. Fun times. Everything was going fine until I ran into some other friends who forced me to chug 3 glasses of champaign. Very odd form of peer pressure. I walked another friend home and hung out in Lenfest for a while, until about 2:30AM. Now it's bed time. It's been a long day.
Dean's Dinner
Today was the last day of legal methods. It was also elections for student senate. Hopefully the latter went better than the former. I couldn't make my self pay attention this morning even without my laptop. I was doodling for 2 hours in my casebook. Fortunately I wasn't caught. I did my reading for contracts and civil procedure in the afternoon while doing my laundry (yay multitasking). Then it was time for the Dean's dinner for new students at the Low Library (it isn't a library anymore, very pretty building). It was just what I would have expected from an Ivy. "Business Elegant" attire translated to I was the only guy who didn't come wearing a jacket. Oh well, they were al hot and I was comfy. No loss. After the coat check we were given large glasses of champaign with rasberries in the bottom. Very tasty. Then we sauntered down a corridor with a live trio on violins all dressed to the nines. Classy. Then it was time for open bar and hors d'vors while being surrounded by lots of antique pottery and other art. After a glass of red wine and two glasses of white and a lot of little pasrty things with weird stuff inside (i managed to avoid all the shellfish) I was ready for dinner. You can only shake hands with people for so long. Dinner was only ok but it was fancy. Some raw salmon thing followed by chicken and then Anjou Pears and other fun fancy stuff for dessert. There were some speakers during dinner but I wasn't really paying much attention. Then more socializing and a walk home in the rain. My email is down so I don't know if I won the senate race or not. Guess I'll find out in the morning. I'll read my torts before bed. It'll be refreshing to have new classes.
Whoosh! Running Through a Crazy Day!
After being up until 3AM as usual I had to get up at 8 for class. That was rough. Fortunately there was no mad stampede for the bathroom this morning. I guess my roommates decided to sleep in. In spite of having done the reading class was pretty boring. I attribute it to lack of sleep and breakfast. I was still 15 min late. Oh well. Old habits die hard. I had legal writing after legal methods and then I had 3 lunch meetings. I only made it to two. Things were too crazy. I got to the meeting on the Domestic Violence Project and signed up to represent battered women in court. Go me. I had two slices of pizza and left in the middle of the meeting to run across the hall to the American Constitutional Society meeting. They were all out of pizza. Very sad. I was still hungry. Their group basically is trying to subvert our conservative legal system back to the liberal principles it once stood for. I'm all in favor so I signed up for that too. Then more class. Then a brief reprieve to do my reading for Contracts on Thursday. It wasn't the most exciting stuff but it wasn't terribly difficult either. Then scarfed some dinner and chilled for an hour before it was time for...you guessed it...yet another meeting. I went to the first official meeting of the Journal of Gender and the Law. I think the room was 95% female. Not too surprising I guess. I think there were only one or two other straight males. I signed up to work on the journal anyway. Good experience for a first year and it's the only journal accepting 1Ls. If everything works out this semester, I'll be working two pro bono projects, senate, a journal, and myriad social activities on top of my class load. Some things really never change. Time to hit the books again...
Frisbee on the Quad
Got up late today. Got cleaned up and went over to John Jay Hall for a Jewish activities fair. Lots of Jewish clubs. Few of interest. Free pizza though, you know that's why I went ;-) I met up with a few other law students and threw a frisbee around on the quad for a while. Then I went home, played some magnetic darts with a neighbor for a while and went with him to Riverside Park to do some studying. We never made it. He got a call from Israel as we were walking over and I went to study on a bench outside a freshman dorm while I waited for him to come back after his call. After about an hour I gave up and went home. It was starting to get dark anyway. Still depressed about happenings back in California. Need to move on. Get past this.
Museum of Natural History
So I know I've missed a couple days of blogging. Not too much happened. At least not that I remember. But being old and senile that doesn't mean much. I went to Hillel for shabbat. The conservative service. They have three. I wasn't feeling it. Went to Danny's for dinner. That was much better. Since wine, beer, and scotch with dinner wasn't enough alcohol for one evening we went upstairs to someone's house party after we benched. I had a gin and tonic. Feeling old after all. Got home at around 3AM I think. Slept through Saturday morning services but made it to seudat shlishit. Service sucked again but the food was pretty good. Lots of people there. Just the conservative section is bigger than all of Davis Hillel. And there are more orthodox than conservative. Went back upstairs for mincha and havdalah. Maybe I'll give the orthodox section a shot next time. Stayed up late printing my candidate statements for the student senate race. Woke up late but just in time to turn them in. Then I went to the Museum of Natural History. Saw lots of dinosaur skeletons. A full scale blue whale model. Many diverse and exciting stuffed dead animals. Some minerals. Meteors. Plants. Good stuff. I'm a total science nerd. I love such things. I'll have to go back 'cause I only had time for about half the museum. I did see the extinct mammal section too. Very cool. Raced Evan up the stairs through Morning Side Park. We tied. And then we both started seeing spots and staggering around. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea after not eating or drinking for 9 hours. We crashed in front of the TV to recover for a while and I made ravioli for dinner. Then we crashed some more. Watched Rocky 3 and 4. Enough TV for a while. Sooner or later I need to do some work. I have assignments for Contracts and Civil Procedure now. Maybe Torts too. I guess there's always tomorrow.
Scattered Friends
I was just having a depressing thought so I figured I'd throw it up here. I realized that not only are all my old friends not in New York, they aren't even near the bay area anymore. They're scattered from Florida to San Diego and from England to Israel. It's nice in principle to have such a diverse and wide network of friends, but practically, it sucks. I'm a terrible correspondent to begin with and with no proximity, I think our lives will slowly drift apart. Sure we'll be in touch once in a while, maybe there will be visits, but things will never be the same. I do miss California and the awesome apartment I had in Davis, but I miss the close connection to friends far more. I guess however much I may love social change, I'm really not much of a fan of personal change within the scope of my own life. I seem to have short bursts of stable happiness in my life spread out by long periods of uncertainty, growth, and change. Even when the change seems to be in a positive direction, it's impossible not to long for the good times of simpler days past and wish that everything could be as it once was.
Guggenheim and Wild Goose Chase
So I went to class as usual this morning, and as usual, my lack of sleep made it tough to concentrate. Instead of doing my afternoon reading I took a power nap. After my afternoon class I avoided work yet again by going to the Guggenheim Museum with some friends. It was extremely unimpressive. Lots of crappy modern art. You know the kind. A huge blank canvass. A piece of plaster in the shape of an egg. Rubbish. There were a few Picasso's and Monet's downstairs at least. A couple other masters too. After that we went back to my apartment for pizza which we baked in my oven and succeeded in filling the kitchen with smoke. The oven is terrible. Worst I've ever seen in fact. We took our burned pizza and ran for the subway in an attempt to get to Queens by 8 for the movie Hero. I knew I shouldn't have gone. It took us over an hour to get there. We missed the showing at 8 because we were 20 minutes late so we got tickets to the 10PM showing. We weren't going all the way out there for nothing. Got some more pizza while we waited. It wasn't very good. It was chalov yisroel though. The whole neighborhood was filled with Jews. All the restaurants were kosher. Craziness. The movie sucked but I enjoyed it anyway. A couple of us took the subway back to Manhattan afterwards and by the time we were getting close to Columbia it was 1:30AM. We made a stupid mistake and accidentally ended up in Harlem. Whoops. Missed our stop. Some JTS girls made the same mistake so we shared a cab back to civilization. Disaster narrowly averted. I dunno how I'm going to function tomorrow on no sleep again...
