Life in Moo Town
Shakespeare in the Park
Spent the afternoon at the Museum of Natural History with a friend and saw the new dinosaur exibit. I like the old stuff better actually. But I did learn something new. Dinosaurs evolved feathers before the feathers were useful for flight. In retrospect it seems so obvious but I had never put it all together until seeing pre-archaeopteryx dinosaur fossils sporting feathers (yes the imprints are clear enough that you can't mistake the feathers for anything else. So some dinosaurs had feathers for heat regulation, mating displays, etc. Moving on. I took a break after the museum to grab a quick dinner at home, then went to Central Park to meet some other friends and try to get tickets to the opening night of "As You Like It". The show was sold out long ago. People had been waiting in line since 6 or 7 AM. I got there for stand by at 5 minutes to 8. The show was at 8. There were over 50 people in line ahead of me. Somehow I got extremely lucky and they had enough no shows. In fact I got to basically walk into some of the best seats in the house. I was originally in the very last row (the nosebleed seats) but at intermission it turned out one of my companions had two extra seats next to her in the SIXTH ROW! It was right in the center at stage level. So yeah. Amazing seats, great theater, and big name actors. Not like shakespeare in the park in Memorial Park back home. After the play we went to Cafe Lalo. More luck. There was practically no wait. I've never seen the place so empty. Well all the tables were full but the wait was less than 10 minutes. Which is incredible for Lalo. I had a chocolate trip and some cheap port. Nice day.
Highlights Through 6/24
I was in California 6/9-6/21 and it was a very nice trip. Saw the graduation ceremony at Davis, caught up with lots of close friends (though sadly only a small fraction of those I would have liked to see), went to my cousins house warming party etc...Had to also do about 20 hours of work while I was home because I volunteered to do a pro bono research project. I only expected it to be 5 hours. Hopefully I won't make that mistake again.
On 6/23 I went to a summer associates reception at the New York City Bar Association in midtown. There were a lot of people there and it was open bar with Dewars and Grey Goose so it was a lot of fun. No one from my office wanted to go with me so I brought a friend from the US Attorney's Office Civil Division. I had actually applied to work there too but never heard back. After seeing what she works on I'm glad I didn't end up there though. Doesn't sound as fun as my Brooklyn job.
6/24
Busy day. Had breakfast with Senator John Kerry at the office of Paul Weiss in midtown. He had a really nice suit but lacked the sort of charisma Bill Clinton had when I met him. Makes me wonder why he got the nomination in the first place. He gave a lot of excuses about not having enough money to win and encouraged us all to keep fighting the good fight. Then I went to a book publishing party at my supervising attorney's daughter's elementary school. Fun to hang out with little 2nd and 4th graders for a change. Time to go to work finally after that. Took off early though to go to Temple Emanuel for shabbat services. Beautiful building. I hear it may be the largest synagogue in the world. They get 10,000 for high holidays I think. It takes up an entire city block. Sadly the sanctuary was largely empty, the cantors and rabbis were the most unenthusiastic I've ever met and the whole place completely lacked ruach. Reform Judaism doesn't have to be that way. Too bad. I wouldn't go back there for services but I'll try to go see the museum and the rest of the building there sometime. After services I cruised around the upper East Side for a while with a friend including going to FAO Shwartz, the famous toy store. They had stuffed animals that were life sized. Including elephants and giraffes. I met some other friends for dinner at Django in midtown for restaurant week. I had a salmon appetizer, then lamb, then a baked nectarine dessert I think. The food and atmosphere were both very good and we had a lot of fun. After dinner we cruised over to The Monkey Bar, which is in back of some hotel. The made a pretty good martini. And they had a piano player. He was kind of loud but one of us who shall remain nameless and was rather sloshed after 3 glasses of champaign had a very good time singing along.
Museum Mile Festival
Today's highlights:
Went to an all-you-can-eat chinese lunch buffet. It was sketchy. Ate a lot anyway. Haven't died. Yet.
Went to the museum mile festival after work. Saw the Goethe Institute, the Neue Galerie, the Guggenheim, the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Got dinner at the 2nd Ave Deli. Had a hot pastrami sandwich. It was good. But I could live without it.
Fin
Water runs down my glass like tears on a translucent face, forming rivulets, then droplets, and finally drying into the hard wall of the unblinking obelisk on my desk. Surface reflecting no emotion, the glass nearly empty, its harsh presence belies its fragility.
Big Trial Day
I've been spending nights after work cleaning my apartment. The level of filthiness was truly ridiculous when my roomates moved out. Stayed up until 2 cleaning the spare room. Hauled out several bags of trash and 2 elevator loads of boxes and papers. This morning I got up early (as usual) to be in Manhattan Family Court by 9:30. When I got through security and up to the courtroom at 10, only lawyers were there. All the clients were late. Lovely. I spent the time reading over some of the case precedent for our constitutional argument. Also scurried around serving copies of an affidavit and motion on several of the parties' attorneys. When we were finally called in for our hearing before the judge one of the partys was still absent. The judge seemed to be in a bad mood overall and started yelling at the attorney I work with. She tried to throw out our motion, ranting about how our client has no constitutional rights and complaining that we were "wasting trees". The father needed a court appointed attorney so we had to take a break soon after getting started while that was attended to. Several attorney's commented during the break that the judge seemed to have PMS. I concur. From now on I'll try glueing Midol to courtesy briefs. After some wheeling and dealing in the antechambers we came back in session and quickly ended up in conference in the judge's chambers. The judge clearly was unfamiliar with the statute we had cited in our motion and her interpretation was a travesty. She went off about how allowing relatives to adopt children encourages drug users not to get clean. I tried to correct her by bringing up the legislative history/intent from the governor's bill jacket but she cut me off and went on a new tirade about how this is the "real world" and we don't care about matters of law. Wow. Funny, maybe I'm crazy, but that is EXACTLY what I thought courts and judges were supposed to care about. But I'm a lowly law student, what do I know? Anyway, she tried to throw out our motion, then changed her mind, then did absolutely nothing and adjourned the whole mess. Crazy day. I can't wait to go to appeal. Preferably in Fed court. I'll bet the judges are saner there. After the hearing we went to a Japanese place in Tribeca for lunch and headed back to the office. Did very little work for the rest of the afternoon and then went to a great party at a yoga club. No yoga occured but they had some very nice wines for tasting as well as fruit/herbal juice blends. The food was great too. Bruschetta and grilled eggplant, tofu, vegetables, etc. Very fun and relaxing time. From there we went to Battery Park for some street theater. The view of the skyscrapers in the financial district and the sunset over the river was gorgeous. Great clouds too. After the performance I went to the nearest bar looking for a bathroom. I didn't notice it was a bar/cabaret (called the pussycat club). Oops. It was packed with wallstreet suits gettign lapdances from some less than beautiful exotic dancers. Got outa there in a hurry...
