Happy Halloween

It's Halloween! Yay! I love seeing kids all dressed up!! And, since I saw this for $1 at Wal-Mart, I decided to get a costume for Lulu too!


I've been pretty crafty this past week thanks to Pinterest, so I thought I would share my crafts with everyone! Let's see, first I decided to try out a new cookie recipe I found and it turned out to be PHENOMENAL! Megan and I LOVED these cookies, and so did everyone else that we let have one. I HIGHLY recommend this recipe!



Then, Kiyoshi helped me carve my pumpkins. They turned out pretty awesome if I do say so myself.


We found the tutorial here, but didn't use it for much other than getting the pumpkin face. I bought a pumpkin carving kit from Michael's a few weeks ago that made carving the pumpkin SUPER easy. Definitely worth the $3!

Cumberland had their Halloween Party on Thursday that I took Megan to. I had actually ordered a costume this year, but when I put it on I looked ridiculous. It was Alice's dress from Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland. There was no way I was going to wear the costume in public with the way it looked on me, so I grabbed my red dress out of my closet and put on some of Megan's fake pearls and tried to be Lisa Simpson.



No one guessed who I was, but I wasn't really expecting anyone too. Megan went as Strawberry Shortcake and looked really cute. Sorry I didn't get any pictures, but I didn't want to take my camera to the Barking Kudu.

I ruined my favorite shirt by accidentally leaving a bra in with a load of laundry :-( The hooks ripped holes in the shirt, and I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away because, 1 it's from Anthropologie and that stuff is PRICEY, and 2, it's my favorite shirt! So, I decided I would turn it into a scarf. Here's how it turned out:


It was sad having to cut up the shirt, but I would've had to throw it away if i didn't. It was actually pretty simple to make, here's the tutorial.

And finally, I actually did something with all my plastic grocery bags other than just throwing them under the sink. I found a tutorial online on how to roll them up so they come out like wipes. It's SUPER simple, super quick, and saves a TON of space!


Please ignore my unmade bed in the background...

I guess that's all I have to say! Bekah might be coming over tonight for some Halloween drinks, but it will depend on how much research I get finished today. Friday my professor decides to tell us that the issue that I felt was the MOST IMPORTANT was the ONE issue we weren't supposed to research!! UUUUGGGGHHH! >-0 (I don't know how to make mad faces, so that's my attempt. It really looks more like a skinny fish or a stickman with no arms that has fallen down...) I wish he had told us that TWO WEEKS AGO when he first gave us the assignment. But, there's nothing I can do about it, so I just have to do ALL OF MY RESEARCH AGAIN!!!

Anyway! I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween and gets to see tons of cute costumes! Happy Halloween from me and Lulu!

Halloween Time!

I know Halloween is still a week away, but I was Stumbling and I found these links to "Creepy Wikipedia Articles". I thought I would help everyone get into the Halloween spirit by giving you the links to my favorites!




~A laughter epidemic that caused 14 schools to shut down and affected over 1000 people!

~Rocks that move without any human or animal intervention.

~A man that dresses up in a bunny costume and attacks people with an axe.

~A cathedral made entirely out of bones.

~People with a disease that makes them think their hand has a mind of it's own.

~A disorder that makes you think a family member or friend has been replaced with an identical impostor.

~Head transplant surgery- not brain transplant- head transplant.

~A man with a 13 inch long tail.

~A woman that convinced people she gave birth to rabbits.

~Faces that mysteriously appear on a concrete floor in a house.

~A mental disorder that makes men think their genitals are shrinking and will disappear.

~The devil's footprints in the snow.

~A Swedish ghost train.

~A part-goat part-man part-sheep hybrid that hides under a bridge.

~A locked vault that coffins moved around in even though it remains locked constantly with no proof of earthquakes or human interference.

~The most haunted house in England.

~Two women that experienced a time slip.

~A man that slowly destroyed his own body.

~A list of unusual deaths.

Happy Halloween!

The Snowball Effect

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I don't really have a reason why other than I forgot or was too lazy.

Monday is our next Contracts test so Grace and I are back in study mode this weekend. We actually started early and studied some last night. Not to be overly-confident, but we ROCKED the last test. I got a 9/10 and she got a 10/10. I think it's safe to say we're both happy with our grades, and I feel confident that if I had FINISHED my test, I would've gotten that last point. We didn't tell anyone about our grades because we didn't want people to want to study with us, but that plan backfired because somehow some people found out about my grade anyway. It's hard to say no to someone asking for help, but Grace and I have a system worked out and don't want to have to worry about it being compromised by the addition of more people.

I think I've figured out the biggest difference between undergrad and law school for me. It's kind of a snowball effect- the longer a snowball rolls, the bigger it gets. I'll try to explain. In undergrad, all the courses were pretty much on the same level the whole year. You learned new things, but the concepts didn't necessarily get harder as the year went on. Obviously they got harder when you went from a 200 to a 300 level course, but within that one course, all of the material was about the same.

In law school it's very different. I guess it's more like math. You have to learn one concept before you can understand the next. If you don't understand one concept, it's going to be impossible to understand the next. Instead of learning a bunch of material that's on one level, each new topic builds on the last and the material gets harder throughout the year.

If that doesn't make sense, I apologize and I'll try again later- but right now I'm really tired and want to take a nap before my last class, so I believe I will :-)

I love you!

Just a Thought

We have all these books full of "lawyering skills" and whatnot, that conceptually make sense, but in practicality really don't. Well, at least not for some aspects. For example, this week we have a "client" interview to get our legal issue for our open memo assignment in LLR. The book actually brought this point up in the text, so I'll just write what it says:

As lawyers, we are frequently in a hurry to find out what the legal problem is. We are trained in law school to stop issues, sift through the facts presented until we find the ones that matter, and then offer analysis of how the law applies to those facts. That is only a small part of what you must accomplish with a client. Avoid the temptation to become impatient when the client seems to ramble or starts talking about feelings.

(And because law school makes all law students slightly paranoid, This comes from "Legal Writing and Other Lawyering Skills" by Nancy L. Schultz and Louis J. Sirico, Jr. 5th Edition, Chapter 9 Section 9.06. For those of you wondering, this is absolutely not in correct Bluebook form, but since I'm not writing legal anything I don't care!)

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that we as lawyers have to be able to communicate and relate to clients. HAVE TO- as in, it's an imperative. The problem is that in law school we are taught to do exactly what that paragraph says- read through pages upon pages (if I said hundreds it wouldn't be an exaggeration) of legal writing to find the one or two sentences that state the issue, reasoning, and conclusion of the court. We get impatient while reading when the Justices throw in dicta (personal opinion is a close enough definition for now) before getting to the issue or conclusion. When fellow classmates brief a case in class, we roll our eyes, sigh, and zone out if their statement of the facts includes stupid things like the fact that the stolen coat was cashmere (someone actually did that today in class and the whole class laughed at him- no joke). If they can't state the issue in a sentence or the holding in a few words, we feel like they've done an inadequate job and have wasted our time. The professors are the same way! They will stop you mid sentence if you start giving a fact that is irrelevant, and get very irritated if you take too long in stating the issue.

I understand why- it's because it's the same way in trials. The judge is going to get annoyed if you waste his time with irrelevant facts, and the jury will stop paying attention if you ramble on too long. But, while this is important in trial, it seriously hinders us in regards to our client relationship. On top of that, we have to stop every now and then and remind ourselves that these cases are incidents involving real people with real families and real lives. They're not just legal issues that need to be studied. I have found myself actually laughing at some of these cases, and it makes me really angry with myself. It's more than just a schadenfreude-type thing, it's me laughing at a professional baseball player for thinking he could sue the opposing team and the stadium because he slipped on wet grass trying to catch a fly ball. Have I lost my empathy?

I've started making myself go back after every case and thinking about the people involved and how their lives were affected. To be honest, I still think the baseball case is pretty ridiculous, but then thinking back on it- he's probably lost his career. His whole life has been summed up into one measly case that takes up a whole paragraph in a torts book that law students laugh at when they read. His career was ended in an accident on the field, if he's like most professional athletes, they don't really have anything else to fall back on. What is he going to do now? He could go back to school. He could get a job that only requires a GED or High School Diploma, but how many of those are jobs that someone would actually want after being paid a professional athlete's salary. One of his only hopes is to appeal to the judicial system and hope to get some money out of the injury that ended his career.

To get back on track, law school almost teaches us to desensitize ourselves to real life and the people in it. We don't have any classes that teach us how to engage or interact with clients. I'm hoping that the steps I'm taking will help me in keeping myself down-to-earth and not think of every person as just a legal issue- but how can the legal profession expect to have compassionate, empathetic, and caring lawyers when the system pretty much teaches us the opposite? I understand now why people think of lawyers as a "necessary evil" instead of a helpful ally. I know I wouldn't want to go see a lawyer if I felt like I was being dealt with as a legal issue instead of a person- why should we expect any more from anyone else?

Red Velvet Yummy-ness

Today was a good day. I woke up before my alarm and wasn't tired at all! It's been a long time since I've felt like that. I also didn't have contracts this morning so I got to sleep in which was a major factor in me not being tired :-)

My left ear has been stopped-up since yesterday and it's driving me crazy because it's giving me really bad vertigo. Yesterday was miserable, and I really thought I was going to throw up a few different times. Today wasn't as bad, but it's still annoying. I took a decongestant that will hopefully fix my problem- right now everyone sounds like a robot in my left ear.

We had a "Called to the Bar" lecture today about how prone lawyers are to alcoholism and drug abuse. That was really uplifting (In case you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm). It was interesting to get to hear some people's stories that had recovered, and happy endings are always nice. What was more interesting though was getting to hear from one of the most infamous lawyers in the state of Alabama. He's a Cumberland grad that went down a VERY bad path and landed himself two felony convictions. Here's a little info about his story. I'm happy to say though, that he's served his time, has found a job, is working with the Alabama Bar to educate other lawyers about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and seems to be turning his life around completely.

Speaking of addiction- Megan and I have been baking like crazy ever since we moved here. Today I made these cookies to celebrate Kiyoshi's MCAT score that he gets back tomorrow:


Well, they WERE supposed to be celebration cookies, but he came over today so I let him have some before he actually got his score because I know he did wonderfully. Also, that's not my picture. I borrowed the picture form the website that has the SUPER easy recipe for the cookies!

They're very yummy, and as I said, super simple to make.

Dralion by Cirque du Soleil was PHENOMENAL. I highly recommend it to everyone! Kiyoshi really liked it too, during intermission he kept asking me why we had to wait so long for the show to keep going. I'm glad he liked his anniversary present :-)

Which reminds me! My cousin Tyler and his girlfriend Elizabeth just got engaged! I'm SO happy for them! I knew they were going to get married, I just didn't know when.

Now I'm going to do my Civ Pro reading that I COMPLETELY forgot about until just now and then go to bed!

I love you!

Success

I am so scatterbrained right now that I don't even really know what has gone in my life and what I need to update everyone about!

I got a 90 on my Bluebook test, which is pretty awesome. I had NO idea what to expect on the test, so and A- was a nice surprise, especially since it is one of the highest grades my LLR group got.

Tonight I'm taking Kiyoshi to see Cirque du Soleil's show Dralion for his anniversary present. I'm pretty excited, but I'm afraid I might have caught the stomach bug that he had earlier this week. I don't want to stop Kiyoshi from going partially because he LOVES Cirque du Soleil, and partially because I spent a good deal of money on the tickets and I can't trade them, so I think even if I am sick I'm gonna go.

We've been watching the Big Bang Theory on DVD since Bekah was awesome enough to let us borrow Seasons 1 and 2. It's extra funny for me because while I don't get most of the science stuff, Kiyoshi does, and it's even funnier when he has to correct the science in the show :-)

We have a closed memo due on Monday. A closed memo means that there are only certain cases that we can use for our analysis. It only has to be 5 pages double spaced, and I've pretty much written all of it already.

Today is the day I usually take Lulu to the dog park, but I'm exhausted, I don't feel great, and I don't want to take another shower today. Hopefully she won't be too mad at me. Maybe I'll take her sometime tomorrow if I'm feeling better. I took her to the groomers this week because Kiyoshi really wanted me to and because they have some special treatment that is supposed to reduce shedding. I was really worried they would cut her too short, but she came back looking adorable, and Kiyoshi is very happy. I loved the bow they put in her hair



I love all of you, and if I've forgotten anything or if there's something you want to know about that I haven't mentioned, let me know!

Smile :-)

I love this commercial and it makes me laugh or smile every time I see it, so I thought I would share it with y'all.



Also, ROLL TIDE! We're having a great season, but I do feel sorry for the Gators' QB.