long weekend

It's been an interesting weekend. And a long one :) On the one hand, I've not (in person) interacted with anyone outside of my own family. So that's a little weird that I didn't go out at all. But on the other hand, I had a really good time with the family. Especially yesterday (Sunday) when my parents and I (and their friend) did Bike the Drive. It's such a fun event -- we do it every year. They close Lake Shore Drive for the morning and you do a 30 mile loop on it on a bike, starting at Grant Park, going South to the Museum of Science and Industry, north to Hollywood, and then back to Grant Park. The views are just incredible and while you see some of them frequently, it's really different to see them from a bike than it is to see them while you're stuck in traffic! We also rode 30 miles on Saturday morning so it's been quite the biking weekend!
Going to my grandmother's for dinner tonight. Tomorrow my family is going to see Spamalot -- should be fun! A welcome reprieve from the mind numbing activity that is studying for the bar...

the day i've had

This is not the post I thought I'd be writing tonight. I thought I'd be coming on here to apologize for being so infrequent with my postings lately and gripe about how painfully boring BarBri was today (class started today). Instead, I've had a very awful day and will post about that instead.

First of all, and most heartbreaking, we are no longer getting a puppy this weekend. The puppy we were supposed to get had a heart murmer and it was pretty serious. This is especially sad because my dad and I got to meet the puppy a few weeks ago. We will still get a new puppy -- Zoe is lonely! -- but not until the end of July probably (it will *nicely* coincide with the bar exam...). :(

Then, after hearing about this, I was on my way to REI in Niles this afternoon to pick up my family's bike the drive packets (this Sunday -- so fun!) when I was in a minor car accident (no injuries). I was stopped in traffic on the highway when a man hit the woman behind me (also stopped) who then hit me. No real damage to my car but it was pretty scary. It took FOREVER for the police to arrive (almost 45 minutes) but we needed them to come because the man who instigated the accident was uninsured (of course). An hour and a half after the accident, we were finally ready to get moving again but, of course, that wasn't to be -- my car wouldn't start. This is strike number 3 for the day... Tried to jump it with the state trooper but it wouldn't start still so I called AAA. It took over an hour for the tow truck to arrive and, once he got there, he was thankfully able to jump my car (don't know why it hadn't worked earlier but I was so glad to have wasted another hour and a half...). Basically I spent over 3 hours sitting on the shoulder of the Edens... not quite how I wanted to spend my day.

Going backwards... I did start bar review today. It was pretty boring, but frankly, I've sat through worse classes than that... We'll see if I still feel that way in a few weeks...

Good to be home

It is good to be home. So good. So nice to know that this isn't just temporary before I head back to Cambridge again. And while it is sort of temporary (since I'll be moving into the city this fall), it's different -- I don't have to say goodbye to anyone again.

Anyway, because of this whole moving thing, I changed my cell phone number. It's pretty exciting actually to have a 312 number on my cell! ("comment" me if you need my new number -- I emailed everyone whose email address I had but some might have been wrong and there's a lot that I don't have).

OK, off to try to be productive!

made it home

So I've been slow with the update, but I have indeed made it back to the Chicago area safely! The drive was fine. On Friday I stopped at Niagara Falls -- really amazing.
Would have been even better if it hadn't been thunderstorming and pouring on me most of the time i was there but, as you can see, it did clear up towards the end. I took a bunch of pics -- the rest are on my flickr site.

Sunday morning I picked my Dad up in Toronto and we headed to Paris, Ontario to meet the newest member of our family, Zeke. SO adorable! The pictures of Zeke are on my dad's computer so I'll have to get them later to put some on. He's currently 6 weeks old -- we'll get to bring him home in 2 weeks.

Anyway, I'm around and I'll try to update more frequently!

school's out forever!

Wow. I'm done. With school. Forever (I hope!). Wow.

Didn't come easily. Of course my computer had to flip out AGAIN last night (luckily it decided to work just long enough for me to take my exam this morning!). It was fixed AGAIN this afternoon, hopefully for the last time.

This whole day since I finished my final has been very odd. It's like, I'm done and that's really more than I can comprehend and nothing really feels different (especially since I don't graduate for another 4 weeks) but I know somewhere in my head that it is different... I don't know. Other people have been emotional, I've just been confounded by the whole situation.

Had dinner tonight with Jamie. I'm going to miss him when I come back to Chicago but at least he'll visit sometimes :) Tomorrow it's pack all day, then celebrate with Emily in the evening before getting a really good night's sleep for driving all day Saturday.

down and up

What a roller coaster of a few days its been! My computer stopped working again on Monday night. Of course. 12 hours before my first final. Clearly there was nothing I could do about it at that point, so I ended up having to hand write my final. First time in law school that I had to do that. As emily put it, good preparation for the bar exam...(oh, final went ok I think...)
Spent the rest of the afternoon after the final yesterday studying (to the extent that I could do so without my computer). This morning, a man from Geek Squad came to fix what they hadn't fixed before. It took him 3.5 hours, but he restored my computer (which involved un-installing and then re-installing windows and everything else that used to be on my computer...). Good thing I (still) had everything backed up, including my music! While this was a MAJOR pain in the ass, I'm happy it's over in time for my final tomorrow. So those were the downs and the first up. Then, a little while ago, I got an email that essentially told me that I passed my paper. YIPPEE!! I was still sort of stressed about this since I aparently had the one paper advisor at the whole school that doesn't just view the paper as a meaningless graduation requirement (and has actually failed someone who did a paper for her so that he didn't graduate). But I passed!! YIPPEE!!
OK, a little more studying tonight...

my computer hates me

It's been quite the few days. After not posting for a while because I was working so hard on studying (I read 600 pages of a casebook and took meticulous notes on it over the course of 2 days), I then became unable to post because my computer flipped out. I mean flipped out. Completely useless yesterday and fixed (I hope!) now only after my spending serious cash and having a geek squad guy sit in my apartment doing stuff to it for 3 hours. BLAH. The bad news is that this meant I was extremely unproductive yesterday. The good news is that my computer is functioning fine now. Let's just hope it stays this way, at least for the next week...
One week from today I'll be driving to Toronto! (Then getting home a week from tomorrow). YAY!!!

a few prom pics

Prom was fun. Not in a "wow, this is the most awesome night ever" kind of way but in the kind of way that anything is ever fun in law school. Most importantly, it didn't suck. More fun than prom itself was the pre-party, at which there was a very cool champagne fountain (filled of course with the crappiest champagne in existence). But something about the fountain made it taste better... Or maybe that was the quantity...

This pic is a bunch of the girls at the pre-party. I don't know the girl on the right.

This is Emily and me. Emily has been the saving grace of my law school experience. Too bad she's going to New York next year...

If you really want to see the rest of my pics, they're on my flickr site... (see link to the right)