Monday, August 29, 2005

 

You Know You're in Law School When...

... it's 11.50 pm and you're still battling to get through the assigned reading for your Torts class tomorrow morning...

kjg fidsufg oid piodsf o;sibgh ;gbfogiubhsfopibh so;ifbh osifh bofi

[Head hits keyboard. zzzzzzzzzzzzz. ]

-LSD

Sunday, August 28, 2005

 

I Heard He's Nice to Animals

Spent much of the weekend prepping for my first Contracts class tomorrow. I was chatting with a Cardozo grad this morning, and he asked me who my Contracts professor would be. "Shupack," I replied. "Oh, I had him," my friend recalled. "He was bloody horrible." Now, I may be new to lawyerly analysis, but "bloody horrible" wouldn't appear to offer much scope for favourable interpretation. Better start girding those loins...

-LSD

Friday, August 26, 2005

 

Ready for Action

Orientation's over. It feels much like the end of the warmup before a sporting event. You're loose, the adrenaline's flowing, and you're ready for action. Of course, "action" in this case means hours of gruelling study, rather than the final on Centre Court at Wimbeldon, but you get the idea.

-LSD

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

 

A Flying Start

First day of (dis)orientation. At lunch, sitting next to my "Elements of Law" Professor. After reaching for a bread roll, attempt to return left hand to lap. En route, left hand clips fork at edge of table. Fork (with mouthful of food still attached) flies into air. Food splatters on neighbours on both sides. Try to assist in clean up. Succeed only in knocking over recently refilled glass of water. Acute mortification results in temporary loss of ability to form complete sentences.

One other observation: our incoming class was addressed by Michael Cardozo, New York City Corporation Counsel and "distant relative" of the illustrious Benjamin, during lunch. As he was speaking about the important role the law plays in society or some such, I noticed a sign on the wall: "Occupation of this space by more than 169 persons is dangerous and unlawful." Given that there were 250 newly minted law students in the room flagrantly violating this edict (well, at least 81 of us were), I wonder if uncle Ben was having a chuckle watching us from up high.

-LSD

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

 

Last Day... Becoming Last Night

It's 5.30 pm, supposedly my last day at Mobius, and I'm STILL HERE. Why would that be, I hear you ask? Turns out my darling wife, who was on assignment at a new facility in north Jersey today, is lost. Very lost. She keeps calling me from her cell phone seeking directions. She's worked her way as far north as Rockland County, and is now bearing south on the Garden State towards Atlantic City.

Now, when it comes to losing my way behing the wheel of an automobile, I'm not one to talk. I've been known to head out for a carton of milk and wind up in Pennsylvania. But that's largely because I'm male and thus intrinsically incapable of seeking navigational guidance. On the other hand, Sandra stops for directions every 3 miles, and still she flounders.

Given the choice, I'd rather be hopelessly lost and maintain my ego intact, thank you very much.

-LSD

Monday, August 22, 2005

 

My Pied-a-Terre in Manhattan

Went to Cardozo this morning to, among other trivialities, register for a locker. Wow, my own locker. (Acquire a half-decent LSAT, fork over thirty thousand bucks, and you can have one too!) I feel like I'm in high school again. Apparently lockers are de rigeur for American college students, but for us foreigners, it's so retro.

Not sure what I'm going to use it for yet. Unfortunately it's too small for sneaking an afternoon nap. And plastering its walls with pictures of Jessica Simpson is probably uncool, seeing as I'm 35 and married an' all.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

 

Winding Down

(Sorry for the hiatus. I'm still acclimatising myself to the blogging game.)

Things are wrapping up at work. Tomorrow I have my exit interview, during which I imagine I'll have free reign to lambast those aspects of working at MOBI I detest the most, like the guy who brushes his teeth for seventeen minutes while you're trying to read the paper on the dunny; and the anti-spam filter that blocks all the decent dirty jokes my depraved friends try to send me.

Truthfully, though, MOBI's been good to me. No doubt I'll be sitting in a Contracts class in the coming weeks pining wistfully for my cozy sanctuary in Corridor 5, Room 3112...

-LSD

Friday, August 12, 2005

 

Oil & Doughnuts - though Chanukah's nowhere in sight

Filled up my little Nissan Sentra today - cost me $25. A year ago, it was $15. I shudder to think what SUV drivers must be paying as their contribution to the Saudi Arabian Treasury.

Anyway, as a way of hedging against the seemingly usntoppable rise in the price of petrol, I bought an oil stock last month - 100 shares of Bois D'Arc (NYSE: BDE) at $15.42. They're now worth $16.90, so I figure I've purchased about $150 worth of price rise protection thus far. And I may need all the help I can get, given that Goldman Sach's prediction of $100 a barrel oil is not looking so far-fetched these days.

Of course, this strategy of buying stocks to protect oneself from the rising costs of necessities does not always work. For instance, last year I bought some Krispy Kreme stock, figuring that the climbing share price would help finance my indulgence in those heavenly artery cloggers. Unfortunately, you only need to take a look at KKD's price chart to understand why I've reluctantly switched my allegiance to Dunkin' Donuts.

-LSD

Thursday, August 11, 2005

 

Real Estate Bubble?

Expounders of today's conventional wisdom would likely recommend that I invest the total of my next three years' tuition bills in the property market instead. The projected return of that investment (and subsequent reinvestment of those profits) will presumably far exceed the increased income I'm hoping to earn during my forthcoming career as an attorney.

Not exactly a comforting thought.

On the other hand, media rumblings of an imminent meltdown in the nation's real estate market continue to grow. So, in the interests of buttressing my fragile psyche with additional affirmation of the soundness of my law school decision, I say: pop away with those needles, ye economics gods...

-LSD

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

 

Surfing the Amazon

Casebooks, primers, canned briefs, commercial outlines ... I can hear the trees falling in the forest as I order these tomes. I'm trying to buy used as much as I can.

The era of the paperless office may be upon us; not so the paper free classroom.

-LSD

Monday, August 08, 2005

 

Home Improvements

Realising how little time (and money) I'll have for those endlessly accumulating household projects once school starts, I've dedicated myself to trying to get as much done around the house as possible in the next couple of weeks. This of course means regular visits to Home Depot and Lowes, which, for handily unhandy folks like yours truly, are the most intimidating stores in the world. Aisles full of fabulously arcane products. Singularly scarce and unhelpful salespeople, trained to respond to your every inquiry with a derisive snort. Fellow customers conversing knowledgeably about gate valves and reducing couplings, while you're just trying to find a watchamyjig to fix your toilet. And clearly both stores want to make returning items as difficult as possible. Have you ever looked at your receipts from these places? It's like they deliberately encrypt the descriptions of the products you purchase so that there's no way you can later identify what you bought. For example, last week I bought a can of primer, some painter's tape, and 2 paint brushes from Home Depot. Here's how these items were listed on my receipt: 1 PR34BM16 14.99 1 SCP23T85 4.50 2 35INPT3B 5.80 No doubt perfectly intelligible to a licensed contractor, but heaven help me if I want to return something in a month's time. -LSD

Friday, August 05, 2005

 

Office Comforts

List of creature comforts I will be bidding farewell to on August 24:
  1. Water cooler. If you've tasted New Jersey tap water, you'll know what I mean
  2. Office as sanctuary (no kids banging on door)
  3. Free milk and caffeinated beverages
  4. Free stationery (though it occurs to me, how many pens would I have gone through in the last 4.5 years? 2 perhaps?)
  5. Cheap soda (we have a vending machine that dispenses cans of soft drink for 20 cents - takes me back to my primary school days)
  6. DIRECT DEPOSIT!
  7. Nightly garbage removal (amazing how much rubbish a 9-5 stint in an 8 by 8 room can generate)
and did I mention... PAYCHECKS?

Thursday, August 04, 2005

 

Lame Duck

So at work, for the next 3 weeks I'm in that weird zone inhabited by the newly resigned, where I'm still formally coming into the office so I can "assist in the transfer of my duties" (ha ha, my boss said doodies!), and more to the point, pick up those last couple of pay checks prior to our looming financial freefall... but in reality, my days are spent thinking about anything but work, with the result that my productivity has diminished somewhat. And by "diminshed somewhat", I mean "drastically and irrevocably plummeted."

The company released its 4th quarter earnings yesterday. No upside surprises, so my stock options remain underwater. Stock options in a tech company are alot like a perpetual lottery ticket. Maybe some day the firm will come out with some amazing innovation or get bought by IBM, the shares will soar, and I'll be rolling in dough. More likely, they'll keep plodding along in the obscurity they've enjoyed for the last 20 years, the share price will remain in the doldrums, and I'll be forced to explain to my daughter why my surefire plan for funding her college education was thwarted by the "vagaries of the stock market".

-LSD

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

 

No Turning Back

Lord give me strength.

Today's the day I officially gave up my cushy, family friendly $75k p.a. plus free health benefits technical writing job, in exchange for the crushing debt, nerve-numbing anxiety and other murky delights promised by a law school education that begins some 3 weeks from today.

The reaction to my resignation at work? Here's a list of some of the polite comments typical of my colleagues, followed by their unspoken implications:

"courageous": you're out of your effing mind.
"I envy you": for about 12 seconds, until the prospect of winner-take-all finals, instant impoverishment, and caffeine-fueled study binges dawns on the speaker, who invariably mutters "courageous" as an afterthought.
"I'm sure you're making the right decision": By "right", I mean "utterly irresponsible".

It didn't help matters that my wife returned from vacation yesterday to find an email from her boss informing her that he was drastically cutting back her hours due to "economic difficulties". You want to know about economic difficulties, buster? Try a $2200 monthly mortgage, private nursery school fees, maxed out credit cards, and a spouse who by all accounts should be entering his most productive income-earning years, but instead is borrowing truckloads of cash to finance the acquisition of a law degree, in the desperate hope that it paves the way to a job offering a salary high enough to service the ever-expanding mountain of household debt.

As you can see, not much margin for error.

On second thought, Lord give me a scotch.

-LSD

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