With my 1L year now behind me, I've found myself with a certain amount of free time that I haven't known since last August. Even though I'll be doing summer school and wage-earning legal work in the coming months, I'll still have more free time, comparatively, than I did during that hectic 1L year. So, I have two big projects in the works:
A Container Garden
This winter I got the garden bug something awful, and I've been mentally planning an herb and tiny vegetable garden for many months. But I acted the Good Law Student, and focused the bulk of my time and mental energy towards my legal studies, putting off the garden until after the end of the semester. Thus it was with great pleasure that I started buying herbs, tomatoes, peppers, soil, and containers this past week. And this evening, after the sun was low in the sky, I planted and planted until I ran out of soil. One tomato plant remains, and I'll fetch more soil tomorrow and get him settled in his container.
In all, I'm growing two tomato plants, three pepper plants, a rosemary bush, and an herb garden. I'm most proud of my herb garden, because of my ingenious container solution. See, there's been an old non-working charcoal grill sitting in our courtyard since we moved here. (Since ours was stolen almost immediately upon arriving here, we had hoped that we could salvage the old one, but no such luck. It refuses to function as a grill.) So I threw away the lid and the grates, lined the vents with cheesecloth -- so my soil wouldn't fall out the bottom -- and used it as a super-sized planter.
It worked perfectly! It contains my entire herb garden: basil, parsley, mint, sage, cilantro, dill, thyme, chives, and oregano. The creepers -- thyme and oregano -- are toward the front edges so they can do their thing and cascade down the side of the grill, and the tall boys -- mint, parsley, and basil -- are toward the back so they can grow high unimpeded. Delicate cilantro and dill are in the middle, where they can be protected by the shade of the taller growers. (Rosemary has its own pot since its a perennial here in NOLA.)
The veggies are each in their own separate, large pots. I wish I could share photos. I have some, but since my laptop is dead I'm without a good way to get the photos off of my memory card...
Updating My Online Presence
This is a big project. First, I'm going to sever this blog from my professional life. I'll still provide updates as to what's going on with me and my legal career, but I'm not going to make an effort to steer clear of the mundane. This blog is going to be geared at folks who know me IRL and who want to know what's going on in my day-to-day life.
Second, I'm going to create a whole new blog dedicated to legal issues and the kinds of things I'm interested in professionally. Ya'll will be free to visit over there, but I won't feel like I'm boring you with my legal interests.
Third, I'm going to compartmentalize my website, separating the personal from the professional. This will entail making a legal sub-domain which will serve as the portal to my professional services, accomplishments, interests, etc., leaving the main site much as it is now, although I do intend to redesign it a bit.
So this is a big project, but one which will be somewhat enjoyable (because I am, after all, an old-school HTML geek) and wholly worthwhile. Stay tuned for links to the new pages as they get up and running.
Otherwise,
I been enjoying spending time in the kitchen without feeling guilty or rushed. This weekend I made fresh-squeezed lemonade, a crock-pot roasted chicken (the leftovers of which are soon to become chicken salad for lunch), from-scratch jambalaya, and from-scratch fettuccine alfredo with prosciutto, mushrooms, and green onions. Not only were the results of my hard work in the kitchen yummy, but I relished in the slow pace of it all. Yay for kitchen therapy!
So I'm all poised to make the most out of whatever free time I can squeeze out of this summer.
Monday, May 10, 2010
a 1L no more and other law school news
My first year of law school is officially over. Yay!
The feeling of accomplishment is immense. I can only imagine how good it will feel to get that JD in hand come 2012...
The exam period was daunting, but I survived. No word yet on grades; they'll be weeks in the coming.
In the midst of it, though, I was dealt a major set-back: with two exams down and one to go, my laptop died. It wasn't completely without warning; Mr. Lappy had been giving me fits when powering up and when waking from sleep, so I had been regularly backing-up my Absolutely Essential data, but I haven't yet managed to save all of my digital photos or archived e-mails. Alas, I remain hopeful that I can salvage those things some way or another.
Luckily, my trusty old ThinkPad, with his dead battery and held-on-by-one-screw-screen came to the rescue so that I didn't have to hand-write my Constitutional Law exam. He'll serve my portable computing needs for the summer, and at home I can share hubby's desktop, and by mid-August I should be able to save up for a new laptop. I will not, however, be buying another HP. Instead, I'm looking to custom build with AVADirect, so that I can tailor my computer for doing what I need it to do: helping me to be a better law student and someday-soon-lawyer.
So, with my 1L year behind me, I'm all geared up for a busy summer. I've got my judicial internship, and not one but 2 part-time law clerk jobs for local small firms. And I'm taking a summer externship class. Although summer school means I'll be super-busy, it will be a good thing because I'll start my 2L year with more credits than students who don't do summer school, which will mean a lighter class-load at some point in my law school career. On top of that, the externship meets Tulane's "skills course" requirement, which is a fancy way of saying that you can't graduate without doing hands-on legal work for class credit. By getting that requirement out of the way now, it will be one less thing to worry about down the road.
The externship involves two components: classroom and field placement. During May and June I'll have class 1-2 times per week, and then during July I'll be working in the Family Law Unit at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. Classes start on Thursday, so I haven't really had much of a break, and the way things are looking I'm not likely to get much of one.
Not that I really mind working through the summer. I'll get some great experience and it will feel good to be working again, but I hope that at some point we can plan a few weekend trips here and there to visit friends and family in Mississippi...
The feeling of accomplishment is immense. I can only imagine how good it will feel to get that JD in hand come 2012...
The exam period was daunting, but I survived. No word yet on grades; they'll be weeks in the coming.
In the midst of it, though, I was dealt a major set-back: with two exams down and one to go, my laptop died. It wasn't completely without warning; Mr. Lappy had been giving me fits when powering up and when waking from sleep, so I had been regularly backing-up my Absolutely Essential data, but I haven't yet managed to save all of my digital photos or archived e-mails. Alas, I remain hopeful that I can salvage those things some way or another.
Luckily, my trusty old ThinkPad, with his dead battery and held-on-by-one-screw-screen came to the rescue so that I didn't have to hand-write my Constitutional Law exam. He'll serve my portable computing needs for the summer, and at home I can share hubby's desktop, and by mid-August I should be able to save up for a new laptop. I will not, however, be buying another HP. Instead, I'm looking to custom build with AVADirect, so that I can tailor my computer for doing what I need it to do: helping me to be a better law student and someday-soon-lawyer.
So, with my 1L year behind me, I'm all geared up for a busy summer. I've got my judicial internship, and not one but 2 part-time law clerk jobs for local small firms. And I'm taking a summer externship class. Although summer school means I'll be super-busy, it will be a good thing because I'll start my 2L year with more credits than students who don't do summer school, which will mean a lighter class-load at some point in my law school career. On top of that, the externship meets Tulane's "skills course" requirement, which is a fancy way of saying that you can't graduate without doing hands-on legal work for class credit. By getting that requirement out of the way now, it will be one less thing to worry about down the road.
The externship involves two components: classroom and field placement. During May and June I'll have class 1-2 times per week, and then during July I'll be working in the Family Law Unit at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. Classes start on Thursday, so I haven't really had much of a break, and the way things are looking I'm not likely to get much of one.
Not that I really mind working through the summer. I'll get some great experience and it will feel good to be working again, but I hope that at some point we can plan a few weekend trips here and there to visit friends and family in Mississippi...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)