another year, another semester, and another home

As I greet 2011 and a New Semester of law school, I’m feeling quite content, if a little overwhelmed.

With another semester of law school under my belt, I’m now officially half-way through with my Juris Doctor degree requirements. And while law school continues to be practically all-consuming, I know that this, too, shall pass, and I'll come out the better for it in the end. (Last semester about killed me – working whilst taking 15 credit hours required more effort than I could muster most days, but I survived, mostly with the help of vast quantities of coffee and espresso.)

So far, so good with the Spring semester. I’m enrolled in classes that are both intellectually stimulating and practical, and the reading load seems to be mostly tolerable.

Good thing, too, since in the midst of the New Semester excitement, it happens that I’m once again living in Box House, the inevitable result of our recent move to a bigger place here in New Orleans. And while I love living in an Irish Channel shotgun double in true New Orleanian style, my desire to get unpacked and settled serves as a huge distraction from my legal studies. I try to delegate my time wisely, and I think I’m on the right track: the house is coming together incrementally, and I’ve not yet fallen behind with my schoolwork.

Also this semester I’ll be Acting President of the Law Women’s Association at Tulane. I was elected to serve merely as Vice President, but our President got the opportunity to study abroad in Hong Kong this semester, and away she went, leaving me to act in her stead. While this is all well and good, it is yet another distraction which influenced my decision to take only 4 classes this term.

Hopefully, after a few more marathon weekends of unpacking and organizing, the new house will be much more settled, giving me more time to focus on my legal education and career development. For now, though, my time remains divided between these two all-important tasks.

And trying to fit in a decent amount of sleep. So it goes that with this brief update I must bid you farewell and goodnight, dear readers. Mayhap 2011 will allow more time for blogging than did 2010...

free time put to good use

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.

in another town

Well, I survived the hottest, longest, most miserable move ever (note: never, ever move to New Orleans in July if you can help it). And it was followed by several weeks without internet connectivity, but now all that mess is behind me.

Happily, although the move seemed to take forever-and-a-day, and was indeed unbearably hot, the process of settling in has gone much more smoothly than the process of getting here. It has been slow-going, but almost everything has now found its place. My proudest achievement is that all of the books are now categorized - a feat which hasn't been accomplished in far too long - and all have been neatly shelved in a manner which Adam has termed the Jacqui-decimal system, despite the absence of decimals or digits from the system. The closets are busting at their seams, but that's okay, because less than a half-dozen boxes remain to be sorted and unpacked.

So it goes that this little Garden District apartment - while perhaps a bit too small in actuality - continues to morph into a lovely home for us. 'Tis not my secluded duplex with three years' worth of memories, but when I stop playing the comparison game this new little place is quite nice on its own merit.

Yesterday I cooked from-scratch eggs benedict po-boys, which I paired with mimosas, and it was the perfect NOLA brunch. It was a celebration of sorts, of our last day off together before Adam starts his new job and I get thrown into the madness of being a 1L.

When I'm alone in the bedroom such as now I can hear the St. Charles streetcar roaring past. It's a sound I'm starting to get accustomed to, just like many other things about this truly unique city...