Poor hamster

11.30.04

Last night at 3 in the morning, Will and I went on a secret mission to bury my hamster by the Lake. Poor buddy died of old age right before I left for Thanksgiving break. I was sure that the cops were going to stop us and accuse us of something illegal. My remaining hamster seems kind of confused about why he's alone all of a sudden, but I'm sure he'll soon find the perks of not having to share his food and bedding.

12:39 PM [link]

The Bachelor 6?

11.28.04

MSN.com says that The Bachelor 6's finale is on this week...There were 6 of them? I didn't even know they'd gone past the third one. Hopefully it's a sign that reality TV is going down the drain when the evening news and newspaper headlines aren't chronicling who didn't get a rose.

03:18 AM [link]

Thanksgiving break

11.23.04

Tomorrow I go home for the first time since early August. It hasn't been completely weird being away from home for so long, since I was used to it from college, but I'm looking forward to it more than I have in the past. I just wish that it was more than a four-day vacation, I'd like to be able to spend more time with my family and Shannon and Matt than four days is going to allow, but at least winter break is coming up soon. I get a full month off -- it will be sooo nice having nothing to do for that long. Unfortunately I still have to get through exams to get to that point, but hopefully it won't be too bad. I'm hoping that having three exams spread out over 2 weeks will make it bearable, but upperclassmen are warning us that we'll be stressed and sick of school by the time we're done. The funny thing is, flashcards seems to be the best way to attack the material -- who would have thought that this far from elementary school flashcards would still the ideal study tool?

Oooh, and in exciting news, I now own a couch! It won't be here for two weeks, but I can now say I have a fully furnished apartment -- four months after I moved here!

03:52 PM [link]

21st on the 21st

11.21.04

Happy 21st to my girl Melantha! Now she and I can finally go drink blue margaritas in Vegas. :D

11:36 AM [link]

Is it done yet?

11.18.04

I can stop being sick now. Really.

School can end now, too. Really.

The semester is almost over. I have 9 days of classes left, and then I have three exams spread out between Dec 2 and Dec 18. And then I have a blissful 4 weeks off from school.

I'm almost weeping with joy from the idea of being done with Torts and Contracts soon. Apparently next year they want to give 1Ls two semesters of Contracts...I'm so glad they didn't have that bright idea last year. Apparently they want to get rid of "Justice and the Legal System" because it's too abstract. I won't know how true that is until next semester, but I look forward to taking something that isn't all black letter law and "What is the rule and holding from this case?"

Too bad they don't offer classes like, "Lawyers in Fiction" and fun stuff like that. Nopes, law school is too snooty for that.

01:10 PM [link]

Tom Hanks?

11.15.04

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon? WTF? That's the first sign that the film version of The Davinci Code is going to majorly suck. Why are they going for highly glitzy star power in a movie that already has a built-in audience of the millions of people who have read the book and kept it on best-seller's list for months and months? It's not that Tom Hanks is a bad actor, quite the opposite. But at the same time, he's Tom Hanks. He's not a character actor; he won't blend in with the film and BECOME Robert Langdon. He'll be "Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon." Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, but for now, I'm just completely disappointed that TDvC: The Movie is turning into nothing but a multi-billion dollar earning box office hit, rather than just a really good movie based off a really good book.

01:09 PM [link]

Dead man

11.12.04

My day is complete now that Scott Peterson has been found guilty.

The most incriminating piece of evidence in my mind is one that I haven't heard the media point out. HE'S TOO FRIGGIN STOIC. How could someone go through the disappearance of his wife and unborn child and his subsequent accusal without a shred of emotion if he wasn't guilty?

The results at least restore my faith in a criminal justice system that lets people walk too easily sometimes. I'm glad that the jury was convinced by the mountains of circumstantial evidence, and that the lack of a cause of death didn't stop them. How fair would it be to let someone walk simply because the prosecution can't tell you HOW they murdered someone, when it was obvious that the victim was murdered SOMEHOW?

The defense is going to say that Peterson was convicted simply because he's a jerk and a liar. That's not the whole picture, though. HE WAS JUST TOO WEIRD. The circimstances were too weird. His behavior after Laci's disappearance (ie -- buying a porn channel, heading to Mexico with $15,000 and blonde hair) was just too weird. I can't believe it took the jury as long as they did (paraphrasing Leno: "Even the OJ jurors are saying 'This one is simple, guys!'"), but I'm glad they finally came to the right conclusion.

And to make the day even better, I got an 87 on my second legal writing memo, which gives me a B+ and puts me in the top 3rd of the class. Wheeee!

07:29 PM [link]

She kicks butt

11.10.04

Congrats to my Lil Amy for being elected VP of Scholarship for Panhel! That's huge, I'm so proud of her. I wish I was there to see everything she puts in motion, but she has her hands full with her brand new Lil and probably doesn't have time for making fun of her hearing impaired Big. ;)

01:37 PM [link]

They still won't stop...

11.08.04

I received a completely galling instant message last night; it seems that some people who are upset with the election results simply cannot let it go and have taken to attacking their own friends who voted the opposite way.

A sorority sister who I have not seen in a long while, but was always on extremely good terms with, decided to send out a message that had obviously been written by someone thinking they were clever and had been circulated through the AOL world by the anti-Bush crowd. The message accused people who voted for Bush (using the term "you" so that it seemed it was directed right at the person reading it) of basically being stupid and irresponsible and for not caring about the future of the nation and simply sitting back and drinking beer bought on their "daddy's credit", or some such nonsense.

As I already noted, I was galled. Is this what it's become? People who, almost a week later, are still so upset that they've taken to attacking their friends and sorority sisters? As I said, I've always been on great terms with this girl and I haven't heard from her in a while, and it's so unbelievably disgusting that the most recent communication I have with her is simply her spitting on me because I disagreed with her. Since when are the issues that dearly matter to you (as I've stated in recent blog entries, the appointment of Supreme Court justices who won't be soft on crime was my largest motivating factor) grounds for attacks by others who you care about?

You don't HAVE to be a bloody moron. Amy is a polar opposite of me politically, but what did she say to me after she saw I voted for Bush? "You have failed me as a big. just kidding. i still love you even though you're a republican bastard. :)"

That seems to be what people are forgetting. You don't go around attacking loved ones simply because you differ. You just continue to love them despite that. I can think of relatives, friends, fellow Kallurians, and other loved ones who are on the opposite end of where I stand. And I would never, ever think of sending them a personal attack because of it.

01:18 PM [link]

Whiny people

11.04.04

I don't get where people get the nerve to march around with "He's not the President of me" signs after this election. He got the popular vote. He got the electoral vote. What in the world more do they want? And of course people are still complaining about the electoral college, which as my darling boyfriend pointed out, the people who are complaining now probably didn't find a damn thing wrong with it back when Clinton was elected and then re-elected. So your candidate didn't win. Guess what? Every time there's an election, someone's candidate doesn't win. What would my thoughts have been if Kerry had won? Not mass suicide or revolution or "He's not the President of me!", but rather simply, "Uh oh. I hope he picks competent people for his cabinet."

I also love the sentiment that suddenly the world is going to explode now that he's been re-elected, or that we just gave up all our precious rights. Our rights don't go anywhere - they're in the Constitution.

As far as people who complain about things like the Patriot Act that makes us give up some of our liberties in exchange for making criminals easier to stop...well, anyone who knows me knows how I feel about that, having a criminal justice degree and planning on going into federal law enforcement. Laws that were enacted because the people feared their own government more than they feared Osama prevented the FBI and the CIA from sharing information that could have predicted 9/11 (I glean this information from actual federal law enforcement officers who have spoken to my classes).

Which right would you rather give up - the right to know that the FBI peeked at what library books you took out, or the right to your life that a criminal (or terrorist, as the buzzword these post-9/11 days seems to be) would gladly take? You can't keep both, you can't ever be completely protected from both the government and the bad guys.

As someone whose future job is going to be protecting the country, whether it ends up being with the FBI or the DEA or another agency, I know I'm a little resentful about peoples' unwillingness to let the government protect them (and bitterly, bitterly bitter at the girl who looks like one of the Munsters and can't wait to be a public defender because those guys she talked to in jail were simply the nicest people she'd ever met), especially since a lot of people put their own life on the line to do so.

As a further note, I simply can't reconcile the fact that Democrats are generally for every possible government program to do things for them, but they're against government intrusion when it comes to fighting the bad guys.

01:16 PM [link]

Let it end

11.01.04

Is anyone else dying for the Scott Peterson trial to end? I'm hoping and praying that the jurors make the right choice, and that if they do, the judge doesn't decide that the prosecution didn't actually prove their case and override the jury's decision.

Does anyone REALLY doubt that he did it? It's like OJ Simpson all over again, let's just hope that the outcome is different. People suggest that the prosecution will have a difficult time since all they have is circumstantial evidence; however, my criminal law prof made me very happy the other day when he told us that he thinks circumstantial evidence isn't always a bad thing, and if you have enough it can paint a very damning picture of something that you wouldn't be able to prove otherwise.

05:18 PM [link]