31 January 2006

I missed Chimpy’s speech. Too depressing to see our elected representatives applauding the man who is hell-bent on destroying what’s left of our republic.

Busy as a little bee with schoolwork. I think I’ve spent too much time around other people lately. I need some pure alone time, and I don’t know if I’ll have any before Sunday. Daddy’s getting cranky.

New Orleans in March? Can I wing it? Does it make sense?

Check out www.cuteoverload.com

29 January 2006

Farmers’ market report: beef, fava greens, oranges, white Malaysian guavas, a cherimoya, and eggs.

Nice dinner party for 12 at the home of an old friend from the gym. How lovely to be back among the bourgeoisie again:

Là, oú tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,

Luxe, calme, et volupté.

A beautiful, if small, house (it probably cost $700K, and he easily spent $250K remodeling it to make it practical). Good food. Interesting, educated, and varied guests. Good wine. Nice music. Und so weiter.

I walked home, since the J-Church was nowhere to be found. 2.25 miles, according to Mapquest, but that meant  half of one real hill and then two small hills. The rain had stopped. It was a beautiful walk past Dolores Park and so forth.

Tomorrow: schoolwork and the gym, and no excuses.

26 January 2006

Ok, Daddy’s getting cranky. Where did that rain come from yesterday? My crush has dropped out of the one class we share, so that sucks. Not that it was going to go anywhere, but now I have to post a new listing for Personal Muse on Craigslist. And the class we shared was in an overheated room that always smelled mysteriously of okra.

At least I got a good grade in one class last semester. It kept my GPA from swirling down the terlet.

And I still have to find a job.

And I’m single and bitterish.

And I’m over-scheduled.

Same woman in two classes won’t turn her phone to silent, so it vibrates loudly three times each class. She pretends it's not hers.

And I’m struggling to understand the law in one area: the intersection of the VRA and the 14th Amendment. If three circuits are wildly split on this, maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad.

Hamas wins and Sharon is still comatose. Could get interesting. Alito will be confirmed, and Our Leader becomes Emperor Chimpy I.

23 January 2006

I sliced a finger open while washing knives. Gory.

Dropping a class is the right decision. There’s only so much information my little brain can absorb in a day. I decided to drop the boring class and keep the interesting one. Doy.

“Terrorist surveillance”, Chimpy? Try getting a warrant. See U.S. Const. amend IV. It applies to you, too.

No touching to report, even though I had a date with the massagist last night. Korean food in the Sunset. Not bad.

Day eight of not drinking. Who knew. So far, so good.  I miss the taste but not the sensation.

I still don’t have a summer job. And I have no interviews lined up.

The gym this evening (chest and triceps) was the perfect antidote to the bad mood that accumulated during the day. Some future lawyers are just toxic. Immature and toxic.

I made the world’s fastest meatloaf for dinner tonight. It’s fast, and you can have it ready to bake before the oven has finished preheating. 

About 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, cooked rice, cracker crumbs, or what not.

1 egg

About 1/4 cup wine or beer

A little Dijon mustard, if you like

1/2 of a medium onion, grated on the big holes of a box grater

Salt

Pepper, and chili pepper, if you like

Herbs of your choice, fresh or dried

One slice of bacon, chopped into small dice (optional)

1 lb ground meat.

Preheat oven to 450. Oil a baking dish (not a loaf pan). Mix all ingredients but the meat until well blended. Add the meat and mix with your hands until homogenous. Dump into baking dish and pat flat until it is less than 1-inch thick throughout. (This is the key to speed). Bake for about 20 minutes, or until no pink shows when you peek into the center.

21 January 2006

Well, I might drop a class. I think I’ve overloaded my schedule. If I do the usual math, I’ll have 72 hours of schoolwork each week, and, on top of that, I have to find a job for next summer. I don’t think I can successfully do it all. Too bad, because it’s one of my favorite classes, and I have two friends in it, and I bought a $100 book for it. Crappity crap crap.

Farmers’ market report. It was a hot chocolate morning: cold, dark, and damp. The smell of wood smoke hung and bacon heavily over the market from the booths that sell cooked food.  I got: white Malaysian guavas, Clementines, honey tangerines, chard, beef, eggs, and chrysanthemums. I’ve spent the rest of the afternoon at school, reading cases, and surfing the internet.  It was too cold in my apartment to study there, so I’m high up over the Tenderloin, looking out at the skyscrapers of downtown, the Bay Bridge, and Oakland and the East Bay Hills in the background. A few hardy sailors are out on the Bay today. Even though I’m 20 stories up in the sky, I can hear the heavy Milanese “Peter Witt” trams rolling down Market Street.

Is it the coffee? The sunshine? Or am I in a better mood today?

17 January 2006

No, I’m not pulling a Chad Fox and disappearing for days at a time. I’ve been very busy with school. Plus sick to my stomach. I spent 15 hours yesterday working on a brief with my moot court teammates. It’s a learning experience, I keep telling myself. Some of those kids are very smart.

No touching to report.  As for the massagist—well, I don’t know what’s up with him. He may be still in the hospital. Or just not calling me back.

Now, for a lovely mid-afternoon nap.

12 January 2006

First day of classes. No big surprises. I think all my professors will be good. I’ll have lots of reading. I was going to drop my advanced legal research class, but our first in-class assignment convinced me that it might be useful: I couldn’t find the answer to this simple question: is there a right to a jury trial in California if the state sues you for back taxes? It doesn’t hurt that my South American crush is in that class, too. The only trouble with my schedule is that I have no idea when I’m going to be able to move the car to avoid the street sweepers.

I applied for a summer job today. Keep your fingers crossed. It’s a firm where I’d really like to work. Local, mid-sized, and with specialties I’m interested in. And no insurance defense work.

I just finished Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel, Prep. The tale of a very observant teenager who  flees the deepest Midwest to attend prep school in New England. I stayed up late two nights in a row so that I could finish it before school started. I also read (and recommend) Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities, which Elaine Pagels describes as “a fascinating introduction to an astonishing range of ‘lost Christianities’ that flourished at the time when the Christian movement began.” Ehrman describes some of the early forms of Christianity that were suppressed or destroyed by the factions that came to define orthodox Christian beliefs. It also describes current scholarship on who wrote the books of the New Testament (hint: it wasn't the Apostles). Lost Christianities would make good reading for the Fundamentalists on your Xmas list, especially if they’re the type that profess the belief that the Bible is literally true and inerrant, which to me seems like nothing less than plain old willful moronism. Which Bible is literally true? In which language? In which version? If you wish to believe creation myths that were suitable to the understanding of a tribe of nomadic barbarians, fine. But don’t try to have it taught as “science” in public schools. Condemn your own children to ignorance, but not anyone else’s. <end rant>

The massagist is under the weather, so to speak. I’m going to try to see him this weekend. So all is not over. Whew.

The gym was a bust tonight. I made the mistake of trying to read the paper while on the elliptical machine. Ooof. After only 20 minutes, I was thoroughly motion-sick.

Tomorrow: lots of very efficient and productive editing work, a much-needed visit to the hairdresser, and lots of studying. It’s going to be great.

So Mrs. Alito left the Senate hearing in tears. But she left while her husband was being questioned by a Republican senator? I smell a rat. It was a P.R. charade, and a cynical one at that.

TIME magazine writes: “The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: ‘Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband's confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development.'"

Alito's confirmation will bring us one step closer to the end of our little experiment with a republic. Hello, Empire!

9 January 2005

School daze. I bought most of my books for next semester. Only $319 this time. The remaining book will bring it over $400.

Only one grade has been reported so far — everyone is on pins and needles. And the grade website is apparently down this evening. I hope I didn’t fail Evidence. The shame.

A few resolutions for the gays at the gym:

• You won’t wear stinky clothes. It’s not butch; it’s gross.
• You won’t wear a square-cut bathing suit as your gym shorts. TMI.
• You won’t wear tights as your gym shorts. TMI.
• You may have looked Hot in tiny gym shorts, a tucked-in t-shirt, long athletic socks, and white sneakers in 1980, but they don’t look good on you now, even though you still have a nice body.
• You won’t hang your dirty underwear on a towel hook in the showers.
• You will exercise your legs regularly.
• More and more muscles won’t make you sexier. Why advertise that you're trying to compensate for something?

And so Cheney went to the hospital again yesterday. The sooner he resigns, the sooner Chimpy’s impeachment proceedings can safely begin.

8 January 2006

Today marks the 126th anniversary of the death of Emperor Norton I.

Not much progress in my schoolwork, but much rest and quiet and solitude. No touching to report. I think I needed a little time to myself today.

The dating adventures with the massagist may be coming to an end, alas. I know it must be hard for you to keep up with all my various suitors.

I love my new pillows. Plans for the week: finish my portion of the writing assignment. Buy schoolbooks. Visit the eye doctor and the hairdresser. Exchange one Xmas present.

A few resolutions: 

• Meet in person my two favorite bloggers, one of whom lives here, though the other lives far away.
• Have a kick-ass semester in trade school but maintain my real life
• Find a good summer job.
• Date someone suitable

7 January 2006

I can’t believe I missed the first palindromic date of the year yesterday. At least eleven more chances.

Farmers’ market report: blood oranges, baby mustard greens, eggs, beef, sweet potatoes, and lilies.

Other items: I had a nice date with the massagist on Thursday. We had a great meal at Canteen, which included a scallop ceviche with tarragon, braised pork belly with chestnut purée, short ribs, and a vanilla soufflé. In the morning, I made him my famous browned butter & cornmeal waffles with my own strawberry jam and marmalade syrup.

And Chad Fox is not leaving San Francisco, which is good news.

Trade school resumes in less than a week. I feel as if the prison doors are about to close back in on me.

Gotta go. I have some cheese straws to make before I head over to my parents’ for our second and final Xmas celebration.

I’m working on some New Year’s resolutions, some of which I may post for your vicarious edification.

2 January 2006

Hello from Silverlake, where it’s pissing down rain (3-5 inches expected by tonight). The drive down was uneventful, if rainy. My hosts have a delightful Golden Retriever puppy (who just slobbered on my keyboard). I’m sleeping in the breakfast nook, which is more fun than it sounds, since there’s no table here, just me and my futon. I realized that I Overpacked, once again. How many outfits does a guy need, especially when he’s prone to wearing the same thing day after day? The plan for LA: gym and lunch with a friend, catching up on my reading (Dororthy L. Sayers’ Have His Carcase [sic], school stuff), resting, the gym, maybe a museum, and cooking dinner for my hosts. Tonight’s menu: lentil soup with escarole, and whatever else strikes my fancy.