night class might be fun after all

I just received a mass e-mail from one of my professors. It includes a few short power point + audio lectures introducing the subject matter of civil procedure. This is the same professor my mentor decribed as “unorthodox” and “fantastic,” and I’m guessing from the background music (Bob Dylan “Buckets of Rain”) and the random jokes interspersed through the lecture, I’m going to love this guy. If I can look forward to even one class twice a week, my weird afternoon/evening schedule might be worth it. And if I end up having off on Fridays…

Introductory legalese

Is there a course in this? I’ve been going through “Legal Writing in Plain English” by Bryan Garner for months with my two blog-buddies KEL and Lisslo. It’s an activity-based book, with short passages and exercises on methods to avoid wordy, confusing and boring language. (As I wrote that sentence, I took out an offending “of” phrase, which I practiced this week).

The exercises contain sentences like this: “In the absence of any proof to the contrary, the court should presume that the administrator’s functions have not ceased.”

Seriously, I had to re-read like five times to figure out what it actually described: “Without contrary proof, the court should presume that the administrator’s functions continue.”

In a way this summer has been about re-calibrating my brain for legal language. As Mr. Garner explains, law students spend years learning to comprehend legalese, and then must battle to avoid spewing more of it into the world.

I’m a bit afraid of what law school will do to my writing. It’s important to be precise, but just as important to be understood. Working through the exercises in this book, I’ve noticed there are many bad habits I naturally avoid, but several that I regularly participate in. There are other phrases, like the use of many negatives, that I just have a  hard time wrapping my brain around.

So please, if I ever use the phrase (from Garner’s $^it list) “during such time as” or “are in mitigation of,” please gently remind me to return to planet earth.

new things

Well, despite my father calling this a move to the dark side (but look it’s white and shiny and sleek and pretty!) I’ve followed the call of my soul and purchased my first Macbook.

Say "ooohh pretty"...

My Acer TravelMate has served me well the last four years, but he wasn’t going to survive the back and forth, in and out and moving around from library to apartment to home and back for three years. Armed with the UW Doit Tech Store student discount and assurance from the law school that I would not have issues taking exams on this baby, I made the switch. It’s actually been six years (gahh – I graduated from undergrad six years ago!) since I last used a Mac, so it’s quite different, and I’m still getting used to it.

But so far, very good.

I even saved $70 on Office for Mac (student discount) because someone I know was able to give me a copy, and I got Adobe Acrobat for free! I don’t need that software, but I now I can explore the wonderful world of creating PDFs! Yeah!

Another goal is to complete several projects around the house before I start school. I now have an entire week to tackle some of the more time consuming ones, like finishing the steps that lead up to our upstairs. Last year I ripped out the carpet in this area and had the floors re-sanded. The steps turned out really well, right?

Well, until you are going up them. Then you see this:

Ahhhh – so ugly I know. The people who did our floors didn’t have the part or whatever to do the vertical side. The sad part is, I’m so used to it, I don’t even notice. However, a month or so ago I cleaned out part of my basement and found my electric sander, which will make it a hundred times easier to take care of this. Then I will get it painted and be done with it.

I also need to paint my living room. I’m not sure about getting that done, but posting the goal on the internet is extra motivation, I think.

Last goal is general de-cluttering, starting by selling old books. I have boxes of books in my basement that, in reality, I will never want to look at again. I keep the books I love, but I don’t need these books. So I started a “store” on half.com, and already sold one book! I’m hoping the pile will shrink and I’ll make a few bucks, and the rest I will donate.