tell me about the wind from Santa Ana
Mar. 18th, 2011 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenIt's the Friday before spring break and everyone is happy. There are people on the streets in costume, carrying musical instruments and dancing, the undergraduates are burning things on the plaza, the law school is eerily sunlit and deserted. It's a balmy fourteen degrees outside with blue sky, and optimists everywhere in flowing skirts and lacy tops. The normally taciturn bus driver announced, "Thank you for riding TCAT Route 30! Have a wonderful spring break!" to pleased whooping from the back. I'm in a good mood, too; I got out of bed and tidied my apartment with the windows open to the breeze, and on a whim invited a friend to lunch and ate pitta bread and fresh salad and made fun of passing freshmen. Life is good.
gavagai's visit turned out lovely. On Wednesday, we went to the First But Nevertheless Annual Faculty Pie-Eating Contest, and paid three dollars apiece to watch five of the nation's finest legal minds get blueberry pie up their nose. About two hundred people turned up and raised seven hundred dollars for the New Orleans trip. I am impressed. It's now two days till I go, and I have my work assignment - mostly manual work in the Lower Ninth Ward, and I am surprisingly not at all disappointed not to be doing legal work. I do legal work every day of my life. And I've got my whole life for pro bono, too - maybe it's best that I work out in the sunlight being of some concrete social use just this once. I'm looking forward to it so much, and when I get back I want to put in for my public service award. My adorable con law professor recommends soup kitchen work, when I return; I think I will. (My con law professor really is adorable; I was sneaking in late to class a couple of days back and walked in to him saying, "Fighting words! Blah blah blah motherfucker blah blah!" Yesterday he asked me to explain the collateral bar rule. I have no idea, I said, I didn't do civ pro. He looked at me fondly and said, "Oh, you English.") I really do want to be a better lawyer: better in every sense of the word. If writing rude letters to bailiffs and handing out soup and bread is the way forward, then so be it.
gavagai left yesterday morning and got home safely eighteen hours later, and I am still a little startled by the wonder of air travel. The Siren, Baby E and I went for dinner last night and had a lovely time - we found a restaraunt that served us wine without IDing us, served us piles of food and ridiculously good chocolate cake and once we'd found it, we stayed there all night - and by the time we all wandered home Laura was flying into London. This realisation over cake and white wine. Isn't it extraordinary how you can be in one place and then another, so fast? The Siren is in Puerto Rico this morning, having called me at midnight to shout, "I have to be up in four hours and next door are having a fight! She just ran her car over his foot!" (I found this too hilarious to be any concrete help. She eventually decided not to call the cops and even made it to the airport on time.)
I feel like the sunshine has remade me from the inside out, bones, flesh and skin. What a wonderful world.
gavagai's visit turned out lovely. On Wednesday, we went to the First But Nevertheless Annual Faculty Pie-Eating Contest, and paid three dollars apiece to watch five of the nation's finest legal minds get blueberry pie up their nose. About two hundred people turned up and raised seven hundred dollars for the New Orleans trip. I am impressed. It's now two days till I go, and I have my work assignment - mostly manual work in the Lower Ninth Ward, and I am surprisingly not at all disappointed not to be doing legal work. I do legal work every day of my life. And I've got my whole life for pro bono, too - maybe it's best that I work out in the sunlight being of some concrete social use just this once. I'm looking forward to it so much, and when I get back I want to put in for my public service award. My adorable con law professor recommends soup kitchen work, when I return; I think I will. (My con law professor really is adorable; I was sneaking in late to class a couple of days back and walked in to him saying, "Fighting words! Blah blah blah motherfucker blah blah!" Yesterday he asked me to explain the collateral bar rule. I have no idea, I said, I didn't do civ pro. He looked at me fondly and said, "Oh, you English.") I really do want to be a better lawyer: better in every sense of the word. If writing rude letters to bailiffs and handing out soup and bread is the way forward, then so be it.gavagai left yesterday morning and got home safely eighteen hours later, and I am still a little startled by the wonder of air travel. The Siren, Baby E and I went for dinner last night and had a lovely time - we found a restaraunt that served us wine without IDing us, served us piles of food and ridiculously good chocolate cake and once we'd found it, we stayed there all night - and by the time we all wandered home Laura was flying into London. This realisation over cake and white wine. Isn't it extraordinary how you can be in one place and then another, so fast? The Siren is in Puerto Rico this morning, having called me at midnight to shout, "I have to be up in four hours and next door are having a fight! She just ran her car over his foot!" (I found this too hilarious to be any concrete help. She eventually decided not to call the cops and even made it to the airport on time.) I feel like the sunshine has remade me from the inside out, bones, flesh and skin. What a wonderful world.
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no subject
on 2011-03-18 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-20 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-18 10:48 pm (UTC)That sounds awesome!
no subject
on 2011-03-20 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-18 08:49 pm (UTC)Anyway. I am glad that you get to do manual labour in ninth district, yes.
I have found working with homeless people to be hugely rewarding, and would kind of suggest if you can doing something where you can share skills rather than give hand outs. I mean, I get if you don't want your extra curiculas to be too brain taxing, but you could do ace stuff with writing and literacy, I suspect.
Xx
no subject
on 2011-03-20 05:34 pm (UTC)The nice thing here is that the soup kitchen is really a drop-in for all sorts of things: food, but also legal advice, warm place to be for a while, etc.
no subject
on 2011-03-18 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-20 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-18 10:53 pm (UTC)I feel like the sunshine has remade me from the inside out, bones, flesh and skin. What a wonderful world.
This is very much how I feel today, too!
no subject
on 2011-03-20 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-18 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-20 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-03-19 01:05 am (UTC)You are going to be the greatest lawyer. And thank you for coming all this way and helping with a beleaguered American city - we appreciate it.
no subject
on 2011-03-20 05:35 pm (UTC)