2007-08-24 - 5:00 p.m.

I�m so mopey right now, what with summer being pretty much over and me having taken on way too many responsibilities in the upcoming semester (which starts Monday). Way too many responsibilities. As if Tracy Flick.

On the positive side, my gig at the thug-repping law firm yielded a real job offer, to be a real-life lawyer come next September, post-Bar and post-Bar-globetrotting. I�m so excited! What�s more, they gave me the choice between going into litigation or transactions. This was a thrill, since I�d been told it�s pretty hard to get into transactional work straightaway, at least with a big firm. The big firms don�t want to pay the big-firm money while training you to do transactional stuff because training is slooow going, whereas law school prepares you to work your little socks off as a litigation research bot right out of the gate. But being a transactional attorney provides you with a super-diverse range of career paths, so I�d been hoping such an offer would come my way. And it did! Hooray! Now I�m just annoyed that I�m doing a full-time externship for a federal judge during the fall semester. Working for a judge is something one would do if one were going to be a litigator. And I am not, as it turns out. And I have to pay for my own lousy expensive downtown parking! I guess the job still provides resume fodder, but still. I�d rather be taking nonsense classes and being a complete layabout like my fellow 3Ls. (Third-year law students typically manage to arrange their schedules so that they only have to come on campus two or three times a week, at most. Not this third-year law student. Oh no. I am teaching a first-year Legal Writing course, TAing for an Intellectual Property course, vice-chairing the Moot Court board, working 35 hours per week for a judge, and taking one actual class where I�m supposed to learn things. Why have I done this to myself? I have no idea.)

More news on the personal achievement front: Last Sunday, Erik and I hiked to the top of Half Dome! This had been on my list of stuff to do, but I never set aside a block of time to train for it. I still did not train, but I figured since I had one week left before the world�s most poorly planned semester commences, why not attempt Half Dome? We�ve been hiking Runyan Canyon several times a week, and I do believe this has had some effect on our cardiovascular systems. Indeed, we actually felt just fine and made it to the top in a little over four hours. Whoo hoo! Coming down pretty much sucked, however, as it was hard on my old-lady knees and wasn�t nearly as triumphant an endeavor. I was in traction the next day. It was worth it though. The views up there were so ridiculously beauteous. Also, I was impressed with the squirrels at the top of Half Dome. They seem to have evolved into some sort of strain of uber-squirrel. One trotted off with an entire apple core, and I watched another dash away carrying an ENTIRE TUBE of Ritz crackers. I leapt with excitement over the Ritz cracker squirrel. What a champion.

One other bit of excitement �round these parts: I�m getting my tattoo removed! I made the mistake of branding myself with a really hideous tattoo when I was 19 and I�ve regretted it forever. I�m actually really self-conscious about it and won�t wear shirts that might afford a glimpse of it. The doctor said he believes he�ll be able to remove it completely with no scarring (thank GOD I chose black ink). I�ll probably have to go in for at least four laser treatments, which are rumored to be horribly unpleasant, and the whole process is going to cost at least 15 times what I paid to get the tattoo in the first place, but I don�t care. I want it off me.

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