GRACE GOES ABROAD!

Two down, one to go.  A strange indolence has taken over me - one which I shall arrest shortly.  I hope.  No, I will ensure.  I allow passivity to take over me, as if I have no control over what I do, and then blame other factors than me - or maybe like to blame myself, when things don't go as well as they should.  This stops, now - well, after breakfast.  Then computer off, and it'll be just me and the crim.  Joy.

One down, two to go.   Even better, 5 credits down (the plughole?  The vortex of despair?), a mid-term and a 3 credit exam to go.  Sahweet.  I think we got a very interesting paper this morning; I like AB's exams for their depth of coverage.  They are very densely packed with issues and you never have enough time to thoroughly cover them all, but the paper tends to synthesise your knowledge.  However, not giving us anything about the seven weeks of eminent domain, zoning and nuisance was a biatch, if I may say so, Sir.  Still, as my esteemed classmates pointed out, they're interesting things and now we can indeed read the paper differently.

Countdown is beginning - we're nearly there.  Hard to believe, but in 48 hours I shall be relaxing with a glass of wine, some cheese, so I'm promised, and with not just the lovely lasses from my section but actually non-law students.  Sounds great.  It just requires me to write coherently about property for three hours beforehand... oops.

The panic has set in.  Yet, it has immobilised me.  I'm not working as efficiently or hard as I should.  I don't think I'm at the "well bugger that, there's no more I can do so stuff it" stage, so I don't quite understand what's going on.  Burnout?  Unlikely, and disappointing at this stage... So maybe just sheer tiredness.  Boredom may also play a part - I'm sick of it all.  However, with three full days before the exam I think I ought to motivate myself just a teensy bit more.

Any good news today?  Not really - Chief Justice John Roberts is as big a waste of space in curbing unconstitutional behaviour as I thought he'd be... although there are interesting free speech arguments that require greater consideration.  Saddam doesn't even have to turn up to listen to arguments about whether he massacred hundreds of people.  Man Utd are out of the Champions League, which I'm sure will do wonders for the whiskey brewers and drowning of sorrows, but isn't brilliant for English football.  However, I don't think I care anymore.  Oh, and a certain Mr FK dissed my site - out-of-date, past it, that sort of thing.  Not appreciated, china - and when's the last time you updated your site, eh?  What exactly could you have had pressing on your life that means you don't have time for a website? ahem.

Apparently, there's this thing you can do at law school (and, so I've heard, in education more generally) other than read cases and go to classes.  You can study and attempt to learn and apply the material.  Test yourself, that sort of thing.  Even more incredibly - it actually appears to be working in my case.  So I'm going home for Desperate Housewives, kahlua & milk and snoozing on the sofa until my beloved gets home.  Hoo-flipping-ray... 

Faith restored in humanity yet?  Via small steps, while not completely restoring me to normal, I think I'm en route.  People who have never spoken to me, but now I see around school all the time due to exam period, say hello.  Despite it being the most horrendous time in terms of stress, people are being friendly and helpful.  Kindness of friends despite drunken ranting (surely not, I hear you gasp).  The happiness of my friends - which, by the way, I only get to see via their blogs because I never get to see them.  However, the knowledge that good people are producing beautiful offspring who will hopefully go forth and make the world a better place is a reassuring thing.  The fact that I know how to ensure that the Bean's interest will vest is simply a bonus.  That's a law school joke - trust me, not even a funny one.  The articles of Julian Baggini - I love you Julian...  So maybe people are worth helping after all.

This fortnight Grace has finally finished the Behemoth - "having to leave the wonderful world created, back to a place where magic is not real, has been a real wrench." She also saw the Shane Black/Robert Downey Jnr/Val Kilmer comeback vehicle Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang - "surprisingly arch, a drama camping it up wonderfully that didn't insult the private eye heritage of Hammett and Chandler." She has started her Dickens for the winter - Hard Times, having finished the "playful and inventive" The London Pigeon Wars - shout out to Nussbaum for that one.

Oh, sweet, sweet democracy

It's not often I'm genuinely ashamed of my fellow Britons and their opinions.  Occasionally, the government, or certain portions of the population.  However, now I am disgusted, saddened, horrified and, worst of all, disappointed at the attitudes displayed about rape.  What can you do to change these people?  Now it appears that being unconscious is legal consent - how on earth can I go forward and seriously want to live at home again?

Wind seriously taken out of my sails today.  I've genuinely had a great Thanksgiving.  Now must make lemon cream pie.  Luckily I don't have to go and worry about how I get through the day because I can't get past the violence used against me.

As even mi madre has started complaining about the lack of blogging, here goes nothing.  LONG MEMO IS OVER.  Which rocks.  Footie season is over.  That does not rock.  I learned how to play beerpong, and didn't do too badly for first attempt.  Anything else in the last few weeks?

Oh, yes, that's it - I learned far too much about people's misogyny in our criminal classes.  I was utterly distressed at several things in our discussions of the law of rape.  First: how much trouble is it really to ask if someone wants to go ahead with sexual intercourse?  Apparently too much, and this distressed me even more that people don't seem to think you should stop to, say, a) make sure you don't rape someone and b) find out about condoms - does no one educated practise safe sex at all?  Second: it troubles me that no one connected that it was perhaps slightly hypocritical and morally difficult to think that a 16 year old cannot consent to sex - not at all - with a 21 year old, but an 18 year old woman who says "no" repeatedly is consenting because she didn't get the 15 stone bloke off her and unlock the door to leave.  But apparently I'm an outlier in these things and I maybe shouldn't presume I'm right.  Third: I am never going camping with anyone of the opposite sex again.  Like I'm a camping girl anyway...

Other things troubling in graceworld at the moment do exist, but I can't really think what they are as I'm too tired and too happy to think that I have a quiet night in, catching up on House and eating tortilla.  Plus, there's Thanksgiving and being able to actually read something other than a law textbook on the train up.  Huzzah.  Our guestflow has also dried up, although there are a few in the mix for the next few weeks, but nothing like before.  It's been glorious, but admittedly difficult in terms of balancing the old work/life issues and time commitment.

New photos to be seen in the gallery, very soon,by the way, courtesy of Anna.  I promise to get my photos developed this weekend, I promise...

This week Grace has listened to "ESG: A South Bronx Story", which is the greatest hits of a group who were given electronic instruments by their parents in order to stay out of trouble in their, ahem, difficult neighbourhood. She says "unlike anything else you'll hear - and utterly wonderful".  She has also caught up on VM episodes and thinks that Sheriff Lamb may yet redeem himself.  She has failed to see the new Potter, nor do anything else cultural.  She deserves your pity as well as censure.  She has discovered IM - and is therefore down with the kids, but can't handle facebook/friendster just yet.  She also saw the arctic monkeys live in the flesh - "a voice to remember - versatile and charismatic."  

I am now drowning under my work.  It's official.  I have worked fairly hard for the last few weeks, but am still nowhere near where I should be.  Long Memo - kicking my arse and I cannot find anything about that bleeding last case.  Boooooo.  However, I may vaguely get torts.  So that's good.

SEVEN YEARS. 

This week Grace has not read anything other than cases about search and seizure; she is not happy about this.  She has listened to a lot more of the arctic monkeys, and likes what she hears.

Harriet Miers.  This is a toughie.  It raises all sorts of questions as to who we want on the Supreme Court - should it just be Ivy Leaguers?  Absolutely not.  But how else do we measure the brightest and best?  Are we capable of doing so in any other way than where they went to university, what posts have they held since?  And, should we?  All too morally and philosophically confusing.  Don't even start me on voluntary manslaughter.  Or the people here trying to freak us out about finding jobs.  WE'VE BEEN HERE TWO MONTHS.  These people are shad, quite frankly.

It seems I'm currently (as in, this afternoon) at saturation point.  Cannot take anymore.  Great.  I actually sit down to do this outlining bollocks, and I'm just not capable.  Maybe tomorrow...  Actually, maybe tomorrow.  There's an idea.  The visiting has been fabulous, but it does play havoc with my schedule and guilty mental conflicts as to who I should be spending time with - my loved ones or my books - aren't easily resolved.

Got out of town to see the leaves.  They are stupidly beautiful - it really is a wonder, and running out of vocabulary to describe their magnificence is an embarrassment, but it does seem to happen to all of us.    I'm still ridiculously overexcited about knowing why they change colour, which is only something I've learnt in the past year, from going to the Natural History Museum here in NYC.  No pumpkin as of yet, though, which is an oversight.  However, I've had a mouthful of a rather wonderful pumpkin pie creme brulee, which is one of the niceest things I've eaten all year...  So that's something, I suppose, if I fail my classes.

This week Grace has still failed to finish her book, but has read 100 more pages.  She has also learnt that Metrosexual Man has been replaced by Ubersexual Man, but fails to see what that has to do with Donald Trump.  She saw "A History of Violence" at the cinema, and while appreciating the great craft of acting exhibited by all the players, was underwhelmed and feels it would have been much more interesting if Cronenberg had taken a different tack.  She was also disappointed to see that there are no more curses in baseball.  

WE SCORED!!!!  WE SCORED A GOAL!!!  WE SAVED A PENALTY!!!(But yes, we did give away a penalty).  We ROCK.  And the mighty Spurs got a draw at Old Trafford - well done Mr Jenas, who is currently on fire.  Supreme.  See below for a most glamorous photo of our most glamorous and wonderful team.

It appears that this is indeed a Thursday thing - intriguing.  Or, indeed, not.  At all. 

As it's just taken me three attempts to type in one symbol which caused me immense difficulty, this shall be brief.  Just a quick update on the old doing something for the earthquake - apparently it's down to me because it's not possible for the Fordham board to think of anything they could do to help.  Grand.  Just what I needed.  Still, had inspiring talk last night about rape - seriously - and also today from women (all women - why?) going for fellowships to do Public Interest (PI from now on - or maybe even ¸ - fnar fnar) work.

What I do want to get into at some point is the imbalance of treatment for the genders in war conflict situations - not just in what actually takes place but our understanding and allocation of import. Why does the shocking brutality of it often comes home not from the mass slaughter of men, but from the stories of gang rape, rape of children?  Is it that women are the majority of the people who survive, and that the men who are left to tell the tales are often the perpetrators or are at least complicit?  Have we swayed too far in our narration and interpretation that we underestimate the terror and brutality in cold-blooded murder?  Having said that, the testimony of the Rwandan woman who had 7 of her 10 family members murdered, was raped 6 times in a day, saw her sister raped and murdered in front of her, and entrusted her 20-month-old to a neighbouring Hutu couple, friends, who then murdered him - is it more brutal that they kept her alive to live through this?

I can't write anything cheery now.  Sorry.  Other than there was a victory last week for workers - the removal of the immigrant status question from the street vendor licence application (vetoed by Bloomberg, naturally) - it's wonderful y enhorabuena a todos - los vendedores, las abogadas Mayra Peter-Quintero, Flor Bermudez, y los politicos que apoyaban la acta.  I hope it makes a difference to these brave people and those who come after them.  Tambien - les prometo que vaya a hacer la pagina con los mejores cincos!  or something much more grammatically acceptable.  Next week... plus hopefully, finally, photos from the various weddings over the summer and indeed new of my mother's visit...  oh, and GRACE PICKERING.  I realised that I hadn't got that on the website, so if you type it into Google you don't find me.  How stooopid am I?  Annoying, too, if you think about that last sentence.  Sorry.  

Tiredness is such an annoying thing.  I was going to make every one of my subjects bend to my will this week, but instead I've been sleeping off excesses - not ideal for willbending.  Still, it's not been a completely wasted week as I managed to stay sober on some occasions, although last night the $4 lychee martinis combined with NO PROPERTY this morning meant that sobriety was a distant friend.  Rock AND, indeed, ROLL!!!!

I've been very disappointed with my school's response to the Pakistani Earthquake crisis - we've, rightly, been pouring support to the victims of Katrina.  However, almost a week has passed since 25,000 people lost their lives, and 2 million were made homeless, and we've heard nothing from the Fordham management.  Disappointing, and I hope the Dean has a good answer as to why... Maybe it is just that it's too far away, geographically and culturally, from what most people here know.  I know that very few people here at school seem to realise that it's Eid today - I was definitely worried that the coincidence of Eid and Yom Kippur would lead to some kind of spiritual and mystic meltdown of the cosmos, but we appear to be ok thus far.  It's not mentioned anywhere, whereas YK gets a mention in the papers for being here.  Another illustration of why there are different priorities for people in the Middle East conflict.  Fair Enough.  Yet another: it appears that my spellcheck can handle YK, but not Eid (and, indeed, not spellcheck.  Oops, that can't be right, can it?).  I have learnt about atoning today, and that it is Leviticus that tells us to abominate owls.  Grand.  I like the idea of trying to reconcile your wrongs and taking a day to reflect on what you've done and felt over the past year, to clean the slate and live right in the next year.  I think I'm rather facile when it comes to spiritual cleansing, but maybe it's something I should do more often, rather than ignoring my many sins and bad behaviour because it makes me feel uncomfortable, while I still make myself feel guilty over natural and good impulses and my failure to trim down my thighs.

I've also failed to comment on the incredibly inspiring tribunal on Domestic Workers' Rights. I'll put it in more detail at the weekend, but it was incredible, particularly Doudou Diene's insights into the labour flow and changing balance between the hemispheres, and the powerful and brave women who told their stories were amazing.  I have nothing but admiration for their struggles and refusal to give in - and fear for all those who have not yet been reached.

This week, Grace has failed to read a single further page of Mr Norrell.  Apologies to all for such slackness.  On a brighter note, she discovered the charms of "My Name is Earl", the new Jason Lee vehicle on NBC, which appears to have comedic potential and a gloriously vivid use of colour.  Hats off to you, folks.  She has also discovered the joy of the new FF album - good work, boys.  May your wry lyrics and feyness win you great success.  

This was taken in v. swish club Lotus, where many men tried to feel me up despite the presence of Mark, and where the food is fabulous.

Occasionally I have a sufficient mental blank that I genuinely don't think anything.  This is not the same thing as thinking inane things that don't constitute anything of significance, which happens to me on a regular basis.  This is a moment of nothingness.  It's not frightening, but rather serene.  Nirvana?  Let's not get above ourselves.

No House for a month.  This is a shoddy, shoddy thing to do, even for those of us who enjoy the whole beisbol enterprise.  YOUR MISSION, HOUSE FANS: watch Jeeves & Wooster, Blackadder the Third and Blackadder Goes Forth and realise how Hugh Laurie's transformation into this misanthrope is so disturbing for us British folk.  Even better, now read "Joy in the Morning" - with the Fry and Laurie voices in your head, it makes for glorious reading.  Everyone should own a copy.

Grace is currently reading "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell", having finished "Civil Warrior" by Guy Saperstein. Mr Saperstein (Esq!), while being undoubtedly a wonderful lawyer who won his clients some wonderful justice, is not a man I warmed to wonderfully as a wonderful person.  I'm glad his children love him.  Grace last week saw "El Crimen Ferpecto" - according to IMDB this is the title, so this is the title Grace is going with.  She rated it an 8.  

This weekend has been marked by several events of personal significance.  I have learnt that hangovers are, surprisingly, not conducive to good centrehalf performances, particularly when you play a very fast and decent centreforward.  Mike Piazza retired after a committed and devoted performance for the Mets - he will be sadly missed.  More importantly, a devoted friend and companion, my cat of eighteen years' standing, died after a brain tumour.  We could show him compassion; we allowed him some dignity after suffering cancer.  He was stretched out and relaxed in death in a way that he hadn't been for years.  My mum and brother held him as he died and comforted him.  This creature was in my life every day as I grew up, patted my face when I cried, who always appeared at the door when I got home and hugged me at night.  Another part of my childhood has disappeared for good, and that, as well as the gap that has opened up at his death, will cause me disquiet that I don't think I can estimate until I go home to a house without him.

Positive notes have arisen: we had a fifth floor party, finally, which featured an amazing array of people full of ideas, experiences and backgrounds that typify my New York encounters and acquaintance.  We are in a position of luxury - we have wonderful neighbours with incredible passions and we are the intellectuals who don't have to face the daily grind in the same way.  The life I lead here may not be SATC/Parkside Princess, but you can ignore the mundanity that others have no choice but to accept; there is a glamour about Manhattan that permeates our time here, even in Hamilton Heights.  

Ah, that fateful day in April.  And here was I thinking that it was just a bug or two.  That stuff absolutely killed my machine, and I now think that hanging's too good for the people who create spyware - you know who you are.  DIEDIEDIE.

However, it has been good for me.  I've decided to give birth to a new version of the website, and it's a spur to learn html.  So that's what I'm doing.  Along with the law school, advocacy projects, and visitors.  I'm certainly not burning the candle at both ends.  Ahem.  

The old website can now be found at if you want to find it.  I'm sure you will...

This is about all for now - it's just a serious achievement to get this up, given the fights I've had with ftp and various insignificant technical things that have somehow caused me to struggle this week with the website issues.  Tomorrow I'll have more to say, I'm sure, including a report on the footie game and latest thrashing, quadricep injury and on the place we're going to tonight.  If they let us in, that is.  Distinctly possible they won't, given our scruffiness!!!!

The sun is out.  The sky is blue.  I'm in love and so are you, Dear Prudence.

Don't look for sources of the original lyrics from the purple wizard album on google.  42 spyware things later, I appear to be a little safer but yikes indeed.  Too many popups, not djs.

Our smoke alarm beeped away again this morning.  Strange how the only time I set something on fire (is there a special term for someone who repeatedly ignites tea towels?) it didn't go off, but god forbid you need to eat sausages in the morning.