tasking has been taxing

I’m pretty sure it’s not good.

Oh, I mean, it’s got good parts, and it’s probably a good start, but I’m pretty sure it’s not actually good. I can’t even add “yet” to the end of that sentence; I’m not really sure it’s going to be good. I have hope, but my hope is definitely tempered with a little bit of realistic dismay.

It’s not as long as I thought it would be; I’m sure it will grow, though. It’s not as fluid as I wanted it to be, but I think that’s expected of a first draft. The biggest problem, though, is that I’m not sure I’ve said anything new at all. Maybe that’s OK—maybe this really is just one of those papers that brings a lot of different thoughts together to bear on a particular problem. Maybe it’s OK to not break new ground in recommending a complete change in thinking if I’m breaking new ground in suggesting that a problem exists that people haven’t recognized, and that other (smarter, maybe) people than I have already outlined the solution—it’s just a matter of applying the solution.

Whatever. All I know is that I have to put the damn thing away for a few hours or days before I come back and reread it, and then send it in. And wait for the (first draft) verdict.

foodblogging, yay!

I like spaghetti squash. But all that bunk about being able to treat spaghetti squash just like pasta is just that: bunk. It tastes like squash, therefore it is not good with red sauce, olive oil and basil, or anything else I’d sauce pasta with. But it’s tasty, pretty good for you, and doesn’t require a lot of fussing—you apply heat in your favorite form (steam, bake, microwave steam, whatever), chop in half (or you can do those two things in the opposite order, depending on how you are applying the heat), and use a fork to pull the threads out into a big pile.

But still, it’s not a pasta replacement. And I always struggle with how to prepare it because of that. Until I found this recipe. This looked really good, pretty easy, and we had a spaghetti squash sitting around, so I made it.

OMG. SO GOOD.

Of course I had to adjust it a bit. I added about a teaspoon of garlic powder because I like garlic, and I cooked the pancakes in butter in my cast-iron skillet. Make them relatively thin or they’ll be too soft and mushy. I served them with low-fat sour cream and some leftover spiced apples we had. (No applesauce, but the spiced apples were probably better.)

MMMMMMM. YUMMY.

Weekly Law School Roundup #114

Welcome to the Easter-Spring-Break-sorry-it’s-so-short Roundup!

• Decisions. terra nullius
• Still browsing A (non)Token Minority Law Student
• Benefits Mommy on the Floor
• Starting PT-LawMom
• Learning Butterflyfish
• Wild Frequent Citations
• Argh! the last refuge of the persecuted crack smoker
• Beards Peanut Butter Burrito

Look for next week’s roundup at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground, and then back here in two weeks.

tired.

As much as I am enjoying the writing (and I really am, when I am actually making progress and know what I’m doing), it hit me this morning just how tired I am.

I’m tired of dealing with . . . everything. I’m tired of dealing with authors, I’m tired of being the go-to person for a variety of tasks which I thought I delegated away, I’m tired of not having time to sit and watch TV or clean my house or take Himself on a decently long walk. I’m tired of the neverending work; I can’t go home and get away from it because it is always there, needing to be worked on. I’m tired of feeling like I don’t have time to go to the gym because it takes two and a half hours to get there and back and get a decent workout done, and I don’t have two and a half hours in the day to spare. I’m just tired.

Graduation is looming, looming, looming and, while I often wish I had another year of law school so I could take all those classes I didn’t get to take and learn all that stuff I never got to learn, I know what a bad thing that would be for me. I’d just end up back in this same spot, fending off ever more work and getting more and more tired. I cannot even begin to describe how eager I am to just have a job and not feel like my minutes on the train or bus need to spent reading and thinking about The Task or exams or journal work, to be able to leave work at work (even if I leave it at work late in the day). Long hours I can deal with; neverending hours I cannot. At least not these kind of neverending hours.

worst weather year ever

I am distressed—nay, appalled—that it freaking snowed 2″ last night. Yesterday was BEAUTIFUL—45 degrees, sunny, breezy, very “Spring is on the way!”

Today, it’s wet and snowy and cold and it looks like it’s going to stay that way through Easter. Barf.

At least I have this paper to write so the sunshine won’t taunt me. Yeah, that’s my lemonade.

still tasking, but a little closer to being done

I am at just under 14,000 words, and I think I probably need at least 5000 to finish this sucker. But it’s coming along, slowly but surely. I am happy with what I’ve got so far, too, and that, to me, is more important than hitting any predetermined length. There’s something about hitting that stride, where you know what you want to write, you know you either have the source you need (or that you don’t have it and need to find it, but that it exists), and you just do it. Of course, there’s also something about being in that mode and struggling mightily for words. Which is how I spent a lot of today. Boo.

tasking

I was out of town for four days and it was terrific—I got little sleep, came down with a three day sinus infection (or maybe I was just allergic to my best friend’s hometown), and did absolutely no work.

However, I’m back now, and racing towards a deadline. I’m about halfway through the first draft of The Task. I’m currently at 26 single-spaced pages and 12,740 words. I could theoretically stop when I hit about 18,000, but I think I’m going to need at least 24,000 to say what I want to say. Which is good—it means I’ve picked a good topic. I’m on a roll, having a good time, and mostly not frustrated right now, except with myself for not doing enough of the right kind of reading. I mean, I’ve read a bunch of stuff over the last several months, and most of it is not useful at all. Ironically, a bunch of articles I found early on but put aside because I thought they were taking me in a direction I didn’t need to go are all the articles I’m having to go back to—and I never read them closely then. Boo.

Back to work.

Monday Daylight-Saving-Time-blogging

I was really excited at how bright out it was as I made my way to campus for a meeting last night. “It’s 5:30 in the evening and I could wear my sunglasses!” I thought. (OK, I admit it—I actually thought, “Hey, wow, the days are really getting noticeably longer!” right before I remembered that we’d just sprung forward our clocks.) I was pretty happy right then about Daylight Saving Time.

Of course, this morning, I remember the dark side of Daylight Saving Time—literally. I hate how dark it is at 8 am when I am getting up and moving around. It doesn’t help that it’s sort of cloudy and hazy out today, with a possibility of snow, and very little sunlight. But even were the weather more cooperative, it would still be dark in the morning when my alarm goes off, and that, my friends, is a crappy thing. I suppose it would matter less if I kept more student-like hours—sleeping way in, staying up way late—but, in fact, I do not. I get up at a reasonable hour and I go to bed before midnight. I keep working hours—i.e., the hours of my working husband. So the evening daylight is nice, yes, because it’s light out when I’m coming home from school or (as last night) going to an evening meeting, but the lack of morning daylight really sucks. It’s hard enough for me to get up in the morning.

Happy Monday, all.

Weekly Law School Roundup #112

Welcome to this week’s (timely) edition of the Law School Roundup, featuring posts by future and current (and soon to be not) law students. Enjoy!

• Winnowing. A necessary task. Terra Nullius
• Credibility. Not sure it’s worth $150,000. Fight the Hypo
• Focus. Remembering it can be helpful. Legally Numb
• Goal. Employment is, generally, the goal, so having some is good. Butterflyfish
• Seeking. It’s out there somewhere, the perfect job. Knocked Up (and in Law School)
• Fighting. What good is a law degree if you can’t fight tickets from your (law) school? The War of All Against All
• Clique. Time and place, my friends, and eventually, it’s not either. Who Owns the Fox
• Smarts. There are different kinds. Frequent Citations
• Pictures. Really are worth a thousand words. Lag Liv
• Nutshell. Definitely worth a read. Shelley’s Case
• Flyers. Seriously, isn’t it just a popularity contest? Thrown for a Loop
• Senioritis. Law school style. I’m feelin’ it, too. Yayarolly goes to law school
• LawDad. Babies, babies, everywhere! Preaching to the Perverted

Look for next week’s roundup at Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground. It’ll be back here in about two weeks.

heading into the straightaway

Now that the MPRE is over (damn the MPRE!) I am heading into my last week of school before Spring Break with only two things on my plate—one more edit ((And this means EVER—I’m almost done with the big part of my journal duties, though I’ll be doing follow-up edits for the rest of the semester. I am pretty much totally and complete excited.)) and The Task.

I’m starting to get a little nervous about The Task. I have several pages, some of which are actually good but most of which are mediocre at best—and quite a few of which are really, really bad. I finally have a solid, concrete vision in my head of what the whole thing is going to end up looking like, but that vision has not hit the paper yet. I’ve got to get it on paper, and soon—all 60-something pages of it. With citations to authority.

So I’ve got about two weeks, maybe a little less, to get the First Draft of The Task done. I keep telling myself I work better under pressure and that once all these edits are off my plate I can just write and write and write. I hope that’s true.