Happy Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas day. On Christmas Eve I did some last-minute shopping (next year I'm buying gifts before the semester begins) and then we had pizza for dinner and went to the Christmas Eve service at my church.

After church, we drove around Mission Viejo to see the lights (not sure how I feel about Santa's new residence at City Hall) and then headed home. We have a tradition in our family that we take pictures of everyone putting the angel on the top of the tree. Because I drove down so close to Christmas everything was done except that. So we took the traditional pictures, and it was the second year that Curtis was in on the fun. It was one of the few years that I actually was dressed in real clothes and had my hair done, so I can actually share these pictures!

We always open one gift on Christmas Eve. Mine was a very pretty hand-painted USC ornament. Then we crashed, and woke up between 6 (me and my parents) and 8 (Jon and Curtis). We opened presents, made brunch, paid a short visit to my grandparents, slept, made rib eye for dinner, and watched Wall-E. We had a really nice day.

The nice thing about starting my break just before Christmas is that I still have 2 weeks off! My uncle and aunt are in town for a week so I'll be spending time with them. I have a few wedding appointments on the horizon. And Curtis and I are planning another trip to Disneyland for New Year's Eve. We're already discussing our strategy for staying awake and energized from 9AM to 2AM....it will be quite a feat.

I hope to have more pictures uploaded over the next week. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

I survived :-)

I finished at 12:30 PM on Friday! It took a few days to recover from the experience and I've had a great winter break so far. Overall this semester was as hard as I expected, but I left every final feeling like the studying paid off. I won't get any grades until January.

I drove down to Irvine on Saturday to see a Kids are Music show (I'm a former member). I'll try and get the pictures from Curtis of my performance of Toy Soldier, lol. That night I had dinner w/ my parents, Curtis, and Jon at PF Changs, and then went back to LA to continue my recovery.

Sunday Curtis and I went to breakfast and then Christmas shopping. We had a really fun day shopping, making dinner, wrapping presents, and listening to Christmas music. Then on Monday morning I cleaned up my apartment (it was a mess after the finals experience) and headed back to Mission Viejo. I still have some Christmas shopping to do but it's only the 23rd :-)

Merry Christmas!

1 more final

This morning I had my second-to-last final, Torts. Overall there were not any major disasters, although I don't think I managed to come up with anything too brilliant either.

The bummer about this particular final is the fact that now all I have to study for is Civil Procedure (Friday). It's notorious for being one of the hardest first year classes, and it's definitely the class that I have the least grasp of. However, it is also the one class where my 2 years of law firm experience helps, and so I am familiar with topics that I otherwise would have no clue about. The key issue over the next 2 days is how to apportion time between studying and sleeping. I'm going to try and get a full night of sleep tonight, but I think it's 6 hours tomorrow and Thursday. I'm trying to treat it like the times we had a large brief to file and were working late the week before. If you keep telling yourself that it'll be over soon, you can push through the exhaustion.

One thing is for sure, there will be a lot of celebrations going on starting around 1PM on Friday :-P.

Just for fun - Curtis & my tree

Check this out!

http://cheetafight.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/street-art-joshua-allen-harris-inflatable-bag-monsters/

I think it's pretty cool.

Winter Break Movie List

After hearing the Golden Globe Nominations today, it made me realize that once again, most of my Christmas break will be spent seeing movies. I am happy to see that there are movies this year that seem to be intellectually stimulating, as opposed to the typical romantic comedy or action thriller. Here's my priority list (with links to Roger Ebert's reviews):

1. Australia - never miss a Baz movie.
2. Seven Pounds - same with Will Smith
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
4. Frost/Nixon
5. Doubt
6. Milk
7. Revolutionary Road
8. Slumdog Millionaire
9. Rachel Getting Married (if it's still in theater)
10. Role Models

I'd also like to see a few movies now on DVD:
- The Dark Knight (I haven't seen it yet and feel ashamed)
- Maid of Honor
- Iron Man
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Updates

Yesterday was a little too weird to put it all together for a blog post -- I feel much better this morning.

Basically since my last update I've been studying all the time. My friend Aysha would come over after school, we'd make dinner, talk through a class, and be done at around 11PM. It's tiring to say the least, so I was happy to sleep in this morning. I think my parents were worried when they didn't hear from me for several days!

I had my first final yesterday morning, Contracts. The one annoying thing about our finals schedule is that even though you have to be there by 8:20, but you actually have to be there even earlier so that you can get a seat you want (something either in the front or on an edge so you're not in between a ton of people frantically typing). Between that and the insomnia that I got the night before, I was running on coke zero and a little coffee (and there are no breaks during the exam).

The great thing about the final was that with the exception of a few concepts on the multiple choice, I didn't feel like I was struggling to remember everything on the exam. Everything was pretty intuitive and it was stuff that I had practiced a lot the day before. Unlike yesterday's exam, the rest of my exams are mostly open book (some multiple choice sections aren't) so I'll be able to spend more time understanding the concepts.

After the final two of my friends and I went to an Asian fusion restaurant in downtown LA that was really good...we were able to get some good laughs in over lunch before we headed home to sleep and start studying again.

Next is LLE (law, language, and ethics) on Friday morning, which is basically a philosophy course on theories of law and theories of adjudication. I'll let you know how it goes!

Anniversary

I wasn't going to post today because my first final is tomorrow (I'm feeling good about this one - Contracts), but I did want to acknowledge that today is the first anniversary of my engagement to Curtis! It's amazing how fast this year went by. Click here for the blog post from last year detailing my surprise at Disneyland. :-)

Earlier this semester Curtis and I decided to hold off on a celebration until I'm done with finals, but yesterday I changed my mind and if all goes well with studying today we're going to do a quick dinner out tonight.

Have a good day! Hopefully if I'm still in a good mood tomorrow I'll post a Tuesday Updates and do a post-game on my first law school final.

Tuesday Updates - 12/2/08

It's December! Here's a quick update:

Thanksgiving weekend: I had a really nice weekend at home, although most of it was spent studying. I was very happy to see Marjorie, Curtis' sister, again. I think the last time we saw each other was June 07! Didn't do much more than eat, but it was good to get away.

Law School: we're at the point where it's time to spend ALL time studying, with some breaks. I think the hardest part going into this was how to divide up my time between all of my classes. I'll let you know that goes. But I'm trying to continue taking care of myself by getting enough sleep and eating well, as well as I normally eat ;-).

Wedding: the big news is all the bridesmaid dresses have been ordered...yay! And I decided go to with short navy satin dresses from alfredangelo.com, and everyone could order a dress they liked.

Next "updates" will probably be after my first final on Tuesday, Contracts. Wish me luck!