Before I talk about work I’d like to share a quick story from today’s evening walk. The story is that a bird pooped on Sam’s head. Better him than me, I thought, since he didn’t notice and probably would have enjoyed it if he did. But then at home when I tried to wipe off the mess with a wet paper towel, he ducked and I got poop on my hand. So I didn’t escape unscathed after all. It figures.

Okay, work. I’m still thrilled to be there, even though I emptied my candy jar in the first two days. I’ve had to bring in and eat *fruit*, can you imagine? I finished my first practice assignment in cite analysis today and will probably get to start on a real assignment tomorrow, assuming I didn’t completely miss the boat on the practice one.

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Today was Day One of my summer job as an editorial assistant at a sweet little publishing house that puts out a series of handbooks for practicing lawyers. If you practice in Texas, you can probably guess who they are, but I won’t name names.

No complaints about the facilities so far. Far from it, in fact. I have my own computer at my own giant desk in my own V-shaped “cube.” It even came pre-stocked with supplies: notepads, tape, tissues, a stapler and staple puller, paper clips, a white-out pen, white-out tape, and a rainbow of pens and highlighters.

The best part? My own candy jar, pre-filled with chocolate goodies. Hey, I would’ve done this editing work for you for free if you’d asked nicely, but now you’re going to pay me AND throw in a few mini Snickers to boot? Dude. I’m gonna edit those manuscripts SO THOROUGHLY.

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My sleep schedule, such as it was, got all shot to hell when I stayed up all Monday night before the Property exam condensing an Emanuel’s book and typing it into my notes. This may well be the absolute worst way to study for an exam, but when you’ve put it off all semester and the prof doesn’t allow commercial outlines, sometimes you find yourself in an unsavory position.

Around 3:30 in the morning I got to a section on mortgages, and I didn’t recall us talking in class about mortgages in any depth, so that bit of my outline looks like this (pretend it’s indented properly):

C. Financing Devices: Mortgages, Deeds of Trust, and Installment Contracts

1. christ i hope this doesn’t come up on the test

First question? “If Bart mortgages his house to Mort, and then Bart sells the property to Pam….” Argh.

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Our three back-to-back weekends of taiko performances wrapped up with Saturday’s pushing-the-hot-end-of-bearable show at the Dragonboat Festival. The organizers moved the festival from Buffalo Bayou to Sugar Land at the last minute due to flooding on the Bayou, with the happy result that instead of pushing our drums up and down a steep hill, we only had to drag them across a dozen yards of grass. I wouldn’t mind a bit if the festival folks made this change permanent.

And it’s just in time that our spring season ends, because I have four finals coming up in the next two weeks, starting on Wednesday. They happen to come in order of increasing difficulty, at least as I see them now. Writing, the easiest final of all (because writing the brief was hard enough), was two weeks ago. I’ll go through my thoughts on the rest, not because you care, but because later I’d like to know how I felt about these exams before I saw them.

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