Least Annoying

I bet no one expected that I would be considered to be the least annoying family member in any situation.  But I recently saw this old YouTube video of Zeb climbing in the Gunks:

You can hear us all commenting annoyingly, in our own ways, in the background.  The funny thing that I discovered, though, was the first comment on the video:

leftystrat62

Nice vote of confidence about the integrity of the rock from your balayers as you go thru the crux. And of course we have the guy at the belay who is NOT leading(doohh) saying how it's easier to heel hook to the left. I think you should keep the encouraging female climber and drop the other dudes.

Most people who experience climbing with me in real life do not have that reaction.

For fun, another angle:

Milk

Now that me and my siblings have (mostly) moved out of my parents’ house, there are far fewer milk crises.  They have gone from going through a gallon or more per day to a half gallon every few weeks.  Meanwhile, though, I have to supply my own milk.

Before I left for England (Fall 2008), milk prices had been climbing for a while.  It wasn’t hard to pay over $5/gallon.  I was pretty shocked when I got back this summer, then, and was paying only half that at not-cheap supermarkets.  It turns out that while I was gone, there was a “dairy crisis” marked by falling milk prices.  More delicious milk for me!

Annual Milk Prices (from “Understanding Dairy Markets”):

2008 Milk Prices:

It looks like now I can drink twice as much milk!

Don’t Worry, They’ll Learn

A few months ago, I came across this article in the NYT.  The general premise is that the author took a climbing class with IME at Cathedral Ledge with his children, who consequently behaved better.  The first paragraph of the article, though, is 180 degrees opposite from how things work in our family:

For three days last month I had a break from family squabbles and smart-alecky retorts. My adolescent children didn’t tell me to “wait a minute” when I needed something done. Phones were shut off, for the most part, and neither a DVD player nor a computer was turned on.

We do nothing but squabble, smart-aleck, and tell each other “hold on, wait a minute,” usually while we’re on the phone.  Oh well.

Student ID Adventures

So, when I was in England last year, the Harvard ID that I got as a 1L expired in June.  Which was a problem that I had anticipated well in advance – in the summer of 2008, before I left for England, I spent some time trying to track down the new ID that I would need to have upon returning in Fall 2009.  The ID office told me authoritatively that the law school registrar would have my ID ready and waiting for me at “registration” in Fall 2009, and not to worry.

So, over a year later, “registration” for my final semester of classes happened online with no discussion of my ID.  No problem; I went to the registrar’s office.  They acted particularly clueless, but told me not to go back to the ID office, and instead just wait.  It would come over from the ID office eventually.  So myself, and the other three HLS students who did the Cambridge program with me, waited.  For about two weeks.  Meanwhile, we had to go through complex negotiations to get into the library and the gym; we learned the secret codes that we had to say to the desk guards to get them to let  us in without our working IDs.  Every so often, one of us would get motivated and go bug either the registrar or the ID office, but they would just say, quite authoritatively, that the other office must have them.  A few of us managed to get some “old-style” IDs missing one of the magnetic stripes they were supposed to have, but that was about it.

Finally, one of us went to the ID office and lucked out – he got a new one printed on the spot.  Inspired, I marched in there, waited in a 10+ person long line, and was then sent to sit in a chair when I explained my situation.  At first, the guy who I spoke to wanted to send me to the registrar’s office, but I told him very authoritatively that “they sent me here.”  After a number of phone calls, he finally located all of our IDs (which had actually already been printed after all).  They were hidden “in the red box.”

So, fourteen months after I first tried to get my new student ID, I finally managed to get it out of the red box.  (I directed the other HLS/Cambridge students looking for their IDs to go to the ID office and demand the Red Box.)

This is still vaguely concerning to me, because I expect that I’ll need another new ID printed in the spring if I continue to do research here at the Harvard Law Library.  And that will be a whole new adventure.  Stay tuned!

Blogging Again

So, now that I’m done with finals (and pretty much done with law school!) I can start blogging again.  At the moment, though, things are pretty much up in the air.  This spring, I might be doing copyright research work with the Harvard Law library – but maybe not.  I might be living in Westborough, I might be in Cambridge.  I might have tons of free time, I might be extra busy (especially when it comes time to take the bar exam in the summer).  Stay tuned!

I also have lots of old things I never got around to blogging about – so expect more to come!

Rumney and Puppies

I haven’t been blogging much lately; it’s been a busy semester.  This spring, though, when I’m totally unemployed, I’ll probably be blogging a lot.

Yesterday, I went to Rumney and climbed with Eugene and Hannah and Daddy and Rachel (and saw Zeb for a little bit).  Rachel has a new puppy, Rufus, who was the star of the show even though he was a little bit boring with a lot of sleeping.  Here’s a video of Rufus, taken in my most annoying voice.

Rufus and Annoying Nika

It was a nice day, and I felt like I was climbing okay, until my foot slipped off a giant hold on Short Wave.  The problem was that the hold was so giant that I couldn’t help slamming my knee into it, too.  So I’m still limping around today.

NOA 2 Soon

Ack!  So, Nick and I are tentatively planning on an August 2010 wedding, but this depends on when his “Fiancé visa” (K-1 Visa) comes through.  We sent off the application for this back in mid-September, figuring that that would position us well for a summer 2010 wedding in terms of timing.

The problem is that USCIS is moving incredibly fast.  They are supposed to issue two notices of action (“NOA”s).  NOA1 is supposed to take a month to issue, and it just indicates that they have received your application.  USCIS sent it out to me within a week, though.  Then, there is supposed to be a gap of five months between the issuing of NOA1 and NOA2 (which indicates that USCIS has approved the application – although there are still many other hurdles that have to be gone through before the actual fiancé visa issues).  However, our NOA2 came today – just under a month after NOA1 arrived.

This is a slight problem for several reasons.  The visa is only good for a certain amount of time, and it’s a single-entry visa, which means that once it issues, Nick will no longer be able to enter the U.S. until it’s time for him to get married.  So if it issues before he comes to visit in January, we’re going to have problems.

Also, as we move further along in the application process, he may face further hurdles in terms of entering the U.S. before the visa actually issues.  I guess he’ll find out tomorrow whether he’s going to have any issues this time around – he flies to Nevada for work tomorrow.  Stay tuned…

Oh well, I suppose an early approval is still a much better alternative than, say, an early rejection.

Where do I live?

Well, in the spirit of this old post of mine, I’ve taken some pictures of my dorm room set up this year.  It’s similar to how I’ve set it up in previous years – basically, everything has a spot, and if you bring one extraneous item into the room the whole system falls apart – because all spots are already allocated.

 

Since the last photo was taken, one of the plants in it has already died (when I got back from Las Vegas it was flat as a pancake).  The other one still seems to be alive, though, despite minimal watering.  So that’s good.

Tomorrow I’m going up to Rumney to freeze.  Forecast doesn’t look good:

Stay tuned…

More Wedding Planning

So, it turns out that wedding planning kind of sucks.  I’m just trying to find a venue, but every suggestion I come up with results in Nick saying “that is way too large, we don’t have enough people” and Mombie saying “that is way too expensive, we don’t have enough money.”  The effects of this are exaggerated when Nick interprets venue maximums as de facto minimums and Mombie comes up with arbitrary inflated figures (“Alcohol is going to cost $10,000 alone, you know”).  And I found a list on a caterer’s website of things I’m supposed to do for a wedding – I’m already hopelessly behind (am I really supposed to be ordering a wedding dress seven months in advance?), and I’d say that about 30-40% of the things on that list are things that I didn’t even know you were supposed to do.

But, the silver lining is that I’m also finding some fun stuff.  I was aware of Cake Wrecks long before the recent NYT article on it, but the article was a good excuse to go back to this page, and particularly enjoy this photo.  This is starting to confirm my suspicious that I’d rather have cupcakes and ice cream…

Oh, and I also found this website specializing in funny engagement photos.

In other news, I have a lot of other stories to blog on that I’ve been piling up – I may post more this weekend.

Facebook Could be my Wedding Planner

So, as predicted, the ads on Facebook have been very excited for me getting engaged.  Current ads include:

• Wedding Weightloss
• Engaged?  Get a free gift
• Planning your Wedding
• New England Brides
• Custom Wedding Stationery
• Boston Wedding Photo
• Pros Wedding Photography
• Save the Dates
• Free Wedding Photography
• Preparing for a Wedding?
• Cambridge Weddings
• Getting Hitched?

Etc.  Nick isn’t doing as well – he only has one “Getting Married?” one, and one for flowers.  He also has one for “Luxury Florida Villas” – so I’m not sure if the advertisers have as clear a grasp on him as they do on me.

In other good news, I have sent off the I-129F form, the form we have to file to get Nick a visa to move here and marry me.  So far the immigration office has indicated they’ve received it, but the next step of approving it could take up to five months.  Stay tuned!

Fall Classes

So, everyone has asked me for details on what classes I’m taking this fall and how they’re going.  Without further ado, here’s the schedule:

Copyright and Trademark Litigation

This class meets once a week on Thursday mornings for two hours.  It’s taught by Dale Cendali, who’s best known for being J.K. Rowling’s lawyer and has been involved in a lot of interesting IP cases, including not only Harry Potter ones, but also the Shepard Fairey lawsuit and some of the Barbie-Bratz disputes.  She’s clearly very big into strong IP rights, which is interesting.  The class has only met a couple times so far, but it has been good.

Sex Equality

This class has a complicated schedule.  During September and October, we meet for three hours on Monday and Tuesday mornings, and another hour and 45 minutes on Wednesday mornings, for almost eight class hours a week.  However, after October, we don’t have any more class meetings.  So I’m particularly busy right now because of this, and will have a lot more free time in November.

The professor for this class is Catherine MacKinnon, which also makes this class really interesting and good – I really like her.  So that’s a good class, too.

Communications and Internet Law and Policy

This class meets for an hour and a half on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, and is taught by Yochai Benkler.  So far, we’ve been focusing more on the history of early- and mid-20th century communications issues with respect to radio and television, but we’re getting into more modern things soon.  This will be interesting with respect to the latest net neutrality developments.

Legal Profession

This class meets for an hour and a half on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and is taught by Annette Gordon-Reed.  It’s a required class for graduating, and hasn’t been all that interesting so far, but I think will start to pick up a little bit.  But I’m still more excited about my other three classes than this one.

So, those are my classes – they’re generally pretty interesting with a good mix of teachers.

Rumney Yesterday

So yesterday was a good climbing day – there was nice weather, and I went up to Rumney with a loosely-organized HMC group.  I climbed mostly at the Main Cliff and Orange Crush, and led a bunch of long 5.11s I had never led before.  It’s definitely getting cold, though – next weekend I bet I will be freezing.

Las Vegas and Red Rocks Photos

They’re online!  Here.

Left Las Vegas

So, I’m back from my flyout week trip (no classes for 2Ls or 3Ls at the law school – or, presumably, 3.5Ls like me).  I was climbing at Red Rocks, right outside of Las Vegas, NV, with Nick.

We didn’t do anything super exciting, but we sport climbed a handful of easy 5.11s and a ton of 5.10s.  The weather was unseasonably hot – most days in Las Vegas it got above 100F, but up around Red Rocks it was probably only above 90 in the sun, and really quite pleasant in the shade.  We spent a disproportionate amount of time in the Black Corridor (a.k.a. Gong Show Ground Zero – I don’t know where those people come from) because it was really the only area with consistent shade and lots of sport routes in a good range for us.  Unfortunately, we never made it to the Gallery when it was shaded, so my big project of Yak Crack didn’t happen.  We also did a “trad day,” climbing the first four pitches of Dark Shadows, a 5.8 (Nick did all the hard leading, but I led a 5.6 pitch that Nick thought was tricky when he seconded it – and I felt like I did a really good job with the protection on it, which made me happy).

In Las Vegas, we stayed at the Stratosphere on the weekends and at the Luxor on the weekdays.  We didn’t actually spend that much time at the hotels (although we did manage to acquire free tickets to the Criss Angel show at the Luxor), but we did pop our heads into a bunch of the other casinos to see all their big features at night, which was fun.

Photos will be forthcoming on FB – but not until I catch up on email and manage to get groceries!

Thinking…

So, this is the start of a whole new blog for me!  My old blog, about my year studying abroad in England, was here, but since I’m now back at Harvard Law School here in the U.S., the old one was less applicable.  Thus, the new one!

I expect that this blog will be about all sorts of stuff that happens to me.  Topics will probably include law, intellectual property, Harvard and HLS, technology, rock climbing, travel, wedding planning, England, feminist issues (per Zeb’s request), and general rants, fussing, and strops.  I already have a little list of things and stories I want to blog about.

So, as I like to say, stay tuned!