I think everyone who keeps up with me on LJ knows that I have a catling, but just in case not... CATLING!!! The name she came with is Lexi, I think she was originally named Donna (we get email from the microchip people, and they're always on about someone named Donna), and she is ALSO named Cattywhompus/Night Whomps/Whomps. Right now she is sleeping on my lap. She is a Russian Blue, according to the pet rescue place (Anjellicle Cat Rescue). She is big and silvery gray and verrrrry soft. She's also pretty vocal, which is often cute but occasionally (between midnight and seven am, specifically) annoying. She likes to sleep on our bed and, if she's being good, wait until the alarm goes off to start walking on us and meowing in our faces. My dad got her a pet drinking fountain for Christmas, which she was scared of for like a week but now likes.

Another thing: it is 2012! Hooray! I just got an email a couple days ago reminding me that it's now less than FOUR MONTHS until my wedding. CRAZY TALK! Sweetie and I met with our caterer again this weekend. He's awesome, guys. Just you wait. We were talking about rentals this time (the menu is settled) and arranging the room. It's a cocktail reception, you see, so it'll be mostly finger foods + Mediterranean table, and the idea is for people to MINGLE and also eat a lot of delicious things. So there's not room for everyone to sit down at once, so... MINGLE! Dance. Lean on the high tables. Wander around Prospect Park if it's nice outside (pleeeeeease be nice outside). Hang around the bar (open but limited) if you're that type.

I'm about to write thank-you notes, and sweetie is playing his new Zelda game. Lexi is still on my lap but now awake. I have a very short week of work next week, which is nice (Dad's getting very fancy award then wedding in Dominican Republic!!) but terrible timing -- it's the only time besides my honeymoon that I plan on being out, and of course that's the week our trial gets postponed to. It should be my trial (as in, the docket number is odd, and I handle the odd-numbered matters), and I feel bad about missing so much of it.

I had a wonderful Christmas, especially seeing family out in Colorado, and got many wonderful presents, especially a BOATLOAD of books. Right now I'm finishing the Hunger Games series. LOVE IT! Katniss could maaaaybe get over herself in Book 3, but it's kinda like Book 5 Harry Potter -- they're over the top annoying and angsty and yell-y but also blaming themselves for things beyond their control, but I guess they have good reason to be a bit unstable. I also got several Kazuo Ishiguro books -- I cannot ever read enough of him -- more Robin McKinley (I'm sooo close to having read all of them), and other random sf/f nerdery.

I also got a replacement Kindle. People don't know this because I haven't been spreading it around, but I got mugged a couple weeks ago. Now that it's in the past, I can say it and it's not such a big deal (it happened the day before a Christmas party with friends, so downer), but that is hence the replacement Kindle. I can say that the dude got a pretty weak haul. I had literally no cash on me, I locked out all my cards that night, I deactivated my Kindle the next day (someone a few days later tried to buy children's books on it), and I had a pound of smoked salmon there from my judge. Enjoy your smelly fish, dude. He didn't get what is BY FAR the most valuable thing I had on my person, my ring, or my phone. Not that it's such a hot item either; I was mostly glad that I could call sweetie and have him come and get me from the lobby. Replacing all the lost things and getting locks changed was SUPER annoying. The feeling of helplessness was the worst but the inconvenience of replacing the necessities in my backpack and wallet is a close second. The actual items I lost is just third.

WELP. On to thank-yous! And on to 2012, WOOOOO!!!

What's this, a post?? I vaguely remember these things. Blocks of text yanked out of my brain, through my fingers, and set on this magical screen. Anyway.

Sweetie and I are seriously considering adopting a cat! Well, we've seriously considered it since before we lived together, but with The Great Summer of Weddings concluded, we're not going to be out of town for more than an overnight stay until maybe Thanksgiving and once in January (and then two weeks for our honeymoon in May... who wants to catsit??), so we figure this is a good time, especially with some of the long weekends coming up for extra quality cat time. Since I was twelve or so, my mom always had a cat, and we're both big cat people.

So... any tips?? Thoughts on pet insurance? We're planning to adopt out of a shelter and probably aim for an adult, as opposed to a baby, cat. I'm so excited!! There's actually a big adoption event in Brooklyn Heights today (or tomorrow -- the event keeps saying "Saturday October 2") that I wish I could attend, but sweetie's out on a huge run, and I guess I shouldn't get a cat without him. Probably.

I maintain that had I been raised in even a SLIGHTLY less hippie church with SLIGHTLY less hippie priests, I would not be going to church these days. But I think I was hugely lucky in that regard. How can I not approve of...

"The song, Away in a Manger, says 'the cattle were lowing.' It's like they were saying 'moooo, baby Jesus, we don't want to wake you up, mooo.' No, it was loud and chaotic."

"It says 'joy to the world.' Not joy just to the righteous or joy to the believers of this or that. Joy to the world."

[quoting another hippie theologian] "When the shepherd came back, his friend said, 'Where have you been?' He said, 'in Bethlehem.' He said, 'what did you see?' The shepherd said, 'The world's greatest hope.' His friend said, 'What did it look like?' He said, 'Like you and me.'"

"They placed the baby in a manger. They were on the margins. 'Joy to the world' is for people on the margins."

And then on the car ride home, we talked about how awkward it would have been if Mary and Joseph had taken the lord's name in vain while raising Jesus. Because seriously... so awkward.

We have a couple new-ish traditions at my mom's house, and they are awesome. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day lunch = tamales prepared Christmas Eve afternoon. Christmas Day dinner = fondue. And whenever I'm in town, Boulevard Brewing Company beer all around! ALSO there is a new kitten, and she is always adorable and alternately sweet and hand-gnawingly feisty. And now time for me to assist Santa in some stocking preparation...

Happy wintertime eating fests to all!! Because getting fat to last out the winter is what the season is all about!

Now that November is over, and NaNo with it, I occasionally have time to check LJ again! Between facebook, write-ins, and the last few pages of entries I read just tonight, it seems that everyone's trucking along much the same as they were before I lost my free time. Well, I have regained free time (not tons of it, but a bit) but lost my voice - that last one's just temporary, though. I hope.

Last night was a dramatic night - I sadly missed the NaNo TGIO party (noooo!) to see a play with sweetie and friends that had Keith Hamilton Cobb (albeit in a fairly minor role). And THEN some of the people I was with are apparently friends with him, so I got a picture (or several, I dunno) with him and then we went to a bar. WITH AN ACTOR. WHO IN MY LITTLE WORLD IS FAMOUS. SO THAT WAS NEAT. He's way too charming and a total hippie.

The night before was a bit dramatic in that I saw The Nutcracker Ballet, which was completely adorable in the first act and very pretty in the second act, and chillaxed with sweetie's mother. It's an experience I find difficult to put into words - not because it's so terrible but because I have so many feelings. She's so attentive and generous but also paranoid about strangers and occasionally prone to righty political rants. I managed to avoid that latter. This time.

And tonight was dramatic in that I undertook sweetie and I undertook our (and my) biggest cooking challenge evar! We cooked for... I dunno exactly how many were there, but like thirty people! And it turned out really well! Some people there are vegetarian, so we made a vegetarian curry. The vegetables didn't go completely mushy and the spices came together just right! It's a wondering feeling, being impressed with one's own cooking (or cleaning or whatever one does). It was for the little Episcopalian church I sometimes attend in Brooklyn. The priest is a total hippie and swears and can be counted on to quote heathens in his sermons. He's good people.

Oh shoot, I meant to make more sugar-roasted almonds tonight in my slow cooker but now it's too late. OMG though guys, if you have a slow cooker, you NEED to do this. It's like two cups of almond, an egg white, and a cup (I think? Maybe two?) of sugar, for a couple of hours on low. It is homemade crack and is going to be stocking stuffers. So, voiceless and coughing and sniffling that I am, I'm going to wander into bed with the very-funny Sewer, Gas, Electic: The Public Works Trilogy given to me by spinflight got me for my birthday. Or got sweetie and me for our combined birthday; I'm not sure which.

Well, maybe not quite "live" - I wrote it up at work and then emailed it to myself. But "real" is the material point!

First of all, work! It's strange, being a working adult and feeling working-adult camaraderie on the train in the morning. I think it suits me: I sleep really well, I'm never bored at work, when I'm not actively fretting over something I find myself pretty cheerful, and I'm just as productive with stuff at home as I ever was - just in way less time. I don't even mind the attorney wrangling so much. The hours are a little long - I get to work shortly after nine and leave shortly after seven. The former clerks called the judge an office-aholic, which sounds about right. Sometimes he stays later than I, sometimes I beat him. He doesn't venture forth much from chambers, and so I feel weird about taking any length of time out for lunch. Still, sweetie works about 20 mins from me, so we have lunch once a week. And after getting my blood drawn and nearly a week of my promised card not functioning, I can go to the gym in the courthouse! Yes, I had to get my blood drawn to go to the gym. I guess they don't want me keeling over mid-workout.

I've been working for three and a half weeks - forty-eight and a half left! - and though I do miss sleeping in and having all that free time, it's going pretty well. I get a little stressed sometimes when I do something wrong or miss something, but I suppose I'm learning from it. I just finished my first opinion (part of it was already written), so I'm looking forward to being flayed in the truest writers group fashion. At least I'm old hat at being flayed! Also, I have a tiny heater fan cos it gets freezing up in there, and that has made all the difference (except, though, sometimes I'm paranoid that I've left it on all night).

In other news, I'm getting back into the swing of reading. Thank you, Brooklyn Public Library! Right now I'm reading Mrs. Dalloway - I know, how have I not done so until now? - and really enjoying it. The prose is beautiful and usually juuuuuust on the right side of long-winded. The crazy is definitely crazy but coherent, so it's rarely a chore to read it. It's probably one of those books I'd get more out of if I read it in a class setting, but I think it's significant that I can enjoy it on my own, too. This is the first of Woolf's fiction I read - we read A Room of One's Own in college and it really resonated for me - but definitely not the last! Her descriptions of London make me think of NYC, which makes me smile.

I recently had to return River of Gods by Ian McDonald to the library before I had finished it; some other jerk had a hold on it. Nooooo! It's trippy and lush and fascinating, and after some initial confusion, I got all the viewpoint characters straight in my head. There's a lot I love about it, but no one will be surprised to know that my favorite concept is the "nute," sort of a... technologically-enhanced trans gender. The pronoun is "yt." I want to get back into it, gosh!

In other other news, sweetie and I just celebrated the two-year anniversary of our first date! We went back to that same restaurant, obvs, where they sang us "Happy Anniversary" to the tune of "Happy Birthday" and gave us free desserts and drinks. Hooray! I think everyone assumed it was a marriage anniversary, but I was not about to disillusion them. A guy sitting at a table next to us said, jokingly but not quite jokingly enough, "If you kill her now, you'll be out in 20 years" and advising sweetie to escape and all that. Issues much?? Also we visited sweetie's cousin, cousin's wife, and cousin's new baby, and while we were there, aunt and uncle stopped by. Aunt was completely enamored with the baby - he was making serious faces the whole time, so funny - and kept asking sweetie and (again, jokingly but not quite jokingly enough) when we were going to have a kid. Woah there. It got a little awkward after the third and fourth time.

Finally, my mother is getting a new kitten, and I am insanely jealous. Waaaaaaaant kitty. Nngh.

AT HOME update: At some point this day went from perfectly fine to actively fun but then crashed tonight down to shitty. Was it... when I heard mousie noises in the cabinet under the sink? When I knocked over my philodendron plant the first time? The second time? The third time? When my handheld vacuum died trying to clean my carpet? When I heard mousie noises again?? But I just eated a wine-filled chocolate and am about to embark upon my first sourdough bread making ever (with real homemade starter), so I'm determined to finish the day on a decent note.

Originally posted by neo_prodigy at Spirit Day

No, not a real entry from me yet. Dunno why - I have so much I could say! I should just write it up at work some time between attorney wranglings and opinion readings and opinion writings and email to myself and post. But I thought this was more than worth my first entry in... too long. Well, I hardly have time to catch up and I sometimes go days without reading anything, so I guess I have a better excuse now than I did over the summer.

Anyway, October 20th, purple, yeah.

Two weeks - well, I suppose now it's two weeks minus a day - until I enter the workforce! It's hard to believe, but soon I shall be working ten hour days (nine, really - I HOPE they meant ten including lunch) at a federal district courthouse. I keep wondering if they've hired the wrong person for the job - don't they know I have no idea what I'll be doing?? The other new clerk and I had a training last week, which was reassuring only because the clerks there now said that they had no idea what to do when they came in. The great cycle continues, I suppose. At least the terms of the clerks are staggered, so by the time I start working in two weeks, the other new clerk will have been working for those two weeks (he starts today!) and will have some idea of what I should be doing. But it's intimidating.

Last week was full of another round of clerkship applications, this time for next year, and I should probably start looking into gov't honors programs this week, but OOOF last week was hugely frustrating. Every possible element of the application process snarled in some way or another, but everything is sent off, and I'm refusing to worry about any of it. Either I'll get calls or I won't, but whatever happens, I still have a year to look for employment. I'll find something in that time, right??

Until then, though... FREEDOM! I'm planning to do a couple arty things, work out, bake (possibly in the microwave, now that the high is mid-90s for the next few days), and devour the rest of the Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh in that time. Maybe I should also head out to one of the nearby beaches one of these days. I also have a couple interminable writing projects to finish, blech. We'll see if I can finally get those stubborn things wrapped up.

If anyone knows of anything cool (and not expensive) going on during the day sometime in the next two weeks, let me know! I feel I must carpe these diems because I won't have free time like this again for a long while, unless I'm unemployed, in which case I'll spend all of it panicking anyway!

Cos that's the way I do!

I don't even know where to start - I feel like I have three entries to post, but no one needs that on their f-list page. So I'll post the best one of them all, Cruise Round-Up.

( Cruise Round-Up!! )

Weeks and weeks of study culminated yesterday and Tuesday in that grueling gamut that is the NY bar exam. And now it's over, hooray! I have no idea how I scored, but I'm confident that I did as well as 80-something percent of ABA graduates, which is the percentage of people who pass the bar. So good enough, I hope! I suppose it's a small mercy that the scores come out during NaNo, at which time I'll doubtless have enough on my mind to keep me from going TOO spare at every passing hour that the scores aren't up (and then every passing hour where the scores are posted but the stupid site crashes because they're soooo surprised that tens of thousands of people are accessing it). I was nervous beforehand and afteward, but during the test, I was too focused to be anything except a little hungry now and then. It didn't drag the way you think two six-hour days of testing would.

So now what?? I think (I know, actually) that I posted about reading the first of the Foreigner series, and after finishing the second one this morning (Jago's totally going to tap that, right??), I KNOW that there's no way I could wait to get each book from the every corner of the Brooklyn public library system. So I eyed the gift card I got from sweetie's parents for my birthday (they're ridiculously generous about presents) and spent most of it buying the rest of the series. Well, the rest minus the last one, which came out just recently and so is still more expensive than the others. It wouldn't fit on my gift card. So I'll be having an awesomely nerdy rest of the summer.

I have healthy stacks of books on my coffee table I have to get through, though I'm not sure where I'll put them; the bookshelf I got free from a neighbor who was moving out is already full. Hmmm. I'm trying to read Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara, recommended by sweetie's dad, but... yeah no. I'm having such a hard time getting into it; so far there's not a single original fantasy idea in there. This is the reason I don't read fantasy without recommendations, and clearly that policy is far from foolproof. I actually forgot I had this book for some while while I was reading Invader, which is never a good sign.

I also need to get back into writing! Bar study drained words from my brain, and now I have to find them again. It happens in the middle of sentences, I'll be articulating some or other thought and suddenly I won't know the word for whatever concept I'm trying to express. I think it probably drained most of the creativity too, but I'm sure that'll return once my neurons shift back into non-bar mode.

Fortunately I've been keeping up with my gym visits during bar study, so there's not much catch-up to do there. But I haven't been taking advantage of any of the classes offered at the Y, so I plan to start with a yoga class on Monday. I have no idea how one signs up or if one just wanders in. I'll find out!

And then the cruise, of course! It's my first cruise, a graduation present from my mother. We're going to Bermuda, a very motley crew of me, sweetie, my mother, and my stepfather. That should be fun, and I think it's a little ways out of the worst hurricane routes.

Basically, laziness will ensue. Laziness and nerdiness and hopefully some apartment cleaning. Yeeeeeeeah.

So I fail at actual updating because at the end of each round of studying, I can't stand the thought of staring at my screen and typing much more. I also fail at writing for the same reason, but I WILL be more conscientious about both of these once the bar is over and my brain has recovered. Which is like two weeks. Oh dear. And you're not missing much with my lack of updates - listening to bar study, writing notes, and practicing questions has left me pretty boring recently!

In bullet point form:
*I joined the Y near-ish me, so I've been getting back into lifting weights (yay!). It's a 30 minute walk from me, so just getting there and back is a substantial part of the work-out. It's just been too ridiculously hot to think about running lately, and as much as I like jogging outside, it's hard on my poor blister-prone feet and sore knees.

*Birfday! I had a joint birthday party some while back with sweetie, and it was wonderful seeing the people I know from different places getting to know each other. And then my actual birthday last weekend was fantastic - an appetizer wholly of fancy cheeses and wine flight was involved on my actual birthday, and Sunday sweetie and I went to Coney Island, rode a few rides, and ate fried seafood (and my tummy was not at all sure about that, but it tasted wonderful).

*Graditation! I'm graduated from law school, which I think means I'm a J.D., though not yet an Esq. I even graduated cum laude, which is going to look shiny on my resume once I update it.

*I'm watching excerpts of a public hearing about building a mosque near the WTC site. Without any context whatsoever, the person shrieking, "I'm not a racist! I'm not a racist!" makes me think exactly the opposite. In fact, any time anyone proclaims themselves to be not -ist, I am skeptical. That's the sort of thing people pick up from a person's words and actions on the subject, not self-declaration. Harrumph.

*It's pretty dang hot here, and my only AC is in my bedroom and weak. So I've been getting back into microwave cookery, which is exciting.

*I've been reading lots of books lately cos they're easier on my eyes than computer screen. Right now I'm reading C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner and really enjoying it. What a well-done alien race!

*My head hurts.

Guess that's all. On to the memery that's been chasing 'round the f-list!





I also got a few Dan Browns, a couple Stephen Kings, Chuck Palahniuk, and Vladimir Nabokov. The hell? Hmm, I wonder if any of the writers on this list are women.