December... yes, I skipped a month.

It's closing in on the end of the month. Theoretically, that means another blog post. In practice... well, not so much for November. The first half of November was consumed by papers, largely: forty-two pages on Appling v. Doyle, and fourteen that comprised the first draft of Murder, Prostitution, and Craigslist: the Paper (MPCtP, as I later acronymed it after Bevis poked at me for always spelling it out in full). What else happened in November... I was sick a few days, which was rather unpleasant. I continued to not get hired for a job, any job. I conducted interviews of family members of those sentenced to JLWOP (Juvenile Life Without Parole) for Children in Conflict, taught by the incredible Bernardine Dohrn, who had us over to her house for dinner at one point. I got into contact with a judge to help me get employ at the State's Attorney's Office. I had an orphan's Thanksgiving hosted by Miss Laura, who cooked an amazing turkey and had stories to tell about wrestling with a turkey neck and assorted fun with giblets. There was a variety of drama, but I can't seem to recall at present quite the nature of it, or of whom it was comprised. I went dancing.

December. Finals. Study group with Frank and Lisa (where each of us had our role to fill: Frank prepared the agenda, Lisa kept us on track and actually knew things, I spun bullshit explanations that turned out to be right far more often than not, much to everyone's surprise) for Enviro. Writing the JLWOP memos and ribbing Patricia about nearly taking us to IN on the way to one of the interviews. Bergy introduced me to Borderlands after our one-hour closed-everything forty multiple-choice question justify-your-answers-in-the-margins-if-you-feel-so-moved Ideas of the First Amendment final, which I then went home and ordered from the internet. It should be waiting for me upon my return--part of why I'm writing this now rather than Wednesday afternoon. One boy from the internet became three boys from the internet, each with a promise to make life complicated. None have been actualized, but I'm hopeful with one of them. There were finals, as mentioned before, and they ended. I was a witness for two friends' trials (one ITA, one Crim. Trial Practice), which went moderately successfully, and were quite fun. There were concerts--I believe I mentioned Imogen Heap before, prior to the concert, but now, after, I can say it was unutterably awesome. Also there was Straight No Chaser with Morgan after an impromptu Triumvirate Sushi escapade, at which there was much singing (clearly). Since then, there has been home, and family, and cats, and work: I redid MPCtP such that it went from fourteen to twenty-one pages, with only four or five pages in common between the two papers. Yesterday I moved somewhere between one and two metric tons, depending on what's an appropriate average weight estimate for the boxes in question (30 is low, Strump says, but that puts me at ~2500 pounds moved). I've been once to my coffee shop, and dancing the same number of times. I've seen several friends--Liz, Dana, Cara, dancing folks, and Eric on Tuesday. Seeing Cara was most emphatically lovely: we hadn't seen each other since she left for Botswana, when we gave her the plush ebola virus. We went to Raku, where we first got date service, and succeeded in getting it again, proving that we've not lost our touch.

I apologize for being terse in my descriptions of things... it's been a busy month (well, a strained autumn, really). Looming over the whole of this all is family drama, which doesn't really bear getting into on a broadcast medium such as this. If you're curious, ask. I may or may not say.

There was a delightful snowstorm here in DC. We got 23" of snow in 2 days, most of which time I was rewriting/revising MPCtP, and watching it snow from outside my improvised bedroom. It was definitely one of the highlights of the break.

Christmas was a push, and therefore stretched and... yeah. We had one tree this year, which I was not allowed to light for fear that it would cook the tree (the last few years, I've lit the upside-down tree, a 6' tree, with at least 25-30 strands. Strump lit this one, an 8' tree, with 20. I probably would have come in at double that--cooked tree would ensue). It got decorated on the 24th, mostly. Christmas Eve was with the Ericksons at the Washington Club, and was delightful--I spent most of the time talking to Ben, and my mother to Capt. Erickson. Sadly, Strump was between these two gentlemen, with no one really to talk to until Ben started asking after the business and things toward the end of the evening. Christmas morning was stockings (mostly chocolate, although there were two salami in mine), late, finishing the tree, and an aborted brunch. Later, we went over to the Ericksons' for Christmas dinner, which was fun. Ben and I exchanged CDs. Boxing day featured brunch (for real), presents, and then me moving a literal ton of boxes (85+ boxes, assuming 35 lbs average box-weight, which given that many of them were impossibly heavy book boxes is possibly a bit light for the average--that puts me at nearly 3k pounds). Today was lunch and a bit of wandering with Cara and Strump up in Bethesda, and then coming home to move more boxes (not nearly so much, but dear god photos weigh a bloody ton when boxed up) and sorting through crap to try to get rid of some of it so it won't have to be moved.

All in all, it's a working break. Unwinding will happen after I return to Chicago on Wednesday, first with Borderlands, second with NYE--hopefully but not assuredly at Morgan's--and third with retarded gluttony up north with a wonderful crew of law school idiots. Hopefully next term won't kill me--I have eleven hours of classes on Wednesdays, including three hours of ITA at the end of it. I'll have to work everything out on Tuesday, as I won't have time to do it day-of, most weeks. Hopefully coffee will also happen with a particular set of pixels.

Oh! Geekery. It's happened, and continues to occur. On one front, gaming with Max et al. has continued. On another, I've been reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, which is an intellectual romp concerning a cloistered society of what would happen if high level philosophy and high level physics were done by one and the same people... among many other things. It's fantastic, since the physics is all spelled out, but the philosophy is never attributed to actual people--I can figure out most of the references, though, so it makes me quite happy. On a third, I was approached over Google Wave by one Mr. Deren with an idea of something actually feasible and useful to do with the service they provide: gaming. Decentralized. Over Wave. So there will be a Shadowrun game over the internet, assuming we ever get organized enough to get it off the ground, and get backstories and characters and shit from everyone. We'll see about it--the characters are all more or less in, if not completely, and look precisely as crazy as the assembled crew of players.

I should probably be going to bed, because I'm told I will be getting up early tomorrow, for more fun moving the basement's contents out of the basement, and possibly into a POD--if we can acquire one on a morning's notice. Fun and games.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye: This Court [bangs water bottle/gavel on bench] is now in session. God save the Queen. –Kathy’s judge, reconvening her ITA jury trial.