Legally not blonde...

Amazingly enough, I survived my first week of substantial classes at law school (substantial means basically any class about the law [procedure is included in this group], so torts, contracts, criminal, etc.). For the first time in my life, I actually bought into the "you're worthless and will fail" bit a little. It's the same typical scare tactic, but since, other than CivPro, this is a beast that I've never really encountered before (because I wasn't a prelaw major in undergrad). I'm keeping my head above water, but, as the saying goes, I haven't made the subject matter my bitch, yet. Don't get me wrong, I have always loved and will always love the whole "hit the ground running" way of teaching, but I have never felt so at a disadvantage before. Here's to hoping that everything gets easier as I transition back into being a student and get more of a hang of what's really going on. I've been carving out little niches of free time here and there that doesn't match the normal "cram until all the work is done and then have a huge chunk of free time" study plan that most have, so my social life has been a bit shot thus far, but I've gotta do what's right for me to keep myself sane.

As to my location, I'm in FOC at a rather large state university, which means that there are plenty of dive bars and coffee shops to go to when I want to escape my place (which is a godsend), in addition to the requisite Urban Outfitters. Unfortunately, this also means no serious urban element and right now I'm missing the hustle and bustle of city life. Catching up on NYC Prep, a guilty pleasure, hasn't helped any. Counting down the days until winter break and going home to an urban element (unless I can convince other out-of-state students to get together with me and do a road trip to a major city, like Chicago, which is the closest large city).

Here's a new brand of genius...

...courtesy of Ron Dellums and the Oakland City Council. They are refusing to allow a potentially new pilot for HBO to be shot in Oakland (the script is based in Oakland). "Not as high on 'Gentlemen [of Leisure]' is Mayor Ron Dellums and a few city council members, who said several months ago that they don't want to show filmed in Oakland because of its edgy subject matter." (http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_12966405) They don't want Oakland known as a dangerous, unsavory place? Uh, sorry, but when the only news of Oakland to make national headlines in the past several months or so are about people getting shot and killed (the 4 cops and the Bart station incident), people in the middle of Iowa aren't going to look at Oakland as a wonderful place to raise their kids or even a place to visit. If the city council still refuses, then all that HBO will do is film in Boyle Heights and South Central LA and pass that off as Oakland (the lack of historic architecture makes those neighborhoods [or at least what I've seen of them] much more unattractive than even the most decrepit parts of Oakland [where old, yet rundown, Victorians are still plentiful]). Besides, think of what this (the fees, tax revenues, etc.) could do for Oakland's coffers, which are so empty that the parking meter fees have just increased 75 cents per hour and operate 1.5 hours earlier in some places and 2 hours later everywhere than before (http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_12717359). But will the light bulb go on in the city council's collective head? Don't count on it...instead we'll just see an increase of taxes and LA being passed off as yet another city that it couldn't be more different from.