I'm going to play around with more fun internet features and actually use the blog features that goodreads gives me. I actually finished this about a week and a half ago, but just hadn't gotten around to posting it. Almost done with the book I'm currently reading too. Woot.

Book #17

Broken by Daniel Clay

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars



View all my reviews.


the book as kind of like a modern day to kill a mockingbird. i picked it up at the sf library bookstore a couple of weeks ago, mostly because it had a cool looking cover and the plot on the back cover intrigued me. i really enjoyed it. am actually tempted to go back and reread to kill a mockingbird at some point now. it's about an 11 year old girl who is telling the story about how she came to be in a coma. it was one of those books that was hard to put down. because i read when i work out, that actually meant that i wanted to work out for 5-10 minutes longer than usual. strange, isn't it?

First things first: Happy Earth Day!

I'm taking a break as I head into the final stretch of my Contracts Outline. I'm debating trying to cut out crap from this (which would fit in the spirit of Earth Day), but I'm afraid that'd be a monster in itself. I might have to live with this near-60 page monster of a Contracts Outline. I'm afraid of how long the other ones are going to be. Soon, I will be making an outline to this outline (this actually helped with some of the other finals I did last semester).

Enough of that, though. Before one of my favorite contestants of this season might possibly be in the bottom for a second time this season and actually get kicked off, I wanted to share my current thoughts on the Idol Contestants.

My favorite three are Allison, Kris, and Matt.

I didn't like Matt at the beginning of the competition. I think I started liking him around country week, but his performance during Motown week is what made me a fan. I was very sad when I first heard that he was going to be kicked off last week. Glad the judges used their save. He can be very hit or miss though. His Fray performance was absolutely terrible and his performance tonight sounded like N Sync doe the Bee Gees (but not in a good way). Actually I think N Sync did Staying Alive at some point in time, but I don't recall. Don't have enough power to dig into that part of my brain right now.

Allison's been one of my favorites for the entire competition. She's got an amazing voice. Not just for a 16 year old, but just in general.

When I first saw Kris perform, I did not think he was going to make it that far. He was good, but kind of boring. He also didn't come packaged with a sob story, disability, or kids, like many of this seasons other contestants did. I felt like that was going to spell doom. Fortunately, he's hasn't hit the Bottom Three yet (despite Dial Idol's predictions...they're seriously full of fail this season). He's also been getting better every week. Also, he gets eternal bonus points for doing Falling Slowly and doing a decent job with it. I loved his performance this week. It was like Jason Mraz meets disco. He and Allison were my definite favorites this week.

Danny was my favorite in the beginning. Mostly because I thought he looked like Robert Downey Jr. He was pretty good for the first few weeks. His performance of Hero way back when was amazing. Then, I started realizing that all of his performances sound EXACTLY THE SAME. The judges will tear apart someone like Matt for their lack of creativity or originality, yet they shine heaps of praises on to Danny. I really don't get it. He sounds like Taylor Hicks, but he's not absolutely crazy and therefore does not make for good Idol entertainment. He's probably slightly more marketable than Taylor, but the judges should realize that he's headed for fail.

I felt similarly about Lil Rounds in the beginning. Probably one of the best at the beginning of the competition. Unlike Danny who maintains a level of mediocrity each week, Lil Rounds seems to be getting worse each week. The back up singers out performed her this week. I don't know how she thought she was going to pull off I'm Every Woman when other contestants have done a much better job with an already tough song in the past. She needs to go. I'm tired of her talking back all the time to the judges. I hope she's out tomorrow.

Anoop can be hit or miss. He's got a very good voice, but lacks stage presence. I also get an arrogant vibe from him. I really liked his Always On My Mind performance. I generally like him, but I'd rather see him go than Matt tomorrow.

I'm so sick of Adam. I'd accept another week of Lil Rounds if it meant that Adam was gone this week. He screeches every song he performs. I almost liked his performance this week and then he started screeching. He's absolutely ridiculous. He tries to hard. I can never forgive his performance of Ring of Fire. The only thing that I can compare him to is the store Hot Topic. The fact that he used the Gary Jules version of Mad World instead of the Tears for Fears version does not make him original. It just shows he watched Donnie Darko. That does not warrant a standing ovation from Simon. He didn't even do the Gary Jules version that well. In theory, I should like him. He's got the Broadway background. He actually does sing well. He'll probably win. I don't know. David Cook turned me around after Smurf week last season, so maybe he'll change my mind in the next month. Maybe.

Actually, I liked disco week a lot more than I thought I would. Wonder what next week's theme will be. The more important question is whether I'll actually watch the results show because there's no Lost tomorrow and all.

Speaking of Wednesday programming, the new show Better off Ted is absolutely hilarious. Portia de Rossi's in it, which is why I first noticed it. My Contracts professor also mentioned that it was good and he was pretty funny, so I trusted him on that one. It's bizarre and funny. The fact that I like it means that it's probably going to be canceled soon. (please no?)

Okay, I've made a compromise with myself. I have just (or forty minutes ago) finished my last class as a first year. I feel like there is some obligatory farting around that should come with it, so I am going to post another blog entry before I go to the gym and then it's crank time on that Contracts Outline. My goal is to finish that one tonight.

Today is kind of a post explosion, I guess. I successfully used the new text post feature (see previous post) which could serve as a replacement for Twitter free from the boundaries of the 140 characters. I might do one more later tonight. I was going to do my final comments on the Idol people before my favorites got kicked out, but I figured that would be more fitting AFTER the performances happen. Disco night. That'll be fun.

Anyway, I just wanted to post about my weekend because I actually did stuff again this weekend. But because I should actually eventually get to work, I'm going to do a semi-shortened one version.

Thursday:

- had class
- Chris came
- we went to lunch at Tommy's Joynt and had good food
- packed up some stuff here and then drove to San Jose for my interview (got the job, yay)
- went home for a while and then went out to dinner for sushi
- Uncle Brian drove us home, but we stopped at Nob Hill along the way because Chris needed contact solution. We also ended up getting material to make a cheesecake for the KALSA baking competition

Friday:

- Chris went to Enviro law with me, was sad that it was the last Enviro law, but we talked about MA v. EPA, which is a very interesting case
- went to the Health Center because I had been having abdominal pains. Got poked and prodded and sent away
- went to Saigon Sandwiches for lunch and ate out in front of the Asian Art Museum.
- went back to the Tower so I could study and Chris could make our cheesecake submission for the KALSA party
- went with a large group over to the Mission for the End of the Year KALSA party. Was a lot of fun. We ended up winning the baking competition, so Chris now knows he's somewhat talented in making strawberry sauce
- left early ish (with a giant group of people who wanted to weed their way through the Mission together)
- ended up making it to the Metreon just in time for the 9:30 showing of Dragonball Evolution (movie was terrible, but was made more amusing by a guy who was snoring very loudly)

Saturday

- breakfast/lunch at El Farolito
- made reservations for our 5th anniversary dinner at The House in North Beach, managed to get 9:30 reservations
- went to Westfield Mall because we were both pretty lame and didn't know what to get for each other as anniversary gifts. I ended up getting him Warcraft books to fuel that obsession. He got me an ecofriendly purse from the Virgin Megastore (RIP)
- went back and studied/watched Arrested Development/TDK for a couple of hours
- left around 8:45 to walk out to the restaurant because we did not feel like catching a taxi
- Food at The House was very good. We split a scallop appetizer. I got sea bass. He got halibut. We had cheesecake for dessert (but only after embarassing ourselves and trying to order crepes when our waitress had told us the dessert special was some sort of a crisp)

Sunday

- we were supposed to go to Dottie's for breakfast before Chris left, but I ended up feeling sick, so I road out to Fremont with him and Umma picked us up to go to the Dr.
- Got lunch at Oakridge
- went home for a while, Chris left
- Oppa took me back to SF
- I got some studying in

That's about it for my weekend. Now it's time for the serious studying. Or maybe more serious studying. Idk, we'll see.

Hey they have mobile posting for blogger (good to know for the next road trip) so I wanted to do a test. Granted, it's not entirely necessary with an iphone but it's still pretty sweet. Also I dont think the 140 character limit of twitter applies here

I'm getting my blog in before Property class happens. It might run over for the slow periods of this class too.

I never got to post about Fleet Foxes. Mostly because I spent Wednesday trying to get work done before Chris came on Thursday and then was busy for the rest of the weekends. Thus, I will give a brief recap of the show.

Was at the Fillmore. Went with Dinah. We got there around 8:20 and were very surprised to find that when they posted that the show was going to start at 8, it started at 8 and not in the 9-9:30 time range. That was a pleasant surprise actually.

The first band was Blitzen Trapper. I had heard of them before and heard some of their music on myspace, but that was about. They were REALLY good live. I was pleasantly surprised and probably would have bought their last album at the store had it not been for the horde at the exit (which I will talk about shortly)



The wait between sets wasn't that long and Fleet Foxes came out before we knew it. In that time, we actually managed to squeeze our way to maybe the 15th/20th row of people in front of the stage. Normally I'm morally opposed to such behavior, but it was not that crowded so it was more walking and less squeezing. And despite the fact that the Fleet Foxes crowd was relatively short, we managed to stand behind the three tallest people in the Fillmore that night. Go figure.

I was also kind of nervous about seeing them live. Their self-titled album was absolutely flawless. I figured there had to be something wrong with the live show. Their voices were too good to be true in the studio recording. Fortuantely, they actually sound exactly like they do on the album. It was amazing to see some of those harmonies they did on songs like White Winter Hymnal. There was also a lot of pot smoking, which at least makes more sense than the pot smoking at the St. Vincent show.

Also, I have some love for my camera. When it was stable enough to take pictures, I got some really good close ones despite the fact that I was relatively far back.



The coolest part of their set, however, was when the lead singer came out and did a completely unplugged version of Oliver James (or I remember it being Oliver James).

And for the final song, Blue Ridge Mountain, the whole band + Blitzen Trapper came out and played the song. It was fun to watch.



MVI_7950.AVI

The show ended relatively early. Maybe around 10:30? It took us forever to get out because everyone leaves from one small exit. That kind of made me a little nervous about the venue and I was glad there was no fire or anything. We did get free posters though curtosy of the Fillmore. That was cool.

We were back to my place around 11:15 between the long exit and the fact that it took forever to get a taxi. Dinah went back and I got in quite a bit of outlining.

That was my quick overview of the Fleet Foxes. I will write about the weekend and getting a summer job (w00t w00t) and all that in the next post.

been pretty busy lately.

this weekend i flew down to socal with chabba for oppa's 50th birthday. the flight to lax was pretty uneventful and chris picked us up and drove us to embassy sweets. we celebrated oppa's birthday at marakesh in costa mesa. crasher and i went there for our 3 year anniversary (i think?). good food and i was craving that bastilla dish for the weeks before.



I mean, look at it. It even looks like a camel. It's got chicken and cinnamon and sugar. So good. Even better, we found out, was the vegetarian version of this dish.

Anyway, I guess that this goes without saying, but we also learned from thsi night that James and Chris should not go into bellydancing any time soon. A bellydancer comes out and performs every once in a while. She dances for the groups and will make people in the groups come up and dance with her. Last time, she made me dance with her and this amused chris so much that he gave her a pretty big tip (for Chris at least). this time around, she tried to pull me up but i decided to not give chris that joy this time around. instead, James and Chris ended up both going up.



Saturday, Umma Oppa Chabba and Mia were looking for places for her to live next year. Gianni James Chris Bruce and I went and chilled in a park in Irvine. Got some contracts reading done and played with Brucey a lot. After they were done, we drove out to Garden Grove for Korean BBQ and gorged ourselves with large quantities of meat. Good food. They had one of those all you can eat meat things going on.

We went to Newport Pier for a while and played at the beach. This is amusing because Brucey is terrified of waves.



Anyway, we had to leave pretty early because we were going to Escondido to see the Scarlet Pimpernel. This involved a splitting up of the parties and a panic as we waited for Gianni's gf to come meet us at the hotel.

We ended up missing the first few songs of the show, but that was okay. That was either the 8th or 9th time i've seen the show (umma insists that it is 8, but i'm pretty sure it is 9). It was actually pretty good overall. Was not a fan of the person who played Chauvelin, or the crazy costumes for the Creation of Man, but it was fun and brought back good memories.

Sunday we gorged ourselves on the free Embassy Suites omelettes and then went to Yogurtland before Chris drove Chabba and me back to the airport. This flight was also relatively low key, except we had to sit in the plane for like 30 extra minutes because the gate wasn't open. It was very hot in the plane. Not fun.

Actually, all in all despite all of that, I got the vast majority of my reading done for the week. This has been good so far because I've been able to crack away at the outlines in that cleared up time. I actually have to do reading for Con Law tomorrow though. And Enviro Law for Fri, but it was a good effort.

Monday morniing I found out that I got waitlisted for the Moot Court team. Obviously, I would have preferred to have actually made the team, but I really did not think that I'd make waitlist. So, I have to take App Ad in the fall and see where things go. Quite a few people do make it onto the teams from the waitlist they say.

Tuesday, I got reelected as Secretary for the Hastings Intellectual Property & Cyber Law Society. Yay for that. Also got an interview for a potential job. Yay.

Also, I saw Fleet Foxes, which was amazing and I will write more about that (with pictures) later.

I am going to take a break from outlining the Statute of Frauds to post here. Hi. meant to post on Tuesday and Wednesday but never got to it. Last few days have been busy.

Tuesday - volunteered at GAAP and got a rose from one client I helped. i think he brought it in to give to anyone who helped him, but it made me happy. And now it's sitting in a water bottle. did homework. went to the Immigration Clinic with a TON of people because I guess the immigration class has to do mandatory field experience. got cookies at this good bakery we discovered last time we went on the way out and then stopped by the Coffee Bean and frozen yogurt on the way back. I even made it back in time to watch Idol. Um...yeah Adam Lambert was terrible. He was nor worthy of Simon's standing ovation.

Wednesday - killer day of classes. they switched our thurs/wed conlaw/contracts on us, so we had TWO hours of contracts in the morning. then we had to do a make up class for property, so we had three hours of property after that. There was some panel on legalizing pot between K and property, but I knew i was going to be worn out and wanted to get homework done, so i skipped out. it was in the room we had property, and it looked like it was kind of big deal. a LOT of newspeople there. The last hour of property was interesting too. Our prof brought in one of the attorneys who worked on the marriage cases. Interesting talk. Got back and had to bake a carrot cake for our hall dinner. The outside burned, so it tasted a little more like carrot bread, but I was able to disguise this under a thick layer of frosting. The floor dinner was good and a lot fun. Outlined and went to bed.

Today - two (more like 1.4) hours of Con Law. Read most of my Enviro law before GAAP. GAAP was really slow today. I only helped like one or two people. Came back and finished enviro law and have been doing an uber outlining session to make up for the work i'm not going to get done this weekend. not quite as productive as I'd hoped in terms of property outlining, but i am making some good progress in contracts. ... decent maybe is a better word for it.

Also, I haven't posted the last few books I read:

#14 - Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons - I think this was the first graphic novel i've ever read all the way through. AMAZING. the movie was apparently very well translated. Except, what was up with Night Owl's goofy snow suit in the novel? Lolz. Now I really want to watch the movie again.

#15 - The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall - picked it up at Green Apple Books while Jeanne and I were waiting for our table at Burma Superstar. The back looked intriguing, but the book was SO WEIRD. I'm still not sure if I completely got what happened.

#16 - Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin - Really inspiring account of this ex-mountaineer (Mortenson) who ends up building over 50 schools in Pakistan. Gianni got it for me for my birthday. Great read.

Speaking of books, some of my friends here have decided to do a book club over the summer. I am really excited about this, but now I'm purposely holding off on some books so I can use them as my suggestions for the book club. I got another book by Michael Chabon at the library last week and I'm dying to read it, but that's one of the books I want to hold off on.

Today ended up being a lot more interesting than it set out to be. Like a month ago, I had signed up to volunteer for the Hastings Admitted Students day to represent both KALSA and HIPCLS. It seemed exciting, mostly because it wasn't so long ago when that was me.

Anyway, I woke up early to start reading for Tuesday's Contracts class. I didn't actually manage to finish that by the time I had to go to the lunch mingling session. The food was good and I talked to a couple people and answered some of their questions about being in law school. That ended around 1:30. At 3, I went up to the SkyRoom for the end reception. I guess everyone was on their tours, so they didn't start trickling in until much later. I was kind of over it by that time, so I talked to a person or two to atone for all the strawberries I ate there and left.

I came back to Churro telling me over AIM that Lily Allen (singer, tabloid fodder, and one of the many individual who is constantly feuding with Perez Hilton) was hiding free tickets around San Francisco for the show she had tonight and was posting tips for her scavenger hunt on Twitter. She had done this in LA too. Think it's going to be a new thing of hers. I wanted to go to her show tonight, but I was kind of iffy about going. Of course, by the time I decided I wanted to go, tickets were sold out. She had put one pair of tickets at the Conservatory of the Flowers and the current one was at Pier 39. I knew that there was no way I was going to get from the Tenderloin to Pier 39, so I sulked.

I waited around for her to post the next clue and found out it was in the Westfield Mall on Market. It's about a 15-20 minute walk from here. When I found out, I ran out of my room and essentially sprinted to the mall. I'm sure I knocked over a few people on the way there. I think it took me less than 10 minutes to get there, though. Thanks to my handy iPhone, by the time I got to the mall, I knew that she was going to be at Borders. Unfortunately, while I was on the escalator that was too crowded to push through and where the stand on the right side apparently does not apply, I saw a group of dirty and smelly hipsters running towards Borders. Even though it turns out they weren't the ones who got the tickets, I knew at that point I was not going to be seing Lily Allen at the Warfield tonight.

I continued anyway and I managed to meet her. I was too sweaty and out of breath by that time to actually think of anything slightly clever to say, think of securing 15 minutes of ONTD fame by getting an ONTD sign, or think of getting an autograph. Instead, I got a picture with her on my iPhone and told her that I loved her new CD. She thanked me.



It was pretty cool. Also Perez Hilton is dumb because 1) she is TINY and not fat, 2) is not a mess, and 3) was very nice. Also, her last CD was amazing. A lot better than anything by Paris or Heidi...

Anyway, now that I was sufficiently sweaty and gross and had met Lily Allen, I stopped by Icebee for some frozen yogurt and walked back to the Tower to get work done.

Surprisingly after all of that I managed to muster enough energy for a short gym trip.

Night's been pretty low key other than that. Just have been reading and outlining.

Today actually turned out to be a pretty busy day. Somehow, I managed to get most of what I wanted to do done too. That's definitely a plus.

I had class in the morning, as usual. Went out to lunch with Matt and Jeanne. Went to Ananda Fuara, the vegetarian restaurant on Larkin and Market. Been there before with Jamie. Good stuff. Had Property right after that. Managed to squeeze in paying rent during break.

After Property, they had some learn how to register for classes meeting that all the 1Ls were obligated to go to. I maanged to sneak in a trip to the B of A ATM between class and that meeting. I stayed for the first forty-five minutes, but I left early so that I could get rid of my laptop and property book before Moot Court.

Today was our last Moot Court meeting, which was kind of sad. On the upside, my Wednesdays are significantly less hectic. We celebrated the end with a trip to Chevys with some margaritas and chips. I've been craving those Chevys chips for a while. No idea why. Anyway, that was a lot of fun. Got to talk to my classmates out of the class context.

I had to leave the celebration a little early because I had to go to a KALSA board meeting. Turned out there was more food there. Talked about the end of the year BBQ and logistics for next year.

That ended a little before 8. This meant that I had an hour to throw things in the laundry before Lost. I did that. Actually, I had really good timing with Lost. It finished around the same time that Lost finished. While watching Lost, I also baked brownies for the GAAP bake sale tomorrow. I also have to finish selling raffle tickets. That is for tomorrow, however.

Also, Lost was pretty good tonight. Kate was surprisingly likable. This was a strange and rare experience for me. I'm just really excited because next week's got a Ben-centric episode and there has been a severe lackage of oldBen.

Also, I'm really happy America had the sense to vote out Megan Joy this week on Idol. She was terrible. She's been terrible. I don't even understand how she lasted this long. Now they just need to kick off Scott. Seems unlikely though. I just hope Allison doesn't go before he does. I also kind of wish Adam sang something like Muse's "Starlight" this week, but at least I didn't want to gouge out my eyes watching him perform this week. I think he's just growing on me.

I did Contracts reading for Thus last night because I knew I was going to be busy today. Read through ConLaw while watching Lost and spent the rest of the night working on my application for Moot Court tryouts. There are limited spaces on the team, so I probably won't make the team. Figure I might as well give it a go. The benefits of trying out and maybe getting on definitely outweigh the benefits of not trying out at all. Also, I really loved the process in the end. I also found out I got an Honorable Mention for Best Brief in our class, which was really exciting. I guess I do have decent research and writing skills after all. The only thing I really have left to do on this application is find some way to get my argument from 14--> 10 pages. I can do this if I change the font. Checking with my TA to see if that's all right. Hopefully I can turn in all this stuff tomorrow. The second part is a 5 minute oral on one of the topics on the site and an interview.

Seems intense, but the journal competition seems way worse.

Oh, cool. TA just got back to me on that question. Yay. Can turn it in before I table for GAAP tomorrow.

Still on the to do list:
Enviro Reading for Fri
Watch An Inconvenient Truth bc I slept through class on Tues where we watched it
get a summer job
clean my room
outline