Grandpa

So, I missed my goal yesterday of posting a blog post but having the daily goal is making it such that I don't have weeks in between posts.  This may or may not be making it more interesting to you guys.

Anyway, yesterday was pretty intense.  We had our first day of "real" bar review.  As in, the first day of learning substantive NY law.  We're starting with the oh-so-fun subject area of New York Practice, which is NY-specific civil procedure.  I will probably never use this in my actual legal practice.  

Anyway, Erik's grandfather (herein referred to as "Grandpa") has been in the hospital since last Friday night.  At first it just seemed like a normal hospital stay (normal as far as any hospital stay is when you are getting older) where they just had to clear some fluid out of his lungs.  He was having trouble breathing and was very fatigued when he was down for graduation.  At any rate, after running tests, the doctors determined that it was much more serious and that he has an aneurysm in (on?) his aorta.  So, things have progressively gotten worse.  Right now we are waiting for a bed to open up at another hospital because that's where the surgeon who can do the surgery is.  They are trying to avoid another open heart surgery because the recovery would be a real bitch and Grandpa really would rather not go through that again.

I'll keep you guys posted but if you could, please send some positive thoughts our way.  I know Erik and I would really appreciate it.  Here's Grandpa at graduation:

Wedding Crashers

Now, I wasn't going to write about any more wedding stuff for a few days because, really, there is more to my life than just reflecting about an event that happened 9 months ago. Granted, it's a HUGE event and the happiest day of my life, but I don't want to sound like a broken record.

Anyway, I was looking through some wedding photos and noticed something strange.  I zoomed it in at 125% and saw 3 people at the bar that I didn't know!  Here's the photo:

 While the rest of the wedding guests are bustin' a move, these freeloaders are drinking from our bar!  And before you say/ think it, they are not guests of invited guests.  As previously mentioned, our guest list was super tight!  Therefore, I knew everyone that came (even guests of invited guests).

I didn't even realize that people actually did this.  I mean, maybe that's why they made a movie about it.  Apparently, I'm not the only one of my friends that has had this happen to them.  I posted a status on Facebook about it and within minutes a friend of mine (the groom) wrote this:

 Yes! We had some that knocked over and broke a display. They even tried to tell me that they knew the groom *roll eyes*

At least yours didn't disturb your evening!

Yikes! I suppose I (we) am (are) lucky to not discover these interlopers until 9 months after the fact.  And then another friend of mine said that she had people who had sex at her reception! Sex!  I was at this wedding.  It was outside.  And it was not the most perfect weather ever.  And who does that?!! 

I have found this all terribly amusing.  At our wedding, I remember distinctly catching several people watching us from the entry way into our hall.  I just sort of shrugged my shoulders at them as if to say "what do you think you are doing?"  They slinked off into the night but maybe it was these people.  There was another wedding in the mansion part of the venue.  Maybe that wedding wasn't as much fun (likely).  At any rate, it was odd.  I've never had a desire or inkling to crash a wedding.  Have any of you?

Bar Review

In keeping with my goal of writing daily, I will just give you all (non-recent law grads) a peak into what bar review is like -- at least at the beginning anyway.  

Right now, it's not so bad.  I'm currently taking a "foundation" course that's going over the major areas of law on a general basis.  These subjects are: Torts, Criminal Law, Contracts, Property, Evidence and Constitutional Law.  All (except for Evidence) basic first year classes.  This also means that it's been at least 2 years since I've even thought about these subjects, with the exception of criminal law since I TA-ed for that class in the fall.  Each day has been devoted to one subject.

We meet at the law school (and I thought I could get away!) at 9am and immediately take a 50 question multiple choice practice exam over the subject matter.  We're supposed to take these cold with no review.  I've been averaging less than 50% correct, which obviously worries me.  This is especially true when the "professor" tells us that, yeah, these are tough questions but on a scale from 1-10 they are a 5/6 and we should expect much harder on the actual Bar.  Thanks, guys, my self-confidence is now at an all time low.

After taking the exam, we have a break. They allocated 2 hours for the exam but I'm finding that I finish around 1.5 hours.  This is probably because my response to a lot of the questions is "heck if I know", which funny enough is how my Tort professor described res ipsa loquitur cases.  They (the bar prep company) also gave us an hour break for lunch.  By majority vote (not unanimous because some people just couldn't care less), we decided that we would only take 30 minutes.  That way we get out of class at 3pm instead of 3:30pm.  This has worked nicely the last few sessions.  Lunch break consists of us all cramming into one long cafeteria table 1L style since we all have break together and who wants to be anti-social?

Then comes the fun part.  Watching pre-recorded hour long lectures that go over the questions we just answered.  This is when we actually learn stuff that we were never taught in the first place but answered questions on anyway.  Because so much information is crammed into the lectures, I haven't found them boring because I haven't had time to think about that.  Also, and this is a little sick, I've found it kind of fun to go over stuff from 1L year. Time seems to fly by most of the time.  Today, however, was an exception.  We covered Evidence today and our "prof" had to have mentioned at least 6 movies to illustrate his point.  He even digressed with personal stories.  I think he was just trying to fill the time since there wasn't that much to cover.  It got really annoying with his verbal tic of saying "my friends".  Which, after John McCain (and this link too), just irks me and strikes me as very insincere.

At any rate, we're done with class at about 3pm.  This sounds good.  I mean, wouldn't it be awesome to only have to work 6 hours/ day including an hour break?  And I'm by no means comparing this to a real job.  But I wish I could manage to get more done after class.  I would like to work out, but usually I'm starving and the last 2 days I had to run some crazy errands.  I did manage to put in another 2.5 hours of studying in yesterday, but if I'm going to manage my test anxiety, I'm going to have to do better.  

I realize it's only May.  I also realize it's a marathon not a sprint.  But I remember my LSAT and having to compulsively pop Tums and take deep breaths.  I do not want to have a repeat on the Bar because the LSAT did not work out so well for me.  So, I'm going to treat this whole thing like my job and put in 8-10 hours/ day (until July when apparently the shit hits the fan).  This is not to out do my friends or stress them out, but I'm doing it because I know what it takes to make myself feel calm about exams.  This is what's worked for me the last 3 years and so why change things now?  I also bought a motivational book with "daily reflections" to keep myself centered.  Here's a passage:

Today before I dive into my planned study schedule, I will take a minute to focus on the fact that I am smart, that I have a law degree, and that I can do this, as many have before me.  I will not let fears and stresses of others derail my preparation.

People CHOOSE their approaches to challenges.  I choose to work through all the material at a steady, planned pace, knowing I will be where I need to be on exam day.  My plans include learning all the subjects required, taking the necessary practice tests, honestly tracking my progress, changing and adjusting course where needed, and maintaining a solid and singular focus on my goal.  While I am following my plan, I will remember to take care of my body and mind.  I will rest when I need to and eat sensibly when I should.

Knowledge and practice are critical — rest and calm are equally important.  I commit to taking care of ALL of me — mind, body, and spirit.

Was this book written for me or what? Apologies to my law friends whom I've now stressed out.  Sorry!!!

Marriage License

I'm trying very hard to stick to my promise to catch up on lingering blog post obligations (mostly about the wedding).  I set as a goal last week to do one blog post a day as a mental break from bar review studying.  So, here is one of the makeup posts about when E and I got our marriage license.

***

Side note: I'll probably take a little break from wedding blogging (kind of hits a saturation point, right?) and write about my past weekend, which was amazing!

***

Anyway, after we drove up to my in-laws and dropped off our car full of stuff we headed up to the county in which we were getting married to get the marriage license.  Well, there was a TON of traffic on the way up there.  It's in a vacation-y part of the state and well, everyone seemed to be heading in our direction and with boats in tow no less.  We were already cutting it pretty close by waiting until 4 days before the wedding to get the license.  I triple checked to make sure we had what we needed, which was surprisingly and disconcertingly little.

We finally made it to the courthouse at 4:35PM-ish.  I was panicking at this point.  Not only had we been in the car for 5ish hours and stuck in heavy traffic but if we didn't get the license that day we would have to do it again the next day (at that point 3 days before the wedding).  The courthouse was rather confusing regarding which entrance to go into to so we picked the biggest one.  Wrong choice!  And there was a line of people!  I had a pair of cuticle clippers in my purse and the officer on duty told me I couldn't bring them into the courthouse and was making a big stink about it.  I'm like, "FINE.  Please just throw them away and tell us where to go so we can get married!!"  Of course, with our luck it was on the other side of the court building and on a different floor.  So, Erik sprints off leaving me behind.  I'm "walking fast" after him telling him that he can't do this without me so he might as well wait.

We reach the County Clerk's Office at around 4:40pm and fortunately, it was not very busy.  I'm sure the other people trying to get married aren't as last minute as us since we waiting right before closing to start filling out forms.  The woman in the office told us that we just made it since the cut off for people is at 4:45pm.  That is, if you aren't already filling out paperwork at 4:45pm, no marriage license for you that day.  Just made it!

The whole process took a little less than 15 minutes.  We had to raise our right hands and swear to something.  I honestly don't remember much from the actual getting of the marriage license because I was still super stressed about almost missing it.  We were able to get one photo in front of the office before the security guard (a different one) told us that we couldn't take photos in the courthouse (I guess I should have known that already):

In with our marriage license were some really bizarre pamphlets.  One of which was an informational pamphlet on why you shouldn't drink while pregnant entitled "Drinking and Your Pregnancy"...  Really? 

Because we had to drive right past our wedding spot, Erik and I decided to get out and see how the place looked.  We hadn't been up there since April, and it was decidedly NOT pretty then.  The cool thing was that it was around the time our wedding would take place when we went there.  Good news: SHADE for our guests.  I took this picture from the top of the aisle.  It looks like a SUPER far distance.  

I have to admit that after taking this picture I really got a little freaked out.  Especially walking it alone.  Erik just looked so tiny at the end up by the gazebo.  One thing to point out in this photo that I wish I had noticed at the time: The sun is directly on Erik and me and setting to the right looking at the gazebo.  This means that my bmaids were not only in the sun the entire wedding ceremony but they were also facing the sun.  I feel so bad for not noticing that in advance because it probably wouldn't have been a big deal to move the wedding away from the gazebo a few feet... Oh well.  Live and learn, right?

Heading Up: T-minus 4 Days until the Wedding

It was a crazy whirlwind between landing on August 1 from NYC and then leaving to go up for the wedding on August 11!  Not only were we doing last minute wedding stuff, we also had a bit of a family emergency.  But the best thing about us is that we are really good at handling family emergencies at this point.  

As far as wedding stuff goes, the downside to getting the bmaid gifts early was that they tarnished over the summer.  So I had to hand polish each on of them.  So, now that the wedding is done and the cat's out of bad, I'll tell you what I gave them!  While living in Nashville, I randomly went to this artisan festival and met Beth from Freshie & Zero. I love her unique jewelry so I thought that she would be perfect to do jewelry for my bridesmaids.  I told her our wedding colors and she custom made the earrings to match the colors.  She just had a baby and I'm so happy for her.  It really was a pleasure to work with her.  Also, bmaid Jess does not have pierced ears so she made a special pair of screw back earrings for her.  She also made a bigger pair for my MoH.  Here are the photos I couldn't share before and of my labor of love:

 MoH Kim's earrings are on the left and the other bmaids' on the right.  Beth made them with topaz and sapphires. :) They match the colors perfectly!

 Polishing each individually.

Wrapped gifts!

I found these cute little notebooks made from old personal ads.  I thought that it would be a nice touch with the earrings.

Another fun thing about it being so close to the wedding is that I would return home from running a million errands—buying photo frames for these letters we wrote to put on the tables, ribbon and baskets for the programs, one last highlight touch up, etc.—to this:

 So, I tried really hard to get that to show up portrait but no go.  And... I don't know html so you'll just have to use your imagination on this one.  Anyway, this is definitely something fun to come home to.  The not so fun part -- waiting until E gets home so he can share in the joy of opening!

Anyway, on August 11, we finally left home to head up to the wedding.  It was hard because we were leaving for almost 2 weeks and had to pack for the wedding festivities and the honeymoon! AND fit everything in our car.  Fortunately, the best man was able to bring up our big honeymoon suitcase.  With the wedding dress and other wedding stuff, we just didn't have room!

But first, we had to stop by Fannie May to get our favors!

Fannie May was amazing.  They gave us a great discount and stuffed and labeled the favors.
Side note: I wore a tube top because I really didn't want to get tanlines from the car.  Yes, I am that neurotic!

Erik really got into the whole document-everything-for-the-blog thing.  In fact, he kept pushing me to update the blog in the days before the wedding.  I was, like, "You know you're an admin too, right?"  Then he didn't think an update was super critical.

 In case you forgot what they looked like.  The stickers are from Zazzle 

and the candy box is from a wholesaler.

 After our 3 hour drive, we dropped off the wedding stuff — putting the favors in Erik's mom's basement to stay cool and the wedding dress in the closet.  Then we drove in really bad traffic to get our marriage license.  But more on that in the next catch up post!

Homecoming from NYC: T-Minus 14 Days until Wedding

My last day of work was July 31, and my firm was really classy and let me know about my offer during lunch on my last day.  In contrast, some of my friends did not find out whether they had offers until September or even October so I felt very lucky.  I went out and celebrated that night with some friends from my summer program and then went over to my cousin’s apt. for dinner.  The next day, I left to come back to Champaign—two weeks before the wedding and 10 days before we had to leave for the wedding.  Erik did a great job keeping the apartment clean, or at least cleaning it to an acceptable level before my return.  The only thing he didn’t quite keep up with was our mail.  This is what I came home to:

Have to love my husband, but he's not the cleanest man on the planet.  After I got in, I had one day (August 2) to recoup (and clean) and then it was time for wedding stuff at full throttle!

First step, fittings.  I had fittings #16, #17 and the final one on August 3, 5, and 7, which is when I picked up the dress.  Good news: The bodice still fit – mission to not gain weight successful.  Bad news: At fitting #16, the skirt was still not attached to the bodice!  I’d been waiting all summer for the dress to be complete and it still wasn’t ready.  I had not planned on going to three fittings the week before the wedding, but what are you going to do? 

 Fitting #16: 

Fitting #17:

 FINAL FITTING:

The Friday before the wedding, I picked up the dress from Tina’s and carefully put it in my closet.  Erik really didn’t want to see it.  Ignore the fact that you can’t see through an opaque bag.

That night, bmaid Jess came over for some arts & crafts time.  Really, we just wanted an excuse to hang out and drink wine, but I put her to work!  While I was working on our guest “book”, she was making “bouquets” for the rehearsal.  Photos from that:

I'm not sure that I talked about my guestbook last year.  I always liked the idea of having people sign a mat around a photo of the couple at the wedding.  That way you can hang up the photo and see everyone who came. But then that got REALLY popular.  And I wanted our stuff to be unique and cool.  So I bought some canvas and painted our wedding date on it (see above).  It's spaced a little oddly but that adds character, right?  And the cool thing: We have it hung up in our hallway on our photo wall.  At graduation last weekend, we had family members sign it that didn't get a chance to do so at the wedding — Mom, grandma and grandpa and Dad hadn't signed.  The VIPs didn't sign! Good thing I still have the paint pens that we had everyone use.  Here's the final product:

Next post: Heading Up!

Summer in NYC

I’m writing this blog post as I’m on a plane to NYC to go to my cousin’s (and MOH’s) wedding shower.  I’m very lucky to have been asked to be in two weddings this summer (2 of my bridesmaids will be joining me in married-land).  This is the crazy whirlwind weekend that I mentioned here and at this time tomorrow (it’s 9:30am CDT) I’ll be on another flight back to Chicago to go to another cousin’s baby shower. 

Since I’m traveling to NY and have not been back since I left last August, I thought that I would blog about my summer in New York.  My blogging fell of a cliff last summer mostly because I was just focused on getting a job and therefore felt uneasy about blogging while at work.  When I finally got home (most nights after 8pm and some nights after 11pm or later), I just did not feel like blogging or doing other wedding stuff.  Most of the wedding stuff that I had to do (that Erik did not/ could not do) was writing thank you cards and sending out last minute invitations.  The fun stuff – receiving the RSVPs and gifts fell solely to my husband.  He did a great job with it and sent me photos of the fun ones, which was very sweet of him!  We kept track via GoogleDoc of all the RSVPs.  It was fun because he updated it almost every day so I got to see our guest list grow.

Here are some things I did instead of wedding planning:

Yep. That's me with Carla from Top Chef.  I also met Tiki Barber, Michael Strahan and Mariah Carey (& Nick Canon). This was at a fundraiser.

Rachel and I at the midnight showing of Harry Potter.  We were up until 4am!  Work the next day was ... interesting...  We also snuck mini- wine bottles into the theater. :)

New Yankee stadium. (Still a Red Sox fan)

Cooking class summer associate event.  We made these fabulous baskets out of parmesan cheese.  We were pretty much bad asses.

Atlanta Couples Shower at my good friend Beth's

Another photo from the shower.

End of summer party after-party.

Firm box seats at Yankee Stadium.

My closest friends this past summer! Us state-school girls had to stick together!

Celebrating Jess & Adam finishing the bar exam!

Really only 2 stressful things happened during the summer.  My MiL increased the guest list about 4 weeks out from the wedding (because we got the whole ballroom instead of half and thus were no longer strictly limited to the 150 max – at least space-wise).  Also, two weeks before the wedding, the hairdresser that I vetted before my shower quit her job to stay home with her baby.  I was a little nervous about that from the beginning because she only worked Saturdays and had recently come back from maternity leave.  Most brides would freak out, I think, but I used it as an opportunity to negotiate for a lower price for my hair – since it was too late to go somewhere else.  I ended up liking my new person WAY better, so it all worked out in the end.

The one “fun” wedding task that I did over the summer was look at veils.  I’ve mentioned my aversion to veils before here, but I decided that I wanted to give it another go.  I dragged my friend Rachel along and here are some photos from that adventure:

I didn’t see anything I liked and, besides, everything was way over priced.  $400 for a piece of lace?! Really?!  Finally, after our search left us tired without anything to show for it, I decided to just trust my dressmaker and take her up on her offer to make me a birdcage veil for free with the dress.  It turned out absolutely perfect:

Next post: Homecoming from NYC

Now that Law School's Done on to the Bar

And not the fun kind!  Graduation was Saturday.  Tomorrow, Thursday, I start my bar review course.  That's right, I got a whole 4 days "off."  "Off" is in scare quotes because they were not days off.  They consisted of entertaining family and friends (which is awesome just tiring), planning and hosting a baby shower, and having an interview.  This is not to mention the errands and loose ends to tie up that were neglected during finals and other aforementioned activities.  This are not necessarily bad activities.  In fact, most were quite enjoyable!  But they weren't the lay-on-the-couch-revel-in-being-done extravaganza that I'm sure my other classmates got to indulge in.  I'm not really complaining, more just hoping that I don't burn out.  I have a BIG WEEKEND ahead of me!

 Here's a highlight of my next 96 hours:

Thursday: Bar Review 8:30-4 and then studying and packing.

Friday: Bar Review 8:30-4, leave immediately for Chicago (≈3 hour drive).

Saturday: Flight to NYC at 8am, immediately go to wedding shower, hang with family, dinner.

Sunday: Flight back to ORD at 8am, immediately go to baby shower, hang with family, drive back home (≈3 hour drive) to make it back in time for bar review classes first thing Monday morning.

This doesn't sound so bad but think of it this way: I will be in NYC for less than 24 hours and have to get up around 4:30am-ish both days to make these events.  Please just hope for on time flights and me not falling asleep on the road on Sunday.

One of my goals for the next few months (and to help exercise the other side of my brain) is to  finish up on lingering blog posts.  I've been terrible the last month and there are some remaining wedding posts I should do as well.  Here's the list (I'll probably create hyperlinks on these as they are completed):

- Bmaid Labors of Love & Craft Time

- Last Fittings

- Heading Up

- Marriage License

- Hair & Makeup Trial

- OOT Bags

- Girls' Spa Day

- Rehearsal & Rehearsal BBQ

- Getting Ready

- Wedding - Ceremony

- Reception Entrance

- First Dance & Cake Cutting

- Speeches

- Food

- Par-tay

- Cooking Class at Blue

- End of Law School Festivities

- Graduation!!

- Baby Shower

That's a lot to catch up on.  Sigh.  Here are some photos from Graduation so I can check that off my list!

Me on the Quad.  Photo credit: Jon Law

Pre-Graduation Brunch

Bmaid Jess came all the way from Boston to come!!  

FYI: The white disk (aka coif) on my cap signifies me being in the top 10% of my class -- I'm now a member of the "Order of Coif" (pending spring semester grades)

That's me!

I beat Erik to getting a doctorate... But I promise not to rub it in too much.

Room B - where I started law school.

B2 Ladies

The Fam - I'm so lucky to have so many people come down.

"Dinner" at 4pm at the local country club.

End of the night.  Erik was proud. :D  

Doesn't he look good with that wedding ring on?