July 20th through the 24th
Tuesday, July 20, 2010: I only have one class today, so I didn't have to be to college until about 12:30 pm. That gave me the morning to catch up on e-mails, job search stuff, journaling and the like before I headed out.
I had my Criminal Law class today and loved it! Mr. Cashdollar started us off with some joke and current events, like he usually does, and then went over the class syllabus. For the last hour of the class, though, he read us a real case file on a woman who had been murdered and asked us to try to determine a profile on her attacker. We got bits and pieces of the profile, but not the whole thing. (We figured her attacker was male, someone she knew, who didn't function well around women, but that was about it). Mr. Cashdollar then read us what the FBI profile was like, and then read the description of the perp AFTER the FBI had caught him. Wow! They were right on the mark... and this case was around 1979, BEFORE DNA evidence could be used to target a suspect. The profiler did a remarkable job! We were all so engrossed with the whole thing that we didn't want leave when class was over. Loved it! After class, I picked up a few veggies and some berries, and went home to make Marty and I a giant salad for lupper. Ate that while we watched "District 9".
DVD Stuff: "District 9" was fantastic. I wanted to leave to get seconds of the salad, but was so capitaved by the film, I didn't want to leave it. Finally had to put it on "pause", grab more salad, and then run back to the TV room. I had been expecting the old yeah-yeah-alien-slums-on-Earth revisited, like a remake of "Alien Nation", but it actually put in a lot of twists and turns -- and had a killer ending. The whole thing smacked of how the whole society in the Soviet Union collapsed; mixed in with the warlord-run area of the Middle East (all the violence and profiteering); mixed in with race hatred; mixed in with the atrocities committed by both medical science and the military... It didn't pull any punches. And it had moments of real surprise and pathos. When the half-alien/half-human guy picked up the alien weapon and fired it for the first time, both Marty and I yelled WHOA! at the screen. And both Marty and I got real protective of the little cockroach-like child-"prawn". (The Humans called the aliens "Prawns" because they kind of looked like that -- antenna, exoskeletons, et al.) Can't wait for District 10 -- The Return of Christopher. Hah!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010: It seemed a lot cooler today than it had been for about a week. I had my Word 2007 and Family Law classes again today, and I'm really enjoying them. This should be a fun quarter. After school, I came back home and crashed for about an hour, listening to classical music with Marty. He had to get ready to go to a Board Meeting of his car club, and was out the door a little before 4:00 pm (got back home around 10:30 pm). Since Marty was going to have dinner at the meeting, I made some fish and French fries for myself, watched a movie, and then did some job search, blogging and e-mail on-line before going to bed.
School Stuff: In my Family Law class today, we did a role-playing exercise. All the students were paired off in teams, each person given a short one-page print-out of information to help them in the role they were playing, and then one team member played a paralegal, and the other a client. I was the client, and my classmate Eva was the paralegal. She had to interview me to figure out what family law issues I had (which were given to me on my print out), what ethical questions arose during the interview, and whether or not the law firm should take the case.
My character was a woman who worked at Wal-Mart, whose husband, who worked for the DMV, had moved out of their home and was filing for a legal separation. The family law issues that I saw off the bat were: the dynamics of a "legal separation" as opposed to a "divorce", child custody, spousal support, separation of property (and "equity"), attorneys fees, settlement, and reconciliation. The ethical considerations revolved around a possible "conflict of interest" (both had come to the attorney before, and he had handled their bankruptcy, and now the attorney was being asked to fight for one against the other), and concerns about "unauthorized practice of law" by the paralegal, who was asked to give the client answers about custody, the legal process, etc. Whether or not the firm should take on the client seemed to revolve around the matter of money: the firm was an expensive one and the client was without much income and although all of her past debts had been resolved by the bankruptcy (so she didn't owee anyone any money), all of her property was jointly owned by her husband... so she couldn't take a loan out on the house to pay her legal fees, because it would be like taking money from the spouse's pocket to pay her attorney). I suggested that the firm NOT take the client; and if they did, then maybe turn her over to a different attorney in the firm so there was no conflict of interest, and take her on as a "pro bono" client... I loved the way this exercise made us think and draw on all the other stuff we'd learned in previous classes about all of these issues.
The teacher, Ms. Englund, also seemed to really enjoy working with us. She had been given a "Success" class along with this legal class to teach, and she said she was so exhausted and stressed out by the Success class students, that coming to our class was a relief. Hah! Having all been through a Success class ourselves, we could feel her pain.
Elections Stuff: Between classes, during the lunch break, there was also a meeting of the Paralegal Club which I attended. The club has been taken out of the hands of the previous "monarchs" who had initiated so much bad blood that none of the other students wanted to participate in the club if they were there; and it was being put under the supervision of a sort of Club Committee at the college who would train all of the officers and develop a system of forms and formats that ALL of the clubs in the college now have to follow. Today was the first meeting of the new quarter and under the new system, so we had to vote for our Board members: president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer. I was nominated for both the Vice President (which I respectfully declined) and Secretary. And that was SUPER flattering, but if I'm pulling 15 units this quarter, AND I'm signing up to be a mentor, I didn't think I'd have the time to give a club position 100%, so I didn't mind when I didn't win the Secretary position. All of the winners, though, were people I know, so that was fun! They were:
President: Christina Rios-Ashley
Vice President: Eva Hebert
Secretary: Ruth Fowler
Treasurer: Jahan Tahirkheli
I'll need to take photos of all of them for the club website. Hey, maybe I can volunteer to be the club photographer!
DVD Stuff: I watched the movie "Julie & Julia", and thought it was very cute, but not spectacular. Merryl Streep was FANTASTIC in her role, as always, and literally stole the movie from the othe chick, whose name I can't even remember. Streep so embodied the Julia Childs I remember from TV -- in her voice and facial quirks, and postures -- that I was amazed. And she made Julia such a likable person (with a sexually rowdy, playful side that was both funny and sweet). In one scene Julia takes a canole out of the boiling water and exclaims to her husband, "It's as hot a man's cock!" Hah! As a matter of fact, after Julia was only on screen for about 2 minutes I said to Marty, "I like her!"
The gist of the movie was: Julie was a failed writer who loved cooking, and in an attempt to just get herself motivated to FINISH something, challenged herself to preparing every recipe (500+) in Julia Childs' book within one year, and she blogged about it. Well, her blog became semi-famous, and eventually the media and publishers found it and her career took off. Her story was set against the story of Julia, who was a bored wife of an American diplomat, who took up cooking classes to fill her days and eventually wound up publishing a 700+ page cookbook on how to cook French cuisine... which then catpulted her to a television spot, etc. It's definitely a "chick flick" -- nothing dramatic, nothing actiony, no tentacled aliens or anything like that -- but was a fun respite from life for a while.
Writing Stuff: I posted Chapter 21 of my Trek story, "The Pon T'Keshtan", yesterday and got over 400 hits on it within a few minutes! Yay! I also got some nice reviews. One was especially touching because it indicated that I'd made the story-line and characters (even my own characters) so believable that the reader "hopes" for them. It read as follows:
From: junewilliams7: Wow. Wow. I wasn't able to review the last chapter because there was SOOOO much happening that I had trouble forming a coherent comment, and this chapter is also thought-provoking. Thanks for the acknowledgment of the DES comment; it is still true that one can never plan for every contingency, and I suspect that T'Kree will soon be mortified at something that was overlooked, or was altered by T'Pau's peeps. Perhaps some scientists who died at Vulcan might have caught it, but the remaining staff of the Vulcan edical Academy are likely not "the senior and most experienced" - they're just the surviving staff, and she is the chief of the survivors.
I really don't know what to hope for T'Cloo's baby. It might be best if the baby died so that T'Cloo's family and Spock might never have to answer those tough questions, but it's still Spock's baby and that means something. Poor McCoy is stuck with an unswerable situation, but he's doing the best thing for the baby - "healer, do no harm." It's almost like a Kobayashi Maru test for a doctor. McCoy said the baby wasn't the right age, so I wonder if T'Pau used some of Spock's sperm (since she had some in her own body) to make a test-tube baby and then had someone implant the fetus into T'Cloo; T'Pau is wacko enough for something like that.
I'm glad Sarek was able to negotiate a better deal. It really wasn't too unreasonable to ask, to have their charter included FOR CONSIDERATION at the council meeting. It's not like the Fonn Vuhlkansu Sect is comparable to an "offshoot race" like the Romulans.
Sa'aat did the right thing in not lying to Spock about their previous relationship. After all the lies and cover-ups that Spock has been subjected to, it would have been immoral to have Sa'aat lie and manipulate Spock. Although I am hoping that Spock returns to his previous closeness with Uhura!
Speaking of Sa'aat, I am still pondering on what choice he will make - a prestigious position as Solai-Lan, fatherhood, and marriage to two beautiful and politically powerful women who are the mothers of his kids... or the single life, free to roam. I think we need to know for sure that the twins and those offering him the Solai-Lan position are aware that he is gay (or bi); otherwise, he might lose everything upon discovery. (I vaguely recall many chapters ago that T'Pau made a nasty comment that Sarek would not want his son to end up with a gay bondmate. It did not sound like gays were fully accepted by Vulcan society.)
Thank you for the new chapter! Oh yeah, you made me laugh with the "sheep-orgy" line... :=)
Sa'aat, T'Kree and T'Cloo are all my own, original characters -- and I love it that they became "real" enough for the reader to care about them and comment on them. Oh, and the "sheep orgy" line was from the following text in the chapter (I wrote):
McCoy stepped away from the unit and looked at the domed roof, shading his eyes against the sun’s glare with a hand. "Problems, Scotty?"
Stripped down to his trousers and boots, with his Red-shirt tied around his waist, and his skin going ruddy with sunburn, the Chief Engineer stepped gingerly across the roof and looked down at McCoy and T'Kree. "Nothin' I can't handle, Doctor," he mopped his brow with a black undershirt he had wadded up on his hand. "Just a wee bit of bother. It seems a few of my engineers apparently woke up this morning one sheep shy of an orgy, is all."
McCoy laughed. "Give 'em a break, Scotty. It's like a hundred-and-twenty degrees out here; maybe their synapses are melting.
Something crashed over and rolled down the other side of the dome, and Scotty turned toward the noise as one of the engineers said, "Sorry, Mister Scott. It just kind of got away from me."
"Och, Ensign Garret, you're the flower of my life, I swear --" Scotty said, storming back across the roof grumbling, "-- you bloomin' idiot," under his breath.
I have waaay too much fun writing Scotty now that Simon Pegg is playing the character. Hah!
Thursday, July 22, 2010: A one-class day, so I didn't have to be to school until 12:20 pm. It was Criminal Law class today, and we discussed where the laws in this country came from, the court system, and stuff like that. It soooo interesting; I just love Mr. Cashdollar's classes. After school I went to the bank, and to PetsMart, then came home, retsed for alittle bit, then cooked cheap steaks out on the grille for supper. Yum-my.
I Write Like: One of the gals who is a member of the same Writing Guild I am on Yuku, provided a link to a place that compares your writing style to that of established authors. You past several paragraphs of your writing into the analyzer, and it pops out an answer. My stle was compared to that of David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 - September 12, 2008). According to Wickipedia, he was "an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923-2006). Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years." He was born in Illinois [like me], suffered from depression throughout his life [like me], and committed suicide by hanging himself [not so much like me] on September 12, 2008.
Dog Stuff: I stopped at PetsMart after school and got Sergeant Margie a new tag (the old one had all of my old information on it), and I also got him a flea collar. As I said before, I never had problems with fleas at all in Shasta, but they're rampant around here in Sacramento, and the BioSpot and flea shampoo weren't doing the trick. So, I hope the new collar helps. I also got a pouch and doggie-doolie-bag refills for $1.97 on close out. So, we should be set, at least for a little while.
Saturday, July 24, 2010: I washed the car yesterday morning, so now it's all sparkly clean (the trees at school drop sap and pollen all over it). After that, I spent most of the rest of the day writing, writing, writing. Got chapter 22 of my Trek story done, and am surging on with chapter 23. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one...
Today, I'd like to get in some writing, finish all my homework, and start cleaning up my room (hah!). We'll see how far I get. I "slept in" a little today, until about 8:00, so I lost those extra 90 minuites or so I normally have.
I had my Criminal Law class today and loved it! Mr. Cashdollar started us off with some joke and current events, like he usually does, and then went over the class syllabus. For the last hour of the class, though, he read us a real case file on a woman who had been murdered and asked us to try to determine a profile on her attacker. We got bits and pieces of the profile, but not the whole thing. (We figured her attacker was male, someone she knew, who didn't function well around women, but that was about it). Mr. Cashdollar then read us what the FBI profile was like, and then read the description of the perp AFTER the FBI had caught him. Wow! They were right on the mark... and this case was around 1979, BEFORE DNA evidence could be used to target a suspect. The profiler did a remarkable job! We were all so engrossed with the whole thing that we didn't want leave when class was over. Loved it! After class, I picked up a few veggies and some berries, and went home to make Marty and I a giant salad for lupper. Ate that while we watched "District 9".
DVD Stuff: "District 9" was fantastic. I wanted to leave to get seconds of the salad, but was so capitaved by the film, I didn't want to leave it. Finally had to put it on "pause", grab more salad, and then run back to the TV room. I had been expecting the old yeah-yeah-alien-slums-on-Earth revisited, like a remake of "Alien Nation", but it actually put in a lot of twists and turns -- and had a killer ending. The whole thing smacked of how the whole society in the Soviet Union collapsed; mixed in with the warlord-run area of the Middle East (all the violence and profiteering); mixed in with race hatred; mixed in with the atrocities committed by both medical science and the military... It didn't pull any punches. And it had moments of real surprise and pathos. When the half-alien/half-human guy picked up the alien weapon and fired it for the first time, both Marty and I yelled WHOA! at the screen. And both Marty and I got real protective of the little cockroach-like child-"prawn". (The Humans called the aliens "Prawns" because they kind of looked like that -- antenna, exoskeletons, et al.) Can't wait for District 10 -- The Return of Christopher. Hah!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010: It seemed a lot cooler today than it had been for about a week. I had my Word 2007 and Family Law classes again today, and I'm really enjoying them. This should be a fun quarter. After school, I came back home and crashed for about an hour, listening to classical music with Marty. He had to get ready to go to a Board Meeting of his car club, and was out the door a little before 4:00 pm (got back home around 10:30 pm). Since Marty was going to have dinner at the meeting, I made some fish and French fries for myself, watched a movie, and then did some job search, blogging and e-mail on-line before going to bed.
School Stuff: In my Family Law class today, we did a role-playing exercise. All the students were paired off in teams, each person given a short one-page print-out of information to help them in the role they were playing, and then one team member played a paralegal, and the other a client. I was the client, and my classmate Eva was the paralegal. She had to interview me to figure out what family law issues I had (which were given to me on my print out), what ethical questions arose during the interview, and whether or not the law firm should take the case.
My character was a woman who worked at Wal-Mart, whose husband, who worked for the DMV, had moved out of their home and was filing for a legal separation. The family law issues that I saw off the bat were: the dynamics of a "legal separation" as opposed to a "divorce", child custody, spousal support, separation of property (and "equity"), attorneys fees, settlement, and reconciliation. The ethical considerations revolved around a possible "conflict of interest" (both had come to the attorney before, and he had handled their bankruptcy, and now the attorney was being asked to fight for one against the other), and concerns about "unauthorized practice of law" by the paralegal, who was asked to give the client answers about custody, the legal process, etc. Whether or not the firm should take on the client seemed to revolve around the matter of money: the firm was an expensive one and the client was without much income and although all of her past debts had been resolved by the bankruptcy (so she didn't owee anyone any money), all of her property was jointly owned by her husband... so she couldn't take a loan out on the house to pay her legal fees, because it would be like taking money from the spouse's pocket to pay her attorney). I suggested that the firm NOT take the client; and if they did, then maybe turn her over to a different attorney in the firm so there was no conflict of interest, and take her on as a "pro bono" client... I loved the way this exercise made us think and draw on all the other stuff we'd learned in previous classes about all of these issues.
The teacher, Ms. Englund, also seemed to really enjoy working with us. She had been given a "Success" class along with this legal class to teach, and she said she was so exhausted and stressed out by the Success class students, that coming to our class was a relief. Hah! Having all been through a Success class ourselves, we could feel her pain.
Elections Stuff: Between classes, during the lunch break, there was also a meeting of the Paralegal Club which I attended. The club has been taken out of the hands of the previous "monarchs" who had initiated so much bad blood that none of the other students wanted to participate in the club if they were there; and it was being put under the supervision of a sort of Club Committee at the college who would train all of the officers and develop a system of forms and formats that ALL of the clubs in the college now have to follow. Today was the first meeting of the new quarter and under the new system, so we had to vote for our Board members: president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer. I was nominated for both the Vice President (which I respectfully declined) and Secretary. And that was SUPER flattering, but if I'm pulling 15 units this quarter, AND I'm signing up to be a mentor, I didn't think I'd have the time to give a club position 100%, so I didn't mind when I didn't win the Secretary position. All of the winners, though, were people I know, so that was fun! They were:
President: Christina Rios-Ashley
Vice President: Eva Hebert
Secretary: Ruth Fowler
Treasurer: Jahan Tahirkheli
I'll need to take photos of all of them for the club website. Hey, maybe I can volunteer to be the club photographer!
DVD Stuff: I watched the movie "Julie & Julia", and thought it was very cute, but not spectacular. Merryl Streep was FANTASTIC in her role, as always, and literally stole the movie from the othe chick, whose name I can't even remember. Streep so embodied the Julia Childs I remember from TV -- in her voice and facial quirks, and postures -- that I was amazed. And she made Julia such a likable person (with a sexually rowdy, playful side that was both funny and sweet). In one scene Julia takes a canole out of the boiling water and exclaims to her husband, "It's as hot a man's cock!" Hah! As a matter of fact, after Julia was only on screen for about 2 minutes I said to Marty, "I like her!"
The gist of the movie was: Julie was a failed writer who loved cooking, and in an attempt to just get herself motivated to FINISH something, challenged herself to preparing every recipe (500+) in Julia Childs' book within one year, and she blogged about it. Well, her blog became semi-famous, and eventually the media and publishers found it and her career took off. Her story was set against the story of Julia, who was a bored wife of an American diplomat, who took up cooking classes to fill her days and eventually wound up publishing a 700+ page cookbook on how to cook French cuisine... which then catpulted her to a television spot, etc. It's definitely a "chick flick" -- nothing dramatic, nothing actiony, no tentacled aliens or anything like that -- but was a fun respite from life for a while.
Writing Stuff: I posted Chapter 21 of my Trek story, "The Pon T'Keshtan", yesterday and got over 400 hits on it within a few minutes! Yay! I also got some nice reviews. One was especially touching because it indicated that I'd made the story-line and characters (even my own characters) so believable that the reader "hopes" for them. It read as follows:
From: junewilliams7: Wow. Wow. I wasn't able to review the last chapter because there was SOOOO much happening that I had trouble forming a coherent comment, and this chapter is also thought-provoking. Thanks for the acknowledgment of the DES comment; it is still true that one can never plan for every contingency, and I suspect that T'Kree will soon be mortified at something that was overlooked, or was altered by T'Pau's peeps. Perhaps some scientists who died at Vulcan might have caught it, but the remaining staff of the Vulcan edical Academy are likely not "the senior and most experienced" - they're just the surviving staff, and she is the chief of the survivors.
I really don't know what to hope for T'Cloo's baby. It might be best if the baby died so that T'Cloo's family and Spock might never have to answer those tough questions, but it's still Spock's baby and that means something. Poor McCoy is stuck with an unswerable situation, but he's doing the best thing for the baby - "healer, do no harm." It's almost like a Kobayashi Maru test for a doctor. McCoy said the baby wasn't the right age, so I wonder if T'Pau used some of Spock's sperm (since she had some in her own body) to make a test-tube baby and then had someone implant the fetus into T'Cloo; T'Pau is wacko enough for something like that.
I'm glad Sarek was able to negotiate a better deal. It really wasn't too unreasonable to ask, to have their charter included FOR CONSIDERATION at the council meeting. It's not like the Fonn Vuhlkansu Sect is comparable to an "offshoot race" like the Romulans.
Sa'aat did the right thing in not lying to Spock about their previous relationship. After all the lies and cover-ups that Spock has been subjected to, it would have been immoral to have Sa'aat lie and manipulate Spock. Although I am hoping that Spock returns to his previous closeness with Uhura!
Speaking of Sa'aat, I am still pondering on what choice he will make - a prestigious position as Solai-Lan, fatherhood, and marriage to two beautiful and politically powerful women who are the mothers of his kids... or the single life, free to roam. I think we need to know for sure that the twins and those offering him the Solai-Lan position are aware that he is gay (or bi); otherwise, he might lose everything upon discovery. (I vaguely recall many chapters ago that T'Pau made a nasty comment that Sarek would not want his son to end up with a gay bondmate. It did not sound like gays were fully accepted by Vulcan society.)
Thank you for the new chapter! Oh yeah, you made me laugh with the "sheep-orgy" line... :=)
Sa'aat, T'Kree and T'Cloo are all my own, original characters -- and I love it that they became "real" enough for the reader to care about them and comment on them. Oh, and the "sheep orgy" line was from the following text in the chapter (I wrote):
McCoy stepped away from the unit and looked at the domed roof, shading his eyes against the sun’s glare with a hand. "Problems, Scotty?"
Stripped down to his trousers and boots, with his Red-shirt tied around his waist, and his skin going ruddy with sunburn, the Chief Engineer stepped gingerly across the roof and looked down at McCoy and T'Kree. "Nothin' I can't handle, Doctor," he mopped his brow with a black undershirt he had wadded up on his hand. "Just a wee bit of bother. It seems a few of my engineers apparently woke up this morning one sheep shy of an orgy, is all."
McCoy laughed. "Give 'em a break, Scotty. It's like a hundred-and-twenty degrees out here; maybe their synapses are melting.
Something crashed over and rolled down the other side of the dome, and Scotty turned toward the noise as one of the engineers said, "Sorry, Mister Scott. It just kind of got away from me."
"Och, Ensign Garret, you're the flower of my life, I swear --" Scotty said, storming back across the roof grumbling, "-- you bloomin' idiot," under his breath.
I have waaay too much fun writing Scotty now that Simon Pegg is playing the character. Hah!
Thursday, July 22, 2010: A one-class day, so I didn't have to be to school until 12:20 pm. It was Criminal Law class today, and we discussed where the laws in this country came from, the court system, and stuff like that. It soooo interesting; I just love Mr. Cashdollar's classes. After school I went to the bank, and to PetsMart, then came home, retsed for alittle bit, then cooked cheap steaks out on the grille for supper. Yum-my.
I Write Like: One of the gals who is a member of the same Writing Guild I am on Yuku, provided a link to a place that compares your writing style to that of established authors. You past several paragraphs of your writing into the analyzer, and it pops out an answer. My stle was compared to that of David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 - September 12, 2008). According to Wickipedia, he was "an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He was widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time included in its All-Time 100 Greatest Novels list (covering the period 1923-2006). Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years." He was born in Illinois [like me], suffered from depression throughout his life [like me], and committed suicide by hanging himself [not so much like me] on September 12, 2008.
Dog Stuff: I stopped at PetsMart after school and got Sergeant Margie a new tag (the old one had all of my old information on it), and I also got him a flea collar. As I said before, I never had problems with fleas at all in Shasta, but they're rampant around here in Sacramento, and the BioSpot and flea shampoo weren't doing the trick. So, I hope the new collar helps. I also got a pouch and doggie-doolie-bag refills for $1.97 on close out. So, we should be set, at least for a little while.
Saturday, July 24, 2010: I washed the car yesterday morning, so now it's all sparkly clean (the trees at school drop sap and pollen all over it). After that, I spent most of the rest of the day writing, writing, writing. Got chapter 22 of my Trek story done, and am surging on with chapter 23. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one...
Today, I'd like to get in some writing, finish all my homework, and start cleaning up my room (hah!). We'll see how far I get. I "slept in" a little today, until about 8:00, so I lost those extra 90 minuites or so I normally have.