Okay, San Francisco, enough of the rain. Enough!

Most of today was cloudy with patches of sun, which I enjoyed when I strolled out this afternoon to find a mailbox and junk food. I've been making my way through bigbro and J1's pantry (let's face it, J1's pantry), and my body has been very receptive to the health foods and vitamins, but today it said enough is enough. We need processed sugars. White bread. Things that contain ingredients created in laboratories.

So I went to the aptly named "Donut Shop" next to the railroad tracks and got me a glazed donut and some coffee. Decaf, that is. Seeing as I've been having trouble sleeping again. As J1 said, the power of the melatonin is not strong enough to fight off the power of my stress.

I thought I'd be sitting at home alone tonight, and I'd have been happy to, honest, but I'm headed out shortly to another gift of bigbro and J1 -- their friends invited me over for the new year's eve. (By the by, it's odd how, when you commit to an idea -- say, that you'll be spending your "break" studying at first two or three hours a day and then ramping up to seven or eight -- you don't really care that others are out and about having holiday fun. Or perhaps that's a benefit of being alone in an apartment for days on end with only books, computer, TV, and Trader Joe's foodstuffs.)

I almost would rather spend tonight at home with the remote and perhaps, just perhaps, a drink in hand. Oh, the wicked indulgence! But it'll be good to speak to another human being after four days by myself. (But are you really alone when you've got Buffy and West Wing reruns on cable? Methinks not. Or methinks it don't matter so much.)

Anyhoo. It's been a year, all right. I started out 2004 in Hanoi, slurping down pho in a hole in the wall where a teenager had to order our cokes for me and the Ringleted One because we couldn't communicate that simple request. I flipped an imaginary penny that night that landed tails, which meant I wasn't going to law school. And here I am, a year later, studying for finals for the first semester of law school.

I should have listened to the penny, obviously.

A glorious Eve to you all, and if not that, at least a good night's sleep.

After three days of dreary, soggy weather, the sun lit up bigbro's apartment this morning with cheery insouciance, like, "Oh, me? I've been around! What -- rain? You don't say! Well, now, doesn't that just beat all?"

Bigbro, J1, and a gaggle of friends left yesterday for the delights of Mexico, leaving me to struggle with the finer points of the Erie doctrine by myself in their apartment. With loaded pantry and fridge. And car. and cell phone. And money for the week. And quarters for the laundry. And cable TV. And yoga clothes. And the gargantuan task of retrieving the mail once a day.

Oh, I could get used to this.

As I was telling Double M yesterday during one of our accountability sessions (for finals and dissertation, respectively), I don't regret any of the choices I've made since college in terms of switching jobs or going to Korea or whatnot. But this week I've looked around the apartment from time to time and thought, "This is so nice." It would be nice to be settled in one place for a while. Have time to create decorative pieces and collect distinctive stemware. Wake up in a bed meant for more than one person. Build a network of close friends in the same area.

It's been a hectic, crazy few months, coming back from Korea and belly-flopping into law school. A little peace (and ability to control what's on the TV) is what I'm after. Despite the studying, it's almost do-able here.

How To Get A Free Lamb Kabob On Christmas Eve In SF

1. Get yourself a sis-in-law like J1, who will buy tickets for the SF Gay Men's Choir, 9 pm show.

2. Go with J1 and bigbro to Dalva, a bar.

3. Drink yourself silly on a Grey Goose vodka martini, with the perfect amount of vermouth (swished around the glass and then tossed out).

4. Weave over to Pakwan, a Pakistani eatery.

5. Order your food.

6. Wait.

7. Realize that people who arrived after you are getting food before you.

8. Stumble over to the counter and demand food.

9. Return triumphantly with food.

10. Look up through Grey Goose haze at counter guy, who has come over to apologize for food delay.

11. Accept offer of free dish as apology, blink and look quizzical when he says something else.

12. Smile uncertainly as he says, "I said, you have pretty eyes."

13. Beam as it sinks in and deliberately say, "This is my brother, and my sister-in-law."

14. Chortle as J1 says, "Omigod, did you see his eyes when you introduced bigbro?"

15. Enjoy free lamb kabob.

It's Christmas Eve.

One week of the three I have to study three classes is over.

I'm on page 10 of a 40-page outline.

For one class.

The other two I haven't started studying for.

BUT:

I'm in San Francisco.

It's 68 degrees outside.

The sun is shining.

The sky is blue.

There are pink geraniums and white calla lilies abloom outside.

Life is nice here.

I had to use my big suitcase, seeing as how I don't have a smaller one, and it's all books, plus about three shirts and some underwear. And socks. And practice exams and a law dictionary and class handouts and two job notebooks and lions and tigers and bears.

Oh my.

I'm fond of a few people in my hall, and the last two left this morning, leaving me defenseless. You know, against law school. But fortunately, going to the gym is good for about two hours, and eating lunch took about an hour, and then I had to sort of rush to get in two hours of reading before meeting a section mate for the College's 95th Christmas Carol Services. Great stuff, the service -- long on the music and short on the praying, which is the way we like it. My classmate and I had to sit on the floor, Memorial Church was so crowded. The front part of the church was an explosion of poinsettias -- I seriously have never seen so many in one place in my life. The congregation was invited to sing along with several of the songs, including my all-time favorite carol, "O Come All Ye Faithful." In Latin.

It was pretty awesome, I tell ya. These days only music seems to get through the miasma of unfocused anxiety and low-level resentment, and there were a few moments when I actually felt kind of Christmas-y.

I had planned on getting several hours of studying in today but the hours leaked away from me. After services and dinner, I headed back to the dorm and did laundry and packed. Watched "Desperate Housewives" while folding clothes warm from the dryer. And suddenly it's nearly midnight, and I only got in 2 or 3 hours of studying. I sincerely hope this isn't going to be the case at home.

Ah, home. It's a nice concept. There's such a cult of home and holidays this time of year, it does make me a bit envious of the kids who are going home to parents and pine trees and presents. For the second year in a row, I'm not spending Christmas with either parent. Hm. At least this year I'll be with big bro and J1. Last year -- I can scarcely believe it -- I was in Cambodia for Christmas day, sweating in 90 degree heat and watching geckos hang out on the ceiling of an internet cafe in Phnom Penh. That wasn't so bad either. In fact, it was pretty amazing.

I had an amusing if trying day yesterday -- must tell you about it some time. But for now, I think I'll sign off and crawl into bed. I'll try not to think about the last nagging errands for tomorrow morning, or worry about having missed something big I have to do before leaving here. Here, where I've been without a break for nearly four months. God, I've 'most forgotten that there are other places besides here. And here is where I'll return in two weeks, and dear lord, I do hope I will have civil procedure, contracts, and property seared into my brain properly by then.

TODAY

Classes for the first semester of law school are over.

There is an astonishing lack of excitement, joy, or relief. As my classmate said, the hardest part is yet to come, and that hangs over us all like the proverbial pall.

I never thought I wouldn't make it. So there's no relief in that. And I can't say that I never thought it would be this hard; I rather thought it might be. I was prepared to hate law school. There's no joy in saying that I was underprepared. I just haven't run across anything that makes me think this was the right choice. Yeah, I've met a couple nice people whom I like. (They're all pretty nice, after all -- I just don't have much to say to most.) Yeah, learning new things was intellectually satisfying. But as Roberta Flack sings, where is the love?

I got dinged from my first summer job application -- a death penalty group in Atlanta. That's humbling.

The clique in my subsection, upon the instigation of the Mormon Who Brought Them Together, invited a couple of the satellite moons for a end-of-semester dinner and hanging-out tonight. It was a good time. We played a card game I first ran into last year, in a Korean game cafe. I played "can't get past me" with their cat, who, trying to fake me out, hit a table leg instead and then tried to pass it off by pretending that she actually wanted to rub against the table leg, because she luuuurves the table. Luuurves it. That was far too funny.

I am heartily, completely, bone-wearyingly tired of people watching TV in the common room. I am sick of having to listen to sports games second hand. (Secondhand sports-game-watching kills!) I don't understand why there is only one girl who occasionally watches the TV without guys around and why every other time the TV is turned on, it's always a guy.

I have to get up in 7 hours to go to the post office to mail gifts, which I bought yesterday and today. That's the only way you can sort of avoid lines at this time of year.

Double M, who is here doing research again, left for the weekend to see family in New York. She'll be back on Sunday. We had donuts and coffee at Dunkin' Donuts this morning before she got on the train. I was up until 3 and got up for breakfast at 7:40. Must sleep.

6 am. Just woke up from one of those nightmares in which you're alone in the house, you've got the lights off as you watch TV except for maybe one lamp in another room, and as you glance over that direction for no reason, and you notice a shadow cross it. There's someone in the house. There's someone in the freaking house.

You get up, heart hammering, so scared you can hardly move, and make your way to the front door, expecting the entire time to be grabbed from behind. You fumble with the door lock, fingers clumsy with fear, afraid to even look behind you, and you manage to open the damn door and run out into the night. You consider going into your neighbor's house, a nice old lady, a friend of the family, and you think, "No, I can't go into Mrs. __'s house, what if they come in and hurt her and she won't be able to do anything to protect me either, no I'll go one more door down to Mr. Liang's house, he can help me, he'll keep me safe, run run run."

So you make it to Mr. Liang's house and you think about ascending the stairs up to his front door, and then something makes you pause. You don't even know what it is, but you pause and you don't go up his white-painted porch to his front door because something doesn't feel right and you know, you KNOW that Liang is in on it, he's the mastermind, he's standing there, waiting for his fucking henchmen to report in that they've killed you, or worse, captured you. He's standing there, arms folded, waiting for the report, and as you start to creep away around the house to somewhere else, somewhere safe for god's sake, you see a white car slowly drive past the house and you know the game is up. You start to run but Liang lives on a cliff and you find yourself trapped between a burly brute twice your weight and a sheer fall of Hoover Dam-proportions.

There's a cable down the cliff, which has inexplicably changed to real dam walls, and you edge toward it, desperate, and the henchman sneers. You have no idea what he says, but then he pounces and you're both going over the edge and struggling to grab that cord and then, because it's a dream, for god's sake, you're clinging to a queen sized mattress, falling down, down, down, and the henchman's got the desperate look this time, because he's falling off the mattress, and you scream at him that you're going to float on the river below on this mattress and that he isn't and he's going to fall and hit the river like a load of bricks and mwah hah hah hah. The wind's whipping past both of you as you fall and then you wake up, heart pounding, earplugs and eye mask still on from five hours ago when you fell asleep, and you realize it was a dream. It was just a dream.

Some months back, I wrote about checking under the bed. Shortly before I went to Korea two years ago, my roommate at the time went on a vacation, and I was alone in the apartment. I found myself checking the closets and under the bed before I went to sleep. What was I checking for? Axe murderers, I guess. Maybe bogeymen, which is one of those words that looks so funny but means something awful -- in this case, "a terrifying spectre, a hobgoblin."

I never checked under the bed in Korea. For one, it's hard to check "under" your bed when you sleep on the floor. But I never felt the urge to check the closets for the bogeyman (also "an imaginary monster used to frighten children"). What am I afraid of here? Why don't I feel safe?

The woman who was hospitalized moved out of the dorm today. A group of hallmates were leaving for lunch and we each hugged her in turn. Was she going to be here when we got back? someone asked. She shook her head no. She waved goodbye to us as we left the hall, fighting to keep her face composed, eyes glassy from the effort of keeping the tears back.

I asked a friend of hers if he thought she was going to be all right, and he said he thought so. But she wasn't going to come back. "Imagine having to do all those classes again," he said. "I mean, if she came back next term, at least she'd know everyone in our section still..." he trailed off. "But if she didn't want to be a lawyer anyway, that's a different problem."

We walked along the street in silence for a few moments. "We all knew there was a problem," he reflected. "She really hated it here, and we all knew she was drinking too much, but we just -- we didn't do anything."

Booze

I came back to the dorm today after a truly scintillating lecture on the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials (which was 99 percent history and a tinge of law and that's really the way it should be except maybe for the law part -- you could leave that out) and found out that someone in the dorm had been taken to the hospital. Apparently she'd drunk the better part of a bottle of vodka, and her friends couldn't wake her up.

Law school, I thought. Fucking law school. If you're someone who isn't sure you want to be here, someone who's more at home in the world of words and humanity, the stress and the workload and the complete bullshit of all it would kill your soul.

This person has other problems, preexisting problems, and one hallmate remarked, "Yeah, she always struck me as kind of sad." I barely know her -- we just say hello and smile at each other in the halls sometimes -- but her deep dislike of this place struck me as real, unlike the superficial "omigod, law school SUCKS" that everyone sighs out before getting back to work. Or -- I don't know, maybe those people freak out in the library too, and run hyperventilating through the night, and feel like crying every few days too. Who knows? Yeah, law school does SUCK, bigtime, and everyone says that, but there are some people for whom it sucks worse than others, and maybe it would be better to be up front about it, about the tears and the panic attacks and the nights playing computer games til 3 to escape reality. Because maybe it would help to know that not everyone bitches and moans and then goes back to reading, maybe it would help to know that there are others who feel wrong here. Very wrong.

I was pretty upset about this when I found out, and almost more so by the matter-of-fact tone that people took. It's not that they don't feel for her, that's not it at all. And it's not that they don't care -- this person has friends here who do care. I guess it's more the lack of outward expression. Are you really bothered by this and just putting it behind a facade? Or are you just not that emotionally engaged?

But I guess I appear pulled together to others too. I mean, I did my reading for tomorrow, and went out tonight, and who would think that I normally feel so isolated here?

I went out with three other girls in the hall to an open bar thing hosted by the women's law association here. Free margaritas and food! It was small and chill, and I spent half my time talking chick stuff with a girl from my section and my RA, and half of my time with the hallmates doing the the bar's weekly trivia contest, and it was awfully fun. It's really the first time I've gone to a law school function and felt happy. Liquor is the answer, except when it's not.