the daily snivel
As you recall, a long-lost dear friend (and ex-girlfriend) of mine pseudonymed "Lucretia" was due to come and visit. She was in town from Thunder Bay (a 20-hour bus ride from here) to surprise her mother on the occasion of her 50th birthday, and give her the gift of a nose piercing. That was also going to be a surprise, along the lines of "I've got an appointment for you in an hour. You've been talking about getting this done for long enough." I still have to hear if her mother went for it. We actually get along so much better now that we are just friends. We spent a few years growing apart after the last (explosive) breakup, but since then have just grown, and become much closer people, even though many miles typically separate us. Whenever she's in town, she is a welcome guest on one of my big comfy couches, and we always have a grand time. We went out for dinner, I gave her a mixed CD that I'd put together, and we played some music that she, in turn, had brought for me. In particular, I was introduced to more of the luscious goodness that is The White Stripes, and some swinging country punk tunes from Alejandro Escovedo, and a dazzling rarity by Weezer (with the singer of "That Dog") called "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams." If you can find this song, listen to it. Man. It's great to hear such good music (and have it mixed up for me), especially since I'm presently too poor to buy any of my own, and that darn download-crazy iTunes Music Store isn't available in Canada yet (says Rob, the whorish Apple shill).
On Friday I had to miss work and attend a funeral for the father of a friend of a friend. I went as a show of moral support to someone who is very important to me, and found the experience sobering and surreal, particularly because the entire service was conducted in French, and my command of that language is poor. Fittingly, it rained in heaps the entire day, much of which I spent considering the nature of life and death (without coming to any particular conclusions except that one should live the sort of life that brings as many genuine mourners to his or her funeral as is possible).
On Saturday, meanwhile, I was off to Arnprior (an hour from here, packed into a rental minivan with my brother, sister, nieces, and my sister-in-law) for an all-day family reunion of sorts. My mother was already up there with my grandfather, 3rd grandmother, and my uncles. Short story: My mother's father divorced my grandmother some years ago and re-married a younger woman, with whom he had three more children. So my aunt and uncles on that side are only a couple of years older than I am, and younger than my cool, law-school-attending older sister in any case. This makes for fairly enjoyable get-togethers, as they are young and hip and (particularly in the case of my uncle Thomas, who has a special place in his heart for a certain herb shortly to be decriminalized in Canada) very open-minded and independent thinkers. I drank rather too much beer (after an entire school year's worth of law-school-sized alcohol consumption, I meant very well to give my liver a break this summer...), ate rather too much dessert, and all in all had a great time.
In other news, I received sort of a strange mass e-mail from one of the review counsel at our community legal clinic, with the brief message that we ought to read the attached file. Being insanely curious about the contents (since I had applied to take part in the clinic course this fall and was eagerly awaiting the word on that), I opened up the attached document without hesitation (deciding recklessly that it probably wasn't a virus and, in any case, that my Mac would brush it aside... and I'm sure someday one or both of those attitudes will seriously bite me in the bum). Lo and behold, I was accepted into the clinic course. What this means in practical terms is that I'm going to be extremely busy come the fall. I'll be combining a seminar course with community legal casework, involving things like client intake, court appearances, legal research and writing, and perhaps acting as duty counsel for a housing tribunal. All this must be juggled against an already bursting schedule. That said, it is a privilege that not everyone gets into, and will entirely fulfill the oral advocacy requirements of my law degree as well as giving me oodles of hands-on experience. I suppose it will also help me decide if I really do like helping people despite long hours and little (in fact, no) pay, or if I'm just a money and power-hungry weasel who can't stand poor people and all their problems, and wouldn't lift a finger unless it counts towards my billable hours at Corporate Law Firm LLP. Meanwhile, I have to figure out the rest of my courses for the year, because registration is coming up on Monday and I still have only a faint clue about what I want to take.
Comments:On Friday I had to miss work and attend a funeral for the father of a friend of a friend. I went as a show of moral support to someone who is very important to me, and found the experience sobering and surreal, particularly because the entire service was conducted in French, and my command of that language is poor. Fittingly, it rained in heaps the entire day, much of which I spent considering the nature of life and death (without coming to any particular conclusions except that one should live the sort of life that brings as many genuine mourners to his or her funeral as is possible).
On Saturday, meanwhile, I was off to Arnprior (an hour from here, packed into a rental minivan with my brother, sister, nieces, and my sister-in-law) for an all-day family reunion of sorts. My mother was already up there with my grandfather, 3rd grandmother, and my uncles. Short story: My mother's father divorced my grandmother some years ago and re-married a younger woman, with whom he had three more children. So my aunt and uncles on that side are only a couple of years older than I am, and younger than my cool, law-school-attending older sister in any case. This makes for fairly enjoyable get-togethers, as they are young and hip and (particularly in the case of my uncle Thomas, who has a special place in his heart for a certain herb shortly to be decriminalized in Canada) very open-minded and independent thinkers. I drank rather too much beer (after an entire school year's worth of law-school-sized alcohol consumption, I meant very well to give my liver a break this summer...), ate rather too much dessert, and all in all had a great time.
In other news, I received sort of a strange mass e-mail from one of the review counsel at our community legal clinic, with the brief message that we ought to read the attached file. Being insanely curious about the contents (since I had applied to take part in the clinic course this fall and was eagerly awaiting the word on that), I opened up the attached document without hesitation (deciding recklessly that it probably wasn't a virus and, in any case, that my Mac would brush it aside... and I'm sure someday one or both of those attitudes will seriously bite me in the bum). Lo and behold, I was accepted into the clinic course. What this means in practical terms is that I'm going to be extremely busy come the fall. I'll be combining a seminar course with community legal casework, involving things like client intake, court appearances, legal research and writing, and perhaps acting as duty counsel for a housing tribunal. All this must be juggled against an already bursting schedule. That said, it is a privilege that not everyone gets into, and will entirely fulfill the oral advocacy requirements of my law degree as well as giving me oodles of hands-on experience. I suppose it will also help me decide if I really do like helping people despite long hours and little (in fact, no) pay, or if I'm just a money and power-hungry weasel who can't stand poor people and all their problems, and wouldn't lift a finger unless it counts towards my billable hours at Corporate Law Firm LLP. Meanwhile, I have to figure out the rest of my courses for the year, because registration is coming up on Monday and I still have only a faint clue about what I want to take.
