the daily snivel
And it's not like I've been co-opted by the Man, but...
I have to agree with
Heather Mallick that men really do look better when they wear a tie. Responding to a column by Geordie Grieg, the editor of UK's
Tatler who shaves his head and claims that ties are vanishing and good riddance to them, she says:
...
I recently watched an episode of 24 in which Kiefer Sutherland was trussed Guantanamo-like (doubtless a typical Fox TV effort to make torture acceptable, dull even), burned, shot with electricity and injected with drugs to collapse his lung to encourage him to reveal the location of a computer chip.
Our Kiefer didn't cave. But he was quite the mess at the end of it all, exuding unfamiliar fluids at every pore.
Then I saw the Toronto Star's spread of celebrities photographed as they frolicked in the city that week. There was Mr. Sutherland emerging from a chic restaurant with a Desperate Housewife wearing a ruched yellow minidress so pretty it made me wish to have sex with her, and I'm not that way.
Mr. Sutherland looked as if he hadn't washed or changed since the impasse over the chip. Tie-less, shirt untucked, jeans that would disgrace a yokel after hay-baling, eyes desperate and gaping, you could still see the pillow wrinkles in his face. He was a rebuke to . . . something.
And yet some days earlier, Mr. Sutherland, wearing a suit and tie, was positively casting light over the Toronto Walk of Fame audience, such was his beauty. He was with his mother, Shirley Douglas, who was immaculate as always.
...
Ties a) look like a phallus, thus planting the suggestion that you have another better one down below b) knot suggestively c) add colour and life to drab male suitings d) conceal the male neck which is often unwashed, wiggly and dotted with neglected beard hair e) impress police officers should you be stopped for speeding and f) give a woman a fine phony reason to compliment you. “I like your tie,” she says. She may be lying, but it's better than saying, “I like the old egg yolk glued to your chest hair under the missing button on your cheap shirt.”
Sometimes a woman who wants to sleep with you will pull you to her by your tie. Sans tie, sans head hair, she's left with your ear, which reminds you of school or maybe your mother.
Throughout law school and my work at the Legal Clinic, I've been regularly required to wear a suit and tie (sometimes daily) as I appear in court on behalf of clients or meet with Crown Attorneys to discuss a case. I've always enjoyed dressing up, because it prompts you to walk tall and feel confident, knowing that you look your best. As much as it may be a manifestation of classist tendencies in this society, looks matter, and in my profession appearance is equated with competence. A lawyer, male or female, appearing in court in a crisp suit or robes has a commanding presence that would be missing if he or she showed up in a sweat-stained shirt and jogging pants.
I don't think that men need to wear suits and ties on a daily basis -- it would be snobbish and classist and to think good looks are synonymous with fine clothing and neckties. Nevertheless, men do seem to get away with quite a bit of slack when they're supposedly dressed up -- not to mention the things we get away with when we're going casual -- and there's something to be said for putting in a genuine effort to look your best.
But surely it's even more than that. Women are indeed held to higher standards of dress than men are these days. Even with the rise of the metrosexual and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," and men who put "product" in their hair, men get away with far more slovenliness than women. In fact, isn't because of the decline of the heterosexual male that we need to learn how to better look after ourselves? We get away with several days' worth stubble on our faces when we'd gross out if women had stubble on their legs. We wear ripped t-shirts and frayed tank tops that have grown gray with age. Our toenails grow too long. We wear ballcaps indoors. We wear sandals and black socks. We let men grow those awful goddamn soul patches, for goodness sakes. I mean, rip them off!
Most people would tell you they take pride in their appearance, but there's nothing quite like a freshly pressed shirt and tie to truly say you're looking your best. It's not necessarily an everyday look, but there's no reason it should be relegated to nothing more than weddings and funerals. Even if you don't have cause to wear a suit and tie to your job, it can still be fun to dress up when you go out -- button
up that shirt for a change, take off the hat, and give the jeans a rest (they cost more nowadays that most dress slacks anyway).
I know, at the end of the day, that it's not that simple. We have bigger problems in life than what we have to wear -- most people in the world are lucky if they have enough
food. There's a hint of classism in the notion that one has to wear an expensive suit and tie to look your best (and let's be honest -- even if you buy your suit off the rack at a department store, and currently I'm one of those people who do -- a suit is expensive). We also live in a very superficial society where people are judged by their appearances more than the substance of their character -- though I'd always prefer the latter over the former. Still, I'm simply suggesting that those fashion experts who
do care about appearance, and yet applaud the disappearance of the suit and tie, are missing the point entirely.
The 7 deadly sins of roommates
[updated July 3 -- see below]At the end of August, I will no longer have to live with roommates. I will be moving to Toronto and getting a place of my own, as is only fitting now that I am 29 and working at a law firm as a Student-at-Law. For the past several years, however, I
have had roommates, and in that time I've compiled a little list of unpardonable roommate sins.
- The measuring cup that never gets cleaned is a deadly sin. Two, two measuring cups are in my house, and they are never clean. One is invariably used as a gravy boat, and is either missing when it is in service, or returned with greasy, sludgy old gravy that requires both soaking and scrubbing to fully conquer. The other measuring cup will be used for, say, baking, but will sit with caked-on flour beside the sink until I have a need for it. And no matter how diligently I wash it after I use it and put it back in the cupboard, the next time I need one, it is ever thus.
- If you live with roommates, the live-in boyfriend or girlfriend is, verily, living in deadly, deadly sin. While everyone should be able to have their snooky-kins over for the night once in awhile, there is nothing quite so inconsiderate as turning those sleepovers into an infestation. If they're moving in, they'd better be up front about it, and the other roommates should get the right of first refusal. If they do move in, they'd better start paying rent to make up for the extra space, hot water, electricity, and bathroom time they also occupy.
- Not buying your fair share of toilet paper? Ooh, you'd better believe that's a deadly roommate sin. And while leaving a roll with just two or three squares of toilet paper hung instead of simply replacing it with a fresh roll may not be a deadly sin, it is irritating. Damn irritating.
- The garbage is there for anyone to take out. If it starts to get full, squishing it down over and over again to the point where the lid won't even fit on it is not the answer. Tie it up, take it outside. Don't wait for someone else to do it.
- Bread tags are the work of the devil. You know, those little square plastic tags that tie the bag of a loaf of bread closed. I don't know how it happens, but they get everywhere. On the stove, in the sink, on the counters, and all over the floor. Tie it up or throw it out, bitchez!
- Pizza box towers make the Baby Jesus cry. Lordy, how those pizza boxes do stack unevenly and unattractively. Please, please, put them in the recycling box outside. All they add to the interior decor is a hint of greasy cardboard and a whole lot of ants.
- Weed, man. I agree it should be decriminalized, but that doesn't mean I want that foul reek in my home. When you get your own apartment, you can smoke it anywhere you like. You can get high and stinky with all your no-good friends into the wee-est hours of the night. Until then, smoke it outside, you dirty hippies.
update -- the eighth and ninth deadly roommate sins:
- Leaving a door unlocked is tantamount to opening a gateway to HELL: Here's a little reminder for all you roommates out there. It's not the 1950s, we don't live in Mayberry, strangers aren't just friends you haven't met yet, and the back door has a deadbolt for a reason. Maybe the weed makes you forgetful on those rare occasions that you do smoke it outside on the back porch, or maybe it's the knowledge that someday you'll have to go back down to the laundry room again and why lock the back door when it would take precious effort to unlock it again next time, but leaving the back door unlocked, overnight -- or until whenever it is that I come by and lock it again -- is infuriatingly sinful. I wouldn't even bother locking it if I thought the axe murderer would stop by and politely murder you in your beds and leave me alone, or the opportunistic thief stole your nice things and not mine, but for fuck's sakes, wake up and lock the back door.
- I pity the sinner who doesn't pay their fare share: Paying your fair share isn't just about paying your portion of the cable bill, whether or not I ask you for it -- though let me emphasize that it's been about a year since anyone has bothered to pay it and I've stopped asking. How do you even watch the television without being guiltily reminded that you aren't paying anything for it, while someone else is paying over $50 a month? And the phone: I don't ask my roommates to pay for the phone because they all have cell phones and I have the land line. But the important corollary of this is: since you don't pay for the land line, don't use it. I hate it when the phone rings and it isn't for me. I hate it even more when I want to use the phone and someone else is on it. AND THEN THERE'S MY COUCH. My dead grandmother's couch. I love that couch. Imagine my joy when I came home one day and noticed the couch lilting on its side because someone, or more likely someone and their worthless friends, had broken one of its legs and not told me! And not offered to fix it. Luckily, I was able to buy new legs and fix the couch myself, and it hasn't been broken since. But grrrr.
Do you have any infuriating roommate sins to purge? Leave a comment and let me know!
Don't ask me for advice about buying or selling a house, but...
I'm pleased to say that I also passed the examination in the Bar Admissions Course for the Real Estate Law module! And by a hefty margin, I might add. It's immensely gratifying to know that a lad can study the arcane secrets of the
Planning Act, master them, apply them, and possibly them wash them from out of the space between his ears where they were stored with booze, but get such a pleasingly high mark on the exam that he wouldn't be afraid if he ran into two abutting parcels of land in a dark alley one night.
Tremble before the apparently competent knowledge of one who can give you the gist of this terrifying block of incomprehensible verbiage!
Subdivision control
(3) No person shall convey land by way of a deed or transfer, or grant, assign or exercise a power of appointment with respect to land, or mortgage or charge land, or enter into an agreement of sale and purchase of land or enter into any agreement that has the effect of granting the use of or right in land directly or by entitlement to renewal for a period of twenty-one years or more unless,
(a) the land is described in accordance with and is within a registered plan of subdivision;
(b) the grantor by deed or transfer, the person granting, assigning or exercising a power of appointment, the mortgagor or chargor, the vendor under an agreement of purchase and sale or the grantor of a use of or right in land, as the case may be, does not retain the fee or the equity of redemption in, or a power or right to grant, assign or exercise a power of appointment in respect of, any land abutting the land that is being conveyed or otherwise dealt with other than land that is the whole of one or more lots or blocks within one or more registered plans of subdivision;
(c) the land or any use of or right therein is being acquired or disposed of by Her Majesty in right of Canada, Her Majesty in right of Ontario or by any municipality;
(d) the land or any use of or right therein is being acquired for the purpose of an electricity distribution line, electricity transmission line, hydrocarbon distribution line or hydrocarbon transmission line within the meaning of Part VI of the Ontario Energy Board Act, 1998 and in respect of which the person acquiring the land or any use of or right therein has made a declaration that it is being acquired for such purpose, which shall be conclusive evidence that it is being acquired for such purpose;
(e) the land or any use of or right therein is being acquired for the purposes of flood control, erosion control, bank stabilization, shoreline management works or the preservation of environmentally sensitive lands under a project approved by the Minister of Natural Resources under section 24 of the Conservation Authorities Act and in respect of which an officer of the conservation authority acquiring the land or any use of or right therein has made a declaration that it is being acquired for any of such purposes, which shall be conclusive evidence that it is being acquired for such purpose;
(f) a consent is given to convey, mortgage or charge the land, or grant, assign or exercise a power of appointment in respect of the land or enter into an agreement in respect of the land; or
(g) the land or any use of or right therein was acquired for the purpose of an electricity distribution line, electricity transmission line, hydrocarbon distribution line or hydrocarbon transmission line within the meaning of Part VI of the Ontario Energy Board Act, 1998 and is being disposed of to the person from whom it was acquired. R.S.O. 1990, c. P.13, s. 50 (3); 1998, c. 15, Sched. E, s. 27 (4-6).
Woo! Scary!
Fear not, though. I will protect you.
But yeah. If you're contemplating buying a house and you want to make sure good title passes, don't come anywhere near me. Even when I
am a lawyer and capable of giving legal advice, don't come to me for it. The unimaginable depths of your local Land Registry Office is like the
Total Perspective Vortex compared to the chapter on land titles searches I skimmed before and during the open book, multiple choice, pass/fail exam.
But, um, if you think you might have murdered someone, well then by all means give my firm a call.
Hot Apple on Intel Action.
Everyone else is declaring that "hell has frozen over" (literally: google the phrase "Hell freezes over" and the word Apple and see how many hits you get) due to the fact that Apple has announce it is moving its computers to an Intel processor-based platform beginning in 2006. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the devil is looking for his red longjohns -- I'd say it was probably the best decision given the sad reality that IBM and the PowerPC chip, while promising much, rarely deliver at the end of the day.
For years, of course, Apple's computers were based on the Motorola 68000 series processor, followed by the PowerPC design. Most recently, Apple began buying its coveted G5 PowerPC processors from IBM, but has been stung by IBMs ability to provide these processors in great volume. When Steve Jobs introduced the G5 processor in the first 2 gigahertz Power Macs over a year ago, he proudly stated that the G5 would have a clock speed of 3 gigahertz within twelve months. This never materialized, and Apple's top of the line Power Mac G5 has two 2.7 gigahertz processors nearly two years later. Worse, IBM has also been unable to deliver a G5 that runs cool enough to put in a laptop. Given that laptops now outsell desktops in computer sales, Apple is watching its flagship PowerBook line stagnate and can do precious little about it.
This isn't to say that gigahertz is everything. The G5, though running at lower clock speeds, held its own in many tasks when compared to a higher-clocked PC, and even bested PCs at many tasks (especially involving PhotoShop), and Apple worked hard to make people understand that it was the performance of the entire system that satisfied users, and not just clock speed. Indeed, Apple scored quite a coup when Virginia Tech built what was at the time the world's third fastest supercomputer out of an array of 1100 commercially bought Power Mac G5s (and now using G5 XServes). Other major projects have since been born out of the success of the powerful (and affordable and efficient) XServe, including the "MACH 5" supercomputer built for the US Army out of 1566 XServes and running at 25 teraflops.
Nevertheless, there were clearly obstacles that IBM was unwilling or unable to clear. Worse, with IBM now contracting with Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to supply processors for their wildly successful gaming consoles, Apple is no longer a priority in terms of design, supply, and customer satisfaction.
Hence Apple's decision to gradually begin using Intel processors, as announced by Steve Jobs on June 6, 2005, at his keynote address at the World Wide Developer's Conference. Jobs revealed, as long had been suspected, that every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for both the PowerPC processor (used in current Macs) and for the Intel x86 processor (this build code-named "Marklar," after an episode of South Park where everything on the Planet Marklar is referred to as "Marklar.") ... just in case. This makes sense, given the platform independence of the UNIX underpinnings of OS X, and a natural desire to always have a "Plan B" when beholden to another company's whims and proclivities. While the ultimate specifications of the Intel Macs remains speculative (the first systems
are a year away, after all) Apple is providing developers with transition kits (including a 3.6 ghz Pentium IV system) that run an x86 version of OS X version 10.4.2 so that they can begin producing software that will run on the new Macs. The strategy at present is to produce "universal binaries" that will run on either PowerPC or Intel-based Macs. Additionally, Apple will be including a translator program, known as Rosetta, that will allow the Intel Mac to run software designed for a PowerPC Mac. The transition will start in 2006 with the consumer level Macs (the Mac Mini and the iBook), eventually moving to the Power Macs and PowerBooks in 2007, followed by the Xserve.
In this respect, I agree with the reasoning of
Jon "Hannibal" Stokes in every particular:
I don't really have to go into much detail about the current, pathetic state of Apple's portable line. Even if the Pentium M didn't spank the G4 in performance per watt, I could still sum up in a single phrase the reason that three years later I'm still limping along with the same TiBook: 166MHz frontside bus. This is just unacceptable for a machine with a price tag as high as the 15" PowerBook. In marked contrast to the currently stagnating G4, the Pentium M is fast, and Centrino is a great, full-featured, low-cost mobile platform that just kills anything that Apple could hope to offer based on parts from either IBM or Freescale. Apple needs the Pentium M in its mobile line, and it needs it yesterday.
The second reason why it makes sense to introduce x86 via the portable and low-end Macintosh lines is that neither of those lines have any need for a 64-bit processor. Yonah (see below), which is the dual-core Pentium M derivative that Apple will probably put in its first x86-based PowerBooks and Minis, will not support x86-64. By the time x86-64 has spread widely throughout the Pentium desktop line at the end of 2006, Apple will be ready to introduce 64-bit Pentium-based PowerMacs.
In this respect, Apple's x86 platform shift strategy is deliberately the reverse of Intel's 64-bit platform shift strategy. Intel is introducing 64-bit support into its products from the top down, with the mobile processors not getting 64-bit support until late 2006/early 2007. Apple, for its part, already has just such a 64-bit workstation/32-bit mobile split with the 970/G4 pairing. So Apple can swap the 32-bit G4 for Intel's 32-bit Yonah, and gain an instant performance boost where they need it most without sacrificing a prominent feature like 64-bit support. Later, as Intel moves to 64 bits across its entire desktop line, Apple will upgrade its existing 64-bit PPC parts with higher-performing 64-bit Intel parts. The end result is that as Intel makes the transition to 64 bits, Apple will make the transition to Intel.
So is this the end of Apple? I hardly think so. I spent three hours yesterday reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows Me on a friend's laptop because it was so infected with spyware and viruses that it could no longer even connect to the internet without seizing up. I then had to install a firewall and anti-virus software so that it wouldn't happen again. Conversely, I've never so much as reinstalled OS X on my iBook since I bought it in 2002. Its built-in firewall renders it virtually invisible to even the most tenacious intruders (according to security websites which probe such things), and it is immune to mail worms, spyware, and computer viruses. That's all in the software -- well designed, secure, reliable, and constantly being refined -- and is something that won't change when Macs use Intel processors.
It simply cannot be that a Mac is so connected to the processor that it will be indistinguishable from a PC once both use Intel chips. Macs have undergone significant changes without losing their identity. The move from 68000 series processors to the PowerPC chip in the 1990s also required people to buy new software and new systems, and required emulation to run legacy software, and it was necessary to do so for the company to remain viable (notwithstanding the terrible management in the Scully and Amelio years that almost ran Apple into the ground before Steve Jobs returned in 1997). Windows computers are very focused on legacy support. Apple, conversely, is an early adopter of new technologies. A PC today could run DOS and other software from 10 years ago. A modern G4 or G5 Mac could not boot System 8.6 -- the newest Macs cannot even boot OS 9.
What's in a Mac anyway? The same hard drives as can be found in any computer; the same CD drives; the same USB and Firewire ports; substantially the same RAM; and so on. The main difference has been, of course, the instruction sets for the processors, requiring custom video cards and lacking BIOS, but given the radical changes to Macintosh design over 20 years, a Mac is a computer that runs the Mac OS, is well-designed, and just works.
As for me, I'm hoping to somehow have it in my budget this year to buy a new G5 iMac (and finally retire my old PC running WIndows 98), but in the meantime the law firm I'll be working for only uses Macs and so I'll finally have Mac goodness both at home and at work. So that's all good. And if I can't buy a new Mac until they're using Intel processors, well, I'll be perfectly happy to get me one. Betcha they'll be better than ever.
Yours Truly, B.A., LL.B.
This weekend, I graduated from law school at the University of Ottawa. What an amazing feeling it is to finally be done (and a feeling that would fill me with even more thrills and tingles if I didn't have to qualify the statement "Hooray! I've finished school!" with "... except for those
classes I have to go to every morning..." as I trudge my way to the Bar Admissions Course only hours after being handed the diploma). The past three years have, in a sense, flown by, but they were still invested with a great deal of work, hardship, stress, and sacrifice. As every graduation speech will inform you, a graduation ceremony is both an ending and a new beginning, but I feel this is especially poignant when thinking about the fact that I am about to enter a profession that fosters continual learning and a refinement of the skills I already feel confident about. It's the beginning of a future in the practice of law. It's the beginning of the great things I will do. It's the beginning of having to repay my small mortgage-sized student loans.
Convocation was held at a fancy-pants ceremony held at the National Arts Centre -- which, let me tell you, is a far cry better than the stuffy gym at Carleton University, which was were my
last convocation took place. I felt very proud to be there that day, surrounded by friends, family, and colleagues, and being bestowed the Baccalaureate of Laws I had worked so hard to earn over the past three years. The night before, I took my mother and my dear friend Natalie to a dinner that was being held at the Chateau Laurier (one of Canada's few five-star hotels) for the Common Law students. Tickets were $55 each, and soft drinks were $3.50 (let alone the $6 price of a
domestic beer), but we were in the grand ballroom of this immense old hotel and treated to elegant service, complimentary wine with dinner, and the vegetarian option was nothing short of fantastic. Yum. After the dinner, the dance floor opened up, and I couldn't resist shaking my booty somewhat. My dear mother got acquainted with some of the other law school mothers when she went outside to smoke, by chance getting engrossed in a half-hour conversation of the mother of a good pal of mine, prompting said friend to go looking for her in concern.
After that, it was off to the Dominion Tavern. Ah, the Dominion. It's a wholly unpretentious rock'n'roll bar in the middle of the Byward Market. Lesser law students have turned their noses up at it, remarking that the patrons look like people on welfare who would rape you, but I've been going there for the past ten years and my mother, brothers, sister and I have spent the past two Christmas-ses there (as my older brother works there and likes the Xmas day shift), and we can all attest to the fact that it is simply laid-back, thoroughly non-swanky, and a source of cheap pints and (yes) quarts. A bunch of my friends were going out after the dinner to the Dominion in their suits and gowns, and being joined by many more who did not attend the dinner but like drinking and carousing all the same.
It was a little hard getting up the next morning for the ceremony, but once I had a shower I was at least able to shimmy into my suit, buckle my feet into my finest, most uncomfortable shoes, and tie up my necktie into a passable half-windsor knot. I had to be at the National Arts Centre for 8:30 to get robed, hooded, poked, and prodded, but was comforted by the fact that all my bleary friends were also there, doing the exact same thing. At some point I was (rather unceremoniously) handed a program, ushered to a seat, and left to await my destiny.
Of course, I had the happy knowledge that in the audience were my mother, my brother and my sister-in-law, my dear friends Natalie, Celeste, and Mélanie, and some law school friends besides. When I was called to the stage and my awards were announced, I was lavished with applause and cheers (including those delightfully non-obligatory "woos!" that signal that people are
really excited for you, and not just being polite), and truly ate the attention up. A friend later remarked that my awards took the longest to announce because of the wordy qualifications attached (e.g. "The Legal Aid Ontario Awards to have made an outstanding and and continuous contribution to legal aid, clinical practice and/or public interest law."), thus heightening the spotlight. Afterwards, I madly lunged for a table of coffee and cookies, since I had partaken in neither coffee nor breakfast before leaving early that morning, and it was now noon. Then I was found in the immense crowds by Celeste and Mélanie, still sipping my coffee gratefully and looking around for signs of familiar faces, and dragged outside to join the rest of my party and become the subject of many, many photographs, variously posing with family, friends, and just the diploma. Throughout, I was pleased to see how well my mother got along with my friends, especially Celeste (who has now met the entire set of my highly collectible family members).
And, oh, the wonderful day just kept continuing. My friend Mélanie was the gracious hostess of a brunch for myself, my mother, and Celeste, cooking eggs, tater tots (never underestimate the wonderous powers of fried potato products), and providing literally heaps of croissants and danishes while we sat on her huge balcony at her new apartment. That new apartment, coincidentally, was my brother's old apartment, and after brunch my mother and I made our way to the new house that my brother and sister-in-law just bought and moved into, for many fine hours of conversation and tasty beer. I was really stunned by their new house. It's a small, post-war bungalo that has been well-maintained, though they are in the process of extensively renovating it. What shocked me was the floor -- a beautiful, matte-finish hardwood floor that looked all the world like it was brand new. When they first looked at the house as prospective buyers, the floors were this nasty green linoleum tile. In fact, below that layer of flooring was another layer of tile. Beneath that were pristine hardwood floors.
This is something of an aside, but I've always been shocked and appalled when watching those home renovation shows like "Trading Spaces" and found that beneath some god-awful layer of soiled carpeting or lineoleum are beautiful hardwood floors that were covered up and forgotten about years or decades ago. The amazed designers rip up the nasty old stuff and all of a sudden you see pristine hardwood that must increase the value of the home by thousands of dollars. I've always thought it should be a crime to cover up hardwood floors.
So, in terms of my brother's house, it turns out that at some point in the past it was no longer fashionable to have hardwood floors. People went out of their way to have their homes re-done with wall-to-wall carpets and tile. So the hardwood floors were covered in plywood that was (sob) nailed down, and over that went glued-down tile. As the years went by, another layer was added. It took my brother and his wife three agonizing weeks to rip up the old flooring nail by nail, after which they had to sand down and re-finish the hardwood floors. But the result is fantastic and beautiful, and I was sincerely impressed by the elegance it added to their home, even in its stage of being only partially renovated.
Anyway, all that to say I had a wonderful weekend. I am indebted to my friends and family for their support (and patient understanding) over the past three years of law school, and it was great to have them with me as I graduated, and to share such happy times.
Thanks.