talbotlucas.org: a word to the wise is sufficient

A few of the events from the last week or so:

+ Graduation was an interesting event. The good:
-- My parents joined Terrence and I in the celebration.
-- The simple fact that it was my law school graduation.
-- We had a beautiful, almost too sunny day.
-- Everyone was in a festive mood.
-- Several of the professors whom I hoped would attend did.
-- I now have a doctoral hood hanging in my closet. Not an accessory I'll have many occasions to wear, but what the hell. It's fun to have my own.

The rest:
-- Having an outdoor ceremony itself didn't strike me as odd, but the whooping and party atmosphere was a little unexpected. Even with "Pomp and Circumstance" being played over the loudspeakers I guess I had expected...well, a little more pomp and circumstance.
-- Sunburn. Ouch. An oddly shaped stripe of burned skin marking where the sunscreen ended and where my graduation robe began. It could have been worse; there were many crispy faces in the crowd.
-- I still have to wait a few weeks for the actual parchment. And for my final semester's grades. Terrence suggested that I not even check for them until June, which isn't that far away. I'll see if I can hold out.

+ A decision in the wine wars cases: My blogging on this is terribly behind the curve, so I'll only say that the good guys won. I thought it would be a squeaker, and hoped the wineries and consumers would be victorious. It was and they were. The alignment of the Court was strange, and I have to reread the opinions, but I was heartened that the Court seized the opportunity to strike down the New York and Michigan direct shipping bans and that the Justices in the majority saw the statutes for what they were: not protections for minors, not attempts to maintain orderly market conditions via taxation, but bald discrimination against out-of-state producers. Now to find out how this will pan out as wholesalers test their lobbying muscle and press for complete bans on direct shipment (not only bans on shipment from out-of-state shippers).

+ Bar exam preparation has begun: The countdown widget on my Dashboard registers 63 days until the California bar exam begins. My Bar/Bri class began yesterday. Warning #1: Don't fall behind. Yow. Lectures in the mornings; personal work in the afternoons and evenings. Today and tomorrow are Torts-focused; Thursday and Friday will be Con Law lectures. I'm writing this during the short break I'm giving myself from wading through sample Torts questions for the multistate portion of the exam. I'm not complaining--I'm treating this as a forced march of sorts. (Reminds me that I wanted to see if the theme from The Bridge on the River Kwai is on iTunes. You know the tune. The whistling tune. I'll just put in on repeat for the next 63 days.*) But really, it could be much worse: unlike the LSAT, there are no logic games on the bar exam. This realization is called "giving thanks for small things" or proof that everything in life really is relative.

+ Dogs can get urinary tract infections. Yes, I knew this. But I learned first-hand about them when Wallace urinated and it was bright red. Blood. In his urine. At the sight of this I went into maternal overdrive and whisked him straightaway to the vet's office. After a week of antibiotics everything seems back to normal. And he's now getting a capsule of freeze-dried cranberries as a daily supplement. It can't prevent a recurrence, but it will minimize his risk.

* I checked. It's not there. So now I have a new audio mission, to find something longer than an mp3 snippet.