After the horror that was the bar exam, I came over to Europe to spend a month with Carl.  It’s been fabulous so far.  We were in England for a little over a week, and now we’re in Munich until Friday.  My brother’s down here visiting us, and this is time to just relax and sleep in.  It’s wonderful.  I was looking at some of the pictures we took in England, and I was shocked by how happy I looked.  I’m not sure if I’ve smiled so much in the last three years as I have in the last week.  When I get back to the States, I’ll have a little less than a week before I start my new job.  This has been a welcome break between finally being done with school and entering the real world.

I think Cort and I will head over to the Deutsches Museum today.  And go shopping.  Ah, what bliss.  And Carl will be working, of course.  He only has off for the first and last weeks of my visit.  But he’s being sent to Dublin next week, so we’ll have a grand time there – I’ll go see exciting things while he sits in a server room. 

So that’s life right now.  I’ll update more later…

On my way home from Harry Potter at 3am, I drove past this Bible church that always has annoying signs out.  They write things that are apparently supposed to make you want to come into their church.  I can’t remember specific past examples, but they did spell Matthew with one T recently.  The one this morning just got to me though.  “The wages of sin is death.  Romans 6:23″  Um, sure.  Yes, that’s partly correct.  One word (“for”) missing at the beginning, but the next six words are right.  However, the majority of the verse is missing: “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Perhaps I focus on grace too much (isn’t too little law, too much Gospel a criticism of the ELCA?), but that part of the verse seems exceedingly important.

You can’t scare people into believing something.  That isn’t faith.  And selective reading bugs me.

1.  bought plane ticket home for September 2nd

2.  bought tickets for the midnight showing of Harry Potter

3.  wrote practice essays

4.  lazy day

1.  neck hurts, jerked awake yesterday morning and strained something

2.  studying a lot

3.  Mom bought a piano, so I get the one we’ve had forever!

4.  bought plane ticket to London!

I like organization.  I like having plans.  I have created a plan that is supposed to motivate me to study for the Missouri Bar Exam, which I will take July 28th and 29th.  I’ve devised a point system.  Three colors of points, though they are all worth the same amount.  I get a blue point for every set (17 problems) of multiple choice questions I do.  I’ve thought about having a quality threshold, but that (and I) would be pointless.  Then, I get a green point for every essay I write.  Finally, I get a purple point for 1) every 20 pages I read in the large outlines, 2) every 20 notecards I create for studying, and 3) every half hour I spend (productively) studying otherwise, though if I study for 50 minutes all in one go, I get two points.  Basically, every point is roughly 30 minutes of work.  So that’s my system.  Sounds great, right?  I have decided that I need to amass 30 points before I can watch any Harry Potter movie, and if I want to watch all five before July 15th, I need to get some serious points going.  I have not earned many points so far.  I’m working on it.

Also, I moved into Carl’s house a week and a half ago.  Stuff is EVERYWHERE.  I feel torn between studying and cleaning, and so I end up reading a magazine instead, naturally.  It’s probably a good thing Carl won’t move back to the States until December.  It gives me plenty of time to reorganize.  I told him how I’ve been organizing our books and DVDs and things.  He has a strange aversion to organization, and he has repeatedly cautioned me that his books will not stay the way I’ve put them.  It will be a fun marriage, I think.  Speaking of which, we’re doing things backwards, and we’re going to basically take our honeymoon this August while I’m over there.  We’ll spend a 7-10 days in Great Britain at the beginning, a week in Italy at the end, and we’re hoping to spend a weekend in Switzerland (Zurich maybe?) and a weekend in Vienna.  I’m really looking forward to it.  I love hanging out with Carl, and we have such a great time together.  We have not done much traveling together, and I think it will be a lot of fun.  We have similar ideas of what constitutes “fun,” which will be a great thing.  I can’t wait to be there.  Then, after we’re married, we’ll take a weekend or something and go somewhere close.  It may sound corny, but the thing I’m looking forward to most is just getting to be with my best friend.

I should study.

Yes, I have finally finished all my law school classes.  Now I just have three finals to take, a settlement agreement to write, and twenty-one 1L summary judgment motions to grade for citations.

I’ve been playing bass a little more, which has been wonderful.  I’m playing for a friend’s church choir this Sunday as part of an ensemble.  It should be fun.

Carl will be home in two weeks.  TWO WEEKS!  This is quite exciting.  He won’t be staying for as long as we had originally planned, but it will be good to have him home.  He’s such a wonderful guy, and I miss him terribly.

Um, right now, there are a bunch of dead ants in my bathroom, all over my shower.  As in, a couple hundred of dead ants.  I sprayed the cracks in my shower with Raid today, and they’ve just been pouring out and dying.  It’s quite gross.  And a great thing to share, no?  Not sure if this is something to mention to my landlord.  I think it may be more a circumstance of where I live instead of the house being defective.  Also not sure if this is a good thing to mention generally.

Anyway, that’s it.  Carl will be home in 15 days, and I graduate in 23 days!

I have a grand total of nine classes left.  Four tomorrow, three Wednesday, two Thursday.  And then I will be done with class for a long time!  Three finals, then graduation.  And Carl comes home for a couple weeks.

Next year, I’ll be working for a law firm in Kansas City, Missouri.  I’m not going to say the name because I really don’t want my blog to come up in searches for it.  That would just be weird.  I’ll be defending asbestos manufacturers though.  I’m very excited about it.  It’s a really great firm, and I’m looking forward to working with all of them.

Recently, I’ve been playing bass more.  I really do miss it.  Anyone know of an orchestra I could play with next year?  There’s a civic orchestra with whom a Kansas appellate judge plays.  That would be fun, but I’m a little hesitant to try and play with them.

Okay, I’m done.

I’m headed to Germany on Wednesday!  I’ll land in Munich on Thursday and spend a couple days with Carl.  I’ll leave on Saturday for Eisleben, where I’ll meet up with some friends from LCM, and we’ll do a Luther tour, following his footsteps, so to speak.  Then on the next Thursday, I’ll head up to Berlin to stay with my brother until Monday.  Carl is meeting me up there, so he’ll get to meet those friends.  I’m excited.

Also have a job lined up for next year, wedding plans are coming along, and I graduate in two months.  Life is so good.

My brother and I are in the Philippines, visiting my dad and his family. We’ve been in Manila so far, but we’ll head to their house in the provinces tomorrow. I’m typing this on a tiny keyboard, so this won’t be long. It’s good being here, and I definitely like having mango and papaya for breakfast. Being here has made me think of India on more than one occasion, partly because of the architecture (especially churches). Also, the idea of personal space, or lack thereof, is similar. Granted, I haven’t been to India for many years, but this is what I remember.

My dad’s family is great, very kind and even fun. I’ll write more when I steal my brother’s computer.

The only good thing about Iowa is Luther College, and that’s basically in Minnesota.  Iowa is a terrible place.  Terrible.

A friend of mine is getting married tomorrow in the Twin Cities, and I was going to drive up from Lawrence today.  I almost got to Des Moines when the serious fog rolled in.  North of Des Moines, I couldn’t see more than 100 feet in front of me.  For far too much of it, I could see a maximum of three stripes on the highway.  I was excited when I could see the taillights of the car in front of the car in front of me.

Decided I couldn’t keep going, so I pulled off in Story City.  And now I’m bitter towards Iowa.  It’s supposed to sleet tomorrow morning.  Can’t wait to drive in it.