Me holding Kylie

More pictures

First picture

Here she is. Kylie Marie.

She's here!

Eight pounds six ounces. Wow. 6:13PM.

Hockey and stuff

My hockey team's record has fallen to 0-2. We played a new team to our division. Apparently they are a former roller hockey team. The advantage to playing this team was that they were small. I felt like one of the biggest guys out there (which was awesome). The disadvantage was that they brought their own cheering section. As soon as they stepped foot on the ice they started cheering. It was ridiculous.

In the locker room after the game, the coach/captain asked us if we wanted to win. We said yes. His answer was cardio. The other team scored one goal in the first, one goal in the second, and then 5 in the third for an embarrassing 0-7 loss. We were blanked. So, 2-3 times a week I'm gonna start running, rollerblading, or something to get my endurance up. I think I'll wait until my knee heals though.

Uncle!

No, I'm not being pinned to the ground forced into submission so my opponent can hear me say "Uncle!" My fighting days are long over (assuming nothing happens at our hockey game on Sunday). I'm gonna be an uncle! For those of you who know the gender, don't say it. My grandparents aren't aware of what the gender is, and we are trying to keep it that way. Rest assured, I'll post it hear when it happens.

Due date for the mother and father to be is June 12. It's weird. I kind of feel like I'm 17 again at the movie theaters waiting for my first kiss. You know that awkward part where you're sitting there...there's this very cute very attractive girl sitting there and you're thinking of all the millions of ways you can and will screw this up. So the movie ends, you walk out, and she goes home sad because she thinks something's wrong with her.

Okay, enough with the aside. I'll keep you posted as to how everything goes down. I'm quite excited for this whole process.

As for me, what will my purchase be? This awesome organic cotton onesie. Think they'll let the baby wear it? Yeah, I didn't think so. You know first time I watch the baby, baby goes home in this.

One Month Down

I finished the bar one month ago today. About this time, I had a few premium Japanese beers in me (Kirin) and was just picking up the final installment in the Harry Potter series. What have I been up to since then? A whirlwind of activities.

To start off, I skipped church (sinner!) and played in a poker tournament with my twin brother's father-in-law. I placed ninth and netted 7 bucks. The clone placed third and won a handsome sum (you really expect me to remember how much he won? This was like a month ago!). After that I departed for Dallas.

Rest assured, my transportation to Dallas was not too fun. See, while studying for the bar I had forgotten to book my airfare. So, I logged on Southwest and booked my flight in about two minutes. Little did I know what I was in store for.

I flew out of Ontario and had "the hottest flight crew this side of the Mississippi" or so the attractive blond flight attendant informed me. She was right. They were quite attractive and very funny. Ontario to Dallas should be a direct flight, right? Wrong. Ontario to Phoenix (where I met an interesting guy who was bitter about a divorce from his wife and knocked over his beer, breaking the glass, and then running from the bar before paying the tab...something tells me he didn't make it onto his flight) Phoenix to Austin! (Yes, Austin!), and finally Austin to Dallas. While in line in Phoenix I wasn't paying attention (I assumed they announced the flight's destination). While on the plane I learned the plane was headed to Austin, not Dallas--my destination. I pressed the stewardess call button, not once, not twice, but three times. She quickly confirmed my worst fears that yes, I was on the correct flight, and yes, there would be a stop in Austin. Fan-freakin-tastic.

So, Austin to Dallas and I'm finally at my destination. I spent two days in Dallas (really only like 1 and a half). The highlight was the trip to Deely Plaza where JFK was assassinated.

More of my trip to come later...I'm tired now.

Game Time

Taking the Bar tomorrow which is not only arguably the hardest Bar in any state, but also the hardest professional licensing exam in the country. No CPAs, yours is not even close. Try three whole days of testing. I know you might complain about Sarbanes-Oxley but two things: 1.) You brought that upon yourself by not self-regulating 2.) we are tested on Sarbanes-Oxley as well. However, we have so much more information that we have to cover, Sarbanes-Oxley will at the most be one sentence out of the thousands that I will write over the next three days.


Tuesday - Essays then Performance Test. Wednesday 100 Multiple Choice questions in the morning, and 100 in the afternoon. Thursday - Essays then one more Performance Test.

It's game time.

Currently listening to: You're the Best from Karate Kid.

CA Bar in a Nutshell

This is it. As of tonight I now am responsible for every subject that will be tested on the CA bar. Do I know them? No. But BarBri has given me constructive knowledge of them (constructive because I sat through a lecture and played fill in the blanks while a professor from a school I didn't go to read me the law). So what have I learned? I give you the CA bar in a nutshell.

1. If a husband's name starts with H and a wife's name starts with W, there's a 100% chance they will get divorced.
2. Don't name your child with a name that starts with V or D. Danny or Danielle always criminally wrong Victor or Vicky...most likely resulting in the latter's death within a year from the date of the incident (Vince Vaughn is doubly screwed).
   
3. Law is Murphy's law on steroids. As the question is being read, if bar applicant thinks, even for the slightest second, "Okay, I know what happens as long as the contract isn't breached," the rest of the question is magically rewritten so that the contract is breached.
4. The government encourages marriage not only by tax benefits, but by giving married people all sorts of awesome privileges. You get spousal immunity and absolute privilege to defame your neighbors all you want.
5. Adverse Possession is not the sexiest idea in Property law...that title belongs to slayer or killer statutes.
6. If someone enters an installment contract for the purchase of land, they will never EVER complete the contract and own the land.
   
7. Corollary to 2: If someone tries to kill someone and the name does not start with V, the bullet will magically miss the intended target and strike Vicky or Vince.
8. The police always forget to read Miranda.
9. Contracts are never in writing when they should be.
10. Corollary: Contracts are always in writing when they need not be.
11. If a tree falls and injures someone, the person whose name starts with D always takes a chainsaw and cuts down the tree a week later.
12. Bears, Apes, Monkeys, and other fantastic beasts are always really tame and don't pose a threat to anyone.
13. Corollary to 4: If someone is an eyewitness to a crime you committed, pray they are a member of the opposite sex and then marry them.
    
14. Corollary to 1: If H and W get on a plane, drive in a car, or take an exotic trip, they will die simultaneously in a fantastic fireball.
    
15. That old family Bible saying when you were born is given more weight than your testimony saying what your birthday is.
16. A seller of real property always has amnesia resulting in multiple sales of the same piece of property a few months or years apart.
17. Mudflaps will always come in two flavors: straight and curved.
18. A house built close to the boundary line of another lot will always encroach.
19. A juror will always be excused because of their race and/or gender.
20. All garbage dumps will always be limited to that city or state's garbage.
21. A legislator will always defame someone on the Congressional or state floor.
22. If a leasee assigns or subleases, the assignee or subleasee? will never pay rent.
23. A person playing a sport will always be subject to a battery or other intentional tort.

That's all for now. Add more to the comments. I'll also be adding to this list as I accumulate more knowledge.

Stanley Cup!

That's right. The Stanley Cup was at Anaheim Stadium prior to the Angels baseball game this evening.


That's a photo pulled from the Reuters website. I'm in the yellow shirt on the left. Here's the photo I was taking at the time.

That made this evening definitely worth it.

CA Bar

Yep. The bad boy I am tackling this year is the California bar. Previous victims of this beast include Antionio Villagrosa (current mayor of Los Angeles)--failed four times, never passed. Former California Governor Jerry Brown--failed once and passed on his second time. Former Governor Pete Wilson passed on his fourth attempt. Former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan, prominent constitutional lawyer who has argued cases in front of the US Supreme Court and is licensed to practice law in two other states failed on her first attempt.

For those of you reading this who are not my law friends--welcome. And thanks for sticking with me for the past three years (I know it's been a bumpy ride and I apologize). But let me fill you in on some background. Each state regulates the practice of law in that state. I want to practice law in California, and so I have to take the California bar. The California bar is tough. It is three full days of testing (compared to two or two-and-a-half days of other lesser state bars). Out of all the takers (both current lawyers from other states and aspiring lawyers), the bar passage rate is under half meaning more than one out of two people will fail.

The California bar consists of three days. Days are broken up into morning and afternoon. Day 1 Morning is three essays in three hours. Day 1 Afternoon is a performance test. Day 2 morning is 100 Multiple Choice Questions. Day 2 Afternoon is 100 more. Day 3 is a repeat of Day 1.

The bar tests 13 subjects. Multiple Choice questions or (MBE) subjects are:

1. Torts
2. Constitutional Law
3. Contracts
4. Real property
5. Evidence (Federal Rules)
   
6. Criminal Procedure/Law

The California Essay subjects can come from either the MBE subjects above or these below:

1. Civil Procedure (Fed and CA--new for Summer 2007!)
2. California Evidence (in addition to the above--also new for Summer 2007!)
3. Wills
4. Trusts
5. Business Associations
   
6. Agency
7. California Community Property
8. and others I'm forgetting.

So, this is why my posts will be sporadic, moody, and stressful until this is over.

BarBri Evidence "Update" or Malpractice?

After sitting through eight hours of lecutre, doing over a hundred evidence questions, and assorted evidence essays, I received an email from BarBri today informing me of an Evidence Update.

I clicked on the email from them with the subject "Evidence Update" and expected to hear that CA had just changed the law earlier today. That was not the case. Rather, BarBri has simply decided to relay to us new information because the information it had provided us in the printed materials (which are CA specific) AND the lectures (which are CA specific) are wrong.

Now, I'm a fairly laidback, guy who is quite flexible. I consider myself quite "above average," perhaps even "superior" when it comes to being able to adapt to a new change. But when BarBri sends us nine changes to the printed materials it sends us, I am not happy.

Let's see what substantive changes BarBri has us making.

First off, the "update" says that both Federal Rules of Evidence and California Rules of Evidence will be tested on the bar on the essay portion of the exam. Isn't this something that should have been told to us at the beginning of the lecture? It's not as if the California Bar (which I'm sure has already printed our exams) just decided to change this rule. This is an error on BarBri's part and a huge one at that.

Second, apparently withdrawn guilty pleas and offers to plead guilty are exempt from Proposition 8. How long ago was Proposition 8 passed? Unless BarBri can point to a recent case that came down on this point, again, this is BarBri's fault for not checking this earlier. How difficult would it be to get a lecturer with experience in CA evidentiary law? How big is this state? How many people practice in CA courts and use these rules on an every day basis?

To spare you from my ranting, I'll summarize the rest: BarBri sets out to explain various hearsay exceptions and differences in expert testimony. My question to them...why wasn't this covered in the lecture? If I were BarBri's client, this would be malpractice. I'm not a client, so this is just a poor level of service offered by BarBri.

I digress....

TB Guy

For those who haven't heard, here's a quick recap. Stupid attorney contracts super deadly virus of TB. CDC says don't fly anywhere. Stupid attorney goes, gee I think I'll fly to Italy, get married, and then fly back. Here's his quote:

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the newspaper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

Okay, currently it's debatable if you are well-educated (because you can't follow directions, you won't beb successful for much longer because you will be dead, and you aren't intelligent because you purposely endangered the lives of everyone on that plane, your wife, everyone at your wedding, and who knows how many people in Italy.

That's the worst logic ever. This guy is why attorneys have bad names. And then, the article talks about how he might be able to sue the government because he's in quarantine. Ummm...stupid news article, how about a little thing called compelling state interest? Additionally, stupid attorney should be worried about being sued by anyone who contracts TB because of his failure to heed doctor's advice. A jury would be mighty unsympathetic to his cause.

What I learned in Torts I

The following is my to do list after attending tonight's BarBri lecture (this will likely only be funny if you are in BarBri):

• Get a spouse so I can defame other people and use spousal immunity
• Have Barry Bonds sue me for my defamatory statements about his steroid use and then use truth as a defense
• Expose the mayor for being a nudist (because I can expose his two dual spheres to each other with no repercussions under any privacy torts)
  

And so it goes....

My days of freedom end today. From now until July 26, I will be BarBri's slave. They will control every free minute I have and will fill it with multiple choice questions, essays, performance tests, or perusing outlines.

Class will be four hours a day from 6pm-10pm, 5-6 days a week. If my blog updates and infrequent and short during this period, it is because I am doing absolutely nothing exciting with my life. However, I will be going to Europe soon, and that will be fun. So, yes reader, you can look forward to that.

Graduation

With my hood.


That's it. Starting Wednesday, I "fly solo" according to Uncle Ken (pictured above).

The End

The road trip is over. I've survived. I finished updating the map. I may add pictures at some subsequent point in time. And here it is, the culmination of my seven day travel extravaganza.

I will post more pictures here over the next few days.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

That's right. It's the end of the second day of our road trip. I'm still updating the map. Today we started in Arizona...drove through New Mexico and ended up in Texas. My thoughts--New Mexico is dry and arid. Arizona's desert is cooler. Texas is alot more green that I originally suspected. I also didn't think I'd really see cowboy boots and wide brim hats, but alas. It's true. Where are the dude ranches? (a la Hey Dude?) We're in San Antonio for the night near Sea World. Tomorrow's plan is a trip to the Alamo, Riverwalk, and then Dbacks v. Houston game.

Google Maps for Trip

Google Maps has an awesome feature that will allow me to coordinate the map with pictures and text. To follow along on our trip just click here. I've already updated the first day.

Road Trip kick off with the Tonight Show!

That's right! A long time ago, I signed up for tickets to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. We were placed on the wait list. Well, it turns out we're going. It should be fun. The studio is in Burbank.

After that, my roommate and I leave bright and early for our Road Trip (Malibu to Philadelphia).

Our plan is very flexible, but these are the five baseball games we will be seeing:

Wednesday, May 9 - Angels v. Diamondbacks in Phoenix, Arizona
Friday, May 11 - Diamondbacks v. Astros in Houston, Texas
Saturday, May 12 - Angels v. Rangers in Arlington, Texas
Monday, May 14 - Marlins v. Pirates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Tuesday, May 15 - Brewers v. Phillies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

And then fly back from Philadelphia on May 16th for graduation on May 18th. What a nice way to say goodbye to law school (which stands in stark contrast to the way I was introduced to law school....see post on first year below).