After at least two dozen aborted attempts to update my blog over the past year, I return to the blogosphere, tail between legs, asking all (one or two) of you (variably devoted) followers for your humble forgiveness. I shall feed your news hungry brains anew.

The following minor events occurred:

• I got into UW Law, among others.
• I accepted a transfer to UW.
• I participated in journal write-on competitions at five different schools before I even knew whether I’d gotten into the school itself … all while still wrapping up the applications themselves AND studying for finals
• I quit my job at AT&T. It was one of the most gratifying moments of my life.
• I moved back to Seattle in nearly the most difficult way possible. I drove between San Francisco and Seattle 4 times in the span of a week, while packing all of my crap in between drives.
• Michael accompanied me for much of this ordeal, enduring searing 100+ degree heat on final moveout day, countless trips up and down 4 flights of stairs, and a recalcitrant U-Haul employee by the name Lloyd Harris Jr., who insisted that “he ain’t gonna do it … if you want those trailers moved you’re [sic] gonna have to do it yourself.” The last drive was 17 hours of continuous Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Tom Jones, and Ronnie James Motherf***ing Dio, finally ending at about 7am.
• I am unemployed and loving every moment that doesn’t involve school. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found a moment that involves something other than school.
• UW is cool.
• Making new friends is tiring, and I’m not particularly good at it.
• I miss In-N-Out.
• 18 credits is too much for one quarter.
• 20 credits is way, way too much for one quarter.
• I’m going to Germany over spring break for an IP law seminar.
• Hank and Wayne are back to brewing, and we’re getting serious about it. Check us out at http://hankandwayne.com.
• And finally, I’ll be staying put in Seattle this summer, working as a judicial extern for Federal District Court Judge Pechman. Means I’m projected to graduate in March of next year!

I think that’s it for now.

Time to start reviewing beers so I don’t forget them. I plan on using the Ratebeer scale – 10 points for aroma, 5 for appearance, 10 for flavor, 5 for palate, 20 for overall impression, then summed and normalized to a scale of 0-5. I use the mid point as 50% percentile (i.e. 5/10 for aroma is, to me, an average-smelling beer).

Name: Norwegian Wood
Brewery: Haandbryggeriet
ABV: 6.5%
BJCP style: 21A – Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer
Country of origin: Norway
Serving temperature: ~7C (45F) warming to ~13C (55F)
Glass: Ordinary pint glass

Aroma: 8/10. Nose dominated by peat, smoldering alder, hot burning juniper wood. Intriguing medicinal overtone, perhaps juniper berries. Not much of the base malt aroma makes it through, however. Brings back fond memories of warming my bones around a brush-fueled campfire in the desolate wilderness of the eastern Cascades.

Appearance: 3/5. Dense, persistent brownish head with no lacing to speak of. Deep brownish ruby color with some chill haze.

Flavor: 7/10. One of the better smoked beers I’ve tried. Clean, moderate bitterness with no hop flavor; dominated by peat, black patent or other roasted malt. Smoke much more evident on the nose than on the tongue. Slight wooden overtone and an equally small amount of fruitiness. Dry, woody finish.

Palate: 3/5. Heavy on intake, heavy on the tongue, heavy going down. Not a whole lot of carbonation to speak of, generous head notwithstanding. Slight alcohol warming. I think the ABV of 6.5% is understated.

General impression: 14/20. A fine small batch artisan beer. I was hoping for something a bit wackier, but Haandbryggeriet instead delivers a smoked beer of unusual refinement (if there is such a thing). Drinkability as well as complexity increased with temperature, with some of the roasty edginess giving way to a well-rounded heartiness; recommend leaving it out for about 10 minutes before pouring to get its temperature into the 10C range. By no means a session beer, but certainly an interesting treat.

Overall: 3.5/5.

(Image courtesy of Anna Buxton, http://bcannaca.smugmug.com/. My apologies to Ms. Buxton for previously having used it without attribution.)

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past six months, it’s that home is where the heart is.  My heart never left Seattle.

I was up north for one my regular visits this past weekend.  There wasn’t a special occasion, nor were there any unusual circumstances about the visit, but something was different about this trip from the start.  I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate for a week prior.  When I arrived, the usual elation of being home was supplanted by a quiet wistfulness.  After literally weeks of being alone, I incongruously wanted to be left alone even though I was surrounded by family and close friends.  The first time someone asked me how long I was staying, I stared at them blankly.  It all came to me at once … after six months of being away, I finally grasped what that question meant.

“Visitng home,” to me, is a contradiction in terms.  If one visits somewhere, it means they’re going away from home.  Furthermore, if one goes home, he can’t claim to be visiting it.  For the past seven years, I’ve considered Seattle my home.  For the past six months, I haven’t been there for more than a few days at a time, but I always felt like I was going home after a long trip.  But on Saturday, I learned that Seattle was no longer my home, but instead a place I desired to be home.  

That desire may very well go unfulfilled for at least a couple of years.  I recently applied to transfer schools in hopes that I’d be able to come back, and by all measures, I’m almost assured an offer at the NW schools to which I applied.  But in a baby-with-bathwater moment, I also applied to Georgetown just to see if I could get in.  I reasoned that there wasn’t much of a chance that I’d get in, but, I thought, it sure would be nice to go if I did.

After looking more closely at the statistics and finally coming to terms with how much I missed home, I now wish I hadn’t applied.  I stand a decent chance of being accepted, and it would be extremely hard for me to turn down a chance to go to one of the preeminent law schools in the country … but still, the very thought just kills me.  

Actually, it might not be the thought of the decision that’s bothering me.  At this stage, it’s more the uncertainty around whether that decision is one I’ll have to make.  As I wait for the the fates to drop more pieces into place, I’m stuck here in limbo – working a job in an industry I despise, living in a town that collectively marches to a different beat than my own, and wondering whether I have to always put myself on the hardest possible path to happiness and success.

Well, at least Bush isn’t our president anymore.  Cheers to that.

Woo woo woo woo wooooooo! It finally hit me this morning – my first year of law school is half done. Time to get myself up north and rock the family, friends, powder, and the sweet sweet joy of not studying.

Not to mention the RAWWK itself. In a few short days, Los Tres Hermanos de Explosion will victoriously reunite for yet another raucously dissonant noisemaking (and beer-drinking) session. Michael’s neighbors can’t wait!

but one hell of a contract law final standing in my way. Thankfully, it’s my last of four, and I’m almost looking forward to it.

Not to eulogize prematurely, but being back in school has certainly been a shock to my system … in a good way. I feel like I’m making up for time I wasted and lost when I was in college, and actually applying myself toward school is providing a catharsis that I’m only experiencing for the first time.  My expectations of performance, while still high, are tempered somewhat by my full-time day job – a dubious responsibility that I share with less than a third of my 1L part-time class.  Most of the rest are kids just out of undergraduate who either didn’t want a full load to start their law school career, or were originally seeking the full-time program and got shuffled into the part-time program by admissions.  Among the older people looking for a wholesale career change, around half quit their job prior to matriculating.  As such, the competitive landscape is unusual, to say the least, and the forced grading curve is really screwing with my usually accurate spidey sense of how I actually did.

I did how I did (and will do as I will do), and think that my efforts were close to my maximum capability with what resources and intellect I can muster.  I have a lot of things driving me right now – my aspirations for the future, some amount of (perhaps misplaced) pride, my sense of duty to the world around me … but most importantly, my desire to rejoin the people and places I love in a better position to help and support them.

So to my family, friends, and the beautiful and wild Great Northwest – here’s to you, and to hoping for the best.  If I succeed, it will have been because of you. 

I will see you soon.

Bailout? More like failout.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/11/auto.bailout/index.html

I don’t have a lot of time to dissect this, what with my torts final coming up and all, but I actually laughed aloud when I read about it.

Did anyone else catch the irony of the United Auto Workers’ refusal to drop domestic guaranteed pay rates to parity with the rest of the industry? That was, in large part, the cause of the bailout’s failure in the Senate. I’m so glad to hear that all of those union auto workers won’t be losing their salary level. You know, because they’ll still have jobs at which to make that salary. I’m sure GM, Ford, and Chrysler will still be in perfectly healthy financial shape without that $11B. Right? Those union guys are GENIUSES!

And on the political side, there’s yet more irony. The Republicans were bitching that the bailout proposal didn’t come with enough strings attached, and said bitching sealed the deal (or lack thereof). They seemed to ignore the White House’s warning that without the bailout, they’d likely divert TARP funds to the automakers. Those funds are likely to come without any strings attached whatsoever.

Basically, we’re looking at a clusterfuck of gargantuan proportions. The unions have, by attempting to protect their workers in the least sensible way possible, doomed thousands of them to having no job whatsoever. The government is probably going to step in and barely save the Big Three at the cost of billions of taxpayer dollars, not really force them to change the core of the idiotic policies that led to their near demise, and set them up for failure again in 10 or 20 or how ever many years until the global economy goes kerplunk again.

God save America from itself.

other than study for my three upcoming finals.  *gulp*

Chris had cows on his blog.  I, naturally, had to investigate.

Saw this on CatharticInk, thought I could do it too. Rules as follows: Go to the sixth page of your Flickr photostream and post the sixth picture on that page.

Huh, okay.  Mine isn’t of cows:

It does bring back some pleasant memories, however.  This was one of my last hikes before I moved away from Seattle, and it was a doozy.  The plan was to camp with Michael near Mount Rainier, then meet Jeff and Jake at Paradise (5,400′) for a 12PM start the next day, hopefully reaching Camp Muir (10,188′) by mid-afternoon.  I had done this particular shlep three times before, and it was painfully delightful each time.  (Or is that delightfully painful? Probably both.)

Problem was, Jeff and Jake weren’t at the trailhead at 12PM.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited.

And waited.

I finally figured that the J-team couldn’t possibly have been delayed by nearly an hour and a half and were probably somewhere on the mountain.  To verify, I had Michael drive me through the parking area.  Sure enough, Jeff’s Prius was basking calmly in the afternoon sun, clearly without Jeff inside of it.  I wiper-posted a quick note intimating that I’d rather they not depart for home without me, then took my leave of Michael and practically sprinted up the snowfield.  I figured that I’d likely see them on their way down.

It turned out that I’d catch up with them on their way up, at roughly 8,500′.  They spotted my girlish figure while taking a breather and noted that my WSDOT-orange fleece was visible at least 1,000′ vertical feet down the snowfield (roughly 3/4 of a linear mile).  They too had waited for me, and after about 45 minutes set off thinking that I’d left without them.

Yeah, that’s right.  They were waiting for me … at a different trailhead.

We made it up, then back down, and a good time was (eventually) had by all.  A lesson was also learned – saying “I’ll meet you at Paradise at 12″ is a bit like saying “I’ll meet you in Seattle at 12.”  Lake City is as much Seattle as Beacon Hill, but there’s a slight possibility that the twain shall never meet.

Now that I’m homesick, it’s time to get back to studying.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t align well ideologically with President-elect Obama, but that doesn’t make me any less thrilled that he will be our 44th president come January. His election is a powerful expression of the social progress our great country has made over the past 150 years. The sudden political awakening of our country’s youth, largely attributable to his campaign, was unprecedented. People the world over seem unabashedly ecstatic over his election, boding well for our frayed diplomatic ties. And that acceptance speech tonight! Haven’t heard one like that since Reagan’s.

Congratulations, President-elect Barack Hussein Obama II. You’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do. Don’t screw it up. And remember, that new puppy you promised your daughters will need to be housebroken.

It appears that the crap economy is starting to hit my credit file, after having burned and pillaged my stock portfolio, my 401(k), and my Roth IRA.  

I generally run low balances on my credit cards and pay them off every month, and have never had a late payment on any of them.  So imagine my surprise when I get a letter from American Express indicating that my credit limit was cut from $30k to $5k due to something “adverse” on my credit report.  

I have three-bureau credit monitoring, and upon investigation, I discovered absolutely nothing different about any of my files.  A call to Amex netted me an obviously scripted response claiming that they had “found certain adverse information on my credit report.”  I told them that my own monitoring of the very same turned up no such adverse information other than the credit line decrease that she claimed was predicated upon said adverse infor … oh, would you look at that, a tautology!  How cute.  

A quick Google search returns a panoply of similar complaints against Amex, many quite colorful, some rather sad.  Speculation is rampant that due to their sickly financial condition, Amex has been aggressively and methodically contracting individual credit limits based on some seemingly esoteric criteria, such as billing address, number of children, and the phase of the moon.  (I made that last one up.)  I brought this speculation to my support rep’s attention.  Any connection to failing financial health, of course, was vehemently denied.  She reiterated that it was all my fault.

Strangely, BECU unilaterally increased my Visa Signature limit slightly about two months ago because of the very same “bad” credit Amex cited.  You know, if Amex can’t be up front about the real reason why they’re giving me a good shafting, I’m taking my business elsewhere.

I’m normally extremely annoyed by the sheer volume of dead tree material that ends up in my mailbox and at my doorstep, but on Friday, there was something in the pile that made me fly into a fit of rage:

A Democratic Party slate card.

Then on Saturday, a Republican Party slate card.

In these abominable documents were precise directions on how to vote for every single initiative, candidate, and proposition.  “Don’t forget to take this to the polls,” they urged.

How the hell stupid do they think I am?  Are there really sheeple out there that are idiotic enough to take these slate cards hook, line, and sinker, and vote exactly how the party wants them to without even considering what they’re voting for?

My faith in our country’s political system, already close to nonexistent, is quickly turning into outright rejection.  So too goes my reflection on the parties themselves, along with their pigeon-brained hacks who can’t offer anything other than eternally vacuous lapdog yappery at the equally cognitively-challenged hacks on the other side.

It all makes me *so* mad.  One of our duties as citizens, by voting, is to make clear our will.  That duty does not extend to making clear the wills of the Democratic and Republican parties.  I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican or a Libertarian or a United Monkey Loverist.  Throw away those slate cards.  Do NOT vote your party’s line unless you clearly understand each and every specific position that they’re taking.  Even if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist, use your brain and do the research yourself.  You’d be surprised at what you’ll disagree with.