Must See TV

Amongst one of the many reasons why my living situation has worked out so well over the past three years is that my roommate and I have a mutual love of television and, even better, many of the same shows. Funny because we are both "meh" on other forms of entertainment like movies.

While many law students or young professionals sacrifice cable to cut down on costs, focus on studying, or because they do not watch much television, there has never been a question in our apartment that we would have cable. Having that one show a night to look forward to got us through some stressful or exhausting days of law school. And no, internet tv just is not the same to us. There is something about watching it on a television, rather than an isolated laptop screen, that is part of the experience.

Now that we have entered into the working world have and have a disposible income, we have upgraded and pay for DVR (like Tivo).I feel silly writing a post glorifying DVR, but it really has changed the way I watch television. I no longer watch what is on, but rather what I want to record. For example, bad reality tv* was one of my guilty pleasures and it was easy to get because it was always on.

And while I still fully defend watching shows like the Housewives of *insert random city here* because 1) there are far worse things to be addicted to, 2) those shows are an interesting commentary on our society, and 3) they were not nearly as bad as E! shows like Rock of Love, I watch far less of those shows nowadays. The Housewives and Top Model have been replaced by Mad Men--which I have grown to love so much, that I will probably have another blog entry devoted to it.

They say that reality tv shows and internet television are killing regular dramas and sitcoms. Maybe I am bucking the trend, but I wonder if other people will revert back, like me, after their fling with bad reality tv.

*I use the term "bad" loosely, as only to differentiate from what I consider quality reality tv shows like Top Chef and Pre-Lifetime Project Runway.

Sick Day Weekend

Well after eight weeks of working at full speed, being around a sick judge and intern, and enduring the schizophrenic weather patterns, my immune system finally caved. I got sick. I hate being sick. It's a control thing.

While I got my rest as everyone told me to--slept 12 hours each night--I was determined not to be bed ridden. I am not a doctor but I am convinced that staying in bed all day actually makes recovery slower. So I watched football all weekend (UCLA lost, Vikings lost, sad), watched The Firm (a horror movie for a lawyer), and cooked a whole lot of food.

Minestrone soup out of a can did the job on Saturday morning, but there is nothing more nourishing than a home cooked meal. Luckily my cold did not affect my taste buds. Everything was delicious, if I don't say so myself.

Roasted butternut squash with caramelized onions, dried cranberries, capers, and Gorgonzola cheese.  I assumed that orange vegetables had much needed Vitamin C.

North African Meatballs with cous couse and glazed carrots. I don't know how authentic these meatballs are, but the combination of olives, tomatoes, ginger, white wine, and cinnamon was fantastic.

I am feeling much better than I did on Friday, which is good, because we have two more trials this week. 

Food + Blog = Flog?

Some people peruse fashion blogs to update their wardrobes, celebrity blogs to catch up on gossip, design blogs for inspiration. I love food blogs, which I guess, is not that surprising since I used to scour through cookbooks and organize my mom's recipe book when I was a kid.

Food blogs help me discover new recipes, ingredients, and cooking methods. I am far from being a gourmet, but it has helped me expand my culinary horizons. Who knew I would love roasted cauliflower so much? Or any roasted vegetable really. It gets me excited about cooking at home, rather than just eating out at restaurants, which usually helps the budget and waistline. And of course, most of them have pictures that fall in the category of "food porn," who does not like that.

Here are some of my favorites. There are actually more than I realized-- so to answer the question that might come to mind, no I do not look at these all day (my work keeps me busy enough). They are all just bookmarked for when I need something, and now I share with you.

A League of Their Own: Two of my favorites who are both big in the food blogging world.
Pioneer Woman: Woman with a great story, funny commentary, and step-by-step picture recipes that will make you drool. She also gives away prizes like Kitchenaid mixers frequently. Basically, all my friends want to be PW.
101 Cookbooks- Healthy Recipe Journal: The first food blog I ever discovered. California healthy cooking never looked so good.

Vietnamese Food Blogs: Helping me recreate dishes and flavors I loved growing up.
Viet World Kitchen: Classic recipes and great articles on Vietnamese culture.
Sunday Nite Dinner: Has not been updated in a while, but the site has fantastic step by step instructions on Vietnamese and other cuisines.
Tia Nguyen, Recipe and Photo Journal: Just discovered while looking for a recipe for chili lemongrass chicken. The pictures make me hungry for my mom's cooking.
Asian Dumpling Tips: From the same writer as Viet World Kitchen, a site all about dumplings. Yum!

Every day cooking: Forget Rachael Ray when you have these sites.
Dinner Tonight: Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Blog. I like this site because it reminds me of the little recipe cards I pulled out of Martha's magazine when I was a kid. Yes, I have always loved Martha.
Simply Recipes: Another early site I found. Easy to navigate and easy to follow recipes.
Smitten Kitchen: Leans more towards the baking side; still many delicious meal ideas as well.
Chaos in the Kitchen: A mom's blog about cooking for her family. While there is a lot of "kid" food, she does a great series about "Recession Cooking" and has useful tips about planning meals.

One amazing thing I discovered is that there is this food blog network, where many of the writers know each other in real life and often make cameos on each others' sites. This also means that they also have links to other food sites, and that you could keep discovering things all the time. So many things I want to try, so little time.

East Coasting through Autumn

One of my favorite things about living in DC is getting a real autumn. In between the humid summers and slushy winters is the most amazing weather.

To celebrate the start of my favorite season of the year, we headed down to Charlottesville, Virginia to watch the UVA football game, pick apples at an orchard, and go wine-tasting at three vineyards including one owned by Dave Matthews. As my friend Ben said, I had a whole weekend of Stuff White People Like.

I will let some of the pictures speak for the weekend.

View of the Virginia Countryside from Carter Mountain Orchard

Wine and Cheese Tasting at Kluge Winery

Wine Tasting Room at Blenheim Vineyards

Tortious Tuesday

Torts is always considered the "fun" class in law school. Reading cases was like story time. What kind of crazy freak accident are we going to cover in class next? Turns out, though, they are not such freak accidents. More and more, I see incidents that you think only could be fiction come to our courtroom. Think that cranes never drop those tons of materials they're lifting? Yeah, we got that case.

And now that I am outside the safe confines of law school, I am encountering these incidents in the real world. We were wrapping up another trial this morning (yes, that is trial #5 in 5 weeks) when we received multiple calls. Judge, lawyers, jurors all delayed because there was a fire on the metro. It ended up being a minor incident that was cleared up after a few hours, but not a good day for DC public transportation after a metro bus hit and killed someone last night.

Apparently just as common as train accidents are in torts case books are exploding manholes. I had no idea until today. After the metro fire situation settled down, I sat down at my desk only to hear an explosion. Look outside the window and I see the smoke coming from the ground and a manhole cover not in its hole. Police quickly come and rope off the area and utility company comes within minutes to do damage control. If you ever see me walk around these covers now, the diagram below will tell you why.

I am starting to feel like after reading about all these cases in school and dealing with them on a regular basis at work, I am going to start becoming really paranoid about accidents.

Trial by Fire

Now that I am over one month into my clerkship, I can officially say that the job is great. Crazy at times, but great.

My judge told me that if I have felt incredibly busy over the past month, it is not just because I am new. We have had four trials in the past four weeks, which is extremely unusual on a civil docket. Most civil cases settle for a myriad of reasons (costs, unpredictable juries, etc), but not on my watch. To give a little context, my predecessor had about the same number of trials in eight months that I have had in four weeks.

I am not complaining in the least though. While trials require a lot of tedious work for law clerks, I have learned so much. I realized that I had never even sat through a full trial before this job. Now I know the whole process and learned about good and sadly, much more about bad lawyering. No Jack McCoys over at my courthouse. Actually most are not even close and it makes me a bit sad about the legal profession (but more about that another time).

The returning law clerks told me that starting off with a crazy schedule like this will make the rest of my tenure seem like a piece of cake. We'll see.

Reading Narcolepsy

Something horrible happened to me during law school. I lost my ability to read for pleasure.

It has been a while since I have been able to finish a non-legal book because no matter how interesting the book was, no matter what time of day I was reading, no matter how awake I was before I started reading, I would fall asleep after reading a couple pages. Out cold. I actually started reading magazines during law school because I knew I could at least finish an article before falling asleep.

I think my reading narcolepsy stems from the same reason of why I fall sleep if I am just watching a movie. I lost my ability to do one thing at a time. I am a serial multitasker. Even if I was reading the most boring case in the world, the reason why I stayed awake was being I was simultaneously taking notes. While "active" learning was worked for law school, I miss leisure reading. I remember how much I loved going to the library to pick out a new book to read. Heck, I even wanted to be an English major I liked reading that much.

So another goal for my post-graduate life: read a book a month. I have a few options on my shelf: Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet, which I have been working on for a year or so; True Compass, the Teddy Kennedy Memoir; Rediscovering Lone Pine, a fiction story written by one of my former professors; and a few others. By the end of October, make sure that I have written a book report to prove that I have read something.