Schedule Change

Dave’s second week of work brought with it a new schedule for us. His first week was mostly business-skills training (easy). His second week was a primer on the computer programming language Java (much harder). So, since he had a few hours of homework every night and wanted to study hard to keep on top of things, we were up at 5am pretty much every morning so he could get his work done. It was good for our productivity, and bad for our sleep deficit. But, we managed to make it through the week and had a pretty relaxing weekend to catch up on sleep, write a brief (me), and study some more Java (Dave). This week promises to be more of the same, so we’re bracing ourselves for the onslaught of work.

But, on the bright side, Dave’s back is feeling better and things are easing up temporarily in the law school department. With my first draft of my brief turned in today, I can breathe easy for a week or so. We’ve got next Monday off (President’s Day) and a couple of classes cancelled this week. Plenty of time to catch up on a backlog of work! I’ve also got a couple of summer job interviews scheduled.

In the meantime, we’re making sure to schedule in some down time (gotta catch up on TV sometime, right?).

Of work and backaches...

Dave has now officially had his first day of work! The job is legit, and though his training is pretty remedial right now (basic “business” stuff), it shows promise of getting much more exciting (“computer” stuff!). So far, so good! He’s currently going to training at a hotel in Dublin (about a 30 minute drive from here), so he says that it doesn’t quite feel like work yet. More like a conference.

Unfortunately, on top of the excitement of getting started at work, he has also had the excitement of hurting his back. Though we have no idea how he managed it beyond bad posture. He’s got terrible lower back spasms and can’t sit or stand very well (especially in the evenings). He’s been toughing it out, however, with the thought that you can’t really miss your first week of work. So, we’re doping him up on painkillers, and I drove him to work yesterday. We’ll see if he can make it there on his own today… Poor guy!

Otherwise, as I’m sure you’ve all heard, we’ve been swamped with rain here in California. I think it’s rained for a week straight! We’re not complaining too much, though. At least it’s not snow or ice. But, it has caused me to invest in a pair of galoshes…wet feet are miserable!

New Adventures

The semester has officially begun with a bang, and our normally “newsless” life has accumulated a few changes. For one, Dave got a job! His official first day is January 25th, and he will be working for Kaiser Permanente doing Quality Assurance programming work. We’re not totally sure what that means yet, but we are pretty sure it’s in his field. It also pays well and has a long training period so that he can acquire a few new skills. He’ll be working in Pleasanton, which is about 20 miles away, but the drive has very little traffic. His commute will probably be just around 30 minutes. At this point, we’re between excited and thinking that this is too good to be true, so we’ll keep you posted as we find out!

We finished up Christmas break with a visit from my high school friend Eva, an attorney in Phoenix who weighed in on “real life” as a lawyer, and my parents. We did a lot of sight-seeing including visits to two nearby state parks, several trips into San Francisco, and a stop at Alcatraz (which turned out to be very interesting in light of my Criminal Law class this semester – first week: discussion about the purpose of punishment…). All in all, a restful and busy break!

School started for me last week, and I hit the ground running. I’m not sure why I reasoned that the first week back would be easy. I guess I was thinking that I had the hang of things, so new classes shouldn’t be too big of a change in the routine. I was wrong. Things are busier than ever. My classes (Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, Written and Oral Advocacy, and Mental Health Legislation Drafting) are time-consuming with lots of reading to be done each day. I’m also in search of a summer job. Interviews start soon, and I’m filling out more and more applications. On the upside, I’ve got my first business suit, so I guess I’m ready to show up to interviews looking official.

With all that going on, I’m taking this long weekend to get ahead on everything I can – laundry, cooking, cleaning – so that we can survive on minimal time while we take on these new adventures.