ariesvirgo

Ok, so for everyone that doesn't know, I only have Internet access at work or at the library. Work blocks Facebook, my blog, etc., and it's a pain in the neck to go to the library. Therefore, if you want to contact me, call me or email me (I can do limited personal email from work).

Now that that's out of the way, here are the life updates:

I'm currently a law clerk for a judge in Palmer, Alaska. I LOVE my job because it's so interesting and I get along so well with my judge, who incidentally has been very understanding and supportive of my pregnancy. She even threw me a baby shower!

Alaska is great. Incredibly beautiful with very friendly people, and about the same winter-wise as Montana.

Jadon is great. We are loving not being a thousand miles apart and married and all that. :)

My pregnancy went fine with no problems. Baby was due on Dec. 20, but surprised us all and came along on Dec. 3. She wasn't premature, just early. 6 pounds 12 ounces, 20 inches. Delivery went about as well as it can for a first-timer.

Sophia Jaqueline Farleigh is incredibly beautiful in my eyes and is the light of our lives. Her daddy is absolutely devoted to her. She's pretty small yet at 5 weeks old, only a little over 7 pounds. She's bright-eyed and has the cutest, funniest expressions on her face. The pictures in the album are a couple of weeks old, but I hope to get more up soon.

To everyone reading this: I wish I could stay in better contact with you. I'm dying to hear how everyone is doing. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to do so right now, but do know that I care and wish I could.

Love to all!

Real substantive update? Nah.

Cool Internet meme involving great works of literature? You betcha! In any case, it seems fitting since practically all I'm doing is reading book after book after book (I made it through more than 20 last week alone!).

So here is the the dealio: The following list is the top 100 books that are marked "unread" at LibraryThing. What you're supposed to do is:

1. Bold the ones you've read for you
2. Underline the ones you've read for school
3. Italicize the ones you've started, but never finished
4. Underline and bold the school books you've come back to in your own time

I've also made fun little personal notes which you can enjoy as well. :)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment *This was a product of my self-imposed "classics" reading program in high school and it took FOREVER to read*
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera *I have this right now in my To Be Read pile :) *
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice *If there was a way to double-bold this, I would. One of my favorite books of all time*
The Historian: A Novel *Also in my TBR pile*
The Canterbury Tales
The Kite Runner
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
The Time Traveler’s Wife *TBR pile*
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault’s Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo *TBR pile*
The Sound and The Fury *This book was SO, SO HARD to read, and I ONLY finished it because it was on the list for my comprehensive exam. UGH*
Memoirs of a Geisha
Brave New World *Also a product of my own personal high school reading program*
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver’s Travels
The Three Musketeers
The Inferno *Did this one for Reading Month in high school, along with the rest of the Divine Comedy. You would get a raffle ticket and points for each book you read, but you could choose which books to read, which is why I'm not classifying this as a "for school" book. Other kids read John Grisham, Stephen King, etc., but I, being the pretentious little shit I undoubtedly was, read Dante*
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fountainhead
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys *TBR list*
Atonement *The movie is great, but the book is better. The ending totally blew my mind*
The God of Small Things
A Short History of Nearly Everything:
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake
Angela’s Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les Misérables
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
Watership Down *SUCH a good book. Made me want to be a rabbit by the time I was done reading it*
Beowulf
The Aeneid
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The History of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night
The War of the Worlds

So for those following along at home, that makes:

16 books read on my own
14 books read for school
2 books read originally for school that I have since re-read on my own
5 books in my TBR pile before I ever saw this list.

That makes a total of 32 books read out of 100. Not bad, but not great either. I guess this list can serve as a good reading list for the summer as well. I should really read SOME good literature while I can.

By the way, I expect this to show up on other people's blogs as well, although those of you studying for the bar may do this as a study break or may wait until after the bar. :)

It's over. Notes to come.

"planting daffodils"

by Charlotte Boulay


*******The Friar tells her, drink this
potion and for a time you will be
as dead.***What? she says,
*Are you kidding? Only the earth
knows that faith. But this love is of the earth,
so when she sleeps, it's in darkness,
******a round weight curled in a papery shroud.

This fall, digging little graves, I can smell
******winter approaching like the war
that already rages, not with drumbeats and shots
but more ominously silent, a great lack
of lucidity and grace.****Too soon,
*******deaths have begun:

fruit clipped by frost, a bird limp
by the mailbox in the morning, the flaming
*leaves—don't be distracted; we're blighting
landscapes one by one.
*******It's hard to believe
that everything resurrects itself in time
***some things with more reliability than others.

So is a rooted bulb a record
of a promise kept through winter. This is the truth we only half
believe:**that each hoary, twinned sprout becomes,
in the moment before she sees him,
*Juliet, waking to a clasp of arms,
*******yellow trumpets crying..

Belle and I have decided to take our chances on spring break and just see what last-minute deal we can get somewhere in the Caribbean. Sounds like a lot of fun, right? I was super excited until I realized I need a new swimsuit, which means swimsuit shopping. I was going to the mall today anyway, and Gap had a few cute bikinis on clearance, so I went into the dressing room to try them on.

For the first time in my life, I truly understood the "Cathy" comic strip.

Holy cow, it was bad. And now I'm all worried about finding something that I don't feel like a cow in before break. I've already started my diet and exercise program, but I've only been dieting for about a week, and only started exercising yesterday, so no (visible) results yet. I'm also giving up pizza for Lent, so that should help as well. All I'll need for motivation is the image of myself in that bikini in the dressing room....*shudder*

Which Pride and Prejudice Girl Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Jane I am Jane. I am beautiful, but modest. I am caring and loving. I always try to help others before myself. Sometimes my naivete can blind me and leave me vulnerable to other people. Jane 85% Charlotte 75% Elizabeth 75% Mary 45% Mrs. Bennet 40% Kitty 25% Lydia 20%

1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY?" YOU SAY?

"Godspeed Titanic" from Titanic: The Musical

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?

"Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" from Moulin Rouge

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?

"Play That Funky Music, White Boy" by KC and the Sunshine Band

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?

"Passenger Seat" by SheDaisy

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?

"What Might've Been" by Little Texas

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?

"There's Your Trouble" by Dixie Chicks

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?

"Two Princes" by Spin Doctors

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

"The One" by Foo Fighters

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN?

"Rehab" by Amy Winehouse (Ha!)

WHAT IS 2 + 2?

"Swimmin' in the Sea" by Gaelic Storm

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?

"Du Hast" by Rammstein

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?

"What's She Doin' Now" by Garth Brooks

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?

"Kissed By a Rose" by Seal

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

"Traveling Soldier" by Dixie Chicks

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?

"Baby's Got My Number" by South 65 (yes, he does!)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?

"Band of Gold" by Freda Payne (funny how these match up)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?

"Another Bites the Dust" by Queen (ok, this is getting creepy!)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?

"Sunrise" by Norah Jones (like you can get me out of bed that early)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?

"I Think I'm Paranoid" by Garbage

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?

"Never Gonna Get It" by En Vogue (the world will never know...)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?

"Peaceful, Easy Feeling" by The Eagles

The thing I hate most about law school is what it's done to my self-esteem. In saying "self-esteem", I don't mean it in reference to my own self worth. It's actually a bit of the opposite in that respect. I have grown (up) a lot in the last couple of years, and in a lot of ways, I'm more confident than I have ever been. No, what I'm talking about when I say "self-esteem" is my opinion of my intelligence.

All through elementary, junior high, and high school, I knew I was smart, and it wasn't just because I went to such a small school. I did well on national tests and won awards at academic competitions. I knew I was smart.

Then I went off to college. As time went by in undergrad, I was no longer the very top of the class. But it didn't make that much of a difference at that point because I had loosened up enough that I no longer needed to be at the very top. I was still one of the good students, one of the kids near the top of the class, and I knew deep down that if I wanted to be, I could be the best. At that point in my life, there were other things that were more important to me, especially since I was still doing well in school. And in any case, I knew I was smart.

Fast forward to law school. Here, I don't feel smart. In fact, I feel pretty dumb a lot of the time. I also used to think I was a good writer, but a combination of law school exams, lack of regular practice, and lack of positive reinforcement have shaken my faith in that area too.

On some level, I know that I'm partly the same girl I was before. I mean, just going to law school doesn't erase my history or my education or that thing inside me that I KNOW must still be there. But I'm doubting myself intellectually for the first time in my life. Here, in this world, my brains are not good enough, which makes me wonder if they were good enough to begin with.

Basically, what it comes down to is that I'm scared. I'm not sure where I'm going or what to do, I don't know if I'm good enough for the legal world, and I'm doubting one of the only things I have consistently had faith in about myself.

So where do I go from here?

...when your kitten refuses to sleep anywhere but your lap while you're trying to type on your laptop. It's really, really cute at least.