A lot of nosy questions were asked at our thanksgiving potluck today, the kind of questions that, if people take them seriously, require them to think deeply about themselves and their relation to the world. It's a greatr way to get to know people, and totally appropriate for a group of newfound friends, sharing the holiday, and sharing each other. I asked more than my fair share.

One of the questions I didn't ask - the first such question, to be honest, posed by the matron of the evening, the mother of the host, a woman who both seemed at home with the crowd and not one of us, was the summary question of the day: tell us, in brief, what you are thankful for.

I dodged the question, to an extent, because the answer would be too long, and oversharing. I alluded to the 'friends and family' and spoke vaguely about accidents and coincidneces in the past which, unforseen, allow me to live the wonderful life i have now.

Law school isn't over when you graduate.

On some level it is, right? You're done with classes. You've got your diploma. You have a credential. It's meaningless. You're done, but you're not done.

Most people then spend weeks in all-day classes reviewing for the bar exam. I don't know what that's like, as I didn't want to quit my job for it. I just spent the time working and studying, listening to podcasts, taking practice MBEs, trying to cram as much as I could.

Law school isn't over when you take the bar exam. It's like any final exam: it's not over until you get the results back.

I took the California bar exam in July.

The results were announced tonight. At 6pm pacific time - 9pm for me. An inconvenient time.

I'm surprisingly wired this morning; possibly a hangover effect from Monday night's concert, possibly the result of making coffee with home roasted beans - I roast light, meaning a higher caffeine level in the resultant beans. :)

Halloween snow notwithstanding, winter has been delayed; it was 60 at midnight yesterday morning, and it's still shorts weather. It is, however, raining, and the leaves people haven't raked off of the sidewalk are ... slippery when wet.

Which might be how I threw out my hamstring last week, for the second time this fall; I couldn't play on Sunday. Hopefully I'll be able to play this Sunday.

Inside: The Alloy of Law, the Foo Fighters, and the Dorr Rebellion

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

One of the best history books I've ever read was the enormously detailed The Lights that Failed, a comprehensive history of the diplomacy of the 1919-1932 period. My only major criticism of the book was that it was so detailed, and so dense, that it was very difficult to remember the forest for the trees; but oh, what a glorious elaboration of the trees it was.

Lords of Finance is nowhere near as detailed, and because it focuses on one particular issue it's nowhere near as comprehensive, but it's almost as good. I borrowed the book from the NYPL after reading a brief recommendation on James Fallows' blog, and - while it took me almost two weeks to read it - it was mesmerizing.

I got home last night to find that certain things at work are falling apart.

We've been here for twelve days now. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's not 'home' yet; I keep mentally comparing things to the way things were 'back home', and it feels mostly like a long-term vacation rental. Perhaps this will change in a week when I go back to work, although the newness and the strangeness of being in the big city, of looking out a window at a  six-story red brick building, will take a long time to wear off.

I have a nasty new blister.

This isn't a surprise; I've been in NYC five days and have done a lot of walking. (Which is also not a surprise).

(a) between the time difference, having coffee for the first time in 30 days, not having really exercised all day, and the heat/humidity (in bed, in the middle of the night, i could feel sweat pooling on my body), i didn't fall asleep until 4ish. That could probably have been expected.

I was nine when I moved to California, a small child fleeing (with his mother) from the tumult of a failing marriage with a querulous, unpleasant stepfather. California was the promise land, the golden escape from  terrors which, to this day, I cannot remember; a sanctuary from a nightmare I’ve all but blacked out int he joy of forgetfulness. (I say all but blacked out, but the scars lingered long; well into my thirties, my conflict-avoidance was pathological, I had a tendency to assume that anything which went wrong in the lives of anyone close to me was my fault, and I suffered from a constant fear that I would drive everyone away and live, alone and bitter, until the end of my days - all signs of emotional abuse the details of which I’ve squirreled away beyond all recall).

I have lived at least four different lives in California - the life of the miserable social outcast, the life of the arrogant nerd desperate to escape from home, the life of the socially awkward stoner computer programmer, the life of the moderately successful married computer programmer-cum-law-student. (In a different telling, these lives could stretch out to six, or maybe even seven, but I can’t shrink them to fewer than four).

My life in California is ending at the end of this month. I’ll be back to visit, but visiting is never the same, and distance changes even the strongest love (even if the connection remains strong, it is different, twisted somehow, and bears the marks of distance and the fact that your paths have diverged and that you are now at the same time both strangers and friends, bonded by an ancient glue which is no longer being nourished and renewed). It’s possible I’ll be back to live - today, I’d say I want to; my tribe is here, my friends and family, most of the people I love. But five years is a long time, and who can say what I will want in five years - and, who can say whether my tribe will still exist in five years to come home to? It cannot be counted on, it cannot be expected; it cannot, in some sense, even be hoped for. If I were to come back, I would be starting yet another new life, with shared scenery and some shared friends, I would not be resuming the life I have today. That life is over.