Rachel's Car

Rachel finally got a car. Yes, it's both of ours technically, but Rachel drives it 90% of the time, and we made sure it was small so she could handle these small roads better.
Special Thanks need to go to Car Hunt Chauffeurs Extraordinaire Dave and Martha for helping us funnel through a list of cars a mile long until settling on this Subaru.



So here is Rachel modeling with her
Subaru Impreza Outback Sport...yes, the most confusing car names that change dramatically annually belong to Subaru's. It's the size of a Toyota Matrix, slightly larger than a Honda Fit. Nothing fancy inside, but classic Subaru AWD, no turbo so we can run regular gas and use a lot less of it!



Yes, She loves it...more than her bike she commuted on for a while...even though she may not admit it. :)

Oh, and don't worry...in classic form of me this scene was immediately followed by "do you love your car? Yes, I know you do. Ok, we got the picture you wanted...now get off the car! You'll scratch it with all your jewelry and riveted jeans!"
:)

Holy...Something that isn't normally considered holy!

I can't believe this semester is over...and though I won't know anything about grades until likely February, I really couldn't care less. We survived what was all in all looking to be a pretty rough semester - formerly unemployed Rachel has a pretty sweet job, after a few months without a car there's a car, seemingly endless days and nights reading an endless supply of case law have ended, and a stress riddled finals week...and a half (yes, Stanford was done with finals Friday, but not the law school) that caused most students to stop eating solid food and survive on a crucial mix of caffeine and sleeping pills...has ended, and the list could go on. What this means is that despite the crazed looks of those few people left on campus walking by as the entire 1L class ran out the doors of the law school, greeted by a continuous volley of champagne cork pops facilitated by both the dean of the law school as well as the dean of student affairs and the equivalent of law school student body officers...yep, those looks were probably justified, but the celebration was earned...well, mostly. And then it was over. An hour later the courtyard was back to just empty tables covered in red fall leaves and tons of bottles/cans slowly being placed into the trash. Everyone started to feel agitated and said they had things they needed to get done...

So what this means is that I can now begin checking items off a to do list that will likely consume my time as much as law school that I began making some time ago.

First on the checklist - Watch the 49ers play on Monday Night Football...Check
Second on the checklist - Write something...anything...on the blog...Check (probably not the something, more the anything)
Third on checklist - prioritize the rest of the checklist...not going so well.

The only issue we have now is a sick Rachel. Don't worry, she's not too sick, just enough to make my finals celebration a little more quiet.

Oh, now I've started looking for my Constitutional Law, Property, Federal Litigation, International Conflict Resolution, and Finance Law textbooks...sounds like another semester...er...quarter stuffed to the brim.

So we are now 1.33L's instead of 1L's...and the souvenir shot glasses from the dean remind us that we're only 1/9 of the way done...thanks dean. That makes me feel SO much better.

And now Christmas can begin!

Rob
PS - I didn't edit this, wrote 15 pages in my criminal law final this morning, and have pretty much no mental capacity left in the tank...any funny or sincere comments, I meant those...any offensive or strange ones, are accidents. :)

Dear Law School Finals...

You suck...but you'll be over in 1.5 weeks, and then I only have 8 more finals weeks to go before being done.

Let's keep it in perspective boys and girls!

Dog Days

As many of you know, I will be starting to work full time next week. I decided I needed to start leaving our dogs outside for most the day while I am home to see if I can trust them outside while I am gone. Periodically, I will peer through the windows to see what they are doing. Sometimes they are sitting in the sun, sometimes chasing the squirrels, sometimes barking at the meter-reader... I feel I can always count on Hanna to spend the majority of her days sitting by the back door waiting to come inside. I've been more worried about what Elvis will do, until I found him spending most of his days laying down with his head through a small hole in our fence.



The other side of the hole in the fence happens to be the front yard of our next door neighbor... his house is in a small "cul-da-sac-like" group of houses, so Elvis has a good view of people coming and going from our neighbors houses. Thankfully, he's really good about it and doesn't bark... he just stares. I decided to go get a picture from the other side of the fence as I was curious how much of a nuisance his staring might be to our neighbors. I laughed when I realized the hole is only big enough for his eyes and nose... can you spot Elvis?



I feel better knowing this is how he'll spend his days while I'm gone.

4:27 AM

As I sit and wonder why I'm still awake at this hour...I remember...I've never written a trial brief before, and my first one is due at 9:30AM. :)

EMPLOYED!!

It's official! I just signed with TiVo and will start working in a week and a half as a Statistical Analyst. I am very excited! Although TiVo has been around for a while, they are still relatively small, giving it that start-up company feel. The environment seems very comfortable and fun... possibly because it's the only place in the world where you get to watch TV as part of your work! I guess this means we can start going down our "list of things to buy when Rachel gets a job." We started last Friday by going to Costco and buying tons of food to fill our freezer. It's fun spending money you don't have yet. :) We'll be doing more of that this weekend...stay tuned for a post about a new car.

List of Things to Buy When Rachel gets a Job

Since Rob and I moved to California and have explored a whole new world of shops and restaurants, we have had many moments where we thought "we should buy that..." immediately followed by "when Rachel gets a job." So, I decided to start making a list of things to buy once I have a job as extra motivation to do well while interviewing. Here are a few things on the list

1. Car
2. Rehab for Elvis (there's a dog trainer out here who claims he can fix Elvis' social problems in one day... hahaha. If nothing else it'll certainly be entertaining.)
3. Rug for the living room (the one we have can't be vacuumed without unraveling parts of it)
4. Filters for the vacuum (since it's now full of string from the rug)
5. Fuki Sushi!! yum
6. Health insurance
7. Did I already say car?
8. ESPN
9. Patio set
10. New plants for the patio... sorry Gail... they died :( they were eaten by worms
11. Worm killer for the new plant
12. Barbecue set!
13. Steak for the barbecue set
14. Subscription to Ferrari magazine (see previous post)
15. Spanish classes
16. Grooming for dogs
17. Lasik for Rob (this is actually on the "things to buy when both Rachel and Rob have a job")
18. Jazz piano lessons
19. Keyboard
20. Kennel for Elvis
21. Thank you cards and about 10 pounds worth of brownie mix for the many many people who have helped us (with moving, rides, dinner invites, etc)

Married too long

Two weekends ago I started working on a puzzle. Rob and I both thought it would be a good idea for me to complete something... to give me a sense of accomplishment while job searching. We only have one puzzle. A 1000 piece landscape puzzle for ages 12 and up. Within one week I had completed about 3 quarters of the puzzle. The bottom part of the puzzle was not finished. Rob was excited to have a little time Friday night and said he'd really like to watch a movie and work on the puzzle (since he'd been watching me work on it all week). We sat down about 9pm to watch our movie and Rob looked at the puzzle and said "Let's just finish it... I want room to put my books on this table without worrying I'm going to knock off and lose puzzle pieces." Well... the bottom quarter of the puzzle is made up of many many pink flowers. Needless to say, we were up until 3 in the morning finishing this puzzle. Every time we thought about quitting, one of us would find another piece and then say "we're almost done." I think staying up all hours of the night on a Friday night finishing a puzzle may be an indication you've been married too long. Rob wants to know what 12 year old would do this puzzle.
I had to take a picture of it before I tore it apart... since it's probably the last time I'll see this puzzle all put together!

Mystery Package

This past weekend we received a package on our front doorstep. However, it was not addressed to us. It had our address on it, but not our name. Since we are renting, this happens fairly often. We usually just put a note on it for the mailman to "return to sender" or throw it away if it is junk mail...but this package was different... there was a small yellow icon with a black horse in the middle printed on the package with the word "Ferrari" written under the horse. Rob immediately turned into a little boy and asked me for a razor blade and some clear tape. He said "technically, 66% of the information on the package says it's mine," referring to the two lines that are our address (the other 33% is the name the package is addressed to...since Rob started law school, statements like this are not uncommon). He carefully opened the package and...

Wha-la! The Official Ferrari Magazine wrapped in bubble wrap! Aside from a check for $100,000, this was the next best thing to be dropped on our doorstep! The magazine came with a letter welcoming the "addressed" to the Ferrari club and offering them a subscription to the Ferrari Magazine... only $375 a year and you get four magazines. Oh and if you wanted you could also register your Ferrari's... but only up to five of them. (who are these people?) Since we usually throw away magazines we get at our apartment that are not ours, we decided not to send this one back. Merry early Christmas!

Update

Hey all~

Sorry it's been a while. Here's an old update. Our friend's Corey and Whitney and their baby Alex visited about a month ago and here are some pictures of their visit. We took them into San Francisco one of the days, but the highlight was getting to go to a University of Utah football game. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we didn't make it to the game until a little into the third quarter, but since Utah hasn't been showing up this year until halfway through the third quarter, we really didn't miss much. We had a lot of fun with Corey and Whitney and hope their smiling faces are convincing enough for all of our friends to come and visit. :-)

Copy/Paste

Hey everybody, in honor of my sitting bored in LexisNexis legal research training with a computer in front of me, I decided to just answer some comments on the blog. In doing so, I wrote enough that I thought I ought to just post it. I may need to provide some commentary though...here goes:

. . .

Things are great. It is warm and pleasant, although we all wear jeans and light jackets because we've become acclimatized to fast, are spoiled, and now think it's cold. We are stuck with 74 high 50 low until Christmas probably...ha ha. I wear gloves in the morning riding my bike in. Unfortunately, and as expected, I'm swamped and Rachel is taking looking for work as a full time job.

The pictures were taken a week before school started for the first years, so it was pretty quiet. We had the campus to ourselves, because the rest of the school is on the quarter system (including the returning law students) so we had the run of the place until September 21st! Now you can hardly walk without getting buzzed by a bike.

I should probably have just posted this response in blog form...ha ha. Sorry, we are trying to post more..we'll get better!

. . .

Other things of note (and pseudo-random thoughts):

• School is fun
• School is really, really, really hard, time intensive, relentless, and entirely intentionally overwhelming - Yes, everything you've heard about 1L year in law school so far is true
• School isn't overwhelming, at least for me, because of the courses, rather it's the extra's. I'm not only doing 5 full courses, I am editing for the Stanford Technology and Law Review, writing good practice notes and researching for a pro-bono affiliated with the UN Global Compact, attending panels that eat up the entire lunch break on any/every topic imaginable, attending trainings and networking functions at night, etc...
• School is really fun :-)
• We are now vehicle-less for the time being
• The job market sucks
• My Christmas break is entirely too short
• I'll be in school from August to June this year
• Biking to school is okay, but my walmart $30 I-don't-care-if-it's-stolen bike experiences incredible losses due to weight, friction, and general rattling
• I think the dogs love it here, but they don't like the neighbor
• My box full of grass idea for the dogs didn't work (dead)...but they still use it!
• Rocky Anderson of all people is coming to speak here in two weeks (eek)
  
• I will be listening to Steve Young and Chief Justice Roberts speak in the same day
• Rachel might go to Mexico!
  
• Rachel loves the Nordstrom Rack next to Home Depot
• Our favorite food is take out chicago style pizza that is literally 2.5 inches thick, or jing jing chinese...that really isn't all that good
• Elvis has claimed the couch as his own...which is bad
• Hanna may still be nuts, but has calmed down
• We live by Hulu...it's amazing...and plug it into our TV to watch it
• I read about 100 pages a night for all my classes
• Training is over

Okay, time to pedal home! Hope everyone is well and I've guilt-ed Rachel into posting more meaningful stuff soon.

...This has not been proofread, was typed while mainly watching the trainer in the front of the room, and was the diatribe of my wandering mind...sorry if it's odd!

Rob

The Stanford Campus

When we first moved in, we took Rob's family over to the Stanford campus to give them a tour. This is the front of the law school. Up close the law school is really pretty, but compared to the rest of campus I think it looks like a dungeon. I'm sure Rob will soon agree. haha
This is the plaza in front of what I think is the student union. There are palm trees all over campus. All of the buildings except the law school also have those redish-orangish shingles on top.

This church is located at the entrance of campus when you come in on Palm Drive. I'm pretty sure is a non-denominational church. It is sooo beautiful. There were a couple of weddings going on while we were there. All the windows are stained glass and there are some more smaller murals around the building.

So, we learned from one of our neighbors that Stanford's mascot used to be the Indians... hence the totem pole. If you look closely there's a frog near the top whose tongue stretches almost to the top. I could look at these things for hours... they always have so much detail.
Rob's classes officially start on Monday. He has a couple of homework assignments already consisting of lots of reading. He met a couple of people at orientation. Every one of them have very unique and amazing stories. He met a girl in a wheelchair who is the national swimming champion in the Paralympics and who took 5th place at the Beijing Paralympics. She said swimming would be excellent for his back as it is low impact. She invited him to swim with her some mornings and said she would teach him. With him biking to school everyday, running to class, and swimming with an Olympian, he'll be doing triathlons in no time!

Our Ant Farm

My sister-in-law gave us this cool space-age habitat for ants a couple months ago. We found it in the move and since ants cost less than five bucks we figured they would be a great form of cheap entertainment. This picture is the first day we had them where they had only started tunneling down the left side. I'll post a picture of their final progress in a couple weeks. Rob likes to wait until all the ants are sleeping in their tunnels, open the top and blow down all their tunnels. They instantly start running back and forth, out of their tunnels, and try to climb out. I think they think they're under attack.

The New Place

So, here are the long anticipated pictures of our place. Since so many people have asked to see our place, I have decided to give you a tour... except for the bedroom since we piled all the boxes we haven't unpacked in there. haha.

The living room:
Thanks to our new Best Buy credit card, we have a TV and a digital antenna which picks up 4 channels inside and 40 outside. We're actually just sad Best Buy doesn't sell groceries, seeing how they are they only people who would give credit to a full time law student living off of student loans and his unemployed spouse in this economy. You will also notice a beautiful alive orchid flower in the corner. Rob bought it for me a couple weeks ago, which means it also survived the drive from Utah. It's supposedly easier to keep alive than bamboo plants. You only need to water it once a month and keep it out of direct sunlight. I give it six months to live with me taking care of it, which is more than I can say for the bamboo plant.

The Office:
If you just turn 180 degrees to your right or left, you will see our office.... as well as some beach towels on the couch. The bright blue glowing box on the desk is our new ant farm, all of which are still alive. The bookshelf on the left is soon to be overfilled with Rob's law books, which I am certain will take more than one trip to the bookstore to buy as there is no way any human being could carry them all together all by themselves (except Mike Barney).




The Kitchen:
Yup... granite countertops and all. But don't be fooled. The granite countertops don't seem so cool when none of the doors in the apartment close... which makes using the bathroom when guests are over awkward. Oh and yes the lamp is blue.








The Bathroom:
You probably don't need any explanation....
















The Hallway:
This is the hallway looking from the bathroom. The linen closet/pantry is on the left. We call it the linen closet when we are on the bathroom side of the closet and the pantry when we are in the living room or office.












The Patio:
This is the "playpen" for our dogs or a litter box for our dogs.









These are our lemon and lime trees. Something we can't grow in Utah. Maybe one day I'll be able to make home made 7-Up. :-)











This last pic is my favorite plant. I'm not sure what they are but they are a pretty purple color. :)

Well, I think I'm all blogged out for now. This should be a more frequent occasion until I get a job. We miss y'all!

We're Here

I'm just trying to get into the habit of posting again (and trying to get Rachel to develop the habit at all :)) so I thought I would drop a little blurb again.

We're here! School officially starts in 2 weeks...not quite ready for that yet...and most of our stuff is crammed into this place. We'll post some pictures as soon as we get time to download them. Rachel has done a great job ''nesting'' with all our old stuff from storage, a few borrowed family items, and some trips to IKEA.

We shipped mom home, and welcomed Megan and Ryan who took a much needed vacation out here. We went to the beach with the dogs, hiked 4 miles in the redwood forest Muir Woods, saw downtown San Francisco, ate Jamaican Jerk Chicken, watched TV...yep, slept a lot, toured the campus, walked University Avenue, ate at a hole in the wall Mexican Restaurant (it was good!), and most importantly...enlisted them to help around the apartment making screens and other things.

Moving

Here we are...moving tomorrow, or rather, today. We'll only make it halfway, but it should be an interesting time.

Goodbye Utah!

Thanks to all those who helped us move, we really appreciated it!

We found a place

Hey all, So I know we don't have any readership anymore because of our lack of posts. We're rededicating ourselves to posting when we move to California, promise.

Just thought I'd drop a note on here: We found a place to live. When we get there and get settled, we can post some pictures, but we are in downtown Palo Alto, 1 mile from campus, 3 from the law school, in an old but nice 1 bedroom. Now to tie up the loose ends in Utah and move out. We have the place starting the first week of August, so we'll see how soon we can get out there and settle in.

Rob

Graduation!!!

So I did it! I graduated! Didn't think I'd make it sometimes, but it came. I didn't walk when I completed my undergraduate, and am now sad that I didn't. Though the ceremony can be long (especially at 8 in the morning), it was totally worth it! Here are some pictures of that wonderful day. Thanks to everyone for coming and supporting!

I Missed Our 6 Month Anniversary!

Crap...Sorry this is too weeks late.

I totally missed our 6 month anniversary of not posting to the blog! WooHoo....wait...this is a good anniversary right? Maybe it was a good thing that I forgot it.

Well, we're still too busy, but as of a week ago, we've been in a steep recession trend in our overall busy-ness index. I think we've lost 20-30% of our current value already, yikes! It's okay thought. Really, it is. We've got a good $100 mil TARP bailout coming in the form of my thesis defense, followed by a massive $4 trillion "omnibus" (I really thought that Hannity made that word up, the little jokester...then I found a dictionary. It turns out my vocabulary is just smaller than a pimple faced, voice-cracking, 9th grade delinquent) stimulus in the form of moving out of state. Of course this large stimulus is nothing more than a bundle of California field mice rolled up in one barrel (things like Rachel finding a job, finding a place to live, selling everything we own, finishing all the school projects, finding loans, etc). All these things are bound to put our busy-ness index back on track? RIGHT? Please tell me we'll be okay...that we'll be busy again...sooner rather than later? Good thing I've been putting every project possible on the backburner (aka food storage) just in case of an emergency like this one. I've got projects to sustain me through the NEXT busy-ness recession.

Well, I know times will be tough, but I think we'll make it through this recession. And who knows, maybe the "conservative underground" of busy-ness will throw enough "we'll die from socialism soon enough" at us that I'll be convinced to just be a free market hippie and go to the beach, or somewhere else nice, and relax. If Glenn Beck's War Room is any indication, things could get a lot worse...I could be forced to move to Hawaii and never be busy again (a busy-ness index of 0)....and get a tan!

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (a la Stephen Colbert)

For those of you who can't hear my voice when I write this....I love dry sarcasm. :-)

I think we may acually begin posting here again....soon.

Hope all is well!

Bryce the Builder