Boom Boom Pow

Today, before the thunder chased us down the street, before the first few heavy raindrops fell on us one block from the house, spurring mommy to pick up the stroller (kid and all) and run, before that Jack and I had gone to the public library.  I got a library card, and they let me get one for him, too, which he held tightly in his little fist the whole way home.  I chuckled to learn that my son is old enough to have his own card.  It also pleased me and made me proud – look, I have a kid who is old enough to have his own library card, look at me!

We try, each day, to take a family excursion and learn a little more about our new city.  We almost always walk, and I can’t say I miss driving much.  The unfortunate thing (besides the steamy, tropical, oppressive heat) is that the sidewalks are pretty bad.  This city is sinking, and taking a select number of its sidewalk sections with it.  I’m not sure how the lucky few were chosen, but they are randomly dispersed on each city block, making strollering a strategic exercise.  My arms have never been so buff, and my kid has never been so rattled.

We do not let the sidewalks keep us in, nor the rain, nor the heat!  We are a determined little family of three, and we’ve walked a hundred miles this week, I think, or thereabouts.  We’ve been to a couple of parks, a couple of grocery stores (the excitement!), the local Farmer’s Market, the Tulane campus, up and down the main shopping street near our place, the local Community Coffee house, and on Saturday we drove into town to attend the festivities for the Red Dress Run, where a bunch of people donned ridiculous red dresses and drank beer at 9am for charity.  Some of them ran the course, but most stayed close to the kegs.  At turns I love my new city, and I miss my old state.  These two feelings comfortably coexist at the moment, and that is ok.

There are things yet to do, in the week before classes start.  I am reading my primers in a focused and scheduled way, now, with about 200 pages self-assigned each day.  I will be taking four classes (Torts, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, and Contracts) plus a Legal Writing Seminar.  I love Torts (this is basically people suing each other for things), I love Crim, and I, strangely, love Civ Pro (Civil Procedure is the basics of which courts can try which cases when people sue each other, and it sounds really dry but I find it elegant and easy to understand.)  Contracts and I are learning to coexist peacefully, although I want to chuck it into the trash whenever I can force myself to read it.  I hope I have a good Contracts professor, or I may require copious amounts of wine to get me through.