Tag: new hampshire

I Live In Chicago Now

On Sunday, May 17, 2009, one day after graduating from law school, I drove from Concord, New Hampshire to Chicago, Illinois. Aside from the first two hours through the hills of southern New Hampshire and Vermont, the drive was simple and entirely on Interstate 90, the longest interstate in the United States at 3,084 miles (Seattle, WA to Boston, MA). 805 (84%) of 960 miles of my drive were on I-90.

The drive was uneventful and I arrived 2.5 hours earlier than scheduled, in time to drive around and scope out possible self-storage sheds. I said I would never again use storage, but dumping my car load of stuff seemed like the wisest thing to do. I needed my car to do some fast apartment hunting, wanting to find a place to live asap.

It took all of a day to find an apartment, and I found a great one mere blocks from my bar review class. My room has good light, which will be nice during the endless hours of studying I’ll be doing this summer. I’ll be moving in tomorrow.

My next goal is to get back to working out. I’ve been off for a few weeks now, thanks to exams, graduation, and moving. Until I find a reasonably priced gym, I plan on focusing on running and other self-sufficient workouts such as push-ups, sit-ups, etc. I’ve found that YouTube is a good source for inspiration for different activities.

I’ve already got a wishlist for my time in Chicago:

  • Single-speed bike

Chicago Tips? Things to do? Want to say hi? Email me via the Contact form in the upper right of this page.

Law School Is Half Over

The end of my Evidence final came at 11:28am today. I am now chronologically halfway done with law school. (I think I’m a bit ahead credits-wise.) So, time to review my life.

Making the decision to go to law school was one of the hardest choices of my life. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but when I look at the time-line of my application process, it spans years and takes a few pit stops.

I took two years off after graduating from the University of Michigan in 2004. During those years I worked for two start-ups. The first, Ruckus, was a blast and forever changed my expectations for what I want out of a job – both good and bad. I was able to be creative and had very few limitations, but the down side of that was semi-chaos that left me anxious and beat at the end of the day. The second was K12, a start-up that was further along. It was more “corporate,” but still had a newness to it.

It wasn’t a complete coincidence that both Ruckus and K12 were education related. Ruckus provided digital entertainment to college kids (a slogan I’ll never forget) and K12 is a virtual curriculum. The people that helped me into those companies felt strongly about the importance of education and expanding education.

I can’t say with certainty what 1.5 years of law school has given me. There have been plenty of highs and lows. I’ve been to China to study, something I never took the time to do in undergrad. The coursework is becoming more interesting and application of it comes with more ease.

What I still lack is the notion of how to bring together prior experience, my undergrad studies and what I’m learning in law school. And then, once it’s together is some loose metaphysical ball secured with mental twine and spare post-it notes, how to apply it.

I look forward to figuring that out. Meanwhile, I have a month-long break before I start in on Law School: Part Deux.

Roundup: Beaver Meadows GC – Part 2

Yesterday, I sped to the golf course as soon as my Evidence class ended at 2:30pm. I grabbed my phone and wallet off the car dashboard, slipped on my golf shoes without even a thought of tying them, and hurried into the clubhouse to pay my twilight fee – twenty-two bucks for all the golf I want and ten bucks for a cart. I don’t usually take a cart, but rain was imminent and I didn’t want to get stranded on the outer-reaches of the course without my umbrella, which was thoughtfully left in the closet at home.

Expecting the rain to shorten my round to nine holes or less and wanting to play the back nine for the fist time ever, I started on the tenth hole. The tenth hole was a par-5 with a slight dogleg right. I striped a driver down the center of the fairway with a slight fade. For not warming up on the range, it was a fluke shot. I laughed, and ran back to the gas cart and sped off.

Beaver Meadows is at best a mediocre golf course. It’s draw, for me, is its availability. On fall weekday afternoons there may be ten other people on the entire course besides me. It allows me to play one, two or as many as eight balls on each hole.

The front nine is boring, relatively unimaginative and open. Open is OK, if there is some definition to the holes. The only hole that catches my eye is the eighth hole, which is a par four with a right-to-left sloping fairway. The green is relatively large and has a closely mowed collection area to the front right. It’s bunkered on the left and back.

Playing the back nine was refreshing after having made several semi-loops around the front nine. The back nine was more wooded, which doesn’t make a golf course unless, like me, you grew up in Northern Lower Michigan and you’re used to courses cut through forests. The trees provided some definition, and gave me an idea of what type of shot to hit. More importantly, they challenged me to not hit certain types of shots, lest I wish my speeding golf ball meet a heavily wooded peril accentuated with that distinctive Titleist on bark click.

I birdied the fourteenth hole, an uphill dogleg right par-4 that measured 430 yards, by hitting a fade driver and an eight iron to ten feet. The putt, a slippery left-to-right breaker, made more difficult by the recently punched greens, poured in the front left of the cup. That was the best execution of three consecutive shots I’ve hit all year.

After fighting the wind, avoiding the rain, and trudging through thousands of fallen leaves, I completed sixteen holes. I skipped six and seven on the front to get around a slow walking couple. I flushed two two-irons of the tee on the ninth hole (my 18th). It was a strong finish to a fun round on a late fall day.

Roundup: Beaver Meadows GC

I played the front nine of Beaver Meadows Golf Club for the second time this past Wednesday. Like last time, I played about five balls on each hole – usually into the green. The weather was nice – 60* – and I was striking the ball better than a week ago. My biggest complaint is that I seem to be pushing a lot of my tee shots, especially with my driver.

“Getting stuck,” they call it.

Concord(s)

We went to a Red Sox game and left in the top of the 9th with the Sox up by one. Baltimore scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth to win by one. I didn’t care about missing it, and from what I hear this is typical of the end of their season. We went to a couple pubs, ate seafood, and saw a lot of cops in China Town. Fascinating. The one hour drive back to Concord, NH took me 3.5 hours. Apparently, Concord, MA isn’t the same as Concord, NH. Nor is it remotely close to Concord, NH. I was going east, west, northwest, which I thought was relatively correct until I found out that I needed to be going east. We got home at 4:30am.