'Evening, all. It's 1:36 in the morning on Saturday, but my journaling days are determined by when I sleep, not what time it is. On my bod, it's still Friday.

Got our first big snow of the winter this week, about 3 inches Wednesday night, and it kept snowing all the livelong day on Thursday.

Loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. It makes the whole town look so pretty. Elise said the idea she had in her head about what my town looked like was Cabet Cove, where what's-her-name lived on Murder, She Wrote. That's not it exactly, but it is very old-fashioned and quaint. I take it for granted much of the time. I'm sure I will miss it when I head back to Suburbia.

Anyway. My first class on Thursday is at 10, which is my two-hour Internet Law class, and the professor comes down from our affiliated university to teach it. The university is a little over two hours from here, and I had a feeling the class might be cancelled, what with every other school in our area being closed.

I go to class anyway, since I do only have to walk across the street. It's 10:00, 10:05, 10:15, no professor. I wander down to the registrar's office to see if they've heard anything, then across the hall to the dean of students to see what the official policy is. In his infinite wisdom, he says wait.

About three-fourths of the class ends up leaving between 10:30 and 10:40, and I can't blame them. I only stayed because (a) I'm a moron and (b) if the guy was on his way, I would feel bad for him if he finally got there and no one had stayed.

He did finally get there, at 10:50. He looked extremely frazzled, and I was glad I had decided to stay. He wasn't really upset that so many others had left, but he did seem grateful that a handful of us had stuck around.

I'm going to be a freakazoid paper-writing machine this semester. I'll have a brief to write and argue in my Religious Liberty class (after two weeks, my favorite class), a paper in Internet Law (could opt for an exam, but it's the last day of the exam period, and if I don't take it I'll be done the first week), and a paper in Education Law.

I'm still feeling out my topics for these classes. He's giving us the issue in Religious Liberty, so I don't really have a choice there. My Education Law paper will likely have something to do with the repercussions following my home state's decision that evolution would no longer be required to be taught in Kansas public schools.

But I think my Internet Law paper will definitely be the most interesting to write. I have several topics I'm looking into (suggestions are welcome if you have an issue that you've been curious about), but since I'm such an entertainment loon, I'd like to write about how studios and production companies are going after private citizens who operate fan sites. They have legitimate copyright concerns about people who upload pictures or scripts or screen shots, but there's also a fair use doctrine that protects some uses of copyrighted material.

I'm also thinking that I may just settle on this as a career. With a communications and broadcasting and entertainment background, Internet Law really is right up my alley. It's what I've been interested in since day one of law school anyway.

Things to think about.

It was Marissa's birthday today, so I made an attempt to organize people for the evening. Her boyfriend lives about five hours from here and was driving up after work, so we basically offered to entertain her until he arrived.

Ended up being only Lynne and I, since Susannah and Katrina were off doing the old-married-couple thing with their respective husbands, and Jan didn't feel good. We let Marissa pick the restaurant, and she opted for... well... the Cracker Barrel.

Ummm, okay. It's her birthday, after all. And truthfully, it wasn't bad. I had a BLT and some vegetable soup. We split a basket of onion rings. We talked about school, of course, mostly about the list that came out today of those in our class who would be inducted into the honor society for being in the top 15%. (Both Lynne and Marissa were on that list... yours truly didn't quite make it. Not a big surprise.)

All the CB waitstaff gathered around and sang happy birthday. We had dessert. We went to Blockbuster and rented 10 Things I Hate About You, which we watched at Marissa's while waiting for her man to get there. (The movie was cute enough. Patrick was a babe, but I think he looked better as a blonde in the summer 1997 throwaway Shaun Cassidy series called "Roar.")

I know. You wonder why I didn't make the honor society? It's because my head is filled with obscure television references. Sick. (It was a good show though. All medieval and stuff. Someday that genre will become all the rage, just like sci-fi, and I will be vindicated.)

Anyway. It was a lovely evening, and I was out past midnight, which satisfied my responsibility as a single person who isn't quite 30 yet. There was discussion about going dancing tomorrow night, but I'm not sure I'm up to that. I rented Citizen Kane from our library today (we have a collection of movies, all of which contain at least one character that's a lawyer, and students can rent them free) and I need to do laundry and I promised a certain mighty journaler a tape of my Profit episodes, so I'm going to my parents' house tomorrow and I think I may just settle in there for the evening. I can also work on my opening statement for my trial without having to worry about sounding like an idiot should my neighbors happen to step into the hall.