It's late, and I owe this journal an entry (I try not to let more than two days go by without one), so I'm writing it, but I can't go through the hassle of posting it tonight. Who knows when that may happen.

I didn't mean for that to sound like I'm only writing this because I feel like I have to. The day this journal becomes a chore is the day it goes offline. (The mechanics of posting can be a chore, but that's my own fault for not being smarter than Tripod.)

There was a party at school tonight, but nobody went. It's really sad how lame the school community has become. My first year, the parties were brimming with people. This one, the Octoberfest, went from renting out the Elks Lodge to having it in the courtyard of the dorm, where about thirty people showed up. Susannah, Jan and I were cold and bored, so I ran back to my apartment and checked the movie schedule, and "Double Jeopardy" was showing in ten minutes, so I went back and picked them up.

The movie was... lame. We've already discussed how the movie's conceit can't really happen: that she can't get out of jail and go kill her husband and not get caught. When the woman in the prison said she used to be a lawyer and then gave Libby that advice, I leaned over to Susannah and Jan and said, "She must have gone to [name of area rival law school]," at which point we had a good snicker.

I do like Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones as actors, but this movie was beneath them. It was very heavy-handed at times in moving the plot along. The ending was not that exciting.

But it was better than the lame party.

Afterwards we went to Jan's and sat around and ate ice cream and discussed the motivation behind certain actions of Jan's boyfriend, who is in the armed forces and stationed in Europe. He keeps sending her overly cheesy love poem postcards, the kind that are very sweet at first but quickly grow tiresome. The fact is that they haven't spent much time together, and Jan is practical enough to wonder just how he can be soooo in love with her after only a few short spurts in each other's company.

Such difficult questions. We didn't answer them, but we had some damn good ice cream.

I've decided to join a Messiah choir at a local church. My friend Marissa sings in the church choir, and told me they take all comers for the chorus in a Messiah concert held in December. You only have to audition if you want a solo. I can carry a tune, but I'm no soloist, so I'm just going to go to the first rehearsal with her and sign up with the altos.

I'm actually quite excited about it. I love the Messiah, and I do love to sing even though I'm quite average at it. But hey, if they don't care, then I'm going to go and sing my little heart out.

Just like the dean at my law school, who goes to the same church I do. A couple of weeks ago, just by chance, he and his family ended up sitting behind us, and I just had to smile at the level of gusto in his hymn-singing. It was very admirable.

I HAVE to get some work done this weekend. I am way behind on the job search, and if I don't get some resumes out on Monday, I'm going to be the schmuck with a law degree working at the bookstore.

I'm also deathly afraid of not passing the bar. I know it happens all the time, to smart people, but still. The bar results came out yesterday and I was compelled to sit down with the picture book of last year's class and see who passed and who didn't. I have to spread the word that I'm not taking the bar here so next year people don't do the same thing and say, "Oh, look, she didn't pass."

monday

Okay, so I didn't get anything done over the weekend. Oopsie.

What I did, however, was see American Beauty, and it is unequivocally the best movie I have seen all year and probably for a few years prior. I liked it better than "Eyes Wide Shut", and I loved that movie. But American Beauty has it beat. Kevin Spacey is so amazing, it almost belittles him to be described as simply an actor. They should create a new category of the profession just for him. He's that damn good, and he makes everyone else that much better, even though they were excellent to begin with, Annette Bening and Wes Bentley in particular. Oscars all around.

It's all I can do not to go see it again tonight.

But I have too much work to do, since I slacked off all weekend.