Doesn’t time just fly?
So far, it’s been one of those weeks that feels like an extended weekend despite my going to class. Yesterday in Property, we finally finished the gauntlet of estate law exercises we’ve been doing in class for a while. I’m fairly confident in my ability to perform Rule Against Perpetuities analyses, anyway. Afterward, I stumbled into this week’s ARC session, hosted by CLS and SOLID, on avoiding burnout and making the legal profession less toxic. It went well enough for something I did not prepare for, though when we broke into small groups, we hardly discussed the session topic, instead making small talk about favorite colors and diet soda.
I then had Crim, where we finished up discussing homicide offenses. Of particular note was People v. Crumbley, 11 N.W.3d 576 (Mich. Ct. App. 2023). If you remember the Oxford High shooting back in 2021, this case deals with the shooter’s parents trying to weasel their way out of involuntary manslaughter charges before trial. Specifically, was there enough evidence of causation to bind the Crumbleys over for trial? But for the Crumbleys’ shocking neglect of their son’s mental health and furnishing him with a handgun, the shooting would not have occurred; they really should have been able to see that their son was unwell and gotten him the help he needed instead of telling him to “suck it up” or laughing at him. I’m not making that up, see Crumbley, 11 N.W.3d at 581. Accordingly, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the circuit and district courts. The parents ended up getting fifteen years with the possibility of parole after ten.
After Crim I played 5.5e; the DM’s homebrew setting is based on Warlord Era China (moving rapidly after last session into the Second Sino-Japanese War). I’m playing Jiaming, a Draconic Sorcerer/Devotion Paladin of the Mt. Hua Sect. He’s theoretically Neutral Good, but xianxia’s genre conventions mean he encounters many fools who court death (he smites them with his jian). Kind of like Steven Seagal in all of his movies, come to think of it. After the last session, our party’s taking a “brief” detour from collecting the jade statue MacGuffins to liberate Manzhu from the fascist Nichiren Empire.
This morning, I got up nice and bright and early to go to coffee with Prof. Wolman and some of my LM classmates at the Board & Brew. I didn’t get coffee, though. I got avocado toast with pico de gallo and homefries, and washed it all down with an Oreo milkshake and a glass of water. The toast was fine, flavor-wise, although there was too much pico de gallo in my opinion, especially considering how thin the toast was. The homefries were on point, though. Among other things, we discussed last night’s State of the Union address, why Phone Bad™, and our current AI-powered dystopia. One of my peers asked if Wolman was familiar with Roko’s Basilisk, but Wolman has a life, so the answer was predictably no.
After that, I went right over to Property, where we finally began discussing concurrent ownership and marital property. We looked at James v. Taylor, 969 S.W.2d 672 (1998), and Tenhet v. Boswell, 554 P.2d 330 (1976). Before class started, we sang for someone’s birthday, but I didn’t feel like letting my voice ring out through the entire building at 10:30 on a Wednesday, so I kinda underdid it. After that, I had some falafel over rice with my NLG friends and went back to my apartment to wait for LegReg with Prof. Greene. Next week we’re back in person, praise be to the Lord Most High. I’m sick and tired of Zoom classes; I hate them in fact.
Hopefully, I can finish this week on a productive note, but the week already feels finished if that makes sense? Sometimes it doesn’t feel real when I go to classes, like I’m drifting through a dream and things just kind of happen with no rhyme or reason. I need structure and more concrete goals. Right now, I feel like I’m just existing for better or worse. Maybe that’s bad, maybe that’s fine, I don’t know really. Many such cases!
Sierpinski Tetrahedron 