The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

My BarBri course is being held at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. It's not a bad location - perched high on a hill it's a very pretty one - except that it's not close to BART. Fortunately (for me) it generally has free parking, so I've been driving to it. Particularly after the evening lectures it's much nicer to be able to hop in my car than have to wait for a bus back to somewhere still short of home. Unfortunately it still costs me at least $5 to go to the city each time (the bridge toll is $5, commuting by mass transit actually costs more), which wasn't so bad when I was commuting to work but becomes rather uncompensatedly expensive when I just head in for lectures. So I try to make the most of my time in the city when I find myself there.

Saturday was one of those occasions. I had a lecture in the morning - a horrible crash course in Remedies (it's not that remedies are so hard, but I found the lecture and handouts disorganized and needlessly arduous to follow) - and that evening there was to be a Tower of Power concert at the Fillmore, a mere 4 blocks away downhill. How could I pass that up? So I was very good, taking the afternoon and holing up in a Starbucks listening to another 4 hours of an evidence lecture. I was also going to do some multiple choice questions, but after all the lectures my brain was pretty fried. Then the rest of the evening fried the rest of me, seeing how it included another 4+ hours of standing around.

But it was fun, and I got quite lucky. I hadn't bought a ticket in advance, and when I showed up to buy one at the box office it turned out they were sold out. A very nice guy then sold me his extra, and at a substantial discount. He had originally asked for $35, which was already $10 off, but seeing how I only had $25 in my wallet he settled for that and invited me to join him on his good spot online. But I feel bad, because as we went in, I accidentally lost him. I hope he doesn't take it personally, and just want to say for the record a big thank you to Pete the East Bay tiler. I had a very nice time at the show, thanks to you.

He'd actually seen Tower of Power for the first time at the Fillmore as a 15 year old - in 1969! This year is TOP's 39th, and they're still a great show to catch. So much so that they keep pulling in new audiences. Many people brought their kids, and I stood up front by the stage surrounded by a group of high school students who were thrilled to finally get to see the people whose music they'd discovered and been playing in school.

Being up front wasn't the best plan, though, because I'm still learning their material and couldn't make out all the words. And seeing a concert after 8 hours of BarBri lectures also wasn't really the best plan either. After the show the band did a meet and greet, and I met and greeted, but was more of a blithering idiot than usual. It wasn't really a "being in the company of famous musicians" thing as much as it was having generally forgotten how to speak English. I did, however, grunt appreciatively and then called it a night.

Happily it won't be until Wednesday before I have to go back for another 8 hours of BarBri...