Back to California in an hour.

New York has been so great to me - I’ve had an amazing time here and met tons of wonderful friends who will remain friends for a lifetime. NYU was a fabulous experience - it’s just been really amazing.

I’ll be back.

That is the question.

My friend wanna take me out for a last night in NY, prolly at B8. I said I’d go but now I’m tired - I woke up at 7:00 AM this morning.

I’m considering it but have yet to decide….

Today, in what the AP calls “a crushing blow”, the Texas Supreme Court overturned the gross miscarriage of justice that Texas CPS carried our more than a month ago by ordering CPS to surrender all the stolen FLDS children to their parents.

Good! As I’ve stated repeatedly and emphatically the state of Texas was wrong in how it carried out the raid and wrong in how it treated the women and children it imprisoned after the raid. I hope the FLDS sues the shit out of the Texas Gestapo when this whole thing is done. Every resident of the state of Texas is going to pay, in one way or another, for this debacle.

2nd to last day in New York. Woke up early today - wrote a paper on Foucault and then read the NY Times. Enjoyed my quiet little apartment - soon off to school.

Tomorrow I’m leaving at 8:00 PM.

I’m a big fan of equivocating on things - I’m never 100% committed to anything I do in my life and I find people who are to be a little bit creepy and over-zealous in every thing they do. To me hemming and hawing a little bit is a sign of a healthy mind. Always question - never follow blindly.

Anyway - this relates to my life about my upcoming choices of law schools. In addition to applying to law school I’m considering applying to several graduate schools for an MA or PhD program in security studies and in particular the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism. I’m still committed to law school but I’ve developed an intense interest in studying terrorist methods and structures and in particular new communication strategies terrorist cells are using.

So far everything seems alright - right? Wrong. If I chose to go to graduate school instead of law school the odds are I’d go to school in Washington DC, where the best programs for security studies are HQ’d. My boyfriend has made clear that if I go to school out-of-state again we’ll break up. I accept this - I know it’s been hard on him (and me) being away from San Francisco and I wouldn’t want to put him through that again.

So I head into these choices with a clear mind and my head held high, fully aware that the choices I make will carry lifetime consequences for not only myself but for him as well. Living on the east coast(again) is not something I want to do but if offered a fellowship at a premiere school in a top program I’d be a fool to turn it down.

I sometimes feel like I’m missing someone in my life, someone wise and experienced with whom I could talk about these things. The Good Doc is out because he’s emotionally involved in the outcome and I don’t feel like any of my friends would understand. So there’s a little bit of a feeling of loneliness in this choice. Perhaps if I’d had a relationship with my father before he died he would have been someone I could share this discussion with. Instead all I have is myself and my thoughts - and I feels a little sad and a little alone to realize that I can’t share this with, well, anyone.

5 minutes ago I was sitting in my apartment and it was sunny and 82 degrees. What’s changed in the past 5 minutes?

In five minutes it has become dark and windy, very windy - there is a front from the south moving in. I can see the dark clouds rolling in over the Hudson as I look out my window.

I guess that’s why the Weather Service has a storm warning out for NY until 8:00. I hope it lightning and thunders and rains buckets!!

I turned down many invitations to go to the Hamptons this weekend to spend time with friends coming in to the city for Memorial Day weekend. I’m so selfless and giving that sometimes it astounds even me - who has spent a lifetime with myself.

So instead of hanging at Dune or Lily Pad I’m doing the usual Saturday night of dining, avoiding bridge & tunnel people and finding a suitable afterhours for when I finally stumble out of Beatrice or Bungalow. There are worse ways to spend a weekend.

As I had stated repeatedly and forcefully - the state of Texas was wrong when it raided the FLDS compound, wrong when it seized FLDS children and wrong in the way it treated the parents and children after the raid.

Today the Texas Court of Appealsm Third District, Austin agreed with me.

The state of Texas is going to pay a heavy, heavy price for this. No matter how much they pay they’ll never set these people’s lives back in place or undo the damage they’ve done to those families.

What a grueling day today was.

I was in my Theorizing Machiavelli and Marx class for three hours then in a prep class for my trip to Italy for another three hours then in a meeting for an hour - all without a break. I found out my paper on the Etruscans only has to be between 5-10 pages. What a relief considering I have a 30-40 page thesis due and the class at Berkeley I still have to take.  I’m going to utilize any way I can to minimize my heavy workload this summer and the less pages I have to write - the better.

I got a rebate check today - from Delivery.com for $37.53! Evidently they’ve been charging sales tax on purchases which are exempt from tax so they added up the overages and sent me a check.

You know how sometimes you wake up and immediately know it’s going to be a terrible day? Well today was one of those days.

I awoke with a scratchy sore throat and realized I had several packets of theoretical Marxism to read. So after sitting down with a pot of fresh tea I began reading and reading and reading. Political theory and in particular Marx is neither fun nor easy reading. I then wrote my standard response and stepped out into the cold and extremely windy NY afternoon to begin my hike down to NYU.

As I struggled up the street through gale-force winds the rain began to fall, pushed sideways by the furious winds the cold wetness stung my checks as I shivered and pulled my hoodie tighter around my feverish body.

Arriving to class the lights seemed brighter than normal, more glaringly fluorescent than I remembered. Their buzz also seemed louder as did the monotonous drone of my classmate’s voices as we discussed Marxist theory. My muscles ached and burned as my coughs became more frequent and a deep sense of exhaustion quickly overtook me. At times I allowed my eyes to close behind my “Marx-Engels Reader” but then realized that any eye closure lasting longer than a few seconds would quickly allow sleep to overwhelm me.

It seemed I could hear the seconds ticking by as we approached the time to leave. Even the professor mentioned how class seemed “more quiet than normal.” The woman across from me kept coughing and unwrapping throat lozenges - angrily I began to silently curse her for the malady infecting me but then reasoned that it was more likely my all-night party on Friday night which was the cause of my current misery. Heartened by my thoughtfulness I resolved to engage in no more late nights before I leave New York on May 30th but then realized such a pledge would quickly fall by the wayside as I only had one weekend left in the city, and the dark side of myself was determined to make that weekend legendary.

Surprisingly I felt better when class ended and as I exited onto the street the sun shone wanly onto the crowd of tourists and New Yorkers walking up Broadway. I steeled my shoulders as I tightened my hood around my face and walked back to my apartment, determined to make this day worthwhile.