My computer has an illness of some sort. Lots of extra programs starting up and running in the background. Spyware, I've been told. I deactivated them from the Startup menu and that seems to be helping, but it feels like a bandaid on a headache, or something like that. But we'll see.

Besides that, I've been thumbing through the course catalog in anticipation of the "General Course Lottery" on Tuesday, which follows the "Legal Profession Lottery," the "2L Bundle Lottery," and the "Clinical Lottery" in the Harvard eighteen-step course selection system. We choose our entire year's schedule at once. And most of the good stuff fills up, so there's a whole science to ranking your choices properly to maximize chances of getting a good schedule. I did pretty well this year, and the stuff I'm looking at for next year mostly isn't on the list of stuff that regularly fills up if not a top choice, so I should be okay. I've found enough of interest to fill a schedule, but not too much beyond that. My usual plan to choose professors over classes works less well when most of the good-reputation professors seem to be on leave and there's tons of visitors from elsewhere. I'll probably end up cross-registering for some credits with classes at the Kennedy School or Business School (if stuff looks interesting) but we can't do that until the fall. In the meantime, my choices look remarkably flaky, at least as compared to what I could be taking -- Evidence, Fed Courts, Admin Law -- none of which sound especially appealing to me. I took Con Law and Bankruptcy last semester and am taking Tax and Corps this semester, so I figure I've taken enough standard stuff. But somehow "Land Use Planning," "Health Care Institutions," "Leadership in the Public Sector," "Legal History," "Law and Psychology," "Economic Regulation of Antitrust," "The Creation of the Constitution," and "American Democracy" all sound kind of liberal-artsy for law school. But those are what sound interesting to me, and if I'm not going to take the classes that sound interesting, why should I even bother taking any? Yes, I like that theory, even if it makes no sense.

Tonight, I'm having dinner with some relatives in Newton, a train ride which will take longer than I'm giving it. I'm bringing a library book to read on the train -- Gregg Easterbrook's "The Progress Paradox," which I'm 20 pages into so far, and it's really interesting. Yes, this is the kind of stuff I read for pleasure. I'll post a review tonight or tomorrow, assuming it doesn't put me to sleep on the train. Either that, or I'll post a review of this week's New York magazine, if I change my mind and decide not to try and read a real book on the subway. :)

Also: Scheherazade did an "all-request" blog day on Wednesday that was sort of a cool concept. So I'll make the next 24 hours all-request. You e-mail me a request -- to answer a question, to write a song parody, to post the number of pairs of socks I have (what??), I'm all yours. Go. (If no one e-mails, or even if some people e-mail, I'm going to make up some requests, so be ready for that. Maybe a Zoomerang quiz to tell the real from the fake, since the last Zoomerang poll went pretty nicely.)