For the second night in a row, I'm up until 2:30 AM working on my moot court brief. I can't say I'm displeased with the result--the argument isn't totally full of holes, unlike much of my recent blogging [1]--but it's been a very tiring road. Furthermore, the case is one of those annoying stories of nastiness on the part of one man (who isn't being sued); suffering on the part of another (who is suing); and laziness, defensiveness, and bureaucratic inertia on the part of the third (who's got the deep pockets, and is thus my defendant). Ideally, I'd like the plaintiff to have acted responsibly, the defendant to then have settled things reasonably, and this never to have gotten to court.

I'm enjoying it. It's a creative exercise, and when I'm not fighting a persistent writer's block--there's a reason I've been blogging so much, it gives me a good hour to 90 minutes of memo writing before my brian seizes up again--I'm loving this odd struggle with precedent and trying to figure out how to subtly say that a given was wrong. Distinguishing between fact situations that are slightly different in limited but critical ways is turning out to be a real pleasure.

But I'm not sleeping. Heck, I'm writing this, and my last entry, because after finishing the brief, it'll take my head another hour to wind down and relax to the point I can shut my eyes. I'm going to look like a train wreck again tomorrow. If I'm unlucky, Prof. Con Law will report me to the Dean on the grounds that the only thing that can explain my current unhealthy demeanor is longstanding substance abuse.

[1]: Never let it be said I can't joke at my own expense, eh?