Sing to Me Hope as She's Thrown on the Sand. Oh, and Ignore Your FRE 403 Lesson.

Ex-Husband and I finalized arrangements to meet March 11th in L.A. to trade-off Daughter, soas he can have a two-week visit. Ex-Husband is freaked out about meeting Boyfriend. Ex has residual issues, but is bringing his own Girlfriend as a buffer. More and most importantly, I get to go the beach!!! Recently, I told Boyfriend that if I do not go the beach soon, my soul shall certainly rot and fade away into nothingness. Even though I will have to settle for an L.A. beach, I shall fall to my knees, dig my extremities into the sand, and most likely cry and cry like a baby. There's something about standing on that line between land and ocean that overwhelms me. It's an analogy regular readers may have noticed gets thrown about here with some frequency.

In work news, Paralegal is "no longer with us." Lex was like "I better work my ass off and not find myself 'no longer with us' too." Two trials are scheduled in the next two months. I am writing limine after limine about shit I don't understandl. Ergo, there is a lot of resorting to the all-encompassing "unfair prejudice" and "confusion of the issues" portions of Rule 403. I tell you, the whole "substantially outweighing" part of the Rule we spent so long on in law school - should be taught differently.

My Evidence Class:

Professor: "Lex.... Wait, Lex is not in class again today. Gunner, yes, you there. Tell me, if I change tangential fact Q slightly to make it cloudy outside, does that sufficiently reduce the probative value enough to outweigh it's admittance as unfairly prejudicial?" Gunner offers ridiculously logical analysis.
Professor: "Good, now Red-Hot, would you agree with Gunner's thoughts that the cloudy conditions could sufficiently reduce probative value and outweigh things here?"
Red Hot: "Well, that depends on whether it was daytime or at dusk. If we were always talking about the event occurring at dusk, or anytime thereafter, the impact of cloudiness is decreased. Alternatively, if it was daytime, than the cloud effect could tip the scales, although we still need to consider the details of facts J, K, L, M and N. O would be inadmissible as hearsay anyhow, so that fact doesn't come into my analysis.""
Professor: "Don't jump ahead, Red Hot, we haven't gotten to hearsay yet. That's another 6 weeks into the syllabus."
Red-Hot: Smiling giggle demonstrative of complete lack of humility. Professor: "See students, this is the type of rigid analysis you must engage in for these types of questions."

Bullshit. The lesson on Rule 403 should have taken two minutes. It would go like this:

Professor: "You never really know if an argument of unfair prejudice will work. It's completely dependent on what the judge thinks, whether his wife gave it up the night before and if the clerk accidently made decaf that morning. Always throw it in, but never, ever hang your hat on it alone. And for the love of God, someone put thrax in Red-Hot's locker. And the one next to hers, since Red-Hot rented it from Ms. Fori for the semester in exchange for an evidence outline. I hear that's where she keeps all the best treatises she checks out at the beginning of the semester and leaves them there until after finals."
Red Hot: "Objection! Hearsay."