I was awake at 4:45 AM this morning.

I hope I can sleep that late two weeks from now.

I think I'll say a word or two about that day, more for the benefit of those following this blog, so you know what I'll be doing.

Before the bar exam, I had this obsession about checking out other peoples' experience with the bar. (This went beyond simply reading other bar-taker blogs to even reading bizarrely detailed stuff by the NCBE.) I'm not quite sure if this is what Eve-Marie was talking about the other day when she mentioned that there is a similar theme between her pre-exam and post-exam posts, but I now find myself obsessed with knowing how others have dealt with learning the results.

The short answer?

Alcohol.

Lots and lots of alcohol.

Damn. If only I drank more than an occasional single Labatt's.

And if only I hadn't basically given that up.

And who the hell wants to wake up the morning of finding out whether you passed feeling like you drank the morning before?

The twenty-four hours before are said to be just awful.

(Note well: the month before is no picnic, either.)

And I imagine the fifteen minutes before are pretty bad as well.

I think I'm least looking forward to the time between when I click on the page link and when I determine whether or not my name is there.

I liked what someone said of being in this bizarre place where you swing between smiling idiotically, imagining the happiness of passing, to the depths of depression you consider in case that other thing happens.

I'm trying to get together with my friend Lindsay, who, you'll may recall, dined with me nine days before the bar. She's sent me a menu of different dates it might work. One of them is October 27.

I think I'll see how much of a glutton for punishment she is.

Let's all do me a favor and pray the World Series goes to a Game Five, so I can occupy my time the evening of October 27.

That evening, around 9:00-9:30, I will be taking some sort of sleep aid. I don't want to pull my first "all-nighter" -- i.e., absolutely no sleep (closest I came was three hours of sleep in college) -- the night before possibly learning I'm free of tests for life.

My friend Laura has advised me I am free to call her anytime in the middle of the night if I need to talk.

Be advised I may also be blogging, if sleep eludes me.

After waking up around five (heh, I'd like to believe I can sleep that long), I will at some point be departing for the Secure UnDisclosed Location at which I will learn my bar results.

Again, I may blog most all of this.

Results are supposed to be posted on the Internet between 7 and 7:30 AM.

They can't get them up AT 7?

Now, here's the tricky part, folks. Once I learn my results, and I do apologize to you loyal readers up front, there'll be a period of radio silence, where I won't post anything, for about three hours.

Why? Because, quite frankly, there are folks who've helped me along on this journey -- going far, far back before the barzam -- who deserve to know how I did in person.

So, that will take some actual driving on my part I will need to complete. I'm going to do it as quickly as I possibly can and, once I've done it, you'll be the next to know.

There'll also be a mass email issued, around the same time I post the entry.

Dem's the breaks.

The day after the results are published, the store is having a Halloween spooktacular. I have been told I must dress up as something.

I hope, by that point, going as a lawyer does not count as a costume.

(Of course, some quarters are encouraging me to go as a vampire. One could argue that might not be a costume for one who's passed the bar.)