BWE 6: A time to kill

February 28, 2010

Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) posts are a summary of the previous week.

I may kill my dogs. Life would be so much easier, and I could rock a fierce Rottweiler murse.

But alas, that’s probably illegal. Wait, is it? I need to do some research…

The overarching theme of the past week has been my illness, which I blame on my dogs. What follows is the 5 step process of how my dogs blemished my week, and my face…and why I’m going to kill them for their fur:

Step 1: Harley gets sick.

I wake up because I sense my dog staring at me from the foot of my bed like a zombie in a horror movie. Then we have the following exchange:

Me: “Ugh. Sleep. I need it. What?”
Harley: “Deal or no deal?”
Me: “What?”
Harley: “I got the shits. I can go right here on this rug, or you can get your ass up and take me out RIGHT NOW. Deal or no deal?”
Me: “I hate you.”

Step 2: Exhaustion

Harley wakes me up every few hours to be let out. Gertrude, the Rottweiler, comes along. By the time I take them out, pick up the nast, and get them settled back down, I’ve lost a half hour.

So the next day in class, I’m as irritated and exhausted as my classmates with newborns at home. I’m unproductive, stressy, and everything takes way too much time to get done because I’m half-awake.

Step 3: I get sick

After a few days of being woken up by Harley’s emergencies, and getting stressed by my lack of productivity, I’m sick. Or rather, severely congested.

And it’s not a real sickness. This is one of those stupid, “your immune system is suppressed because of stress and lack of sleep and now you get to suffer” situations.

I feel like someone just stabbed me with a botox pen. But instead of getting a glossy face, I just have pathetic look of defeat and the need to blow my nose every few minutes. Fail.

Step 4: Harley is better, but now Gertrude is sick.

I get one full night of sleep and then the Rottweiler gets sick. I think she’s copying Harley for attention. Lack of sleep ensues due to more night time dog-diarrhea messitude…

Step 5: layer in class, court appearances, and dating

After high school no one ever believes you are sick. You can call in sick and cancel things, and people respect this out of some sense of professionalism…but no one really believes it.

It’s even worse when it’s not a dramatic illness but severe congestion. I was not contagious, but there was still an amazing amount of pain and sense that I was starring as the “before” person in an allergy commercial without the benefit of the Claritin Clearness afterwards.

So I got to be awkward congested guy in court, class, and on dates.
And just as the congestion subsides, I sprout a big, fat, juicy cold sore while at work on Saturday.
I’ve had cold sores since I was a little kid. I get cold sores after being sick, stressed, or exposed to citrus. They are gross and unsightly, but some people have real problems, and a 3-day blemish doesn’t count.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going strut into the clubhouse with a juicy sore on my lip. So Saturday night I stayed in, despite everyone wanting to hang out. Even my most antisocial friends were out on Saturday, but I wasn’t budging.

I coyly declined invitations, but for those who pressed on I had to engage in the overshare: “I HAVE A BIG FAT JUICY SORE ON MY LIP? YOU WANNA HANG? HMMMM? HMM? COOOTIES!!”

And surprise, surprise, that worked!

I’ve been rocking my $20 bottle of Abreva all day, but I think I’m still going to be pretty gross for tomorrow’s classes. I would just skip and heal at home, but again, my professors are not going to believe that I’m sick, and probably wouldn’t consider a disfigurement a good reason to miss class.

So I’m stuck. I blame the dogs, who will be slaughtered and used to make my new dog-leather Lady Gaga inspired face mask to cover my sore.

Judd

Zombies, a lost blackberry, and the gushy stuff.

February 27, 2010

Last night I went on my third date with Judd.

We went to see “The Crazies” in Roseville because gory, apocalyptic zombies movies are totally appropriate for dates.

It’s like a gay club, minus the Abercrombie cologne.

There was a pack of girls behind us in the theater, so we got the stereotypical commentary – “OH GIRL! HE CRAZY!”

Word.

After the sheer terror movie, we went to Dinkytown to Pagoda. Pagoda is a pan-Asian restaurant and an old haunt from 1L year.

I usually loathe dinner dates. I fear being stuck at a table with awkward silence or even more awkward conversation. There is also the possibility that the guy will drop a deal breaker early on and make the rest of the dinner uncomfortable.
On our first date, we ate at the bar area of a Granite City, and the only awkward part was that one of my friends¹ just so happened to be at that very restaurant, at the bar, snickering.
There were no cameos last night and the conversation wasn’t forced or awkward. We lingered. At one point, I wanted to look someone up on google images and noticed that I didn’t have my blackberry. It was probably in my car…

There was also a wild bachelorette party going on in the back room of the restaurant, so our conversation had brief pauses for the random cheering, laughing, and singing coming from the walls.

We eventually left Pagoda and I noticed that my blackberry wasn’t in my car.

I left Judd in the car and went back to the restaurant. The blackberry wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the sidewalk…or in the car… this was strange, and a giant date-swagger fail.

After another fruitless search of the car, I went into the Jimmy John’s near the car:

Me: “Hi, I lost my blackberry outside. Did someone happen to turn it in?”
JJ Deliveryman: “Pfft. A blackberry? I would have pawned that shit already.”
Me: “Heh. Lovely. Have a good night.”

I drove Judd to his house, and he helped me to search the car one last time.

So of course the phone had fallen in between the seat and the center console, and it was still plugged into the charger. Epic fail. Judd is dating a bald blonde. You can call me Amber Rose.

¹Aka, the only law student with whom I discussed my upcoming date. He swears this was a coincidence. Right. And Alesha Dixon coincidentally looks like Beyonce.

Take Three

The Freighthouse

February 26, 2010

My favorite Dunn Brothers cafe in Minneapolis is the Freighthouse. It is built in an old freighthouse and has a great upstairs loft.

It is also close enough to school that I can pop over during lunch, but far enough that I don’t have to worry about running into other law students.

I study at the Freighthouse often, and the hot baristas have nothing to do with this. Really.

picture of the day

Price Gouging

February 25, 2010

I hand a bottle of Vicks 44 to a cashier at a campus convenience store. She rings the medicine up and gasps.

Cashier: “What?!”
Me: “Pardon?”
Cashier: “Is it really this much? This can’t be right.”
Me: “It’s like $9 isn’t it?”
Cashier: “$9.19! For this? Really? Is it really that price?”
Me: “You’d know better than me.”

Last week’s cold went, but the sinus pressure stayed. I was so stuffy and irritated that abandoned my tax law preparation and left the Hanson Hall Starbucks early to get the nearly-$10 bottle of medicine:

I knew that buying anything on campus is like going to a movie theater concession stand. But $10? Yikes. It feels like price gouging.

Edit: According to the CVS website, CVS sells this for $7.49, so the markup was actually not that bad.

blog theory / Law School

Not Quite Overshare: Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook

February 24, 2010

Explaining social media tools to someone who doesn’t use them is always awkward, but I’ll try anyway.

I use social media tools to make my life easier. This is how that works:

The blog:

Getting connected: The blog is a quick and easy way to introduce myself to peers, coworkers, others in the Twin Cities, and worldwide.
Staying connected: The blog allows friends and family to catch up on my life on their time. It is less jarring and harassing than a phone call or the pain of “scheduling coffee” with people who I don’t see as often. The blog also cuts the mundane, preliminary “what’s going on with you lately?” portion of conversations and allows us to jump into deeper topics…sort of like doing the reading before class.
A resource: Blogs are the new autobiographies and how-to books. I had very few surprises during my first year of law school because I read law school student blogs (such as this one, this one, and this one) and their advice was far more valuable than any “how to” book on law school that I wasted my money on. The experiences I write about help others considering going to law school, becoming a resident assistant, dog owner, blog author, etc.
PR & Journaling: The blog allows me to chronicle my experience and curtail rumors about major events by allowing people to read my account of a situation and form their own opinion. It’s like a constant interactive press conference, minus the vicious reporters and “oh shit” looks.

Twitter

Twitter lets me instantly connect with friends, professionals, and others. Twitter is less harassing and time consuming than an IM conversation, and a great way to meet new people, especially other law students and lawyers.
There is a lot of noise on twitter that I don’t subscribe to. I don’t follow people who only retweet news stories, stock prices, quotes, or “deals” that no one cares about. It’s like subscribing to junk mail. And to that I say, “Bitch, boo, bye.”

Twitter, is not (for me at least) a popularity contest to find the most followers. The important part about twitter is connecting with real people. And if I also happen to get a coupon from a local pizza place then that’s just an amazing bonus…

Foursquare

The ultimate way to connect with locals. Foursquare uses my phone’s GPS to locate me and attaches that location to my tweets.
Foursquare also tells me who else is at my location and has allowed me to connect with coworkers and neighbors who I would otherwise not have met. There has been a recent stink over privacy concerns, but it’s simple to give the address of a nearby park or public place when you’re at a friend’s house or at home.

If someone was really going to rob you or stalk you, they would (and could) do it without the assistance of Foursquare. This is why the new Taser X3 is super affordable and comes in cute “fashion colors.”

Facebook

Where it all comes together. Chances are that you are reading this post on facebook, or have become my facebook friend after running into me on Foursquare or Twitter.
My facebook account is constantly updated with posts from my blog, Foursquare, and Twitter. This is incredibly convenient because people just have to look at my facebook page to see where I am, and what I’m up to.

Giving my friends this information makes my life easier because my friends know when I am available. The running-updated schedule makes people more likely to respect my time and less likely to pester me when I’m busy. The updates are also conversation starters and invitations for my neighbors to join me at local cafes and bars if they are in the area.

My social media connectivity never feels like a “big brother” or exhibitionist situation because all of these applications require an affirmative action to update. This makes a true, unintended, overshare uncommon. Which is why you won’t know if I’m constipated at a rat-infested 7-Eleven restroom unless I post it (which I won’t, don’t worry.)

My life is made easier by sharing more information rather than less. I got used to living in the proverbial fishbowl as a resident assistant in undergrad, and living in the fishbowl is rather comfortable.

I share what I want to, and I find that perpetual connection with others is far better to being out of the loop.

Law School / picture of the day

Geyser

February 23, 2010

This is why I usually have a coffee tumbler:

I’ve been a coffee-soaked law student for over a year now, so I just shake off the dark roast from my copy of the tax code and I’m ready to go.

dogs / Take Three

Pummeler

February 22, 2010

I think she’s being dramatic.

Harley’s unimpressed.

2L Spring / 2L Spring Summaries / Judd / Life

BWE 4-5: Dance-offs, dating, and misc. mess

February 21, 2010

Note: Best Week Ever posts are a summary of the previous week(s).

My weeks are too unusual and packed to cover two weeks in a “best week ever” summary post, so here are five snippets of the chaos…

Scene 1: The getaway driver.

I am in court observing a bail hearing. A scraggly woman approaches the stand and the judge sentences her to four years in prison. She was the getaway driver for her godson’s bank robbing spree and could have been sentenced to 20 years. She thanks the judge for the 4-year sentence, and gets hauled to the next county for sentencing on another robbery.

It is hard to complain about much after volunteering at the public defender’s office. My time in court is always a nice reminder that some people have real problems.

Scene 2: dance-off at Lush.

1 a.m. on Saturday. A group of us are near the dance floor at Lush Bar in Northeast Minneapolis. Adam Lambert’s queeny little brother, Glambert, is on the floor. Glambert points dramatically, flips his hair, and challenges a sassy, break-dancing lesbian to a dance-off.

Hot messitude ensues.

Glambert flails around, points, and flips his hair like Jeffree Star without the tattoos, or personality. Glambert goes on for a long time until his friend grabs him and tells him to stop being ignorant.

That is when the sassy lesbian leaves her group of annoyed-looking butch girls. Sassy slides onto the dance floor and launches into into a dramatic, stunt-filled break dance routine.

Glambert got served, but instead of clapping and going on with his life, Glambert proceeds to drop to the floor, open his legs…and… well, my friend Pechman described the scene the best: “That’s just embarrassing.”

Fail.

Scene 3: snot and authorities.

I was sick. It felt like someone filled my sinuses with bleach, but I was going to finish this moot court brief, headache and bleach be-damned.

I camped out at Wilde Roast and worked for close to five hours on revisions. Randy made a cameo and gave me a study break, but I eventually finished my brief and then raced to a copy shop for a blue brief cover.

I felt ridiculous paying for parking and trudging through the snow for a single colored copy of the cover of a pretend legal brief.

But whatever. If the Moot Rules of Appellate Procedure say blue cover, then they’ll get a blue cover. I’ve stop trying to make sense of my school’s requirements.

These past two weeks were full of trips to the Spyhouse, Starbucks, and Caffetto. I blame moot court and the tax code.

Scene 4: vogue!

I had a vogue battle with a Somali in St. Paul. Hilarity. That story is here.

Scene 5: the gumption.

The problem with dating in Minnesota is easily summed up: Pussyfooters.

Most guys simply drop equivocal hints that they want to go out on a date:

Pussyfooter: “I might want to get coffee. Someplace…somewhere…over the rainbow perhaps? You like coffee right? I like coffee…possibly, maybe…sometime…”
Pussyfooter: “I might be at this bar tonight. Possibly. Maybe. With friends. I’m not sure yet. Haven’t decided. Are you going out tonight? I might be…”
Pussyfooter: “I’m so bored. Thinking about doing something! Going out, maybe? Something. I mean, I may leave the house tonight… not having any plans or a life or anything makes this easy... So I might be up for something! With someone! Possibly! Maybe! What are you up to?”

They want me to ask them out. I have to make the plans because their fear of rejection limits them to pestering guys online.

And I refuse to go out with these guys beacuse I cannot be bothered to waste my time on self-conscious, timid guys. I’m not Dr. Phil, and don’t have the time to build a would-be suitor’s self esteem.

So how shocked was I when someone finally asked me out on a date? I had at least a dozen pussyfooters bothering me at the time, and this guy bowled them over and got the point.
He wasn’t quite my type based on his pictures, so of course he was attractive and interesting in person (seems to be a rule.) The date went well, and I am impressed.
I think Minnesota men might have redeemed themselves. Possibly, maybe.

Minneapolis-St. Paul / Take Three / the details

Icy

February 20, 2010

Things like this don’t amuse the natives anymore:

And yes, the dogs and I totally play fetch with the icicles.

unsolicited advice

For the 0Ls (Prospective Law Students)

February 20, 2010

It’s that time of year again. Law school acceptance letters have gone out and the future victims students are trolling the student blogs.

My advice? Run.

If you’re not going to run, then consider these 5 tips:

Do not go to law school just because your humanities major did not give you any marketable job skills.

That’s like signing up for the military because you won’t condescend to work retail as a B.A. The legal job market collapsed last year. If you were looking for riches and employment, then try Starbucks or business school…or the military. At least they’ll pay for school if you survive.

**When considering schools outside of the top 10 (or maybe top 20) focus on the schools in the state/market you want to practice in.**

Your New Mexico JD isn’t as powerful in Maine, even if the New Mexico school is ranked slightly higher than Maine’s Bumble School of Law.

If you are choosing between a well-ranked school and a scholarship at a less prestigious school, ask whether the scholarship is contingent on your GPA or class rank.

Most students at these schools will lose their scholarships because of the curve. And yes, your competition is as smart and motivated to keep their scholarship as you are.

Much of the prep during the summer before law school is a waste of time.

Your time is best spent working, because your scholarship or loan money may not come in until classes start. Working out also won’t hurt, because law school is the land of coffee and pizza.

If you really want to know what law school is like then read law student blogs.

An outline of my 1L fall semester is here, and an outline of 1L spring is here.

Again, I recommended that you run, so don’t batter me with nasty messages this fall about how I ruined your life because this blog convinced you that law school is all sunshine and lollipops. It is not. Run.

Tweet any questions to @dennisjansen.

Life

The Critic

February 19, 2010

Ugh. We can’t take him anywhere.

My parallel parking has never had a more severe critic.

My defense is that the roads are slick, so the cars are 4-feet from the real curb….and this makes it harder to mark somehow…and it’s dark…and, and, and, well, whatever. Wer schreibt, der bleibt.

on the record / overheard

Negligently Annoying.

February 19, 2010

I think Jill coined a new term.

Me: “So, Jack overheard ‘dresses inappropriately boy’ from Tax Law talk about what fashion disasters the other students are.”
Jill: “Oh my god! Really? Even after he wore a neon colored hat, skinny jeans, and man-Uggs yesterday?!”
Me: “Yep. But you know, I try not to judge because very few people are intentionally annoying.”
Jill: “Yes, but some people who are not intentionally annoying are still negligently annoying, and should know better, and should feel social pressure to pay more attention.”

Snaps, Jill. Snaps.

2L Fall / my legal space

Finishing the Brief

February 18, 2010

I spent the majority of yesterday popping pseudoephedrine pills¹ at Wilde Roast while finishing the final draft of my Moot Court brief. I felt really sick, but this “awful” had to be finished. If Webster’s dictionary had an illustration for the word “tedious” it would look like this:

I think the hypo for the moot court brief is boring and the procedural posture is awkward: an interlocutory appeal of a denial to suppress a subpoena.

Um.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I have completed four oral arguments on this brief, and my last one is this coming week. Although my brief could be better utilized as a weapon to beat skinny-pants-wearers, I am so overjoyed to finish with Moot Court.

I spent some time this week watching real court proceedings in Anoka, which are vastly more interesting than things in the State of Moot.

Watching real lawyers argue also gives me a new appreciation for how important oral arguments are and how easy Moot Court is. If a lawyer can – with a straight face – ask a judge for leniency for a defendant who had a 2.9 BAC when he terrorized his wife with a gun, then I can slap on a tie, waltz in front of my legal writing professors, and advocate for some make-believe Moot Court clients.

Unlike the raging husband, the Moot Court clients aren’t standing next to me. There’s no sobbing wife, angry mother, or threat of jail time. The lack of stakes makes Moot Court feel like a very charmed exercise. And yes, I just said that.

¹Tylenol Severe Congestion. But I’ll let you know when I start using illicit drugs.

dogs / Take Three / video

Snow Romp

February 18, 2010

Winter walks are always entertaining:

Life

Dear Hairstylist

February 17, 2010

Dear Hairstylist, this is not a comment on my love for you:

And before you lecture me on how “everyone prefers Badu with a weave” just remember a few things:

Every few months I have an Amber Rose moment.
It’s winter, and I want to wear hats without my hair being compromised.
Tyra said that my look was “too commercial” and Tabitha agreed.
And your last haircut did kinda suck.

Xoxo,
– Baldy.

Minneapolis-St. Paul / picture of the day / Whittier / Uptown Minneapolis

Not a car

February 17, 2010

This is a problem:

Let’s ignore my dirty car windshield for a second and focus:

Twenty seconds before I took this picture, this man was almost creamed by a school bus. He was drunk and whizzing around the wrong side of the street when the bus came around the corner. It was a motorized hot mess.

What is equally disturbing is that this is not the first man I have seen recklessly driving a motorized wheelchair on the streets. Maybe this phenomenon is due to the group homes in Uptown? Misleading promises of grand canyon trips? Carrie Prejean? I don’t know…

Two bigger traffic hazards in Minneapolis are the tailgating semi-trucks and the bikers. There is a well developed cycling culture in the city, but some cyclists think that things like hand signals and stop-lights are optional, and chaos ensues…then again a lot of the cab drivers think that stop-lights are optional too…

Law School / on the record

Ms. Ass speaks

February 16, 2010

One of today’s topics in my Family Law class was restrictions on parents’ rights to name their children.
Family law is a huge class. There are over 100 people in the room, but instead of deterring embarrassing and irrelevant comments, the class size seems to ensure that every loon in the law school is represented ala But No Thanks.

The conversation got so ridiculous that people openly laughed at the speakers.

One can only take a mother’s right to name her child “5 + 5” so seriously, but there was a boy who said that the name would be fine if it was written “Five plus Five” instead of numericals.
The best comment was not by one of the loons, but by a rather pleasant girl who shall forever be known as Ms. Ass:

Ms. Ass: “…I get what he’s saying about names. My parents love me, but my initials are “ASS.”
I was only briefly traumatized in 2nd grade when the 5th graders found out… but in undergrad, Bumble University used our initials as our email address. So when applying to law school, I had to get documentation from Bumble U that I did not pick “ASSØØ4@bumble.edu” to be my email.”

I love it.

2L Spring Summaries / my legal space / picture of the day

My Legal Space: Spyhouse

February 15, 2010

I have been reading for corporate tax at the Spyhouse for several hours now. My table is cluttered:

It takes some serious bum-glue to finish the corporate tax reading.

There is a lot of information and I have to take breaks before my eyes glaze over and I start seizing. It’s like pausing before pouring more water down a drain lest it overflows.

I am here for another hour, and then I will skip down to Eagan to make an appearance at the office. I need to finish the reading for corporate tax today, so I will probably insert some study periods into my work day.

My tax professor uses an “expert” system, which is essentially a preset schedule of who will be called on. There are 2-3 “experts” assigned for each day, but the list is not updated to accommodate people who drop the course, so there is always the chance that I will be the only one on call for the entire class.

I can see it now:

Professor A: “Mr. Jansen! Does this redemption of stock qualify as a termination of interest under §302(b)(3)?”
Me: “Um, well, I personally believe that U.S. Americans and …uh, suchas… maps?”

I guess the worse-case scenario is that I sound ditzy and clueless in class, which is not unusual or as embarrassing as my seat collapsing… but then again, that could happen too…

Minneapolis-St. Paul / Take Three

Traffic’s consolation prize

February 15, 2010

Highway I-94 is usually a traffic disaster, which would be more annoying if the view wasn’t so great:

When I first saw the Basilica, I was horrified that such a beautiful church was so close to a highway.

That changed when I got to enjoy the view from standstill traffic.

2L Spring / 2L Spring Summaries / Life / Minneapolis-St. Paul

Took the Night

February 14, 2010

It is 1 a.m. and we are at St. Paul’s Camp Bar. Eric and Curt are off another room, but I am on the dance floor because Beyonce’s “Video Phone” is playing. An over-cologned Ethiopian-Somali¹ guy watches me from the bar.

A remix of “Took the Night” comes on. The Somali and I exchange a look, he puts down his drink, and a full-scale vogue battle ensues.

I usually do not vogue at random bars, especially in St. Paul, but I just wasted a hour listening to a crappy cover band butcher top-40 hits. The band is on break, the video-Jockey is playing vogue music, and therefore boomkats are in order. The Somali agrees.

We give hands, dips, and duck walk as guys at the bar gawk on like “what kind of fuckery is this?” The battle lasts for the entire song. We then clear the dance floor and the cover band comes back on:

Surprisingly, our random vogue-off was not the hottest mess in St. Paul that night: earlier, at the Movie Bears Beer Bust, there was a 400-pound woman wearing black underwear, fish net stockings, and 3-sizes-too-small spiked heels.

Eric was so amused and wanted to pose near her, but I could not get a good shot of our Pussycat Doll because her friend blocked the view:

Normally, I would just ask the Pussycat Doll if she would pose with Eric, but she was ranting about how she didn’t understand why people were making fun of her, so I decided not to add any fuel to the drama-fire.

Last night’s beer bust was my first Movie Bears event. The club usually watches movies on Tuesdays, which is Trivia night, but they also watch horror movies on Fridays. It seems like a fun group, but I haven’t decided if I want to tack one more event onto my social calendar. Do I have time for this?

¹ This is actually accurate. I asked.

February 2010