I returned to the bedroom to find that I had been replaced, but decided not to interrupt the lovefest:
I returned to the bedroom to find that I had been replaced, but decided not to interrupt the lovefest:
Harley is a little sick – he has an upset stomach – so I knew that I had a problem when I returned from my job to an apartment that smelled like dog-McFlurry.
I let Harley out of his kennel and he was caked in it. Gross.
He shakes himself off and scampers to the kitchen, leaving a trial of shit prints all over the floor! I shout for him to stop so of course he RUNS TO MY BEDROOM AND JUMPS ON MY BED!
Violence ensued. But now I have a fierce pair of bullmastiff gloves and a scarf for winter!
I’m kidding. I only considered killing him.
I tackled this 100lb dog, tied him up in the bathtub, mopped and disinfected the floors, and threw my sheets in the wash.
Then Mr. Shit-prints got a bath:
The good shots always end up with drool on the camera lense…
I’m cranky, but the nice thing about law school is that one is never alone…
I walk into Real Estate Law:
Me: “Good Afternoon, Jill.”
Jill: “Hey, how are you?”
Me: “Eh. I think I’m over law school.”
Jill: “Me too. I really enjoyed 1L year but this year I just want to kill someone.”
Yikes.
The longer I am in law school, the less I see myself practicing, and the more I suspect that I am wasting my time.
…so I started researching English doctorate programs.
I opted to go to law school instead of the English PhD route because senior year I was so disgusted by some of my professors who read random theories into texts that couldn’t support them. It was a type of academic “scholarship” that was essentially creative writing masked as literary criticism.1 Shakespeare, Elvis, and McDonald’s in the African diaspora…
I rather create than criticize, but the MFA-professors at my undergrad always seemed to have a badge of inferiority because of their lack of doctorate degrees.2 The question was always, “How well was your book received? Did it sell? When is your next book coming out?”
I am going to try and get into a literary theory class next semester and pick my professor’s brain about career options, and to see if a PhD is worth it.
If all else fails, I’ll be spend the first few years after law school as an underpaid attorney or an overeducated barista. Venti or Grande? Would you like a pastry or my legal opinion with that?
1 …by people too uncreative to write an original work. This was also rampant in Art History classes, where there is a razor thin line between “advanced research” and “bullshit.”
2 It seemed absolutely ridiculous that the people who were creating work were somehow less prestigious than those who did nothing but criticize it. But that was just my perception…
I am a little clumsy, so I spend a significant amount of time pancaked on the law school’s stairs, frantically picking up my books.
Usually no one catches the shit show, but Jill entered the stairwell right after I fell, coffee cup in hand…
Jill: “OH MY GOD ARE YOU OKAY?”
Me (getting up): “Oh, I am on a mission to douse every stairwell in the law school with coffee…”
Jill: “What?”
Me: “Nothing. Just clumsy I guess! I should buy a pair of knee pads…”
Jill (scoffing): “Looks like you’d be better off investing in a helmet.”
See also: The Best of Jill.
I posted this picture earlier this year on facebook:
Respect for lease. Surely a sign of a bad economy.
But things have gotten much, much worse:
I called Joel tonight, around 9, to whine talk about my night of youtube apartment cleaning.
It took me around 4 hours to get the apartment in a recognizable state.
Four hours of cleaning and youtube! It’s a hard-knock life! Time for some sympathy fishing…
(Ring)
Joel (Yawning): “Hello!”
Me: “Hey…uh, where are you?”
Joel: “Oh, still at work…doing reports.”
Me: “Oh, hi. My name is JC Petty. Lemme go find Dennis…”
My attempts to avoid my own “bitch not” advice foiled! Drats…
Oh look, it’s Kerli. There are several abandoned buildings in Jack’s part of Minneapolis. I spotted this street art on one of them:
Other photography posts:
The neighborhood children haven’t discovered that no one really cares if you smash the jackolanterns after Halloween.
So they sit and rot:
There is a scene in the latest SAW movie where a lawyer finds out that the key to save her is in the stomach of another person.
The lawyer takes a circular saw and immediately tries to slice the guy’s stomach open to get the key. Screaming and chaos ensues.
During that scene I turned to Joel and whispered, “THAT is law school.”
And it’s true. The size of the saw depends on the intensity of the curve. Vrrrm! Bitches!
The last two weeks have been the most irritating academic weeks of my life. I am tired, mortified, and annoyed. Sing it with me now!
I am always amused when I write these “Best Week Ever” week-in-review posts for difficult weeks.The chipper title is based on the premise that there is no such thing as a bad day. Yes, my name is Pollyanna and I am here to rock.
There is always something amusing happening and positive way to spin the worst disasters short of zombies taking over the earth.
The “Best Week Ever” title is basically a reminder, before I begin writing about an awful week, that things are not so awful, and that I should keep the bitching to a minimum and focus on the amusing things.
And amusing things did happen….really…week 9 started with a Tax law midterm. All the studying I did for the midterm was an utter waste of time and my answers were as eloquent as Miss Teen South Carolina:
“Um, capital gains, and the Iraq and all the little expenditure children…and stuff. That’s hot. And so totally deductible!”
After the epic fail Tax exam I turned around and finished my moot court brief.
The problem with the timing of the brief was that it was due on Wednesday and I have four classes Tuesdays and Wednesdays which means I have at least 3-4 hours worth of reading to do on top of life.
And the fact that Modern Real Estate went from a fluffy review of property to a brutally complicated tour of mortgage rights…didn’t help.
I worked on the brief at Dunn Brothers and there was a dramatic scene with a racist homeless guy who did not notice the four black people in the cafe. Screaming, N-bombs, and hilarity. The awkwardness was amazing.
I also officially started dating Joel. One night Joel turned to me and said,
Joel: “Um, we’ve been dating for five weeks now, and I was just wondering where this is going?”
Me: “Five weeks? What? Law school has me in a time warp…where am I? What year is it?”
Joel: “So I was wondering what my facebook status should be…”
Me: “Whatever you’d like! Well, don’t you DARE put married until you put a ring on it…”
Joel: “Uh, okay…”
Me: “SILENCE! I am channeling Sasha Fierce! Watch the wind sway my hair and be dazzled by my funky fresh moves…Hootyhoo! Time to get back to the Tax regs…”
So we became official during the beginning of week 8, and last night I met his parents and brother. Apparently I am the first boyfriend he has ever brought home to a formal dinner. Eek!
No plates were thrown or shots fired, so I guess everything went well? Maybe?
Anyway, I survived the parental inspection, the tax midterm, and the moot court brief. Coming up next is: Finals!
And the 2L fun continues…
Late as heck…
Harley constantly sends mulch and poo flying throughout the neighborhood, but I am pretty sure that most dogs do the sniff-sniff kick.
Here is the ritual:
And of course, Dooce is the originator of the doggy modesty patch.
Photos of Minneapolis, the city of the $42 traffic ticket.
These are photos that I am not sure that I posted. I apologize if they appear in earlier posts.
“One more picture with flash and I’m shitting on the carpet.”
Yesterday’s topic in Real Estate Law was Due-On-Sale clauses in mortgages. These clauses allow a lender to demand repayment of the entire loan amount upon the sale of property:
Professor E: “The game was hiding the sale from the lender. Every market had a few lawyers that people knew would be willing to do this. So people who wanted to cheat their lenders would go to these lawyers…well, I guess saying “cheat” is a value judgment isn’t it? So anyway they would go to these lawyers to cheat their lenders…”
Jill: “Wait! You seem to be implying it is wrong to do this.”
Professor E: “You’re right!”
This triggered a 10 minute discussion on the ethics of lawyers helping clients hide transfers of property interests from lenders.
Professor E: “Wow, maybe this is an avoidance of the next topic because I’ve never had so much participation!”
And she was right. The next topic was mortgage backed securities. Eek.
Other OTR posts with Professor E:
In a perfect world…
Professor A: “Cleaning supplies should be deductible. Maybe in a perfect world the IRS would monitor the spic-and-span, the toilet paper, and all that crap and see if it is taxable, but they don’t.”
Words of Wisdom:
Professor A: “This is another one of my tax rules: you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If a tax scheme looks too good to be true, it is. And you and your client will get into trouble if you participate.”
Other Tax law posts:
Note: I refer to my tax professor as “Professor A” simply because “Professor T” was taken. The naming issue was really bad during my first semester when I had Contracts, Conlaw, and Civil Procedure.
There are “Vote Meg Tuthill” plastered all over the neighborhood. She’s running for city council and apparently the owner of Tuthill’s Balloon Emporium:
I thought the Balloon Emporium was abandoned when I first saw it, but it is still in business and I think it is like a Party City store.
I told Joel how appalled I was that two people on Saturday had never heard of Party City.
He nodded understandingly and then told me that he had never heard of it either. Why do so many Minnesotans not know about the “nation’s largest party retailer” according to Wikipedia? Does everyone just go to Target?
After we figure out this answer we’ll get to why I am suddenly on a Party City awareness campaign.
I expect my check in the mail. Thank you.
Here are three random wallpapers that I have used in the past few weeks.
The first wallpaper is a facade of an old mill. The second wallpaper is the cheesy obligatory “it’s fall” shot. And the last wallpaper is a closeup of a spray-painted and utility box.
More wallpapers are here.
It’s rusty, it’s crusty, and it’s poorly aged, but I love the Grain Belt Beer sign by the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.
Below are some thumbnails. Click the images to see larger versions.
More Minneapolis photography on No.634:
I still can’t believe I brought a copy of the United States Tax Code to a club. The Tax Code was an amazing prop for my second Halloween costume: law student!
I had tape on my glasses, an old briefcase, and about 8 inches of books. I felt pretty…oh so pretty…
The craziest costume we saw last night was an abortion doctor who wore a monster fetus on his shoulder. Yes, it was as gross as it sounds.
At the Eagle there were three guys wearing the same pimp costume from Party City. Wearing the same $19.99 costume as two other people is worse than being caught wearing a duplicate dress on the red carpet. The pimps did not know each other, but the bar was so crowded that they ended up awkwardly close anyway.
When I made the Party City comment to my bar group, I got the craziest looks because two of the people in my bar-group had NEVER HEARD OF PARTY CITY! Gasp! I don’t know why I am so scandalized by this… it must be the franchise-lover in me…
Next to the duplicate pimps was a morbidly obese man dressed as Winnie the Pooh. I told Pooh that he should have brought a jar of honey as a prop.
The best costume of the night was Billy Mays. There was also a guy at the Saloon who I swear was NeNe Leakes from the Housewives of Atlanta.
In true NeNe style, the NeNe drag queen went off on someone….and that someone just happened to be my friend Phillip! We were on the dance floor and Phillip’s costume caught on NeNe’s sleeve. Nene thought Phillip was grabbing her and proceeded to smack him.
…and hilarity ensued.
NeNe’s friend eventually came and calmed her down. The awkwardness was delicious.
Last year I spent Halloween DJing at the Gamma eta Gamma house. Pictures are here.