Best Week Ever 6: One big, snowy hot mess.

This past week was hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

The week started with me randomly getting a car. I have never bought a car by myself before, so I didn’t know how long the financing process would take. I thought it would take a few weeks. It took about 10 minutes.

The gist:
Me: “Hi. I’m a law student who just got a job in the suburbs. Busing won’t cut it anymore, and I haven’t learned how to fly…”
Banker: “Got any cars in mind?”
Me: “Yep! I am eying a car at BigChain car dealership. It’s an Altima.”
Banker: “Do you have a number for the dealership?”
Me: “Yep. I filled out a form and Rick Salesman sent me an email, the number is 612-000-0000.”
Banker: “Please hold.”

Banker: “Okay. I’ve cleared everything with the car dealership. You’re approved for the loan. Just login to your online account and check “yes.” There is an e-check you can print out to get your car tonight.”
Me: “Wait, what? Tonight? Really?”
Banker: “Yep. Let me know if you have any problems.”
Click. I didn’t even have time to call mom before the car dealership called:
Salesman: “Hey, this is Rick Salesman from BigChain. We’ve emailed. I just talked to your bank.”
Me: “Uh…yeah…hi. Sorry about that. I didn’t think they were going to call you immediately…or even approve the loan that quickly.”
Salesman: “Yep. BigBank works quick.”
Me: “They sure do.”
Salesman: “So when are you coming to test drive?”
Me: “Well the problem is that I don’t have a car. So I have to find a ride…maybe tomorrow...”
Salesman: “Oh don’t worry about that. I’ll pick you up. You can test drive it back to the dealership. I’ll be there in 25 minutes.”
Yikes! I guess there isn’t a recession going on! Or, maybe so few people are buying that they are eager to sell to any non-sketchy person they can find. Hm. I really wanted the car, but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly…

So I enjoyed the wonders of winter-car-ownership this week. Miami didn’t prepare me for any of this:

• The gas tank freezing shut. I was running low on gas and I couldn’t open the tank! Images of past tow-truck adventures started flashing before my eyes. The car has inside pull-level, so I didn’t know if it was really frozen shut or if the pull-level broke.  I had to get my car steamed in a car wash before it opened.  But it DID open…
• Getting stuck in my driveway. The neighbors found this hilarious. I pretended I was an Olympic hurdler when I lunged over the snow wall blocking my driveway…
• My febreeze freeze. The car completely stunk of nicotine when I bought it, so I bought some febreeze. It froze in my trunk, and is currently thawing on my desk.
• Snowmageddon: the first day I took my car to school we got 10 inches of snow. I hadn’t bought a snow shovel yet. It was tragic. My whiny vlog about it made CNN though!

The beginning of the week was fairly unproductive. I didn’t do enough work during the weekend so I came into this week “behind.”¹

Lack of sleep is a vicious cycle. If I don’t get enough sleep the night before, I’m likely to be too tired to do any work the next evening. (And it doesn’t occur to me to just go to bed…)

So I stayed up, doing a lot of nothing. Every time I glanced at the clock another hour had passed, until gasp, it’s suddenly late! I better go to bed. But wait, I have work to do… I’ll just get up early… & Repeat.

This trend started Monday night with the surprise car purchase (I got home around 11pm) and cycled until Wednesday. I managed to nix it before it became a multi-week affair.

As for classes…

• Civil Procedure is still amazing. The topic is personal jurisdiction, which is pretty straightforward.
• Property was a surprise. I was expecting the worst, but Future Interests/Vesting is not god-awful, especially when I realized there is not substantive difference between many of the categories. It really IS about magic words…
• Corporations is still all about scandal. Everyone was grateful that we had less reading in the Delaware Code this week.
• Criminal Law has not improved. In fact, class has become so unspeakably dull that my section has begun aggressively playing “word of the day.” Everyday the section leader declares a random “word of the day” which we have to incorporate into an answer. Two of this week’s words were: hambone, and spirit-murder.
  Class discussion has become unruly. It is dominated by the same handful of students. So, instead of waiting to be called on, my classmates have started raising their hand to interject a random “word of the day” comment. Half of the section starts laughing when this happens. The professor thinks we’ve lost it. (he’s right.)

This upcoming week is busy but exciting: on Monday and Thursday I’m attending public hearings for the fees committee. On Tuesday I’m attending my first CLE class. Oh, and that memo is due for legal writing… hm!

¹ “Behind” as in reading the case shortly before class.