Intentional and unintentional.
Some days I love being a caretaker. Other days, the landlord wants you to pick up a winter’s worth of dog shit from the back and 5 potential tenants flake on showings.
I only had one question for the IRS:
I call the IRS’ practitioner priority line. Hold for about 30 minutes. Get transferred.
I hold for 10 more minutes. Get transferred again.
Reach a third person who gives me a number.
Long-time readers of this blog know about my struggles with mice in my new apartment building. At first I thought my neighbor kept pigs and then the mice somersaulted through my kitchen.
I eventually started fighting back, which meant that the dogs got hold of the poison mouse blocks and I dealt with “no mess” mouse traps that created pools of stinky mouse blood.
In short, the mouse situation was a flaming hot mess for a very long time.
I sort of gave up during these past few months. I still kept all food refrigerated or covered and occasionally put out poison blocks, but I basically resigned myself to vacuuming up mouse crap every few days and using ungodly amounts of Lysol.
Then while at Wal-Mart this weekend I see a display of mouse-glue-pads.
I considered placing the bulldog statue I have at work with this gem:
I thought about it for longer than I’d like to admit, but I remembered the #1 rule of retail and resisted: if you’re not thrilled about a purchase, you probably don’t need it.
The professors assigned one of three Supreme Court cert petitions to each student and we wrote response briefs.
Today we defended our briefs in group debates. I spent the majority of our debate challenging Nancy Grace: “The defendant recruited four guys to invade Joana’s home, pistol whipped her husband, threw Joana in the car, and stole her bayyybay!”
Winter smacked down during these past two weeks.
I enjoyed one last day at the lake and then Minneapolis got a foot of snow in an epic snow storm.
I dread parking in the Salon parking lot.
There is a parking lot attendant who always creepily compliments my haircut when I pay. He makes me uncomfortable and I have a hard time understanding his thick-Somali accent. He makes me feel as if I’m in some sexual-harassment training video.
Professor H noted that we look stressed, and that stressed law students are typical for November.
She then addressed our Thanksgiving schedule:
Jill summed up the situation in class today:
Jill: “I don’t know why I came to class today. I have so much to do that just sitting here stresses me out.
Amen.
Passing my 1L sectionmates follows this script:
Me: “Hey! Haven’t seen you in forever!
Jack: “So busy 3L year is! What the hey?!”
Me: “Oh yeah, I’m super swamped too.”
Jack: “I know right? Time to jet! Late for thisandthat!”
Me: “Bye cupcake!”
Class feels like a huge time suck that gets in the way of the work that I am actually graded on, and yet I have not missed a single class all semester.
Laura Edwards came to my Legal History Workshop class today to talk about her book, “The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South.”
Edwards’ presentation was fascinating, which is typical for this semester’s workshops, but the best part of the workshop was the question-and-answer session:
Jill: “I wonder about the rights of white men who didn’t have property, you know, those who didn’t own land or slaves…the itinerant farmers…”
Edwards: “Yes. We call them ‘poor white trash’…”
Jill: “I WAS TRYING TO BE POLITICALLY CORRECT!”
Buhaha. Edwards keeps it real.
But today is different. I packed lunch for a marathon day at school, so I finally went to my locker to throw my lunch in.
My locker must have missed me because when I open the locker, it flings a bottle of Abercrombie Fierce cologne from the top shelf. The bottle smashes on the floor.
I quickly look around and pick up the glass shards, and then sneak to the trash and hide the evidence. I then wipe the floor dry, and hope I didn’t get too much of the Fierce water on me in the process.
