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.
I work full-time at the office, clerk at the public defender’s office, volunteer at a tax non-profit, and regularly skip over to the law school for the tax law clinic.
I do 60-hours of work in three different counties, but life is so much easier and less stressful than having the regular law school schedule.
This semester I have 6 credits: the tax law clinic and a foreign-language movie class that meets 1 day a week. No law school classes or finals. BUMP!
It’s about 10pm and Halvers and I are 50 feet onto the lake.
The dogs slide on the snow around us. We both have our blackberries out, googling “is the ice on Lake of the Isles safe to walk on?”
Google has nothing for us.
And another year begins.
Break is fairly busy because I work full time, volunteer, and occasionally throw some attention at the dogs, boyfriend, and music production.
But I made time to be social on New Year’s Eve. Actually, I felt crabby and wanted to go to bed early, but Halvers threatened encouraged me to go out with the Calhoun Shore crew.
I’m glad he did, because it was a lot of fun.
The night started at Kristin’s house and then we skipped to Lush.
The celebration was somewhat subdued because the hostess did the midnight countdown 5 minutes early. Apparently the clock on the DJ’s computer is fast. We had a private countdown at the appropriate time.
We skipped to Jetset Bar shortly after midnight because we got sick of the nondescript house music at Lush. Most gay men have a high tolerance for nondescript house music, but it just got excessive, so to Jetset we went…
Jetset was amazing. The small bar was so packed that steam came out of the front door.
We danced to everything from “Hit Me Baby One More Time” to “Whip My Hair.” Hilarium.
We came across a totem pole during the dog walk.
The bucktoothed one is my favorite, if you couldn’t tell.
I’m spoiled when it comes to malls.
We had massive malls back in Florida, and the Twin Cities are home to Mall of America, one of the largest malls in the country.
And it sure is big:
We hit the classafrass drag show with style as the cast of Calhoun Shore – Minnesota’s take on Jersey Shore.
Left to right: Krookie, Nay-Woww, The Dilemma, and Sweedo. Picture by Mrs. Pederson.
And it was a fabulous show, featuring:
The semester is over! Now I am busy working full time at the office and pummeling through the snow with the dogs.
Here’s an outline of what happened these past few months:
I hunkered down at the Spyhouse and wrote my first legal history essay. I kept ordering tea refills as snow flew by the cafe windows. I skipped home after the first essay due to the amount of exasperated road-condition-related tweets lighting up my phone.
I started the second essay after shoveling and emailed both essays in around 10pm…and that was it.
I came across a source from 1887 while writing my legal history papers. The author is Albert Shaw, a Minneapolis-based journalist and academic. The context is the American myth of limited government.
Shaw wrote his essay almost 125 years ago, but it could serve as a reaction to modern American economic theory. Shaw writes that Americans benefited from and supported a strong regulatory regime while adhering to a wholly inconsistent laissez-faire ideology of limited government.
The week began quietly enough – I became an espresso snob, creeped the boyfriend out with my mouse catching, and attended my last formal law school class.
And then the “Minneapolis Blizzard of 2010” came.
Sigh.
The snow was so bad that the Minneapolis Metrodome collapsed. My friend Krämer moaned that Minneapolis only makes national news when something collapses, but I reminded him that we are also famous for Prince and recounts.
I completely cleared and salted my building’s sidewalks on Saturday, but everything was re-buried by Sunday morning. Apparently at least one tenant thought I that I had not shoveled at all:
Halvers wasn’t amused by the note.
I had my last formal1 law school class session yesterday evening.
My presence in yesterday’s class underscored how pointless attendance is sometimes. I slogged through rush-hour traffic on slick roads for a 15-minute “wrap up” session that should have been tacked on to last week’s class.
