Week #10 was the last week of summer school, aka, finals! I spent the beginning of the week studying, mostly at the Walter library. After my last final I went to work, and worked 10 hour days for the next 4 days.
I also decided to get health conscious, and just say no to Caribou pastries. That’s also the week I almost ran Jill off the road, and celebrated the end of my first year in Minnesota.
Every-other day for the past two weeks, police lights have lit up my street up like a vivacious performance.
I feel like I live in the projects without the benefit of supplemental security income. My neighbor was arrested twice in the past two weeks, and the police are constantly raging about for miscellaneous disturbances.
The problem with the police action is that the cops are the main disturbance in the neighborhood – blaring lights and shouting – and I doubt they cause this much remmidemmi when doing business in the suburbs.
Some of my friends suggested that the police drammy is exciting. And while Yesina’s first arrest was amusing, by the second arrest I was annoyed. I don’t need to hear Yesina screaming “DON’T TAKE MY BABY!” when I have a morning class the next day.
The themes of the past week? Work, fireworks, dog drama, cleaning, and crunk cyclists.
Oh, and birthday festivities. Pictures:
First off we have the awkward retro-kids who roamed into the hiphop room of the gay club:
And some vogue or…erm, whatever this is:
And Jack and his boyfriend John:
Oh, and we saw Borat roaming downtown Minneapolis… pictures and video after the jump, which are not school/work safe:
My windshield wiper fluid had been empty for a week, so I was really proud of myself when I finally bought some fluid from Wal-Mart.
In fact, I was SO excited that I popped my hood in the parking lot and filled the wiper fluid right there. Just because I’m that classy.
But when I got into my car, the “you need windshield wiper fluid” light was still on.
On the way home I realized why the light was still on – I poured the windshield fluid in the radiator!
The next day I was on the phone with Valvoline. They wanted $79 to flush my radiator.
I then called my car dealership’s repair shop – they wanted $125.
This has been the week of random celebrity deaths.
Ed McMahon died on Tuesday, Farrah and Michael Jackson died on Thursday, and Billy Mays died on Sunday.
I was at work when Michael Jackson died. It was incredibly interesting to watch the major news outlets catch up to TMZ – who reported everything, including his death, an hour before everyone else.
By the time I left work, every news agency had finally caught up to TMZ and Michael Jackson was officially dead. Michael’s greatest hits were on most radio stations.
I turned on the car radio, rolled down my windows, and joined the collective Michael jam session blasting from every car in Minneapolis.
I started bawling when “Don’t stop till you get enough” came on.1 I was crying not because I was sad, but because I was disappointed and pissed off that someone who had so much talent turned out to be so weird and creepy despite himself.
Michael’s death made it clear that he could never turn himself around, and it was a shame.
What distinguished Michael from the typical pop culture disasters2 is that Michael was actually talented, and his strangeness was probably a mental illness issue instead of the usual drug and alcohol combo.
I couldn’t blame Michael for his crazy so I just had one good cry for him while driving home.
Later that night, I left my apartment building with Harley. As I led my dog down the apartment steps, a young-ish black woman with a small child approached on the sidewalk. She saw the dog and said,
Woman: “Woah, that’s a big dog!”
Me: “Yep.”
Woman (passing me): “He’s big and bad! He’s bad! He’s really really bad!”
Yes. He’s bad…and kid friendly!
1 My favorite MJ song.
2 Those scenes are from Factory Girl, the biopic about Edie Sedgwick.
Oy vey. The past two weeks? Well, I started summer school and stopped petitioning. Once I stopped petitioning I focused on getting my apartment in order and then tried to maintain my enthusiasm for Professional Responsibility.
I also worked a lot, and ran from random teenager shooters when I came home. Oh, and of course there were drag shows and random hot messes too…
Minneapolis has been Renaissance-fair soggy1 for the past few weeks, but today the temperature was in high 70’s and it felt unbearably hot.
I walked Harley around campus and he was all, “Okay, seriously, this heat is some bullshit.”
“Yea, this heat thing? No. It’s not working. FIX IT!
He didn’t stop shooting me glares until I let him run in the river:
And it was hot enough that he dried out before we got back to the car. Score.
The summer is shaping up to be wonderfully breezy: work, class, hanging out, repeat.
The marathon training is not going well however. I need to unleash my inner Jillian Michaels this week… it’s just a matter of finding the appropriate wig and snarl…
1 Seriously, mold and plague.
I sort of stumbled into summer, and it was messy…
My civil procedure exam variance smudged the line between spring semester and the first week of summer. The finals period ended on Friday the 15th but I had my last exam on Monday the 18th. I moved some more things into the apartment Monday and Tuesday, and spent the rest of the week working 10 hour days.
The rest of that week went like this: walk dog, iron, work for 10 hours, walk dog again, bed.
I also picked up my petition packet that Friday.1
Last Sunday I moved the rest of my things out of the gamma house, which created an organizational nightmare – boxes and shitkram cluttered my apartment – even the dog gave me the “this is some bullshit” look… so I spent the beginning of week 2 cleaning and unpacking. The rest of the week consisted of work, hanging out 2 with friends, and ignoring the periodic bitch-slaps from the petition-monkey latched to my back.
Two of my coworkers – Cheryl3 and Nadine – have kept tabs on my non-progress on the petition. Cheryl is mortified and amused. Nadine takes a more gung-ho approach since she is also petitioning at her law school:
Nadine: “I don’t understand those people who pick up petition packets and don’t finish them. I mean, there’s no such thing as not getting it done – even if I have to pull a few all-nighters – it will get done. It just has to.”
Amen.
I decided today that finishing the petition is a win-win situation because I’ll either get on a journal or have the satisfaction of showing out by completing the petition. So I spent today outlining my note. I will write it tomorrow. The petition is due Friday, and summer classes start tomorrow.4 We’ll see how this goes…
