Here’s an outline of my spring semester. A lot happened…
January: The semester starts.
It is spring in Minneapolis…
Note: the “Best Week Ever” (BWE) posts are summaries of the prior week.
The past two weeks whizzed by. I don’t know what to say.
Oh, I am a terrible hypocrite!
I encourage the 1Ls to blog, especially when they are busy. “The busy times are when it is most important to blog!” I say. “You’ll thank yourself for writing!”
So of course I don’t condescend to blog when I get busy. Do as I say, not as I do right? I feel like a governor…
Luckily the free-for-all that is “discussion time” in my family law class is the perfect time to blog! I am so not slacking at this…
So, what happened last week?
Well, the most exciting thing about last week was the heat! I think it got to 80 degrees one day, but maybe I’m exaggerating… maybe it was 90 degrees, or 100…
Regardless, it was warm, and the grass came out:
What a busy, hilarious week. There is too much to write about, so I am settling for pictures and captions. This is choppy, but appropriate given the state of things…
This week featured a massive iced-tea spill at the office. Amber is cackling as I run to fetch napkins:
Spring break was exhausting.
The week was strewn with awkward middle-of-the-day appointments and my entire salary went to the vet.
I come home from work on Saturday night to find my apartment covered in scat and blood.
Apparently stress caused the Rottweiler to have a bacterial imbalance, and erm, yeah. Blood. Everywhere. It was disgusting.
I was on the phone with Madre Jansen while scrubbing the blood from the floor:
Me: “Ugh.”
Madre Jansen: “What’s wrong grasshopper?”
Me: “I’m scrubbing blood from the floor. The Rottweiler is having issues again. I’m going to vet.”
Madre Jansen: “This is getting expensive. Maybe you should give the dog back to the humane society.”
Me: “Ugh. We’ll see. I still want to make her into a handbag.”
Madre Jansen: “Maybe she’s on her period and – excuse my language – just a sloppy bitch.”
I laughed so hard that I almost dropped my phone in the blood.
Mom cursing = hilarity every time.
It was my third vet trip within a week. Harley did a good impression of my face when I saw the bill:
Everyone has a syrupy facebook friend: the one whose status updates constantly mention their significant other in a cheesy, overly-sentimental way,
Syrupie Smith: “Off to lunch with my amazing boyfriend!”
Syrupton Bergsteiner: “Going to see my beau! Love you babe! Xoxo!”
Syrupy ~LOLZ~ Adams: “So excited for tonight! I get to see my sweety! Tee hee hee!”
Etc.
These are also the people with the preggers pictures and baby-profiles, or the gay guys who upload dozens of nearly-identical shots of themselves posing with their not-so-cute boyfriends. Hay!
We all know these tacky people, and I am trying desperately not to become one. But it’s hard. The new relationship is more Beyonce than Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
Today the temperature was well into the 50’s and everyone was waltzed around without coats, and most of us had shorts on.
I had time for the multiple dog walks because I left work early.
My coworkers and I are probably going to start boycotting most of the food options at work. Amber got food poisoning from a cafeteria salmonella salad, and I became deathly ill after eating a pack of sugar-free gummi bears from the company store.
I, of course, ate an entire pack of the jelly beans AND the gummi bears. And yes, the warnings are there for a reason. My goodness.
This coming week is Spring Break for my school. I will work a lot, but I have grand fitness plans. We’ll see if I can force myself into a Jillian Michaels workout routine, or if I will have Har Mar’s curves for another season.
I have not watched the Oscars since middle school. The show is excruciatingly boring, has no fun musical performances, and there are only 3 or 4 awards anyone cares about.
Although I suspected the Oscars would be a snoozefest, I joined the boyfriend at Jeff’s house to watch the Oscars anyway.
Nothing has changed. We are halfway through the Oscars and everyone is bored and bitchy. Vera Farmiga’s cupcake dress is almost as awful as the unflattering shots of Gabourey Sidibe. There is a random interpretive dance segment, and ample shots of the face-lifts in the audience.
The awards show was awful, but the real purpose of the evening was for me to meet the freshly-minted-boyfriend‘s friends.
“Meeting the friends” is like playing minesweeper. If I give too many beauty pageant answers then the friends will think I’m boring, fake, or stupid. What I am left with is the countless ways to accidentally offend people.
One of the friends asks us how Macbeth was. We saw Macbeth on Friday, I was underwhelmed, so I say “skip it” before learning that the friend is the promoter for the theater.
Woops…. It was lovely, I swear… the pinnacle of theater…
Ugh.
Fail.
Aside from Oscars dullness and minesweeper fail, I blitzed through the rest of the week. I think I’m busy. My week felt like it was already over on Monday.
Monday morning starts with international tax at 8:30am. I spend the next three days studying, getting flat tires fixed, and being dragged throughout the city by the dogs.
There is also Trivia on Tuesday evening with Carson:
Judd came to Trivia and we lost, but we didn’t really care.
I get up early on Wednesday to finish studying, show up for class, and then skip to work for the evening.
On Thursday and Friday mornings I’m in my car by 7:30am to observe bail hearings in Anoka.
Anoka is a town 26 miles north of my house. After the bail hearings and hanging around at the public defender’s office, I commute back down, let the dogs out, and then head 16 miles south to Eagan and work for the rest of the evening.
Friday night is usually date night with the boyfriend, and I work for the bulk of Saturday.
Then on Sunday I hope I’m not too exhausted to finish my tax reading for Monday morning…where the cycle continues again…
… this was supposed to be my light semester…but at least I’m not bored?
Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) posts are a summary of the previous week.
I may kill my dogs. Life would be so much easier, and I could rock a fierce Rottweiler murse.
But alas, that’s probably illegal. Wait, is it? I need to do some research…
The overarching theme of the past week has been my illness, which I blame on my dogs. What follows is the 5 step process of how my dogs blemished my week, and my face…and why I’m going to kill them for their fur:
I wake up because I sense my dog staring at me from the foot of my bed like a zombie in a horror movie. Then we have the following exchange:
Me: “Ugh. Sleep. I need it. What?”
Harley: “Deal or no deal?”
Me: “What?”
Harley: “I got the shits. I can go right here on this rug, or you can get your ass up and take me out RIGHT NOW. Deal or no deal?”
Me: “I hate you.”
Harley wakes me up every few hours to be let out. Gertrude, the Rottweiler, comes along. By the time I take them out, pick up the nast, and get them settled back down, I’ve lost a half hour.
So the next day in class, I’m as irritated and exhausted as my classmates with newborns at home. I’m unproductive, stressy, and everything takes way too much time to get done because I’m half-awake.
After a few days of being woken up by Harley’s emergencies, and getting stressed by my lack of productivity, I’m sick. Or rather, severely congested.
And it’s not a real sickness. This is one of those stupid, “your immune system is suppressed because of stress and lack of sleep and now you get to suffer” situations.
I feel like someone just stabbed me with a botox pen. But instead of getting a glossy face, I just have pathetic look of defeat and the need to blow my nose every few minutes. Fail.
I get one full night of sleep and then the Rottweiler gets sick. I think she’s copying Harley for attention. Lack of sleep ensues due to more night time dog-diarrhea messitude…
After high school no one ever believes you are sick. You can call in sick and cancel things, and people respect this out of some sense of professionalism…but no one really believes it.
It’s even worse when it’s not a dramatic illness but severe congestion. I was not contagious, but there was still an amazing amount of pain and sense that I was starring as the “before” person in an allergy commercial without the benefit of the Claritin Clearness afterwards.
So I got to be awkward congested guy in court, class, and on dates.
And just as the congestion subsides, I sprout a big, fat, juicy cold sore while at work on Saturday.
I’ve had cold sores since I was a little kid. I get cold sores after being sick, stressed, or exposed to citrus. They are gross and unsightly, but some people have real problems, and a 3-day blemish doesn’t count.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going strut into the clubhouse with a juicy sore on my lip. So Saturday night I stayed in, despite everyone wanting to hang out. Even my most antisocial friends were out on Saturday, but I wasn’t budging.
I coyly declined invitations, but for those who pressed on I had to engage in the overshare: “I HAVE A BIG FAT JUICY SORE ON MY LIP? YOU WANNA HANG? HMMMM? HMM? COOOTIES!!”
And surprise, surprise, that worked!
I’ve been rocking my $20 bottle of Abreva all day, but I think I’m still going to be pretty gross for tomorrow’s classes. I would just skip and heal at home, but again, my professors are not going to believe that I’m sick, and probably wouldn’t consider a disfigurement a good reason to miss class.
So I’m stuck. I blame the dogs, who will be slaughtered and used to make my new dog-leather Lady Gaga inspired face mask to cover my sore.
Note: Best Week Ever posts are a summary of the previous week(s).
My weeks are too unusual and packed to cover two weeks in a “best week ever” summary post, so here are five snippets of the chaos…
I am in court observing a bail hearing. A scraggly woman approaches the stand and the judge sentences her to four years in prison. She was the getaway driver for her godson’s bank robbing spree and could have been sentenced to 20 years. She thanks the judge for the 4-year sentence, and gets hauled to the next county for sentencing on another robbery.
It is hard to complain about much after volunteering at the public defender’s office. My time in court is always a nice reminder that some people have real problems.
1 a.m. on Saturday. A group of us are near the dance floor at Lush Bar in Northeast Minneapolis. Adam Lambert’s queeny little brother, Glambert, is on the floor. Glambert points dramatically, flips his hair, and challenges a sassy, break-dancing lesbian to a dance-off.
Hot messitude ensues.
Glambert flails around, points, and flips his hair like Jeffree Star without the tattoos, or personality. Glambert goes on for a long time until his friend grabs him and tells him to stop being ignorant.
That is when the sassy lesbian leaves her group of annoyed-looking butch girls. Sassy slides onto the dance floor and launches into into a dramatic, stunt-filled break dance routine.
Glambert got served, but instead of clapping and going on with his life, Glambert proceeds to drop to the floor, open his legs…and… well, my friend Pechman described the scene the best: “That’s just embarrassing.”
Fail.
I was sick. It felt like someone filled my sinuses with bleach, but I was going to finish this moot court brief, headache and bleach be-damned.
I camped out at Wilde Roast and worked for close to five hours on revisions. Randy made a cameo and gave me a study break, but I eventually finished my brief and then raced to a copy shop for a blue brief cover.
I felt ridiculous paying for parking and trudging through the snow for a single colored copy of the cover of a pretend legal brief.
But whatever. If the Moot Rules of Appellate Procedure say blue cover, then they’ll get a blue cover. I’ve stop trying to make sense of my school’s requirements.
These past two weeks were full of trips to the Spyhouse, Starbucks, and Caffetto. I blame moot court and the tax code.
I had a vogue battle with a Somali in St. Paul. Hilarity. That story is here.
Most guys simply drop equivocal hints that they want to go out on a date:
Pussyfooter: “I might want to get coffee. Someplace…somewhere…over the rainbow perhaps? You like coffee right? I like coffee…possibly, maybe…sometime…”
Pussyfooter: “I might be at this bar tonight. Possibly. Maybe. With friends. I’m not sure yet. Haven’t decided. Are you going out tonight? I might be…”
Pussyfooter: “I’m so bored. Thinking about doing something! Going out, maybe? Something. I mean, I may leave the house tonight… not having any plans or a life or anything makes this easy... So I might be up for something! With someone! Possibly! Maybe! What are you up to?”
They want me to ask them out. I have to make the plans because their fear of rejection limits them to pestering guys online.
And I refuse to go out with these guys beacuse I cannot be bothered to waste my time on self-conscious, timid guys. I’m not Dr. Phil, and don’t have the time to build a would-be suitor’s self esteem.
So how shocked was I when someone finally asked me out on a date? I had at least a dozen pussyfooters bothering me at the time, and this guy bowled them over and got the point.
He wasn’t quite my type based on his pictures, so of course he was attractive and interesting in person (seems to be a rule.) The date went well, and I am impressed.
I think Minnesota men might have redeemed themselves. Possibly, maybe.
I have been reading for corporate tax at the Spyhouse for several hours now. My table is cluttered:
It takes some serious bum-glue to finish the corporate tax reading.
There is a lot of information and I have to take breaks before my eyes glaze over and I start seizing. It’s like pausing before pouring more water down a drain lest it overflows.
I am here for another hour, and then I will skip down to Eagan to make an appearance at the office. I need to finish the reading for corporate tax today, so I will probably insert some study periods into my work day.
My tax professor uses an “expert” system, which is essentially a preset schedule of who will be called on. There are 2-3 “experts” assigned for each day, but the list is not updated to accommodate people who drop the course, so there is always the chance that I will be the only one on call for the entire class.
I can see it now:
Professor A: “Mr. Jansen! Does this redemption of stock qualify as a termination of interest under §302(b)(3)?”
Me: “Um, well, I personally believe that U.S. Americans and …uh, suchas… maps?”
I guess the worse-case scenario is that I sound ditzy and clueless in class, which is not unusual or as embarrassing as my seat collapsing… but then again, that could happen too…
It is 1 a.m. and we are at St. Paul’s Camp Bar. Eric and Curt are off another room, but I am on the dance floor because Beyonce’s “Video Phone” is playing. An over-cologned Ethiopian-Somali1 guy watches me from the bar.
A remix of “Took the Night” comes on. The Somali and I exchange a look, he puts down his drink, and a full-scale vogue battle ensues.
I usually do not vogue at random bars, especially in St. Paul, but I just wasted a hour listening to a crappy cover band butcher top-40 hits. The band is on break, the video-Jockey is playing vogue music, and therefore boomkats are in order. The Somali agrees.
We give hands, dips, and duck walk as guys at the bar gawk on like “what kind of fuckery is this?” The battle lasts for the entire song. We then clear the dance floor and the cover band comes back on:
Surprisingly, our random vogue-off was not the hottest mess in St. Paul that night: earlier, at the Movie Bears Beer Bust, there was a 400-pound woman wearing black underwear, fish net stockings, and 3-sizes-too-small spiked heels.
Eric was so amused and wanted to pose near her, but I could not get a good shot of our Pussycat Doll because her friend blocked the view:
Normally, I would just ask the Pussycat Doll if she would pose with Eric, but she was ranting about how she didn’t understand why people were making fun of her, so I decided not to add any fuel to the drama-fire.
Last night’s beer bust was my first Movie Bears event. The club usually watches movies on Tuesdays, which is Trivia night, but they also watch horror movies on Fridays. It seems like a fun group, but I haven’t decided if I want to tack one more event onto my social calendar. Do I have time for this?
1 This is actually accurate. I asked.
Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) is a summary of the prior week.
I had two oral arguments on Monday. My moot court section has an odd number of students, so I volunteered to argue off-brief.
It was slightly awkward waltzing in and arguing for the other side: “May it please the Court, forget everything I said one hour ago! These guys are so totally not guilty, and US Americans…”
It wasn’t so terrible, and I survived.
I spent the bulk of Tuesday’s school day in the Sprint Store. The Rottweiler ate my phone, and a quick lunch-time phone replacement turned into an epic customer service fail.
I made a point of not being snide or pissy with the Sprint customer service reps. It is embarrassing and stressful enough for a worker to look incompetent in front of a customer. Exasperating someone’s discomfort is not going to make them provide better service.
My politeness also allowed me to adopt a sense of moral superiority while watching the parade of rude customers that came into the store.
The worst guy was a very short man with a baseball cap who walked in with his arms folded:
Chipper customer service rep: “Welcome to Sprint! How may we help you today?”
Napoleon: (dramatic pause) “I have been a customer for over 15 years! I demand service! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?”
We eventually got my blackberry working, and I spent the rest of the week playing foursquare and connecting with more Minnesotans.
Foursquare is this stalkerish, twitter-like application that uses your GPS to pinpoint your location and broadcasts the location to your facebook and twitter streams.
You can leave to-do tips for other users, and even see who else is at your location. This is awesome because when I “check in” at work I am instantly connected to new coworkers.1
My workweek started on Wednesday. I’m not sure if this was a good idea.
I had the same problem last week: I went to work on Wednesday after an exhausting school day and I got behind on cases.
I did not want my quota to suffer, so I spent the rest of the week playing catch up and worked for free on Sunday.
Several of my coworkers had the same problem. You get behind, feel guilty for being behind… stress builds, productivity decreases, you wake up the next day with more to do than the day before…
I refused to get on the hamster wheel this week. I have always met my employer’s productivity quota and I’m not going to walk around like Raggedy Ann because I failed to live up to my artificially heightened expectations for one day. Cue Portia Nelson.
Friday was epic, Saturday was calm, and today is my day of work and homework. It is like prepping before cooking the feast. The more work I get done today, the easier my mini-school week will be. We’ll see how this goes….
1 My connectedness level has increased with the blackberry. I have never been so up to date on my email. I think the best part of the PDA experience has been meeting more Minnesotans. I hate to use the term “networking” but that’s essentially what’s going on.
Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) posts are a summary of the prior week.
This week had a surreal vacationy feel. It was like spring-break minus the nice weather.There was Trivia, yarking drag queens, dancing, and intense pool tournaments.
On Friday, I somehow found myself at a house party in the exurbs. There were about 8 people, but I only knew Jack. After an unsuccessful game of Categories, Jack’s friends separated into small groups and started bickering.
It was a chaotic scene that felt like an episode of The Real World because the partygoers kept interrupting their trash talk to give me back story as if I was one of the confessionals.
The hostess and her boyfriend fought mostly because he didn’t like her tone, which she couldn’t control because she was drunk. They were too crunk for Jesus to communicate properly, so there was a lot of running around to separate rooms, screaming, and dramatics.
One guy kept rattling on about his most recent trip to jail, and another girl spent a hour telling me an epic story about her evil Russian stepmother. The girl’s stepmother stories apparently enraged one of the partygoers who started mumbling dark threats and eventually went up to the girl and shouted, “NO ONE LIKES YOU! WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE? NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE! YOU’RE A BITCH!”
This happened as she stood near the hostess’s awkward apartment-mate, who spent most of the evening by himself playing shoot-em-up video games. The gamer and I exchanged a look like “oh snap, thank god we aren’t involved in this….”
Aside from my social activities and Real World cameos, I also worked on my days off from school.
Apparently this is what I look like when I get a securities regulation case at work:
I really like my job, but I hope that if they hire me after graduation that my coworkers won’t wear hot pink skinny pants. Amber was so shocked by the pepto bismol pants on Friday that she sent me an emergency text. It was glorious.
I spent most of my non-working time this weekend cleaning and doing homework. Today I went to Dunn Brothers to study for corporate tax, but I failed to notice that there were no open seats until after I ordered my coffee. So I chugged the coffee and went to the Purple Onion, which is closer to campus.
The cafes immediately surrounding campus aren’t busy at the beginning of the semester since the undergrads are still doing more drinking than reading. They complete the transition from bars to books about a week before finals, so there is room for me for majority of the semester.
The last major thing that happened this week was the end of the relationship.
The cattle call started once my “single” status hit people’s facebook streams – dozens1 of casual friends who barely kept in touch while I had a boyfriend are suddenly coming out of the woodwork and are desperate to “hang out.”
I am like the 10-year old girl who is suddenly popular because she is the first one in her class to use a training bra. I feel suspicious and harassed essentially for the reasons stated in this post.
Over the coming weeks I will weed out the true friends from the fair-weather suitors. We’ll see how that goes.
1 Literally, dozens. My inbox is full. You’d think Beyonce was on auction or something…
Spring semester started, I think?
It was a strange week. I worked through Monday, and school started on Tuesday.
This week I had family law, corporate tax, advanced estate planning, and a housing clinic. I dropped the clinic before the end of the first session because it sounded like a miserable time-suck. I did that “oh we’ll see how this works out” bit last semester and I’m over it. I know what I want in a class and will drop accordingly.1
Law school has definitely lost its new car smell; I am bored and annoyed. Does Jack have to raise his hand in every class? Where is my Conlaw II grade? And why is it okay for people to go barefoot in school? If you can’t roll into a McDonald’s barefoot then it shouldn’t be acceptable at a professional school – just saying…
I don’t exactly march around school shooting bitchy looks at people, but I am no longer the chipper, lingering 1L.
Things outside of school are vastly more interesting. The dogs keep me busy and amused at home when I’m not skipping off to work or being social. The “being social” bit this week included Trivia night at Innuendo, the Colbie Caillat/Uncle Kracker concert and the Loring Pasta bar with Joel, Avatar with Eric, and random bar-club hilarity that included black-eyes and boyish lesbian DJs.
So of course by Friday I was run-down and sick, popped enough cold and allergy medication to offend my liver, and woke up early enough on Saturday to start my 10-hour workday at 5:30am.
By Saturday night I felt better so I hosted a movie night at my place featuring Revolutionary Road, Humpday, State of Play, and red stripe.
Today I worked, went to Wal-Mart, did laundry, cooked for the week, and finally combated the hostile occupation of grime on my stove. I smell like vinegar and Lysol…which isn’t a terrible way to end the first week of spring semester.
1I added International Tax Law to replace the credits lost by the clinic. It’s at 8:30am on Mondays and Tuesdays, but it means that I have Thursday and Friday off from school. It isn’t truly a 4-day weekend because I am working, but I prefer to do my 20 hours over a 4-day work week than a 2 day weekend.