Alesus and I ended the week eating oysters on the rooftop patio of Stella’s Fish Café in Uptown Minneapolis.
Alesus and I ended the week eating oysters on the rooftop patio of Stella’s Fish Café in Uptown Minneapolis.
My schedule is a disaster.
I scheduled afternoon classes so I could exercise and work in the mornings. That plan feels ridiculous now.
The problem is that my professors love scheduling and re-scheduling things for the 12:15-1pm time slot, which makes the 30 minute drive to the office not worth it if I wake up after 7am. (Which happens a lot.)
I also underestimated the amount and type of work I signed up for. Sure, I only have 12 credits, but my schedule is beholden to weekly assignments and “special projects.” I am constantly in the library cursing the decrepit computers and lack of staples.
The odd weekday schedule meant that my weekend consisted of marathon days at work. I’d walk the dogs, spend 8-10 hours at work, come back, walk the dogs, and veg out on trashy reality TV. Hardly the relaxed 3L schedule I imagined.
Despite the odd schedule, I still made time to make an appearance at Lush bar with a gaggle of law students, and I also attended Classafrass, the drag show at the Townhouse bar:
Some weirdness went down at that show – one of the drag queens who looks like Tila Tequila decided to perform Madonna’s “Erotic.” Tila’s performance was… well, true to the song.
And then comes a barefoot old man with the old-man shakes. Tila makes him part of the show. It’s unspeakably awkward. Pictures after the jump.
Things got real bad on Friday night.
I come back from work around 10pm and find Mark, who lives on the second floor, waiting by the building door. Mark tells me that his sink kitchen clogged, so I call the emergency plumber.
The plumber dredges Mark’s sink while Alesus and I skip over to the Showplace ICON theater and watch the new Resident Evil1 movie.
We come back to my apartment, watch Jersey Shore, and go to bed around 2am.
I hear a knock on my at 4am. It’s Heidi, the tenant who lives under Mark. Her kitchen is completely flooded with stinky black water that is shooting from her kitchen sink. Heidi’s bathroom ceiling is also leaking.
Law school orientation dominated the past week.
I was an orientation leader and spent the majority of my week convincing 1Ls that they can survive their first year of law school without being crazy. I also squeezed in some hours at the office, a movie, and even went to the Minnesota State Fair with Alesus.
It was my first time at the fair. I went primarily because the state fair is the only place I can buy Shoe MGK cleaner for my tacky white Aldo shoes. I also wanted to try camel on a stick.
Apparently the camel-sellers left the fair early, but I managed to buy the shoe cleaner, which was a life changing experience.
The Minnesota State Fair was surprisingly fun and great people watching.
There were cows:
Crowds:
Fancy kiosks with enormous light bills:
“You got served” style dance-offs:
I am sprawled on the bathroom floor. Blood is everywhere.
The “no mess” mouse trap that I bought is in fact, very messy. Sure, I cannot see the dead mouse in the trap’s chamber, but the trap is swimming in a pool of blood.
The trap is strategically placed under my bath tub, so I have to crawl on the floor to wipe up the pool of stinky mouse blood. Ick.
Cleaning was the theme of the week. My apartment got the complete pre-semester scrub. I changed the vase water, washed sheets and clothes, and shampooed the carpets.
I also scrubbed my kitchen, replaced tiles, and finally hauled in the tumblers that collected in my trunk during the semester:
Orientation training started today, so summer is officially over. Here’s what happened this summer:
May
It feels like everyone started school already, but the University of Minnesota law school starts after labor day, so I still have a week left of summer.
I only have one week of summer left because orientation leader training starts this Friday and I will spend the entire first week of September encouraging the new 1Ls to be less awkward around each other. I think we call that mingling.
So while the other law students figure out how to read cases, stress about employment, and even represent themselves in court, you can find me at the lake.
And I know it makes for dull reading and summary posts, but it is a lot of fun.
My time is spent working, listening to MPR, walking the krakens, biking, and watching trashy TV shows online with Alesus… you know, that “relaxation” thing that they beat out of us 1L year sometime between Contracts and Torts.
Oh, and there’s the occasional night out with drag show fabulousness:
Summer is fabulous. You can find me at work, biking across the metro area, at cafes, dragging the dogs around the lake, and at home with the new boyfriend, usually watching Jersey Shore or BravoTV online.
During the past two weeks there were also missed apartment showings, foiled robberies, and an usual amount of spoiled food. I also feel perpetually behind in blogging, music production, and laundry. Blame it on the excessive amount of lake time:
This week was embarrassingly busy. I didn’t even know what day it was during the beginning of the week.
The beginning of the week is a thick, sticky haze, but I think it had something to do with locking myself in my apartment to write my Physical Evidence paper.
The topic was Field Sobriety Tests. The thesis of the paper was that the tests aren’t scientific enough to form the basis of a DUI conviction. Luckily, the driver usually is usually caught with an open bottle in the car, falling over, or admits to being drunk. And the cops are usually organized enough to perform a somewhat more reliable chemical test (urine, blood, breath).
Of course, the evening after I finished my paper I got a bunch of cases on field sobriety tests. I wanted to scream. Actually, I might have. But it was 11:30pm and I was the only one in the building, so that’s okay.
This was the week of shit. The dogs kept breaking into my 3-tiered plastic food shelf, gorging themselves, and then crapping everywhere.
I would come home to find a chocolate rendition of the Bavarian Alps in my living room, and the dogs passed out in the kitchen. The dogs also figured out how to open the toilet lid and drink the blue-water, so they had the runs most of the time.
The steamer and cleaning spray barely kept up. I spent most of my week flustered and disgusted. Ick.
And although I finished moving to the new apartment last week, I had yet to clean out my old apartment because I thought that I had until August 1st to move out.
So I was horrified when my landlord left me a voicemail: “I showed your apartment today. It’s trashed. I’m also showing it tomorrow. Can you clean it, you filthy slob of a man?”
As a rule, any unexpected entrances into my apartment happen on the ONE day that it is trashed, so I should have expected that call.
Moving to my new apartment consumed the past two weeks. My move can be summed up with two quotes:
“The more things I threw away, the more I found.” – Jack Gladney, White Noise.
After drilling fixtures into my new apartment, I confronted all of the crap that I accumulated over countless trips to Wal-Mart and Ikea. I have a lot of random packs of garbage bags, travel-sized tissues, and cords for things I chucked a long time ago.
Didn’t I just do one of these week in review posts? I did. But the last review post was late. I promised to get better about it. This is me fulfilling that promise. Hi.
This week I officially became the caretaker for my apartment building. This means I have a set of master keys and get to explore all of the super-creepy storage areas in the basement.
Most of the rooms are straight out of a horror movie – spider webs, dust, filth, former tenants’ abandoned belongings…old dolls…
I really need to do these summaries on a weekly basis because I end up giving short-shrift to everything when I wait two weeks.
What happened these past two weeks? Well, there was school, dates, drag show fabulousness, illness/rice socks, music production, the Minneapolis gay pride parade, diva-dom, and mass awkwardness.
The most exciting thing that happened during the last two weeks is that I finished my first song. Here is the concise version:
It is 3am. Our group is outside of Pizza Luce in downtown Minneapolis, and an oversized bouncer is frisking us for weapons.
The bouncer pats us down, lifts our pant legs, asks for IDs, and then tells us the cover is $4. “Cover” is probably not the right word. It was applied to our pizza, so it was more like a down payment. I still thought all of this was a bit odd for a pizzeria, until I got inside…
After getting searched and charged, we stroll inside and experience the ghettofabulous scene: there were pimp suits, neon mesh leggings, candy colored stilettos, sweated-out weaves, grills, jelly rolls, folds, muffins, and zebras…. It was glorious.
We got our pizza and somehow made it to the Hotel Minneapolis without getting mugged. And although there are better pictures, I think this blurry shot best depicts the zombie-like fashion in which the guys attacked with pizza:
It’s 1am. Phillip and I are in the car, zipping around downtown Minneapolis. I ramble: “…tomorrow I will go out less, crack down, stay home and focus. From now on. Seriously.”
Phillip lets me ramble, but doesn’t believe it.
This was another cluttered week of work, exercise, dating, and reconnecting with long-neglected friends. Pictures!
It’s late, I’m sweating, and my deodorant has broken down.
It’s summer, and it’s hot. My freshness is compromised.
Earlier this evening, Justin pointed out that it looks like Niagara Falls sprung from my armpits. I flashed a coy smile and wrung my armpit on his sofa… but my freshness woes are for another post…1
Spring semester ended and I started working full time. Things are changing at the office because all of my 3L friends graduated and moved on to bar prep, and a new set of interns took their place. It is exciting to have new coworkers, especially since new interns tend to overdress. They bring glamour to the cubicles.
The increased work schedule is complimented by my increased workout regimen. I skate around the lakes, got organized about lifting weights, and sometimes bike to work:
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: