I am halfway through a habeas case at work when Jill, a coworker, turns to me and says:
Jill: “Tornadoes in downtown Minneapolis!”
Me: “What what?”
Jill: “That’s what they are saying on NPR. Check online.”
Yesterday, I got home from work around midnight.
Working long or odd hours usually isn’t a problem for the dog, unless he has an upset stomach.
So of course, when I open my apartment door I immediately smell that this is one of those nights where Harley made a bullmastiff-sized welcome home surprise.
I let the dog out of the kennel and he skips off to his food bowl. I then grab a trash bag, paper towels, and the bleach.
The little kennel-disaster made me forget about my parking situation: I parked in the nearby business parking lot again because the plan was to just quickly get the dog and move the car.
Now, some of you remember that the last time I parked in that lot, I saw a shooting and had to run from the shooter. And you’d think I would have learned my lesson, but I didn’t. Obviously.
So I finish scooping all of nast out of the kennel and stand up just in time to see a tow truck flying down the street towards my car!
I drop the trashbag full of dog-mess, grab Harley’s leash, and then flee the building like I just saw bejeweled crocs. I run across the street with the dog dragging behind me, waiving my arms – “STOOOOOOOP DON’T TOW MEEEEEEH! I’M A POOR LAW STUDENT!”
I look pathetic enough for the tow truck driver to let me off the hook.
Tower: “I didn’t have you hooked up yet, so you can go.”
Me (gasping): “Thank you, I was just getting my dog……and uh, thank you!”
The tow truck driver’s girlfriend glares at me from the truck. I wink.1
The closest parking space is a few blocks away. I park, walk the dog back to the apartment, chuck the trash bag of surprises, and then decide that it is a good time to go to Wal-Mart since my apartment reeks of bleach and dog poop.
So Harley and I walk back to the car, and go to Wal-Mart.2
What I really needed from Wal-Mart was canned food. I eat mostly fresh food, but once in-a-while I use canned vegetables. And canned vegetables are one of those things best bought in bulk, from Wal-Mart, in the middle of the night…sort of like tiolet paper.
So of course all of the canned-food isles are “closed for waxing” and I was the guy randomly buying nothing but dog treats at 1 a.m.
At least Harley didn’t seem to mind…
1 Now who the heck called my car in at midnight?
2Wal-Mart is by my job actually, so there was a LOT of backtracking that night.
We are posted in my favorite room, the video bar, which is like a gay sports bar that plays music videos instead of football.
The Ting Tings are playing when the bar tender plops these small red drinks in front of us.
I shoot the bartender a look like “What the heck?” and he says,
Bartender: “These are from the guy across the bar.”
Hey, as long as you’re comfortable.
I was in high school when I watched Supersize Me. At the time, I ate at McDonalds twice a day, every day. The movie didn’t phase me, and my drive-thru habits continued. 1
After reading Jillian Michael’s “Master your Metabolism” my grocery list turned into that of a hippie yoga teacher, but drive-thrus were still the norm when I didn’t make time to stop at the grocery store.
My eating habits consisted of fruits, vegetables, and fresh meat mixed with fast food and vending machine “food.”
I realized that my eating habits reached the disgusting level last week during my summer school final exams. I felt queasy and sleep deprived, and my stack of bluebooks was surrounded by cups of vending machine coffee2, two bags of pretzels, a bag of generic vending machine salted trail mix, and a box of Mike & Ikes. Sure, I had healthy food at home, but this crap was somehow in front of me.
Sometime between my Professional Responsibility exam and my Wills & Trust exam I decided this had to stop.
That day I decided to ditch the vending machine food and the late night fast food trips.
On Saturday, Jill and I were pulling a marathon work day, and we decided to take a break and fetch lunch. I decided to shake up the new “healthy” diet with a strategically timed trip to Culver’s.3 I figured that a burger wouldn’t shake things up too much…
…and I was wrong.
We get back to work, I eat the burger, and twenty minutes later we hear a loud cranking and gurgling sound.
Jill: “Oh my god, is that your stomach!?”
I give her a pathetic, panicked look and flee to the restroom.
Culver’s was officially axed from the diet.
Today, I axed all the other fast food restaurants. I saw the movie “Food Inc.” and I think it finished the diet change that Jillian Michaels started.
Jillian described how disgusting most food is, but it is one thing to read about how gross food is, and it’s another thing to see it.
The reason why Supersize Me didn’t change my eating habits is because I lost weight on my straight-McDonald’s diet. Supersize Me didn’t disgust me because I knew that fast food was made from poorly treated, hormone pumped animals and chemically engineered potatoes. So what?
Food Inc. answered the “So what?” question.
I’ve officially been in Minnesota for a year. There are already extensive summaries of fall semester and spring semester, so I’ve decided to pick a picture/memory to represent each month.
Here it goes:
August: Exploring Twin Cities
September: school starts, law students riverdance.
October: Let’s talk about the weave
November: Outlining…oh, and Fedde Le Grand/Moon Goons!
When Jill and I left work today it was pouring. Jill’s car was closer than mine, so she volunteered to sprint through the downpour, fetch her car, and then drive me to mine.
How did I thank her? Well, 10 minutes later Jill and I were driving our cars down the highway and the rain became blinding. Of course this happened when the road curved so I had my face up against my windshield trying to figure out where the raised median was.
Suddenly Jill’s car was behind mine – I had drifted into her lane and cut her off!
At the next light I rolled down my window and apologized profusely. Jill said “don’t worry about it” which is Minnesotan for “you crazy asshole!”
I was officially that guy.
Jill and I took a break from work and went to Caribou:
Me: “I have all this fruit at my desk…”
Jill: “…and?”
Me: “…and I’m eyeing the banana nut bread.”
Jill: “Well it is reduced fat!”
Me: “Yeah, but not reduced enough!”
Me (to the Barista): “May I have a large dark roast with room?”
Barista: “And?”
Jill: “Get the banana nut bread!”
Barista: “Yes! Get the banana bread. It’s delicious.”
Me: “No! Morbid obesity is knocking and I am not answering! Just the coffee please! God, I feel like my disc is herniating1 or something…”
Jill: “You sound like an old person applying for SSI.”
We comprised with me trying one of the free pastries, but I stuck to my guns.
1 We deal with a lot of petitions for social security disability insurance benefits and supplemental security income, and the stereotype is an overweight claimant with a herniated disc and a fibromyalgia.
I went to drop off my rent check at the property management office1 and ran into my landlord in front of the building:
Landlord: “Hey! How are things? How’s the building?”
Me: “The building is nuts. I feel like I live in an episode of Cops.”
Landlord: “It’s Yesina isn’t it?”
Me: “Yes. She was arrested two weeks in a row!”
Landlord: “I’m really sorry about that. That woman is a fucking idiot. I am trying to kick her out, but these things take time – you understand that don’t you? I’m not even going through a normal eviction because she’s got to go!”
So it looks like Yesina’s days are numbered. The question is: will she leave with a bang?
And: can I convince some sane law students2 to take her place?
1 It’s on my way to work. I always hand deliver my rent because no one ever believes that the rent check was lost in the mail.
2 Total oxymoron.
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.
It finally stopped storming, so I fetched Harley and went to the East Bank to study outside.
Harley got very serious about digging a ditch to sit in:
I went to Wal-Mart1 after work, so I left my backpack in the car to bring my Wal-Mart bags upstairs. I left my backpack, with my school laptop in it, was in the front passenger seat of the car.
After tossing the bags in the apartment and chucking the milk in the fridge, I got the dog for the evening walk. I left my backpack in my car because the car was going to be within eyesight during the walk.2
Harley and I were about a block away when two teenage girls passed us. The girls reeked of pot and shot me the stank eye.
Harley knocked over a mirror last night. It was a $10 Wal-Mart mirror, so it wasn’t a big deal. I cracked open my new box of generic trash bags1 and collected the glass shards.
When I moved to throw out the trash bag, I felt a sharp pain in my thigh – a glass shard had cut through the trash bag, through my shorts, and stabbed into my thigh.
I pulled up the leg of my shorts just in time to see the start of Bloodfest 2009. I grabbed a paper towel, pressed on the cut, and then instant messaged Gibs to see if he could drive me to the hospital.
But Gibs was at work. Drats!
The mass archive import brought on a little nostalgic tinge.
I suspect cubicle partitions help noise travel. There is a seating area in the hallway near our cubicles. Two women broadcasted their conversation from the seating area today:
Woman 1: “I wonder what Cheryl is going to name the baby.”
Woman 2: “Cheryl’s pregnant?”
Woman 1: “Yeah Cheryl’s pregnant. She’s very pregnant!”
Woman 2: “Oh, I didn’t know.”
Woman 1: “Weren’t you just walking with Cheryl and I a few weeks ago? Cheryl was very pregnant then…”
Woman 1: “But she wasn’t that big! And there’s no polite way to ask if someone is pregnant! Sandra is STILL mad at me for asking if she was pregnant last year!”
Jack and I had to resist the temptation to get up and look at who the women were. The real question is: who’s Sandra?
Enough interns were snickering that the women realized it was time to go.
I left work late, so the only street parking was a few blocks away.
When I got out of my car I noticed someone peering from the dirty white car across the street – it was Terry, the toothless man who sleeps in his car.
I nodded politely but Terry just kept giving me this blank-yet-rabid-stare. I could sense his eyes following me as I walked down the block…ugh.
After getting home and walking the dog, I realize that I left my laptop in my car. I decide that it is more prudent to fetch the computer than to explain to the cops why I left a laptop in a car parked next to a crazed semi-homeless man.
Harley is afraid of fireworks and gunfire-like popping noises.
So, he’s spent the past week cowering in the bathroom because it’s the only room in the apartment without windows.
It’s 1am. I’m in my boxers, crouched in my living room, wiping-up a massive pile of diarrhea.
I lysol. I wipe. I lysol again.
The trash can fills. I get a strong whiff of the nast and shoot the dog a “fuck you and die” glare.
He cowers in the corner.
The same thing happens every night.
Harley hears me brush my teeth, dashes into the bedroom, and lunges on my bed.
I then spend the next 15 minutes explaining to him why he can’t just commandeer my sleeping space, as he shoots me the “bitch boo bye” look.
Harley then closes his eyes and starts snoring, and I get frustrated and shove him out of the way.
The compromise usually consists of half the 100-pound snoring-farting-mess sleeping on my leg…