Go Down Moses

Had a nice little 6 person seder tonight with some friends from school. It was very informal, for example the photocopied haggadah mentioned the parting of the "Reed" Sea, and I'm not sure it mentioned the burning bush at all. Was Moses ever named? I can't remember. But it was still nice for the ritual and tradition of it, particularly since I was a little bummed that I couldn't go home for the regular seder at my mom's house, full of Veuve Clicquot.

Two people in the elevator think I'm a drug addict. They were discussing what people do when they get old. I am assuming they were talking about a grandmother or some relative. The girl said "go to exercise class twice a day." The elevator door opened and I said "Heroin. That's what they do." Then walked out. I'd call that a good first impression.

I need to get to sleep earlier. It's my new goal. That and winning at the game of life. But that second one is more of a long-term thing. A marathon, rather than a sprint. Sprint sucks, I'm glad I have AT&T. Now I'm free associating; time to sleep for real.

John Denver did some things.

Also, before I forget (and this is actually sincere), I want to thank everyone I've improv-ed with and improv itself. Improv has helped me so much in law school, particularly getting on ADR Board and (more saliently) Moot Court Board. The competitions, and many aspects of school, are heavily reliant on thinking on your feet, giving snappy responses, and going with the flow of an unpredictable situation - all skills that improv helps immensely in developing. Who knew something so fun would be so useful? I totally lucked out in this regard.

Another Convert; I Win

I woke up this morning feeling somewhat dissimilar to P-Diddy. Perhaps that's because I woke up before 8 am despite the fact that it was Sunday morning. Ugh. Round 3 of moot court was slated for 9:30. I got to school at 8:45, did a mock argument with Tracy for a warm up, then did my actual argument. I didn't think it went incredibly. Not as good as yesterday. Plus I had an extremely petulant judge who would not quit with his abrasive questioning. He interrupted my answer to another judge's question to ask me some inane question. Multiple times. There were three judges, one asked me maybe 2 questions, the second about 3 questions, and this one probably 17 questions. Many of the questions were completely preposterous and irrelevant. He did the same thing to my opposing counsel, who also felt he was more than a tad overbearing. I thought maybe it was supposed to be this way because it's the final round of the competition and it's supposed to be more difficult. Nope, turns out he's just a self-important jerk. In the feedback portion (after the arguments are over) he was the only judge who felt the need to introduce himself and tell us that he was a 3L in charge of some clinic. He's kind of a big deal, I was very impressed. Nope. I was far more impressed that I didn't lash out at him during my argument: "Your honor, that question is completely off topic, inapplicable to the facts of this case, and was delivered with a smug hint of superiority which neither I, my opposing counsel, or your fellow judges appreciate." Wouldn't that have been great? Instead I stood there, sucked it up, and dealt with it. Apparently I dealt with it well enough - I made moot court board. Woo, another thing to throw on my resume. I can also now represent my school in external moot court competitions should I so choose - not likely.
A lot of my friends made it to the third round but did not ultimately make board. I felt bad for them, they put in a lot of work and I'm sure they did really well. It's ultimately such a subjective judgment. In this regard, announcing your accomplishments on facebook is a pretty tacky thing to do, and one which is certain not to win you any friends. We all see that your name is on the list, you don't have to rub it in everyone's face.
The most gratifying part about the competition turned out to be winning my individual oral arguments by implication. Opposing counsel from the second round didn't make it to the third round and opposing counsel from the third round didn't make board. Does that mean I won? I think it does. I win! Competition! Yes, the meaning of life is proving that you are better than your competitor. That and happiness (note: probably not the actual meaning of life, this is mere speculation, but if someone tells me what the actual meaning of life is I'll post it here). Oh yeah. Now that I don't have a sport to be constantly competitive about this is how I get my competitive kicks. Sad, really. Law school, you disgust me.

Speaking of disgusting, four of my friends foolishly participated in the Golden Monkey challenge last night. One finished, but didn't remember it. Two remembered everything but didn't finish. One did not come close to finishing or remembering. Who really won? Well depending on how you look at it, I think Reza won (he finished but didn't remember). Reza came over this morning feeling and smelling awful. It was after I came back from my oral argument. He chose to lie down on the floor, despite offering him my bed to lay down on. But it was productive for him, he's about one episode away from being hooked on the West Wing thanks to yours truly. He got a big kick out of Sam being unable to discuss the Roosevelt Room (which is actually named after both Teddy and Franklin), and of the President's entrance in the Pilot (go figure). Another convert is coming.

I can't stop listening to Flogging Molly. Fantastic.

Goodbye bread! I'll miss you for the next week or so. You too, rice, you were always a good friend. It's not you, it's Passover. That stupid Pharaoh kept changing his mind. It's his fault. He should have just been decisive, and either let the Hebrews go or not. And if you let them go, then give them some time to let the dough rise. As it happened I'm pretty glad he let them go; the outcome worked out pretty well...kind of (there's apparently some sort of ongoing conflict in the Middle East). I'm no bible scholar though. For a more complete understanding of Passover I'll have to refer people to the Rugrats, Prince of Egypt, or the Ten Commandments. Or the bible, but that thing is cumbersome at times and not written in contemporary English.
Fun fact that I just made up about the Exodus story: the burning bush was an early allegory for STDs and served as an early caution to use birth control.

Laziness v. Aspirations

Where has this week gone? Unclear. It was pretty erroneous. Life is erroneous.
The highlight has to be the auction at school on Thursday night. It was to raise money for summer funding for some program - something resembling a good cause. Most of the "items" were a variation on dinner with a professor. A wine-tasting for 6 with my Civ Pro professor went for $1200. Why? He's a popular professor and to give you an idea, one nickname of his is The Silver Fox. Wine from his personal wine cellar. He has a wine cellar? Of course he does, he has everything you could ever want in this world. It's sickening. I'm sure his wine cellar is right next to the stable where he keeps the Pegasus he rides to school everyday. Anyway, the auction was hilarious. I wisely abstained from even bidding on anything, but it was tough. The organizers were handing out free beer and pizza. In order to get more beer all you had to do was raise your beer and catch the eye of one of the roving beer distributors. Free beer brought to you. This caused a lot of people to get inappropriately drunk. Additionally it led to a spirit of recklessness in bidding on auction items. Chants, cheers, and boos were quickly instituted and many bidding wars ensued. The peer pressure in that room was overwhelming. It was enough to make me want to bid on crap that I clearly did not want/need/couldn't afford. Mostly sniper training.

Friday afternoon the people advancing to Round 2 of the Moot Court Competition were announced. I was on the list. Friday night the argument times were posted. 1PM Saturday. Gee, thanks for letting me know so far in advance. My suit is not clean, I am not motivated, and I haven't even thought about this problem in a week. I thought it was all over. Well time to suit up and dive back in. A lot of people who advanced expressed regret over doing so. In the constant battle between laziness and aspirations, laziness seems to be winning.

I am all about "Africa" by Toto. What an incredibly awful song!

Are you there LRW, it's me, Will

Morning post! What a rarity. It's because I actually went to sleep at a reasonable time last night and woke up before I had a class to sprint to this morning. My reading for today is actually done; some of my reading for tomorrow is even done. I have ample time to browse the news and sip a cup of coffee. What's going on here? Oh, LRW is basically over - that godforsaken class. Exquisite.

LRW ended for all intensive purposes on Saturday morning around 10:45 when I walked out of my oral argument, looking very sharp in my suit if I do say so myself. Being a very classy gentleman, I congratulated opposing counsel on a good argument (which it truly was), straightened my tie, and did the black power fist in the air to show solidarity with my brothers and sisters who lined the halls of DC Superior Court, waiting for their oral arguments to commence. I think my own oral argument was pretty good, but who really knows? And who cares? Not me, it's over!

In celebration I met up with Rebecca and Vanessa, who was in town, and we ended up walking from the Smithsonian metro stop all the way to Arlington National Cemetery. That's a long walk. But it was fantastic - the day was glorious and did I mention that LRW was over. On the way we stopped by the Washington monument, WWII memorial, and Lincoln memorial. Arlington, which I had never been to, was pretty incredible. It is absolutely huge. I went and saw the Kennedys - John, Bobby, and Teddy. Sad face. Needless to say I love the Kennedys (I have a picture of those three on my wall) and I find them a fascinating family, so I was happy to get to pay my respects. And I was respectful. Unlike the people who were shouting into their phones or posing for pictures despite the signs asking for quiet and respect. Come on people. The worst was someone who had to explain to his friend who Teddy Kennedy was as they were stepping up to see the grave. "President Kennedy's brother. He died, like, recently." "Who? When?" There are ten million nasty things I can say about that, but what it really left me with is the idea that many people in this country do not have enough of a sense of history or a respect for the past. And here's one mean comment: Read a freaking book people - one that isn't Harry Potter!

I don't know what this says about me, but this was my ending thought, which I said to Vanessa, upon leaving Arlington: Wow, this place would make a crazy good zombie army. If I were a necromancer, I'd totally come here.
Probably too much Diablo 2 in my past. But there I was always a barbarian...

Sunday, the first full day without LRW, was largely consumed by a Passover themed scavenger hunt around Dupont Circle. The 10 clues, each of which led us to a new location, were of course plague-themed. Wow. Despite how this may sound and how bad you are judging right now, it was actually a lot of fun. My team did not win. But we also did not lose. Most importantly we didn't make ourselves look like a bunch of hyper-competitive JAPs (I'm looking at you team of girls who screamed at your teammates to run everywhere, made rude comments to my team, and wore incredibly tight and unfortunately revealing spandex). Then beers, frozen yogurt, and college basketball. So really, who won here?
I mean it was no Scavenger Hunt (I didn't get banned from IHOP, fight off capture, or throw tea bags into Boston Harbor), but it was still fun.

What A Crazy Friday Night

Live from DC...it's Friday night! And I am sitting at home reading my opposing counsel's brief and looking up cases on LexisNexis. Why? Because I have oral arguments tomorrow morning. Thus, I am not going to Barrister's Ball (law school prom), nor am I going anywhere else tonight except to sleep (if I'm lucky and my body feels like cooperating). I am a huge winner.

Problem: opposing counsel's brief is...well...how do I say this politely...poor. There are punctuation errors, spelling errors (my favorite was leaving the "e" off "rationale"), organization problems, and statements that are just plain wrong. It's all very distracting and makes the brief hard to follow and difficult to rebut. I only have 15 minutes of oral argument - how am I supposed to point out all of her factual errors and make my own case while responding to questions from the judges? It's going to be a balancing act. Hopefully her oral argument will be a little less...incorrect than her brief. I'm really not trying to be mean here; the brief really just has misleading/incorrect information. I personally like opposing counsel. We'll see how it goes over tomorrow morning.

I do not have enough quarters to do laundry. My closet tells me this is going to be a huge problem very soon.

My Contracts professor describing a party breaching a contract: "He pulled out and disappeared." I laughed a little because I am immature. But not as immature as the people who laugh when my Property professor talks about testators and dying intestate. (Testate means leaving a valid will. Fun fact, which I did not know until this week.)

Good news: apparently the interview went well - I got the job! Very exciting.

More good news: my mom was in town for business tonight and I went out to dinner with her. It was nice to see her. It was also nice to eat steak. Of course, I learned from my lesson at the Brazilian restaurant in January and only had one plate of meat. Six was too many. Nakul knows.

Now You Are Older

Since no one could decide what they were actually going to do for St. Patrick's Day, I decided to throw a party and nail down my own plans. I'm a man of action. You get some interesting looks carrying three cases of beer down the street, as I found out. You also get a sharp pain in your arms. The party started after my mock moot court. Yes, a mock moot. It is a fake run through of a fake appellate argument. You don't get much closer to being a fake human being than doing a mock moot. Thanks, law school. Anyways, back to the party. At the beginning I was kind of running around making sure everything was set up. Had to update my dying iPod, get speakers, etc. I also had to eat dinner, because beginning the night on an empty stomach would have been ingredient one in a recipe for a huge disaster. Around 9 people started trickling in and it worked out nicely. All told there were probably 20-30 people who came and went. We went through all the Guinness and all the Baileys (often used in conjunction). And other things as well - whiskey, wine, Goldschlagger (not very Irish, tsk tsk). A lot of people said they had a good time, that's a good indication. I certainly had a good time. Anat was very accommodating and had fun as well. Some neighbor, however, was not as thrilled. At 11:30 we get a loud banging on the door. "Alright, now it's 11:30, time to turn it down. That's enough." Alright guy, you got it. Turned the music down, didn't even bother to hush people . No further problems. Another good sign...until I get evicted tomorrow, that would be poor.
The evening included singing Dropkick Murphys songs, car bombs, discussing Magic Cards, and other St. Patty's Day traditions. I was informed this morning by Stephanie that I threatened to kill a lot of people last night. That sounds like something I'd do.
The night ended, as all good nights in Dupont do, with going to get jumbo slice at Alberto's. Nothing is better than watching a large, steaming pizza be taken out of the oven, cut into 4 slices, and being handed one of those slices. Mmmm delicious quarter of a pizza, you make me so happy. Anthony had two (codename: half a pizza). That probably sat well in the ol' stomach.

I may have gotten a little carried away in the spirit of the evening, however, and this morning I was not feeling my prettiest. But I did receive what I am dubbing the Text Message of the Week from Keara: "I am at work...still drunk. Victory!" sent at 9:06 AM. Excellent.
I also got a call from Emma, who I called last night. Emma told me that I left her a voicemail. I wanted to talk about something with her, but I knew that I wouldn't remember what I wanted to talk about so I told her to tell me to look at my facebook messages. I left myself a clue! I absolutely cannot believe that I had the foresight to leave myself a clue about what I wanted to talk about. That is actually amazing. I win the game.

One incident from last night that I just remembered: Ryan got stuck in my bathroom, honestly I think he was just too drunk to muscle open the door. I had to rescue him and in doing so I hit him with the door. He stumbled backwards a couple steps then just thanked me for getting him out of the bathroom - nothing about hitting him with the door. He proceeded to forget much of the evening. Then Notre Dame lost today and he proceeded to lose his mind.

Earlier this week I went to Boston Sunday to Tuesday. It was for a job interview on Tuesday, but I made the executive decision to skip the extra 2 classes on Monday to get to spend some time in Boston. Civ Pro and Con Law can wait. I played with lots of people, which was excellent. Nothing better than getting off the plane, eating at my favorite Chinese food restaurant, and then getting coffee with Shakedface. Of course it was raining all Sunday and Monday and after dinner with Shaked, Ron, Braver, and Yael on Sunday I had to go home to literally help my mom bail out our basement. After an hour or two my mom realized it probably wasn't going to help much more. We ended up with at least 6 inches of water in the basement. I think a replica Noah's Arc was floating around. I thought about buying some scuba gear. We called the fire department when there was only 3 inches of water and were informed that they wouldn't come until there was 6 inches. Also, we were around #150 on the list to be bailed out by the fire department. Tax money going to a good use!
Sunday night I also went with Shaked to briefly see some superstars including Ethan, Kuss, Ben, Keara, and Foxy Matt Brown who deserves special mention for speaking highly of this very blog.
Monday night Ron, Shaked, Ethan, Erica, and Chris (Erica and Chris also get special mention for talking about the blog) came to play and endured my necessarily being distracted by a fantasy draft. I'm not proud of being distracted...but I am proud of the team I drafted, so that's some solace.
Might I reinforce how great it was to see everyone who I saw? Yes, I might. And there, I just did. It was a rhetorical question, why did I answer? I don't know, I just did. There, another rhetorical question that I answered. I have to stop doing that - answering my own questions that do not necessitate answers. Gross. This is like not being able to understand my own sarcasm.
Tuesday was a day of sunshine and the interview. The interview went well, and hopefully that works out. But of course the day the sun comes out I went back to DC. Sad face. Back to the land of fame, excess, am I gonna fit in? Yes, yes you are, Miley. Because the next day was St. Patrick's Day which was a hoot and a holler. For a full description, begin this post over again.

Raise What's Left of the Flag for Me

My head hurts. Why? I'll tell you when you're older.

Happy "Evacuation Day"

Ok, Now

Figured it out. That's right, formatting, I beat you! <--Pathetic. 1 more edit tomorrow, then I am done with writing crap for LRW!! So excited. So what if this is nearly 2000 words under the limit? My professor likes concision. And not my writing, so it probably won't make a difference either way. Who cares? I'm done writing! Oh joyous day.

This calls for a celebration. How about going to Boston tomorrow through Tuesday? OK, done. Yup, that's happening. It's actually for a job interview, but that's neither here nor there. I hope to see some cool cats. That was about my mom's cats, Boots and Brady. I also hope to see some friends. That would be phenomenal. I am there for an extremely limited time, I know. Sucks, but oh well. I'm already missing two days of class for this. Exciting, right? Right.

Sharks suck!

I've been listening to Flogging Molly a lot recently. I'm a fan. Not even because one of my favorite holidays is next Wednesday. Though I am super excited for that. I will miss being at college for St. Patrick's Day though. Those were some fun, possible excessive, times. The memory that stands out to me (and I have lost quite a few memories of those days) is junior year bellowing Dropkick Murphys at the top of my lungs with Packard and Keara while staring at a table completely covered with empty Guinness and Baileys bottles. I'm sure more reminiscence will follow. Let's see if we can't make some more "memories" this year.

I wish I had more exciting stories from this week, but nothing was particularly exciting unless you are a huge fan of Microsoft Word, which consumed most of my week. Also, I have been fighting off being sick for a few days. That's obnoxious. I drank three cartons of orange juice in three days! How could my body possibly even think about getting sick? If science has taught me anything it is that I should be healthy right now. I should be more than healthy. I should be a Nietzschean superman! (I took an entire course on Nietzsche and if you asked me what his philosophy is I still couldn't tell you. What a guy.) Also sometimes Nietzsche makes me want to change my name to Zarathustra so after every sentence I say I can add "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."

One more thing - new career goal: At some point in my legal career I want to yell "I AM THE LAW" at someone. They will be scared as hell; I'll be kidding but they won't know that. Much better that way.

Not Your Usual Blog Post - That's Later

Is anyone really good with Microsoft Word? Like, do you know how I could have my page numbers go i, ii, 1, 2, 3...? Because I am friggin about to lose it. This appellate brief is so close to done. Last paper of the year. Last writing assignment for stupid LRW. And I can't get the pagination correct. What could be worse? Being stuck in an elevator with Jabba the Hut. That would be worse.

Also, what was Luke Skywalker's aunt's name? Uncle was named Owen. Aunt was named ...? They were moisture farmers. What a horrible profession. Maybe I'm happy that I'm in law school and don't live on a desert planet with two suns.

It's so damn hot out. Law school was a bad choice.

This is a bad week for lots of people I'm hearing. People are s-t-ruggling (credit to Caitlin on that one). I will include myself in that category, seeing as my appellate brief is due on Sunday and I didn't really do any work on it tonight. Additionally I may or may not be behind in reading and not entirely clear about what is happening in Con Law at the moment. So do not worry fellow strugglers, you are not alone. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother." Too dramatic? Yeah, but whatever. Maybe more appropriate is "misery loves company."

The chief cause of struggling today was my computer AC adapter. It is funny how dependent we are on all sorts of technology. And funnier still that this makes us dependent on a variety of chargers which are essential for continuing our day to day lives. Maybe that's why chargers are so expensive to replace, they know we need them. Well, my AC adapter let me know it was on its last legs in Civ Pro when I spent the entire class learning about summary judgment while holding a wire into the electrical outlet in a certain position that would allow it to charge my computer. By the time I got home my charger just refused to work. I spent an incredibly frustrating half hour on the phone with Dell trying to figure out what charger I needed to buy as a replacement. During my time on the phone with the good people at Dell (aka "Frank" in "the USA") I had to give three separate people (with three separate fake names - I don't like being deliberately lied to) the exact same information. It all got rather frustrating. At the end of it "Mary" finally told me what type of charger was the replacement and that it would cost $65. Oh, great, so I assume you can overnight that to me? Nope, turns out not - the quickest would be 2 day delivery for an additional $15. Let's see here, I can spend $80 and not have my computer for two days, or go to Best Buy tonight and pay $100 for a 'universal' charger. I'm typing this right now, so what do you think I chose? What a waste of my time, Dell. On the plus side, it is kind of cool that I got to speak to people halfway around the world today! Even if they lied to me. Were they in the Southern hemisphere? Does the water go down the drain backwards for them? Should have asked! Maybe I'll invent a problem for Dell so I can go call back and ask them. Then I'll ask them if their refrigerator is running. Then I'll remember that I'm in law school and clearly do not have time for these shenanigans. The only shenanigans I have time for are writing an inane blog and getting very angry about things over which I have no control.

I should have known today wouldn't go that well. I hit snooze three times. I think that is a law school record, though not an impressive one. Of course then I had to run to LRW (another sign today wasn't good), and in the process I forgot the coffee I had made and left on my kitchen counter. In a mug, maybe that wasn't clear. I had to buy coffee on the way to school at ABP, kinda a waste of $1.97. Yeah, I have the price memorized, wanna fight about it? That was almost balanced out by getting a free sandwich for lunch (yay!). But it was a vegetarian sandwich (boo!).

Additionally, my stupid school's deadline for applying to law clinics is Wednesday. It was nice of them to tell us that. Of course they couldn't be bothered to tell us how to apply or where to find an application. Administrative fail. Same as everything else that goes on in the administration.

Lady Gaga - you need to stop.
Lady Godiva - you need to stop also...doing whatever it is you do.

"The Supreme Court has held that..." - passive voice or past perfect tense? I think past perfect tense.

I messed up my shirt with salad dressing. Balsamic vinaigrette, you have crossed me for the last time!

We Built This City

First off, big shout outs to Jonah and Missy for letting me stay at their places in New York and being generally awesome.

As you should gather from my first off statement, I was in New York this week, thus the lack of updates. It was really nice to see people, to have a week without classes, and to get out of DC for a little while. Despite being in the biggest, loudest, most hustling-bustling city in the country, I feel more relaxed after the week. I took the bus up Tuesday and read a New Yorker basically the entire way. That filled my brain up pretty good, which probably accounts for my poor showing at trivia with Jonah that night. Either that or accidentally going through five pitchers between three of us. Yeah, didn't realize that was happening, then I wondered why it was difficult for me to remember the four states that are actually commonwealths. I did get them eventually. (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and...drum roll...Kentucky.) Though I'm also going to say that I was distracted by fantasy baseball talk, 'cause I'm the coolest, least nerdy person ever.

The next two days were basically spent walking around the city and writing my appellate brief. I went on a tour de coffee shops. Seats near electrical sockets became a precious commodity. I became an expert at which places have nice bathrooms and which do not. I pirated internet when necessary, drank innumerable medium (sometimes grande) coffees, and listened to at least half a dozen women complain to their girlfriends about a coworker who was ruining their life. On Wednesday I went to dinner with Nina on the west side and walked 2.6 miles back to Jonah's apartment, needing to pee the entire way. It was terrible! I was constantly on the lookout for a Starbucks and in those 2.6 miles I did not see one. I must have taken the only streets in Manhattan that do not have a Starbucks strewn around. Upon reaching Jonah's house I had to blow off his parents' greetings and proceed immediately to the bathroom for what will go down as one of the most satisfying visits of my life. Then I was happy to sit on the couch with him mom and talk about how ridiculous American Idol is. Jonah did MCAT studying like a loser. A loser who wants to go to med school.

Back to American Idol for a second - when did Ellen become a judge? I actually like that a lot - she can be meaner than Simon, yet funny at the same time. And you can't hate her because she's Ellen. Unless you are homophobic, then I guess you can hate her, but I will consider your views repulsive. I was afraid she was going to be a Paula-style, lovey dovey, full of crap judge. I guess they have someone else for that now, some woman I don't know. Can't be worse than having Lil' Mama as a judge. I forget what show that was, I want to say America's Best Dance Crew, but it was terrible. I was in pain every time she spoke. Not only does she not have a basic command of the English language but she has no talent to speak of and is generally moronic.

Thursday night I watched "Night at the Museum 2" with Missy. Actually an amusing movie. I love silly historical humor, so that definitely helps, and there are a lot of good comedians in it.
The next evening (I guess that would be Friday evening) I met up with a lot of people at a bar on the west side. Nina, Jonah, SKlass, and Emma who came in from Worcester. The bar was a little fratty - it had beirut tables in the back and was giving out free shots of American Honey - but it was fun. There was a fat version of Owen Wilson, I met friend's friends, and general revelry ensued. Also a waitress tried to sell me some kind of drink that is designed to prevent hangovers. The conversation was basically this:
Her: "It's supposed to hydrate you"
Me: "Oh, like water."
Her: "It helps with hangovers"
Me: "Like water?"
Her: "You can use it as a chaser for shots."
Me: "Ok, so water?"
This type of thing continued for a while. As far as I can tell this is water, but it comes in a can and is more expensive. Needless to say I did not purchase any.
Lots of people left the bar so I went with SKlass and her friend to a bar on the east side that was playing Paul Simon, Billy Joel, and Journey rather than Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas. I wasn't complaining. Some guy kept telling me he was impressed that I knew the lyrics to "You Can Call Me Al." Another guy wore an effeminate scarf then got defensive about it. A third (everyone's favorite) made out with some girl in a manner that cleared the dance floor. A fourth looked like he wanted to stab me in the neck after I stopped him from whispering sketchy things into Sarah's friend's ear. That was pretty much the scene. Everyone was in their work clothes and with their coworkers, but that didn't stop them from making bad decisions. Earlier that day Sarah asked me what DC bars were like. I told her they were more like this one.

Saturday I got woken up bright and early to go to Costco with Missy and her brother. After Costco and a delicious brunch of blueberry pancakes where, in a rare move, I chose over french toast and did not regret my decision, I walked around the city with Emma. It was very nice to see her, even if she had to leave to go to Brooklyn for dinner and then never came back to Manhattan. What is that? Come on! I forgive her. She did come all the way to New York.
I walked 60 blocks back to Missy's brother's apartment, a lovely little walk, and helped set up for their parents' 30th anniversary surprise party. The party was super cute; her parents are adorable and incredibly nice people. There was tons of delicious food (three plus sushi boats, tons of stuff from California Pizza Kitchen though not pizza, salads, lots of cheese, cake, etc.), karaoke, cute speeches, and lots of happy people. Missy's family really enjoyed it, which was the goal. So get the aircraft carrier and bust out the flight suit: Mission Accomplished.
After the party Missy and I went up to see Gavi and other people at a bar...for maybe 45 minutes. But I got to powerfist, so it was all for the best. Also, stayed up til 4 am for no good reason. Oops.

Best story of the trip:
I was on the subway walking up an escalator. There was a guy just standing in the middle of the escalator. Being in New York (though I do this everywhere), I said "Pardon me" in a somewhat sharp voice. He didn't react. Again, "Excuse me." This time he slides over to the right a little bit so I can pass. As I walk by I see he is just peeing on the escalator. Letting it all go. Oh New York.

The British Are Coming

I just went to the post office to mail one thing, which ended up costing $1.05, and I stood in line for no joke 20 minutes. The line was out the door. That post office was hopping. I didn't mind so much, it gave me time to watch a woman with a huge ring and a Coach bag attempt to tape a box. It was a pretty lame attempt. It was like she had never used tape before. She couldn't get the flaps of the box to stay while she applied the tape. I felt bad and almost offered to hold to box still for her, but it was way too amusing to watch her epic fail.

Journal competition is done! I handed it in with about 8 hours to spare. It is pretty much impossible to condense a 60 pages case into a 3 page summary. Also pretty impossible to make a good argument about it in 3 pages. So my note ended up being...impossible? Who really knows. It's over, that's the important part. And now, on to Spring Break!!! Let's go to Mexico!!! Wooooo. Oh, nearly forgot. Mexico isn't particularly safe at this moment, particularly not in the North. That's too bad. I guess I'll have to settle for going to New York. Alright, done (as of tomorrow).

I wish I had more amusing anecdotes, but sadly not too much happened in the second floor study room the past few days. I mean, normally it's a crazy place, but journal competition kinda put a damper on things. The roller coaster in there was shut down; the alligator pit was temporarily out of order; and the stabbing hobo went fishing. No excitement. Just blue-booking (worst activity ever, if you don't know what it is then your life is better).

I think Revolutionary War jokes are the greatest, particularly when drinking is involved. Idea for the night: get someone so drunk that they run naked up to Dupont Circle holding a bottle of whiskey and screaming "The British are coming!" Then I will coolly correct them, informing them that Paul Revere never would have said "the British are coming," rather it was more likely "the Redcoats are coming" or "the lobsterbacks are coming," since the colonists considered themselves British (and since lobsterback was a common nickname for British soldiers).