Non-Phone Things

Yesterday in Evidence a student fainted. He regained consciousness and was alright, don't worry. But it was...jarring. I felt so bad for him. Someone called 911 and an ambulance came. The paramedic had him step outside (he came back in). It must have been super embarrassing. (Also embarrassing - I can't spell embarrassing without a spellchecker.) It was one of the worst ways to lose 10 minutes of class I have ever experienced. I would have far preferred to listen to my professor.

Today I also came across a 2-minute old car accident. I jogged to Safeway to get cranberry sauce and when I came back there was a car in the middle of the road that had just been hit. I missed the exciting part. But what is going on around me this week? The cranberry sauce was used to make a delicious sauce to go with pork tenderloin and mashed potatoes. Delicious. The taste was clearly not marred by the perilous circumstances of the cranberry sauce's acquisition.

Somehow this week I am actually paying attention in classes. Even in Professional Responsibility, which is silly because the MPRE is over. By the way, the MPRE went "meh who knows." As Ron put it, it's the kind of test where you walk out feeling like you failed, but then you pass. I did the first part, I haven't learned about the second part. The first question (of 60) was the juiciest (it wasn't very juicy), about sexual relations with a client. And there was no "good answer," only a "best answer." It isn't good to have an "Oh crap, I don't know" question as your first one. Not a good tone for the rest of the exam. I took the MPRE at American's law school. Across the street they have a Crate & Barrel with a Starbucks inside. I could wait for my latte while shopping for plates. It was the most bourgeois thing ever. It could also be right out of a "Stuff White People Like" post. Hilarious.

After the MPRE, I started reading Game of Thrones again. It is getting crazy. And hard to put down. It was a good call to stop reading when I did.

If you are wondering, the Jay-Z/Kanye West concert was awesome. Jay-Z was better live. He sounds as good, if not better than he does on album. Kanye sounds fine, but his songs have a tendency to be so produced that it just isn't the same live. And he isn't as fast (maybe because he isn't a "real" rapper). They played a lot of stuff from Watch the Throne, and most of their individual hits. I can only think of two Kanye hits they didn't play - Love Lockdown and Through the Wire. But Jesus Walks and Good Life were fantastic live. As were Hard Knock Life, 99 Problems, and Dirt Off Your Should from Jay-Z. It's alright to be jealous in this case. I owe Damien for getting the tickets.

It's time to face the reality that I don't know how iPhones work. Oh, but I said non-phone stuff.

You know whose music is totally unappreciated by my generation? Arlo Guthrie. But he's the man. Huge Alice's Restaurant fan (Thanksgiving tradition to listen to it).

Damn it. I just missed Top Chef.

Does anyone know how to use this damn thing? I feel old - technology is now beyond me. Oh, but not talking about it.

Instead we'll talk about...brunch. The best meal of it week. Really! It's a once-a-week kind of meal. Especially with bottomless mimosas. But it's the best meal. I pretty much discovered that upon moving to DC. They just don't do it the same way in Boston. Stupid Puritan laws. In my youth they still had Sunday Blue Laws! What is that??!! Let the people shop on Sundays. Let them have drink specials! If you were real puritans, you would just insist they run around in those silly buckle hats. I'd be down.

Tread Carefully

This morning I woke up motivated to work out. That motivation is unnatural and probably came from the amount of hors d'ourvs I ate the previous night at a holiday party. Everything was a puff pastry or melted cheese. Or both! I love baked brie. But it's not exactly like eating a salad. Melted cheese, why are you so good? So in the name of working off a few holiday calories, and because I hadn't gotten to work out for a couple of days before and likely will not tomorrow, I decided to go for a morning run. On the treadmill. In the basement of my building. It's not like I slogged three miles through the rain to the gym. But still, running in the morning, that's pretty good for a lazy guy. I'd say about 20% of the time I'm in the work out room someone else is in there. Maybe less frequently than that even. As luck would have it there was one woman in there on the bicycle. Fine, not a problem. I got on the treadmill and ran for a while. In the midst of my run I brushed the cord of my headphones. In slow motion I saw the cord ripple and begin to pull my iPod down. Still in slow-mo I reach to catch my iPod before it falls, but I'm not quite fast enough. Unfortunately, my mind was also going in slow-mo, and it didn't stop me from making a second grab at my iPod while completely forgetting that I was running on a damn treadmill. So my arms reach down, my feet stop running, and my body is hurled off the treadmill against the wall, still grasping for my iPod. I landed on my left elbow, which still hurts a little. The woman on the bicycle looked up to see me recovering on the floor. I quickly popped up and kept running, raising my iPod to show her what I had been going after. In the end I got my iPod back, but I left some dignity on the floor behind the treadmill.
I probably should have just stayed in bed.

That, unfortunately, was the most exciting part of my day. The rest of it was studying Civil Procedure and Contracts, and being cold. Also starting a scrabble game (on facebook) out with a seven letter word due to being handed two blanks in my opening hand. That was pretty sweet. Speaking of scrabble, Brendan played the word "pika" in a game. That's not a real word, I'm sorry. It's just not. You can tell me it's an animal in some obscure corner of the planet, but I'm not going for it. Anything from Pokemon is right out. Try putting "snorlax" out there as a seven letter word and I'll hit you.

Here's a good idea

The first night of law school orientation the entire class was invited out to a bar called Third Edition. It's a trendy bar in Georgetown with two levels, a live DJ, and an outside Tiki bar (apparently because of the palm trees and kayaks on the wall). I would have renamed this bar the Trade-off Bar. You either had to be inside where the air conditioning was blasting as much as the music was or outside where they were venting the hot air and simply standing was reason enough to perspire. Essentially it was a choice between being able to hear people while putting them off because of your sweat, or being nice and cool yet having to lean in and ask "What did you say?" every two sentences. It was not ideal for meeting our classmates.

Even less of a good idea was dancing. Everyone who was there (I think) was from school. So you would have thought that they would be smart enough not to even approach the dance floor where certain embarrassment was waiting for them. You certainly thought they would be smart enough not to dance in an incredibly risque manner with strangers, aka people who will see you in class next week. You were wrong. This happened. And people watched. And I can only hope that it was embarrassing for them. Of course it was a nice opportunity for the rest of us to lean on the bar and bond over how we were all glad we did not have poor enough judgement to grind with a stranger to a Pitbull song with the possibility of sitting next to them tomorrow.

I spent at least fifteen minutes talking about my disapproval with some people I had just met. I also spent a long time meeting people while sweating profusely at the Tiki bar. Turns out most people are older than me, yet they do not know more than me about what to expect at law school. I did feel slightly stigmatized for being so comparatively, but it's not exactly something I can help. Plus people said President Kennedy was too young when he became president, and look at him, he's...ummm dead. Oops.

Mostly people talked about law school rankings, LSAT's, where they were from, and where they were living currently. I'm sure I had the exact same conversation with about seven people. But I think that's the nature of orientations. We don't really have common experiences yet, so we just tell each other facts about ourselves hoping that will spark a conversation that is more interesting. So far most people I talk about college with either say "Oh, do you know _____?" which I inevitably do not, or they say "Never heard of it. Where's that?" They aren't the most interesting conversations I've ever had. I have tried to limit my who-do-you-know-from-college game playing with other people. So far I've only done it with one person and been slightly successful. And we actually had a fairly interesting conversation about things other than undergrad institutions and hometowns. So I'd call that a success.

As far as the people I have met go, very few people are completely awkward, which is a nice change from college. Of course it makes me guarded, because I certainly have the potential for awkwardness of large proportions. So I certainly haven't tried to make friends by asking people what Star Wars movie is the best and yelling at them until they agree it is Empire. I was talking with a guy named Matthew for a while and we exchanged concerned looks when some kid was yelling about how he had classes on Friday and was super pissed and a bunch of trivial other stuff that I don't remember because I didn't care. Hopefully I can at least get some sort of cynical mocking rapport going with some people. After all, it is one thing I am good at and used to. Bottom line so far: meeting new people kinda sucks and making new friends is a difficult, awkward process.