I Love Solid Food

It's amazing how much you appreciate solid food once you can no longer have it. For medical purposes (don't worry, I'm fine) I just ate my first meal in two days. It was General Gao's chicken and it was delicious. But this Thanksgiving, one of the things I am thankful for really might be the ability to eat solid food every day.
And my goodness, I drank literally two gallons of Gatorade yesterday to keep something in me. I am keeping that company in business. I'll throw it out there - blue is the best Gatorade. And orange is clearly the worst.

The Red Sox really need to pick it up. My advice is to stop sucking. Especially the starting pitching. John Lackey, I am looking at you, don't even try to hide in the corner.

My Professional Responsibility professor could make that class a lot more tolerable by speaking in clear, concise sentences. It would translate into notes much better. And it would clarify the rules. Instead, this is the kind of thing we listen to for two hours: "The test is two parts, with the first part being whether the lawyer has moved from one firm and is currently working at another firm, and this does not apply to secretaries, paralegals, or any other non-lawyers because they are regulated differently under the comments to Rule 1.10 which makes a difference between lawyers and non-lawyers because..." Now at this point, I have stopped paying attention and taking notes. But the problem is that it's a two part test. Remember he said that an hour ago? So if I tune out, I don't get the second part of the test. There is so much information in that sentence that it is impossible to write it all down. But its also redundant and/or useless information. Here is my proposal: "The test is two parts, with the first being whether the lawyer has moved firms and the second being whether the lawyer had a former client conflict. This test does not apply to non-lawyers..." and then he can go on and on with extraneous information. Complete sentences is what I'm asking for. End the run-ons. I don't need twelve clauses per sentence. Is that too much? Out of a lawyer? Probably.

Gunning Where It Matters

Last night was a fiasco. Not anything I did, per se, more what I did not do. Namely sleep. I probably got a solid 4 hours. I went to bed around 11, hoping to be in dreamland by 12. It turns out that was optimistic. I could not fall asleep no matter what I did. I read, watched tv, had a glass of wine, counted in my head, listened to music, etc. Nothing helped. I just lay there unpleasantly conscious. Covers on; covers off; covers half on; covers seven-eights off. Around 2:30 am I took a shower. My roommate must think I am a freak, but I think it helped so that sometime around 3:30 I drifted off. I woke up (with a wet pillow from my hair) on time this morning to take...my Criminal Procedure final. What a joy!

The final itself went alright. I felt pretty good about it, but so did everyone else. Our grades are distributed on a curve, so the better everyone else does, the harder it is for me to do well (see Will's common gripes about law school: grading curve). I tend to do better on more difficult finals, so I am a bit nervous about this one.
The other reason I am uneasy about this final is that two of the multiple choices questions should be disqualified. One of them had no correct choice as an answer (I am 99% certain, particularly after conferring with some classmates). The second question was not written in complete sentences. I believe the question was, "Which of the following is a true statement?:" The four answers were supposed to be about the Knock and Announce Rule, but only two of the answers actually referenced the rule. The other two answers simply contained incomplete sentences lacking a subject. In retrospect, the subject seems to be "the Knock and Announce Rule." But these incomplete sentences led to some semantic difficulties so that I did not even know what one of them was trying to say. Again, after conferring with classmates, I am not crazy, this actually happened. I want this question excluded (especially because I am not confident I picked the correct answer now that I fully understand what proposition each answer was trying to state).
I remembered the number of the first question (with no right answer), and after the exam I went to my professor's office to ask her to look for it in reviewing the tests. I stupidly forgot to mention the second question and had to later email her my request. Yeah, I felt like a gunner for doing that. But, hey, I am nervous about the test and this could really have an impact. This is real people. This is not a drill. So sometimes one must appear as a gunner. Luckily, I only did so to my professor rather than the rest of the class. And I guess to this blog. But no one on the internet is full of judgment, from my understanding.

Tears of Rage

This afternoon I made the mistake of reading Tax in bed. You guessed it, I fell asleep. But I was rudely awakened by 15 minutes of an Audi SUV's car alarm going off. I did a good job of ignoring the first 5 minutes of the racket, but it eventually became too much and I succumbed to the pressures of consciousness, followed immediately by anger. Someone turn that damn car alarm off or just steal the car already.

Last night I went to dinner with a college professor of mine who was in town. He contacted me on Tuesday to say he would be down in DC, and would I like to meet up. Of course I would! It was nice to catch up with him. But it was rather saddening giving him my honest (read: negative) impression of law school. He was quite interested because he has a J.D. himself and is often consulted by college students for advice on law school applications.

Barrister's Ball (law prom) is tonight. Reza is worried about dancing. I gave him Will Smith's advice from "Hitch." We can pretend like that's not the advice I follow also. The event includes an open bar and "heavy appetizers." I'm not sure what heavy appetizers consists of - an edible ten pound weight? But the open bar excites lots of people. I remember two Halloween's ago as an open bar cautionary tale. Plus how badly can you abuse an open bar when you are wearing a suit? "A lot," is the answer that creeps to the front of my mind. Uh oh. Let's all hope for the best. At very least, it might help Reza dance!

Happy Purim! Someone give me a Haman effigy to burn.

Last night at Damien's there was a serious debate about the spelling of "tear" (meaning rip). Some very intelligent people argued it is spelled "tare." They are wrong, though that is a word as well. They were getting tripped up by the fact that "tear" also refers to what you shed when you cry. I was staunch in my defense of the "tear" spelling, and rightly so, but it did make me question my own sanity very briefly.

I seem to have shipped up to Boston

Here I am, back in Boston for the "holidays." I woke up early this morning to catch a MARC commuter train to Baltimore. And from Baltimore I was to drive up with Nakul. Well my karma from waking up on time did not translate into good train schedule luck. The 7:30 train was delayed indefinitely and the 8:30 was outright canceled. I managed to get on an Amtrak and get to Baltimore, which was magical in itself because I had not yet had any coffee. While on the train, I almost kicked the guy in front of me who was listening to a playlist from his phone without any earphones plugged in. In fairness, I probably would have equally vindictive thoughts even if I had coffee, but it made my attitude was quite pronounced this morning. Nakul and I ended up making great time from Baltimore (6 hours) while avoiding most traffic and bad weather.

Since I last updated I've done a whole lot of nothing. Unless you count being at the bar as something. Then I've done a lot of something. For some reason all of my classmates were quite anxious to go drinking after finishing finals. Well who was I to say no? The post-finals party was pretty epic. I will remember it for my relative sobriety compared to everyone else's complete lack of let's say self-control. The word for it is mess. Hilarious mess that I can laugh about even if no one else will remember. Some drunk 1L kept buying everyone drinks, me included. Another drunk 1L bought everyone shots. As I was leaving, my drunk friend tried to buy me a shot which I politely declined. The problem was that he didn't just buy one shot for me, nor two shorts for us to have together. Rather, he bought five shots because he seemed to think that was a rational choice at that point of the night. He spent the next ten minutes trying to pawn some off because it was almost 2 am and (surprise surprise) most people were in no shape for ripping whiskey shots.

4 am is not a good time of day to be awake for. Next time I think its a good idea to play beer dice after closing down a bar, I need to think again.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have not slept well in a good long while. Between regular sleeping issues, a month of finals studying where I have problems shutting down my brain, bar nights, and early mornings, it has been a long haul. I am looking forward to at least three good nights of sleep this vacation. That's my goal. And if my cats wake me up, I will give them the crappy cat food for the entire time I am here, so help me. (Good threat, right?) Three nights - think I can do it? I am honestly not sure if I can. It's a wonder they don't make game shows out of these situations.

Too Tired, if this is incoherent I apologize

Apparently I have no time to update. I've been busy procrastinating. In fact, I just read an article in the New Yorker about procrastination in order to procrastinate doing work. How's that for meta? Then it just made me feel really bad about myself - it still didn't really motivate me to do the work that I should be doing.

BDP and Emma came in last Friday for the Rally to Restore Sanity, which was a smashing success to the tune of 200,000+ people. The signs were pretty great. For some reason my personal favorite was a counter to "The Rent Is too Damn High" which said "The Rent Is Proportional to Supply and Demand." But there were tons of great ones. The rally itself was amusing and fun. I have never been in a crowd that large before. The general tenor of the crowd was very civil, perhaps surprisingly so. There was no pushing and shoving, only cooperation and humor. It was all quite...sane. The performances themselves were varied, I'm sad that Kid Rock only did some crappy song that no one's ever heard before instead of doing that crappy song that everyone's heard. The Roots were great, Ozzy Osbourne was there (!!), and Stewart and Colbert were good times. There's probably more to that, but it's all too much to write down now. The only downside is that I got a sunburn on half of my face. I was standing in the sun for like 5 hours, I am fair-skinned, and I did not anticipate a need for sunblock (it being October 30th and all, not July 30th).

Halloween night ended well - with Ben Sandler at Ben's Chili Bowl (note: Ben's Chili Bowl is in no way associated with Ben Sandler, they both just happen to be named Ben. Sandler is in no way that I am aware of responsible for the ownership of Ben's Chili Bowl). That came after a really weird house party that I am still unclear as to why I was in attendance. I'm going to blame Alena because she's an easy target, not having a blog of her own to respond with and likely not even reading this one. Sucka.

While I'm mentioning people, I should say that the night before the rally I had the pleasure of seeing Caitlin and Molly. They are like Sister Sister with a few large differences...like they are not twins and do not have a television show. Other than that no differences come to mind (I am colorblind!). Sorry, I am really tired. I just wanted to update so it doesn't go a week with no news and my loyal readers (ha! what a joke) are not concerned that I have been picked up and shipped to Gitmo.

No political commentary about the election presently - I am too angry. Except to say that the state of Kentucky has elected a man who believes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be unconstitutional. Let's all reflect on that.

No 4am Wake Up Call For Me

I wanted to wake up insanely early to go to the Supreme Court tomorrow to see the oral arguments in Snyder v. Phelps, the case where a church group goes around protesting at the funerals of servicemen because they believe that people are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan because of America's tolerance of homosexuals and got sued. It pits the First Amendment against the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Very interesting stuff. Unfortunately, I am aware that around 50 people are already camped outside of the Court, waiting to get in at 9:30 tomorrow morning. First, that is very intense of them, and they are in for a night of rain, cement, and misery. Second, that means that even if I chose to join their slumber party this minute, I still would not get into the Court tomorrow morning. And you thought the wait time at Six Flags was bad! I am contemplating getting up tomorrow to go see the protesters outside of the Court, but that is unimportant enough that my desire for slumber will likely triumph.

It is official. I have a job. Huge sigh of relief. How ever will I fill my mandatory stress level now? What about worrying about other people? Done. I am now sending out positive energy. Or, as much positive energy as I am capable of mustering. Which might not be a lot compared to other people. Sorry. I really am trying...

I was talking about it, but it does occur to me, does Gogurt still exist? Was there a sufficient market for easily portable pouches of yogurt that it survives to this day?

Each day I find myself waking up with progressively less motivation to do inane work. I don't want to read a 7 page case which will be boiled down into a one sentence rule for the final. I don't want to listen to a 45-minute lecture about originalism in constitutional law that we already heard most of last week. And I don't want to write an explanation of how a note topic centered around Iran is not centered around the US. Thank you, law school, for the hours of fun.

New Toothbrush Day

It's new toothbrush day. That day when you are at CVS and finally remember that thing that has been gnawing at the back of your mind for a few weeks. That day when you get that nice crisp brush and remember why new toothbrushes are important. To accompany my new toothbrush I even purchased new toothpaste. Not a new kind, just a new tube. This is probably more important than the new brush; this morning I managed to squeeze out the last drop of toothpaste. Believe me, there were tense moments when I though I would not be able to get anything, that the well was dry. Luckily I avoided a terrible fate: having to sneakily use my roommate's sub-par toothpaste.

I think I found a new note topic! And it's not preempted! But I am trying not to jinx it. Two things. First, I don't know why, but I am increasingly superstitious and worried about jinxing things by discussing them. Maybe I need to go outside, run around the building, throw salt over my should and spit, or whatever it is. Second, Jinx was the name of the cat in the "Freddy the Pig" book series, which I enjoyed thoroughly as a child (as maybe continue to enjoy).

My Corporations professor went on a lengthy tangent about how he does not understand the "Poke" feature of facebook. Among his comments were, "I've never been poked," and "I always want to poke someone, but I never do. I just hover my cursor around it." He is a silly man. Speaking of professors, I ran into my old Property professor, who invited me to attend oral arguments with her class at the Supreme Court on Wednesday at 5 in the morning. She was so enthusiastic she gave me copies of the briefs and appellate court opinion to look over if I want. I am currently weighing how cool it would be to see a First Amendment oral argument at the Supreme Court against my desire for sleep. My current thinking: you only live once! I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Quarter to twelve and we just gettin' in

Thanks to refereeing a fencing tournament this weekend, I actually had to get up earlier during the weekend than I do the week. As a result, sleep has been difficult to come by, which is not aided by my body's refusal to turn off every night. Someone suggested tea or milk to help. I suggest whiskey.

Friday at work my "mentor" aka, the person in charge of the other intern and me, did not have any work for me to do in the morning. His instructions were "Go mess around on espn.com. I'll see what I can come up with." After four hours I finally got some work - organizing a spreadsheet in a different way and adding two sentences to a cover letter. Those took about 5 minutes each, and there wasn't a really good way to stretch them out. Then I got to look over a brief. Please discount the pun but that assignment was brief as well. Hope this week is more promising. Otherwise I'm starting to get angry as the computer cheats more and more at Hearts.

My friend who works at Ferragamo was trying to get me to buy shoes. While I am certain of their quality, on sale and with his 40% discount I still do not have $400 to spend on shoes, thank you.

While I do not desire to speak of the actual game, Thursday night I went out to a bar in Fenway for Game 7 Celtics/Lakers. Packard, fresh from a year in China, was present, as were a number of people I haven't seen in a while. Halfway through the game someone we knew started working the downstairs bar, so drinks were pretty easy to come by.
...I am not sure I have ever seen so many angry Bostonians in one place at around midnight that night. No one was happy. Thinking ahead, I parked my car about half a mile away from Fenway so I wouldn't get caught in a police barricade. I did walk by a few squads of riot police, tear gas ready, but I had no trouble getting home. Unfortunately there was no riot to disperse, and the precautions of the Boston PD were for naught.

There are some people who are perfectly nice who I just do not care for. People who are nice, and despite being kind of boring seem like they have more to themselves. What are you hiding? A ruthless, back-stabbing true personality? The fact that you are secretly (or not so secretly) a moron? Or are you actually just really boring? Unanswered questions.

I have to start writing cover letters this week. Self-promotion on paper addressed to "To Whom It May Concern" isn't my favorite thing. Maybe I'll just use blog entries and hope that they don't actually read cover letters.

Alejandro.

Why Michael? So you can fly away from your feelings?

Matt came to visit this weekend! It was quite exciting. We did a lot of things. Friday afternoon we went the the National Portrait Gallery. It's a crazy place. We saw, amongst other things, the presidential portraits. One of these things is not like the others can you guess which one it is? It's the portrait of George W. Bush. He is the only president whose official portrait does not have him looking at all dignified. George H.W. Bush, Clinton, etc. are all in suits, looking presidential. George W. Bush is sittin' on a sofa in a Western-style light blue shirt looking like he is about to tell hunting stories. He looks more like your Uncle Al than the 43rd President of the United States. I guess that's part of his "folksy" charm. How is he folksy? He went to Yale and Harvard, he's the son of a President and had everything in his life handed to him on a silver platter. I don't understand how that connects him with the common, hard-working American. Matt and I also managed to set off two alarms at the Portrait Gallery. Matt did it first. We were just walking down a hallway and there was a sculpture of an Indian (wah-wah) lying there. The Indian is holding a tomahawk which kind of juts out. Of course Matt walked next to the statue, a little too close to the tomahawk, and set off a loud alarm and jumped about 3 feet in the air. In addition he almost got scalped. The second alarm was my bad. I was looking at some modern "art" (in fairness I think it was a Rauschenberg). It was modern "art" so I clearly didn't understand it, and felt the need to take a closer peek at the little blurb about it. Turns out the security sensor didn't like that one either and it set an alarm off. Matt and I casually strolled away while a security guard (unarmed, no worries) checked out the situation. Things were fine.

That night we watched Arrested ("Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne...") and went to a party in Columbia Heights. It's a little bit of a sketchier area then the one I live in, but it went alright. I only thought we might get mugged once, so all things considered it wasn't a bad walk to the house from the Metro. The party contained an inverse ratio of awkwardness to beer drinking, which resulted in a pretty decent night. Then Saturday morning we went to the zoo. The best part about this zoo visit was the Bird House. One part of the Bird House is this fairly large, enclosed gazebo where a bunch of different birds roam (fly) free. We were looking at some low-energy birds when we heard an odd bird call. It was kind of a warbling sound that ended in a loud honk. And every time I heard the honk I couldn't help but laugh. It sounded like a clown nose or something. Matt and I went towards the noise, with me perpetually bursting into laughter, only to discover that this was not, in fact, all a bird call, rather the first part was a middle-aged woman warbling at a bird, provoking it to make this ridiculous honking sound. This woman was staring straight at the bird practically screaming at it. I'm laughing because of the ridiculous noise, and this woman's daughter (maybe thirty years old?) sees me and gets wicked embarrassed. I would too. Her mom is standing in the National Zoo provoking a honking peacock. She quickly dragged her mother away, but the peacock continued honking for a while and I continued laughing at it. The other animal that sent me into fits of hysterics was the iguana (still in the Bird House, oddly enough). It was just lying there smiling and opening its mouth. And it looked ridiculous. I couldn't get over it. But Matt can't say anything disparaging, the very first animal we saw he fell in love with-the sloth bear. Admittedly it was pretty awesome. He looked like a small bear (small for a bear that is) with an enormous head. Like a mascot costume-sized head. And he was sleeping, but he looked like he could have been dozing off in class. He was sitting upright doing that little nod thing you do before snapping your head up to make it look like you weren't asleep. Matt was in love. And of course people at the zoo were completely retarded again. This time "Look at the bear!!" They were looking at a tamarin monkey, which looks nothing like a bear. Seriously, google image search lion tamarin right now. Does that look like a bear to you? No. Why? Because you aren't a moron. Also, overheard at the lion cage: "There he is!!" (Said while looking at a lion without a mane, therefore clearly not a he.)

Later that day we saw a movie, "In the Loop," which was funny. Particularly if you enjoy watching angry British politicians push the bounds of curse words and insults to new levels. I know I enjoy that. We dined at a fancy Italian restaurant that did not necessarily live up to its fanciness. For one thing my gnocchi was bland and for another the waiter unsuccessfully tried to push dessert on us for twelve minutes. I'm generally not too snobbish-if it's food I'll eat it (unless it's mushrooms)-but this was not a class act.

Speaking of food, I want Friendly's.

Saturday night Matt and I went to Ballston (tee-hee) to watch an improv show. We were greeted by an energetic intern at the theater who insisted on using an terrible British accent the entire time. Even Matt wanted to punch him in the face. This is the guy who, in his improv classes, busts in with the "Agent Michael Scarn! Hands up!" type of shtick. Aside from him, the show was surprisingly good. The troupe was incredibly good at the gibberish guessing game they played. As per usual an audience member thought the funniest suggestion ever was dildo and almost fell off her chair laughing about it. Ha. Ha. Die in a fire. That night we were pretty tired and turned in early. Except that I was woken up at 4:30 in the goddamn morning by the loudest screaming fight I have ever heard in my life taking place right outside my window. I initially thought it was a dream. The only reason that I'm convinced it was not is because my roommate also woke up and we talked about it a few minutes before 5 am. Boy, it's times like that I am glad to be alive. Or not. But I think I was dreaming about Contracts, and I thought this fight was just a contract dispute. I don't actually know what it was about, but I do know that I probably should have called the police. I was actively trying not to listen, so that I could get back to sleep, but I think I heard "You hit me with your stiletto!" Bitches be crazy. Eventually the screaming stopped and I went back to sleep, only to be awoken later (I can't remember if it was 5 or 7 am) by someone's goddamn car stereo playing salsa music INCREDIBLY LOUDLY while at a red light. At least I'm assuming that's what this was, because if it was a traffic light then it was the red light of eternity. Seriously, I think I heard the same stupid song three times before the music died out. I was less than pleased, and that was less than the best night of sleep I have ever had.

Today Matt and I walked to the White House. Boy, it would be cool to work there. Maybe Deputy Chief of Staff? I'd do it. Fantasy world aside, on the Ellipse there were a few hundred Chinese people celebrating something. I have absolutely no idea what though. All I know is there were a lot of people in red shirts with Chinese lettering running around, singing songs, and raising both the Chinese flag and the American flag. I asked Matt, but apparently I was way off in thinking it was Chinese New Year. Like to the point where my ignorance in asking that question may have been slightly offensive. Oh well. So happy Chinese-America Day everyone. Because that's all I could surmise from the celebration. Then, after some pasta lunch, Matt took off to go back home. I miss him, but he's in a better place now. Chicago. After that it's just been work and television for me. I probably forgot some things about the weekend which will pop up later. Oh well. And now off to another week of law school. Whoop-dee-do-da.