BREAKING NEWS!!

Well, not really. Rather, just news, classified in easy to understand categories.

THINGS I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, THAT I APPARENTLY DIDN'T:

Don't attempt to run with pulled muscles. Look. I knew that aerobics wasn't what I was good at. But when I accidentally ended up going through an advanced body sculpting class, and couldn't walk for three days with muscles pulled from my knees to my neck, I decided that I could be in better shape. And today, a week after the most awful 60 minutes of my life, when I moved onto the next part of my training schedule my hamstrings protested. First with mild demands for attention, and after the third mile with screaming, crampy yells. Apparently I'm not healed yet. Must stop trying to be a hero. For....no one.*

THINGS I KNOW THAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE CONFUSED ABOUT:

Only jerks print PDF's on the library printers. Look, everyone loves the free** printing available in the Law Library. Especially right before the major legal writing assignments are due. However, when you try to print PDF's to those printers, they can only print ONE PAGE AT A TIME. And those pages are sent one at a time to the printers. So your 80 page document takes 4 hours to print. It's really kind of a jerk move to tie up a printer for four hours. If you find it absolutely necessary, please do it at 8 am when nobody needs the printers. Not at 2 in the afternoon. Because let me be honest here: I am that girl who will cancel your print job in order to get mine through. I have no scruples.

THINGS WE BOTH ALREADY KNEW:

Ricky Martin is gay? This is so shocking! Except not. Because I was alive in the 90s. Seriously, did anyone think the guy who sang "She Bangs" and "Shake your Bon-Bon" was straight? I'd love to give the human race more credit than that. Seriously, I don't think even Sue Sylvester would need him to Swish It Up. Seriously, the guy is the hispanic Clay Aiken/Ryan Seacrest hybrid.

Jesse James is a stupid man. Seriously, you would trade Sandra Bullock***, she of the Oscar, friendly smile, good comedic timing, and general awesomeness for THIS? A tattoo model and possible nazi? One's man trash is another man's treasure I guess, but who would trade in Sandra for a trashy tattoo model nazi??? Clearly, James was threatened by the extreme force of awesome that is his wife. Ick.

AND IN OTHER NEWS:

Happy Passover!**** Baby B is celebrating the heritage of his people this week and all I can tell is that it's ruining Law Free Lunch. He can't eat ANYWHERE because of the processed grains thing. Look, Baby B, you eat pork ALL THE TIME. You are already terrible at being Jewish.***** Stop ruining my week with your silly religious needs.

_______________________

*"I could be your hero baby!" Seriously, taking applications.

**With outrageous amounts of tuition, of course

***I realize she's not everyone's cup of tea, but objectively I feel she can be considered awesome.

****Do you wish people a happy passover? Not sure about Jewish etiquette.

*****Don't take this too hard. I haven't been to a confession in years.

The Doc Diagnosed Me With A Raging Case of the Mondays

The funny thing about Spring Break is that once you get back, it's finally Spring! It was still light out yesterday when I got off the train. Unfortunately, when I looked in the fridge upon arriving, I only had butter and jelly. Good for toast, right? Except I didn't have any bread. That having been said, I've been distinctly unproductive today.

I went to BOTH my classes and bought a ticket to Law Prom (19 days!), went to the grocery store, and made myself some delicious chocolatey pudding. Originally I promised myself that I'd read twenty pages of property, read the next Crim assignment, and get a really good edit done on the Argument section of my trial brief. But then I ate pudding, and all that work became "do a first edit on my argument section."

There's not actually a point to this.

Chocolate pudding is delicious.

And Mondays are THE WORST.

The end.

OMG SPRING BREAK!!

The fact of the matter is, I have never been on a "college" Spring Break. You know, the ones where you head somewhere warm and drink too much and take TOTES AWESOME PICS! Even right now, I am sitting on my couch watching Molly Ringwald make the ugliest dress of all time to wear at prom in the ever delightful "Pretty in Pink". (Side note, what was she thinking? She's a redhead and that is a hideous pink tube dress! Green, Molly Ringwald! Green!)

This week, I have reviewed an entire semester of contracts, something I would not recommend to anyone. I wouldn't have done it had it not been for extenuating circumstances. (Extenuating circumstances = blonde b*tch who decided that instead of teaching aerobics, she would teach unscheduled advanced body sculpting out of the blue. I literally could not walk for three days.) I sat at my kitchen table and outlined all week long. I haven't gotten to Property or Crim yet, but we only have another 70 pages of Contracts to read for the entire semester, so I don't have that much more to do in that class anyway.

Beyond that, I've spent almost the whole time with my family and one weekend in Muncie with some BSU friends. (It never fails to surprise me when Puerta's margaritas kick my ass.) Even though I've pretty much been studying non-stop, except for my ten hour nights of sleep doped up on painkillers, I feel really refreshed, and I'm feeling a lot more caught up with school. This is good because we're going into the time crunch of the end of the semester. I'm glad I'm feeling a little bit confident.

I'll probably never have the archetypal college Spring Break, since I'll be studying non-stop for another two years. I'm not all that sad.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch Andie end up with Blaine the major appliance instead of Duckie, the dork of my dreams.

Absentia, aka Why This Week Has Been Awesome

So I may have deserted this blog for the week. But I've been very busy. Very, very busy. Being not busy. So I thought instead of imparting any sort of faux wisdom, I would just chronicle the past few days to explain my AWOL behavior.

Monday: I gotta be honest. I think I was just lazy this day. Which doesn't work well for my excuses. I did, however, read a 400 page novel. Which wasn't very good. In fact it was awful. Looking back, Monday was a waste. Damn.

Tuesday: In case you didn't know, Rock Band released the Lady Gaga tracks on this illustrious day. So what's a girl to do? Attend a Rock Band party held by a friend! It was probably the best house party I've ever been to. (note: I've been to about three and one of those was busted by the cops as I was arriving, so I don't know that I have a wide enough sample size.) Anyway, you know those couples that you just want to be around all the time because they are so happy and adorable? And you don't hate them at all because it's completely genuine? Seriously, when E. yelled "This used to be our spoonin' song!" when Lay Down Sally came on, I realized that I needed these people to be my friends. Anyway, the people there that night? Are the BEST people. It was an excellent night. And then I got home at 2 am.

Wednesday: I shouldn't need to tell you that this was St. Patty's Day. So I needed to go celebrate my Irish Heritage. Good news! I no longer have an aversion to Guiness! (I used the scientific method and repeated my tests several times to make sure of my hypothesis.) Bad news! My only Ukrainian friend woke me up at 7:30 am with a text saying "You better be going out today." After I got home at 2 am. Jerk. But don't worry. In between the wake up call and all of those scientific studies, I exercised, had lunch with friends, ate the world's most delicious brownie, had a beautiful reconciliation, went to M.'s apartment in River North for a couple hours, made a bet about the lyrics to the song Edmund Fitzgerald, and ate at Flaco's Tacos. Never let it be said I can't cram a whole week into a day.

Thursday: While Property was a complete bust (I have 10 lines worth of notes), LSBFF and I grabbed lunch and ate in the sunshine in Grant Park. (It's Springtime!) While we were there, two students gave us a survey. They were from Campus Crusade for Christ. The survey was cut noticeably short when they found out I'm Catholic and LSBFF is Muslim. So much for being a witness or whatever it is they were doing. Seriously. Had a picture book lesson in accepting Jesus Christ. At least I wasn't indoors.

And now my friends, IT IS 16 HOURS TO SPRING BREAK! So the neglect may continue. After all, Puerta's has whole pitchers of margaritas.

I never said I was a perfect person. Just having a perfect week.

Also, I Will Be Sailing The Pirate Ship REVENGE

Dear Whoever-You-Are:

I don’t like you. That’s right, I said it. I don’t like you. You may remember me? We both went to the Cabrini Green Legal Aid training about a month ago. After the training, you signed up for every available spot you could. And then you signed your friend up for the rest. It meant I couldn’t volunteer for a whole month. Well guess what?

I got fired. From a volunteer opportunity. That I never got to volunteer at. Why? Because they now have so many volunteers that they don’t need me. And I’m well aware that out of the five Friday volunteers, your friend is one of them that they decided to keep.

Worse, you knew what you did. I knew you were a law student, you knew I was a law student, and you know that first year law students only have time to work on Friday mornings. And you took every single Friday morning you could. I am displeased.

Well listen up. I am declaring war on you. You may think that I have no legitimate cause to do so, but seriously. YOU GOT ME FIRED FROM SOMETHING I HAVEN’T SCREWED UP YET. You are hereby collaterally estopped from denying that you are a jerk. And for that, I’m going to beat you up in the girls’ bathroom one day.

So be looking over your shoulder, Miss Whoever-You-Are, because you got in the way of me and my resume padding. And for that, you will pay.

You should never smile at a crocodile

The denizens of law school are characters. So is it any wonder that we students eventually fall into a sort of morbid fascination with our professors? We gchat about their habits during class ("Nearly Right") and we talk about their one-year-olds while we're at lunch. Don't get weirded out. I've already explained we don't have lives.

Myths abound about every professor and dean. Every 1L knows about the dreaded Prof. G., who I'm pretty sure is just out to make students cry. And there's another one who swings a baseball bat WAY too close to your head in order to make his point about demonstrative evidence. Our former head dean was a magician, and one of the Constitutional Law professors clerked for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was Obama's student. And that's just the SURFACE of what we know.

That having been said, there are always two deans who seem to work in tandem. They gave us a lecture yesterday on "Life After First Year." One of them, Dean T. is a black woman with what might be the best skin I've EVER seen and a short buzz cut. Even with the buzz cut, she might be one of the more feminine women I've SEEN working in law. She has a voice that seems rather gentle, but easily reaches the back of the room. The other is Dean W. and she is intimidating as all hell. She might be 5'5", in her late 50s or early 60s and smiles. Not nice smiles, scary smiles. The smile that a crocodile makes RIGHT before it eats you alive.

They have the most amazing good cop/bad cop routine, where Dean T. tells you what you need to know and then Dean W. says "And don't come to me after you screw it up." It's like optimism and pessimism standing together. I'd love to see the two of them work a courtroom.

It was once explained to all of us that every litigator has to brand themselves. You have to find your courtroom personality. Do you grill the witness on cross-examination, making them feel like a bug under a microscope? Or do you let them feel secure, so that something slips out of them that shouldn't?

It doesn't really matter, but I know this for sure: I want to be Dean W. Smiling cynically until I bite your head off. That woman gives me faith in humanity.

I've Got the Blues...

I really, really dislike Criminal Law. I'm not good at it, and it's all theoretical, and not substantive enough. Apparently when I answer questions in that class I turn red. The professor has an amazing career. She was a sex crimes prosecutor in New York. I find her incredibly intimidating and scary, and I can never say what I mean to because she looks at you like you're a crazy person, even when you're saying exactly what she wanted to hear.

And if that's not bad enough, it's now making me sick.

We've covered basic theoretical concepts and murder. We've now moved on to rape. Rape is a sensitive word in the English vocabulary (and indeed any language). Cases in law school are thorny to begin with, but dealing with these cases is a whole new level of upsetting. I find myself shaking with rage at the decision and at myself for understanding why it was made. After an hour and fifteen minutes in class, I felt sick and exhausted. Thank God we're only covering this topic in depth for one more week.

Because I have a feeling that I'm going to spend that whole week sick.

Skipping Class

Well, it's official. This memo has me terrified. I don't know where I'm going, or where to start. And it's due in exactly 51 hours and 45 minutes. Considering that about half of my contracts class is missing this morning, I am not the only one. I almost skipped right along with them. But I couldn't make myself do it.

Baby B made a good point this morning, "If you skip, you'll spend four and a half hours catching up." It's true, too. Class is only one hour and 40 minutes long. And in that one hour and 40 minutes, you can take eight pages of notes if things are happening quickly enough. When you skip a class, you not only have to track down the notes, you have to work through someone else's shorthand, and try to understand what happened during class. And then you'll probably have questions to ask the professor. And there goes your weekend.

Simple profit/loss statement? You've just lost a future extra 2 hours and 50 minutes for an immediate 1 hour and 40 minutes. Ask yourself if it's really worth it. If it is, then go for it. If time is a more valuable commodity in future than presently, just go to class. You'll appreciate it long-term.

Birthday Cake. Birthday Cake.

I hate birthday parties. They’ve never gone well. At six years old, I received four of the exact same Barbie. Not a huge problem for a six year old, but repetitive to open. At eight years old, my friends came over for my very first slumber party! My new puppy peed on my best friend which kind of killed the mood. We then tried to play a practical joke on one of the girls, and she ended up having to cut off her long, beautiful hair. It gets worse.

At eleven, I got into a fight with my two best friends for my birthday party, and we ended up hating each other until senior year of high school. Fifteen? One of the girls confessed to trying to commit suicide. Serious mood-killer. Another cried because she didn’t have a boyfriend. Sweet 16? I spent with my parents.

At twenty, my birthday fell on Ash Wednesday while I was in Spain. It was an incredibly somber day with people carrying wooden religious figures through the streets. Twenty-one ended early after some older blonde cougars dangled forty dollars over the bartenders tip jar if I did a body shot OFF the bartender. I was mortified, and couldn’t go back to the bar (my favorite) until he quit. (And yes, I did the body shot. Having worked for tips before, $40 is a whole lot of money all at once.)

This year was twenty-three, and it was looking like it was going south. I was sick the whole week before, and on the day of, I had an allergic reaction to my face wash. Later I had a nosebleed, and the whole day people kept telling me that they weren’t coming to my party. Then the bar screwed up our reservation, making it hard for anyone who didn’t want to go in on the wristband deal we had purchased attend, and some guy I didn’t know kept trying to introduce himself to me. (Hello, Karl. We’ve met three times now.)

But, thanks to everyone who did come, it was a great night with good friends. In fact, If you take an ex post facto view (sorry, but it IS a law school blog), the fact that I needed to spend the whole next day recovering while watching Law and Order means it was one of the best nights ever. That being said, I won’t be planning any more birthday parties. You want me to have a party? Surprise me. From now on, I’m spending quiet evenings at home with a nice dinner and a bottle of wine. Clearly, I’m not meant to celebrate making it through another year.

Here’s a couple pics from the night!

Me, The Boy, Baby B, and some other good friends.

Me, The Boy and the LSBFF are in this one, just being classy by the fire.