The Great White North

In the spirit of the fight against mental exhaustion and burn out that is all of law school, a few friends and I spent the weekend in the realm of America's northern neighbor. It was a weekend replete with 90s music, too much makeup, some sea otters and brunch. Brunch is truly the best meal of all the meals.  All of the best of breakfast with all of the best of lunch, in ONE meal. Truly brilliant. Creator of brunch, I salute you and honor your memory by eating chocolate cake for lunch.

Like adults do, we spent a significant portion of our vacation post-brunch at the aquarium. Because penguins. And sharks. I am now the proud owner of plush based Sea Otter slippers. Eat your heart out 5 year olds! I also own a sippy cup with a curly straw and a whale. We then went out and partied (responsibly) like it was 1999. And I truly mean like it was 1999....as in glittery eyeshadow and cat eye liner. We made new friends, as outgoing groups of people do. I encountered a gentleman (a term I'm employing extremely loosely here, as he was 4 years my junior and a bit like a lost puppy) who could not and cannot take a hint. Though I did nothing to encourage his advances, he made a few of them. I now need to be real abrupt with Canadian men...lesson learned. CANADA!!! Why is everything just a little bit different?!?!

We also had delicious Udon soup, some fantastic pork belly, and all the snacks from ever. OH, and poutine. And fries. And just so much food.

Also, Canada's parking meters stole my quarters. But I found a combo of coconut water and coffee. For when you're both dehydrated and tired. It will keep you awake and make you need to run to the restroom.

Now to do all the things and then watch my friends kick butt in the mock appellate advocacy competition, because law school is NERDY. Deal with it.

Special shout-out to my glorious, tall, co-founder of Team Creep - Happy Birthday! See, the sun even came out specially for your birthday! The universe wants it to rock.

Aaaaaaand back to the bazillion things I have to do.

How I Fail at Adulthood

These are just the most recent in a series of failures that will make up my struggle to be a real adult for the rest of my life.

1. Eating vegetables like a person
2. Cooking real meals like a person
3. Keeping up with the laundry like a person
4. Washing all dishes immediately post using them
5. Not counting fried potatoey things as an essential part of a meal
6. Leaving the house on time (we're not aiming for early here, because...honestly....I'd be incapable of that)
7. Understanding time constraints (who knew that figuring out a place to live for the summer would be so difficult?)
8. Understanding questions you should ask when offered a job (e.g. how much does it pay?)

That's it for recent failures. I'm sure there will be more. There are daily ones.

Bah.

If only, if only

This article is incredible, and I wish I could say that doing these things would jet power you through law school. Unfortunately, it won't. It might, however, help you to make it through (mostly) sane. Because, let's be honest, how many law students have you met that meet the definition of 100% sane? And if you ask a law student that, the answer will ALWAYS be, "it depends." Always. Because that is the answer to EVERYTHING in law school. Sane? Nope. Logical? Maybe (it depends....see?!?!). Infuriating? Most definitely.

Anyway, the link is CLICK HERE.

Victory Shall Be Mine!

Success of all successes! I'm apparently employable! I have until the end of the week to figure things out and decide if I want to take this particular summer job (e.g. is it actually feasible for me to move for the summer, rent a place short term, and still have enough income), so we shall see. It is, however, really good to know that I'm not a total waste of legal air space.

Things seem to be weirdly alright this week. Which, of course, means that there is going to be some sort of explosion of not ok by the end of the week, but that's for future me to worry about. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In other news, I'm getting better at faking being an adult. I dress like one, go on job interviews, get job offers, do drycleaning, own my own sets of chopsticks, eat breakfast, cook, have a wine rack. Those are the things that make one appear adult-y, right? Sure. We'll go with that.

Oh, and in the world of fun facts (1) I'm pretty sure the assistant prosecutor owns Christian Louboutins (which makes her AWESOME), (2) I will one day own a home with a wine cellar, (3) it will look like this:

(HINT: it's the lit up blue thing under the floor. That is, the mosque of wine.), (4) I also want one of these:

because then I can MAKE MY OWN OXYGEN! Boom, science.

I've also determined that a key to feeling confidence (for me, at least) involves wearing the proper shoes. The "proper" shoes are awesome ones. Not boring black ones. For clarification, not all black shoes are boring and not all boring shoes are black. People do, however, tend to wear either boring, black, or boring black shoes for interviews and court. It's apparently not necessary. Unless it's required by your dress code (yeah, offices have those, and it serves you to be well aware of them).

Finally, when in a bind and making dinner (yes, actually cooking it....for once....when you feel severely unhealthy), here's a quick meal. Take frozen albacore steaks...defrost for several minutes. I'd say about 20. Then put steaks into a ziplock bag large enough to marinate them in. Add desired amount of marinade (for extreme laziness I recommend either champagne vinaigrette or italian dressing - storebought). Allow to soak in marinade for about 5 minutes (or however long it takes to heat a large pot of water (not quite to a boil). When water is sufficiently warm, place sealed ziplock into the water, and allow to cook for about 10 minutes. It's the ghetto version of sous vide. If you're like me and can never seem to make enough dishes dirty, then you'll take the fish out and place into a skillet for like 90 seconds per side to finish it off. Serve with whatever else you feel like eating/can be bothered to make. Ta-Da! 3 dishes, and a tasty meal! At this point you can feel accomplished for the whole day.

Lesson Learned: Quality Assurance Edition

As anyone on a law journal or law review will tell you, most of it is a privilege. You get an office, away from the rest of your fellow students, you get to work with practitioners and professors, you get to (potentially) publish. The downside is that you have to write a comment. And edit other people's writing.

It's the second one that's really the kicker. If you're not some sort of sadist that just enjoys cutting other people's attempts to ribbons, while coating a Word document in red comment boxes, then sitting for several hours in front of a computer and pouring over the minutiae of the all-knowing Bluebook is probably not your idea of fun. It's particularly annoying when there are obscure sources...as in ones only available on microfiche. Now, if you read this blog, you know my feelings on microfiche. It's not a thing that you should have to actively seek out in order to finish an assignment. Technology exists for a reason. Hell, you can get most books in PDF form.

Luckily, I have devised a way to make this mind numbingly awful task less horrid. It involves having Top Gear or The West Wing on while going about your business. You should also have snacks and beverages near. By snacks and beverages I mean a glass of wine, mineral water (I'll describe my bizarre obsession with that at some other time), tortilla chips, and enchiladas. It's the perfect balance of crunchy (for wakefulness), nutritional (for lack of hunger pains), hydrating (important when awake for many hours), and soothing (for allowing irritation to sublimate into mere annoyance).

The point is that, at some point, doing a QA assignment will feel like this:

And, once you reach that level of delirium, it's time to take a break. That's where Top Gear comes in. It's unobtrusive enough to remain on without greatly distracting you, but interesting and entertaining enough to actually take your mind away from the task at hand when it's break time.

Before you know it, the deadline will be nigh upon you. Let's face it, I don't think anyone can create perfect Bluebook citations, because real sources are never as clean and easy as the examples in the Bluebook. So, by the time you're done, it won't be perfect, but by god, that article will be as good as it is going to get in your mostly competent hands. You will, however, feel as if you spend 12 hours straight doing this:

The point is that this system will make it less than awful. So, winning?

Triumph Over Adversity

I had my first of two interviews today. Both I have to commute to, since they're in other parts of the state. As is wont to happen whenever you're trying to get somewhere on time, traffic decided to be terrible. Terrible in my terms is anything more than an hour and a half where you're just about at a dead stop for anything more than 9 minutes. Oddly specific, I know, but trust me. There was an unexpected accident on the only way to get to this interview...and a rather bad one at that. I saw the warnings when I started off, and figured that they'd have it cleared up by the time I got there 20 some odd minutes later, but that was false. Rather, the Dept. of Transportation decided to shut down all south bound traffic for forty-five minutes for NO APPARENT REASON. The accident was on the shoulder. I saw them towing it away as I inched by at a whopping 6mph. As I started having mini-stress strokes over being late to an interview, I then called the office I was interviewing at. They start you off with a recorded message, as they do, telling you to punch in the option you want, and then telling you that if you're not sure, you should stay on the line for assistance. FALSE. I listened to the same recording 4 times before going, "screw this" and taking my eyes off the road just long enough to mash the key for the operator. Success! I informed them that there had been an accident and that I was running about 15 minutes late (thanks, traffic), then thanked the lovely receptionist, hung up, and drove like a bat out of hell (within reason, obviously) and made it exactly on time. The interview went fine - I met with two lovely people and appear to be quite suited to the position (maybe even employable!) - and then I thanked them and left. I got back home in an hour. Exactly one hour. I sat in traffic for longer than that. Le sigh.

A journal article edit and one more interview to go, and then I can relax a little. Thank the flying spaghetti monster!

And the Clouds Parted.

I was having a crazy day. By crazy, I mean that aside from my hour "break" between class and a meeting, which I spent in the lawbrary writing a motion, I got zero break between 8 AM and 7:30 PM, and then came home to work some more. Two motions, four classes, two meetings, one interview reschedule, and one seriously tight (and ticking down) deadline later. I'm home, having missed my run, and swaddled in my murdered teddy bear blanket and working away on my journal assignment. Not MY journal....the law journal I'm on. Just when I was starting to get frustrated and discouraged, I logged onto the daily puppy, and there he was. He was staring up at me with those mischievous licorice colored eyes, and all of the creaks in my upper back from hunching over a laptop all day and all of my worries about the next 24 hours just floated away.

I have a new love of my life. His name is Jax. He's black and chestnut brown and has floppy ears. He sweats through his tongue. This is a picture of my new man (and yes, I know he belongs to someone else. Just call me a homewrecker.):

SEE?!?!?! How much better is your day now? Infinitely, you say. Told you so. How could anyone not fall into that precious little face?