last week's next big thing

08:27 am: Kind of sad, but even more bizarre...
So I went to high school with this guy. I had no idea he was semi-famous. (I've never seen Prison Break, and I guess the whole Jessica Simpson thing overshadowed anyone else in our class' attempt at stardom.) I didn't know him well... I want to say he was in my junior high Spanish class. If I remember correctly, he was not a very nice guy.

It's tragic and all, but it does make you wonder, What the hell was he doing in a car with two fifteen-year-old girls?

03:31 pm: Announcement
After five and a half years (and 700 entries), this journal will be going entirely friends-only as of today, April 3, 2006. I will be periodically going back and editing all my previous entries to make them friends-only as well. Obviously, that's going to take some time, but I'll get around to it eventually. I guess I'm just at the point where I don't feel comfortable making public some of the stuff I've posted on here. I have to face the ugly fact that I'm going to be looking for a grown-up job relatively soon (as well as trying to pass the grown-up Character & Fitness section of the bar exam), and I feel increasingly paranoid about some of the very personal stuff I've posted for all to read. I guess my six-year exhibitionist phase is coming to an end.

If you've been reading this and you have a livejournal account (but for some reason or other are not on my Friends list), let me know, and I will add you so you can keep reading. I know, my life is so incredibly exciting that this will devastate many people. Yeah, not really.

I know this is a ridiculously huge thing to ask, but if you've been a long-time follower without a livejournal account (e.g. Justin, Chana, Caroline), pretty much the only way to do this would be to get an account of your own to see my posts. It's free and you don't need to post in it or anything (and I don't think you need those stupid credit things anymore to get an account like you did a few years ago.) If you don't want to go that route (and I don't blame you, really) I will most likely make major life-changing posts on my Myspace. Yes, you can all stop groaning now. No, I'm not a big fan of Myspace either, but all the kids are doing it, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon.

So goodbye, public internet. It's been... interesting.

Love and handjobs,
M

08:01 pm: Very quickly, as the wireless connection I purchased is quickly running out of time...
I want to go home.

I miss Andy.

I miss the law school people. I even kind of miss having something to do all the time. I don't know what to do with myself here. If I had money, I'd shop. If I lived within walking distance of a bar, I'd drink. But neither is practical right now. It's kind of like prison in The Shawshank Redemption. I'm institutionalized. This is just pathetic.

I miss high-speed internet and, well... autonomy.

The job interview went sort of okay but not fantastically well. At least it was practice for Pittsburgh.

I absolutely cannot move back in with my parents. Not for six weeks or twelve weeks or whatever it would require. Nope. Not gonna happen.

10:52 am: Merry Christmas early
There's sewage bubbling up in my basement.

Did I mention that almost everything I have to do today (laundry, handwash, dishes, showering, etc.) somehow involves putting water down drains?

And that I really have to pee and I can't stop thinking about it?

And that I was going to try to come back to St. Louis a few days earlier than I planned, but that it would cost me an additional $40? You know, my family is good people, but 8 days of family time doesn't sound like the greatest idea in retrospect.

Yeah. Great. Rad.

04:45 pm: Proof positive that I am totally losing my mind...
Okay. I need your help.

So last night was the big 1L post-exam party. Somehow, I managed to somewhat restrain myself and not get too horribly smashed. Yet when I got home, it sort of hit me like a ton of bricks. Anyway, I woke Andy up by accident when I came in around 1:30, he made me frozen pizza, and I flipped on The Insider (the Pat O'Brien celebrity gossip show. Hey, there was nothing else on - I don't have cable!) and Andy went back to bed. I finished my pizza and lay down on the couch to attempt to sleep. (I've been sleeping on the couch for the past few days since Andy has some sort of flu bug and I didn't want to get sick for finals or my interviews or the train ride home.) I can't say for sure whether I dozed off or not. A couple of minutes later, Andy was woken up by me shrieking and pointing at the TV.

I swear I saw this bit where Jessica Simpson is somehow romantically linked with the actor who played Gareth in the British version of The Office, and he broke up their marriage or something equally scandalous. Andy didn't make it out to the living room until the segment was over. I have since searched IMDB, the Insider website, and Google, and have found absolutely nothing linking the two. No one on my friends page has mentioned it... and at least half the people on my friends list watched The Office religiously (and are at leat mildly obsessed with pop culture in general). Andy is convinced I dreamt this. Did I? Did anyone else happen to see this segment, or hear about this elsewhere? It does seem a bit... odd, and sort of like something I would dream while drunk and trying to forget about finals... but I swear I remember the exact pictures that they showed! It seemed like something too horrible for even my subconscious to come up with! I mean, it's not like this guy (Mackenzie Crook is his name... I looked on IMDB) is particularly hot or whatever, but at least he has indie cred, and... Jessica Simpson? Blaaaahhh! Gross! And weird!

In other (equally bizarre but more positive) news, I have another firm interview, this one with Locke Liddell & Sapp in Dallas, the day after I get home. I'm trying very hard not to freak out. I meet with four to six lawyers, most from the litigation department, and they take me out to lunch! This is bad! I have terrible table manners! Not that I, say, talk with my mouth full or whatnot, but I have a tendency to... drop things. And get stuff in weird places (I once got through an entire meal with hummus in my eyebrows and no one had the balls to tell me!) And I'm very bad at both twirling pasta and figuring out how to work around meat with bones. I'm not even sure I want to be a lawyer! (No, of course I'm not going to tell them that!) I hope I can still fit my enormous self into my suit!

Let's just hope they hire me before they see my grades.

10:29 am: Funny...
Andy just called and gave me a license to rock my Property exam this afternoon. And I can feel free to rely on it so it becomes irrevocable under estoppel. He said he would have granted me an easement to rock, but he doesn't own the test. It felt good to laugh.

I feel like I'm going to barf.

(The only) things I know:

Time
Title
Interest
Possession
(Marriage)

Execute
Deliver
Record

Contingent remainder-contingent remainder
Vested remainder-executory interest

Touch and concern the land/Restatement Third provisions (unconscionable, arbitrary, restraining trade, etc.)

Don't kill some other guy's whale/fox/ducks

Restraints on alienation = BAD ("Alien Nation? That was my favorite TV show!")

Title is relative

42

I'm so fucked. Even the yoga breaths aren't helping. I'm seriously bringing a barf bag into the exam.

10:02 am: In case anyone was curious...
Oh man.

OH MAN.

Yeah. That torts final?

IT FUCKING SUCKED.

I had "Play that Funky Music White Boy" during the first half of the final. During the second half of the final, I had a mean little gnome on my shoulder that said "You are going to FAIL" over and over. I'm kidding about the gnome part, mostly. But not about the funky music part. And not about the sucking. And it was funny; we got to pick our own exam rooms (one of four), and we were mixed in with people from other sections. I picked the same room as my Torts class normally meets and sat in my usual assigned spot. (I was hoping that sitting in the same spot would somehow help me remember more, but... not really.) I was sitting next to Amy and Becca and a couple rows in front of Chris, and then I look around the room and realize that I'm in the room with pretty much everyone I'd met during orientation and shortly thereafter, several of whom I am no longer speaking to for various reasons. Amy's all, "This is like a reunion!", and my response was "Yeah... a reunion of death!" (which makes no sense, I know, but it was funny at the time.) Oh, and if any men out there were needing fashion advice: don't ever, EVER tuck a baseball shirt into jeans with a belt. Even if it's a Red Sox shirt. It makes you look like your grandma dressed you. And then it's distracting to other people in the exam room, and not in a good way.

But I digress...

So anyway... I was actually feeling pretty okay about Torts. I missed maybe three classes out of the 60 we'd had. I'd usually gotten the answer semi-right when called on. We'd only gone through like 300-something pages of our coursebook (compared to 900-plus in Contracts and Property), and periodically throughout the study period I'd gone back and re-read most of it. I'd made my own outline and been pretty diligent about it (and proud of the result). I'd bought study guides and read through the parts covering stuff I felt like I didn't understand. I'd done one out of the two practice exam questions he'd given us (I really didn't have time to do the second.) and gotten my answer critiqued, and I'd gotten most of the issues right. I definitely didn't study as much as I could have, but it was at least 5-6 hours a day for the last two weeks or so (for both Property and Torts), which I figured was plenty. I'd gotten almost eight hours of sleep the night before, eaten a good breakfast, etc. I had a Balance bar and a Nalgene bottle full of water with me, along with Andy's watch (Mine broke last week.), two highlighters, three pens, some gum, and an extra laptop battery. I figured I was good to go.

So first of all, it was a three-hour, closed-book exam (Not that my book would have helped much, but still...). We had literally ten pages of fact pattern. The parties were all characters from Harry Potter. I realized after the test that it was a good thing I'd read the books and seen the movies because at least then I had a face to put with the different parties. We then had a rather confusing case attached as well as literally three or four multi-part statutes and four or five Restatement provisions. It took me literally 45 minutes to get through all of the exam material before I even wrote an informal outline. There was almost nothing involving intentional misconduct and all this stuff about negligence and strict liability and sort of the mixing of the two, which we really didn't get to in class. There were five parts to the question. Part three had two sub-parts, and part four had three sub-parts, with all of the subparts having several sub-sub parts.

In summary, I didn't finish. I'm pretty sure what I wrote was garbage. I began one question and had written maybe five or six sentences, on a pretty good roll (I thought) when I realized that I was writing about the wrong parties and that what I was writing didn't even come close to answering the question. Some of my answers to the sub-sub parts were only a couple of sentences long. I feel like I spotted about 15 relatively important issues in the fact pattern that didn't seem to fit anywhere in the questions he was asking, and I was told repeatedly by upper-level students to not answer questions you weren't asked, so I didn't. Literally it seemed like all we were asked to do was apply the facts to the Restatement and such. I cannot help but think that there was more to it all than that. I just didn't know what I was supposed to say. I made allusions to some rules we had learned and some cases that we had studied where the holdings seemed relevant, but I'm sure it wasn't enough. It was just bizarre and completely counterintuitive and I walked out of there seriously wanting to jump off a bridge.

I'm praying for a C. I'm so embarrassed; I've only gotten one C ever in my life and that was in premed bio in college (and, incidentally, it was a C+) And if Torts was this bad, I cannot even imagine how Property is going to go. I know everyone else was rattled by the exam too, but I'm sure they still wrote more than I did and it had more to do with what we actually studied.

Honestly, I woke up this morning more depressed than I've been in a long time. I feel like I have royally fucked myself over. I walked into law school convinced I'd have no trouble making Law Review (HA!) and graduating at least in the top quarter or so of my class. My parents are going to be so ashamed of me. And my grandparents. And the sleep lab. And my hairdresser. Yeah. I'm trying not to think about it. I'm going to go take a shower and make some coffee and sit down and work on Property and just put Torts out of my mind. I was feeling a bit better last night... dutin called and that was wonderful, and I went out with Amy and Chris and drank more beer than I should have. But I've never been great at permanently turning off parts of my brain, and I'm sure today will be no different.

I'm so not cut out for this.

This really isn't worth it.

I want to be a housewife.

11:00 am: holy crap holy crap holy crap
I have an interview for a summer associate position at Reed Smith in Pittsburgh.

I have to call them tomorrow to set up a concrete time, but it will be the first week of January.

I know Pittsburgh isn't exactly New York, but... I don't care. It's a firm job as a 1L. So there.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

If this isn't an incentive to do well on Property, I don't know what is. It would be incredibly humiliating to be offered a position and get it retracted because my grades sucked.

By the way, I do appreciate all the reassurances and well-wishes from everyone... I will respond to them individually when I'm done with my final.

02:43 pm: T minus 24 hours...
I’m sitting in Panera St. Louis Bread Company. It’s 2:25 PM. I’ve been here since 10:45 AM. I’m on my third (medium) cup of coffee. I have no cigarettes, as I smoked them all last night, and I will not have any until Andy picks me up around 5:00. Until about ten minutes ago, I’ve been pretty productive, but I kind of feel like I’m at my wit’s end. ( These are the thoughts running through my head, exactly one day before my first ever law school exam, in no particular order: )

Tags: law school, wankery

06:11 pm: Announcement
I really can't imagine that this would matter to anyone who reads this, but...

My parents have finally decided to get rid of AOL. At one point this was my primary email address, but I have not actively used or publicized it since, oh, 2000 or 2001. I used to check it maybe once every six months or so just to make sure I didn't miss anything important, but it was a pain in the ass wading through 800 junk emails at a time to find essentially nothing, so I got pretty lax about it. As a result, I have forgotten my password. And this afternoon my parents deleted my account.

So...

1. If you feel like emailing me (and haven't in the past five years or so), please use the gmail address on my userinfo, or my Wash U email address, which, if you don't know it, I would be happy to email you if you comment on this entry. I check both at least ten times a day. (Yes, I am fully aware that I have no life.)
2. Unless you have some really pressing reason, (and laziness does not count), DO NOT EMAIL ME AT MY HOTMAIL ACCOUNT. I HATE HOTMAIL. GMAIL IS SUPERIOR TO HOTMAIL. I only check that account every few weeks, and I've already gotten pissed-off emails from my grandmother and a few old friends who totally forgot I sent out the email with my gmail address on it.
3. And if for some reason, you emailed me at my AOL address sometime in the past year, and I didn't respond, I'm very sorry, and you might want to try one of the addresses mentioned above.

Thank you for your time and patience in this matter.

Love and handjobs,
M

06:38 pm: Don't tell anyone, but...
I got the Virgin for the lab Secret Santa.

It was totally an accident. Apparently the subject's mom picked it for me. (Bitch!) Needless to say, I'm fucking thrilled.

Looks like SOMEONE's getting a blowup doll and a tub of Nads for Christmas. Or maybe just a swift kick in the nuts. That would be cheaper, but not very... secret.

Whatever I'd get him, I'd look like a stalker. There's no graceful way to handle this.

M-F'er.

12:14 pm: I'm sitting here in the library working on my PowerPoint presentation on bonded child labor in South Asia, and there's a really nerdy-looking guy in here with a t-shirt that says "Historians are never without a date."

Even though I'm pretty sure I don't qualify as a historian, I want that T-shirt. My birthday's coming up, people. Work on it.

03:54 pm: I am so damn tired.
In fact, I am so tired that my vision has started to blur (literally multiple times a day now) and I start to zone out at inopportune times. I nearly fell asleep at my computer at my internship yesterday, even after drinking a large cup of black coffee. That has honestly never happened in the two months I've worked there. In fact, I slept through my internship entirely last Friday, for no real reason. I feel like I'm moving at half speed, almost like I'm drunk. I've become far clumsier, bumping into things (and people). (No, I didn't think it was possible to be any clumsier either, but I've managed.) I tried to sit down in my Human Rights class and very nearly missed my chair. I'm lucky my ass didn't wind up on the floor in front of everyone. My eyes are bloodshot, and my whole face is puffy. I've been told by multiple people in the last few days that I look like hell. I don't think I've felt this awful since I was working night shift.

The strangest part of all this is that I've been getting what should be a reasonable amount of sleep. Granted, it's not been the doctor-recommended eight hours, but I must average at least six hours a night. The problem is that it rarely feels like restful sleep. I have a tendency to scare myself awake around 7:00 regardless of what time I have to be up. Sometimes this will happen multiple times in a night, beginning around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. I'll have about 30 seconds of panic when I'm convinced that I should have been up hours ago, and then I'll realize what time it really is and I'll fall back to sleep. Unfortunately, I will often repeat this every 20 minutes or so until it's really time to get up.

I honestly don't know how to combat this. I've been taking vitamins. I've been trying to eat better, resisting the powerful urge to eat a Freschetta last night and opting instead for chickpea curry, a salad, and a fudgesicle. I still drink a kiddie wading pool full of caffienated beverages every day, but at least I have been chasing them with multiple bottles of water. I don't exercise as much as I should, but I honestly, swear-to-God don't have time, and at least I walk around a lot, have to walk up three flights of stairs at least twice a day, etc. I wonder if there's something really wrong with me. Anemia? Chronic fatigue syndrome? Head lice? (Did I mention I'm a raging hypochondriac?)

Maybe it's all stress. God knows I've been stressed. I should work on that. Do less, sleep more, say no to authority figures, etc. Ha. That's funny. And it's not just school-related stress, it's that awful up-in-the-air feeling that I don't know where I'll be six months from now, and that the lab is full of ridiculous drama to the degree that I don't like being there anymore, and that one of my best friends here is moving away in 10 days. And that it will be my 24th birthday in less than 2 weeks and I honestly don't feel like celebrating.

I hate feeling like I'm totally losing my mind. I predict that I'm about twelve hours away from full-blown hallucinations.

Bring it on.

01:24 pm: I am so DONE!
I'm so relieved that I'm basically incapable of writing much of anything right now. And I'm positive that the macro final was at least better than the midterm. At least I didn't have to leave any essay questions blank.

I knew it was a good sign when on my way in I saw a car with the bumper sticker, "Republicans for Voldemort".

I know I'm a nerd, but I laughed all the way in to my exam.

02:25 pm: One last post before I accept my fate...
You know you're in enormous amounts of trouble when you're studying fixed and floating exchange rates, and every time you see "floating exchange rate", the song from the "Will It Float?" sketch on Letterman runs through your head. That gets old REAL quick. And then, of course, I start giggling every time I see "dirty float" in my notes (which, incidentally, means only allowing market forces to partially direct the exchange rate, but it really, really sounds like a euphemism for poop).

I really should have started studying for this WAY earlier. But there's precious little I can do right now.

Taking Macro as an elective really has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Right up there with believing the guy who told me in high school that Kia cars only came partially assembled (and that's why they're so cheap). Yes, I eventually found out the truth. By eventually, I meant six months ago.

I need a nap. Badly.

01:25 am: Okay, I'm awake now... and really freaked out
Okay. So I got new downstairs neighbors a few weeks ago, and they are BIZARRE. One night around midnight, right as they first moved in, I was walking down to the street so Steve could pick me up, and I notice their door is ajar about a foot. Thinking that maybe they were still moving some stuff around, I didn't think much of it and proceeded down the stairs. I then noticed that there was this cat who appeared to have been in a fight wandering around on the landing near the door. I went back up to my neighbors and knocked lightly on their door. A woman a few years older than me answered, looking quite disheveled (mascara under the eyes, sweatpants, messed up hair, etc.) I asked her, "I'm sorry to bother you so late, but are you missing a cat?" She nodded, and I said, "Oh, he's right down here I think." She replied, "Oh, yeah, he's around somewhere." (???) She comes with me to get the cat and then says, "Yeah, I have another one too. He should be around here somewhere also."

Thinking this was kind of strange, I shook it off and went back downstairs to meet Steve. I was walking through the basement when I saw the BIGGEST FUCKING CAT I HAVE EVER SEEN sitting on the windowsill, staring at me. I called up to the woman, "Hey, he's down here in the basement!" The woman, still holding the cat, which is struggling to get away from her, managed to get down the stairs and moved toward this thirty-pound monstrosity, when all of a sudden it LEAPT off the windowsill (making a sound like someone dropped a load of bricks) and took off down the basement hallway. The woman, looking baffled, took off sort-of-running after it. I, deciding that I had had enough excitement for the evening, scratched my head for a minute and went out to meet Steve.

So tonight I'm washing my face, minding my own business, when I hear this awful noise that sounded like it was coming from Lindsey's TV, almost like a man moaning. I think to myself, God, Lindsey, I don't care if you're watching porn, but could you at least turn it down? I turn off the water and realize that the noise is NOT coming from her bedroom. I creep up to my door and realize that's it's coming from the hallway. And then I realize what it is.

Cats mating.

Yeah.

So I open my door, thinking if they saw or heard me they would STOP. I look on the landing and see a single cat (the first one who had escaped that night a few weeks ago). The cat looks at me for about half a second and then takes off... TOWARD MY DOOR! Freaked out, I immediately slam the door and watch from the peephole. The cat sits in front of my door for a minute, and I swear to God the cat was trying to look into my soul. He/she/it very slowly walks away. I don't understand why one cat would make all that God-awful noise!

Okay, great. I have a test tomorrow, my neighbors are insane, and there's a cat that's possessed by the devil living in my building. WHAT THE FUCK???? Who lets their (horny) cats just wander around an apartment building? Isn't this a health hazard? What if someone leaves the door open? What if someone has allergies? What if it has to go to the bathroom and can't find the litterbox in time? EW EW EW EW EW!

Reason # 2928 why I am a dog person.

04:33 pm: Okay. It's official. I'm a lesbian.
Not really. But I'm seriously considering it.

So there I was, listening to Johnny Cash and thinking to myself, My God, I'm just like one of those women he's singing about. Fickle? Check. Cold-hearted? Check. Wow, I was going to feel guilty about how I treated Steve, but maybe my awful behavior will inspire him to write timeless country songs. There. I'm a muse! I DID MORE GOOD THAN HARM.

It's easier to picture yourself as a country-song villainess than to feel rotten about treating someone who is fundamentally good like total shit.

So then he comes over before his shift at Typhoon (a new Thai restaurant in Shadyside, where he just started working a new job) because he wants his spare car key back. He comes in my house for a grand total of 30 seconds, enough to give me back my spare toothbrush, a pair of earrings (both of which are understandable), my spare deodorant (a little weird), and a SPOON he was convinced was mine (totally unnecessary). He refused to look me in the eye or succomb to my attempts to make idle small talk. He then proceeds to ask me, "So, do I have any food left in your fridge?" and then roots around in my fridge, comes up with a half-empty bottle of Giant Eagle brand taco sauce, and says, "I think this is mine." I tell him that I will happily give him money to buy a FULL bottle of taco sauce that won't have to sit in his car for his six hour shift. He tells me "No thanks," and then walks out the door with the taco sauce and the key, saying "See you around." Yeah, right. Coming from someone who has a strict no-friends-with-exes policy. It kind of hurt. I said, "Asshole!" loudly as the door was closing, and he didn't react. Mature, I know. But he refused to talk to me! And he took the damn taco sauce! How retarded is that?

And he has queer hair. And, surprisingly, cobalt blue is not a good color on him.

I don't even care anymore that two nights ago I had a dream that he had a new girlfriend, who was Thai. And they met at Party City (which is a party supply superstore in the Southwest), which in my dream happened to be open 24 hours. They were at Party City at 4:00 AM because they had nothing better to do, and then they wound up fucking in the aisles (he tells me in the dream). I woke up really upset. And worse: I woke up in Johnny Quarterback's bed. I've never had a nightmare where I sat straight up in bed before, but it happened that night.

Oh well. C'est la vie. Ix-nay on the Eve-stay.

More substantial entry to come, which will cover:

My pukealicious (but otherwise very fun) girls' night out with jediem, my second (or was it third?) date with Johnny Quarterback, and how I'm about to fail out of school.

I'm going to go do my hair now.

03:24 pm: It's true. Jonathan Brandis is dead.

Come to think of it, I am not certain I've seen anything he starred in all the way through. I seem to remember seeing part of "Ladybugs" at a friend's house once. But I never watched "Seaquest" because it was on opposite that Lois & Clark show that starred the studly (and more mature) Dean Cain. What can I say, maturity went a long way back then.

It's still sad though. And it's even sadder that nobody found out for a week.

Great, now I'm sad again.

01:49 pm: Jonathan Brandis is dead?????


Why am I suddenly so sad?

12:10 pm: What a happy piece of news to wake up to
I saw this and nearly got sick.

I saw him at Avalon in the fall of 2000 (less than a month before I left BU) with Andy, Justin, Deuce, Oz, and Maya. It was a pretty great show, and one of the few truly happy nights I had right before I left school. According to Pitchfork, he grew up in Dallas, like me. I never knew that.

As Andy so eloquently put it, it's really not been a good year for male singer-songwriters.

Is it really pathetic that I kind of feel like crying?