occupation

so what can i be?

so...

if you couldn't tell, this blog is on vacation. a little vacation called final exams. let me give you an idea of what i have been or am currently dealing with in these two weeks:
four finals, two review sessions, at least three tutoring sessions, two interviews that are worth $50K+, a letter to draft to potential donors (due the day i interview), one flight across the country, one lambda party, still one outline to finish, and two outlines that need updated with the last two weeks of material. i am not even outlining evidence: there is just not enough time. oh-- and we will need to decide where H is going to work and tour three possible apartments. And a firm is having a luncheon for me because they picked me for a diversity scholarship.... the day before a final and H won't be here to drive me-- it's not on a bus line so her boss is going to drive me. Very inconvenient.

now there are just 11 days left of this stress which is both exhilerating and terrifying.... how am i going to get everything done???

so... look for new 7&c entries 11 days from now. i promise. they will be clever and/or thought provoking.

watch out

a PSA for DC people looking to adopt this cat: you probably should not get this one. the animal law club brought the washington humane society's traveling pet adoption center to school, so there are a bunch of dogs playing in the quad today. The RV had a couple cats in it, and right before I was about to go in the room to look at the cats, I heard one of them scream like I had never heard before: very wild and very loud. a classmate explained that a student put his finger into the cage, and apparently the cat went nuts. poor kitty! they shuffled the cages around and stuck that cat's cage in the corner and covered it with a towel.

on the way into school i saw a ton of hispanic people waiting to get on the metro... this makes me happy, as i assume they were coming into the city to protest. i love when people exercise their right to assemble.

within a month of moving to dc, i began telling everyone how the metro system needed the equivalent of an interstate looping the city. what a shock, i am not the first one to think of this: the purple line. hopefully this will be built by the time i am sixty.

okay, i can't think of anything else halfway interesting to say.

lazy muncie

growing up, this was the big city to me where we went on special occasions. my dad was also the elks president in a town very near to here, which makes it even more funny:

http://www.lazymuncie.com/

another link

here's something useful for when you are stuck for a long time with only the internet to entertain you:

1. go to television.aol.com
2. click In2TV (upper left hand side)
3. you can watch old shows like growing pains, head of the class, perfect strangers, and wonder woman.

head of the class = best 80s show ever.

"A lawyer's either a social engineer or he's a parasite on society"

--Charles Hamilton Houston

link of the day

go to cnn.com and watch the video entitled "Psycho cat going stir crazy under house arrest."

omg, it is for real.

MSNBC did a followup with the owners of the cat that fell 80 feet out of a tree, and had the cat watch the footage of its fall. so dumb. you can watch it online, there is a link from the msn homepage.

in other pet news, i want a siamese cat, a longhaired chihuahua, and a papillon. unfortunately, three cats and two dogs would kind of equal a zoo, so i am not sure when this is going to happen.

i have about ten million things in the air right now and i am just waiting for them to fall and settle... i just need to know. i keep hitting refresh on my email, over and over.

Arrested Devlopment is hilarious... so clever. it makes me tilt my head back when i laugh.

it took me 24 hours to figure it out, but i finally realized what i should have said to the guy on the metro:

scary military man trying to subjugate me: "if you push me again, i will punch you.... stupid bitch."

second year law student (me): "if you touch me, i will sue you for everything you own."

i normally confront hecklers because i know the law is on my side... in this situation, i temporarily forgot that the threat of the law is pretty powerful as well.

woah

i love the metro because it is such a unique situation, so many opportunities to obeserve human behavior. sometimes it is funny (like two hippies transporting an old beat up bookshelf) and other times it is sad (noticing a nanny get too rough with the children traveling with her). today it was both scary and personal, which sucked.

so the orange line at rush hour is insane, people pack in like sardines. tonight, i met up with my dear friend S, who was in town to apartment hunt, since she is working at a DC firm this summer. i ate the best tom yum soup ever, then said goodbye because i was late to pick up H's birthday ice cream cake. there were 2 orange line trains two minutes apart, and i find a way to squeeze on the first one, but since foggy bottom is the second to last stop where people typically board the train on its way out to the 'burbs, i was very close to the door. when the train got to the last stop where people want to get on (rosslyn), this guy in a military uniform, carrying his military uniform dry cleaning, pushes me hard to squeeze onto the train-- one of the worst pushes i have received, i was literally knocked into this lady's backpack on wheels. but i say nothing and just hold on to stay upright. he had a shaved head, black combat boots, and he was at least six feet tall and black. he had a full camoflauge miltary uniform on. i mention that he was black only because it plays into something i did later.

so we get to the next stop, and of course tons of people want to exit, including the lady right beside me. so i turn and exit the train. it was squished, but absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. as i am waiting for people to leave, military man turns to me and says, "if you push me again, i will punch you.... stupid bitch." i was in shock, so i said nothing and reboarded the train. at this point, i was scared, so i weave around a bunch of women to be farther away from him. i explain this to them saying, "i need to move-- that guy just called me a stupid bitch."

he overhears me and says loudly in front of the whole train, "that's right i called you a stupid bitch-- don't you push me." i have this philosophy of trying to quell violence, trying to reach common understanding-- i hate how often (white) people won't talk to some people, and act like they are better in their smug silence. this is especially important to me when race comes into play. so i say to him, "there's no need for namecalling. i was just moving to assist others trying to exit." he starts saying again how i am a stupid bitch.

at this point the women around me made sushing noises, and i didn't respond. i hoped he would exit at the next stop, but he definitely stayed on the line until the end, when i exit too. so i waited until he exited the train before even getting up from my seat.

it was so scary and frustrating on so many levels. it sucked because no one spoke up when it happened (and frustrating that the threat was made outside the train, so no one heard about the punching) and no one afterward spoke to me... they just averted their eyes... so much like the kitty genovese situation which occurs in large groups. there was no community, just a 6 foot tall man in combat boots calling a 5 foot 3 girl a stupid bitch. plus i was frustrated because what was i supposed to do? there actually was a policeman in the station, but it just seemed pointless to file a police report. so instead i just got in the car and cried. and even now there is this pain in my stomach, a palpable fear-- i have never had a stranger threaten violence towards me.

it's hard to process too because the situation just violated all the rules i have in my head of ordered society. if it would have been H who had been threatened, we could have said, "oh, homophobe" and at least it would fill a compartment... but here, it makes no sense. it made me understand how victims, especially those who are attacked by strangers, feel-- i immediately understood the victim who buys a gun and keeps looking around. maybe this is overreacting, but i ride the metro at least 10 times a week and i have never seen anything like what i experienced. and the guy was not crazy, he got on at rosslyn, where a lot of military people work... he was carrying his dry cleaning. plus i didn't push him and he pushed me so hard when he boarded the train! and of course, even if i did push him, violence is never an appropriate response. plus it made me feel so alone in a sea of people.

it made me miss indiana, because people actually talk to each other and comfort strangers in bad situations. in indiana people are nice at gas stations. they may disagree with your politics, but if you are gender normative, they are genuine when they ask how you are. they talk to each other. i notice this in dc all the time: someone will be putting their fare card in upside down and no one will stop and say to turn it over. i do though. i think that is why tourists ask me for directions all the time.

so... i am scared i will come in contact with that person again. i also feel sorry for him, because what kind of person does that??? if i could redo the situation, i would have said, "i feel genuinely sorry for you." the namecalling is one thing, i probably would have just laughed about it later if that was all it was, but the threat of violence, which was so sincere-- i will never forget the way he looked at me. and it made me think about misogny, about the way some men use their strength and their combat boots to absolutely devastate women. how powerful that is. it riled up the feminist in me. but it also riled up a fear i have never experienced before.

peacefulness

this weather forces me to love everything despite myself. it's so much easier to focus at the computer with an open window nearby and a bit of a breeze. the kittens love it too: they've been taking turns on the windowsill, sprawled out like parentheses.

plus i took a nap and now H is taking a nap and the house is quiet and only lit by natural light. love it love it.

did i mention it is supposed to be eighty-three degrees on monday?

back from vacation, got way too much sun and now moving is painful. i got tricked because when i laid in the sun, it was windy... so i couldn't tell that my skin was gradually becoming overcooked.

the best part of being out of the country was getting to come home and find so much life waiting for me to catch up on. lots of mail, tivo, emails, news, etc. the worst part: by not being accessible by email, i missed out on the chance to get interviewed by an AP reporter re: solomon amendment. he emailed and i didn't check my email until it was too late. i would have liked 2.2 seconds of fame.

another best part: i LOVED speaking spanish in cozumel... it was addictive. i think if this vacation happened three years ago, i would have studied abroad. although i definitely had to count on my fingers when talking to a taxi driver-- "once, doce, trece.... okay."

the right to own a pet??

i'm not surprised that more people know about the simpsons than the first amendment, but this.... really?

It also showed that people misidentified First Amendment rights. About one in five people thought the right to own a pet was protected, and 38 percent said they believed the right against self-incrimination contained in the Fifth Amendment was a First Amendment right, the survey found.


(from here.)

in other news, my vacation starts in like 18 hours... yay!

untitled

a guy on the city bus today explained to me that it was unconstitutional that only verizon phones work in the metro. this is because, according to him, it violates his first amendment rights. he told me how the bombings in london illustrated his point: those people had a constitutional right to call their families in the emergency. he talked very loudly so the whole bus could hear, then told me how he is an intern at a conservative think tank.

i am not making this up. he did stop talking, however, when the person we both know (one of the students H supervises, who he was sitting with) told him i was in law school. i did not say a word, although i thought many words.

oh, he was wearing a bow tie too.

cornhole

the best game in the entire world is cornhole. you have not lived (or tailgated at a football game) until you have played it. once i live in an apt bigger than this one, i am going to order a special set with the IU logo on it, like my friend tim.

here is a reference for those whose lives have yet to be touched by the joys of this game: cornhole .

a list

here are some things that i do not like:

1. the gilmore girls. the dialogue is just too much.

2. kittens (or should i say, a kitten) with PTSD. long story short, there was smoke in the building and everyone had to evacuate and some kittens are more cooperative than others. little miss uncooperative had to be carried out by hand on a harness and leash and escaped from my grasp, ran into a boiler room, and basically freaked out from fear of the fire alarm. but the building did not burn down (overheated elevators caused smoke) and everything is fine. but someone is still jumpy. (that would be the uncooperative kitten, not me.)

3. another thing i do not like: milk. it is gross to me. the last time i drank milk, i was less than ten. this probably means i will probably get a hunchback when i am 60. but i do like cheese and ice cream.

4. mustard in its traditional condiment form. i do like it in its dried form on pretzels.

5. conflicts questionnaires. who knew i had done so much legal work?

6. that donatoes and penn station (east coast subs) aren't franchised in this area.

7. my sleeping schedule as of late: i stay up until between 2 and 3AM, then sleep until 11-12PM: staying up too late and sleeping in too late, a vicious cycle. it is going to suck in nine days when i have to get up at 4AM for my flight to miami.

besides those things, life is good.

ouch part two

atrios reported yesterday that there may have been alcohol involved in the dick cheney hunting accident situation.

negligence lawsuit, what? EDIT: this was posted the exact same minute i made this post.

also, i saw on some other blog that the white house said he was hit with "between six and 200" pellets. way to estimate, WH! i am somehow guessing it was a little more than six.

in other news, girlyman concert tonight! i am so excited.

ouch!

i want a t-shirt that says "dick cheney shot me on a hunting trip."

this is hilarious to me.

hungry!

here are my five favorite restaurants in the dc area:
1. the melting pot
2. kinkead's
3. oceanaire seafood room
4. vidalia
5. indebleu

honorable mention goes to todai in fairfax, because all you can eat sushi plus crepes and a huge dessert bar makes for an amazing dinner too. it is a chain, but it is a chain of deliciousness.