can't stop listening

that echo chorus lied to me with its
hold on hold on hold on hold on

my favorite summer associate friend explained the unexplainable: the reason I have struggled and somewhat disliked direct legal services is because you take the role of the client and... it sucks. it sucks to be poor and have legal needs and have to beg to get the public benefits you need or beg for some sort of justice for a wrongful termination based on HIV discrimination. i love doj and the firm because there's power, it's easy to get things done and still intellectually challenging. you are disconnected from the bureaucracy. as she said this, it completely overwhelmed my brain... suddenly so much made sense. and suddenly i was a little embarassed too.

i've figured out that i still like public interest, but i like the public policy and impact litigation parts of it... not so much being in the trenches and the routine application for public benefits and such.

1. As I have said, I love, love Alison Bechdel: ny times review

2. this was so hilarious to me that I emailed it to myself at work:
Governor Daniels, who flew back from a trade mission to Asia to attend the ceremony marking the announcement, said Honda's decision was exciting for his state.

"These are the jobs we seek for Hoosiers most avidly — high paying jobs, stable jobs," Governor Daniels said. "These are the jobs that Hoosiers admire most."

article
umm... i beg to differ.

again, a crosspost

So it appears that when it becomes hot in DC, all the homeless people get umbrellas. I was walking along K Street yesterday and all of this sudden this homeless lady emerges from underneath the umbrella and barks at me: "Buy me a Coke!"

That is SO what I would say if I were homeless and down on my luck!


also a true life overheard in dc:

Sorority girl to her friend: I really like monogrammed stuff, but my initials are ANS, which sounds too much like anus... so that would make me uncomfortable.
Friend: but actually if it were monogrammed it would be little A, big S, little N.
...
Sorority girl: hmm, I had never thought of that before.
--Tenleytown metro station

so long, civil rights

i meant to post this last week--

This is so disturbing. This is the second of two Supreme Court decisions that came out after exams which would have changed some of what I was taught this past semester (the other was an evidence related case about 911 calls being admissible).

and you know you are in law school when you read the summary of the majority opinion and think in your head exactly what you later discover the dissent said.

fucking awesome

(crossposted from my other blog)

Pope Makes First Papal Visit to Six Flags

In other news, H is gone until Sunday, so I am going to spend the rest of the week unpacking, getting my hair cut, going out to dinner with S, and doing all the DC type things I love to do (like shopping in Georgetown.... I have money to spend!).

i'm in a computer lab, as the internet has not worked in my new apartment yet since i moved in this weekend. i keep thinking of amazing blog topics, but i have of course forgotten them all.

i am going fishing tomorrow with the firm. and by "fishing" i mean, sitting on a boat and drinking beer while the rest of the people kill animals in sport. :-) although i do think someone will end up eating the fish, which evens out everything.

this story makes me laugh so much. and last week cnn had a video of a cat that chased a bear into a tree. there's a photo where the bear is a 100 feet high, looking down in terror, and at the bottom of the tree is this tiny little orange cat. my childhood cat (the one with three legs who is actually still alive) used to chase deer, but then the deer would figure out the size differences and the chase would be reversed.

this book is amazing. i met her last week and she signed my book with an exclamation point... so cute.

FUN HOME ALISON BECHDEL As a little girl, Bechdel knew that her father, an English teacher in small-town Pennsylvania, was odd. He was withdrawn, he decorated their house too much, he moonlighted as an undertaker. But she didn't realize he was gay and seducing his young students, and she certainly didn't expect him to kill himself at 44 years old. In this brilliant, bleakly hilarious memoir in comic-book form, Bechdel combines stories from her emotionally barren but weirdly fascinating childhood with elegant allusions to Proust and Joyce to make a gripping story of filial sleuthery and, in the end, hard-earned acceptance of how much of her father she finds in herself.
from here.



the firm is taking us on vacation starting tomorrow. time to go pack the seersucker and linen clothes.

peace like a river
joy like a fountain
love like an ocean

back home again

well, i am here in my hometown for my brother's graduation. i ate the world's best bagels. it's really nice to be in a real house and have a big kitchen and a yard and such. the cost of living here is amazing. tomorrow is a cookout at the open house and hopefully sitting on the front porch swing and reading. i miss having the space to house all my books.

i have no commentary on... anything. my life is currently jam-packed with a million things. it's going to slow down shortly i think. much love!

this is my childhood:

--frozen cokes (@ Hills)
--the plastic smell of My Little Pony
--Bert & Ernie swing set
--filling sand buckets with rosebud tree blossoms
--having an address that was "rural route __, box __"
--Mash and the A-Team
--special trips to the mall
--The Facts of Life (my root)
--my black cat named Pokey
--plastic over the screened in front porch
--legos
--talking Alf doll
--being scared of Operation (the game)and the posters on my wall at night (I thought the figures in the posters moved)
--falling asleep to the American Tail soundtrack
--stranding on my tiptoes at the snack bar at the country club: "charge it to d__ b______ (my father)."
--Hardees breakfast and playing with the calculator with the written tape at my dad's work on Saturday mornings
--getting groceries at Cub Foods
--my dad lining the back of the truck with plastic and filling it up with the hose so i could swim
--saying the pledge to the christian flag in kindergarten
--having a boy doll whose arms folded in prayer with velcro
--crocodile mile and slip & slide!
--being little chief red cloud at girl scout camp

schadenfreude

nice job, bow tie boy. plus he is a law student!

dare i say

i am actually enjoying full-time work. it is nice to be able to come home and be DONE for the day: most of my law school days end with me reading the assignment due the next morning, and cursing myself for not finishing it earlier. even if i don't get home until 7-8PM (and that is reduced hours because i am not a real lawyer yet), at least those few hours left in the day are mine completely.

also you have to love a firm where an attorney comes over to you just to ask, "did you watch shalom in the home last night?!?"

i tivoed it.

also my new favorite dc restaurant: ten pehn. yum.

so i think i have read around 12 magazines in the past three days. i am catching up on the ones i didn't have time to read over finals. now i get all the jokes in the blogs: "the decider"-- hilarious!

indiana politics

make sure to scroll to near the end: republican primary.

the two party system and primary system in general always brings out the best people. gotta love the flogging.

awesome

so i take back that last entry. stress, you know. for some reason on the way to take my third final this morning, i started feeling like my old self: i'm a rockstar again. i think this feeling coincides with the end of this huge to do list as far as interviews, luncheons, traveling, outlines, etc.

in the middle of my exam, my power cord somehow got in that joint where the chairs connect, so when i pushed my chair back to turn my exam in, it snapped the wires. not so good considering i have one more exam in less than 24 hours. but one of my classmates is going to let me borrow hers tomorrow afternoon, hopefully that will all work out (still a bit nerve wracking, as my computer currently has only two hours and fifty six minutes left in battery power-- and it's a three hour exam).

i'm feeling great because the end is near, and by the end, i do not mean the Second Coming of our lord and savior... i mean finals. even though monday is definitely a new beginning: i start my summer job. oh powersuit, you're such a dear old friend.

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