hurrah for no hot water!

so i figured that i had started my last couple of days with grumbling posts and i didn't want you to think that i was a grumbly person (ok, maybe i'm a bit of a grumbly person, sometimes), so i'm trying to make this sound upbeat! b/c everyone loves ice water in their faucets!! i know i do!

so i had asked ivy (hurrah for ivy!) to fix my drippy faucets. well, they came by at least. and left a note that they would try to fix it today. but fucked with things to the degree that they turned off my hot water! hurrah! the water was so cold i almost couldn't brush my teeth. and i sure couldn't shower. nope, no shower. so i'm gross. be sure to tell me so when i see you in the hallways. i would love that.

so to the management of ivy gardens, if you're reading this--GIVE ME BACK MY HOT WATER!
sincerely, laura

grrrrr to another crappy morning

so i will have to tell all of my stories here, b/c it turns out that my friends don't like listening to me.

so i woke up at 6am, b/c i went to sleep at 10 last night. but it was still dark. so i kept snoozing, waiting for daylight. well, i finally realized that we weren't getting daylight today. and by then it was raining. so i finally motivated myself to get ready, but then i thought i would just drive over and have rob bring me my books and i would take them back home and study there, which is the sort of thing to do on a day like today. but then i decided that was stupid and i would just come to the law school. and i left the apartment and it was not raining. but then i realized i was not wearing earrings. so it took me 10 minutes to try on every pair of earrings i own and finally decide that none of them were what i wanted. and by then, it's raining. but i decide i must go to the law school. well, as i walk more furiously than usual, the rain only picks up and now it's pretty much pouring. so by the time i get here, i'm sweating, i'm soaked up to my knees, my computer and purse are soaked, and my arms are wet (yes, i was carrying an umbrella). and of course, within two minutes i see more people than i saw all day yesterday when i was looking really cute.

i suppose no one should have been forced to listen to that story.

things already wrong with today

so it's not even 9am and here's what's already wrong:

1) i have realized that i must lose weight before i am able to wear any of my winter clothes. ugh. winter clothes are supposed to be for hiding all your weight. granted, most people manage to not gain that weight til the middle of winter after a couple of months of sweaters. not me. i'm ahead of the curve.

2) i could not get to sleep last night. i got like two hours of sleep. ugh. actually, i feel fine. but still. ugh.

3) i am wearing new shoes, which have not yet been worn outside and have a very slippery bottom. i nearly killed myself (and embarassed myself) on the way to class. that also kinda sucked. but i think i like the shoes.

4) and it's not like it's anything new, but i walked too vigorously to class this morning and now i am sweaty and gross. so ugh.

and good morning to you!

family fun--another residual t-giv post

so my mom is a pediatric neurologist and my dad is a neurosurgeon. and i am a bit of a spaz. with a gait so bizarre that my friends, and even sometimes mere acquaintances (tho i question these people's social skills) comment on it. also, my family frequently takes walks on the beach, which makes your gait a little bit funny anyways. so for years, one of the things i have loved to do with my parents when walking is play a game i refer to as, "what's wrong with me?" [there are two versions of this game. the other one involves tearing apart my personality and figuring out why people don't like me. this one involves diagnosing me with the medical condition that would account for the walk i am doing at the time.]

so i start walking in all sorts of fun ways. limping and hobbling and putting more weight on one foot than the other and arching my back in weird ways, and i suppose that this may sound like a terrible game, but i swear i'm not making fun of people who really walk this way and there really are portions of all of these things in my regular walk. and then my parents tell me what could be wrong with me. they also play this game with random passers-by, but that's not as much fun for me b/c i've never absorbed anything they've said. interestingly enough, my younger sister has become quite the diagnostician.

but like most stories involving obscure medical ailments or my family in general, it's really no good unless you know what they say. frequently they say i'm hemiparetic. on occassion they say it's not a medical condition and i'm just walking like a weirdo (i doubt this, i'm always convinced there could be a condition associated with the walk). but this vacation it seemed that i was favoring spastic diplegia and spastic paraparasis. which, i'm not sure if you noticed--both start with "spastic." so i'm starting to wonder if my parents are playing a trick on me. like it's a medical diagnosis, but what they're really wondering is, "how did i get stuck with this kid?"

actually, my mom has an answer for that too--my dad. whenever i ask her where the weird comes from, she replies, "your father." (my parents are divorced, so this is not the man walking down the beach humoring me by playing this game, despite that fact that he bears no genetic relationship to me.) and that's a diagnosis i'm willing to believe.

family ailments, part II

this is a residual thanksgiving post, but it turns out that these family ailments may really exist. so we were walking with my mom, my grandparents, my aunt and my two cousins. and my mom strikes up a convo about the "pokey." and ALL of us start nodding in unison and pointing to our backs and recounting stories of how it has crippled us. it seems that my aunt and her kids have it in a slightly different location, but it's definitely the same sort of pain. after further conversations about all of our aches and pains, my poor grandpa concluded that he should have died before he ever managed to procreate.

mystery solved

not the mystery of how to make me do work, but the mystery of the extra books in my carrel.

I MADE IT!!

i am at the library. approximately 28 hours later than anticipated. but i am here.

at the start of the year, i got myself a carrel, b/c i could and b/c i thought that was pretty neat. but then i never ever ever came to the library. nor did i read or do homework or anything. so i told all my friends to avail themselves of the carrel. the first few people did not, so i continued to extend the offer. and then, one day, i returned and realized that about half a dozen people were using my carrel. which is all fine and dandy. and funny. i have no idea whose stuff it is that i am sitting here with. but i've got access to my first ever bookstand. actually, it looks more like molly's than ajeet's. hm. welll it's not ajeet's. his is very distinct. well i'm using it anyways. and i would use his headphones, but matt madden already jacked them. and i listen to the silence while i work. which is a nice change from the heavy breather in the carrel to my left.

ok, final point b/f i actually start doing work. hopefully.

so i have gained a fair amount of weight this year, and i am quite sure it is only going to get worse thru finals. so i have bought myself a wardrobe that will expand w/ me thru/out this season. (you've already heard about this wardrobe--it's also the lounging around the house wardrobe from target.) so i'm trying it out today and i'm quite pleased. no matter how large i grow, i will always be able to wear my matching "cashmere" hoodie and pants from target. what a season.

happy studying!!

addendum

so i also thought about getting the magic bullet with my lexis points. but i can't find it! even tho it's on amazon! if only ajeet pai could tell me what to do...

sadness consumes me--the magic bullet is gone

so i have loved the magic bullet since first i saw the infomercial. i could flip by it ten times a day and stop to watch every time. despite the horrific cast. i mean, those people are awful. but something about the magic bullet compels me. (for those of you who don't know, it's this little cooking contraption that does all sorts of things. i'd say it slices dices and juliennes, but none of that matters to me. what really matters is that you can make nacho cheese and pasta sauces and tasty alcoholic beverages.)

anyways, of course i would not pay $100 for this thing, tho i have been more tempted than i ever have been by an infomercial. BUT before i left for t-giv, i saw a wal-mart ad that said it would be sold for $44.88 after t-giv! oh my! this is great! i still have to grapple with it and after i return, i look online and do some price comparisons and whatnot and it turns out that this is at least $10 cheaper than you can find it anywhere else. and there's no shipping and handling. which i despise. but i still have to mull it over and make sure that i'm serious about this financial commitment. i mean, i just spent $100 on terrycloth pants. so i finally head out to the wal-mart this evening (venturing out of my apartment for the first time all day) AND THEY WERE ALL GONE!

the man told me that they had all been bought between 5am-11am yesterday morning!! DID NO ONE THINK THAT I WOULD COME BY ABOUT A DAY AND A HALF TOO LATE AND STILL DESPERATELY WANT A MAGIC BULLET?!?!!? WHAT JERKS! anyways, now i refuse to pay more than $44.88 for this product, but i also now have my heart set on it. sadness.

success!!

so about once every year i decide that i will cook. this is usually a bad idea. i know this before i start. it takes about 8 times as long as it should and creates about 14 times the mess it should. for a final result that may or may not be edible.

so last week, while watching the food network, i decided that i would make a butternut squash lasagna with a basil bechamel sauce. and today i did. nevermind the fact that i went to three grocery stores and could not find fresh basil. AND IT WAS A SUCCESS! i made a butternut squash puree and a basil bechamel and both were tasty! and then i put them in a 13"x9" pan with cheese and pasta (hard to screw up) AND IT WAS STILL TASTY! and i actually didn't make too much of a disaster in the kitchen. there were some mini-disasters, but the success has already gone to my head and i've forgotten about them. most amazingly, i still have 10 fingers after having cut up butternut squash and de-rinded it. unfortunately i have done this while everyone is out of town and now i have all of this food and i do not know if i can eat it.

BUT I AM AMAZING! I AM A MARVEL IN THE KITCHEN! MY COOKING SKILLS ARE UNPARALLELLED! HURRAH FOR ME!!

crazy old people

so you may have noticed that i said i had to make an excuse to get out of more family time. but you have to understand is that i LOVE my family. we're the best family ever. it's just that today they were all going off to see very extended family today and i wanted out of that. but that's not the point.

so i call my parents "crazy old people." all the time. and it only dawned on me about 2 days ago that maybe that wasn't appropriate and maybe other people don't call their parents "crazy old people." frequently. to their face. i asked my parents and they agreed that maybe that wasn' the norm, but that they understand (or hoped) that i meant it affectionately. which i do. this is going to be another crappy laura story, b/c the fact is that i can't explain it. but it's just the way they are. somewhat as individuals, but i think i mean it primarily about the way they are as a couple and the way they interact after 25 years of marriage. it's each of their second marriages and in the past few years i've really come to see how great they are together and how well they complement one another. and they're a riot. i wonder if all couples are like this at this point or if my parents are just very lucky.

yup, another weakly documented laura story--my parents are crazy old people. in a good way.

back from thanksgiving

well, i am back in c-ville from my brief thanksgiving departure and i have a few random things to discuss. i am allowed to post these today, b/c i have decided that today is laura day and tomorrow i will start studying. even tho starting studying is the excuse i used to get out of more family time. but now i need an excuse for why i stopped at target on the way back to town and spent about $100 on multiple pairs of lounging around the house pants. see, i figure that this is ok b/c i wear them all the time and i've only got one pair i really love, which i have been trying to replace for years. a fact which vexes my whole family b/c we all love them and BC quit making them the year we each got a pair. now they sag and hang in an absolutely comical way and i insist on wearing them all the time. until now, when i spent $100 on all these other pairs from target. and hence why i must waste the whole rest of the day. do you see the logic? trust me, it's laura logic. anyways, on the agenda is watching a movie in a theater and cooking for fun, which will invariably be a disaster and will take 8 times longer than it should and make 14 times the mess it should. i also drove by the bowling alley on 29 and think i should go bowling too. alas, no one is in town. anyways, hope you all had a happy thanksgiving.

why everyone should have a friend like ajeet pai

b/c when you go to borrow a food processor from him b/c you are deluding yourself into thinking that you'll actually make a butternut squash lasagna in the next week, he provides you with not only the food processor, but also with the butternut squash. which happen to just be sitting around his place.

those law review nerds

one of the nice things (b/c i am also a nerd) about being friends with people on law review is that it only took approximately 5 days b/t the time i started my blog and the time a friend IMed me, citing the blog in Blueboook format. how cool is that?!?! i'm like a cultural icon!

Auto response from LifeboatLaura: i've just realized that i have less in my checking account than i have since i was about 17 years old. but b/c i have no financial record-keeping, i can't tell if this is b/c of my spending habits or b/c firms aren't paying me back fast enough. i'm going to assume a bit of the former and a lot of the latter. BASTARDS!

mmm7w: Just "a bit" of the former? But see, Laura, look what i bought, Nov. 18, 2005 at http://lifeboatlaura.blogspot.com/2005/11/look-what-i-bought.html.

curses on the food network!

so i don't actually cook. ever. but i watch a lot of the food network. and to the executives at the food network responsible for the scheduling of program--this post goes out to you. why would you ever schedule 2 solid weeks of thanksgiving programming? how many times do you think i need to learn to bake a turkey?!?! i don't even need to learn once! i won't be making a turkey for about another decade! i just want to have something distracting and fun on the tv to keep me from doing my class reading. yes, i'm not using your programming to learn anything, but i don't want to waste a week of time "learning" the same thing over and over! this is just crazy. also, i think you should consider putting on more alton brown. that man is quite the entertainer.

commercials that suck

lexi and i were talking about this recently, but i just saw another commercial that irks me, so i'll give you all of them right now.

the worst are the leapfrog learning tools ones. i haven't seen any of them in the last few hours, and i have a short memory, so i'll just give you the gist of why they're terrible commercials. they all involved this device teaching your child, while you and your spouse do other things in the other room and leave your child with the tool. so you go to answer the phone, and when you come back--how great, your son has learned to read! but the first one i saw is still the worst. the dad's in an airport and (maybe this is even the one where the mom goes to the other room) the kid is reading a whole story about a great relationship with a father, but remember that his dad isn't around and the kid isn't having a relationship with his son. and then there is some sort of tagline about your being there for all the growing moments in your child's life. BUT YOU'RE NOT THERE! YOU'RE IN AN AIRPORT ACROSS THE COUNTRY! THIS MACHINE IS TEACHING YOUR CHILD TO READ!

that story would have worked much better if i remembered the commercial better. sorry.

but there are more. there is also a series of outback commercials that irked me. the first person gets hit with a boomerang, giving them the brilliant idea to go to outback, and then in THREE OF FOUR of the little vignettes, the boomerang came back and hit the second person FROM THE SAME DIRECTION FROM WHICH IT HAD ORIGINALLY COME.

one final one, which is the latest. i just saw it. it's an ad for diamonds and the theme song is "under pressure," which is playing as the man walks home to his wife or girlfriend or whatever she is. does this mean he doesn't want to give her a diamond, but he has to b/c she's a shrewish bitch who's forcing him to do so? i can't exactly tell, but it seems like a fair inference.

do you think it's weird that

one of my dillees replies to all my helpful e-mails with, "Thanks dude." i'm all for informality and all, but i do find this bizarre.

big day

well, i may not be doing schoolwork, but i have managed to find something moderately productive to do. today is the day i'm switching out my summer wardrobe for my winter wardrobe. it's fun in that it reminds you of all those things you didn't even remember you owned. simultaneously, i try to weed out a few articles of clothing to get rid of. in many cases, this is quite easy. those pants you know will never again look right on your butt or a sweater set you can't even recall the last time you wore. but there are a few items that always p0se some real problems. i have a number of items that i haven't worn in years, but that i just can't bring myself to get rid of. today, i have finally come to part with a sleeveless hooded t-shirt that must have been following me since my freshman year of college. i can't even explain why i haven't been able to get rid of it all these years, but i haven't. i am still holding on to a tan sweater set. i believe it was the first sweater set i ever owned and it's still so great. except it has managed to shrink, so that it only covers about half of my stomach. when you have a stomach like mine, this is not a good thing. and yet it sits in my closet, year after year. oh well.

the other thing making this task particularly difficult this year is that i am spending two weeks over christmas in hawaii and hopefully the week of spring break in some tropical locale. as such, i do not want to put all of my summer clothes away b/c i'm not going to want to root them out when the time comes. and i'm not willing to make many decisions about what i might want to wear for those occasions. so i've still got nearly a full closet of summer stuff and i don't know where my winter clothes are going to go.

anyways, this was a completely worthless post. i apologize. but now i'm thinking of hawaii again and that's always fun. mmmm, fun in the sun.

lightheadedness and whatnot

so having begun this blog for the purpose of disseminating information about my latest medical condition, i realized that i have not yet done anything of the sort. now that i know i have a public, i must answer the call of duty and give you the story.

first, a bit of background. i am wildly hypocondriachal. to some degree, i truly am worried about any number of health ailments. and to some degree, i think it fits well with my drama queen personality. also, i have not even a rudimentary knowledge of health-related things. so basically i have been diagnosing myself with cancer about once a month since i was 18. if my knee hurts, i think it’s knee cancer. if i have a slight pain in my stomach, it’s stomach cancer. you get the point. sometimes it’s not cancer, but it’s always something fun. once, having put in a new pair of contacts, i sent my mother an e-mail with the subject line, “glaucoma? cataracts?”

which leads to my second background point. my parents are both doctors so i call them to have them diagnose me. i do this all the time. i figure that if i quit, my mother wouldn’t know i loved her. plus i think that my mom is one of the few people who has to love my weird, endearing quirks and i find this whole series of conversation to be classic laura. my mom has to love them. but i am starting to become more suspect of my mother’s diagnoses, as my friends have heard about the things my mom does and i believe. for example, last year i thought i had a brain tumor. or maybe it was brain cancer. whatever. so when i went home for christmas, my mom looked in my eyes with one of those little doctor tools and told me i didn’t have a brain tumor. i was willing to believe that this was a perfectly sound medical procedure for locating tumors. my friends are not so sure.

anyways, i recently decided to take a break from asking my mom for medical diagnoses. this was after i called with itchy legs and my mom diagnosed me with the early stages of diabetic neuropathy, which would have me gradually losing all sensation in my limbs, or with some sort of cancer. it turns out that my skin was a bit dry from having gone to a tanning bed b/f the law school semi-formal.

it was rada who diagnosed that problem, so i have decided to turn to my friends at the law school, clearly all health care professionals, for medical advice.

starting tuesday evening, i started to feel lightheaded a lot and like i might fall over whenever i stood up and walked around. so i got worried. and asked my friends. they first diagnosed me with an iron deficiency, which i was willing to believe b/c i do have totally screwy eating habits and it may have been a week since i ate red meat. but that only lasted about 8 hours b/c i went home and checked my daily vitamin and realized that it had 100% of my daily iron needs.

next, ajeet told me i might have low blood pressure brought on by dehydration. this also sounded like a very good idea. normally i drink a lot of water, but once again, maybe not this week. also, ajeet has mentioned that he would like to go to medical school. i figured this was very trustworthy advice and i followed up by drinking so much water i nearly exploded all over wednesday night trivia.

but alas, the next day i was feeling lightheaded and woozy and generally unpleasant again. so it was time to call in the big guns. my mom wasn’t answering her phone, so i went with dad. also, decades of medical training. however, he usually tells me it’s nothing. to his credit, he does this after asking me a series of questions. but still—nothing is not as much fun as brain cancer. i mean, you get way more cards and well-wishers when you have brain cancer. or i’m assuming. i still haven’t had brain cancer. anyways, when dad told me this was nothing, i decided to call mom to get a second opinion.

so mom went with her other fallback position—“oh this is just something that happens on my side of the family.” i don’t know how i had the misfortune of being born into this family, but you wouldn’t believe the medical ailments we all seem to have. searing pain in my right shoulder for days on end—oh yeah, we all get that. (my mom has a highly technical term for this. it’s our “pokey.”) turns out we all have terrible feet pains and that our muscles randomly freeze up and we can’t move every now and then. and now, it also turns out that we all have days or weeks of arbitrary lightheadedness. maybe when i get older this will be accompanied by nausea. score, i can hardly wait! so be forewarned and don’t procreate with me. just imagine the poor kids.

so in the end, it seems that my general wooziness is mostly gone, but i’ll be sure to tell you if that ceases to be the case. be sure to keep tuned for that.

in the meantime, i’ve got my latest theory. i think that someone is trying to poison me! i found this to be the most obvious answer and very fun. my mom thinks it’s crazy talk. but we’ll see who’s crazy when i die and someone slips into all 5 classes i’ve so carefully picked for next semester.

aren't you glad you didn't ask?

i have a public!

so i was told earlier this evening that there are times in history when a person and a technology mesh in perfect harmony. (or something like that.) this person, clearly an avid fan of this blog (much like yourself, i am sure), went on to note that the blog and i are such a combination.

somehow when he said it, it was very moving and spoke volumes about the majesty of this site. clearly i have butchered it. alas.

kudos to me

for having uploaded a photo with such ease!

fine fine, kudos to the people at blogger.com who made it idiot-proof. whatever.

look what i bought!

dear god, i hope that uploading pictures is as easy as it seemed and that y'all can see this picture.

and here is what i have to say about these shoes--

so as i was at rack room shoes, looking for shoes for everyday use, i came across these. dear god, they're amazing. i figure that i went thru a phase of getting rid of all my costume clothes for theme parties. having come to law school, i am back in the reaccummulating phase. i don't know for how many years we will still be attending 80s parties, but i've got at least two years left and there are some great things out there to be purchased. (earlier this year, lexi and i bought maroon lace skirts. they are hideous. they were $1.50. they should not be worn for anything but a costume event. the best part about this is that the woman who works there told us on both the scouting mission and the purchasing mission that she owned the skirt in every color. we were willing to let this slide the first time, b/c we thought maybe she was trying to make us not feel like freakish losers buying this skirt. i was completely unwilling to let it slide the second time and now i like to make fun of her whenever possible.)

anyways, that is all related to the story i was signing on to tell, but is not the story i was going to tell. so back to the shoes.

the thing about these shoes is that you really can't figure out if they were made in 1983 and they are still trying to sell them, or (and this is far more likely) some moron designed them and is trying to sell them this year. but maybe he's not a moron. maybe he's a genius b/c he knows that we are still attending 80s parties and someone has to make hideous shoes for such occassions. incidentally, there were only 3 pairs left in black. so they are selling. i had to get them about 2 sizes too big, but i figure this is OK b/c that way i can wear socks with them. maybe even two pairs of mismatching socks.

anyways, i think they were a wise investment.

well drat

looking into it, it turns out that westlaw rewards doesn't have anything worth spending your points on. until you reach approximately 20,000, but that's crazy talk. and here i am, stuck earning points b/c of the compulsive nature of my personality. really, i'd like to think of it as a matter of principle. and maybe by the time i redeem them, there will be something worth buying.

yes, i decided to get a blog so that everyone could be sure of how dull my life is, rather than just suspecting.

i have a sickness

i have recently become addicted to accruing lexis and westlaw points.

see, i never cared about this at all until i mentioned to ajeet how many points i had and innocently asked what it could buy me. he said it was something like two toasters and half a blender. and then i really started looking into it. i could get an IPOD nano with my points.

thus began the sickness. a sickness which is starting to consume my life. a sickness which is truly pathetic.

you wouldn't believe the amount of time i spend every day trying to figure out if there is any other way i could earn some lexis/westlaw points. in the last hour, i have earned myself about 550 westlaw points. this is in addition to the approximately 200 i earned during the daylight hours. and i'm already plotting what i can do when the lexis rep gets into the office in the morning.

I DON'T EVEN LIKE TO USE WESTLAW AS A SEARCH ENGINE!! I'VE BECOME A POINTS WHORE!! AND IT DOESN'T BOTHER ME!!! once i learned what i could get, i realized that i should not have been treating westlaw as my bastard redheaded step-cousin, but rather as the bastard redheaded step-cousin who might buy me really neat christmas gifts. and so it began.

scratch what i just said

so that whole thing about stealing lexi's format is no longer true. well, it's sorta true. but in a new color. so i don't have to change things too much, b/c change kinda scares me, but so does a bright white screen. my blog will be much easier on the eye late at night, w/o all the glare and whatnot. also, it reminds me of papyrus and i like old-timey things. i guess.

in related news, i did seriously consider having my dillees submit one of the drafts of their final memos to me on colored paper. i was debating b/t something kinda grey and a green, b/c ajeet says that green paper is supposed to be easy on the eyes. i figure i'll be reading these over christmas during my two weeks on a beach and the glare of the sunlight off of white paper will really suck for my hyper-light-sensitive eyes. alas, i didn't get my act together on this and i suppose i'll just read them inside in the evenings or something.

all aboard the blog bandwagon

so i really doubt that this will be something i post to more than twice, but i wanted a forum to discuss my recent lightheadedness. see, i sent about a dozen e-mails a day to those that happened to be around when i first asked for medical advice from my peers (none of whom have professional medical training), but maybe they don't want those e-mails. so here is the new way for them to find out what is going on with my medical conditions. or lack thereof.

but i'm getting ahead of myself. i want that to be it's own post.

am i supposed to put up some sort of "hello, i am laura" sort of thing here? um, i think i am not going to b/c of the fact that i assume that only two people will ever read it and you already know these things about me.

hm, i wonder if i'll ever be able to figure out how to post after i close this window. thank god for lexi and her wisdom.

also, i wanted to apologize to lexi for having taken her blog format. i mean, there are only like 8 templates, but this is what i think a blog should look like. and i didn't like the other options better. so we will say that my blog format is a shout out to lexi's blog format.

anyways, i am now going to quit my first post. if i never post again, it's b/c i can't figure out how to do so. that would not be shocking.

if i can figure out how to post again, you will soon be being regaled with the tales of my lightheadedness and the varying diagnoses of my peers and parents, only some of whom are health care professionals.