i am a terrible human being

i just laughed out loud for a commercial about a movie starring johnny knoxville in which a man pretends to be mentally and physically handicapped so that he can rig the special olympics and bet on them.

i'm thinking of a number...

you know that commercial where the guy says, "i'm thinking of a number between three hundred and eight-fifty." or whatever the numbers are. anyways, this game was a lot more fun before i'd seen the commercials a number of times. now, i just wish the guy would pick a new number. yes, seven-twenty. i know. i've got it. he's not a very good at this game.

few things amuse me like i do

so people have been calling the library the "nerderary." i did not know this was from a movie. i thought ajeet was witty.

i have also been trying to convince someone to come spend time in the library. i keep telling him what good times it is in here. i have been saying that we do things like sit across from 1Ls and eat celery and apples. you know, because that's fun.

so today, i sent an email that said, "they don't call it the library for nothing!"

which is funny b/c it would make sense if they called it something like the "funnerary." you know--"they don't call it the funnerary for nothing."

but no one calls the library the funnerary!

ha! that's great! i'm a comic genius. there is no doubt.

it is so handy to take tax law

so it turns out that if you burn your own house down, the IRS isn't going to let you take a deduction for that. who knew? that is really handy to file away and keep in mind for future reference. i know i will. and i bet mr. blackman wishes he had.

no one has brilliant ideas like laura has brilliant ideas

so you know how i bought the ipod, but i can't study while listening to music? well i have actually just found the perfect compromise. i have just put in my earplugs AND THEN put on the headphones. it's brilliant. it filters out the most noise and the music is good, but not distracting b/c it's vague enough that i can't concentrate on the words and it's muffled. i like that. now my ipod won't feel like such a waste. except i'm listening on my computer. whatever.

no, this is my new low

so it's 3:30 pm and i am eating marshmallows and watching a lifetime movie on my couch. a lifetime movie about A WOMAN PLANNING HER WEDDING. but it gets worse. i couldn't bare to miss any of it, but i knew i had to get moving. SO I SHOWERED DURING A COMMERCIAL BREAK. now, to be fair, these were really long commercial breaks, which i knew when i made the decision. but i CONSCIOUSLY DECIDED TO SHOWER DURING A COMMERCIAL BREAK SO THAT I WOULDN'T MISS ANY OF THE LIFETIME MOVIE ABOUT A WOMAN PLANNING HER WEDDING. yes, that is way worse than having a toothbrush in my locker.

so how sad is it that...

as i sit here forcing myself to eat b/c my bloodsugar won't rise above 50, and i look a little feeble while doing it b/c of my lack of motor skills when my bloodsugar is 50, the first thought to go thru my mind is that i look like someone for whom a taxpayer could claim either a section 21 credit (despite the fact that i'm over 13) or a section 129 deduction.

and i thought the second year of law school wouldn't have me making jokes about the law. at least now i'm only making them to myself in my own head at 3:30 in the morning.

so refreshing

i'd like to give a shout-out to the locker toothbrush. my mouth tasted particularly gross after my evening diet of coffee and cookies. but no longer. thanks to the locker toothbrush, i am energized and ready to go!

semper paratus, i always say

yes, i did just change my pants in the library.

i know that many people may find this to be a new low in the realm of my making myself right at home and moving in to the LS during finals. but i think there's no shame in it. i mean, i think there is no shame in keeping two meals in the fridge at all times, and cookies and fruit in my carrel, and a toothbrush and shorts and a t-shirt in my locker, and frequently having my contact case and glasses in my locker.

but when i went home at 5pm for my car, i still wanted to be cute. but i knew that before i went home, there would come a time when i wanted to be comfortable and lounge about in gray pants. so i came prepared. and now that that time is here, i sure am pleased i did it.

now back to tax law!

electricity bill

no, it has not arrived yet for the month. but i am very excited about its arrival. b/c while everyone else has had their heat on for about a month, i have yet to turn mine on. well, i turned it on for a smidge last night.

i did this once when i lived in DC and it was kinda a bad idea. i lived in a basement there and therefore, it was frickin' cold in my apartment. i think it was motivated by cheapness that year. and then a desire to see if i could do it. i was sleeping in like 3 shirts and wearing gloves to bad. in retrospect, it was stupid. i was calling my mom to ask if the reason i was sick was because i refused to turn my heat on even tho it was like mid-december and i lived in a basement. she thought the two might be related.

so i thought about doing it this year b/c i am cheap and b/c i wanted to see if i could. but now it has not been cold in my apartment. at all. my theory is that i live above someone who heats their apartment ridiculously and i am benefiting from that. but i don't know for sure. either way. i am thrilled that i will have a $15 electricity bill for december. or i hope i will. imagine how bitter i will be if it's more than that. grrrr. that would make me angry.

anyways, back to watching tv and being a putz. i somehow got all into reading about harry potter on wikipedia and accidentally discovered what happens at the end of the 6th book, which i am planning on reading over x-mas break. now it remains to be seen if i forget before i do read it. normally i would say yes, but it was quite a doozy of an ending i think.

totally random

so i was talking to someone yesterday and she was talking about how she thinks that cedric diggory from the most recent harry potter is really hot and i didn't want to say anything, but i don't really think so. i mean, i couldn't remember what he looked like, so i didn't say anything. but then i looked him up online, and he was not so attractive. and today, the first harry potter is on, so i would like to say that i think that oliver wood from the first harry potter is very dreamy. i just thought this was an appropriate forum in which to express my disagreement with someone who doesn't read this forum at all.

mmmm, how i love wads of foam in my ears

so during finals of first semester last year, i saw people studying with earplugs. and i thought they were freaks. neurotic, weird, pathetic freaks. and then i tried it. and ooooh, how i loved it.

it only got worse during finals second semester. somehow there was something about shoving little balls of re-expanding foam into my ears that said it was finals, but i was ok b/c i was blocking out the clacking of keys and the loud breathing of everyone else around me. and then, at some point, it brought me peace. i'm not quite sure why. perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they kinda provide their own white noise, b/c they don't really block out sound and they kinda reverberate what's in your head, which was what i initially thought would be awful (there's a lot going on in my head), but then i guess is what came to be so reassuring about them. i even wore them sometimes during the summer.

but i hadn't returned to them this semester. until today. i was trying to use my iPOD, but the thing about the iPOD is that it doesn't block out any of the external distracting noise, and then it provides more distracting noise. so i can't do it. at least not always. so now i have re-discovered my earplugs and i have a sense of peace. not a sense of knowing anything about first amendment law. but a sense that at least the freakishly loud air vents in the klaus reading room are muted by my earplugs. and at least that's something.

cuz i'm loving these....

Hague v Committee for Industrial Organization, p 380

• why was justice stone all alone in wanting to allow the speaker to convey this right in a public park, when he wanted to do so under the first amendment, rather than under the privileges and immunities clause? a great mystery of the case. of course i tune in for the thing that even the prof says doesn’t make any sense. score.
• now he’s saying something about prior restraint
• i want a nap
• ooooh, nap
• how nice would that be
• oh! i’ll go up to phyllis’ office after this
• that would be perfect
  

Schneider

Kunz

• oooooh, i was trying to listen and i was, but i was playing a game of solitaire

more from my notes

it is truly sad how frequently the words "blah blah blah" show up in my notes. sometimes, they're accessorized with other words--

• missed a bunch of stuff. it’s an internet day
• might make a difference if blah blah blah

drive of death

so now that it is finals, i have a schedule that does not overlap with the schedule of many others. the fact that it is daylight and i am at the law school is something of a miracle. i am certainly the biggest proponent of the new 24-hour library during finals policy, and am generally about the last person to leave. last year, i left one morning at 7am, just to drive my car home and shower.

but that's generally irrelevant to the main part of this story. first of all, i am totally unaware of anything that is current events-related. this includes the weather. i learn these things from reading other people's away messages. so yesterday people were all talking about "ice" and "sleet" and whatnot. and molly was expressing concern that she should go home early and i was like, "um whatever," thinking that i would not worry about such things.

well, it turns out that molly's concern was well-placed. so i left the LS at about 4:30am. at which time, i discover there is snow. i had no idea. i had been inside for the previous 12 hours. and then, on top of that snow, there is a wintry mix that seems to have been falling for hours. and is now a nice layer of ice. on everything. i get some of this layer of ice off of my car, but i figure that no one else is on the road and so i don't worry too much about it. after all, this involves standing in the wintry mix, while your feet get wet. i drive 5 feet. it becomes clear i had better make more of an effort to be able to see out of my front window at least. anyways, in the end, it turns out that this doesn't matter at all b/c the "rain" is still falling and my windshield wipers are frozen and i still can't see out the front of my car and the streets aren't plowed and they are totally icy, and well, it was just no good. the upside of this is that the only other vehicles on the roads were the snow plows (thanks for getting there before me, guys) and i figure that if i wound up in a ditch, c-ville is small enough that they should have found me relatively quickly. anyways. i think it took me like 20 minutes to drive home from the LS and i nearly didn't make it up the hill under the bridge and it sucked.

so the moral of the story is that maybe you should know when there is going to be ice and you should go home early.

TORTFZR

so last year, as many of you recall, i went thru a t-shirt making phase, creating law school (or LS)-related t-shirts. well last night i decided that it is about time to wear my TORTFZR t-shirt. but this morning i felt like wearing a sweater. so the question is, and i realize that there is very little that can make the fact that i have created this t-shirt any worse (or any better for that matter), but do you think that it makes it better or worse, or is it such a ridiculous thing to have done anyways that it's irrelevant, if i wait to wear the t-shirt til monday, when the 1Ls have their torts exam?

slightly annoying

so these posts aren't going to be particularly lengthy, or even interesting at all, but at least they are something. yes, dellis was probably right. i probably did have only a week left.

anyways, so the other week, ivy was to fix my faucets, which had become drippy to the point of needing to be fixed. well, after they turned off my hot water, they did fix the problem. except that they switched the direction the one faucet turns. how annoying is that?!!? totally annoying! so now, rather than turning both faucets to the center, one turn inward and the other turns outward. it drives me crazy! also, the hot water faucet is off when the faucet handle thingamajig juts straight forward. which is a lot like how it should look when the water is on! ugh. i get upset just thinking about it. so i'm tempted to report that something is wrong, but do you think they would fix it just for that? b/c i'm not sure how long i can go on like this.

straight out of my notes

09.14.2005

• we talk about some recent decisions involving free speech. really, he talks. i fail to listen.

oh no....

so as tho this blog weren't bad enough for my productivity, now this blog has inspired me to play MULTIPLE computer games. i decided to give them all a try. now, if only i could play hearts, spider solitaire AND regular solitaire all at once! that would be heaven! oooooh, this is very very bad.

hey! wait a second!

i think michelle, pauline and ben are ganging up on me! it's like they know exactly how to make me get stuck with the queen of spades! bastards!!

hearts

so after that post, i figured i should give the game a chance.

i don't think i have much chance at games that involve paying attention to what other people are playing and what cards are already out there and what might still come out to bite you in the ass.

but i was doing pretty well. mostly b/c of a...is it called shooting the moon?...that i hadn't intended at all. i didn't even realize it til the end. which should show you why i'm generally bad at these sorts of games. then i just realized i was sucking about halfway thru a game and hoped no one else had picked up any tricks, and went for the rest of the points. it worked. so now i'm kicking pauline, michelle and ben's asses. well, not ben. ben is quite the hearty competitor.

anyways, none of this answers if i like this game or not. i'm not sure. but it's just as effective a time-wasting technique as any of the others. trouble, they call that.

solitaire

the tax code isn't really holding my interest.

so my first semester of law school, i was addicted to freecell. i loved the freecell. i played the freecell all the time. i could not get enough. and then, miraculously, i got bored of the freecell. but then i turned to spider solitaire. i loved the spider solitaire, i played it all the time, desperately craving the win that so eluded me on the hardest level. and finally, i had it. and then, as quickly as it started, i was bored with spider solitaire. so i turned to regular, plain old solitaire. and now, i am addicted. i play it all the time. the beauty of the regular solitaire is that it's just so easy. it's just a 2 minute commitment, and you don't really have to pay a whole hell of a lot of attention.

but here is the question. back when i started, solitaire was something i won every game. but then, somewhere along the way, i started losing. more and more. and i would say that now i lose more games than i win. so here's the question, do you think (1) that i've gotten worse, (2) that my computer realized i had gotten too smart for its previous card configurations, so it upped the level of difficulty on me (of its own accord, mind you), or (3) do you think that this might be my subconscious' way of telling me that i'm actually now bored with solitaire.

i don't know either. but i'm really concerned about what happens once i am. perish the thought that i start to play hearts (hm, do i start to play hearts?) or do i cycle back to the previous games? b/c the previous games kinda intimidate me now. mostly b/c of the time commitment and the attention that must be paid. not that i don't just make up for the time differential by playing 80 games of solitaire, instead of one game of spider. and weren't those the things i used to love about those games? i remember loving the skill involved on both freecell and spider. but now, i just don't know if i can go back. and here, with finals upon me, i've gotta have a game plan.

hurrah for computers that break on friday evening during finals!

so it turns out that i can't charge my computer and since my battery now holds about 20 minutes of power at a time, this is no good. and of course it happened on a friday evening, so derek leach won't be back for 48 hours to help me and i'm back to the old-fashioned methods of studying.

actually, i'm not really at studying yet. i thought i would start by reading the tax code, but that didn't go so well. do you know how clear the tax code is? not very. so i decided to print my notes for the class. which are the best class notes i've probably ever taken. which is not saying much. we'll see how much they clarify. of course, b/c of our fun computer lab, i managed to print them twice. as tho it wasn't painful enough for me to see them once.

but it turns out the my computer can charge off of other people's power cords, so it could be worse. at least it's not worse.

i think dellis was right. i give this blog one more week. i might keep posting, but it's clear that the fervor of the original days is long gone. either that or it's b/c my life sucks now. i haven't even been to CVS in weeks. CVS is always good for a story or two. yeah, maybe that's it.

ok, back to the tax code.

i was being so good

b/t approximately 9:15, when i finally managed to get out of bed, and 10:00, when i started to get very distracted by everything.

it all started when i decided that i could put more music on the ipod, while reading. and every now and then i would just switch CDs. no problem. except i shortly learn that i have lost a CD i don't think i ever listened to and now, of course, i must have it on my ipod and i am plagued by where it could possibly be. grrrr.

and then my dad e-mailed me with where we got a spot for spring break. so, of course, i started comparing that location to all the other places we would have rathered gone, so i can prove to myself that those spots were, indeed, better based on a number of factors like accommodations and airfare and oooooh, you see how it goes. but for those who care--aruba. i'm stuck in aruba for spring break. yes, i really should quit complaining.

and there are any number of other things currently plaguing me and tempting me, but i will not post about them, b/c i am going to read the FRE. i swear. i have decided that that is a good place to start with evidence. then i realized that i'm not sure why i'm spending a day studying for the exam i have in 3 weeks. but yeah, that's what i'm doing. and not very effectively, i might add.

just one more game of solitaire....

my latest problem

so my latest way not to study is to put music on my ipod. well, really i put the music on itunes from a CD and then someone else puts the music onto the ipod b/c the ipod hates me. so i figured that i would do this all tonight and then i would be done with it and i wouldn't have this excuse any more, so i would just use this excuse for tonight and go to bed early and be at the law school early tomorrow to study.

this is not how things turned out. it didn't take me very long to burn the 8 CDs i own. so then i went to burn eli's CDs, figuring that would really diversify my portfolio. but it turns out that wasn't really very strenuous b/c eli's CD collection isn't a lot of help unless you want every dave matthews concert ever. as for the other stuff, well basically i spent the last few hours downloading music i have no idea if i'll love or hate.

but that is probably totally irrelevant. b/c about halfway thru the venture, i realized that i had no intention of ever using this contraption. why the bejeezus did i buy it? the last time i bought a CD was...well, it's been a few years. and the last time i downloaded a song was....well, never. and the last time i was like, damn i'd really like to listen to some so and so right now was...maybe it's happened, but not very often. so this may have been a poor investment.

it also turns out that tonight was a poor investment of time b/c then khang showed up and told me that burning things off CDs was foolish and antiquated and why didn't i just download music off of his computer and then upload it to my computer and well gee, where were you when i was having eli give me advice?

so now it's 1:30 and i've done no work again. so far, while everyone else has spent the last week studying furiously in the library (or so i've heard, i haven't been there) i have spent my week: Monday--sleeping, Tuesday--being a juror for the trial ad class, which i figured was enough of a good use of my time that i wouldn't waste any more time studying for myself, Wednesday--going out, Thursday--putting crap on my ipod. so i figure that tomorrow is for studying. except i have also just noticed that i haven't spent a solid day this week on just pure, unadulterated fucking around. so i may have to pen that in for tomorrow.

either way, i meant to be asleep hours ago and here i am, still rambling. if i post tomorrow, kick my ass--i should be studying.

testing one, two, three

does this work?

if so, lexi is the greatest!!

dammit

i could really go for a bit of cheesy garlicy pizza right now. too bad i left it outside a bar last night.

Tastykakes

So I'm trying to learn how to link. We'll see how that works out for me. (addendum, it's not working very well. why don't you just go to http://lextacular.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_lextacular_archive.html.)

Anyways, Lexi, whose blog many of you know and follow (and love), has been talking about Tastykakes all week. "Ooooohhh, Tastykakes!" she and Aaron keep saying. So today Lexi let me try my first Tastykakes. They're pretty tasty. It turns out they come in all sorts of flavors. So far I have tried the "jelly krimpet," but I also have a special Christmas Tastycake to consume in the near future. They go well with Diet Coke. Doesn't everything go well with Diet Coke?

I apologize for the weakness of this post and am waiting with baited breath to know if the link works. I don't know why blogger can't make this easy, like AOL IM does. Even I can make a link say something fun there. How hard can it be?

IPOD

so the other day, i bought an IPOD. couldn't care less about music and really, what made me cave was the prospect of listening to law school CDs on my flight to hawaii. yes, i'm a nerd and a moron all in one. it truly is amazing.

so now, my IPOD is here. and i have a sinking suspicion it's going to take me approximately 8 eons to undersand how to use it. they didn't even send me an instruction book! then sent me a page then explained how to put the CD in! as tho a CD would teach me anything. which might say something about why i shouldn't have bought an IPOD. oh yes, and i own approximately 4 CDs. most of which are from the mid-90s. you know, high school and whatnot.

anyways, i don't think there was any point to this post. sorry. just trying to rack up the posts b/f someone tries to read me in class and finds out there's nothing new.

well drat

so i have just realized that approximately an hour and a bit ago, i left over half of a pizza sitting outside of a bar, waiting for my return. now, this would be perfectly ok if it weren't for the fact that for my next three meals, i know that i will feel exactly like eating this specific kind of pizza. it wouldn't bother me in the least that this would involve eating heavy doses of garlic.