also, IT IS THE WEEKEND OF LEXI!!

i would be remiss if i did not say so. sunday is lexi's birthday. that's why all of the things on the agenda this weekend sound like things lexi would love to do. it remains to be seen if she'll still manage to stretch her birthday out into a 3-week long affair, like she did last year.

ALL HAIL LEXI!

hurrah for laid-back, and unanticipated, fun

so i thought that i didn't really have anything to do this weekend, other than dinner saturday and the fair sunday evening.

only it turns out i was mistaken.

see, anthony and i both had the best of intentions of working on our papers today. unfortunately, we decided to sit at the same table to do so. and unfortunately, two well-intentioned (yet only moderately motivated) people are just going to lead one another astray. we had lunch. we took a field trip to ivy to pick up some stuff. we went back to the library. we decided to go to the driving range. we went to birdwood. it sure was lovely tho.

but it also means that ave alerted me to other things i get to do this weekend! the fireworks and hanging out at spot's place tonight! yay! and the 1L softball tournament tomorrow. i mean, i know i'm not a 1L or anything, but there is beer and food and pretty weather and a number of my friends fulfilling their PA duties.

then there's oktoberfest at ludwig's, where we have the chance to win gaudy prizes. oh, who am i kidding. i will not win gaudy prizes. i went last year and we had 14 people at our table and i think that i was literally the only person who did not win a raffle prize. of course, that did not deter me from yelling out my raffle number excitedly every time they started to call a winner. nope, not at all. well, maybe this is my year.

but if it's not, there's always sunday to make up for it. because sunday we are all going the the Virginia State Fair!!!! anthony and lexi have been planning this for a year. by which i mean they decided about 11 months ago that we would go and have been talking about it ever since.

but other people do not plan for things like laura plans for things. which is to say that i spent 3 hours yesterday on the fair website, looking at all the food choices and the rides and the presentations and the livestock shows and oh what a lineup i have planned!!!!

the initial plan was to go in the evening. but that is just not going to work. after all, look at all the things i need to fit in:

• i have done extensive research on the foods. there are not fried twinkies or fried snickers, but there are fried oreos, fried corn on the cob, fried mac and cheese, turkey legs, fried doughs, corn dogs, and about 1,000 other things, many of which i have decided i want to eat.
• i have decided that we have to be there by 2:30 b/c that is the latest in the day that they’re doing the pigeon rolling and I’M SORRY, BUT I HAVE TO SEE/DO THE PIGEON ROLLING! (i’m not sure if this is a spectator or participator sport.)
• there is pig racing. 6 times a day.
• there is an aerial daredevil contest.
• cow milking!
• A TRIBUTE TO JOHN DENVER!
• and a civil war re-enactment and encampment demo! (oh no, at the same time as the john denver tribute! we’ll have to pick one! and i am so bad at making decisions.)
• oh, and a presentation called “agricadabra—the magic of agriculture.” fortunately, that plays many times in a day, so we can’t possibly miss it.
• and then, at 6pm, there is the rooster crowing contest, held in the chicken/ducks/geese tent. yes, that is what it’s called.
• oh, and there is a ferret fiesta!! how could you go wrong?

the bad news is that we will be too late for both the pretty cow contest (1pm) and cow pie bingo (1:30). dammit!

so i'm starting to think that i may have to leave cville this evening to fit everything in b/c i don't want to put my fried oreos too close to my riding that ride where you spin in circles and the bottom drops out. that ride caused me problems in the 7th grade.

anyways, the point is that i am very excited!

oh, except lexi and i are about to head to another one of those out-of-water classes that kick our asses and i may not be able to walk or move my arms for the next 3 days. so we'll have to see if i do all of this, or if i spend my weekend crying on my couch in pain from friday's workout.

overheard

so one of my friends says he over heard the following conversation b/t two 1Ls this morning:

1L#1: so what's the deal with this whole 'law review' thing?
1L#2: well, my dad says they just pick the people in the best study groups, but i'm not sure if there's more to it than that.

WE LOVE IT! ave and i nearly cried laughing when we heard this. love it, love it, love it.

grumble grumble

so my professor sent me thoughts on what i mentioned in my email, but they were things i already knew and most importantly, THEY WERE NOT PAPER TOPICS! I NEED HIM TO GIVE ME A PAPER TOPIC! I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO RESEARCH UNTIL I HAVE PICKED ONE! HAVING TO RESEARCH SIMPLY TO PICK THE TOPIC! well that just sounds outrageous to me. and i have realized that my weekend plans mean that i pretty much need to have this done in the next 2 hours. but i do not want to do it in the next 2 hours. so grumble grumble whine.

patting myself on the back

well, it has turned out to be a very big day. ok, so it wasn’t. but this last hour. now that has been rife with productivity.

after spending a solid hour composing an email to tim heaphy to tell him what i’m picking as my paper topic…ok, so i didn’t tell him. really, what i did, was tell him that i don’t have any idea what i want to write about. but i hid that within about 10 lines of text, talking about things that really interest me about a topic. so i’m hoping that that 10 lines of other stuff will distract him to the fact that i have not at all picked a topic and then he’ll just send me something to write about. brilliant, isn’t it? i thought so too. well, the potential problem is that the 10 lines of text will draw attention to the fact that i have not picked a topic and am only trying to distract him from that fact. i decided to take that risk.

and THEN, after i had put in all that hard work, i decided it was time to watch the 4th disc of the office. yes, because my last 12 hours of tv watching have been very grueling. i clearly deserved to watch another 2 hours. BUT the upside is that when i’m done with this, then at least they won’t sitting there, telling me to watch them. so that’s good.

a good morning!

my hat returned to me! it turns out that 40 people didn't lost hats at the after-party. just two! two? well that's crazy. i thought everyone loses their hat at the after-party. it's what we do.

and then, i had a cold-call that didn't suck. which is saying something. since yesterday i spent ten minutes trying to come up with two words. two words i should have known. all she wanted to know was what the statute required and i got to sit there for 10 minutes reading it to myself silently, failing to find the two key words, while everyone else thought how stupid i am. oh well.

and then i spent the whole afternoon on my couch, watching season 2 of the office. but i guess that's not bad. just really really lazy. (this is all molly's fault. i didn't even like this show, until she forced me to watch more episodes and then i found it guffaw-out-loud-and-embarass-yourself-in-front-of-your-friends funny. so i would recommend it. tho maybe not in one day. that might be excessive.)

oh, and not emailing my prof about a paper topic. why don't they just let us pull paper topics out of hats. i could do that! i don't know why i didn't research paper classes enough to find a class that does that. dammit. another classic example of the longer you wait, the worse it gets. and i continue to wait. 3 weeks and counting...

yes, i was just feeling like i should post, but clearly i don't really have anything to say. sorry.

sometimes, even a very drunk girl finds a bone

or something like that.

so tiffany had a friend come into town for foxfields. a friend who LOVES to regale people with the tale of the time this summer when tiffany fell on her face and cut open her chin. he thinks this is hysterical. so ajeet, tiff, and i were discussing how if he were to tell us that story, we should just be really quiet, so there was an awkward and uncomfortable pause, making it very clear that stories about our friend hurting herself were not at all welcome. later, before i went to sleep that night, i even contemplated exactly the words i would use to make this point very clear. after all, i don’t do subtle well. give me a pregnant pause, meant to create a precise effect, and i’ll probably giggle. but give me an angry diatribe and it’s much more natural.

but, as you know, i forget much of yesterday. so i IMed tiff today, telling her how sad i was that korey had never said anything at all about her falling and hurting herself.

turns out i was mistaken, and that he made that very remark to me.

tiffanyuva: korey did bring up the chin thing
tiffanyuva: TO YOU

so now i’m very worried. i had such a perfectly laid plan! and i was so drunk. i’m sure i laughed heartily and told him it was a great story. ooooh, i would be so disappointed in myself. the best laid plans and all that.

but NO! it turns out i was great!

tiffanyuva: and you were FANTASTIC
tiffanyuva: i started laughing
tiffanyuva: because you were so serious
tiffanyuva: you just stared at him
tiffanyuva: and was quiet
tiffanyuva: and then you were like
tiffanyuva: you know korey, i dont think its very funny when my good friend falls and hurts herself
tiffanyuva: it was so good

so i would just like to pat myself on the back for having scripted myself so flawlessly that even tho i was so drunk i could not keep my cup upright, or censor the things i said to my friends, or any number of other things that i wish i had been able to do, i DID manage to put korey in his place! yay for me. also, i love the mental image of me doing this. i think it might even be better that i was so drunk that this could not have possibly been a perfectly laid plan meant to ensnare this person from telling this cruel story in the future. tho i doubt it really did that either. but still.

foxfields wrap-up

it is 1am. i already have my hangover headache.

i was home at 7:30, convinced that it was at least midnight.

i did not cry!

i did hit people. i cannot recall if i did this in the friendly way or the angry way. i think a smidge of both, but mostly friendly.

i lost my hat. i know i said it was only $4 and i was ok with losing it, but it still makes me sad.

i also lost my pitcher/thermos. i never even drank from it. that's a wasted 5.5 cups of bourbon folks, and it's a little sad. i hope someone else found good use for it. (actually, i did not lose it.. i left it at post 109 and it was gone when i returned for it. if you know of it's whereabouts, marked clearly with my name, let me know.)

i danced in the rain. with good people. it was delightful.

i took 91 pictures. i took the first of these before everyone got drunk, when i was battling with sobriety. i took about the last 75 after i had conquered the sobriety. there are 75 pictures of me with very bleary eyes. this is exactly why i was taking the pictures before we all got drunk. at least i have those pretty memories.

i played bocce. overhand bocce. thank god i killed no bystanders.

i played croquet. we all cheated terribly. i love games where your competitors encourage you to cheat and you encourage your competitors to cheat. also good people.

anyways. i suppose me and my headache should go back to bed.

good times, all around. yay for foxfields!!

66 pounds, my ass

I HAVE A HALLOWEEN COSTUME!

what i can't figure out is why petables is not more aggressively marketing these costumes to adults. or at least to larger children. cuz i tell you this--you do NOT have to be 66 pounds to fit in this thing. as a matter of fact, you can be more than TWICE that weight and still fit in it.

and still look adorable.

ok, so i can't get out of it w/o assistance, but that's what friends are for, right? (actually, by the 3rd time i put it on this evening, rob refused to help me and i got out of it just fine.)

oh, and i can already tell that i will burst into flames while wearing this in a crowded bar. so this year i advocate for the farm party again. and if not, what's a little heat stroke?

bets on tomorrow?

no, silly. not bets on the horses. well, i suppose we could take bets on who will see a horse. (i always make a very concerted effort to make sure i see, and take a picture of, a horse. i feel like it makes the whole thing more legitimate.)

the bet i'm talking about--will laura cry? odds are on yes. after all, i'm 2/2 on the crying at foxfields, and the reality is just that i get very emotionally volatile when i drink (it's a very attractive characteristic. trust me.) and i am very prone to crying. it's just the way it is. (if you see my crying, just be nice to me. the other thing about me being drunk is that i have a very short memory and if you distract me, chances are good that it'll only be a few minutes before i've forgotten that i was upset and i'll be happy laura again. oh, and ask me if i even remember why i am crying. that will make me laugh. the other night i was crying, but i couldn't remember why, and i didn't want to admit it. that's kinda funny.)

a more interesting bet is--why will laura cry? sometimes it's something you can see coming. sometimes, you're blindsided by it.

and another--will i hit people? this could really go either way. and if i do, is it the fun hitting or the angry hitting. this could also go either way.

to conclude--a poll: which is the better drunk--the mean drunk, or the overly emotionally sensitive drunk? i was a very mean drunk when i was in college. well, kinda mean in a good-spirited way. i wasn't actually mean, but i said mean things. mostly to see what i could get away with, not really b/c i thought the things i said. the boys actually seemed to love it. i kinda miss it, but i suppose it's just as well that i am no longer a mean drunk. unfortunately, it has been replaced with overly emotionally sensitive drunk and i'm not sure that's fun for anyone. particularly not whoever gets left to deal with me. (oh, but lest it sound really bad, those aren't always the drunks you get. it's a total crapshoot. i also do a lot of happy drunk. some loud drunk. a smidge of pensive drunk. the aforementioned are kind of the emotional lowlights of my drunks.)

anyways, let's see what we get tomorrow!!

[ok, having re-read, i sound like a terrible drunk. but i'm really not. i swear! i can be lots of fun. when i'm not hitting you and crying. =) you've just got to work around that.]

mint julep, anyone?

so we have decided that we are going to BYO a bit of our own drinks to foxfields this year, since by the end, everyone is always scrounging for booze. we have all bought our own personal little gallon thermoses, and are picking our own drinks. i picked mint juleps.

as you probably all know, the recipe involves making a large batch of simple syrup and then mixing it with bourbon to make individual servings. all the recipes pretty much say to make 2 cups of simple syrup, but when i looked at 2 cups, it seemed like so little, so i decided that i would double the recipe. i didn't really pay any attention to how many mint juleps this would make, until i decided it was time to figure out how much bourbon i would need to mix this with (since the thermos does not allow for making at the exact time of consumption, i had decided to just deal with it.) even when i do notice that it's 44 servings, that doesn't seem like a lot b/c i figure they will be small and all the recipes seem to involve a lot of ice. i figure by the end of foxfields, i won't need much stinkin' ice.

so the recipe says 2oz. of bourbon per julep. doesn't seem like a lot. i multiply the 2oz. by the 44 drinks the recipe says each batch will make, times the 2 batches i have made and put it into an online converter to tell me how many cups of bourbon i will need.

22 cups of bourbon.

hm. i may have to re-think this plan.

the hat takes on c'ville

the hat has already been worth it's $2.98

i really did not plan to wear the hat to bar review. it is hideous. when i said that in the other post, it was a joke.

but then i got dressed for bar review, and i decided to wear a halter top and i always wear my black halter top and i have these others in great colors and i talked myself into wearing the fun turquoise one.

then rob came over to give me a ride, and i was showing him my purchases from the day. well, as soon as i put the hat on, it was all too clear. IT MATCHED MY SHIRT PERFECTLY! IT WAS SCREAMING TO BE WORN! i was still not so sure, but rob is more than a bit of an enabler, and by the time we left his place to head to bar review, i was already a happy drunk, making me far more inclined to wear it in public.

anyways, it wound up being a fine decision. it turns out that everyone loves a turquoise fedora, made of 100% paper.



incidentally, i know who two of those people are.

hats, hats, HATS!

the other week, lexi and i were at the mall together for some reason or another. she was looking at something boring like pantyhose, so i told her i would be in accessories when she was done. well, when she showed up a few minutes later, i ran at her, overjoyed, wearing the hat on the left [this picture really does not do justice to how horrible this hat is], and waving jazz hands with a pair of fuzzy hot pink gloves on each hand (i say a ‘pair of’ b/c the way the gloves are paired together, you had to stick one hand in each pair, leaving the other glove dangling off. as tho i didn’t look silly enough.)

anyways, lex and i spent the next 20 minutes putting on hats and scarves and sunglasses and hideous belts and just loving it. she explained to me that when she was a child, her mother hated going to department stores with her b/c she would wander off to the accessories department and try on 18 things at a time, embarrassing her mother and wasting her time. if there were ever any doubts that lexi and i were meant to find one another, that story erased them. during this time, lexi found a hat with pink feathers stuck all over it. it is the kind of hat that few would love. fewer would look good in it. lexi looked perfect in it. she bought it the next day for $23.98, down from $100, but later returned it in a fit of guilt.

so now we are at today. i run some errands at the mall, then head to dick's sporting goods where i bump into aaron and lexi. i mention that i have just bought a foxfields hat and she and i start to reminisce about our fedoras. our hideous, hot pink and blue fedoras, made of 100% paper and retailing for $4.98, as of our last visit. we realize that we MUST return to buy our hats. we figure that we will take aaron with us, as the voice of reason. this, of course, will not matter at all b/c we have a far more fool-proof system.

in this system, you pick the upper limit you will pay for the hat. in the dick's parking lot, i say we will buy the hats if we are under $3. so we go. we spend 20 minutes trying on hats, while aaron looks like he wants to shoot either himself, or the two of us. i'm sure it's bad enough to have lexi, but when you have lexi times two, meaning there is another lexi to encourage the real lexi to BUY the hats, well i'm sure that's even worse.

so our fedoras are still marked at $4.98, and aaron says we are not allowed to buy them, but i know this cannot possibly be true. that is when we meet someone who is more of an enabler than lexi and i combined--the sweet-looking sales lady. i am talking loudly to lexi about the price of the hat and how we will have to have it price-checked, which the sales associate does w/o our asking, pronouncing the hats to be only $2.98. THAT'S UNDER $3! WE CAN BUY THE HATS!

of course, do we really need these hats? we have to think of all the things we could conceivably do with them. feb club, obviously. be britney spears, duh. or make ourselves t-shirts that say "laura and lexi's crazy hat day" and wear them around the law school for fun. BRILLIANT! (of course, do we want it to be 'crazy hat day' or 'funny fedora day' or 'hideous hat day' or something else entirely? this is the question with which i am now left to grapple.) that is it. the hats are ours.

while aaron winces, we each put out the $3.13 for our beautifully hideous new fedoras. the enabling sales lady explains that we have not just spent $3, but that we have saved $17. how right she is.

then i see the pink feathered hat, calling out to lexi. i must make the hat talk to her and tell her how much it misses her. i say she has to buy it if it is less than $15 now. she says $10. the enabler does a price check. $9.98!!! aaron looks like he's about to shoot both of us and the sales associate. he had thought he was rid of this hat, but here we are, bringing it back into his home. he had managed to talk me out of a hot pink number for $4.98, but this was an uphill battle. forunately, lexi does have a streak of practical in her body--to what will she wear this hat? unfortunately, i have already decided we are all going to spring foxfields this year.

so now, for $20, we have 4 hats between the two of us--one foxfields hat per person, and one hideous turquoise fedora each. what a day it has been!! if you see a hideous turquoise fedora wandering thru bar review tonight, don't be surprised.

A Tribute to A.Pai

In honor of the fact that Ajeet has recently been unveiled as the member of the c/o 2007 with the highest GPA at the end of our second year of law school, I have decided to post about him. I am even using capitalization! I also figure that celebrating Ajeet's intellectual greatness gives some sort of explanation of my GPA, seeing as how I have managed to take an average of 3 classes with him per semester. Anyways, the real impetus for this is that the Law Weekly is writing an article, but the fear is that that's just going to make Ajeet look like a tool, and I realized that I had no end of good things to say about him (after all, maybe one day he'll be the person in the position to give me that secretarial position of which I have always dreamed.)

The thing about Ajeet is that he's obviously really really f''in' smart, but there's so much more to him than that. It's kind of infuriating really. While we were waiting for him to meet us at the polo match last Sunday, we were all sitting around joking about the fact that he would probably show up with a portable pop-up polo tent. Because he probably wouldn't have had anything else to do the previous night, after finishing a bottle of wine, than construct a portable pop-up polo tent. Well, obviously this would have been after he taught himself Arabic, cleaned the gutters, and cooked up some sort of elaborate meal with freshly-grown ingredients.

But I think the thing that may take longer to notice (unless you sit next to him in class, in which case it is immediately obvious) is that Ajeet is the most efficient user of time you will ever meet. In the time it takes me to read a case, Ajeet has read that same case, understood the legal underpinnings to the opinion better than I ever will, organized a section outing, e-mailed amusing anecdotes to a dozen different friends, accrued another 1,000 Lexis points, and composed a Wikipedia article, all while a soufflé bakes in the oven behind him. I suspect he is also curing cancer, but he hasn’t ‘fessed up to that yet.

And while those traits might be what make him worthy of high praise, none of that is what makes me love him like I do. Somehow, I am fortunate enough to count him among my best friends. I can't figure out why he would include me as one of his close friends at the law school, but he does. (I suppose you need to keep a couple of people around who aren't competing with you for clerkships.) My IQ is probably about 1/3 of his, (hyperbole, people) and my IQ comically overestimates the level of intellectual conversation of which I am capable. And while I may be intimidated by him, Ajeet does not make me feel like a moron. He asks my opinions on things, he forwards me articles he thinks I'll find funny, he replies appreciatively when I do the same. But what's the most impressive is just that he makes a really good friend. That's not something you can say about many people in your life, and I really noticed it this summer when we were all spread to our various corners of the US, busy with our own firms and summer activities and totally separate lives. Somehow, Ajeet always managed to stay in touch; it wasn't necessarily a huge thing, but always some well-timed email or gesture that pulled out some sort of fond memory or positive emotion and made you remember how glad you were to have friends like these.

Ajeet is the sort of person who makes me realize how lucky I am to go to UVA Law. There is no denying that he is a brilliant mind who has the ability to do just about anything, but he's also the sort of person with whom you just want to spend time and enjoy a beer.

So, in conclusion--three cheers for A.Pai! Hip hip hooray and all that.

halloween, part 2

if you're interested.

gosh, THIS is a costume!

halloween

yes, i know it is only mid-september, but halloween has been very seriously brought to my attention today. i say "very seriously" b/c i have been thinking about it for a while. i am nearly in a panic about what to be this year. last year, at this time, i had known what i would be for approximately 9.5 months. and i loved it. so there is a lot of pressure, but i have been managing to fend it off.

until today. when i went to the target, which was FULL of halloween stuff. now i am ok with the costumes. i am a bit upset that there are aisles of halloween candy b/c seriously, who is buying their candy more than a week in advance? it's just silly.

anyways, so i was looking at the costumes. costumes for adults pretty much suck. on the other hand, there is some pretty good stuff out there for dogs and for children. i found a dog costume that is a lobster! it's just a hat and then little paw cuffs. so you know what i did? i ducked into an aisle, tho still visible to a group of people, to see if it would fit on my head. it did not. i am sure they were not at all concerned about the girl trying to cram her head into a costume meant for a pug in the middle of september.

well then i found this:

now i know that it doesn't look that amazing right here. BUT IT IS! you have to trust me on this. it fits over the head of a child and then that child is a dinosaur. and you'll probably see this fairly soon b/c, unfortunately, this fabulous costume was not located in the relative privacy of the target.

rather, it was in the very front of the teeter. but i saw it and i simply HAD to try it. you should have seen me eyeing this thing for like 5 minutes and wandering around produce trying to find a corner where i could shove my upper body into a dinosaur costume designed for children weighing 42-66 pounds. yes, i checked. and i did the math. i realized that i weighed over twice the upper body limit. it did not deter me. sticking my arms in did, but only because i could imagine myself getting stuck in the thing and needing help to get out. i briefly considered calling lexi to see if she could drive out to the teeter near the target and help me try to worm my way into a costume designed for 42-66 pounds. in the end i decided that i have over a month to drag someone out to do so. the other problem with lexi is that lexi will probably decide that she wants to be the pony or something and her 14 inch waist will fit right into the pony costume and i will be very upset that lexi can have my costume.

anyways, before i wind up trying to actually do this for real, does anyone have any suggestions for me? keeping in mind that i like to be weird things for halloween. past costumes have included a pencil, a christmas tree (this is what happens when you wait til october 31 to get a costume and there is nothing left in the halloween aisle), an aquarium, and, of course, a ladybug. (i would post a picture, but it would take me another 2 hours to figure out how to put 2 pictures in one post. it already took me 30 minutes to get the first one in.)

OH, and in other news--there are actually aisles of christmas things up at target. THAT IS SO DISTURBING I DO NOT EVEN NEED TO GO INTO HOW DISTURBING IT IS!

that is all.

there is a fish!

so as many of you know, there used to be fish in the pond in spies garden. and i loved those fish. i would visit them all the time and i dreamt of the day the pond would be named in my honor, and i have seriously considered buying one of those bricks and having it inscribed with, “the laura g memorial fishpond.” (speaking of which, if anyone knows how much one of those bricks costs, let me know.) anyways, the fish were one of my favorite things about the law school, and then the cold weather came and it was not good. i spent the 30 minutes before our crim law exam all in a bona fide panic (literally. i was doing that laura thing where you run around at a frenzied pace, waving your arms in the air, and talking very loudly to anyone around you while you gesticulate wildly.) b/c the pond had mostly frozen over and i was very worried, until i finally discerned movement under the ice, and confirmed with a fellow student that fish can survive these things. well, fish can’t survive all things and at some point in the spring, the fish were gone. which broke my heart. and they were never replaced. actually, at some point in the last 2 years i found myself talking to someone when i mentioned the fish and it turned out that this very person (i can’t recall who) was actually in charge of the fish and it turns out that the fish died every year and they finally decided that until there was a better system that wouldn’t kill the fish every year, there would be no fish. which i suppose is valid, but it does leave me w/o fish.

anyways, today i thought i would just take a look inside the laura g memorial fishpond, just to see.

AND THERE WAS A FISH!

now, you can hardly see the fish, b/c there is only one and he is black and the pond is totally dirty and it does not look like there is supposed to be a fish in there and i seriously think that the fish has spontaneously generated, but none of that changes the fact that THERE IS A FISH IN THE POND AGAIN! so that makes me happy. tho i do kinda wonder about all of the logistics of it, but i suppose i won’t focus on that for the time being.

endorsement: Raising Cane's!

well i know i'm not the only person in cville who is excited about this, but maybe i'm the only person who's posting pictures. (yes, of course the post will look really stupid b/c after an hour i can't figure out how to make the pictures work. please ignore that.)

raising cane's is finally open in cville!!

this is a baton rouge based chain that serves nothing but chicken finger combos, which include chicken fingers (wonderful chicken fingers), special sauce (mmmmm, tasty and delicious), texas toast (like you can ever go wrong with texas toast), fries (see previous parenthetical notation), and cole slaw (if you're not a cole slaw person, you can sub out for other items, but if you're someone who thinks that cole slaw can be good, give this slaw a chance b/c it is very good stuff.)


so anthony and i decided we would go check it out together. the best thing about doing things with anthony is that he doesn't mind when you bring your camera along for such adventures. furthermore, he doesn't mind as you make him pose with equipment in the restaurant.

or with his food.


anthony was very excited about the sweet tea and i am pleased to report that both the sweet tea and the meal are AVE-approved!!


so we both had a lovely meal and dammit, now i am thinking about chicken fingers again. anyways, i was worried that they wouldn't have any business yet, but the place was packed the whole time we were there, and i think a lot of southerners, and those who have previously lived in towns with their own cane's have been pretty excited to see it open. really i felt like just about everyone in there had some sort of glaringly southern characteristic to them. except anthony and i, and i think we both had to get in under his georgia license plate. i did talk to a man about crawish boils, but my hair was not as floppy as most, nor was i wearing fraternity clothing.

anyways, the food was great and the place is fun and chill, and i think you should all give it a try. it's up on the left on 29, right after the best buy and the KFC and before the damon's and milan. i think. well you can find it. rob says that nothing in that spot ever stays for long, and i hope that cane's breaks that curse. so go check it out. mmmmmm, cane's!!

some good f’in football out there today

so i grew up with a lot of good football in my blood. i was raised in baton rouge, LA by parents who went to nebraska and ohio state. in the end, my one brother started at texas and wound up graduating from LSU, while my other brother went to virginia tech. i went to boston college, followed by my brother for 2 post-grad degrees, my sister for undergrad, and a hell of a lot of my parents’ allegiance. it's not a football powerhouse, but that doesn't mean that they're not my team. so i kinda love me some college football.

tho there’s also plenty of truth to the fact that i don’t care as much as i should/think. i don’t watch religiously and i still have a girl’s inability to really remember what happened, but i try. and i manage to live up to some of it. for example, last weekend. with BC’s awesome OT win, and the OSU win over texas. i was all over those. like i should have been. except i fell asleep thru most of the BC game, only waking up for the last few minutes of regulation and the OTs. but who really needed the first 55 minutes of regulation? i actually watched some of it and all i was doing was screaming at the TV. so that was fine.

anyways, then there was this weekend, with lots of good football. not that you probably need me to re-hash it for you, and it's not even all over yet, but i have been sitting here, very happy for quite some time:

1. BC over BYU. ok, so i watched the whole game, til after the first OT, and it was really nothing but awful and a question of who could screw up more. so i actually left after that and led lexi on the bataan death march, but when i returned, it turned out that we had won again, so YAY!
2. Louisville over Miami. i don't care at all about louisville, but i do like an underdog (the fact that they were higher-ranked is irrelevant to me b/c they have never been a blip on my football radar, whereas miami is a big blip) and i have a history full of hating miami. so there reached a point where it was no longer even a game, but i could not help but love the fact that they were not just losing, but they were being decimated.
3. oregon in the last seconds over oklahoma. as a nebraska daughter, we always hated oklahoma. so YAY! and an amazing last few minutes, that are the sort of thing you just love to watch. didn't look like oregon was going to be able to win, but a few plays later, they were withing a few points and scored that touchdown and i thought it was over, but then oklahoma had one amazing play, and YAY for blocked field goals. god i love those.

actually, i suppose my happiness has been mitigated to some degree by other games, but the fact of the matter is that i have a very short attention span, so i have forgotten the sadness b/c i have told myself they matter less than the big wins:

1. LSU almost eking out a win against auburn, but losing. i did love the adrenaline i got in the end, but it didn't kill me.
2. notre dame losing to michigan. as the daughter of an OSU alum, i always thought Michigan was the devil. and as a BC girl, i thought for many years that ND was the devil. only i have now found that i am friends with a number of ND grads and i have decided that they are no longer evil and i would not root for them if they were playing us, but i suppose the catholics have to stick together. i actually didn't really watch this game, as it was the biggest loser in the fact that i was trying to watch 3 games at once, meaning i couldn't actually watch any of them, and this game was already over by the time i got back from the bataan death march.
3. oh yes, UVA losing to directional michigan. well, i wasn't there. i have decided that i can convince myself it is worth going to see UVA in ACC games, but not against some of these other teams that we have insisted on playing recently. so instead, i made lexi and i take a lengthy, rapid-paced walk for exercise at 3:30. we nearly died. it turns out the hoos lost. oh well. i got great exercise in the meantime.

so now there are even MORE great games on and i am excited. also, yes, i know, i should not become a sports reporter anytime soon. yes, i know this. oh well. the fact that i do not really appreciate what is going on does not diminish the joy i get when i am paying attention.

so YAY FOR TEAMS I WANT TO WIN!!!

funny email

so i needed a pre-req waived for a class and cary bennett told me the guy to contact was a mr. link. so i emailed said "mr. link." the following is his reply--

Laura:

My first name is Link, but I have to admit Mr. Link has a ring to it. I have emailed the dean with my approval and we look forward to seeing you in January. I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you will never forget.

Best,
Mr. Link

i am giving something back

court asked me to be on the group of people who harass our classmates to give to UVA law before we graduate and i figured that i couldn't say no to that. i mean, i love UVA law and i love harassing people. but really that's not what sold me. i thought there were only like 2 per class, but it turns out that each representative only gets like 10-12 people. so i was wondering how they assigned these people, b/c i was worried that i would get stuck with all the people who hate UVA law and then i would feel very bad for having let my school down.

well this is the most fascinating part of it to me--everyone who has agreed to do it sits down in a room, with a list of everyone in the c/o 2007, and we pick which 10-12 people we want to harass for money!

so i have decided that i am going to start vetting people. i don't want anyone who looks like they love UVA law, but it turns out that they're secretly very discontented, or stingy, or neck-deep in credit card debt that is going to get their big firm bucks before me and my law school can get our grubby little paws on it. so i will begin a very intense process of talking to my friends and figuring out who has these skeletons in their closet and whose money i can or can't count on.

another thought was that maybe i should take all the people that we wouldn't think were going to give. after all, i am a bit creepy. i figure i could root around in their garbage cans and threaten to reveal their deepest darkest secrets, unless they were to give. after all, we all know that i have a lot of extra time this year and i can't think of too many other things to do than root thru my classmates' trash. so that's a whole different tactic, but i think that in the end, everyone stands to win. unless of course i was arrested and then there wasn't anyone to harass that group of 10-12 people and then i guess that everyone loses. but the chances of that seem really slim.

a final possibility is to use this opportunity to meet 10-12 new men! i figure time is dwindling and everyone else seems to have already found their future lifemate. i've still got a few months and i should use them for everything their worth. of course, this approach could also involve rooting thru trash cans and seeing what secrets of one's past i can uncover.

of course, all of these approaches seem to really highlight my creepy. i should probably just try to highlight the friendly and work off of people's appreciation of the fact that we go to the best law school in the whole wide world. of course, that doesn't involve rooting thru trash...

a great big BOO to all things trusts & estates

[note: this post is not actually worth reading, but like most of my posts, i didn't really realize that until it was too far along to stop and then i decided to keep rambling on about my class selection and my dislike of any number of things about my class.]

well, not all things in the whole wide world related to trusts & estates, and not even everything in the whole of UVA law school that is trusts & estates. but a great big BOO to nearly everything that will involve trusts & estates and me this semester.

so i don't know if you recall how excited i was to get out of that horrible 9am class and get into the employee benefits thing with doran. so it happened on monday and i was very excited! so i slept in the next morning and i started my day with a 10:30 and i then went to the noon class with doran. well, it was about 12:08 when i started IMing people that i had better get the hell out of there. not even a great professor can save a class that is so far out of your league. so after much IMing and great debating, all over IM during this class, which probably explains at least part of why i didn't have a clue what was going on, i decided that there would be far greater shame in failing a class as a 3L than there would be pain in having a 9am that would at least be relatively easy to pass by all accounts. furthermore, i concluded that this was the sort of class that i could skip a fair amount. particularly if the teacher is awful.

oh, and it actually turns out that they had deleted all changes made on monday, so i had never even switched classes, and then, just to see, i tried to get into the doran class and it was full and wouldn't let me. which i figured was clearly god telling me that i should stay in trusts & estates. the last time god had spoken that clearly to me was 2 weeks ago when he told me to buy that dress and there is much evidence that says that was clearly the right decision. so out of employee benefits and back into T&E it was.

so there i was, thursday at 9am, slightly disgruntled, but generally OK.

ONLY SHE STARTS CALLING ON PEOPLE! and i haven't done the reading. of COURSE i haven't done the reading. i mean, i have been VERY bogged down with a lot of other things. mostly like screwing around. but i had TRIED to do the reading. it just didn't happen. so it was one of those classes where you have no idea what is going on and you just figure that if you had done the reading it would make sense. oh, and i was also terror-stricken the entire class b/c of the name-calling. turns out she just goes down the list, but i didn't realize that until the second-to-last person of the day commented on it and by that time i had already spent the entire hour wanting to vomit out of terror.

which brings me to yesterday. so now i am in the class, i'm behind on the reading (which always makes it even harder to motivate b/c do you skip what you skipped and move ahead, or do you try to do all of the reading to date, or do you just give totally up and figure screw the reading for the whole semester), and i have no idea if she'll call on me b/c she was up to the Cs by this point and she calls on everyone for like one stupid little question (which is not to imply that i would have any idea what to say when my stupid little question comes) and zooms right thru the roster.

well it was a very grueling analysis of many factors, but i wound up doing the reading for today and skipping last week's. today's even made sense! i figured i was ok. ONLY THEN SHE STARTS CALLING ON PEOPLE ABOUT LAST WEEK'S READING! oh, and no one had done it b/c she did this horrible thing where she disguised 20 pages of reading behind no page numbers and also had called it "background reading," so that no one at all did it. and when she asked who had done it, after having rambled on about SOMETHING (i have no idea what b/c she sure wasn't teaching us about the case or the law) for like 20 minutes, ONE person raises their hand. now yes, most of the time people don't actually raise their hands, but SOME people do. so when ONE person in a class of 100 does, MAYBE YOU SHOULD TAKE THAT TO MEAN THAT YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY ASSIGN THE READING! oh, and the further problem for me on this is that if that reading isn't what made last thursday's class make any sense, then how the hell am i ever going to figure out what was going on in last thursday's class? it's always a bad sign when it's day 3 and you don't have a damned clue what's going on.

oh, and to make matters worse, lexi tells me i can't just skip all the time. I DON'T KNOW WHY LEXI DID NOT MENTION EITHER THE COLD CALLING OR THE FACT THAT SKIPPING ALL OF THE CLASSES WAS NOT AN OPTION WHEN I WAS GOING THRU THE WHOLE DEBATE ABOUT TAKING IT OR USING THE UNIVERSITY CROSS-REGISTRATION SYSTEM TO ENROLL IN UNDERWATER BASKETWEAVING OVER AT THE COLLEGE!

i'm not funny

fortunately for you, my friends are.

if you have spoken to me in the last week, you surely noticed that once molly introduced me to the phrase "WHAT WHAT" during our road trip, i took to it quite compellingly. by which i mean, i reply to nearly everything with "WHAT WHAT." the beauty of the phrase is how much you can contain in the "WHAT WHAT." you can express exuberance or displeasure or interest. generally i use it to express unfettered joy, but that doesn't mean that that's all there is to it.

now, what is fascinating is that this has not gotten old. ok, maybe slightly old, but no one has yet beat my head against a wall or threatened me at gunpoint to quit. in fact, most people still laugh at it. but today, matt madden posed the idea that i should start replying to all things in double question words, but that i should branch out from the WHAT WHAT. his example of how one such conversation would go, is as follows:

Person: I am going to bar review.
Laura: WHEN! WHEN!
Person: Couple of hours, want to cab over?
Laura: HOW HOW
Person: We call, they pick us up and drop us off.
Laura: WHERE WHERE
Person: Biltmore, dumbass.
Laura: WHY WHY
Person: Because that's where bar review is. SBA out scouting for undergrads, as usual.
Laura: WHO WHO
Person: Undergrads. You know, ditzy sorority girls looking to spend all their summer firm cash on Boone's Farm.
Laura: WHAT WHAT
Person: Boone's Farm, you know . . . slightly alcoholic Kool Aid. Hey listen, you keep talking in these double question words is getting old. I think I will split a cab with someone else.
Laura: Uh . . . WHICH WHICH

to save for posterity

i've decided i want ajeet to be around if i ever, god forbid, start to go into a diabetic coma. he never actually told me he knew what to do, but i think that if you know the word "bolus," you're probably a better candidate than the people who think insulin is the right way to cure low bloodsugar.

ajeetp: This isn't going to be one of those mornings where you overestimate your bolus dose and pass out on the floor, is it?
ajeetp: 'cause I'm on it if so
LifeboatLaura: good. i've learned that most people would actually kill me
ajeetp: shoving a cookie up your nose?
ajeetp: common mistake
ajeetp: among the untrained

i have sitemeter envy

lexi's blog gets like 80 hits a day and mine gets maybe 20. and about 3 of those are mine b/c every time i post something, i insist on viewing the blog and seeing how it really looks on the page. i don't know why. it's one of my things. and lexi's blog shows up from all sorts of neat places, like google searches. this week she was selected as a featured law school story by one of those people who compiles law school blog entries of the week. my readers show up from lexi's blog. so i am happy for lexi and she is my friend, but that doesn't mean that i'm not a little sad that my blog is a failure next to hers. then again, lexi actually gives her posts sensical titles and gives her entries a coherent them that she writes about. but c'mon. that's just not my style. take it or leave it, fools. ok, maybe that's part of my problem. =)

no one accumulates lexis points like i accumulate lexis points

so the other day i was wondering if i could sign up for 1L lexis training. i just don't think it's fair that i don't have those point opportunities, just b/c i've already learned how to run a basic search. and lexis doesn't have comparable training opportunities right now for 2Ls and 3Ls (westlaw does--ajeet and i went just yesterday).

so today i asked my lexis reps. i mean, they were just standing there at a table, peddling their wares and handing out skittles. so i asked.

AND THE ANSWER IS YES! so i have just signed up for 1L Lexis training, Part 1. i haven't yet signed up for Part 2, but you better believe that move is right around the corner, as each is 200 points. i mean, just think of the things i can do with 200 points!

actually, that's part of the problem. i indiscriminately accrue these things, grasping for them at every possible opportunity. but i don't actually have any idea what i want to get. it's almost an advantage of westlaw that you have so few options. out of the nothing, it wasn't tough for me to pick my bagless vacuum. now i think i'm going for an aero-bed, tho i'm not quite sure. but with lexis, you have all of amazon at your fingertips. it's just a lot to deal with.

anyways. i would also like to give a shout-out to myself. since the start of the semester, i have already amassed 1550 lexis points. i mean, that's insane! to be fair, about 1000 of them were saved from this summer, but that's beside the point. it's barely september and i've almost achieved elite status! it's almost like i'm ajeet!

i'm kinda kicking myself for having not started doing this until my second year, b/c i'm pretty sure that 3 whole years worth of points would have gotten me a pony.

here's a tip

i know that people at UVA law don't find my blog, but nonetheless this is something i want passed into posterity and i figure this is a way for me to pretend that i am doing that and for industrious little souls who weren't fortunate enough to have some upperclassman tell them to figure it out. i think it's fairly common knowledge, but it turns out that i'm who passed it around the majority of the c/o 2007, so just humor me.

there's a link that let's you get to lawweb photos that people haven't released.

http://lawnotes2.law.virginia.edu/admin/degreestatus.nsf/PhotoSource/xyz2q

you're going to need to enter your lawweb info and then put in the user ID of whoever it is you want to find at the end of the address. and then there they are.

is it wrong...

that when i see people studying in the law school in the evenings, i laugh aloud?

no, i'm not kidding. i was leaving after my evening class, and i walked by the study rooms with the glass walls, and well, i giggled audibly. as i hurried home, lest i be in the law school and not either a) in class, or b) screwing around with my friend between classes. and i'm the girl who used to be in the law school til after midnight all the time.

gosh i like this year better than that year.

a few things

first of all, it seems that a number of people have tried to visit my blog since last i posted and to you all, i apologize for having not updated more frequently. it will be interesting to see if my being a 3L makes me totally lazy in all aspects of my life or if i update more frequently b/c i am not working. actually, i have a feeling the truth is that i will update less frequently b/c i will not be searching so desperately for ways to procrastinate.

secondly, i happened to just see a line from my own blog and i would like to commend myself on being fairly funny sometimes. "FEEL MY WRATH, DEMONS OF SHUTTERFLY!" is the line to which i am referring. i'm sorry, but that's pretty funny.

i would like to give a shout out to lexi and me b/c we have actually been going to classes at the gym. unfortunately there aren't really classes on fridays and saturdays and i could not go today b/c my parents were in town and i can't go tomorrow b/c i have a class inconveniently scheduled at 7pm, thereby eliminating all of the gym classes that would not result in my having a heart attack. so it is not a great start, but i think that we are committed to working out with the other 60-year old women. and to that i would like to say "what what." ("what what" is the latest slang i have learned. i say it a lot these days. perhaps i will discuss it at length in a later post, which is a presumptive of me to say, since it implies that i would be interested in giving some sort of cohesiveness to my posts. but i will try.) anyways, lexi has a lovely discussion of our time together at the gym, posted here.

i would also like to give a shout out to my parents, who have spent the last 2 days visiting. first and foremost, my parents are absolutely too good to me. while most people have to perform a most vigorous cleaning of the apartment in advance of the parent's descent into town, i opt to ignore the task for a month or two, knowing that my mom is going to swoop into cville with her cleaning supplies in hand and give it a very thorough cleaning. and she won't even give me any guilt about it.

and while she does that, my father sits on my couch and sorts all of my important papers and financial records from the past year. and i do mean, literally, the last year. since the last time it got done was last labor day weekend when he came and did it. i think he wants to cry every time he does it. or throttle me. last year when he came, he was very upset to realize that i was driving around with proof of insurance that had expired a year ago. meaning that i had never put the new one in in february when it came or in august when it had come. he had the same realization this year. i think it was less forgiveable this year and actually i don't blame him. the thing is that i have been paying my insurance all this time, but i'm not quite sure why the new card doesn't come in some bright pink folder that says something like, "pay attention to what is in this folder laura because it is your NEW PROOF OF INSURANCE that NEEDS TO BE PUT IN YOUR CAR immediately upon receipt." it would all be in caps, except that we know i would think that was too over the top and i wouldn't read it if it was all in caps.

but it's going to matter less in the future b/c it is clearly the time for me to find a man to keep my car insurance records and bank statements in line. i know this b/c my parents also came bearing my birthday gifts. now, you have to know that my mother is a zealous catholic and she always gives all of her children what we call "god books" for all gift-giving holidays. you can see them lined up, unread, on all of our bookshelves. well, this year, i got not only a god book, but a book entitled, "the ABCs of choosing a good husband." yes. seriously. now i think this means that it is time for this man to enter my life b/c my mom has always thought that i was not yet ready to meet this man and that is why god had not brought him into my life yet and i figure that since my mom and god are so tight, the giving of this book means that it is time and he is right around the corner. also, i had been saying all summer that he's going to be a 1L. i had meant it as a joke, but clearly i should start leering a bit more at bar review and see what happens.

despite the greatness of those highlights, i also enjoyed other birthday gifts and time with my family. we went and bought me some golf clubs!! which is very exciting. they are pink and beautiful and the first step in my being the next big thing to hit the LPGA tour and not need to use my law degree. and then b/c they know i can't do anything by myself, they actually took me over to birdwood and we checked out the driving range. they're good parents.

and then of course there were the obligatory meals at nice restaurants with my friends. cassis with rob, lexi, and aaron yesterday and OXO with eli tonight. because they were so good (my parents, not the dinners), i let them do something they wanted to do and today we went to visit some wineries. it was an absolutely beautiful afternoon and we had a lovely time at kluge, with an stop at ash lawn highland, james monroe's home. i would post pictures of how it was the most gorgeous day ever except i didn't take my camera.

during our lunch at kluge my father and i must have spent about 20 minutes trying to explain to my mother the fact that the federal and state court systems are separate. i'm not sure why she didn't ask rob to explain this to her at dinner, since i don't actually know these things and when trying to provide an example of why i would not fare well in a clerkship interview i said, "b/c the judge would ask me something like, 'how far do you think the 13th amendment goes?'" and my friends laughed heartily and said it only went so far as to abolish slavery. clearly the question i was trying to come up with was, "do you think the 14th amendment incorporates the bill of rights against the states?" and that is an even better example of why i would not fare well in a clerkship interview. it took my mom quite some time (until i sent her the article about dan bress last year) for her to finally give up her belief that i would be a really great clerk for a supreme court justice. but i think she's finally realized that this isn't an example of laura "selling herself short," but actually an example of laura being "nowhere near qualified/intelligent enough" to do something. which i don't say to sell myself short. i say b/c, well, it's so damned true.

anyways, i've really got to quit posting b/c it is 1:15am and i have a 9am class and i still haven't read for my evening class tomorrow. i'm still trying to fine-tune my schedule. i thought there wouldn't be any drop/adding, but of course there has been. my latest attempt was brought on solely b/c of a sectionmate's email offering to let someone into his spot in a class. not that this class had ever crossed my mind. but all of a sudden i decided it was a brilliant idea. it would get me out of the 9am i had tried so desperately to get into with a horrible professor and it would allow me to revel in the joy that is michael p. doran once again and to sleep in a bit on tuesdays and thursdays. which would be awesome. now, of course, i have my heart set on it. you know how i can be. if i get into this, it will mean that i have picked up nearly half of my schedule based on off-hand remarks by other people, saying they were going to drop something that i had never considered taking. and you know what i say to that? what what. what what, indeed.