trouble ahead

so i've picked the two exams i'm going to take first and i've been studying for the one i need to study for and not even thinking about the short one in the only class i've read for all semester. i decided this evening not to take it tomorrow morning, b/c i was doing so well on the fed courts work, so i figured i would just keep plowing thru it and employment law could wait.

no problem.

only a few minutes ago i decided that my head would explode if i looked at another page of fed courts notes, but it didn't seem worth opening employment law, since i'm not taking it tomorrow. i could just go to bed, but for the fact that i took approximately 5 hours off this evening for the gym and dinner and wine on my balcony. oh, after i didn't start studying til about 1pm.

anyways, point being i figured i would start looking at stuff for one of my remaining two classes. so i began by printing out the syllabus. which is probably your first sign that i'm in trouble. then, rather than even making an effort to begin doing the reading from the syllabus, i figured i would just highlight the names of the cases and passages we were supposed to read. in the casebook's table of contents. yes, highlighting the table of contents is what i am now calling "reading." that's how bad it has gotten.

only then it got worse. b/c my name falls early in the alphabet, and he did an alphabetical on-call system. and i NEVER again listened to a word that came out of his mouth, once i had been on call. so for the first half a page of the syllabus, i'm all with it. "oh this isn't going to be so bad! these case names are familiar and i think i even remember some facts!" and then i turn to the second page of the three-page syllabus.

seriously, i have heard maybe a third of these cases even mentioned by name. i have no idea what a single one of them is about. looks like some of them involved railroads. go figure.

the worst part? this isn't even the one of the two remaining classes that terrifies me. this is the one i'm not worried about!

they say no one fails, right? please tell me that's true!

seriously?!?! are you kidding me?!?!!

ok, so last night i have literally the worst night of sleep ever. it was not a night of sleep. it was a night of things waking me up and of being unable to fall asleep. part of it was one of those weird things where you just can't get to sleep and part of it was all of the noises. i had never noticed all of the noises! i mean, really, what are birds doing chirping at 3am?!!?! aren't they supposed to be asleep?!?!!?

so i soldier thru and still get up at a decent hour to start studying today, only then i have to weigh the 47 factors of what i feel like i need in a study environment today and i really can't come up with anything that matches all of those criteria (example: i want a place where there are people around, so that i don't get lonely, but not so many people and not in the sort of environment where i get distracted.) so finally i just decide i'll stay at home.

only when i get out of the shower, i learn that THEY ARE DRILLING THRU THE BRICK WALL OUTSIDE OF MY APARTMENT!

i'm not sure if you recall that i had a similar problem last semester. do you think they do these things all the time, or is it their sick little way of twisting the knife in our backs?

foxfields wrap-up

much is still the same about foxfields, since my last review.

mostly the part about being so drunk by early evening that you are convinced it is midnight, and that you are then already hungover by 2am. of course the beauty of this is that you are not hungover all the next day. which is very good b/c i have finals to study for. of course, it is nearly noon and i have not started that effort yet. instead i have uploaded my 154 photos to facebook. 154 pictures! of course, there are large chunks where you can tell that i am not the person taking the photos.

it was not the debacle i anticipated spring foxfields to be, but perhaps that is b/c we did not wander very far from our little plot. i wandered far enough to meet a man named "big nug," who was about 250 pounds, wearing all black to foxfields, had "NUG" tattooed on his calf, and proceeded to discuss with me about how much he also LOVES the movie "ice age 2." alas, i never witnessed the urine trough, but i did manage to see more horses than at all other foxfields combined. the horses account for about 20 of my pictures.

but most importantly, lexi and i got to wear some fabulous hats.
god, those are some hats.

product endorsement: bisquick complete

mmmmmm! tasty and delicious! i made the honey-butter variety on friday, and proceeded to eat 3 biscuits w/in about 5 minutes, only waiting until jared had left to devour the other two. and then i made the three-cheese variety to go with egg strada before foxfields yesterday, and was complimented widely for what everyone thought were homemade biscuits. p-shaw! i made it quite clear that they were not, but that you too can have such delicious homemade-tasting biscuits in just 8-11 minutes! fabulous! according to the website, you can also have them in cheese-garlic and cinnamon swirl. i bet they are amazing too! i most heartily recommend the honey-butter flavor, which is sweet and perfect. mmmmm!!

addendum #2: real men love amaretto

not that i am a man, but i think this is a tasty and delicious beverage, and it sounds silly to say "real women love amaretto." for what it's worth, jared also thinks this drink is gross. i am not sure if this is a statement about his manhood or if the reality is that real men don't love amaretto.

but i am going to recommend it highly.

italian margarita
1 oz amaretto
2 oz sour mix
1/2 oz tequila
1/2 oz triple sec

addendum

is it alcoholism if you have someone else to drink in your apartment with you? perhaps heavily at times?

someone just brought home lemons and powdered sugar (for bona fide whiskey sours) and a cocktail strainer (b/c i said i should add one to my kitchen collection) and grenadine (b/c sometimes i look wistfully at it in the grocery store).

in addition, it is 10pm on a tuesday night, i have not started studying for finals and i am debating b/t a drink that consists of tequila, triple sec, amaretto and sour mix, and one that consists of vodka, triple sec, amaretto and a lemon wedge.

no one would recommend me for counseling, right?

if i'm going to be a lawyer, i've got to learn how to hang.

things to do when you're not studying: aquire a taste for alcohol

i don't mean become an alcoholic b/c it's not like i'm drinking a lot. or in public. (shit, that doesn't help my case.) rather i'm trying to find ways to use these alcohols in my apartment. not only do i have all of the usual suspects, which i have always had, but i have also found myself in position of an inordinate amount of triple sec and a newly acquired bottle of amaretto. so currently i am trying to figure out how to use those ingredients, with lemon juice and lime juice and whatever else and create a tasty drink. maybe with whiskey. the thing is that i have the worst sense ever of what goes together. as you may have already ascertained. pretty much, if i make a drink, i will have to drink it b/c no one else ever will. generally their first sip is accompanied by the phrase, "whatever made you think to put these flavors together?!?!!?" generally said with disgust.

and don't direct me to webtender.com. it has not fulfilled my needs adequately. then again, i kinda want a time-intensive process that will produce minimal results. otherwise i would have to start studying.

[jared was a little shocked when i told him i was still planning on taking my first exam next monday, despite the fact that i have not started studying anything, nor have i done the reading for the semester in anything, and that i am going to foxfields. "you mean in less than a week?" he said. to which i replied that i have to have all four of them taken in two weeks. what is so outlandish with having taken one of them 6 days from now?]

i have commenced the studying!

by which i mean that i have printed out previous year's outlines for 2 of my 4 classes.

this was spurred on by having made the mistake of having lunch with a studying 3L who is in 2 of my classes and was talking about all of the things she has done to prepare for the exam, and then i started wishing that i could read in the hour before my next class only none of my books are at the law school, so all i can really do is send email. and print out old outlines! done! it's like i'm ready for half of my exams now!

things to do when you're not studying: go to a drive-in movie

one of the things that recently found its way to my list of things i want to do before i leave cville/ dates to go on was a trip to a drive-in movie theater. there is one out in lexington, about an hour away--hull's drive in. interesting tidbit--it's the nation's only non-profit community-owned drive in.


well, to make a real night of it, we decided to start things off at the cracker barrel. there isn't one here in cville, but there is one about 30 minutes away in waynesboro (where, handily, you can pick up a map of all cracker barrel locations in the us, for use in planning your next road trip.)


anyways, after that we headed further down the road, to hull's drive in. now, i am going to admit that watching a movie in your car is not as comfortable as you might think. but it still is a lot of fun, and it's a great little community gem, and you get to see both movies for $5 if you can sit in your car that long! and i think it will be great once the weather gets nice and you can take yourself some chairs and support their very reasonably priced snack bar and sit outside in the fresh air to watch your movie. anyways, i'm just going to recommend it as a little side trip from cville for those of you who are looking for something a little different to do. and the people are uber-friendly. i loved them. i have decided that if i move back to VA at some point, i want to live close enough to be one of hull's angels and help out at the snack bar on weekends. it's going to be the best.

things to do when you're not studying: try new things in the kitchen

this is the most recent of the things i have done in the past 12 hours, none of which have been read. mostly i have screwed around looking for a place in DC, even tho you can't really do that w/o looking and the realtor is really in charge of that and well, it's all fruitless except that it gets you all excited and then you realize that you live 2 hours away and should have gone and looked at places today, only you didn't and you really don't even know how to look for a place and well, that is very frustrating and now you've just upset yourself more when really you were just supposed to be telling the world about cottage cheese pancakes.

also, i have spent many hours screwing around on online picture sites, all of which just eat my pictures and are very frustrating and will not just make me a damned picture book to save my life and now i am going to be upset about that too, when all i meant to do was tell the world about cottage cheese pancakes.

anyways, on to the cottage cheese pancakes, which only took up 10 minutes of my life and produced far more fruitful results than all things previously mentioned that were not catching up on a semester's worth of reading.

so jared's men's health recently had an article about healthier breakfast options and one of them was cottage cheese pancakes. i mean, cottage cheese pancakes! i know that not everyone is a fan of cottage cheese, but i say to all of those people--you are wrong. I LOVE COTTAGE CHEESE! AND I LOVE CARBOHYDRATES! so what could be better than taking cottage cheese and making it into a carbohydrate?!?!?!

well it turns out, not much. i love them! they aren't really like pancakes. but they are like creamy pancakes made of cottage cheese and i found them to be tasty and delicious. and easy! even i couldn't screw them up! and they only have 8 carbs per pancake and 97 calories.

anyways, i decided that i would share the recipe with all of you, in case you are interested in trying them out and avoiding reading all that reading you have not done all semester. or if you are some kind of loser, i suppose that you could just make them after "finals" are over. or as a "study break." i don't need to take those b/c i am not studying. anyways, courtesy of the april 2007 edition of men's health and their resident chef matt goulding, here is the recipe--

1 cup cottage cheese
2 eggs
1/2 stick butter, melted
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg (optional) (but tasty and delicious!)

in a large bowl, stirl t/g the cheese, eggs, butter, and milk. add the flour, baking powder, sugar, sale and nutmeg, and blend lightly until just mixed. grease a griddle with cooking spray and place over medium heat. put a large scoop of batter on the griddle and use the back of a spoon to spread it out evenly. the pancake is ready to flip when you begin to see small air bubbles form, about 3-4 minutes. flip and cook for another minute or two. makes about 12 4-inch pancakes.

oh yes

and other things i have done recently include corrupt the youth of america.
this is the only picture i have of baby madden, but i just had to put it up to provide some proof that he is maybe the cutest baby ever. i'm even one of those people who doesn't think all babies are cute. i mean, i wouldn't tell you that your baby wasn't cute, but well, your baby might not be cute. this one is. overwhelmingly so.

also, quite a lover of the pina colada!

kidding, kidding. please don't send social services after either me or the maddens. it was a joke!

aw sh**!

so i wander to the upstairs of the library today. this was a smidge inadvertent. see, i had been in the library for lexis training, which i was going to do for an hour and a half b/c you know how i love my points, and then skip my class to write this paper that is due at 5. well, halfway thru the second training i mention this and marva pretty much kicks me out of the final training, b/c she doesn’t want to enable me. well, that’s fine. anyways, i decide i’ll probably skip class anyways, but i won’t let myself leave the library til i have submitted the paper. only i can’t stand the library parts of the library, so i have to go to one of the two rooms with the comfy chairs upstairs.

well on my way to the comfy chairs, THERE ARE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE IN THE LIBRARY!

and then it dawns on me—finals start in something like 10 days. i don’t know exactly b/c even now, i refuse to go look at count. i mean, any other year, i would have started my stressing and my catching up and my working on outlines a week or two ago. instead i have had friends over for drinking in the mid-afternoon, and i have been ticking off items on my list of things i want to do b/f leaving cville, and i have been sleeping in and blumping around and generally not at all concerning myself with the fact that i have read for one of my four classes all semester.

anyways, i go sit in the one room, which i promptly have to evacuate b/c this group of kids has reserved it for a study group! A STUDY GROUP?!?!!? geez louise.

i’m screwed. and yet, still not really concerned.

which is why i am posting on my blog despite the fact that i have a paper due in 3 hours. a paper which pretty much currently says nothing. i doubt it will really say anything when i turn it in either, but if i think about that, i start to worry a bit. so i should probably avoid that.

god bless the people who make hats

today lexi and i decided to reprise last september's hat extravaganza. after all, those hats didn't go to waste. and foxfield is right around the corner. we all know how much i love foxfield!

and lexi and i never met a ridiculous looking hat we didn't love to put on our heads.

turns out rob is of our ilk too.
but with hats like these! who could resist? this one nearly won me over, but my dress isn't white, it's more of an off-white. alas!

the one lexi is wearing tickles her nose. the one i am wearing makes me wish i had a different life. the kind of life where i had occassion to wear such hats. i imagine there would be many garden parties in this life. and afternoon teas.

and this one makes me wish i had a big ole' southern wedding to attend sometime in the near future. preferably one where gaudy is an asset.

but in the end, here is the hat i will be donning at foxfield this spring:

the last great reward of online legal database training

has arrived today. the PicnicTime Pioneer Picnic Basket. i say the last great reward, b/c from here on out i will only be able to amass enough points for a $25 gift certificate, maybe another $10. but gone are the days of westlaw and lexis sending me hundreds plus dollars worth of goods thru the mail. without the oppression of shipping charges! which is probably my favorite thing.

well, i have always had problems finding suitable rewards on westlaw, given the sparse pickings. in the end, i was debating between an aerobed and this fabulous picnic basket. at rob's urging, i concluded that indeed, lexis/westlaw points were for fun, and the picnic basket won out.

it really is one heck of a picnic basket too. it's got salt and pepper shakers and wine glasses, and coordinated plaid napkins and plates and a tablecloth and blanket. oh! and a cheese board and cheese knife! b/c you cannnot have a picnic without an assortment of cheeses! so true.

the only remaining problem is that i'm not sure i'll be able to pick it up once it's full of foods.

oh, and that i'm not sure i can really come up with a suitable meal with which to fill it. i mean, this warrants more than sandwiches and chips! but what exactly? please submit your suggestions for perfect picnic meals, that are bona fide meals, that actually involve being moderately domestic, tho not so domestic that i would screw them up horribly.

i did a terrible thing

last year, at lexi's xmas party, i received a whoopie cushion as part of a bag of gag gifts. i never thru it away. i found it while cleaning today. i offered it to jared, who had expressed interest in the whoopie cushion when i had mentioned it a month or so ago.

my aparment has been filled for 10 minutes with the sounds of jared inflating the whoopie cushion, deploying the whoopie cushion, and then solid minutes of giggling like an 8-year old boy.

ahhhhh, adorable.

then again, he did do my taxes yesterday. i suppose this is a fair trade.

crawfish: tasty and delicious. and cute.

every year brent has a crawfish boil, where he orders 35 pounds of fresh crawfish from louisiana and boils them up, true cajun style, in his backyard for friends. and this year, b/c i am now attached to someone on the invite list, i got to go and have a taste of home! (i have been looking forward to this for over a month, and i think that jared may have some concerns that now that it's over, he's getting kicked to the curb.)

well, despite the beautiful weather that we had last week, it managed to snow yesterday morning, but that did not dissuade us. we all bundled up, and warmed ourselves with the keg of harp, to enjoy brent's annual crawfish boil.

which did not disappoint.

unfortunately, i made the mistake of befriending one of the crawfish. i didn't actually realize they would still be alive after their journey from louisiana on ice, so i was a bit surprised to see them start to move around. well, i picked one up and decided he would be mine. i would save him! they were all totally disoriented from the ice, so i tried to warm him up by breathing on him. and then i let him sit on my chest like you would do with a cat, or some sort of small mammalian pet. and of course, i named him. b/c that's how i roll. humphrey.

only at some point, they made me put him in the boiling water and i didn't really protest too much b/c what was i going to do with a live crawfish? but it still broke my heart, and i knew that i would be able to find humphrey again. i was sure that even though he would look like all the other crawfish spread out before us, i would recognize him b/c of his spirit.

and i did.

so i insisted on taking him home with us. and now humphrey lives in my fridge. he would live outside of the fridge, but my apartment kinda starts to smell when you leave him out for too long.
tho we do take him out to play with sampson. they get along like peas and carrots. sampson seems to think humphrey is pretty funny. so jared and i are beginning a bona fide family here in ivy gardens. a family who can sit down around a palm tree at night.

a palm tree that holds 60 beers. what more could a girl ask for?