late addition to my list of new year's resolutions...

so, i'm sitting in the library, happily reading justice brennan's opinion in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), and i look up from the book to tell krista how excited i am about this case, and she looks over at my book and says, "oh my god -- you are such a highlighter spaz!" and so i look back down at my book and it's a mess of colored pens! (i made the switch this semester to the colored pen system -- highlighters are so first year!)

now, we're not just talking about a well marked-up casebook. this case is practically all color-coded. there's not much here that doesn't have an underline or a comment in the margin! and, in horror, i paged back through my book, at all the markings i've made throughout the semester, and it's all this bad! i'm honestly embarrassed by how horribly i've treated these poor cases.

krista said, "if, years from now, you ever need to look at your old casebooks, you're going to open them up and scream because of how crazy they look." i said, "or, more likely, if i ever have a child, someday that child will decide to look at my old casebooks and will be stricken by the reality that his/her mother is an absolute moron."

so, new resolution for 2006, effective immediately: use colored pen system wisely.

i admit it -- i'm a hippie, too...

i think all of us law students would, to varying degrees, agree that the experience of law school has changed us. i'm not talking about all that crap they told us at first year orientation, either. yeah yeah yeah -- that whole "you'll never think about things the same way again" or "you won't be able to jaywalk without thinking about contributory negligence" is true, but all of that is more just functional/job-training-type stuff. i'm thinking specifically about the various ways that intense educational mind-fucking can really cause you to figure out some stuff about yourself.

for example, krista and i were waiting for the bus yesterday, talking about stuff, and she commented that she thought it was very amusing that i've got this new hippie presence in my life. so i said, "how come?" and she said, "don't you remember when we were first becoming friends? how much shit you gave me for being a hippie? you were all, 'you're one of those hippies, aren't you? damn it, i'm not sure if we can be friends now.'" i had, of course, forgotten about this.

and why had i forgotten about this?

because i think although my politics have always been left of center, law school has enabled me to better articulate why i feel about things the way i do, where i stand on things, what i'm willing to sacrifice, what i'm not willing to sacrifice, where i think compromise is the best course. in essence, law school has caused me to embrace my inner hippie.

none of who i am now is at all inconsistent with who i was prior to law school. and i'm not at all surprised at how my intellectual development has panned out in the last year and a half. truth be told, i think i'm much better off in a lot of ways. more rational, less of a firecracker. more informed, more able to admit when i don't know, less afraid of uncertainty. and more satisfied that where my politics lie is where they should be.

so, hooray for law school, hooray for hippies, hooray for good people!

lost in translation...

i don't even have all that much reading for tonight, but i'm currently amusing myself (read: procrastinating) by playing around with this online translating tool.

and what specifically am i doing? glad you asked. i'm taking a simple little william carlos williams poem, translating it into various languages, and then translating it back into english to see how it changes.

first, the original poem:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

and now, the translations. these are all translated back to english after being translated to the following languages:

1. french:

depends so much
on
a red wheel
wheelbarrow
frozen with the rain
water
close to the white
chickens.

2. spanish:

as much it depends
on
a red wheel
wheelbarrow
enameling with rain
water
next to the target
chickens.

3. german:

depends as much
after
a red wheel
Truck
glazed with rains
Water
beside the white
Chickens.

4. russian:

so much depends
on
the red wheel
the barrow
it is glazed with the rain
the water
near the whiteness
chickens.

5. italian:

therefore a lot depends
on
one red small wheel
wheelbarrow
shining with rain
water
to the white man side
chicken.

6. japanese:

It depends so
Red wheel
Wheelbarrow
The rain and gloss can be applied
Water
Side of white
Chicken.

but here's where this gets really fun! i had to pull out the old college poetry books to make sure i had the punctuation correct for the WCW poem, and here's what i've got written in the margin next to "the red wheelbarrow", from first semester, senior year of college, in john matthias's class:

imagist poem; mimesis of external reality not an issue for WCW - importance of words regarded as things - formal relationships, pure form made object; WCW as maker rather than sayer

sigh... i love my english degree!

my favorite paper plate snowboarder...

...now has a blog! hooray!

deep thoughts...

emily: george, don't read my e-mails!
george: i can't see your e-mails from here.
emily: i'm transposing government secrets.
george: can you tell me some of them?
emily: duh, they're SECRETS!
krista: huh, do you think that deodorant is called "secret" because it's supposed to be a secret that you perspire?

ahem, we're on THE THIRD FLOOR!!!

okay, this is my passive aggressive way of dealing with my quickly rising blood pressure... i'm on the third floor right now, trying to get my reading done. everybody knows that the third floor is where you go when you need quiet, lack of distraction, and no social interaction.

HOWEVER, sitting in the carels next to me are two 3Ls (i think they're 3Ls... they're at least 2Ls) who are engaging in the following:

1. playing internet poker
2. talking to each other, in normal voices, about their respective internet poker games
3. swearing out loud at their computers about how poorly their internet poker games are going
4. and one of them just carried on a cell phone conversation

WTF?!?! AYFKM?* the sound of my fingers on my keyboard right now disturbs the silence of the third floor! i'm on the verge of kicking these guys in the shins if they don't knock it off!

you friends of mine out there who are SBA reps? next meeting i want it suggested that we institute library bouncers around here. i mean it!!!

*this stands for "are you fucking kidding me?", my new favorite thing to write in the margin of my casebooks when the court says something remarkably inane.

and while we're on the subject...

YOU ARE RULE 15!

You're a very helpful rule! You allow the attorney

to amend their complaint once as a matter of

course at any time before the answer is

filed, and also allow amendments in other

cases. If a claim relates back to the

original transaction or occurrence outlined

in the complaint, you can amend the

complaint, even though the statute of

limitations has run. Like a good friend,

you're always there to help out in a bind.


Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(i was hoping for maybe Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 11 or 12(b)(6), but i'll take R. 15!)

tagged...

ah, the chain letters of the blogosphere... moony, you're lucky i like you, and that this little "which {enter subject here} are you?" game is sufficiently nerdy... now, if only i can find the link to that "which federal rule of civil procedure are you?" quiz... aha! here it is!

and my results for moon's game of tag:

You are the Rule of Lenity! You interpret

ambiguities in penal statutes in favor of the

accused. You're a laid-back kind of rule and

concerned with not being too quick to judge.

You're soft on crime.


Which Canon of Statutory Construction are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

dawn and drew!

so, i'm a little late entering into the world of podcasts, and i'm definitely still a newbie, but REDACTED has introduced me to the dawn and drew show, which is truly fantastic!

on the way home on the bus tonight, i listened to show number 234, in which dawn's dad (a.k.a. "showbiz dad") reviews a porn movie called "hercules". man, i must have looked like a total idiot, because i'm sitting on the bus, my backpack on my lap, and i'm giggling like a fool. and i literally started laughing out loud and clapping while i was walking home from the bus. i seriously want to be dawn and drew's best friend! they're hysterical and silly and irreverent and (the best part!) they're from wisconsin!

i wholeheartedly encourage everyone to start listening to the dawn and drew podcast -- you won't be disappointed!

i [heart] you, dawn and drew!

at least i can get an A+ in something...

per sandy, i totally passed eighth grade math! (and given a certain person in my life these days, if i had botched this, it might have been worse than defeat at star wars trivial pursuit...)

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

some thoughts on a memorial, and a decision...

on friday afternoon, pitt had a memorial service for professor white. class of 2007 section B was well-represented, as were many other friends and former students, and i think all of the pitt law faculty was in attendance. the service was very nice, very sad, very thoughtful, very important to everyone there.

i'm tremendously grateful for the efforts of all who were a part of putting it together. prof. white's wife, when she spoke, moved everybody to tears and smiles with her grace and sincerity. i can only imagine what she must be going through right now, and while i know it wasn't her motivation, i hope she knows how precious it was to those of us at the service that she allowed us to listen to her, to mourn her loss with her.

there was, though, a moment in the service when my fellow bloggers and i sat up a little bit straighter in the heinz chapel. it all started when one of prof. white's oldest friends and colleagues was speaking. he was talking about the number of students who had been affected by professor white. he said, "a student named emily said, 'he made me fall in love with the fourth amendment.'"

that "student named emily"? yep. that would be me.

when the chancellor of the university spoke, he also made mention of comments made online. comments made by my friends on their sites.

it was really rather amazing and special that words that my friends and i wrote had been incorporated in such a way into professor white's memorial service. those posts were things that we had all put up for ourselves, to share our grief with each other. i certainly never expected my posts to reach any farther than my own immediate experience.

and yet, this is the internet. and i'm not that naive. anything i write here is as close as the right permutation of terms in a google search. so, with that rather disarming reminder, i hereby bring to an end the short-lived diary of a certain 3x/week wardrobe-tracking. let's face it -- it was never really that interesting anyway.

"off the hizzle?"

okay. so, yeah. i'm a music snob. i'm a dirty, rotten, indie rock music snob. but i'm not entirely exclusive in my snobbery. as i'm sure michael and steph can attest, since we all live in close quarters here on south fairmount street and the walls are often too thin (like when a certain landlord's dog is having his wee-hours-of-the-morn-barkfests), i have been known at times to listen to some pretty terrible music. yep. we're talking hall-and-oates-caliber stuff. and the cheesy silly wannabe-karaoke-star in me loves it! i get the biggest kick out of it! but i do still retain some ability to tell the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff, the mass-produced from the mad-skilled.

...and i totally have a secret love for music that fucking grooves.* for example, a friend burned me a copy of the john legend CD "get lifted" and i've totally had track number 7, called "i can change", on repeat for a while now. yeah, i could do without the snoop dogg shit (although i do find snoop completely hilarious! here's a sample lyric, as best as i can make it out: "i can change but only for you cause you the type of female, you know what i'm sayin', you bring that out in a playa, make me wanna lay down the pimpin' and step my love game up, can you dig that?"), but there's this part in the song where it breaks down and there's a CHOIR! with HANDCLAPS!!! the lyrics leading up to it go: "so i'm through with the women/yeah that's right/i give up on the pimpin'/girl i'm gonna repent from my sinnin'/if that's what you want me to do..." it's pretty hot. i'm an absolute sucker for handclappin' choirs. and horn sections. sheesh.

i hearby declare my candidacy for mayor of moronville, captain of craptastica, and director of dorktown.

*oh. my. god. that might be the lamest thing i've EVER written, including my entire seventh grade diary.

taking care of bidness...

i woke up this morning feeling like anxiety personified. yep. if you were to look up "stress case" in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of me at around 7:00 a.m. remember that post i put up last week about how i was going to swallow my fear and schedule those brain scans? yeah? well, i didn't do it. i'm _that_ good at making excuses. but maybe it was my dad constantly asking me, "em, did you get your neurology stuff taken care of?" or maybe it was finally getting tired of that awful feeling that my chest was in a vise grip, but this morning i decided that i couldn't put this off any longer. so today i went to my TA training class at 9:00, but afterwards i took a personal day. that's right. a personal day. if folks can do it in the real world, i can do it in the hurly-burly world of law school.

and, judgments of certain dear friends notwithstanding (and you know who you are), i'm really glad i did this, because i've been able to take care of some things that needed attention in the normal working hours, namely:

1. i have new insurance! goodbye $300/month for COBRA. hello UPMC student health plan. it's not as comprehensive as what i've had in the past, but everything i need is going to be covered and it's going to be a helluva lot more cost-effective. and the woman i talked to on the phone about the student health plan was very nice, which was more than i could say for the woman i talked to on the phone at the customer care number for my now-former insurance provider, who, among other things, suggested that i contact my, erm, employer... i wish, lady. oh, to have an employer!

2. the MRI and the EEG are now officially scheduled. the MRI is february 2nd, the EEG is february 7th.

3. if at first you don't succeed... yeah, so i cancelled the second appointment i made with the new therapist of last week (the good ol' passive agressive break-up-with-therapist technique: go through the reception desk!) and scheduled an appointment with a new one. this will be number three for me at the university counseling center. we'll see if this one can help me calm the anxious creature lurking within my brain, minus the deep breathing exercises and new age music, and without insisting that i explore my emotions...

4. spent almost two hours on the phone with the folks at dell about my computer's broken wireless. (you know how inevitably, when you call a tech support phone number, you spend a lot of time on hold while you're waiting for a live person? well, i find it gosh darn hilarious that while i was waiting and waiting and waiting, i got to hear a billion pre-recorded messages about how i could save time by going to dell.com and using their online tech support chat program. erm, i'm calling because my computer WON'T CONNECT TO THE INTERNET! how the hell is going to dell.com going to help me out? thanks, guys.*) so, long story short, i have to back up all my computer files, then call dell back and have someone walk me through the process of wiping clean my hard drive and re-installing my operating system. does anybody have any experience with this? and the really important question: those 4,280 songs i have on itunes? will my ipod transfer them back to my computer for me, once the system restoration has taken place? or will i have to manually put everything back?

oy. but that headache notwithstanding, i feel a billion times better about my life having gotten some stuff taken care of. i can do this! i can be a law student AND a normal person! good for me.

*it's kinda like how FEMA kept assuring everyone who was affected by hurricane katrina that they could apply for assistance either over the phone or on the internet... you know, since everybody had access to telephones and computers.

"it was like voting!"

...that's what andrew said to me -- or, slurred to me, rather -- about his experience watching the steelers win the AFC championship today! if they were to give out awards for most valuable fan (MVF?), i would exuberantly nominate andrew, as he is without a doubt the steelers' newest, most enthusiastic, and most vocal fan. we're talking borderline discipleship here.

but if tom, oliver, and andrew go to detroit for the superbowl, where the hell are the rest of us gonna watch the game? [not that i was there today, of course (because i am lame), but i'm totally in for the SB!]

E-A-G-L oh, damn it! wrong cheer again!

GO STEELERS!

the AFC championship shuffle...

eh, what the hell... everybody else is doing it, and nobody's gotten hurt yet, so here's the next 10 songs up on my itunes shuffle...

1. how to disappear completely -- radiohead
2. the blue nun -- the beastie boys
3. a simple plan -- pedro the lion
4. mabel -- the juliana hatfield three
5. repeater -- fugazi
6. good good things -- descendents
7. full disclosure -- fugazi
8. perfume-V -- pavement
9. hummingbird -- wilco
10. so says i -- the shins

(and for whatever reason, the eleventh song up is "bed for the scraping" by fugazi... i think my computer might have a little crush on ian mackaye...)

who dat?

who dat say dey gonna beat dem saints? who dat? who dat?

wait, what? not the saints, you say? who? oh, right. the steelers...

hey -- give a girl a break! i grew up in pascagoula. the closest thing we have to a professional football team is the new orleans saints. or, the "ain'ts", as they're often lovingly called. and the "who dat?" thing is the NOLA equivalent to the "here we go" steelers song.

could be worse -- i could have that chicago bears "superbowl shuffle" song stuck in my head... oh fuck. and now i do.

while my friends are all over at tom's house watching the steelers beat the broncos, i'm gonna be sitting in my apartment with my schoolwork (because i got a whole bunch o' nothing done yesterday). but i think i'll have the game on, as background noise. and i think i'll call andrew at various times throughout the day and yell "go steelers!", just to let him know i care.

get this man a pocket protector...

hands down, michael is the nerdiest guy i've ever known.

UPDATE!!!
so, michael, who is currently next to me in the computer lab, read the above post as i was writing it, and said, in an exasperated voice, "at least link to my blog!"

case in point.

early b'day gift suggestion for andrew...

steph's got a post up on her blog about the slate.com review of the new jamie foxx album. i put up a comment on her site about this, but i really think we should all pitch in and buy this album for andrew, so he can use it as both a how-to guide and some background music for when he pleasures a lady after the steelers win the superbowl!

eeeeeeeeeeeeewwww...

calling all tax attorneys...

so, you folks who have taken/are taking tax:

my income for 2005 was exactly $0. the only thing that even approximated income was my PLISF grant for my summer internship. do i still need to file, given that i can't be taxed on what i didn't earn? or would the IRS prefer to not have to deal with me this year?

that's right -- i'm asking fellow law students for legal advice. i figure if dice can post her last will and testament on her blog, i can ask my tax questions on mine. this counts as reasonable reliance, right?

not a chance...

after i left school tonight i walked over to the corner store to throw some money at the tobacco industry. and as lately there has been some discussion of summertime travel, and as i'm not really sure how said travel will be financed, i decided to also throw some money at the PA lottery and i got two $1 scratch tickets*. i shoved them in my pocket, figuring i'd wait until i got home to see how the fates are feeling about me today.

then i got on the 71A, and there were my friends chris and regina. hey! friends on the bus? lucky for me! and today was a pretty good day (except that i saw a new therapist this morning and already know that i must break up with new therapist) in the sense that i think i really like estates & trusts now. and i saw on sandy's blog that she won some cash, so as far as i was concerned, luck was all around! great day for luck!

so rather than wait until i got home, i pulled my lucky T token out of my wallet (from my good ol' days of riding public transit as a resident of boston) and went in for the kill with my scratch tickets. and guess what?!?!?!

i won...a lousy dollar. big whoop.

fucking scratch tickets.

*this is indicative of why i'll never be a successful gambler -- i'm all about low stakes and low risk. know when to hold 'em? know when to fold 'em? yeah -- not this girl.

lesser evil...

i can't decide which is worse: the kid sitting in the carel behind me here on the 3d floor of the library who is ALWAYS playing internet poker? or me and my obsessive blogging?

pot and kettle, i suppose...

interminglings...

for you folks out there who don't go to barco high, erm, pitt law school, allow me to explain the weekly phenomenon known as "bar review"... the student council, erm, student bar association sponsors drink specials at a different local bar every thursday night. and lotsa law students (heavy on the first years) go. here are things you can expect to encounter at bar review:

1. the same people you see every day at the law school
2. those same people, but a lot drunker, and some of them will be groping each other
3. a whole lot of boring conversations about classes/professors/people you see every day at the law school

yes, i've attended bar review thursdays a few times. i've even managed to enjoy myself on occasion. and i'm proud to say that i've never groped or been groped by a fellow law student (at least not at bar review). but as a general principle, i'd rather not do the bar review scene. because the times i've gone and have had fun have been largely due to the friends that i've gone with, and i don't need an SBA-planned thursday drink special to be with those folks.

with that said, today i got the following e-mail, sent to the all-student list:

This upcoming Thursday, January 19th, the medical
school students will be joining us for Bar Review
at the [NAME OF BAR HERE] in the Strip District from
10pm - close. There will be drink specials and
live music.

The students from the medical school who contacted
us to do the mixer are very excited, so we
encourage everyone to attend. This is a great
opportunity to meet fellow Pitt graduate students.

drink specials? live music??? MEDICAL STUDENTS?!?!?! um, ick. here's the thing -- law students fancy ourselves the left-brained half of cliff and claire huxtable. we all fantasize about finding some sugar mama or daddy with a white coat and a prescription pad to pay off our student loans. so, the thought of a "mixer" with law and med students, particularly one with copious amounts of alcohol, spells total disaster! disaster of biblical proportions! we're talking human sacrifice! dogs and cats living together! mass hysteria!

i'm imagining all the lewd, torrid grossness of the usual all-law-students-all-the-time bar review, but amplified by desperate, overstressed, undersexed law students intent on finding an equally desperate, overstressed, undersexed MD-to-be with which to simulate intimacy. and there will be lots of coors lite. and shots.

but one thing will definitely not be present at this dionysian brouhaha -- me. tomorrow night i'm gonna sit at home, maybe have a couple of whiskey sours, and watch a movie. all by myself. and i'm so looking forward to it!

chickenshit...

okay, this is embarrassing. this post shall go down in history as the most embarrassing post of all times, but i'm so goddamn mad right now that i can't not write about it! so here goes, i can't believe i'm going public with this...

i got home a little while ago and made dinner. and i figured i'd turn on the television (the goddamn idiot box!!!) and find something mindless to entertain me while i ate. friends, this is why i don't watch TV... what i ended up watching was something i'd never seen before and that i sure as hell will never watch again -- the worst possible waste-of-time show, the most horrid evil ever made... "american idol".

(ugh, i totally just threw up in my mouth a little bit just seeing that in print...)

oh, but it gets worse.

so, the show is a total trainwreck (is this why i continued to watch it?). everyone on it is horrible. EVERYONE! and i expect that. but what's really got me all fired up right now is the way the show dealt with the last auditioner on tonight's program. it was this 18 year old kid named zachary. before they showed his audition, they had shots of him walking, shots that were focused on his footwear -- high heels. can you all see where this is going?

the kid gets into his audition, and all three judges are a little taken aback by how he looks. now, the kid is pretty, he's got a pretty face, longish hair, he's tall and skinny, very feminine. but he was obviously totally comfortable with himself. the one judge that wasn't the douchebag simon or paula abdul was all, "so tell us something interesting about yourself." and douchebag simon scoffs and says, "as if he needs to". but the kid was a total good sport, and says that he's talented and he's happy to be there and people confuse him for a girl all the time and he thinks that's really funny.

and one of the judges, maybe douchebag simon, but it could have been the other guy, says, "you mean you're not a girl?" and zachary laughs and says "no, i'm a guy!" and then he goes on to sing his song, a whitney houston song. and the judges stop him midway through, obviously very uncomfortable, and douchebag simon is all, "no. absolutely not. that was horrible. and confused." and paula abdul, queen wuss of wussland, says, "yeah, i just don't think your voice is ready for the competition." and if that's not bad enough, she goes on to qualify her statement by saying, "but it's only about your voice."

what! the! fuck!

so, the poor kid not only doesn't get to be on the crappy "american idol" show, but he's basically humiliated. and they show him coming out of the audition room in tears, all upset, and they're interviewing him and he's going on and on about how he should have known that "american idol" would be just as prejudiced as the rest of the world, and how he should have known that they wouldn't know what to do with a guy who decided to sing a woman's song. the kid was heartbroken and disappointed.

but here's the real kicker, the real proof that "american idol" ranks right up there with wal-mart and george bush on the list of things that suck bigtime --

the song that was playing in the background while this post-audition interview was going on?
"the crying game". everyone on the PLANET should be insulted right now!!!

barf barf BARF!!! i'm absolutely dumbfounded by this whole thing. not entirely surprised, mind you, but totally beside myself at how horrible and narrow-minded this stupid stupid packaged-for-mass-consumption society can be.

meno? me, too...

currently reading for jurisprudence. the assignment includes an excerpt from "meno" by plato. here's the part that inspired me to put up this post:

socrates: observe, meno, the stage [the boy] has reached on the path of recollection. at the beginning he did not know the side [i.e., length or width] of the square of eight feet. nor indeed does he know it now, but then he thought he knew it and answered boldly, as was appropriate -- he felt no perplexity. now however he does feel perplexed. not only does he not know the answer; he doesn't even think he knows.

the note i wrote in the margin next to that section reads as follows:

"i.e, emily in law school"

T.R. log, day 4...

i don't even know what the hell color the jacket is today... khaki? greenish? tan? herringboned? but this, with a dark striped shirt and black pants. sandy and i think he looks nice. andrew says we're both wrong.

postponing the inevitable...

here's what's on my mind right now, in more ways than one...

i'm way overdue for an MRI. i haven't had one since august of 2004, before i moved to pittsburgh and started law school. for the first year i was here i had a total egomaniacal jackass for a neurologist, who seemed to think that he was way smarter than all of my docs in philadelphia and that there was no reason for me to be taking the MS meds and having regular scans of my brain.

so i decided to take my treatment into my own hands. i gradually weaned myself off my anti-seizure meds, and eventually stopped taking the MS injections i was supposed to have once a week. in that way that i can justify anything, i slowly began to believe that there was nothing wrong with me (the aforementioned egomaniac was a jerk, but i had no concrete reason to believe that he was incorrect in his un-diagnosis, right?), and the injections made me feel like crap-ola for the better part of one day per week, and given all the stuff that school required i do with my time, sacrificing 1/7th of each week to what may or may not be doing anything for me seemed kinda silly.

but lately i've been getting weird tremors in my ankles. it's probably nothing. they only last a couple of seconds, and they don't impair my ability to move or walk or anything at all, but i'd be a lying kind of a guy if i didn't say that the tiny spasms scare the hell out of me, and fill me with all the weird hypochondria that was a part of my daily life almost two years ago...

now i have a new neurologist, who is truly fantastic and with whom i feel very comfortable, and he wants me to have an MRI and an EEG done...this month.

which brings us to this moment. it's january 18th. have i scheduled those scans yet? nope. do i have a good reason for not having done so? nope. want to know the real reason why i haven't? because i'm chicken. i'm a scared little girl of what they're going to show. and despite the claims that knowledge is power, sometimes ignorance is bliss...

but the real truth is that despite my fears, i'm determined not to let something that i can't control get the better of me. and pretending that things are okay is, in some sense, deceiving myself into allowing the unknown to have some control over my life. and i'm smarter than that.

so, in that 3 hour block of free time i have tomorrow between jurisprudence and estates & trusts, i'm going to make some appointments to get my brain tested.

and regardless of what those tests show, i'm okay. i'll be okay. i'm better than my fears.

call from dad...

i swear that the single worst location on the planet from which to make a cell phone call is inside my dad's house. maybe the walls are made of lead? maybe the house is precisely positioned at some awkward, star-crossed vortex of cellular confusion? whatever the reason, holding a normal conversation there while on a cell phone is next to impossible. but, since cell phone minutes are way cheaper than long distance, when my dad calls, he does so from his celly. like he did tonight.

i almost didn't answer (three cheers for caller ID!) not because i didn't want to talk to my dad (i think new year's day was the last time he and i had talked, so we were about due for a chat), but because he called at 11:00 and that seemed a little late for father-daughter phone time.

...but then i had that what-if moment that inevitably occurs with late night phone calls from family -- the chance that there's bad news waiting on the other end of the line... so i held my breath and answered the phone.

no bad news. none at all. dad just wanted to make sure that he had my correct mailing address so he could send me the sneakers my step-mom had bought-but-needed-to-return-because-they-were-the-wrong-size for me for xmas.

i'm not sure what it says about me that my own father doesn't have my address. does it mean that living in eight different places in seven years makes me a non-committal space cadet*? or perhaps it means that my dad is an old man who no longer has the energy to keep track of minor details like the whereabouts of his adult children...

anyway, the conversation was predicably full of static and interference. all i could hear with any consistency was the sound of the television in the background. there was a lot of "what did you say?" and "dad, you there?" and "emily?" going on... grrrrrrr... so goddamn frustrating! somebody's got to get that man a better long distance plan on the ol' land line!

but one good thing that came out of the conversation (aside from the brief talk with my dad, whom i really do love very much), was that dad told me that they had gotten the current issue of the notre dame magazine (one of the publications that ND sends out to alumni and parents of alums; although, i think if you don't give them any money they stop sending it to you because i haven't gotten it in a while), and there was a brief piece in it from my favorite professor.

so my real purpose in putting up this post is to link to valerie's little article. this woman is seriously one of the most brilliant women i've ever known. this is a good excuse for me to get in touch with her, because it's been about a year and a half since we've talked. she's one of my heroes, one of my role models. she was a great professor and mentor to me in college, and has been a dear friend in the years since. i'm happy to show her off a bit.

enjoy!

*just for kicks, lemme see if i can remember -- no cheating allowed -- all the post-college addresses that i have called home... i'm only listing street names. in my mind, putting up the complete addresses would be like me standing naked in the middle of the law school lounge with my social security number written in sharpie across my belly. and nobody wants that. so here you go -- all the streets on which i've lived, house numbers and cities omitted, and in no particular order: fawn street; arnold street; morewood ave; locust street; s. fairmount street; fawn street (again); woodstock ave; commonwealth ave.

T.R. log, day 3...

black turtleneck, black pants, charcoal grey jacket. in my opinion, he also needed a beret, some round glasses, and a leatherbound edition of ferlinghetti's a coney island of the mind under his arm. kerou-wacky!

AML, on the other hand, thought he looked hot.

just curious...

so, readers, i invite your input...

which is more emasculating, to be told you have a small penis? or to be told you have no penis?

the company you keep...

i love long weekends!

although my plan was to make this a full-out working weekend, things haven't exactly happened that way. but it's been a helluva fun time nonetheless.

here are some highlights...

1. thursday: "the tragedy of liberalism"
thursday night i went out with andrew. it was only to be a dinner-and-one-drink venture, but it turned into a silly, whiskey-soaked night of silliness. it was all very well-timed: first week back, over the half-way point, neither of us really know what the hell we're doing with the whole job search thing, but both of want to do really good, important things. andrew said, "you know, this is the tragedy of liberalism." i said, "no, dear -- WE are the tragedy of liberalism."

but good news! we found out that harris grille is exactly halfway between our two apartments, at least as calculated by our respective walks home.

2. friday: "we should do this every friday!"
that's what tom said, at 80s night at lava lounge. sheesh! seriously, maybe i showed my age by knowing the lyrics to, like, every song that the DJ played (why oh why can't my brain retain the law like it can the words to every song by the go go's???), but it was awesome to just be out and dancing with my friends. also, it was unanimously decided that i am a bigger spaz than krista (including the opinions of three of her college friends, who at that point had known me for all of 2 hours).

another friday highlight was a fantastic dinner with my friend rachel, who should definitely hang out with us more often.

and there was an unexpected late-night phone call that was like the perfect ending to an awesome night with friends. good stuff.

3. saturday: "go ahead -- google 'the keeper'"
candace and timily might be two of the most fantastic people ever! saturday, after spending a ridiculous day in the sprawl with andrew, we got a phone call inviting us to meet up with c & t in the south side for a drink. not only were andrew and i pleased to have been invited to hang out with those two, it was t's birthday, so we really couldn't refuse. we had a crazy israeli waiter at the restaurant, who claimed rather emphatically that pittsburgh is going to be "one of the most powerful cities in 10 years". most powerful? like a superhero? pittsburgh???

and there were, for whatever reasons, lots of conversations about tampon alternatives, but mostly about this. i'm not sure how i feel about it, really... the environmentalist in me is all "hell yeah!" but the gets-grossed-out-easily part of me is, well, grossed out.

but i think my favorite part of the night occurred later, when "ice ice baby" was played at the lava lounge, and candace discussed, at length, the inadequacy of the second verse of vanilla ice's magnum opus. this was a learned and much-pondered diatribe which culminated in the probing question, "now, why would somebody rap about being a pussy?" brilliant. candace = brilliant!

oh, and since andrew is a big ol' steelers fan these days, i'm totally ratting him out on this. on our way home from the south side, andrew dragged me into a 24-hour CVS on the false pretense that he needed aspirin. well, what he was really buying was...wait for it...black and gold nail polish that he could wear while watching the steelers/colts game sunday! what an idiot!

4. sunday: emily's coolest moment ever...
sunday, i went to watch the aforementioned steelers/colts game with krista and paul and their friends from college who are in town for the weekend to visit. we were a small, but mighty contingent of colts fans in the corner of a bar that was overwhelmed with black and gold...

aside: why are there so many goddamn sports fans who take allegiances so personally? just because i was rooting for the colts on sunday does not mean that i am a disgusting human being who needs to have her mother insulted or be shot dirty looks across the bar. sheesh!

...and as everybody knows by now, the colts lost. the game was rough, a real heartbreaker. paul, a dyed-in-the-cornfields indiana boy, was not a happy camper. but we were all good sports, it's just a game, blah blah blah. until, a little bit after the game had ended, this total jackass kid, all decked out in steelers garb, came over to our table, started jumping up and down and pointing at us, and said, "ha ha ha" over and over! it was obnoxious. ob. nox. ious. so what did i do? i looked at the kid, and yelled right back, "you have no penis!"

seriously, i don't know what came over me! it was a classic no-brain-to-mouth-filter moment for me! but it was awesome -- the kid shut the hell up and walked away, and our small-but-mighty clan of colts fans retained our dignity.

-------

but the point of all this (in typical emily fashion) is that all weekend i've been aware that i know some truly fan-fucking-tastic people, and i feel damn lucky to be a part of such an eclectic and brilliant group. and, if such awesome people all seem to want to keep me around as a friend, or a least they don't seem to find my company objectionable, then that makes me feel pretty cool.

yes, it's all about me. i'm the coolest girl ever. emily = supercool. and hot. i'm hot, too. and i get straight A's. okay, now i'm totally lying...

was "global warming" mother nature's new year's resolution?

erm, is anybody else kinda creeped out by how unseasonably warm it has been so far this january?

high stakes...

last night, andrew made a bold bold bold proclamation. he said -- and let me see if i can state it with a little less raunch for the kids out there -- that if the steelers win the superbowl, he'll take a little visit dahntahn, if you know what i mean. but the catch? he said this little venture would be performed on a woman.

i swear it happened. greg witnessed it, too.

and suddenly, just like that, i'm a steelers fan! schadenfreude schadenfreude schadenfreude!

bulk...

went to costco yesterday with andrew. here's a list of things that i saw available for bulk purchase in costco that i plan on never buying:

1. mayonnaise. for the record, few things gross me out more than mayonnaise... mayonnaise-in-a-gallon-drum? ew.
2. seafood. call me a snob, but i grew up on the gulf coast, and coasts understand seafood. buying seafood at costco doesn't make any sense to me. none.
3. clothing. i never want to buy clothing at costco.
4. jewelry. although, andrew said that he's going to buy me an engagement ring at costco, and i told him that was very sweet.
5. erm, pregnancy tests. that's right -- costco sells pregnancy tests. they're right next to the bulk condoms.

oyez oyez oyez...

last june i did a 150 mile bike ride/fundraiser thingy for the national MS society. and i'm doing it again this year. and i want you all to do it, too. because not only do you feel like a bazillion bucks when you cross the finish line (you even totally forget the saddle-soreness, if only temporarily) because you just traveled 150 miles through the power of your own body, but you get to meet a lot of really great people with interesting stories and you're supporting a worthy organization that may or may not have a direct relation to whatever the hell is wrong with my brain.

here's the deal -- it's $25 to register (if you sign up before april 7th, and it's only $30 after that), you have to raise a minimum of $200 (this is pretty damn easy -- i raised about $1100 last year and am totally expecting to do better this time around), you'll get all the peanut butter sandwiches and bananas you could possibly want, and it would be amazing to do this with a group of friends.

we could even have our own team! hari and i rode the MS-150 together last year, and although we didn't actually have a "team", we totally wanted to have a team called "stare decyclists". and yes, i came up with that name. just like how i named the little gnome that krista and paul have in one of their plants "gene" as in "genome". but i promise that if we do the team thing this year, we'll come up with a name that isn't so, erm, emily-esque.

i will say that 150 miles on a bike isn't easy. the whole two day ride is pretty much all hills. and hills suck. especially when you've been in the hot sun all day (sunscreen and LOTS OF WATER are necessities) and you're on mile 80 and all you want to do is rest. but there are stops every 15 miles or so, with food and water, and it's not a race, so there's no annoying competitiveness involved. and day two is all rolling hills, so you get up enough momentum going down that the climb back up is a piece of cake. and there are so many good people and so much good energy all around that you really don't realize how much work it is.

and one of the greatest moments -- in terms of pure personal achievement -- in my life's recent history is riding through the streets of conneaut, ohio (the end point of the ride), listening to my ipod (i was only listening to one headphone, in my right ear, so that my left was totally exposed to the noise of the street/traffic/other riders) and "we are the champions" by queen comes up (okay, okay, so i had made a special playlist for the ride, but i hadn't anticipated when each song would play), and i'm totally singing my heart out, feeling like a superhero!

i want that feeling for each of you. i'd giftwrap it if i could.

so, to all of you fantastic, brilliant, up-for-a-challenge types out there, think about doing this. details are here. the allegheny chapter of the national MS society is here.

this is a call. all those in favor?

grant is my hero...

so, the wireless card in my stupid computer isn't working. why? because dell is mean. and before andrew says it, i will -- i should get a mac. i know this. and as soon as i have some cash, i will, but blowing a substantial portion of that loan refund check i deposited into my account today on a new computer would be foolish. but soon. i'll be part of the mac revolution. just like andrew and grant and aubrey and elizabeth and the crazy neo-cons who sit on the other side of sandy and me in ethics... (?!?)

oh, but i had a point...

so, i've been e-mailing/blogging from school, from michael and steph's apartment, and from the basement in my building, where i can plug my ethernet cable into the building's DSL router. but now? now i'm blogging in my living room! why? because grant is fantastic and has loaned me his old computer, which has fully-functional wireless capability!

hooray for grant! i'm buying him a pony! well, after i buy myself a new mac. so i hope he can be patient...

touche...

people. PEOPLE!!! for chrissakes i am NOT a crazy cat lady!!!

but to prove that i'm a good sport, i'm putting up a link to greg's post of last night, which did in fact cause me to laugh out loud.

especially since when i was walking home from the bus tonight, i had a conversation with a really cute little orange stray cat with a scratchy voice whom i totally -- if only for a moment -- considered bringing home to be friends with milo and kenobi.

(mark -- this is NOT your opportunity to again suggest that i take your extra cat off your hands, you hear me?!)

but no -- i'm not a crazy cat lady. how come sandy never gets any shit for having cats? or krista? or grant? or tom??? we give tom shit for everything else!

T.R. log, day 2...

black pants, navy blue tie, white shirt (with the polo logo -- so stylish!).

but no comments akin to the ol' torts "jamming the bunny cutout into the cookie slot"... alas...

emily can't come out to play...

goddamn you people and your stupid games of tag! i'm not going to play along! i will not tell you the next 10 songs that itunes gives me on shuffle! i will not tell you three things nobody knows about me! i will not will not will not!!!

xo,
emily

second day back, brought to you by stuart smalley...

i, erm, checked some of my grades today. i realized that the whole notion i had been clinging to -- that if i never actually see my grades then they must be straight As -- was absolute poppycock and that i was kinda curious to find out how i had done. bad idea. bad idea jeans. ignorance truly is bliss, friends.

last semester? last semester was not my best semester. and i probably could have told you that towards the end. i knew i had fallen behind, that i wasn't using my time to its full advantage, that i shouldn't have been blogging during so many administrative law classes...

so, new semester, new leaf -- no more blogging in class! no more letting some classes get in the way of my reading for others! no more goofing off when i should be in the library reading!

and you know why? because i'm good enough, i'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

blog log...

don't ask me why -- i don't have a good rationale (or, for that matter, disposition, critique or lessons), but i've decided that i'm going to keep a log of what my ethics professor wears every day to class. so, not every day, just mondays, tuesdays, and wednesdays. the days when i have ethics.

okay, here's why. to quote michael, our prof "looked fucking suave today". and he did. the attire? black pinstripe suit, white shirt, plaid tie. oh yeah.

this guy last year, when i had him for torts, basically wore some version of the same outfit every day -- button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, slacks. usually the shirt was some shade of blue.

now, it's no secret that i love this professor, so by no means should this this little sartorial chronicling be interpreted as some sort of mockery. it all truth, it's the only acceptable manifestation i can think of for my professor-crush, since writing "i love you" on my eyelids and sitting in the front row of class seems a little absurd (especially since he's one of those types who more often than not stares at the back of the classroom, just above everybody's heads, while going on some long-winded tangent...).

so let the fun begin! if nothing else, this ensures a minimum of three blog posts per week. and here's a bonus -- on the days when this professor says anything particularly ridiculous or brilliant or hilarious (which should happen with some frequency), i'll log those little gems, too.

first day back...

woo hoo! we're all now sliding on the downside of the slippery slope towards getting our JDs! the halfway point is officially in the past. and it seems that this is the semester of the first year, first semester professors... i've got two repeats (my torts and legal process profs are now my ethics and conflict of laws profs), other folks have three.

today was first amendment, ethics, and conflicts. there was a really nice mention of professor white at the beginning of my first amendment class. day one went really well -- i'm pretty excited about this semester's lineup. and again, seating charts will be full of power rows of me and my friends. only this time i'm not going to blog during class or fill up my time writing notes to andrew when i should be paying attention. new year's resolutions, you know.

time to do some reading...

pijamas del gato...

you know, i totally probably divulge entirely too much of the goings-on in my head on this blog. believe it or not, there are some things that i do consider sacred. with that said, however, this blog is still the repository of all the stuff -- boring and unboring -- that goes on in my world. and given that i just had an amazing weekend, i feel some need to write about it here. but in abbreviated form. because this weekend belonged to me and somebody else, and not to the blogosphere. and quite frankly, i don't want the blogosphere to have it. because i'm selfish. and silly.

so, here's what i'll say...

this is a messed up crazy world, right? there are things that happen that come together so nicely that it seems that the only plausible explanation is our friend the flying spaghetti monster (who was very charmingly rendered for me on friday night at kelly's with the use of some drinking straws and paper napkins). but who the hell needs to waste time looking for reason in madness? not me. i'm just really goddamn grateful for lots of things right now. for isosceles triangles, for weekends spent holed up in my apartment with brilliant company, for timing, for the interweb, even for losing best-two-out-of-three tournaments of star wars trivial pursuit.

friends, there is good stuff to be found. stuff that is simple and easy and full of all the best aspects of adventure. right now i feel really good.

hooray for 2006!

eat it, USC!

okay okay okay i know i said no more college football until august, but HOLY CRAP!!! TEXAS BEAT USC IN THE ROSE BOWL FOR THE NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP!

almost makes that notre dame fiesta bowl loss worth it. almost.

a funny thing happened on the way to buy books...

(friends, this is why i'm a crazy blogger...)

krista and i braved the world of thackeray hall today to get bookstore credits to facilitate the inevitable wallet-raping that happens twice a year when buying casebooks. here I am, $438.15 lighter, and i’ve lived to tell the tale. it goes like this…

so, when you get a bookstore credit, you have to take a printout from the financial aid office to the bookstore office so they can set up an account for you. the bookstore office is way in the back, behind the children’s book section. since krista and i are incapable of not being distracted by everything (it’s a trait of those who are hilarious and brilliant), we ended up getting totally sucked in by a particular rack of books. but this wasn’t just any rack of books. this rack was filled with books of…paper dolls! the most fantastically ridiculous array of paper dolls you could ever hope for!

the best ones were as follows:
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Paper Dolls
Glamorous Movie Stars of the Nineties
Bill Clinton and his Family
Old-Time Children's Fashions
Glamorous Television Stars
Famous Child Stars
Great Fashion Designs of the Eighties

there was also one for george w. bush and his family, but that one was just sad. and there were glamorous movie stars of the eighties and seventies. and glamorous latin movie stars. and french movie stars (which was oddly without the “glamorous” descriptor). and lots of red carpet fashions. all of these were done by some guy named tom tierney, who, in my mind, is obviously some sort of fetishist.

so, picture krista and me, all sprawled out on the floor, surrounded by our favorites of the ridiculous books of paper dolls, giggling like idiots, and all of a sudden we look up and there’s our friend tony, my favorite conservative, captain of the good ship federalist society (erm, this is not a good ship), the only guy i’ll let flip me the bird across the evidence classroom on a regular basis. tony’s just standing there, shaking his head, and he says, “i should have known it would be you two.”

indeed.

and if the paper dolls don’t convince you that the pitt bookstore is a veritable wonderland of fluff, take a look at this. so i kinda love nesting dolls. when i was little, my parents brought me a set from a convention they went to somewhere that wasn’t in mississippi. and the dolls were one of my favorite things. but the nesting dolls i love are the cute, cartoonish, hand-painted, brightly-colored ones. not ones like these. nobody wants to see nesting dolls of frodo, gandalf, arwen, aragorn, and legolas. i love the lord of the rings stories as much as the next geek, but come on!

ooh! and, krista and i are going to start our own podcast! we've been discussing the idea with krista's boyfriend paul, since more often than not he's the third party who gets to listen to the absolutely hilarity and brilliance that is krista-and-emily. the problem, however, with discussing this with paul is that he more often than not tunes us out, so he misses the hilarity and brilliance. but the krista-and-emily podcast is sure to be a favorite with miscreants and geniuses alike. we'll discuss things like... knitting! and the perils of hair dye! and paper dolls! and maybe we'll even do a podcast where we talk about podcasts! it will be very meta. stay tuned!!!

bookstore tally: second year, second semester...

Con Law – First Amendment:

The First Amendment: Cases, Materials and Problems $76.00

2005 Casebook Supplement $14.00

Ethics:

The Law and Ethics of Lawyering $107.75

Professional Responsibility: Standards, Rules & Statutes $38.40

Conflict of Laws:

Conflict of Laws: Cases and Materials $94.00

Conflicts Supplement: $6.00

Estates and Trusts:

Wills, Trusts, and Estates $102.00

Jurisprudence:

books not yet in the bookstore…

Total (so far): $438.15

hey, could be worse. but i did honestly think that ross would have assigned us “ethics in a nutshell” or something equally as ridiculous…

siesta bowl...

well, one thing i can say for my alma mater is at least our football team is consistent. notre dame lost its eighth consecutive bowl game last night. we got pummeled. we wasted opportunities with turnovers. we played like last season’s team. it wasn’t pretty. again, friends – it’s not just football, it’s notre dame football.

but the bright side is at least i’ll never ever again have to endure brent musberger and jack arute’s incessant commentary about how ND quarterback brady quinn’s sister is dating ohio state defensive lineman a.j. hawk. it was painful and embarrassing for all.

here’s another new year’s resolution – i will use my superpowers to restore notre dame football to glory in 2006!

and guess what, guys? you won’t have to hear anything more about college football from me until august!

paper, rock, scissors...

so, on new year's eve, over at krista and paul's place, after the drinking had commenced, it was decided by krista, michael, steph, and me that we needed to spend our time on a game of pick-up sticks. and to determine who would go first, michael suggested a round of "rochambeau" (or "paper, rock, scissors" for those of us who do not possess the weird northwestern united states vernacular that michael insists is the norm).

so, there were four of us playing paper, rock, scissors. we set out the ground rules (i.e., we'd throw after counting one, two, three). and we went for broke... and all of us -- ALL FOUR OF US -- threw scissors! what the fuck?!?! no rock, no paper, all scissors!

i'm convinced that we were either the direct cause or the direct result of some sort of rift in the time/space continuum. paradigm shifts occurred in that moment. antichrists were born. visions were had.

bizarro.

welsh white...

just wanted to put up this link to pitt's statement about professor white's passing.

i keep thinking about how grant and i would see prof. white in oakland during the summer walking to get his daily ice cream cone. like clockwork. every day. and the one time i saw him on the 2nd floor in the law school and i asked him how his summer was going. he said, "it's emily, right?" gasp! he knew my name! i was a schoolgirl with a crush. still am, i suppose.

if someone has contributed so much, can you really consider it a loss when that someone's body dies? yes, of course. i'm not so foolish as to rationalize this away. but it does make the grieving a bit more comforting.

i was in the last class that welsh white taught. he didn't teach this past semester, but he had a bunch of first years for crim pro last year. that bunch of first years = section B, class of 2007. my class, my section. how lucky!

rest in peace....

this may be the saddest post i've ever put up on this little blog... i was just catching up on friends' blogs, and dice has posted the news that one of the most fantastic pitt law professors, welsh white, passed away yesterday.

i'm speechless. and very sad. but i'm also feeling really grateful to have had the opportunity to take his criminal procedure class. he's awesome and brilliant and the best physical comedian ever in a classroom setting. and he made me fall in love with the fourth amendment.

professor white, you've been important to a hell of a lot of people, academically and personally, and you will be missed. thanks for all you've contributed.

supremely hilarious...

oh, let's face it, folks -- it's not the jurisprudential character of the supreme court that matters these days. who cares in what direction the high court is headed as regards reproductive rights or civil liberties or presidential war powers? what really counts is who is the funniest justice!

and good thing the NYT is there to keep us informed.

here's an excerpt:

Of course, what passes for humor at the Supreme Court would probably not kill at the local comedy club. Consider, for instance, the golden opportunity on Halloween this year when a light bulb in the courtroom's ceiling exploded during an argument.

It takes two justices, it turns out, to screw up a light bulb joke.

"It's a trick they play on new chief justices all the time," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the court that month, said of the explosion.

"[Laughter.]"

"Happy Halloween," Justice Scalia retorted.

"[Laughter.]"

And then, the kicker. "We're even more in the dark now than before," Chief Justice Roberts said.

"[Laughter.]"

On the other hand, in a January argument in a statute-of-limitations case, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy made an amusing observation about the absurdity of modern life.

"Recently I lost my luggage," Justice Kennedy said. "I had to go to the lost and found at the airline, and the lady said has my plane landed yet."

"[Laughter.]"

oh man! how i love the supremes!

enjoy!

auld lang syne...

so, it's 8:37 pm on january 1st and i'm still nursing a headache, the last vestige of my new year's hangover. does this bode well for 2006? methinks yes. i did, after all, somehow put half a bottle of bombay sapphire in my belly last night, and i didn't puke, and since i almost always puke when i'm this hungover (e.g., that one contracts class first semester of last year when i left the classroom THREE TIMES to vomit), i consider this a pretty good sign. perhaps it speaks well of my equanimity.

began my 2006 with krista and paul. we watched a fascinating PBS documentary on hot dog stands/restaurants/vendors. it was one of those documentaries with lots of small town folks wearing denim shorts. denim shorts! so many things are wrong with denim shorts!!! so. many. things.

so, erm, is this where i say something about new year's resolutions? okay. first of all, no denim shorts for me. or my friends. none of us. i don't own any, so this will be easy for me. but if any of my friends dare to show themselves in my presence wearing denim shorts, they are to be bludgeoned. second, all the usual crap like save the world, go to the gym, eat more vegetables, be kind to old people, make good decisions about boys, the usual. third, i think for the MS 150 bike ride this summer i want to do a century on the first day. you know, to keep things interested. fourth, gotta get my damn seminar paper published. my professors sent an e-mail with how-to information about getting student work published in law journals. they suggest that i plan to send out 40-60 copies of this thing. hello to 40-60 rejection letters!

oh! and i need health insurance. my COBRA runs out february 28th... i need to get an MRI and an EEG done at some point in january (per the new neurologist, whom i haven't blogged about yet, but he's absolutely rad and he knows dr. p., my philly neurologist, a.k.a. my fave doctor of all time.) and if those scans show something ugly (and i have this really really bad fear that they will), i've got to go back on the meds. and meds are not free, particularly not the meds i was taking, which cost -- no shit -- about $1200 a month. which makes that whole $300 monthly COBRA payment justifiable. so, if anyone has any suggestions of where to find affordable medical coverage if you're a student, i'm all ears.

this post isn't really interesting.

like, not interesting at all.

so, long story short, happy new year to all! hooray for 2006 -- new year, new experiences, new lessons, new opportunities!

and here's a picture of my sis and me, from the last night i was in mississippi, being stupid girls. she's brilliant. i miss her.