honestly...

...it's way too soon in this internship for my co-workers to find out how much of an idiot i am.

yet, that doesn't stop me...

i'm sitting at my desk and i notice that there are two voice mail messages on my cell phone. so i check them, and they're both fax attempts. so i say to the other intern and to my mentor attorney, "aw man! somebody's trying to send a fax to my cell phone. that's annoying." and my mentor attorney says, "what's the number?" and i read it. she says, "wait, that's our fax number."

yep -- i faxed my financial aid form to the law school a bit ago, and i wondered why i never got a confirmation sheet. to make sure, i faxed it a second time. the reason that first one didn't go through is because i'm a complete dumbass and instead of dialing the fax number for the financial aid office, i dialed my own cell phone. WTF?!?!

at the movies...

you know what i've missed in this town? the ritz theaters! the four old little indie/artsy movie theaters in society hill. my friend robert and i went to see a movie called brick yesterday. this may be the lamest two word movie review ever in the history of movie reviews, but i can't think of anything better to say than that it was fucking cool. film noir-y, totally engrossing, a little violent, just the right amount of humor, and it was all about high school kids! robert had seen it before and suggested that we go see it because he wanted to see it again.

go see it. you'll be glad you did.

horoscope...

according to the philadelphia city paper, one of the two free weeklies in the city of brotherly love, here's my horoscope for this past week:

Have you heard of the Lorax, the fuzzy yellow hero of the Dr. Seuss story? When a greedy factory owner moves into his idyllic little paradise and begins despoiling the forest, the Lorax complains on its behalf, saying, "I speak for the trees, because the trees have no tongues." Be like the Lorax, Virgo. Stand up for those who are too meek or weak or inarticulate to defend their own interests. It's the right thing to do, and besides, by doing so you will make connections that generate lucky breaks for you.

well, huh. that's a pretty good forecast for kicking off my summer internship!

the stuff you forget about is often most worth remembering...

saturday evening jenn and i went to target (somehow, conditioner and cat litter and cat food turned into $70... goddamn target!), then got some dinner and came home and sat on the back porch with some specially-created jenn drinks. it's been really great staying with her and chris these past weeks. they're good friends, good people. mark was in the hospital over the weekend, having surgery on his wacky broken leg, and jenn and i were talking about hospital stays, and the conversation progressed to those oh-so-fun six days back in march of 2004 when i was in the hospital.

that experience is such a blur. i remember the particulars, but it was such an emotionally charged time, it's hard to piece it all back together in some spots. but what my saturday night talk with jenn brought to my mind (which maybe i wasn't aware of at the time, since i was so overwhelmed with what was going on in my own head -- and i mean that both figuratively and literally) was that i had this amazing support system of friends who were all really concerned. she told me that she always thinks of the night after my first full day in the hospital, when she and joe and jessie and stean went to tangier on lombard street to get dinner after visiting hours were over. she said the four of them just sat there around the table, beers and burgers in front of them, not really saying anything. hearing her tell me that story almost broke my heart, but in the way that you want your heart to be broken -- broken open, touched, clunked over the head with one of those "it's a wonderful life" kind of realizations. my friends really were extraordinary -- above and beyond amazing.

and i somehow had all the components i needed around me at that time. i had joe, who, aside from being a wonderful friend, is a doctor and he was so crucial at helping me make sense of the medicalities of the situation. i had jessie, who came down from new york without needing to be asked, without any hesitation, without any doubt that it was what she had to do. she took care of the dog and cats and stayed at the house so that stean could be with me at the hospital. i had jenn and chris, who brought me silly dollar store diversions (including the most gigantic pair of underpants ever to imagine a grandma's ass) and kept me company. i had paula, who is always such a constant calming presence -- always has the right amount of perspective and sense of humor and trust that things are going to work out. and, i had stean.

oh, stean... a lot of my friends here know stean, some of them i know because of stean. and so he's come up in conversation a lot lately. i honestly miss having him in my life. i wish i could call him, i wish he and i could catch up, laugh together, go see stupid movies together. but even though i'm able to do that, i know that he's not. maybe someday? word on the street is that he's dating someone, which makes me really glad. but word on the street also says that he's still not doing so well... but that's his story, and not mine.

nevertheless, i had stean when i was sick, and i don't think there's a single person in this universe who could have loved me more or who could have been more brave or supportive. he was there for every doctor's appointment. he was there for every weird panic attack. he was there when i couldn't sleep at night or when i would cry because i had no idea what was going on. and he may not have always known what to say (but who the hell ever does in those sorts of situations?), but he never once let me get away with focusing on the terrifying stuff. he never let me see that he was terrified, too.

but he was. jenn told me that she saw her role in that time as being the support system for stean so that he could be there for me. and she told me that he had moments where he broke down, too.

why does it blow my mind to imagine that people could care so much about me? if the tables were turned, there's no doubt in my mind that i would be a wreck with worry. so why does it seem so wild that others would be like that for me? maybe it's because we go through life so absorbed with our own experience that we don't really pay much attention to the ways our life reaches out and mingles with others. it's not really just our own experience -- we get involved, those involvements become a big part of what makes our individual, self-absorbed experience meaningful.

i've never been one to believe that things happen for a reason. maybe i lack faith or i'm too much of a cynic, but it doesn't seem to me that "reason" plays that fundamental a role in how things pan out. yet, looking back on things, it sure seems that certain figures have been in place at the times when i needed them most. not really sure what to make of that. but one thing's for sure -- i'm incredibly, unbelievably, inarticulably grateful.

hollywood shwingahs...

my brother had his wisdom teeth removed yesterday. he and i are on the phone right now. he's all doped up and has gauze shoved in his empty tooth sockets and he's playing DJ with his ipod. and singing along. and what he's singing goes like this:

i rememba not sho long ago
i went to the theatah
and i shaw a kool and the gang show...

ready...set...go!

work starts tomorrow! yesterday morning i stopped by to check out the place and to meet the folks i'll be working with. as far as first impressions go, i was very very pleased. everybody was very enthusiastic and friendly. i think it's going to be a great summer internship.

i filled the rest of my day yesterday with friends. stopped by drew's place, then visited mark and his broken hip, then had dinner with lisa. oh, and i also checked out another sublet that i think is going to work out. it's a tiny (we're talking microscopic!) studio, but it's cute and clean and affordable.

spent my last pre-work day today with jenn, running errands, goofing off. just watched the season finale of "lost". i myself was completely lost (har har har), since i've never seen any episodes of the show prior to this evening. now i'm going to make my lunch for tomorrow and figure out what i'm going to wear for my first day on the job.

i'm really happy to be back in this town!

baby factoried...

WTF?!?! this week's savage love column pointed me to this article that appeared in the May 16th washington post. i'm absolutely infuriated by this! check it:

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

i mean, wha?!?! "pre-pregnant"? has it seriously come to this? are women nothing but reproductive vessels? sweet fucking christ. makes me want to go and get my tubes tied.

the OC...

whoa. talk about bad idea (capri) jeans! i went out last night in old(e?*) city in philadelphia. silly me! i had no idea that the dress code for women was no socks, no sleeves. i, of course, was wearing socks and sleeves, and i would estimate about 172% more clothing than the vast majority of the women there.

how to describe old city? it's this part of town (would it have been funny if i had written "towne"?) where the guys wear button down shirts tucked into their jeans and the girls show a lot of cleavage and wear a ton of makeup. and everybody looks like they spend way too much time at the gym. the bars are all pretty and well decorated and serve drinks that end in -tini.

it's just not a place for a girl like me. i like my bars divey and dark and smoky and cheap.

but the story has a happy ending: at the end of the night, paula and i agreed never to go out in old city again!

*i honestly have no idea if the proper spelling is olde (as in ye olde city) or old (as in old). nor do i really care.

flew the coop...

yesterday i moved all of my stuff out of that awful awful apartment. my little undergrad sublet guy was a little neurotic and pissy about the whole thing (which is understandable), but he was also pretty aware that he had screwed this up royally, so he didn't try to push things. although at one point he was all, "well, if you want to get into the legal aspects of this..." to which i responded, "okay, let's get into the legal aspects of this!" because no money had exchanged hands, thus no consideration. and while there could have been some sort of promissory estoppel argument against me, he had misrepresented a lot of things about the apartment.

anyway, i'm back in jersey for a few days. i've got a lead on an adorable little studio apartment (with a murphy bed!!!) in west philly, in the heart of hipster central, that looks like it's going to work out just fine. and i'd be a block away from aubrey and a few blocks from my old roommate's place. the only thing is that if i really want to fit in, i'm going to need to get a really bad choppy haircut and find myself a mangy dog so that the hipster neighbors will accept me as one of their own.

i'm pretty sure that i've just put my cats through the worst week of their lives. but they're much happier now to be out of that one place. there were no windows or sunny patches where they could sit, the only place they could hide was under that awful filthy bed, it was loud and smelly there. soon we'll be in a place where there are bay windows and no roommates and they'll again be happy little campers.

the adventure continues...

megalomaniacally...

there's this one police song on _synchronicity_ called "walking in your footsteps". at the end of the song, sting gets all beatitude-y and sings "they say the meek shall inherit the earth".

but it doesn't sound like that's what he's saying. what it sounds like, as my brother pointed out way back when he and i were teenagers, is this:

"sting shall inherit the earth"

and that, friends, is what's stuck in my head this morning.

graded...

dear pitt law,

why oh why do you refuse to give me my grades over the telephone? you have them. i know you do. you have my jurisprudence, estates & trusts, and first amendment grades. my friends have checked theirs. but i can't get mine. this is, well, silly.

especially since you told me that i can have a friend come by and pick up my jurisprudence paper if that friend gives you my anonymous number, but you can't tell me my grade when i tell you my anonymous number?

you see, i'm in philadelphia for the summer, so i can't really swing by and check things out. and it seems to defeat the whole anonymous grading thing if i have to tell someone else my exam number so that s/he can go and check my grade for me.

and let's face it -- no process is slower in all of the university of pittsburgh than that of the law school registrar posting the grades to student accounts online.

i worked hard and i'm impatient. i just want to know how i did!

thank you for your understanding.

sincerely,
[insert anonymous grade number here]

...courage to change the things i can...

i helped hobbly gimpy mark do his grocery shopping this evening. i am well aware that he's taking advantage of my full mobility while he's getting by on crutches, but at least it gets me out of this hellhole of an apartment. that's how desperate i am to not be here. when he picked me up, he said, "okay, i've come to a conclusion -- you have to move." that seems to be the consensus of everyone i've talked to about this, and it's been my sense all day. even though the kid from whom i'm subletting is doing his damnedest to wheel and deal me into staying, it's just not worth it. and here's why...

while i'm not a princess and i don't need elaborate living conditions, i know myself and my anxiety levels well enough to realize that i need to feel comfortable in the place where i sleep. i couldn't fall asleep last night until around five in the morning because i was so creeped out and unhappy here. the filth is a big part of it, but it's also the (forgive the terminology here, please) vibe of this apartment and this building. it's icky undergrad boy land. it's not for me. no way. plus, i'm not only looking out for me, i have two little cats that i do love dearly and i want them to be happy, too. they're as miserable as i am in this place.

and, this summer is supposed to be the summer of emily. i've got a great internship, i'm back in philadelphia with great friends, i'm really excited to be here. i'm just not willing to settle for a crappy apartment. i'm too old and set in my ways for that. and i refuse to apologize for it.

i biked over to see my friend lisa tonight. she's truly one of the most fantastic ladies ever, and a dear dear friend who is always really easy to be with. she's going through some things these days that closely mirror what i went through a year or so ago with stean, and it was so nice to just sit around, have a couple of glasses of wine, and talk about what we've learned in our lives lately.

one of the things we talked about was being in philadelphia. she grew up around here and loves it. i'm realizing that i've reached the point in my life where i'm ready to put down roots, and i believe that this is the city where i want those roots to settle. i know enough people here that i don't have to be bored or lonely, but it's big enough for me to get lost if i want to be by myself. plus, i think my days of brand new cities and starting over from scratch might just be behind me. i'm finding it a tremendous comfort to think of returning to something that's familiar.

we also talked about how there are things we can control in our lives and there are things that we can't. we can't really do much to prevent or predict the latter, but we're silly if we don't make use of the opportunities with the former. thus, again, i'm moving out of this apartment tomorrow. this falls directly within the category of "things emily can control". so good for me! and i'm very very grateful that i have friends here who are willing to put me up for a few more days until i find a place that's going to make sense for the summer.

jesus, what a week! can't wait to see what next week brings!

putting the "sub" in "sublet"...

i have one word to describe this sublet of mine: gross.

no, two words: fucking disgusting.

no, howsabout several words: makes dante's various circles of hell look like a merry-go-round.

currently, milo and kenobi and i are hiding out in my summer bedroom. why are we hiding out? because we don't like it here. yeah, it's cheap, but i'm currently being haunted by a never-ending refrain in my head of "you get what you pay for"... not sure what i mean? allow me to elaborate:

1. when i got here to move in, both bedroom doors were closed and i wasn't sure which was mine, so i looked in both. the room that belongs to my summer roommate, whom i'm gonna call "mr. personality", was full of piles of clothes on the floor and a stash of liquor bottles.

2. the whole place smells like boys and bad men's cologne.

3. there was a pubic hair on the toilet seat and i swear the bathroom has never been properly cleaned.

4. under the sink is a can of raid bug spray and a box of glue traps for mice.

5. there are no dishes, no utensils, no pots, no pans. but there is an x-box and a giant TV.

6. my summer bed has a weird dip in it, so i went to flip it over, and in between the mattress and box springs i found: $2.75 in quarters, a fork, a packet of duck sauce, a receipt for the movie theater across the street, a bunch of dirt and a lot of hairs.

7. while looking for kenobi earlier, i looked under the bed. not only did i find her, but i found a whole crapload of, well, trash -- socks, garbage, something that smells really bad.

yeah... is anybody else thinking "implied warranty of habitability" here? basically, this whole place grosses me out. totally grosses me out. i've sprayed the mattress with febreze twice now and i'm still afraid to put my sheets on it. i might just sleep in a chair tonight. i wiped down every surface in the kitchen and bathroom and i threw away a mousetrap that i found that would surely have broken the paw of milo or kenobi, had one of them gotten to it first.

i met mr. personality a little while ago. he informed me that he's cool with the cats, but he's not going to take care of them. uh huh.

a ton of gratitude goes out to amanda, my old roommate, for giving me an excuse to get on my bike and get the hell out of this place for the night. we exchanged gossip, some of which had to be told in code, in case unfriendly folks could overhear. we agreed that, henceforth, whenever code names are needed, we will use the names "he-man" for boys and "she-ra" for girls. or "jem". or whatever.

good times...

i seriously have a problem...

...with people who have fixed gear bikes. or at least, that's what andrew just told me. but he's right. and even though i have a dear friend who loves his fixie, i just don't get it.

and don't even get me started on that one kid who is always showing off on his fixie outside of the law school! krista calls him my boyfriend because i hate him so much.

hey! speaking of hatred, the other night i went out for drinks with jenn and her friend mike and this obnoxious classmate of theirs tagged along. never in my life have i felt so violently opposed to someone as i did to this guy! here are some snippets from the conversation:

mike: so, when are you taking the LSAT?
obnoxious kid: in november. i'm going to apply to fordham and american and harvard and penn.
emily: you know, the LSAT isn't offered in november. it's in october and december, though.
o.k.: oh, yeah. right. i'm taking it in october.

o.k.: so, what was your major?
emily: my degree is in english.
o.k.: yeah, so you probably worked with a lot of the Ph.D. grad students, then?
emily: not really. my school didn't have things set up that way.
o.k.: well i went to a major research institution, so...
emily: yeah? i went to the university of notre dame.
o.k.: oh. but it's too bad you had to be in new england...
emily: except that notre dame is in indiana. but i did live in boston for a couple of years after i graduated from college and i loved it!

more fun stuff? he referred to the court before the rehnquist court as the "blackmun court" (friends, justice blackmun was never chief justice), pronounced justice breyer's name like brayer (as if he's a donkey!), confided to me that he's very uncomfortable with the catholic majority on the supreme court right now, and is convinced that scalia is an activist justice. wha?

at one point during the evening, i leaned over the table and said to this kid, "honey, they're going to eat you alive in law school."

but i'm glad i won't have to be there to see it -- one evening with this kid was enough.

george!

george now has a photoblog! i'm quite pleased about this. you can regularly check in on what he's doing with his camera over on the pals links at "ready to hand".

welcome to the blogosphere, george!

shoes...

it's funny how silly little things trigger silly big things... and that's all i'm going to say about that.

the re-integration into my philadelphia world continued today with dinner with mark, followed by a pathetic attempt at a scrabble game. then a few whiskey sours with paula and kibbet, including some marveling at how philadelphia has become a haven for silly hipsters and construction projects. we also might have engaged in some unapologetic mockery of the bizarre fixed gear bike contingent in this town.

i'm so happy to be around these folks again! happy as a clam!

dee - ee - double hockey sticks...

i have been on the phone now with dell tech support for HOURS. literally. hours. to say that i'm a wee bit annoyed might be the understatement of the year. my very kind tech support guy, whose name is simon, has concluded that i need to (again) send my computer in to have it worked on/repaired by people who know what they are doing. hoo-ee! this is going to seriously throw a wrench into the works of me getting that goddamn journal write-on competition submission finished...

grrrrrr...


i [heart] summertime!

...and...

one more post from this morning in jenn's kitchen --

we're listening to WHYY, my absolute favorite NPR station. jenn just said, "guess what? you just missed the pledge drive, so you get a summer free of all of that crap."

brilliant!

from the other side...

here i am! back east! i'm currently blogging from the kitchen at my friends jenn and chris's house! i'm here for a couple of nights and then i move into my sublet on wednesday.

i gotta say, it's weird to be here. not in a bad way, just in a way that seems, well, weird. like, i'm in jenn and chris's house, where i've been a billion times, and these two are such good friends whom i love dearly, but things are in this weird state of transition and i feel a little, well, rootless.

in time, the roots will be put down and things will again feel normal and routine. but that will take a little while. soon enough, though.

i talked to sandy on the phone saturday night while i was packing, and i told her that i felt kinda lonely. not alone, but lonely. i know i have people in my world who are so wonderful, but humans are creatures of habit, and my routine has just gotten way way interrupted. my summer is pretty unpredictable right now. i haven't physically met anyone with whom i'm going to work, i haven't actually seen my apartment, i don't know how the next three months are going to pan out. that's kinda exciting, though. it will certainly be an adventure.

the ride out yesterday went well. jess was great company (and i didn't think she drove like a teenage boy, contrary to popular opinion) and all of our stuff fit just fine. i did have to leave my sewing machine in pittsburgh (which is good news for krista, to whom i will trust its care for the next few months), but i probably wouldn't have done much sewing anyway. i'm here with what i've brought. i'll figure out the rest.

jenn just said to me, "if we get a bunch of people together, would you want to go camping?" i said, "TOTALLY!" wow -- my summer is awesome already!

vacating the premises...

it's my last pittsburgh saturday until the fall. i've made a fantastic pot of coffee. my stereo is blaring NPR. some things never change!

but approximately 24 hours from now i'll be on the road, headed east on I-76, for my philadelphia summer adventure! i'm seriously as giddy as a schoolgirl! yesterday i talked to three of my favorite philly friends (mark, paula, jenn), i've been packing/cleaning/getting things ready, i have no idea how i'm going to fit my stuff in jess's car for the drive, but all of this is finally happening! hooray!

alas, there is sadness, too. i've been trying to catch up with my pittsburgh friends this week before i skip town -- dinner with paul g. on wednesday, drinks afterwards with george, oliver, and tom; girls' night at sandy's on thursday; randy stopped by for a visit yesterday and michael and steph came down for a drink last night. i'm hoping to catch up with folks for a bit tonight, too, but at the rate i'm going, i've still got a lot of work ahead of me before i'm ready to move. so i'm gonna get back to work...

the next time i post will be from the other side of the state, in the city of brotherly love, the city that loves you back. friends can look forward to blog posts full of tales of my bohemian summer existence, in my apartment with my undergrad summer roommate, stories of neighborhood bars with cheap beer and familiar company, anecdotes about the poor old folks that i'll be working with in my internship.

farewell to pittsburgh for the summer! best of luck to all my friends who will be staying here, and to those of you who are scattering across the country (anchorage! cincinnati! new york! rachel -- i forget the name of the town where you'll be!) for summer jobs and adventures. i'll miss you guys! come and visit!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo,

emily

p.s. best packing soundtrack ever for saturday, may 13th? pearl jam's _ten_. i haven't listened to this album in YEARS! oh, and i dyed my hair again. dark brown. nice, respectable, lawyerly dark brown. i'm hoping that if i look in all other respects professional, i won't have to take out my nose ring. here's to wishful thinking!

mark your calendars!

since this year for me has been all about bad timing, it only seems fitting that i miss out on this, too. but so that other folks who may be interested do not, i'm using my little blog to shamelessly promote my college best friend...

remember all those old posts about my friend dave's book? it's finally coming out this month. and he's going to be in pittsburgh giving a reading. everyone should go. this kid's got skillz. i mean it -- i'm not just biased because he's my friend and all. here are the details:

Dave Griffith -- _A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America_
Thursday, May 25th, 7:30 pm
Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
6300 Fifth Ave, Pgh

here's the press release for the book:

1-933368-12-8 Trade Paper Original
5 1/2 x 7 1/2 192 pp. $15.00
B&W photos and illustrations throughout
Current Affairs & Politics May 28^th, 2006

Inspired by the recent Abu Ghraib torture photos, this is Griffith's journey through the vast catalogue of violent and sexual images that have accumulated in our collective unconscious, a journey he seeks to understand through filters ranging from Flannery O'Connor to Susan Sontag to Andy Warhol.

Griffith offers gripping personal testimony to the difficulties of living out the Christian imperatives of love and forgiveness amid a culture that legitimizes government violence as the only "real" way to establish social order.—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

David Griffith is a writer to watch--politically engaged and bitingly funny, but never shrill. His passion for social justice is grounded in his understanding of art and religion-two forms of vision that, rightly understood, increase our awareness of irony and ambiguity rather than stifle them. This combination of talents and interests is rare indeed: Griffith is working the same territory as Thomas Merton in books like Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander and Seeds of Destruction. In short, this is cultural criticism with a soul. -- Gregory Wolfe, editor, Image journal

In the wake of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, American leaders from different fields, politics, journalism, law, psychiatry struggled to understand what happened in the notorious prison, and why. In this astonishingly elegant and passionate series of essays, David Griffth contends that our society's shift from language to image has changed the way we think about violence and cruelty, and that this best explains the ongoing prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo.

In effect, Griffith argues, our much-touted visual “savvy” has lead to a true science fictional moment: a disconnect between the image and the consequences of the actions depicted—-a problem Anthony Burgess meditates on via Alex’s experimental “rehabilitation” in A Clockwork Orange.

In the spirit of Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, Griffith meditates on images and literature, from the Abu Ghraib photos themselves, to Andy Warhol and even Star Trek; but Griffith in particular suggests that Flannery O'Connor—whose writings explored the gulfs between faith claimed and lived and the meaning of human evil—might offer the most potent insights into the failures at the prison facility.

Unlike Sontag, however, the narrative focuses inward, on the story of Griffith's own visual education, in order to expose the roots of a new violence, the violence of disbelief. Ultimately therefore, this book is more in the tradition of Joan Didion’s Salvador and Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”—a dramatic, experiential first-person story from inside the mess and noise of the culture, inflected by a radical Catholic philosophy.

First serial rights to Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion

David Griffith has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in English from the University of Notre Dame. He is the chair of creative writing at the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts, a frequent contributor to Godspy, a quarterly magazine about faith and culture, and is affiliated with the Catholic Worker houses in South Bend, Indiana, where he presently lives.

seriously, friends! make me proud and go check this out!

OMG...

MAY 12 UPDATE: i'm an idiot. i'm changing this post around because it sounded totally patronizing and mean and i don't want to do that, given that i absolutely adore my sister and don't mean to or want to incur her wrath. so, i've changed things up a bit. and i'm a dumbass...

so, in my perusal of jurist's fellow webby award winners, i clicked on myspace.com, winner of the, erm, "breakout of the year" webby. myspace does indeed make me feel like breaking out...in hives. my apologies to all friends who maintain myspace pages, but i just don't get it. it's cluttered, aesthetically displeasing, full of high school kids. if you're a high school kid, fine -- have your myspace page. but beyond that it just seems kind of, well, creepy. or maybe i'm just old? i dunno...

however, a certain favorite 18 year old of mine has a myspace page. and i know i'm gonna catch hell for this post from her, because she does indeed read this blog. but, myspace? okay, okay. i have a blog. i know that by some standards, blogging is every bit as abhorrent as any sort of online presence. but, well, i use big words like "abhorrent" and "perusal" and "aesthetically displeasing". find THAT on your typical myspace page -- i dare you!

the truth is, though, once i got over my feeling all icky about reading the comments and stuff on this particular myspace page, i realized something -- my sister is a whole helluva lot like me when i was at that point of life. to illustrate, i give you the following:

1. the grateful dead... those of you who are familiar with the best show of all time freaks and geeks will remember fondly the one episode where mr. rosso loans lindsay his copy of "american beauty" and she totally falls in love with the album. if i've said it once, i've said it a thousand times -- lindsay weir = emily in high school.

2. ah, kerouac's _on the road_. totally. read it on a bus ride to denver (for church youth group of all things!) from there, i moved on to the other beats (burroughs, ferlinghetti, ginsberg), then started to grow impatient with the lack of/portrayal of women by the beat fraternity. then there was the brief stint as a philosophy major, heidegger, a language crisis, and then the realization that, really, everything is all very silly. enter vonnegut, and a bit of camus and sartre. from there came the rediscovery of faulkner, the discovery of nabokov. and the befriending of some new poets (wcw, stevens, eliot, berryman); became enraptured by the greek tragedies, and totally disenchanted by anything on the NYT bestsellers list (at least as it pertains to fiction). fell in with the american fiction writers of the first half of the 20th century, with a little dostoevsky and hesse and joyce, even merton. suddenly i'm surrounded by books i love but can't remember and music i never listen to but do remember, and i've got a mad urge to re-read _on the road_, just for kicks.

3. i remember when i realized that holden caulfield couldn't be one of my "heroes". i blame that godawful show "party of five". it was then that i knew that my beloved _the catcher in the rye_, although brilliant and perfect when i was in high school, had become yet another victim of hipster chic. why must the hipsters take all things wonderful (CitR, pabst blue ribbon, chuck taylors) and turn them into pop culture trash? i mourn the loss of these things as mine, yet i harbor secret love for them anyway. however, upon revisiting salinger after a few years, i was all about "a perfect day for bananafish" and "for esme -- with love and squalor". and that's when i realized that, really, it was the glass family that was truly salinger's masterpiece.

so, yes... the moral of the story here? my favorite 18 year old is a frightingly accurate mirror image of yours truly as a senior in high school... secretly, i'm hoping she'll continue on this path. i've turned out okay, right?

so, c? i love you! you amaze me and i'm so proud of you. but please get rid of the myspace page! xoxoxoxoxo

hooray for jurist!

the polls are closed, the votes have been counted, and jurist has won the people's voice webby for best law website!

congrats to jurist! congrats to pitt law! congrats to my fantastic friends krista and tom h. whose notable journalistic contributions to jurist surely played a big ol' part in such high inkernet accolades!

time warped...

so... i had high hopes of getting all the stuff done by now that has needed my time for a while. i.e., i figured that by saturday i'd have my apartment so clean it would literally sparkle (very distracting for a girl like me whose attention gets monopolized by all things shiny). i'd draw up that contract for my subletter on sunday and get all of my laundry done. on monday i'd go on a fantastic long bike ride until my legs gave out and then i'd start getting things ready for my move to philadelphia. on tuesday i'd be getting started on the journal write-on materials.

um, right. instead, i'm not really sure what day this is, i've gotten so much wonderful sleep, and i'm still doing laundry. but my place is pretty clean now, and i do have the whole rest of the week, right?

oy vey... philly in t minus five days!

oh, and to my dear dear sweet charming "friends" andrew and tom? GIVE IT A FUCKING REST!!! xoxo

secondhand...

today krista and i had a typically krista-and-emily day of wandering aimlessly from place to place, with just enough of a plan to keep us from going too astray. the theme for our outing was thrift stores, and our adventure took us from east liberty to the south side to the north side, searching through racks of other people's clothes and shelves of gently used goods.

by far, the most exciting new additions to krista's and my worlds were books. krista found a book on national parks and one of those great 1950s nonfic paperbacks predicting the horrors of the future. here's what i came away with:

1. _The Wapshot Chronicle_ by John Cheever
2. _The Theory of the Leisure Class_ by Thorstein Veblen
3. _Hand Puppets: How to Make and Use Them_ by Laura Ross
4. _Han Solo's Revenge_ by Brian Daley*
5. _The Elements of Style_ by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White**
and, the BEST FIND OF ALL...
6. _Our Bodies, Ourselves_

...and all for a total of $7.98!!!

i will admit to having seriously debated as to whether i should have bought the cassingle of color me badd's "i wanna sex you up" for $0.75. i will also admit regret at not having bought that AC/DC t-shirt at the north side goodwill.

the day was rather bittersweet, though. since krista leaves for portugal tomorrow and i leave for my summer in philly next sunday, this was our last hurrah for a while.*** it's like the wonder twins are going on hiatus. this makes me a sad girl...



*yes, this is a star wars book. shut it! i thought it was funny.
**this is strunk & white, 3d ed. 1979. the current edition of _the elements of style_ is the fourth ed.
***i mean, yeah, i'm going to be back in pittsburgh from time to time this summer, but i'll be here as a visitor, which will be a little weird.

c'est la vie!

well, i may have finished with a bit less than a bang, but at least i'm done. i'm now officially a third year law student. to celebrate the completion of another year at pitt law, i came home and took a nap!

and now? now i have several days of nothing to look forward to! sweet, glorious, beautiful nothing!

oh god, i think i'm bored already... okay. i need a plan. tomorrow morning i'm gonna get up and clean the end-of-the-semester-casualty-of-war that is my apartment. and then, maybe i'll ride my bike to schenley park and read something that has nothing to do with the law.

peanuts, cracker jacks, and the final final exam...

well, friends? the first pitch was thrown last week, i reached the seventh inning stretch right after my first amendment final on tuesday, and now it's the bottom of the ninth, the scoreboard says i'm up, but i have to defend my lead for another three outs. i'm hoping for nothing but pop flies and strike-outs from the home team so this can all be over soon, painless and quick-like.

(erm, the above was brought to you by a girl who loves baseball, but truly knows nothing of its nuanced beauty. i know, on some superficial level, that there are things like the infield fly rule and interleague politics, but i don't really know. and i felt that i owed mark some sort of peace offering for insisting that he and i go to the phillies/red sox game in a couple of weeks, knowing that he hates the red sox, but not realizing until now how much he truly hates the red sox. for the first time in my life, i'm a little afraid of my normally peaceful, laid back friend. who knew that such savagery could come from a man who only eats vegetables?)

ahem, the point, though, is that this is it! the time has come, the time is now! (marvin k. mooney? anyone? anyone?) i'm all done with this craptastic crap-a-thon called the second year of law school...in about 8 1/2 hours. one more final -- estates and trusts (why oh why isn't there a key somewhere on this keyboard that allows me to draw hearts and smiley faces and stars and moonbeams and ponies???). i do so love estates and trusts... and not like how i love baseball. i love baseball the way schoolgirls have crushes on professor indiana jones. like, i'll bat my eyelashes (you better believe that pun was intended) and giggle, but i don't really know who the man behind the myth is. i love estates and trusts, however, the way i love the BCS and college football -- and hopefully that kind of love is what it's going to take to make me wildly successful on this 80 question multiple choice final exam.

i finished my last sleep of my second year of law school with a dream about law school. in this dream, a certain class of 2007, sec. B criminal law professor was conducting a class, and various barco high characters were strewn about the classroom, raising their hands to interject a lot of haughty, highfalutin nonsense about the case we were to have read for class. and i had a point that i thought was relevant and even important, but i was hesitant to raise my hand... but eventually i did. and the professor loved it! i was the class genius! the sad thing, though, is that the point i made was some sort of parallel to the way the text of the opinion was written and things i studied as an undergrad on her way to her english degree.

this is what i'm hoping that dream meant -- my most successful speaking-up-in-a-big-lecture-hall-sized-class experience was in...estates and trusts! so, this dream was a prediction of great success and brilliant insight on the Es & Ts final today! way to go, sleeping brain! way to psych myself into utter delusion!

the bad news, though, is that i've started this banner day in a seriously grumpy mood. i'm cranky, sleep-deprived, for some reason there's a bruise on my shin. i've just made a pot of coffee, and i've got five hours to do my last minute preparations, so i'd better get on that.

regardless, it will all be over soon. and there will be much rejoicing!

oh man...

...am i glad that they don't give out DUIs to girls on bikes!

because i can rock the first amendment secondary effects of statutes that prohibit fortune-telling, but me on a bike after five hours of drinking dollar beers? not so cool.

big thanks go out to oliver for calling to make sure i made it home in one piece!

and goodnight to all.

so uncool...

hmmm... tom and i had a little disagreement today. despite his better efforts, he's not going to convince me that he's right on this matter. but he and andrew and i did have a chance to talk it out this evening at the crazy mocha in shadyside. and you know what? the three of us actually managed to discuss it civilly and intelligently!

alas, it quickly devolved into one of those boring conversations where the three of us proved to ourselves and each other that our academic pursuits have converted us into dorky lawyer types who turn everything into some sort of policy discussion. but that wasn't the low point in the conversation. oh no. the low point went like this...

i forget what the topic was, but tom made some point and then said the word, "kaboom". i said, "you can't say that word -- only krista and i can use that word." and then andrew said something about how krista and i don't have a monopoly on the word "kaboom" -- it's a fairly well-known word... to which tom responded, "yeah -- even shaquille o'neal had that movie about it."

right at that moment, tom's phone rang, so the conversation kinda halted. but something didn't seem right to me... kaboom? shaq? huh?

and then it dawned on me! so right as tom answers his phone, i say, " YOU MEAN KAZAAM!"

and tom gave me a high-five.

wow.

bright, sunshiny...

the weather today is perfect. i mean that -- flawless, ideal, PERFECT! the temperature is perfect, the breeze is perfect, the sunshine is perfect. seductively perfect. earlier, the weather lured me out of the depths of my finals malaise and onto a sunny bench at schenley plaza with my first amendment notes. for a while it was great -- i was fulfilling my need to study while restoring my body's winter-depleted vitamin D levels. and then it happened...

you see, the sun was so warm and made everything so cozy. and the sunlight cast everything into such brilliantly sharp focus that i had no choice but to gaze off at the springtime yellow-green of the trees, the brightness of the flowers, the soft patterns of clouds...

and before i knew it, my backpack was a pillow, my first amendment notes had plopped down onto my stomach, my eyelids were heavy...heavier... everything just felt so comfortable...

and then, my inner voice of reason spoke up. and this is what it said:

"ahem. HEY YOU! wake up and study for your goddamn finals! you get through the next three days and you can nap in the sun all you want!!! besides, you're not wearing sunscreen and you know how easily that pale irish skin burns."

hmph... i hate when i'm right. three more days... two more finals... almost there...