throckmorton

balls...

2009-01-31T20:27:00.002-05:00

here we go!

2009-01-31T18:03:00.004-05:00

this morning, my yarn winder finally arrived!

a yarn winder (and i'm not even sure if that's the technical name for this thing, but the only thing printed on it is "made in china") is a little simple machine that you thread your yarn onto and wind up so your loose hank of yarn becomes a neat little ball of yarn that you can knit from. it's like a larger and more manually operated version of a bobbin winder on a sewing machine.

i've wanted one of these yarn winder fuckers for a really long time. carson refused to get one for me for christmas (carson has this thing about gifts -- he doesn't like to buy things for people that they ask for, you know -- things that would definitely make the recipient happy; he prefers the risk, i guess), so i just ordered one for myself. i've got so much yarn sitting around that needs to be balled up, and obviously i can't do that without a yarn winder.

well, the yarn winder is kind of a pain in the ass. it works -- there's no design defect or anything -- but it really kinda needs a device called a "swift", which looks like this. the thing is, a swift is a lot more expensive than just a yarn winder, and i'm totally cheap (and poor), so i've foregone the swift for now. but i know that having a swift would probably make yarn winding much less rage-inducing...

like this morning, when i opened the front door and saw my little yarn winder box on the porch, i was SO FUCKING EXCITED that i had to try it out IMMEDIATELY. and because i'm an inherently impatient girl, i got yarn (and cats and myself) all tangled and knotted everywhere and ended up cursing up a storm at the stupid yarn winder. so i decided that i should probably just get the hell out of the house for a while so no further harm could ensue.

i didn't do too much on my little errand-running, get-away-from-the-yarn-catastrophe adventure, but everywhere i went, everyone totally had the superbowl fever! pittsburgh has really grown on me in the four years that i've lived here, and one of the things i find incredibly charming about this town is how excited people get about the steelers. the steelers got me, too. my first year here i tried to hate. and then the icy shackles around my heart started to melt and i, too, became a believer. (although it should be made clear that the penguins are the pittsburgh team that truly has my heart.)

so when i got to costco and that silly "here we go" steelers song was blasting through the aisles of bulk merchandise, i kinda got this embarrassingly teenagery feeling of cameraderie and solidarity with my pittsburgh brothers and sisters. fuck yeah, steelers! you're goddamn right i want us to win the freaking superbowl and prove to the world that we are the greatest NFL team ever (no other NFL team has won six superbowls)!

so, yeah. i started today as an angry scorned knitter, but i've ended up filled with the superbowl spirit.

and now i'm gonna try and convert this spirit into more yarn-ball-making. wish me luck...

HERE WE GO STEELERS! FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD!

can't make any promises, but...

2009-01-25T20:15:00.002-05:00

...here i am.

i just reclaimed my office from the dreaded "extra room syndrome". yes, i just made that up. but it's when you've got a room in your house that you designate for some purpose, but since it's not a room designated for some regular necessity (bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, living room), it becomes the junk room, the room where you stash all the stuff that you accumulate but don't really use. then you can close that room's door and voila! all is orderly and proper!

i did a lot of housekeeping/organizing today (including collecting all of my knitting needles and accoutrements from various locations and bags throughout the house and putting them where they belong -- in an old tanqueray tin; and untangling the fire hazard of cords and wires connecting my tv to its various input devices) because lately i've felt kinda, well, kinda bleccchh. not for any reason, just have the my-life-is-kinda-boring blues. so maybe now that i feel that i have more control over my living space, i'll feel more in control of my time and my sense of well-being.

...which leads me to throckmorton. i miss this blog. i've kinda replaced the void it once filled with a mildly obsessive relationship to facebook, but facebook makes me feel like an asshole every time i ignore a friend request from someone who isn't really my friend. and lately i've felt a little put off by just how personal some of my facebookfriends get with their facebooking. i have thoughts and feelings, too! but i think it's better not to bombard the various and attenuated online contacts i've gathered with my deepest, darkest musings every time they open their facebook homepage.

anyway, i'm thinking of blogging again. yes -- i've said this before...and nothing has come of it. so i'm gonna treat this like when i quit smoking (which, for the record, was two fucking years ago which means i can now say that the portion of my life spent as a smoker is less than half) and not look at this as a big deal, just something i'm gonna do and if it works, then good.

but let's face it -- i'm not getting any younger, and if i want this site to turn into a book deal, i better get to work, right?

that whole "closing a door/opening a window" thing...

2008-10-01T20:22:00.002-04:00

i moved in with carson. that's right. my boyfriend and i are now "living in sin". lucky for us, we are heathens for whom "sin" carries no threat.

nevertheless, this was a huge decision and one that we didn't make lightly. so far, all is going well. there have been no major cat fights (and i mean that literally: between the two of us we have four cats) and our love for each other has not diminished yet as a result of sharing space. in the interest of full disclosure, however, this has only been going on since friday.

last night, though, i bade farewell to my apartment. and it sucked and made me sad. don't get me wrong -- i'm happy to be living with carson and i think it was the right decision for us, but leaving my space, the apartment that was all mine and only mine, was tough.

i spent three and a half years in that apartment. that's the longest i've ever stayed in one place since college. it was a good place for me, filled with good memories and growth. i was a law student there, i became a lawyer there, i had good relationships while i lived there, and a few that i could have done without. there were adventures and misadventures (such as that unfortunate evening when i almost accidentally burned the place down, or the time krista and i bleached my hair, or when greg and andrew and i had sangria and wii night), manic pseudo-academic all-nighters, varying degrees of success with house plants and roof gardening, my 30th birthday party, three notre dame football seasons. mostly, though, it was 3 & 1/2 years of laughs and cries and struggles and triumphs. and it all happened in my little space, a space i made my own, filled with the contents of my life. and almost all of it was good.

last night, after i finished mopping the floors and scrubbing all the surfaces, after all the trash had been taken out and all the closets emptied, i couldn't leave. i kept walking through the rooms, looking around, remembering. if things go as i hope they should, i'll never live by myself again. that's more than a little terrifying, especially for a selfish and bratty girl like me who enjoys being the boss of her own life. but this is all part of it, right? and that's exciting.

but i'm allowed to feel a little sad.

goodbye, little apartment! thank you!

facebook?

2008-09-08T22:59:00.002-04:00

okay. i know i'm about a hundred years too old for facebook and i'm also about a hundred years behind the times, but i had some sort of mad facebook frenzy come upon me this past weekend and i'm pretty much all blissed out now from essentially cyberstalking people i haven't seen in years.

yes, this is embarrassing. i am embarrassed. i'm going to be 32 years old next week and i spent my friday night uploading pictures and combing through friends' friends lists. it's so silly, really, but i don't care. i love it! it makes me happy to see what these people whom i truly love are up to these days and makes me feel incredibly fortunate to have known such amazing people in my life.

don't judge me. i've never claimed to be a grownup. not really, at least.

on being a lady voter in 2008...

2008-09-07T18:15:00.002-04:00

jesus, where do i begin? my feelings on the whole sarah palin debacle can best be summed up as follows: WTF?!

how freaking stupid does the GOP think america is? actually, the sad truth is that there are way too many americans who are exactly as stupid as the GOP thinks they are. and that's the part that makes my head explode. because sarah palin makes no sense at all! seriously, by all logic and reason, the ultra-conservatives and the evangelicals should gasp in horror at sarah palin. yet, they're taking to her like a hockey mom to lipstick. and it truly truly terrifies me.

who the hell is this woman? before she was the governor of an oil-rich state of 683,000 people, she was mayor of a town of 6,000. and she has the balls to suggest that community organizing is some kind of hack job? i'd love to see sarah palin last an hour in a low-income, primarily black chicago neighborhood.

as for her pregnant teenage daughter? if that had been chelsea clinton back when bill was running for president, the GOP would have lept all over it. and it would have been ugly. but the real kicker about the whole bristol palin thing is that all of the coverage uses language like this:

Here's a statement the McCain camp released from Todd and Sarah Palin, which is identical to the quote in the Reuters story: "We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support."

um, correct me if i'm wrong, but bristol's "decision to have her baby" sure implies that she had an, um, choice to make? like, perhaps she could have chosen something other than having the baby? oh, the blasphemy! makes emily's head go KABOOM!!!

the thing is, strategically, the GOP made a really strong move in selecting palin. of course tons of americans are going to "relate" to this woman. tons of americans have the same small-town, PTA, book-banning, nascar-loving, guns-and-religion sense of identity. and this is what got us eight years of george w. bush. it's identity politics at its most dangerous, and it scares the hell out of me.

finally, sarah palin is not an emblem of feminism. sarah palin is not proof that the GOP cares about women's issues. sarah palin is the worst kind of woman -- she's an opportunistic beauty queen. and i hope joe biden eats her alive in the vice presidential debate next month.

blogfade...

2008-07-21T21:20:00.002-04:00

aw man, i miss this little blog! i really really want to write new things, but i must make it a habit again. keeping this thing updated has been a real challenge since i haven't had regular during-the-day access to a computer. even if i weren't in a courtroom all day and if i had a computer (or even a desk) to use and the time to use it, the stupid county blocks practically every website that has even vaguely interesting content on it, so i doubt blogger would be accessible.

the short version of things lately is like this...

i love my job. I LOVE MY JOB. i'm getting paid (but not very much) to spend my time doing something i actually give a shit about. today i pissed off two cops. i later apologized to one of them because he didn't really deserve my wrath, but the other one can fuck right off for making my guy pay restitution to the county for crime lab fees. totally uncool. and if i hadn't been outside the courtroom when his case was called, explaining to another client what was going on with her case, i would have raised so much hell about that restitution issue (because district magistrates do NOT have power to hold attorneys in contempt).

i will now fully admit that writing about my job makes me nervous.

i got a new set of golf irons. cobra FPs. they totally rule. they have flowers on them, because apparently the entire golf industry thinks that lady golfers have the aesthetic taste of four year old girls, but at least the club shafts are blue and not pink. i dunno know when was the last time you were in a store that sells golf stuff, but almost all the things for women are pink or pastel and practically scream not to be taken seriously. yes -- this offends me. my golfing skills proclaim loudly enough that i shouldn't be taken seriously; my clubs should just shut the hell up.

on saturday, carson and i woke up ridiculously hungover (because of sid's birthday celebration the night before) and all i could think about was getting a giant big gulp from 7-11 filled with gatorade. this was a profound need that had to be met or else i was sure i would transform into a sad and thirsty pile of dust. so to 7-11 i went and i purchased the biggest drink i've ever seen in my life. it was 64 ounces, which is truly an absurdly stupid amount of liquid. it took carson and me several hours to drink. and i swear it made me happier than any other $1.92 purchase ever has before.

and finally, um, i can't stop watching this. seriously. i watch it over and over and it never stops being funny. you should watch it, too. and then watch it again.

okay, that's all for now. i'm going to read over my cases for tomorrow and then get some sleep. i miss you, throckmorton!

RIP Ad'H...

2008-06-05T01:26:00.002-04:00

a billion years ago, when i was a grant writer at the philadelphia museum of art, one of my regular tasks was to write letters. i wrote cover letters for grant requests, thank you letters for grant awards, and cover letters for grant reports. and since nobody knew who the hell i, a lowly grants associate, was, and since the whole fundraising/development/arts&culture world is all about name/brand recognition, i wrote these letters under someone else's name, someone whose name got recognized.

one of those well-recognized people was anne d'harnoncourt, the museum's director. anne d'harnoncourt died over the weekend.

now, it's not like ADH and i were pals; it's not as if we'd trade quips about marcel duchamp when we'd pass each other in the halls. truthfully, i had very little direct interaction with her, and i was a little terrified of her because she was the big boss and she was six feet tall. but i liked her -- she was always kind and professional, she was a perfectionist even with my submitted drafts of two-paragraph thank you notes (very rarely did i get a draft returned to me without some minor change on it), she was completely devoted to her work, she was gracious and genuine with those who supported the museum and its programming, and she had truly fantastic handwriting. she did wonderful things with and for the philadelphia museum of art, and by extension for the city of philadelphia. she was very well liked and respected and she will definitely be missed.

(by the way, as an example of an editorial change that ADH would have made to one of my drafts, in the previous paragraph's second-to-last sentence, she likely would have marked through the word "wonderful" and replaced it with "marvelous." she actually talked like that, too.)

there are a few articles in the NYT about her. here's one of them.

by the way...

2008-06-03T23:43:00.003-04:00

...that new job i mentioned? i'm gonna be a public defender. damn right!

i start on monday. i have no idea what i'm going to wear.

YES WE CAN!!!

2008-06-03T21:10:00.003-04:00

never ever have i loved pittsburgh more than i do right now! i swear the whole city today was sleep-deprived; people were walking into their various downtown office buildings this morning like a mass of zombies. why? because every one of us stayed up last night to watch game 5 of the stanley cup finals!

now, here's my confession: i've only been a hockey fan for seven weeks, since friday, april 11th. that was game 2 of the stanley cup playoffs in the round one penguins/senators series. i didn't even want to watch the game that night, but carson did, so i watched it with him. and by the end of the first period, i was hooked! and yes, pun intended.

i had no idea that hockey was so fantastic! all this time -- for thirty one years -- i'd been convinced that a girl from the south like me had no business with the cold weather sports. and then i learned to snowboard. and then i discovered the true magnificence that is the NHL! you're SUPPOSED to check the guy with the puck! and there are fights and black eyes and bloody noses and sticks in faces! and a penalty box! and power plays! and man, can those boys skate! and really, hockey is totally hot. there's something about the sound of a good check against the boards that makes me all swoony.

also, of course, i have seventh-grade-girl-caliber crushes on like all the pens, but especially max talbot and marian hossa. although, after last night's game, i'm about ready to bear marc-andre fleury's children.

never have i been more emotionally invested in a sports event than i was in last night's game. that includes a lifetime obsession with notre dame football. those fifty minutes of overtime play took years from my life, but that sweet sweet petr sykora goal made it all worthwhile!

holy crap! game six tomorrow back at home! LET'S GO PENS!!!

absent-minded...

2008-05-20T21:44:00.002-04:00

wow. i totally need to update this blog, don't i?

yes, of COURSE i do. i'm just not going to do it now because i'm sleepy. but i will soon, i promise. because i've got STORIES! and NEWS! and a SPRAINED ANKLE!

real quick-like, here are the three most awesomest pieces of news:

3. my kickball team made the playoffs!
2. krista and paul got married this weekend and it was truly fantastic!
1. I FINALLY GOT A JOB!

details to follow...

OMG MO ROCCA IS MY BFF!!!

2008-03-15T12:25:00.004-04:00

thursday night was THE GREATEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!!!

okay, probably not, but it was very awesome. and let me tell you why -- my dear friend grant offered me his extra ticket to a taping of (drum roll!) WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME! and if you know nothing about me, at least know this -- "wait wait" is my absolute favorite NPR program ever of all time!

and our tickets? in the second row! zomg! i had also had four whiskey sours (i only meant to have three, but the bartender at the byham theater couldn't find the sour mix and made one of the drinks with margarita mix, then he found the sour mix and he gave me a real whiskey sour, too)! and the panelists were tom bodett, roxanne roberts, and my favorite "wait wait" panelist ever of all time, mo rocca!!!

so, pretty much, i was happier than a pig in shit! it was a delight!!! oh! oh! and the celebrity guest for the "not my job" segment? governor ed rendell! i LOVE ed rendell! and his strange knowledge of madonna's movie career only deepens that love!

the show was fantastic and smart and hilarious and chock full of eliot spitzer jokes. we got all that fun extra stuff that only the live audience gets. i now know what the show's producers look like. but hold on, it gets better!

grant got the tickets because he's a sucker and gave too much money to local NPR station WDUQ during a pledge drive. in addition to the show tickets, he also received tickets to the reception after the show. and this is where the magic happened!

grant and i were awkwardly lurking about, wondering what to do with ourselves, i noticed that there was cake. i said, "grant, we should have some cake." so we got our cake, we're again standing about, and all of a sudden i heard grant say, "hello mr. rocca!" and i IMMEDIATELY turned into a bumbling nervous schoolgirl (much like i did when i met david foster wallace). but we totally hung out with mo rocca! with cake! we talked to mo rocca!!! we talked about pittsburgh, about how the show was terrific, i told mo that he looked a bit like an easter egg in his lime green jacket with blue tie. he said he was doing his part to usher in the spring. things seemed to be going well, so i said, "mo, this is corny, but could i get your autograph?" he said, "of course." i handed him my program to sign and i said, "i was going to ask if you'd be my best friend, but i thought that might be a bit much." he responded, "well, maybe if were going to be in town longer." when he handed me my program back, i glanced at it and i said, "DOES THAT SAY 'BFF'???" he said, "yes it does." and i said, in i guess what you would call a stage whisper, "i knew it!"

that's right, friends! that's how mo rocca became my new best friend! i called krista on my way home to break up with her. when she heard that she was being replaced by mo rocca, she understood. that's why she is, i mean, was my best friend.

and even though i didn't get a chance to meet carl kasell, i got to talk to the fantastic peter sagal, who cemented his position as emily's favorite NPR show host ever in the following exchange:

me: so peter, i have to ask you this. who would win in a fight? you or michael feldman?
ps: oh, i'd beat his scrawny ass!
me: i know you would. i know you would.

that's when i knew that i would follow peter sagal to the ends of the earth.

the thing that kinda sucks about not having had the internet all week is that last night i found peter sagal's blog and it makes me like him even more now. i wish i could have done a bit of pre-show research, alas, it wasn't to be. and it doesn't really take anything away from the evening, which was so freaking nerdy and wonderful!

so listen to the show, guys! you can download the podcast if you miss it on NPR. you might even hear me cheering and clapping! i was the drunk one in the second row.

i hate it when my last post is all whiny...

2008-03-15T12:16:00.002-04:00

because you, loyal readers, deserve SO much better than that!

i just survived FOUR WHOLE DAYS without the internet! yes, yes, i'm okay now. it was brutal, almost painful, but i've made it. my lovely little macbook got sick, but a kind macnerd at the genius bar at my local apple store saved the day and now all is well. or, it will be soon, once i complete the process of transferring my files back.

i feel a little silly about being so dependent on this small computer. it's JUST the internet, right? maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if i had the internet at work. or if i weren't in the middle of a job search. or if hadn't become addicted to the "talk of the nation" podcast (i can't help it! i love that neal conan says "bye bye" when he ends the conversation with callers!). regardless, it made my week seem long and lonely. but now things are much better. and now i own an external hard drive to back up my files.

so, let this not be a complaint post! let this be a joyous, welcome-back-dear-macbook post! huzzah!

and as soon as i get my scanner connected again, boy do i have something to show you guys!!!

sign of things to come...

2008-03-15T12:01:00.001-04:00

last night i was on the phone with my dad. everything was nice and normal until he happened to overhear me ordering my dinner -- a salad with chicken on it. and then things went like this:

dad: emily, it's a friday in lent. no meat.
me: oh dad, lent is for catholics.
dad: well then what are you? are you some kind of buddhist?!
me: we've had this conversation already, and i'm pretty sure you know where i stand.
dad: this is a conversation we will continue to have.
me: fine. we can talk about it all you want. but don't you dare start proselytizing, because it's going to be wasted on me.
dad: [silence]
me: you know, i'm not a bad person.
dad: i know that. i never said --
me: and it doesn't make me any less of a good person.
dad [long silence]
me: and if you think that it does make me less than what you think i should be, that's your hangup and a judgment you're passing and you're going to have to work through that.

and then i changed the subject. but we didn't talk for much longer after that. i realized that this is going to be a conversation that my father and i will likely have at points for the rest of our lives together.

hopefully, this will be the last angry rant for a while...

2008-03-04T22:37:00.002-05:00

snowboarding fashion is truly stupid! every time carson and i have gone to seven springs this season, i've had to control my urge to point and laugh at the kids in their mismatched plaids and offensive prints, all complete with fur-lined collars. wha?!?! are THESE the people who loved "juno"???

i'm really glad "juno" didn't win best picture...

2008-03-04T21:37:00.004-05:00

yeah, i know that i'm really behind on my pop culture blogging. but in a few months, will that really matter? of course not!

so, i didn't love "juno". the truth is that i didn't even really like it that much. krista and i went to see it because of dreamy jailbait michael cera. i also will admit that i might have had a not-appropriate-for-children dream about jason bateman a while back. but when we left the movie, k & i were both underwhelmed, and we've discussed in recent weeks that perhaps we saw a different version of the movie, like maybe some prankster theater employee sneaked in the outtake reel, because that would explain why we didn't get what the rest of the world was so, erm, goo goo ga ga about.

maybe i'm too old. maybe i'm too angry. maybe i'm just tragically unhip. but "juno" made me roll my eyes A LOT. remember how people used to complain about how the kids on "dawson's creek" talked in a way that was too big for their britches? well, dawson and joey and pacey ain't got nothin' on the quips of juno mcguff. folks, NO TEENAGER ON THE PLANET talks like that. it is antithetical to all teendom to be that clever and self-possessed. actually, i gag a little at even describing juno as "clever and self-possessed." because what i truly believe is that the character of juno is pretty much what some insecure hipster chick with a look-at-me exhibitionist streak wishes she could be now, let alone when she was a kid.

that's right, diablo cody -- i think you and your scenester, contrived, more-indie-than-indie made up name are totally lame.

in my googling while writing this post, i came across this, which pretty much sums it up. and this little excerpt:

I want Blood’s Daniel Plainview to barge into Ellen Page’s pre-Oscar interview with Barbara Walters and bellow: “I drink your Sunny D! I drink it up! Slurrrrrrrrrp!”

is a billionty times more fantastic than ANY of the writing in silly little "juno".

(btw, i thought "no country for old men" was goddamn haunting and amazing and knocked me on my ass! if you haven't seen it, GO SEE IT NOW!)

yes we can?

2008-03-04T01:09:00.002-05:00

i have a new favorite website! www.barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com

it's simple, it's brilliant, it's freaking hilarious! and it's the best piece of obama backlash i've seen so far. and i'm probably going to get some serious shit for this, but i'm going on record as being sick and tired of barack obama. or, maybe it's not senator obama i'm tired of -- what makes me feel all icky inside is the hero worship, the golden boy status, the fawning and swooning that seems to happen all over the place every time his name is mentioned.

come on, guys -- he's not bobby kennedy; he's not jesus h. christ; he's not even howard dean! he's smart, he's charismatic, he's run one hell of a campaign, but he's basically proving that american voters are going to elect the person that they LIKE the most. why does leadership have to be so aligned with popularity?

also, nobody seems to have noticed that the democratic party isn't doing anything differently this time around. we've just gotten to a point where the republicans suck more, so the democrats look shinier and prettier by comparison. after the PA primary election (if the PA primary even matters after texas and ohio vote tomorrow), i'm changing my voter registration to "independent". i know, i know -- that's so awfully uncreative, but my options in PA are as follows: democrat, republican, libertarian, green, independent, and other. seriously. "other"??? yeah. that's me!

i wish i had the energy and the wherewithal to put my thoughts together in some intelligent way, but at this point it's almost 2:00 a.m. on a school night, and all i've got is the following:

1. representative john lewis of georgia, the superdelegate who switched his support from clinton to obama last week, confuses me greatly. he claims that he can't go against the voters in his district, who overwhelmingly support obama, but isn't the point of the "superdelegate" to provide a different sort of measure for the democrats than the voters? i mean, if the superdelegates are just gonna go with what the voters say, why do we need the superdelegates at all?

2. i appreciate how excited everybody is about this election. i've become pretty much obsessed with the drama and the spectacle, too. but i'm also a cynic, and a sometimes-realist. i don't actually expect that the next president will be able to, erm, change things any time soon. government has a glacial pace. all the hope in the world can't speed that up. so what's gonna happen when a year from now we have somebody new in the oval office and the economy is still messy and we still have way too many soldiers in iraq?

3. although i think that nader is a crazy old man with no ability to gauge how the public views him, i gotta give props to the principle behind the alternative candidate. i wish it were someone who actually stood a chance of being relevant, but maybe this means that someday we'll have a viable candidate who isn't a hack of one of the two major parties. maybe? is this my foolish hope for change? yeah?

4. sigh...

5. god, i miss john edwards...

albatross...

2008-02-17T12:35:00.003-05:00

friends, i'm going to share with you something that causes me great anxiety. i am terribly afraid of the ski lift!

i'm not afraid of being up high or anything. i don't worry that it's gonna break or that i'm going to get stuck on it high atop a snowy mountain. my fear is about getting off the damn thing. i almost always fall. and it makes me very sad.

i think the major contributor to my less-than-graceful dismounts is my own panic. i get stressed about having to get off, i panic about being in the way of the people on the lift behind me, i overthink what i'm supposed to do (board facing forward, right foot on the stomp pad, knees bent), and kaboom, emily does a faceplant in the snow.

it's really quite ridiculous. i hate the ski lift! but the alternative is to walk with my board up the freaking mountain every time, and that's just foolish. and i know that i CAN get off the lift without falling, because i've done it twice. perhaps i just need more practice?

anyway, carson and i went snowboarding yesterday for the first time since he broke his arm. this was the best time yet for both of us. we're falling down a lot less, i'm getting much better at riding with the nose of the board facing forward (as opposed to the easy, slow, back and forth of the falling leaf*), and i can now stop on my heel edge and my toe edge! snowboarding is getting more fun, and this pleases me.

an added bonus to our excursion to seven springs yesterday was that we got to snowboard for a while with my friend candace and her boyfriend chris, who are most fantastic and very fun to be around.

here's a fun story -- at one point in the evening, carson and i were passed by a group of young kids on skis. i'm gonna guess that they were probably 9 or 10 years old? one of the girls yelled out to her friends, "i've got a wiener in my butthole!" carson then turned to me and said, "she must go to a school with 'abstinence only' education."

good times on the slopes!

*the falling leaf is when you zig zag back and forth on your heel edge with your board perpendicular to the hill

one more timely post about john edwards...

2008-01-30T23:47:00.001-05:00

when i got in my car after work today, NPR's "all things considered" was on the radio and i caught a bit about edwards' decision to withdraw from the race. you wanna know what the broadcast was concerned with? white male voters! WHAT?!?? the NPR folks were all, "what's going to happen to the white males now? do they support the chick or the black dude?" (that's not a direct quote, btw.)

i'm of the opinion that NPR crossed a line today. it ventured outside the weird and woolly realm of political correctness and into the vast sea of AYFKM.* the white male voters? really? NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE WHITE MALE VOTERS!!! except the republicans. and they're silly.

____________
*AYFKM:
duh! short for "are you fucking kidding me" -- my favorite little acronym to write in the margins of my law school casebooks. aw, law school! those were the days...

so much for "super" tuesday...

2008-01-30T23:14:00.000-05:00

john edwards has withdrawn from the presidential race! no!!! i guess now it's up to me to wage the war on poverty in america...

i'm really sad about edwards' decision. i know that it was inevitable, given that clinton and obama have clearly outperformed edwards in the primaries so far (providing clear and convincing evidence that democrats are stupid), but i LOVE john edwards! i love that he gets angry! i love that he's not really a capitalist! i think his $400 haircut looks nice!

in my job, since i have no connection to the outside world (i sit in front of a computer all day, but i don't have access to the internet -- i found out that edwards had quit the race via text message from andrew), i listen to a lot of podcasts. and the vast majority of the podcasts i listen to focus on news or politics. this means i've gotten overexposed to and a little obsessed with the presidential election. obviously i'm not going to vote for any of the wacky republicans, who, although scoring high on the hilarity scale, are all kinda cartoony (they're like the rejects from a justice league parody -- including and ESPECIALLY ron paul, whom only foolish college kids think is politically legitimate). but at least the democrats have been dramatic!

but without edwards, what the hell do i have to get excited about in this election? clinton? obama? sigh... boring... now it feels empty. i can't care anymore -- it hurts too much!

i guess i'll just vote for whomever edwards endorses...

can you smell what barack is cooking?

2008-01-17T23:52:00.001-05:00

that should TOTALLY be obama's campaign slogan! if he were to go with such a slogan, i might even consider voting for him. but probably not. well, maybe if edwards weren't in the presidential race. but if edwards weren't in the race, i'd vote for clinton.

btw, i can't take credit for this politicization of dwayne johnson's old WWF tagline (or is it WWE? who cares!). my brother's friend kevin, who is quite hilarious, said it. and my brother told me.

emily, this is your life...

2008-01-17T22:05:00.000-05:00

do you ever go through periods in which you don't feel like yourself? periods when you feel like your very existence is a burden? when nothing feels natural, everything requires effort? this is not my beautiful house/this is not my beautiful wife, et cetera...

no no no, this is not some cry for help. i'm just in a really weird head space lately.

i have this job right now doing contract work. document review. it's mindless, repetitive, tedious, but the money is okay. yet i literally sit in a little cubicle all day long counting the minutes until i can go home. or calculating how much overtime i'd actually have to work to justify buying an iphone. or daydreaming about snowboarding or knitting or -- jesus fuck -- or about LIVING. living! i don't feel like i'm living, and i feel this awful pressure to DO something with my life!

see, i think i'm having a crisis of faith. or a crisis of nonfaith. and i can pinpoint when it began -- the evening of friday, december 7th, over dinner at a stupid chain restaurant down at the waterfront. that was when my father and i had this truly terrible, erm, conversation (for lack of a better term), during which i basically admitted to him that i don't believe in god and i'm tired of being told to pray about everything all the time. and i might have also compared the holy spirit to a "magical little fairy". yeah. good quality family time, that.

here's an embarrassing admission: i think about death a lot. a whole lot. i've basically been obsessed with death since the fall of 1995. that was when my mom died. i think about my own death as if it could happen any moment. some people find that liberating and carpe-diem-poetic and all that. i, however, find it -- i dunno -- somewhat terrifying. but not because i'm afraid of what happens afterwards, because when i'm dead i'll be dead -- it won't matter a bit. but because i feel like the craptastic holding pattern that has been my life to date will have been a real waste of this one shot i got at living. because i don't buy the theory that there's an afterlife that offers some sort of glory or grace -- i'm of the belief that if you want to be happy, you'd better the hell make yourself happy NOW.

okay, lemme try to reign this in a bit. i feel static. this seems like one of those life phases where i'm supposed to take some important next step, but that thought makes me furious. i don't want to just do what i'm supposed to do, because that's what everybody else does. i don't want to be another person in a responsible job with a retirement savings plan and three weeks of vacation time per year. i don't want to push out a couple of kids who resemble some second chance to get right all the things i got wrong back when it was my turn. it's still my turn, damn it! and this whole working-for-the-weekend shit is not only fucking depressing as hell, but it's wasting my time.

perhaps this just a new manifestation of my anxiety, or perhaps this truly is some sort of post-adolescent existential crisis, but these days, everything feels like a neurological event -- a pre-seizure, a brain shiver, numbness of limbs, a short in the circuits. granted, the major neurological event of a few years ago is still a ghost that haunts me, so my objectivity is suspect, but every single moment feels...

...biological.

one of the reasons that i left the whole faith/religion/god thing behind is because of those damn seizures. you shut down completely, then you restart slowly until everything is back online. like a computer. like a machine. you begin to think about your body as mechanical, your consciousness as the delightful consequence of a series of cooperating and functioning systems. but you also realize that if something goes wrong and stays wrong, eventually it takes the rest of you with it. and the balance seems so delicate, almost accidental. and, well, what the fuck?

so, there you go. my weird head space. i just want to feel like what i'm doing with my time has some value. because time is a precious commodity.

sheesh. i need to lighten up.

hi!

2008-01-17T21:33:00.000-05:00

i'm here!

so, if "podfading" is what happens when a podcast kinda stops broadcasting (i.e., fades away), did throckmorton just experience a near-blogfade? GASP!!!

no! i ain't going anywhere.

it's just that i have this job right now where i sit in front of a computer screen (with no access to the internet, mind you!) for at least 8 hours a day, but for as many as 12, and when i get home i'm exhausted and the last thing i want to do is, well, sit in front of a computer screen.

but i'm still here. and there's lots going on in my head. see the next post for details.

xoxo,
e

snow!!!

2007-12-06T00:30:00.000-05:00

it snowed a ton! and the snow brought me my brother and my dad, too! they're in pittsburgh through the weekend for my swearing-in ceremony. daniel and i went for a walk through the snowy neighborhood and we took this picture:it's not the most high-tech photo ever, because daniel took it with his phone, but i like it nonetheless. it's me! in the snow! and it says snow, but with a heart for the "o" and an "i" on top. get it? i heart snow! and i do! i truly do!

dear employees of whole foods, trader joes,...

2007-12-04T18:59:00.000-05:00

...or any other similar grocery store,

please please please -- for the love of all that is good in the world -- stop congratulating me and/or cheering me on when i say that i don't need a bag for the single item i'm purchasing.

i appreciate your social consciousness, really i do. and i'll even admit to you that in the past few months i've had a really weird obsession with plastic, complete with horrible apocalyptic visions of landfills overflowing with kitty litter tubs and restaurant take-out containers and ziploc bags and tampon applicators and other horribles -- people create a LOT of trash and this freaks me out. so i understand and am grateful that you, too, want to cut down on the amount of waste that we're plugging into the world.

however -- and no offense -- but you're not really in a position to pass judgment. and even if you're offering positive commentary, you're still passing judgment. i don't like this. i don't like when you say, "awesooooommmmmmmme!!!" when i say that i don't need a bag. i also don't like when you say, "right on", "good job", "nice", or "yeah!" basically what i need you to take from this is that how you feel about my decision not to carry my single item or small number of items home in a bag has no affect on whether i will make a similar decision in the future. really, it just annoys the hell out of me.

perhaps you're trying to do some social engineering, but think about it like this -- once the person has responded to the "what kind of bag would you like?" question, you're only affirming what they've already chosen -- you're not influencing them in any sort of way. here's a thought -- maybe instead of asking me what kind of bag i would like, you could say, "do you need a bag for this?" if i weren't already inclined to decline the bag option, that question might make me think about how i really don't need a bag after all. see? see how that works? when you congratulate me after the fact, it's too late to bring about change.

so, please, dear employees, think about this next time someone chooses not to use a bag. that person might be choosing so for several reasons -- efficiency, environmental consciousness, fear of plastic -- but that person does not need you to celebrate his or her shopping decisions. unless that person has very poor self-esteem. and really, if that's the case, it's out of your hands anyway.

thank you,
emily

curling!

2007-11-18T23:01:00.000-05:00

on saturday, krista and sandy and i learned how to curl! we contacted the fine people at the pittsburgh curling club and signed up for a lesson. folks, please allow me to enthusiastically endorse the sport of curling! i mean, yeah, it's like shuffleboard on ice, and you slide a 40-some lb rock with the help of two sweepers who run alongside the rock and scrub the ice like madpeople, and all of this sounds silly, but it's truly fantastic! even the olympics thinks so!

and as if the sport itself weren't enough, one of the people who taught us and played with us was CANADIAN!!!

thumbs up for curling! you should try it! you'll like it!

not even kurt russell...

2007-11-18T00:52:00.000-05:00

...could make "death proof", quentin tarantino's segment of _grindhouse_, worth watching.

wow. i mean, wow. what a craptastic movie! so, the story is that there are these hot women in tight t-shirts and tiny short shorts who drive around in texas and get high and tease boys and drop the f-bomb in every sentence and talk like guys in the proverbial locker room and eventually kurt russell kills some of them and tries to kill the others but then they kill him in the end. OMG BORING!!! soooooo boring!

carson and i had nothing to do last night, and we both think kurt russell is pretty fantastic (come on -- "overboard"??? "big trouble in little china"?!? yes!), so we decided to watch "death proof." but then we got exceptionally bored by way too much stupid boring dialogue. to the point where we were making exasperated sighs and in general acting like impatient little kids because we were totally annoyed with the movie. i'm sorry, but who told tarantino that people want to watch 20 minute scenes during which four boring characters talk about boring stuff that is not only painfully boring, but isn't even remotely funny or educational? (if tarantino were my friend, i'd say to him, "quentin, you've truly outdone yourself this time, you arrogant, pointy-chinned prick.")

and then, when things finally get unboring and kurt russell is trying to kill the girls for being so freaking uninteresting, and then the girls fight back and go after kurt russell, it gets totally lame AGAIN because after being a murderous crazy asshole for the whole movie, suddenly kurt russell is all "i'm so sorry! i'm so sorry! i didn't mean anything!" um, what?!?

here's what really gets me, though: people have referred to this movie as "feminist." maybe i've been reading all the wrong stuff, but i didn't realize that "feminism" was nothing more than women talking about their sex conquests and giving lap dances as a means of empowerment and driving fast musclecars and violently beating the crap out of the bad guy at the end. uh, what? sorry, folks. you don't make something "feminist" by casting sexy, leggy women in roles typically reserved for men.

long story short, "death proof" is a colossal waste.

but "planet terror", the robert rodriquez part of _grindhouse_, is pretty damn entertaining and a good time. and federico from "six feet under" is in it, too!

"please advise..."

2007-11-09T13:09:00.000-05:00

my boss at my temp job sends lots of e-mails to me that contain the phrase "please advise." it's been several years since i worked in a large office environment and i had blissfully forgotten how often certain phrases are used. "please advise" is probably in my top three (along with "best practices" and "proactive") most hated business-speak terms. (coming in a very close fourth place is "incentivize", which i'm not sure is even an actual word.)

"please advise as to the attached e-mail." "please advise the status of..." "please advise if you plan to work extra hours thanksgiving week." et cetera et cetera...

so, i know this is very antonin scalia of me, but i'm gonna cite to the definition of "advise" from the merriam webster dictionary website:

transitive verb 1 a: to give advice to : counsel b: caution, warn c: recommend 2: to give information or notice to : inform intransitive verb 1: to give advice 2: to take counsel : consult

truth be told, i like the word "advise." i think it has lots of fun and relevant uses. but it's like how radio stations overplay certain songs and even if you liked that song at first, you reach a point where hearing even a fraction of a measure of that song will cause you to commit hara kiri. i now physically cringe when i read "please advise" on an e-mail or a post-it note. sigh...

anyway, i just got an e-mail about how i've yet to put anything in the log of crap that we temps have to keep for all of our input, so the bosses can track the input-to-output ratio. "please advise why there is nothing in your spreadsheet for november." what she's really asking is why the hell i haven't entered this information yet. and i think i'd rather receive an e-mail that says "why the hell haven't you entered this information yet?" the truth is that i've been out of the office for three and a half of the six business days in november and those other two and a half days i just didn't think about it. because instead i've been sitting here staring at this weird paperclip sculpture i made that looks like an alien butterfly and feeling totally humiliated to be a licensed attorney with a decent resume who can't find a real job.

i probably won't say that, though.

why is it...

2007-11-05T13:39:00.000-05:00

...that every time i tell someone about how i'm gonna learn to snowboard this winter, that person responds by telling me they can't stop laughing at the mental image of me strapped to a board, screaming my head off, and careening down a mountainside with limbs flailing?

i won't be THAT bad, will i? i'll wear a helmet!

i give you "hatetheface"...

2007-10-30T08:52:00.001-04:00

last night after we went to the gym, carson and i went to get food for dinner at the grocery store. he saw some guy in the frozen food aisle that he's seen around town and doesn't like at all. why doesn't he like him? "i don't like the way his face looks."

he's a "hatetheface"! i learned this term from my friend ed and i think it's magnificent! hatetheface! the moment when ed told me this term was a real moment of validation for me. for years i've felt alone and ashamed in my silent hatred of certain people just because of how they look. there was a girl in a couple of my classes in college whom i couldn't freaking stand because she looked like a teddy bear with a hangover. but i felt so weird about having such negative feelings toward her when really i knew nothing about her...until ed opened my eyes to the concept of the "hatetheface" as if it were a truth universally acknowledged! this is something that people do! i wasn't alone in my weird dislike of certain faces!

so, courtesy of my friend ed, i pass along to you:

hatetheface
noun: a person whom one detests solely because that person has a stupid looking face

esquire...

2007-10-29T17:01:00.000-04:00

this blog is now authored by a member of the pennsylvania bar.

i know what you're thinking, and no -- this does not mean that i'm going to temper my rants on fourth amendment violations or anything. what it means is that i've just taken an oath to uphold the constitution and to be good to my clients and pay my bar dues on time.

regardless, it feels pretty good.

"what else is there..."

2007-10-29T14:00:00.000-04:00

fun fact -- as of this past may, every single one of the folks in my friend group from college (the ones with whom i graduated, at least) has some sort of graduate degree. i was the last one. we're this nerdy bunch of masters and Ph.D.s and JDs. how unbelievably ivory towerish of us!

but when you think about it, this is consistent with who we were back then. we were a secret society, a crazy-youth-inspired collective of writers and collaborators. we had this standing sunday night date where we'd get together to talk about stuff we had written. this was sacred time, holy time. nothing interfered with this time. it all started at the beginning of our junior year. it sprung out of casual acquaintances with each other while working on notre dame's 1996 sophomore literary festival. it was bryce's idea. i remember running into him near south dining hall one spring evening in my sophomore year and he told me he was thinking of getting some folks together to share some stuff we were writing, kinda like a student-run workshop. i was hooked from that moment.

i don't know what it was -- probably the right mixture of ambition and inspiration and curiosity and desire and collegiality and need, and i'm sure the alignment of the stars might have had a hand in it -- but it stuck. every single sunday evening was giant steps night. giant steps -- like the coltrane song. and when the weather permitted, we would actually meet on the steps of bond hall, the ND architecture building.

i was never a strong creative writer, and i knew this then. but some of us were amazing, even in those days. and it felt so important. the thought of not meeting wasn't even really an option. some folks had church on sunday -- we had giant steps. it's still important, really. i feel like in a really critical way, those weekly meetings defined my college experience. and the friends who were a part of it continue to be very important to me, even if i don't talk to them nearly often enough.

this morning i was trading stories about college with a co-worker and i got all warm and fuzzy and nostalgic for my friends, my classmates, my colleagues; for our silly conversations about jack kerouac and miles davis; for our love of john matthias and valerie sayers; for that one place you could stand in front of bond hall and hear the acoustics bounce your voice back to you when you spoke out loud. our ten year reunion is in may. i'm going. those were good times. they're still good times.

so, friends, if you happen to check in on this blog after i used the google to hunt you all down this morning and tell you that you must join me at the reunion, well, (this is terribly and unforgivably silly, but) this blog might not exist (or might not have become so important in my life) if it weren't for those sunday night meetings and for the friendships that resulted. see you in may!

love,
emily

i heart canada...

2007-10-28T23:07:00.000-04:00

last night carson and i went to see the weakerthans at mr. smalls. carson loves them. and now i love them, also! and what's not to love? they're a canadian indie rock band with songs about stuff like curling (the sport!) and sadness and they have two songs told from the perspective of a cat! and did i mention that they're CANADIAN?!

as we were driving to the show, carson says to me, "you'll see -- you're going to have a crush on john k. samson." (he's the singer for the weakerthans.) and i'm all, "oh yeah?" and he says, "yes! everyone does! even i do! and he's your type -- he's a skinny little indie boy." yet, i wasn't sure. because conor oberst, the singer for bright eyes, also fits that description and i do NOT have a crush on conor oberst. but, he's not canadian.

well, as soon as the show started and john k. samson started to sing, and he just looked so smiley, and like maybe it would be nice to have a molson with him or something, i turned to carson and i said, "i DO have a crush on him!"

reclaiming space...

2007-10-28T21:44:00.000-04:00

if you're at all curious as to how long i've been tolerating the ever-worsening frost problem in my freezer, i remember at my 30th birthday celebration my friend greg opened my freezer and made some smart-ass comment about how i might want to defrost the bastard.

um, for reference's sake, i turned 30 thirteen and a half months ago.

anyway, yesterday i had reached my breaking point. i had stopped buying frozen foods at the grocery store weeks ago, but now i could no longer successfully open or close the freezer door because of the frost build-up. i am both embarrassed and amazed that i let my freezer reach this point:

so like a mad mad madwoman, i grabbed a fan and a bunch of towels and got to work. i pretty much spent about three hours hacking at ice chunks with a mixing spoon, spraying warm salt water on all the frost, and generally going after the ice build-up with a fury that would rival the classic greek tragedies. it was magnificent!

and now? well, see for yourself:

i couldn't find my swimming goggles, so i had to use those sunglasses as my protective eyewear. of course.

words cannot express my sense of accomplishment at having conquered this feat.

kicked...

2007-10-25T23:26:00.000-04:00

we won!!! we totally won! the blue team are the champions of the kickball world! hooray!!!

this is especially exciting for sandy, who has played PSL kickball for four years and this is her first championship!

my team freaking RULZ!!! go blue!!!

when turkeys attack...

2007-10-25T12:58:00.000-04:00

friends in boston! you're under siege! beware of the TURKEYS!!!

i know this isn't really funny, but it's kinda funny... i mean, wild turkeys harassing people in brookline? on beacon street? we're not talking about suburbs, here. this is bustling, urban space. and apparently these guys are making themselves at home and chasing people down the street on their way to the doctor!

the accounts are kind of amazing! look at this:

The turkeys started chasing kids and joggers down the street. Neighbors would laugh watching the lawyer or pediatrician who lived next door being chased by a gobbling mob of birds.

or...

Schnoor's neighbor Louise Dionne was attacked by a large male tom. It jumped on her back, beating its wings and scratching at her with a talon that turkeys have on their leg. She made it to a neighbor's house after kicking the turkey in the chest.

kicking a turkey in the chest? holy crap! the mental image i have of this scene is...well... holy crap! it's like if alfred hitchcock visited the twilight zone! with turkeys!

apparently the rise in the turkey population is due to deliberate efforts by the massachusetts division of fisheries and wildlife. good one, guys!

thanksgiving is coming soon, birds. watch your backs.

kickball playoffs!

2007-10-25T12:29:00.000-04:00

my mighty PSL kickball team has made it to the playoffs! i'm not entirely sure how this happened, but i'm psyched nonetheless.

we play tonight at 8:10, and if we win, we go on to the final round afterwards! wish us luck!

PSL-kickball-team-in-thursday-league-A-who-wear-the-light-blue-shirts FTW!

(we don't have a team name)

na na na nylons...

2007-10-25T10:53:00.000-04:00

i have a truly amazing ability. if i were a superhero, this might be my superpower. this keen and magical skill of mine is an uncanny knack for getting runs in my nylons. oftentimes, this occurs in the brief window of time between when i get dressed and when i leave my apartment. and i notice that i have the run while on the bus or walking into work. seriously -- it's like i'm some sort of nylon-run-getting savant. truly incredible! if only this were a marketable skill!

the catch (pun intended) here is that i only ever wear nylons when i wear a suit. ONLY. why? because i freaking hate nylons. (apparently, they don't like me much either.) what about wearing skirts on cold days? those times are for tights, which i like very much because they are fun. nylons are kind of moronic and awful and weird. (btw, i refuse to call them "pantyhose" -- that word is just too ridiculous.) but days when i wear suits are days when i'm supposed to look all professional and grown-up. and lately, days when i wear suits are days i'm going on interviews.

and you know what is not professional and grown-up and appropriate for interviews? having runs in one's nylons.

since i've started knitting and i understand the engineering of these sorts of fabrics, sometimes i wish i had a very very tiny crochet hook so that i could mend my nylons. i have this wish for about half a second, which is approximately the amount of time it takes for me to do a cost/benefit analysis of the situation. the benefit is not having to go get a new pair of nylons. the cost, however, is losing my fucking mind trying to repair the tiny fibers of a pair of $3 nylons. uh, no thanks. my mind is worth $3.

oh the places you'll go...

2007-10-24T11:33:00.001-04:00

carson and i are planning an adventure -- the kind of adventure where you throw a dart at a map and wherever it lands, you drive in that direction. i originally wanted to go to montana and to yellowstone national park, but then i looked at a map and saw how freaking far away montana is. so this won't be the time when i go to montana. but someday...

i would like to go on a moosehunt. i lived in new england for two years and never saw a moose! i suggested to carson that we go on a moosehunt and he didn't seem too excited about that plan. i think he's afraid of mooses. i can say that, too, because he never reads this blog. my boyfriend is totally afraid of mooses! then he suggested that we look for bison and i was okay with this, too. basically, any sort of quest to find an animal that looks totally made up is okay with me.

the plan is to drive somewhere, go hiking/camping for a couple of nights, and then spend a couple of nights in a place with regular shower access. actually, the plan is just to get the hell out of dodge for a few days. i like this plan. but it's a tentative plan -- it depends on whether i can get the time off from my temp job.

anyway, to pass some time today, i've decided to list some national parks i'd like to visit someday:

1. yellowstone
2. denali
3. mt. rainier
4. acadia (i've already been here, but i love it!)
5. redwood
6. glacier
7. dinosaur national monument (duh)
8. banff
9. death valley
10. joshua tree

UPDATE ON 10/30/07:
i've been told by both carson and mark now that i should make two additions to this list. so here they are:

11. zion
12. bryce canyon

at least i can listen to WHYY online...

2007-10-16T10:15:00.000-04:00

it's pledge drive season again at WDUQ, pittsburgh's big NPR station. this means that every morning during "morning edition" and every afternoon during "all things considered", i am bombarded with pledge breaks and ira glass telling me that giving to NPR is the "right thing to do" and all. OKAY! I GET IT!!! but now that i know that the economic powerhouse that is the catholic church is behind WDUQ, i feel a lot less responsible to support the station...

here. from (of all sources!) the pittsburgh tribune-review.

and here it is in the post-gazette.

i'm sorry, but since when did my NPR station have an allegiance to the catholics? i know that the "DUQ" in WDUQ is for duquesne university, but i had no idea that the university and the church had such a presence in the station's programming or fundraising efforts. WDUQ has no catholic (or religious) programming. WDUQ, for all intents and purposes, touts itself as an NPR station, not as a mouthpiece of catholicism.

this is from the FAQ section of WDUQ's website:

What affiliation does DUQ have with Duquesne University?

Duquesne University holds the broadcast license for DUQ's 25,000-watt broadcast signal. The station is a non-academic unit reporting to the Provost and Academic Vice President. Duquesne University provides DUQ with annual in-kind support (facilities and services) and 6% of cash funding. DUQ is considered self-sustaining. This means that DUQ must raise its direct cash operating support from sources outside of the University, such as membership and program underwriting.

huh. but look at this excerpt from the above article in the trib:

Hanley said a donation to DUQ is a donation to Duquesne. He said this is the first time this type of situation has arisen.

"The university's president felt very uncomfortable with accepting gifts from Planned Parenthood," said Hanley, who emphasized the school never has interfered with the station's editorial integrity.

Bridget Fare, a Duquesne spokeswoman, confirmed that the university told DUQ to halt the broadcast of Planned Parenthood's underwriting messages and refund the organization's $5,252.

"Planned Parenthood is not aligned with the university's Catholic mission and identity," said Fare, who cited the organization's support of abortion as an example. "DUQ operates under the university's (nonprofit) status and it can legally accept or decline funding from any organization. Accepting or declining funding from an organization is a separate issue from DUQ's ability to cover controversial news issues."

the "hanley" mentioned in that quote is scott hanley, DUQ's station manager.

it's disturbing enough that WDUQ is denying support from planned parenthood. that's enough to raise my feminist hackles. but what takes this one step further, into the realm of propganda, is the promotion and insistence on the catholic mission! uh, what? a donation to WDUQ is a donation to duquesne university? are you kidding me? if that had been more obvious, i highly doubt that planned parenthood would have made its donation in the first place.

well, if duquesne and the catholic church, an organization of extreme wealth and influence, are supporting my public radio station, i guess ira glass is right after all -- it really doesn't matter if i pledge my support or not. the show will go on.

nice knowing you, WDUQ. good luck with this.

-----------------------

if you want to send an e-mail to the folks at WDUQ in protest of this, go here and fill out the form!

clockwatching...

2007-10-11T13:58:00.000-04:00

i had an awkward conversation a bit ago with one of the women i do work for at my temp job. she was calling to make sure i had processed one of the invoices she had sent up to me. (btw, the fact that i just used the term "process" to refer to one of my essential job functions makes me cringe!) all of these invoices have claim numbers on them, in addition to actual client names. my job entails a lot of typing in numbers, matching them with other numbers, filling in some information on form letters, and a little bit of arithmetic. it is incredibly (and exceedingly) dull and unengaging. so when this woman called me to ask what was the status of the [insert client name here] invoice, the first words out of my mouth were, "um, wait, what?"

yeah. well, she interpreted my lack of recall as an admission that i hadn't done it yet. the truth, folks, is that about 75% of my time in this temp job, my inbox is totally empty because i have nothing to do. i pretty much get paid to sit here every day, do an average of 8-10 hours of work per week, and play on the internet and read wikipedia articles for the other 30-32 hours per week. and it makes me miserable!

i think i managed to smooth out the conversation once i figured out what she was asking me for. i went through everything on my desk (which consists of stuff that has already been, erm, processed, and which is ready to be passed along (have you ever seen the movie _Brazil_? sometimes i kinda feel like that.) and since the invoice in question wasn't here, it means it's already been done and passed along. this was, of course, after she suggested that she and i sit down together so she can explain how things work around here. ouch! just because i was a little caught off guard? again, once i explained to her that i pretty much do things as i get them and don't let them sit around collecting dust, there was no further mention of such a meeting.

i think the real challenge is that i'm up against some bad precedent. the woman who had this temp slot before me (and who handled the bills for the same examiners i now work for), messed a lot of things up and didn't do a lot of things and, as the rumors go, failed the bar exam like six times. now, i don't mean to discredit the bar exam or anything -- that test was freaking hard as hell. but after the fourth or fifth failed attempt, well, maybe it's time to re-think your strategy... and this job is pretty tough to mess up. i get all my work done AND have plenty of goof-off time. too much, as a matter of fact. i'm pretty sure it's making me stupider.

and i REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want a lawyer job! i'm so antsy. i'm not really making that much money and i've got nothing really to do but sit here and think about how eager i am to actually use the degree i just went into so much debt to obtain...

dad and daniel are coming up here for my swearing-in in early december. i really hope i'm working for real by then. ugh.

in rainbows...

2007-10-11T11:19:00.000-04:00

hey! radiohead has a new album! and they've decided to let their fans choose the purchase price for the album. um, three words: bad idea jeans! silly anti-capitalists! silly radiohead!

anyway, so like zillions of radiohead fans, i went online yesterday (the official release date) to download the new album. of course, the site was overloaded and was running really really slowly and kept timing out and all that stuff that reminds us that we're still fallible. this isn't radiohead's fault, but in our i-want-it-NOW day and age, it was a wee bit annoying. but once the proper pages finally loaded, i got to the screen where i got to enter my own price.

bear with me through this next part -- i promise i'm getting to the point...

way back in the day, to make some extra cash, i took a part-time job in visitor services at the philadelphia museum of art during a big edgar degas exhibition (a truly irrelevant aside here is that i wanted to make t-shirts for the visitor services staff that said "viva las degas", but i seemed to be the only one who thought that was funny. whatever. impressionism is totally boring anyway.)

just so i properly flesh out my personal history here, this was one of three phases of my life in which i was employed by the PMA. i was a full-time grant writer for a couple of years. and i also did a stint as a membership telemarketer for a while. why? i honestly don't know. the PMA has a weird way of getting its hooks into hipster artsy coolkids in their 20s and not really letting go until those hipster artsy coolkids grow up a bit. and yes, you heard right -- i just pseudo associated myself with the philadelphia hipster artsy coolkid crowd. n.b. i said PSEUDO. that was probably the closest i ever truly came to being hipsteresque, and even then i was way on the margins. i mean, i never had an asymmetrical haircut or wore skinny pants with socks and flats. come on -- that stuff is just silly. i'm way more punk than hipster anyday.

anyway, visitor services is the department at the museum that does things like staff the admission desks and sign up new members and manage the coatroom. the job was super-easy and actually pretty fun. especially in the coatroom where i'd make well over $100 in tips in any given shift, even though by the end of the shift, i'd be completely exhausted. anyway, the admission policy on sundays at the museum is "pay what you wish." despite its plain-on-its-face meaning, this concept baffled visitors every single sunday. in my opinion, it's a pretty rad policy (duh -- it appeals to my inner socialist). you can't get in for free, but you can pay a penny if you want. it was a really interesting thing to experience from the receiving end of the transaction. a lot of people would just pay the regular admission price (which at the time was $10). every once in a while someone would pay more than the regular admission price. but most folks would pay between $5 and $7. and some folks paid only a dollar or two. and there were always the jackasses who acted like they were gaming the system and would give me their pocket change in exchange for an admission button. i was all, "really? you think you're mr. coolguy for giving me a shiny nickel? because really i don't care -- it's freaking 'pay what you wish' day. it's not a moral challenge -- it's a freaking admissions policy." also, back when i worked in the development department, i saw the general operating budget for that place. i know full well that it doesn't make the bulk of its money from admissions.

which brings me to the point -- when you let people name their own price, there seems to be a dangerous (in my opinion) tendency to bring morality into it. remember, the vast majority of museum visitors on pay-what-you-wish sundays would pay between 50% and 70% of the regular admission price. i could see the wheels turning on their faces as they decided what to pay -- it was as if they were thinking, "well, i don't want to not pay enough, but i do want to take advantage of this, so..."

look, it should come as no surprise that i'm not a capitalist. and that i don't think morality and economics should cross paths any more than they have to. (and if it does come as a surprise, hi! and welcome to my blog!) but how else does one figure out how to price something without thinking of the valuation process as one of both economics and personal worth? take two groups of people i encountered while working at the admissions desks -- the folks who paid more than the usual admission price and the folks who paid less than a dollar. on one level, paying more than you must is show-offy and paying next to nothing is cheap. on another level, paying more than you must is generous and paying next to nothing is living-within-one's-means. but the people who seemed (based on my own observations, which may or may not be an accurate assessment of financial resources) like they truly and honestly didn't have the money to spend on fancy museum admission were rarely the ones who only gave a few cents -- they would generally try to pay at least a couple of dollars. i can't help but wonder how much of the decision of what to spend was motivated by altruism, how much was motivated by ability, and how much was motivated by a sense that they might be judged according to how much money they gave.

i.e., how influential is the perceived judgment of others? i'm no sociologist or statistician, and nor am i much of a gambler, but i bet it's pretty freaking powerful.

okay, now back to the radiohead album...

there are obviously some major differences between this "pay what you wish" policy and the one at the PMA. first of all (and perhaps most importantly?), this transaction takes place online, so you don't have to speak to or encounter any real people while naming your price. a nameless, faceless, secure online payment system isn't nearly as intimidating as an actual human cashier. second of all, i'm not sure how comparable a not-for-profit cultural repository (even one that is pretty well established and has one hell of an annual endowment income) is to a for-profit rock band with a loyal following, seven studio albums, and a career that spans more than fifteen years. third of all, i imagine that the vast majority of people who would actually purchase the new radiohead album at a named-by-the-record-label price in a store have long ago overcome their moral hangups about downloading music for free. we're not talking about bringing art to the masses, here. we're talking about kids in college dorm rooms who can put music on their ipods in their sleep if need be.

and radiohead (or the folks who market their music) isn't stupid. on that same website where you can download the album for whatever price you choose, you can also pre-order the _in rainbows_ "discbox", which includes the actual CD, a bonus CD, two vinyl albums, and a book. this magic discbox set can be yours for a mere 40 GPB. which, according to current currency exchange rates, is about $82. and just like all of those silly folks who pre-ordered the "legendary" release of Halo 3 (which for a bunch of extra dollars, gets you an extra DVD and a stupid master chief helmet?!?), i'm quite sure there are plenty of fans with disposable incomes who will insure that sales of the _in rainbows_ discbox keep radiohead from going hungry.

i'm really curious about what folks are going to pay to download this album. i imagine that the majority won't pay much. there will probably be some folks who pay something comparable to what they would pay in a music store, or what itunes would charge. i don't want to be too cynical, but given what i suppose will be the demographics of those who will get this album, i really doubt that people are going to give a lot of thought to what radiohead means to them or how much they value the artistic contribution radiohead makes to society.

as for me, i wanted to get the freaking new radiohead album for free. judge all you want, but i don't have any moral hangups about paying precious little for music. and i've paid the regular store costs for those other six studio albums radiohead has released, so you know, they probably owe me or something. however, naming your own price has a catch -- regardless of what you choose to pay, the download server charges you a 0.45 GPB transaction fee. and despite my many attempts to enter 0 as my chosen price, it wasn't accepted. neither was five or ten pence. so i bumped it up to 25 pence, and this seemed to be acceptable. i can't verify that this is the lowest i could go. not only did i not try out 11 - 24 pence, but i also could have been victim of weird overloaded server issues. regardless, i got my downloaded copy of the new radiohead album for 0.70 GPB -- seventy pee. which is approximately $1.43.

and what of the album itself? it's good, kids -- REALLY good! i've been listening to it nonstop all day today.

it's worth every penny.

waste not, want not...

2007-10-08T15:07:00.000-04:00

after the bar exam was over (you know, the bar exam that i freakin' passed?!), carson and i joined a gym. this is all part of our larger plan to make sure we live until the singularity occurs, which will save us from peak oil.*

in the ensuing months, we've been damn good about using the gym. and in the past few weeks i've reached a point where i can really see how my body is changing. first of all, i'm smaller, which tends to happen when you eat better foods and exercise regularly. but second of all, i can see muscles! i knew they were there, but now i'm starting to see them. it's kind of awesome! it makes me want to challenge strangers to arm wrestling contests!

and all that stuff about how regular exercise generally improves your quality of life is completely true. law school was not exactly the most active phase in my life. i think the calorie burning activities in which i most regularly engaged were carrying around tons of casebooks in my backpack and staving off anxiety attacks. not exactly what a doctor would recommend for cardiovascular health. but these days i feel better and i look better and carson says i snore a lot less. and once you get used to eating good foods, you start to like it. and you become aware of just how unhealthy most easily accessible foods are. we're basically a nation full of fat-asses because bad food is cheap and people keep buying and eating it. i'm trying to maintain a practice of eating the calories and types of foods that my body actually needs -- the right balance of fat and protein and carbohydrates. i get kinda grossed out now when i think of all the stuff people eat on a regular basis that is really and truly terrible and excessive. no wonder folks have cancer and heart disease and type 2 diabetes! we're putting terrible things into our bodies every day!

anyway, i'm rather proud of these choices i'm making and i plan to continue making them, since they seem to be good and all. i've got goals, too, like how sandy and i are gonna run the great race next year! and how i'm going to be able to do 20 real push ups soon (you know, NOT the girl kind where you put your knees down)!

whatever works, right? it's just nice to know that this is actually working. it makes it easier to keep it up.

*yes, of course i'm kidding. i'm not THAT freaking crazy!

this is not going to become a knitting blog...

2007-10-08T14:22:00.001-04:00

there are entirely too many knitting blogs out there and, frankly, most of them are really kinda embarrassing.* but lately i've been doing a lot of knitting, so it's on my mind and there's this part of me that wants to blog about how i made a really cute pair of mittens yesterday by combining a strand of this weird koigu yarn (that the lady at my friendly neighborhood yarn store -- the lady that carson pointed out looks like kenobi (my small cat) -- somehow talked me into buying) with the awesome lamb's pride wool/merino yarn i found in the bargain bin in color "medieval red". or about how this weekend i knitted my first sock and now i want to knit socks all the time!

but i will blog about this... i have become a yarn snob. that's right -- a freaking YARN snob.

when one first learns to knit, one uses big needles and cheap yarn. this is because bigger needles are easier for unskilled hands to manipulate, and cheap yarn is less frustrating when you mess up a billion times. but once you start to get the hang of it, you start to experiment with different needle gauges, and soon enough you have a whole freaking armory of needles -- single pointed needles, double pointed needles, circular needles, cable needles, wooden needles, aluminum needles, long needles, short needles, fat needles, skinny needles; not to mention the stitch markers, the stitch holders, the rulers, the scissors, the counters...

but the real kicker isn't the needle-gathering**, it's the yarn. the yarn! once you start knitting with real wool, there's really no going back. it's so superior! it moves through the needles so much more efficiently! the stitches look so much nicer! it has the ability to transform a casual and pleasant hobby into true craftsmanship!

(i know -- this makes me sound batty as hell. spinsterhood, here i come!)

but there's something incredibly gratifying about knitting with good wool. sheep, alpaca, merino, cashmere... even cotton! it's all about the nice natural fibers. once you start using it, there's just no freaking way you can go back to manmade acrylics. yuck!

the issue here is that natural fibers can be freaking expensive. (there's this one skein of yarn at the yarn store that i'm completely in love with, but it's almost $60 for about 200 yards! this is a love that is destined to be unrequited.) even if you decide you're gonna knit christmas presents for everyone on your list, if you're using good yarn, you're not really saving yourself any money. it's truly sad. but i'm truly becoming a compulsive knitter (i knit on the bus, i knit in bed, i knit while i watch college football! i'd knit on the treadmill if i could do it without falling on my face!) and it's just so much better to use the good stuff.

alas, i am a poor girl these days. so my new plan is to dig out all the old sweaters i don't wear or like anymore and unravel them! yup -- recycling old yarn. i'm gonna turn ugly ducklings into beautiful swans! because i just can't stop myself.

sigh...

* i believe "fantram" is the correct word.
** yes, that was a pathetic attempt at a pun on the word "woolgathering", which (the context of this post notwithstanding) is one of my favorite words ever of all times.

two additional things about today...

2007-10-05T12:44:00.001-04:00

...that i'd like to memorialize in this blog:

1. i got a phone call from germany! i've never gotten a phone call from germany before. and this wasn't just any phone call, this was a call from my friend george in germany! awesome! george is doing well, enjoying berlin, starts classes soon, and is gonna celebrate having passed the bar with some champagne, and some good and overpriced american staples: nacho cheese sauce and root beer! yay george!

2. i found a wikipedia entry for one of my favorite things in the world, the spit-take. rad!

and we'll keep on fighting 'til the end...

2007-10-05T11:07:00.000-04:00

they're here! the results from the july 2007 pennsylvania bar exam! and you know what, kids? i freaking passed!!!

and i'll let you in on a little secret... i've known that i passed for about a week now, but i didn't want to say anything because nobody likes the jerk who already knows she passed the bar when everyone else is going crazy waiting to find out, too. and if you're wondering how i found out early, well, i'm not telling. let's just say i have a kick ass friend with magic connections!

right on! i passed the bar exam! to say that i'm relieved doesn't even come CLOSE to how i feel about this! it was literally the most difficult test i've ever taken. and trying to make comparisons to standardized tests in general just doesn't do the bar exam, erm, justice. it's a licensing examination -- it's fucking hard. on purpose. because we want our lawyers to be smart and ethical and responsible and all. you know, because all lawyers are smart and ethical and responsible and all.

oh, dare to dream...

anyway, so begins my life as a lawyer. i have lots of good things to accomplish. pennsylvania bar, i won't let you down!

currently distracting emily at her temp job...

2007-10-02T14:03:00.001-04:00

hmmm... i wonder if i should sell my car and get one of these instead:

it's not that i don't have anything to say...

2007-10-02T12:14:00.000-04:00

...it's just that right now i'm holding my breath, biting my tongue, biding my time. i've been interviewing for some jobs, one in particular that i REALLY want. like, REALLY REALLY want. to the degree that i actually said at the end of the interview, "emily [i don't wanna put my last name here, but i said my last name] for the win!" yup. i threw down the FTW. and it was risky, but in talking to a trusted source who interned at this place during law school, i think it was okay that i said it. and they laughed (yes, "they", as in a panel of six attorneys), and in an oh-that's-cute-and-funny kind of way, not in an omg-what-a-freaking-moron kind of way. so now i just wait. and wait and wait and wait.

and wait for the official notification about a certain test i took a few months ago. even though maybe i already know? do i? i dare not say!

oh, and yes. notre dame football. oof! how's that for a kick in the pants?! i hope ty willingham is eating this up. because those awesome seasons charlie weis had? were with willingham's recruits. oh well. you win some, you lose some. and this has given me an excuse to start following the SEC, the conference of my birth. (did you guys see the auburn/florida game this past weekend?!? holy crap! holy awesome!)

every once in a while...

2007-09-21T10:03:00.001-04:00

...the onion makes me giggle! it used to make me giggle every week. now it's only sometimes. and that makes me sad. but today it totally got me with this:

14 American Apparel Models Freed In Daring Midnight Raid
September 19, 2007 | Issue 43•38

LOS ANGELES—Acting on information gathered from billboards, alternative weeklies, and Internet banner ads, an FBI strike team liberated 14 dazed, sallow, and undernourished American Apparel models in a raid on the controversial organization's downtown Los Angeles compound early Monday.

"There were girls lying everywhere—draped over furniture, sprawled spread-eagled in the corner, and huddled close like animals," FBI Special Agent Curtis Froman, who oversaw the raid, said at a press conference. "Many of them had been given nothing more than a pair of tube socks or men's briefs to wear."

the story goes on here.

i swear -- nothing baffles and befuddles me like american apparel! i mean, what? nobody needs gold lame leggings or a dress made out of sheer t-shirt material that can be worn forty different ways. i know the clothing is all american made and the company hates sweatshops and all, but do they have to parade their models around with their nipples poking through their clothes and their asses exposed? i don't get it. isn't the notion of "sustainable" sexy enough without having to look sexually exploitative? silly hipsters!

it's a new car!

2007-09-20T13:39:00.000-04:00

no, it is not a new car, but somehow someway i am now the owner of a 1997 chevrolet monte carlo with 244,555 miles on it. for all those counting, this car has driven farther than the distance between the earth and the moon.

how did i obtain such a well-traveled american automobile? well, you know how i had a birthday on monday? so, either because carson is very generous or because he's just tired of having to hear me ask if i can borrow his car every time i need to buy cat litter or laundry detergent or anything kinda heavy and bulky that's a pain in the ass to walk home from the store with, but probably because of some combination of the two, carson gave me this car as a present.

it's not as fancy as it sounds -- the car was his dad's old commuter car. and his dad was looking to get rid of it anyway, so he sold it to carson for cheap. and carson passed it on to me, as a means to get to interviews and run errands and go to the yarn store until i have a job and can afford to get a real car.

here's how the gifting went: carson pulls up at my house on monday evening so we can go to the gym before we went out for birthday dinner. i get in the car (carson's car) and he hands me a set of keys and an envelope with the title to what is now my car in it. the following dialogue ensues:
c: here you go! a piece of shit car for you! happy birthday!
e: um, whoa. i can't accept this.
c: that's because you're a socialist. you people only know how to give, you don't understand how to receive.
e: fine. give me the goddamn keys.

so there you have it. despite its mileage, the car seems to run fine. it needs an oil change and will need new brake pads soon. and transferring the title into my name is a process that PA's DMV website does not exactly lay out in easy-to-understand form. but it's mine. and it's quirky and a little broken, too -- just like me! for example, to get into the car, i have to use the key in the passenger side door, then use the power locks inside the car to unlock the driver's side. fancy!

it's been years since i've owned a car, and i'm a little afraid of it. and i doubt i'll use it more than i need to. but, dude, my boyfriend gave me a CAR for my birthday! wtf?

hey, happy birthday to me!

2007-09-17T11:19:00.000-04:00

hooray! today i am 31 years old. also, today the united states constitution is 220 years old.

i dunno about the constitution, but if i can manage to stay alive for another 40 years or so, then i can live forever, thanks to the singularity!

better luck next year...

2007-09-14T14:31:00.000-04:00

yes. my beloved fighting irish are 0-2. i know. i still love them. i'll still watch all the games. this season is going to be ugly, and i'm not yet charmed by our new freshman quarterback (whom i think dick vitale referred to as a "diaper dandy" during the ESPN coverage of the ND/penn state game. "diaper dandy"? gross!) who may have lots of talent, but he's not in high school anymore.

at least michigan is also 0-2! until this weekend, of course. they may win this weekend. sigh...

go irish?

swimming with sharks...

2007-09-14T14:01:00.000-04:00

you know those dreams that haunt you all day long? the ones that follow you around and mess up your thoughts long after they've ended? i had one last night. i blame it on this program i watched on the discovery channel at carson's house last saturday while waiting for the ND/PSU game to start.* the show was about these great white sharks off the coast of seal island in africa that breach while feeding. apparently this phenomenon doesn't happen in other places. see the picture for more fun.

anyway, the program might have gotten me all choked up at one point because there was a little seal that got away from a shark attack and the researchers on the boat pulled him on board and took him to safe, shallow waters. the little guy was gonna be okay, but he had a huge chunk taken out of his side and he was a bloody mess. i didn't like this at all.

so my dreaming brain concocted this ridiculous scenario last night where my brother was attempting to film breaching great white sharks and dolphins and walruses and seals that were all hanging out in the shallow water beyond the seawall in my hometown. and he was doing this with an underwater camera, at night, and in a canoe that looked like it was made of some sort of screen or net.

we're driving along the seawall and we get out of the car to set up for this little documentary excursion. there are huge dolphins swimming right up to us. there are also seals with huge chunks taken out of their sides -- escapees from shark attacks. my brother insists on getting in the water with his camera. i'm terrified by this, because you can see sharks' dorsal fins breaking the surface all over the place. but it hardly seems like being in the water is any less safe than in the canoe, because the canoe's walls keep bending like paper.

and that's about it. nothing really happens, it's just scary as all hell -- it's nightswimming with sharks and a videocamera. here i am, many hours after the dream ended, and i'm still creeped out.

*yes. i have yet to blog about notre dame football. i'll get to that in a minute.

getting better all the time...

2007-09-13T21:12:00.000-04:00

okay. today was much much much happier than the rest of my boo-hoo week. i started my day with a meeting with my boss from the internship i had after my first year of law school. this guy also happens to be my favorite attorney. i went to talk to him about my job search. you know, because i need all the guidance i can get.

while i was sitting in his office talking with him, he asked me where i'd ideally like to be in ten years. he asked me the same question back in march of 2005 when i interviewed with him. it's the "dream job" question, the "if money wasn't a factor" question. and you know what? my answer today was the same as my answer in march of 2005. that is enormously reassuring to me. it means that after three years of personal relationships and academic challenges and internships and the general chaos of law school, my goals and my focus are the same. i still feel called to service in this profession. i still feel inspired by the possibilities that my law degree can create.

the reasons why i wanted to be a lawyer in the first place are still the reasons i want to be a lawyer! high fives!

oh, also, we totally won our kickball game tonight! and i'm convinced that my team is the bestest kickball team in all of the pittsburgh sports league. hooray!

these days...

2007-09-12T13:39:00.000-04:00

...okay, i admit it. i'm in a bad mood lately. and being in a bad mood is completely counterproductive, which makes being in a bad mood even more annoying. i found myself last night at the gym literally trying to outrun my anxiety. and it worked for a little while, until i started getting all anxious about whether i was in danger of becoming a girl who uses exercise as therapy and who never actually overcomes her demons, instead she just uses endorphins and adrenaline to medicate them...

see? i'm in a bad mood.

i'd have to go back and read my posts from this time last year, but i'm pretty sure i was excited about my 30th birthday. i seem to recall turning 30 as a GOOD milestone, one that seemed full of promise and opportunity. now, i'm in a face-off with birthday # 31 and the birthday is winning. and i'm in a bad mood. i'm almost 31, i don't have a real job, i'm $130,000 in debt (that's all education debt, by the way -- there's nothing tangible in there, like a mortgage), and my apartment is a mess.

i hate this feeling. it's like those anxieties, those demons, those fears are all lurking, like my shadow, just waiting for me to let down my guard so they can pounce! i can't let them. i won't let them. being consumed by my fears is SO twenty-something. i'm a thirty-something now. gotta handle this like a grown-up.

imbroglio, sorta...

2007-08-29T15:00:00.000-04:00

okay, it's been a while. i have some ground to cover.

first of all, i've decided that for the primaries season, this blog will endorse john edwards. hilary clinton is in second place, but edwards wins because he's more of a socialist.

second of all, i had a temp job, then i quit my temp job because it was far away and i don't have a car and i was carpooling with folks whose project was canned. but i got a new temp job and this one is in pittsburgh! now if only i could find a real job as easily... i'm working on it, though. i figure as long as i don't give up the search, something will inevitably work out.

third, because i'm poor and lame, i couldn't go to maine last weekend for my friend tony's wedding. this saddened/saddens me to no end, because it would have been a marvellous weekend and it's been way way way too long since i've seen tony! instead, though, carson and i drove out to michigan to visit his parents. this trip cost me zero dollars. i like when things cost zero dollars. carson's folks live in a tiny little town on the cost of lake michigan. here are some of the things i saw there:
- swans!
- elk!
- a freaking huge buck with antlers that looked like trees!
- a family of turkeys (including baby turkeys) crossing the road!
- orchards of various fruits! apples! plums! blueberries!
- asparagus fields! did you know that when asparagus goes to seed, it becomes this wispy, bushy, lovely little plant?

and here are some of the things i did there:
- go carting!!!
- mini golfing!!!
- fishing for salmon in lake michigan!!!
we only caught two salmon because the water was too rough to go out early in the day (when the salmon are hungriest), but i was delighted nonetheless. of course, i got sad when i realized that by my own action, i had caused the death of the fish i caught... i'm a jerk.
- gambling in an indian casino!!!
however, i gambled poorly. i don't know what the hell was going on -- perhaps it was my come-uppance from my grand performance in las vegas back in january, but i fared badly. like, worse than the odds. eh, you win some, you lose some.

so yes, i am now in love with northwestern michigan.

fourth, have you guys seen the HBO show "flight of the conchords"? here: watch this! carson and i are planning on memorizing it and performing it sometime, probably after having a few drinks. he'll be jemaine (a.k.a., the hiphopopotamus) and i'll be bret (the rhymenoceros). we'll be memorizing both the lyrics AND the dance moves.

and finally, starting the thursday after labor day, i'm gonna be playing kickball with the pittsburgh sports league! no, i am not a good kickball player. but i've got pluck! i've got spirit, yes i do! and, this is a surefire way to get to hang out with sandy once a week now that she's moved to wheeling. this makes me happy.

okay, bye!

hitting balls with sticks...

2007-08-12T16:32:00.001-04:00

friday night, carson and i drove out past monroeville to go to a driving range/batting cage. hooray for hitting balls with sticks!

as far as golf and i go, i haven't swung a golf club since the fall of 1994 when i was a wee freshman in one of my chosen six week rotations for the required physical education class at notre dame (other chosen rotations included ice skating, self-defense, cpr, and FENCING!). i didn't really love golf back then, but these days it seems like everyone in my life is all about the golf, so i figured maybe i should give it a go so that i don't get left behind. well, i still don't love it, but there is something oddly gratifying about sending that little white ball soaring through the air. and while it's frustrating as all hell to swing at the little ball and miss (doh!), the experience wasn't nearly as frustrating as i thought it would be. i even had fun, and would now like to learn how to be an awesome (or at least a respectable) golfer so that my uncles will see me as more than the renegade crazy liberal of the family.

and NO, carson did NOT stand behind me with his arms around me to show me how to swing. that's just dumb.

also, we swung different sticks at different balls in the batting cage. how have i reached 30 years of age never having experienced the joys of the batting cage before? how freaking awesome! you give a machine some quarters and put on a helmet, then another machine tosses you balls that you can totally slam out of the park, erm, cage! fantastic!

i'm just saying...

2007-08-12T16:24:00.000-04:00

in a may 4th article in the pittsburgh business times, the director for my law school's career services offices was interviewed, and the article reported that "about a fourth of Pitt's 2007 graduating class of 243 haven't landed jobs yet."

however, in an e-mail sent out from career services this week about an open job (a temporary position in wheeling), the sender failed to make use of the bcc function, so all the names/e-mail addresses of those of us who haven't found jobs yet were viewable. and i counted. because i wanted to know what things look like for the class of 2007. there are 103 of us who received that e-mail. last time i did the math, 103 of 243 is not one-fourth.

thanks, career services.

give me a freaking break...

2007-08-07T14:23:00.001-04:00

generally, i think it's a good thing that e-mail and technology have made it easier to keep in touch with people and to reconnect with long lost contacts and friends. it's nice to get that message from out of the blue from someone i spent a lot of time with in high school or a classmate from college. but what i absolutely CANNOT STAND is the resulting epidemic of forwarded messages. delete. delete. delete!

however, today i received something from an old high school friend of mine that has got me so infuriated, so enraged, so offended that i have to respond to it, both directly to my friend and on this blog.

the message is all about how we shouldn't trust barack obama because of muslim influences in his background. it's about how obama was sworn in on the qur'an and not the bible. the message is full of capitalized words like MUSLIM, ATHIEST, RADICAL. and the most offensive part of all? it alleges that obama's run for the presidency is the muslim attempt to take over the united states from the inside.

are you kidding me?!?! i'm all for the first amendment, but this looks a lot to me like hate speech. the message attempts to equate islam with terrorism, and that is flat-out unacceptable and hateful.

what the hell is going on in the world? haven't we learned by now what religious persecution does? if you take these messages (and i use the plural because what i received in my inbox is not unique) and replace the word "muslim" with "jew", you end up with something eerily similar to anti-semitic rhetoric in nazi germany. and have we forgotten what happened there?

come on, people -- wise the hell up. who are you to judge?

the bar exam: postpartum...

2007-07-30T14:59:00.000-04:00

okay, so it's been not-quite-a-week and i haven't written about the bar exam on this blog yet. so wtf's up with that?

well, the bar exam was an effing horrible experience. i have never in my life felt so utterly defeated as i did by the end of each of those days. the strange thing is that for the morning sessions on each day (tuesday was essay day, wednesday was multistate multiple choice day) i felt okay, as if maybe i wasn't totally acing the thing, but that i was gonna pass. but after the afternoon sessions on both days, i was convinced (am convinced?) that i'll be back in that cold cold cold (as in meat-locker-cold) convention center room in february to take the thing again.

the test really was terrible. i mean, who the hell knows the standard for a rule 59(a) motion? and nobody ever told us that we should be on the lookout for a billion multiple choice questions about jury instructions! it does calm my soul a bit that all of my friends seemed to feel just as defeated by the test. but it's just so frustrating that i'm not going to know the outcome until october! should i get rid of the barbri and PMBR books? should i trash my notes and my flashcards? or is it smarter if i just set them aside temporarily? how powerful is positive thinking? and is positive thinking completely futile at this point? because what's done is done.

sigh...

the strangest part of this, however, is the really pervasive depression that has set in since the bar exam has been over. i don't know what to do with myself. i haven't cleaned my apartment or done laundry (things that desperately need to be done and haven't been done very well in a long time), i've only made a cursory attempt to apply to jobs. these are things i can and should do. but i feel totally let down. maybe it would be different if i had felt that i kicked ass on the bar exam, but somehow i doubt it. i think this is bar exam postpartum. you spend three years with your life run by law school, then a summer with your life run by the bar exam, and then you just kinda tuck-and-roll and dust yourself off and realize you've got nothing. at all. to do.

ugh. i wish i had a job. i wish i didn't need a job. i wish i had become a gardener or a landscape architect or a seamstress.

sigh...

the final countdown...

2007-07-23T23:10:00.000-04:00

will someone please explain to me how my brain has insta-access to various pump-you-up songs from 80s movies (generally accompanying an inspirational montage) but it struggles to remember dependent relative revocation or when specific acts are admissible character evidence?

today i've had such songs as "you're the best" by joe esposito (from the karate kid) and "there's no easy way out" from the rocky movies (it's a really really bad 80s rock-out song) and "eye of the tiger", which i actually sang out loud in the shower this morning.

bar exam starts tomorrow! time for emily to eat lighting and crap thunder!

matryoshka...

2007-07-19T23:52:00.000-04:00

here's a little known fact about me: i love matryoshka dolls, those little wooden russian nesting dolls. you may remember them from those old stop motion shorts from sesame street.

i love them. i don't know what it is about them. i'm sure we could all come up with our own psychoanalytic theories about why these little dolls have found their way into my heart, but i'm content with knowing that they make me happy.

now, lest you think i love all russian nesting dolls equally, i do not. a lot of them are a little too cartoony for my liking. i'm a simple girl with simple tastes -- anything too flashy makes me feel confused. but the ones that manage to meet my weird standards are ones that will forever have my love.

there is one set of nesting dolls that i love more than all others. this particular set was given to me by my parents when i was a little girl. my mom and dad got it somewhere on some trip for something that i was too young to remember, and they brought the set of dolls back to me as a souvenir. i forgot all about it when i went off to college, and only in recent years has it drifted into my mind again.

but there have been many events that have transpired since my pre-college days that could have led to the demise of my beloved matryoshka dolls: my dad moved to a different house, lots of stuff (and all of my old stuff) got put into storage, big bad hurricane katrina destroyed a lot of that stuff in storage. i had basically given up on the hope that my little dolls and i would be reunited...

but on a lark, the other day i sent my dad an e-mail asking if he knew where that little doll set had gone, and, if it was around, could he send it to me.

tonight i got an e-mail from dad with this attached:

isn't she fantastic?!?! she's just as beautiful as i remembered her!!! dad's going to pack her safely and mail her to me! somehow just knowing this still exists brings great joy to my soul. hooray!

four study days left...

2007-07-19T22:25:00.000-04:00

i cried today. studying for the bar exam made me cry. i've had several bouts of panic/stress/anxiety about this stupid test, but today was the first time i actually cried! and you want to know why i cried? i bombed a practice essay question because i couldn't come up with terroristic threats as an offense from the facts. i got the others -- i came up with receiving stolen property and conspiracy, but not terroristic threats. i thought maybe it was assault. (???!??!?!) oh, and on another question, i failed to recall the doctrine of incorporation by reference.

i think i need this to be over soon.

as of today...

2007-07-16T17:53:00.001-04:00

...my lungs are six months smoke-free! awesome!

emily has minimum competency, across the board...

2007-07-16T17:21:00.000-04:00

the following is an e-mail conversation had today between sandy, krista, and me. it started with some stupid spam message that i got in my pitt.edu e-mail account; it was one of those all-jibberish messages. enjoy!

ORIGINAL SPAM MESSAGE:
> Subject: continued debut alpine
> californium cashew, depredate clash courtesy, agreed abigail. cleave bootstrapping autumn chromatic classify chalkline bully. absorbent croft coralberry cryptic companion blanch adjourn danny contraceptive chimera budweiser adulate. bloodshed consummate ailanthus calamity asynchronous carrot decorate

E-MAIL FROM ME TO S & K:
with subject: it's like the spam e-mails are coming from my own brain...
> ...because the following is pretty similar to the caliber of thoughts i'm having lately:
[forwarded spam-a-lot message from above]

E-MAIL FROM K TO S & E:
>I was just thinking about absorbent croft coralberry, too! Weird.

E-MAIL FROM S TO K & E:
>I didn't know you knew Agreed Abigail.
>You guys, my brain is numb.

E-MAIL FROM E TO S & K:
>yes. brain numb. i go need coffee and change scenery. i go [shadyside coffee shop] now. kbye.

E-MAIL FROM K TO S & E:
>I guess "my brain is numb" is a better way to express what is going on in my dome than "my brain is hard." The former is subject to less confusion.

E-MAIL FROM E TO K & S:
>"my brain is hard" makes me think of the petrification process. wait, is "petrification" a word? is "petrified" a thing? like that happens? petrified wood. am i making that up? like when trees get really old and the wood turns stone-like? omigoodness i could be totally making this up!

this is not my beautiful house! this is not my beautiful wife!

letting the days go by,
emily

E-MAIL FROM S TO K & E:
>I feel nauseous. And my FUCKINGspacebardoesn'twork.

E-MAIL FROM E TO K & S:
>well, it's a good thing you're not preparing for the ... wait for it... space bar exam!

(wow)

END TRANSMISSION

one more week...

2007-07-16T13:42:00.000-04:00

i wonder how i'm possibly gonna decompress after this exam is over? i've gotten into a pattern of falling asleep by listing the tests for equal protection levels of scrutiny or the felonies that trigger the felony murder rule or the elements of misrepresentation... what will i do when i no longer need to know that stuff?

but i've reached the point at which i'm dumping the things that are still giving me grief. e.g., character evidence. so help me, i can never ever get those stupid character evidence rules organized in my head! so, i'm giving up. i'll probably get those questions incorrect on the multistate exam. this is okay -- i'll get other questions correct. and mortgages? screw you, mortgages! you are an impenetrable dark land in my world. but i finally figured out how to deal with recording statutes, and i'm no longer afraid of the commerce clause.

those essay subjects, however? those are a different story...

back to work for me! regardless, this will all be over a week from wednesday...

gulp.

overheard in pittsburgh...

2007-07-16T12:16:00.000-04:00

this morning, carson and i got breakfast in regent square. there was a group of adolescents at a table near us, ranging in age from what i'd estimate to be 8 to 13 (although i'm really bad at guessing the ages of children). the kids all seemed to be related (cousins perhaps) and some of them were british.

these kids all roll in, climb into seats around the table, the waitress hands them menus and takes their drink orders (they ordered juices and diet cokes) and they begin to discuss their food options. the oldest of this crew was one of the brits. he had the kind of really big curly hair that seventh grade boys have these days and one of those awkward-featured faces that seventh grade boys have had for all time. he declared, in his pubescent-british accent and in a louder-than-necessary tone, "by order of the eldest child, there will be NO french fries!" he made this statement no fewer than four times.

not even needing to eavesdrop, i learned that these kids were going to kennywood later and they were obsessive about low-fat foods. and when the waitress came back to take their orders, the eldest-child-qua-monarch forbade them from going with the homefries option, too, because homefries are just as unhealthy as french fries.

now, i'll admit to being more-full-than-usual of the rage lately. i blame the dear bar examiners. but i was a wee bit annoyed by this table of kids. sure, i applaud their very un-american focus on eating healthy food, especially without adult supervision, but if i were a skinny kid and my cousins-from-another-country started imposing rules about what i could and couldn't order by virtue of being older than me, i would have had a thing or two to say about it.

but, ah the "by order of the eldest child..." bit. awesome! there were many giggles had at my table at the thought of all british children being enamored of ideas of birthright and inherited sovereignty and absolutist decrees and stuff. oh yes, your highness, there will be no french fries!

viva la revolution! generalizations are fun!

what not to say...

2007-07-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

several months ago my dad told me that he saw the son of a friend of his somewhere, a kid who was a new lawyer, and the kid told him that studying for the bar exam was the worst experience of his life. my dad passed that along to me, likely thinking this would make me realize that others have gone through the experience and have lived to tell about it. however, in response to this story i had two immediate thoughts:

1. this kid is an idiot. i know who he is and he's an idiot. and if studying for the bar exam is the worst thing he's ever experienced, well, i feel justified in declaring him an idiot.

2. to date, the "worst experience" of my life was waking up in the recovery room after having a brain biopsy, groggy and in a lot of pain, with a blonde woman resident from eastern europe standing over me and telling me, "miss mcnally? we didn't find fluid, that means it wasn't a cyst or an abscess. it looks like this is a tumor." yeah. beat that, bar exam!

now, with only two weeks to go before the bar exam, i have some additional thoughts on this matter. i vehemently stand by points 1 and 2 above, but i wish to distinguish this bar exam thing from other bad experiences in my life...

a)
everybody goes through periods of stress and strife and anxiety. my "BFF TD" and i have discussed on several occasions that one of the reasons our friendship has worked so well is because somehow we've managed to time our freaky-outy-ness so that we're not freaking out simultaneously. however, all of those wonderful friends that law school has put into my life? you know, the people whose praises i've sung and on whom i've come to rely over the past three years? well, these days we're ALL going through stress and strife and anxiety over the SAME DAMN THING which means we're at a limited capacity to be supportive to each other. we're all kinda like, "oh yeah? you're stressed out about the bar exam? really? the bar exam? what, is that coming up or something? yeah? well, join the club." practically speaking, this means that we're all inadvertently contributing to each other's stress/strife/anxiety levels. and although we're all in the same boat, it feels a little lonely since the only folks who know what this is like are in the wrong position to help make it better.

b)
in normal communication with people in the world, when one talks to someone who expresses feelings of stress, there seem to be two automatic responses: (1) "don't worry -- you'll be fine!", or (infuriatingly) (2) "well, think of [some person/situation/time that you really don't care about]. it could be worse!"

look, folks in the world, i know you're trying to help by telling me i'll be okay or that things could be worse. and objectively, rationally, i KNOW that i'll be okay and that things could be worse. but this is the same as telling someone who's just lost someone that s/he loves that the deceased is "in a better place." it's not about the deceased being better off -- this is grief! grief belongs to the griever. whether the deceased is better or worse is really kind of irrelevant.

see what i'm getting at? stress/strife/anxiety(/grief, by association) is NOT objective or rational. these things are at the core of what makes us imperfect humans -- it's the fear that what we want to happen just might not happen the way we want it to. and that's a little terrifying. when folks say, "don't worry, you'll pass the bar exam," or "at least you're not also trying to do X, Y, and Z and pass the bar exam!" or "at least so-and-so is in a better place," although the intent of these things is good, the result has a dangerous tendency to belittle or devalue the very real feelings of stress/strife/anxiety(/grief, by association) that people go through.

what would i rather you say? i dunno... maybe just acknowledge that this is a really big deal and that my stress is warranted. i think that would be enough. i don't want pity -- i don't think i'm some sort of victim, nor am i unaware that this is something i chose to do. i just don't want to have to defend myself in my anxiety.

c)
again, this is not the worst experience of my life, nor should it be. but i just put in three years of blood, sweat, and tears (well, maybe not the blood, but definitely the sweat and tears) to earn my law degree. why? because i want to be a lawyer. and if i don't pass this stupid bar exam, i don't get a license and i don't get to practice law. so, really, thinking of things in my life/world/experience, this IS a big freaking deal! this is a major hurdle in my chosen career. it's the biggest hurdle to date in my professional life. will there be bigger ones down the line? probably, but those are irrelevant at this point.

so yes, i'm stressed out. and yes, i know that i'm not going to sprout horns or go blind if i fail the bar exam. and yes, i realize that things could be a lot worse. but my elevated stress level is 100% justified and real. and this, too, shall pass.

that's all for now.

peas!!!

2007-07-10T06:51:00.000-04:00

i grew them all by myself! see?

(there were lots more, but i kinda ate them because they're delicious!)

i could still be a senator...

2007-07-09T23:23:00.000-04:00

i heard a rumor that hillary clinton failed the bar exam the first time she took it. hillary clinton! and she's freaking brilliant!

literally, friends, i'm steeling myself up for the reality that i might not pass the bar this time around. that doesn't mean i've resigned myself to defeat -- it means that i'm trying to be realistic, given that i've hit this awful plateau where i can't seem to get more than 50% of the multistate questions correct.

sigh...

two and a half more weeks of this crap. let's hope that's enough time.

some thoughts about getting hitched...

2007-07-02T20:11:00.000-04:00

so, some people i care about a whole hell of a lot are either getting married soon, have recently officially gotten engaged, or just had a secret wedding this past weekend!

in the midst of all the crap and anxiety that have been haunting my little world as a result of the boo-hoo bar exam, this whole friends-getting-hitched thing brings me a lot of much-welcomed joy. and yes, i know that's corny as hell. keep reading -- it gets worse!

here's the thing: we all know couples who probably shouldn't be together, couples that are together for the wrong reasons, couples who fall out of love. from time to time we've all had broken hearts, lonely hearts, hearts worn on sleeves, bleeding hearts, heartsickness. sometimes i really think that with all the variables and circumstances in the world, it's a wonder that anybody finds anybody else...

...but it does happen. and it works. and it's fantastic! and i guess the silly, schoolgirly, gushy part of me is a little bit in love with the truth that good people find other good people. and i really believe that when good people have other good people who love them and appreciate them and respect them, then the individual goodness gets even better, becomes capable of true greatness. and that, my friends, makes the world a better place.

these four couples that i'm thinking about as i'm writing this post are each making weddings that are their own. in the mix there's a traditional church wedding, a wedding that is only recognized legally in massachusetts, even a tiny wedding in the park. but no matter how they've chosen to conduct the ceremony, the consistency is that they're brilliant, strong people with good hearts who have decided to share their lives with someone else in a really remarkable way. and these are all couples who should be together, couples who are together for the right reasons, couples who will make each other stronger and better for years to come.

so, to those amazing friends of mine who have chosen to take the plunge, make the commitment, exchange the vows, please allow me to be so starry-eyed as to thank you for making my world a little better, and for giving me happy things to think about (instead of really boring stuff like part performance or fee simple determinable).

okay. i'm done now.

xoxo

special post for my friend tony, the groom-to-be...

2007-06-27T18:18:00.000-04:00

yay tony!!!

when my brother and my cousin and i were night kayaking, i told the story about how we went kayaking the one time at peaks island and schoss totally wussed out in her kayak and so you and allison had to tie her to your kayak and pull her around! and i don't know if you and allison were aware, but schoss kept motioning for me to tie my kayak to hers so you guys would be pulling both of us, but i'm no wuss!

also, got your e-mail about attire for the wedding reception and i LOVE how theme-oriented you are!!! i've got this crazy idea that i'm gonna try and MAKE a dress for the occasion! but i'm not gonna start until two conditions have been met: (a) i find a decent pattern (i've never sewn anything from a pattern -- i usually just wing it. but then again, i've never made anything as comprehensive as a dress before!) and (b) NO NEW PROJECTS UNTIL AFTER THE BAR EXAM!

i miss you! XO times a billion!

kayaking at night...

2007-06-18T00:03:00.000-04:00

...might just be the best thing ever in all the world!

also, earlier today my cousin and my brother and i went tubing. who woulda thunk that holding to a giant donut while you get pulled behind a boat could be so freaking exhausting! (and so freaking fantastic!)

good times in north carolina. good freaking times. why the hell did i EVER move away from the water?!?!

father's day...

2007-06-17T12:51:00.000-04:00

this weekend i'm in wrightsville beach, north carolina, with my brother and sister. my aunt (my father's sister) and uncle live out here. we're here to visit them and to have some quality sibling time.

last night the three of us sat up and talked with my aunt and uncle and cousin until around one in the morning. we laughed, we shared stories, we caught up. and as a special father's day gift to us, my dad had sent via his sister a letter to his children and asked my aunt to read it to us. the letter was amazing -- very true to form for my father, who has such a beautiful way of expressing how much he loves us and how proud of us he is.

i'm a lucky girl. i'm incredibly fortunate. no matter where i go, what i do, how i end up, i've got this network of family that is so strong and so loving and supportive. my aunt and uncle loved my mother so much, and it's so good remembering her with them.

also, it's beautiful here on the north carolina coast! daniel and i went for a jog earlier this morning (i'm a lot slower than he is, but he was a good running companion). after lunch we're going out on my uncle's boat, and will probably hit the beach after that. i'll lug my barbri practice questions book with me and sit in the sunshine (and yes, i WILL be wearing sunscreen -- i fear the cancer.) and make the best of this whole study stuff.

happy father's day to all (especially you new fathers out there)! to my own father, who never reads this blog, and to whom i already said this when i spoke to him earlier, you are the greatest man i've ever known, and it's an honor to be your daughter. i'm trying my best, too. and although we don't always get it right, there's no doubt in my mind that even the mistakes come out of love.

someone with whom i'm hopelessly in love, probably always will be, and have no chance whatsoever of ever meeting, let alone making out with...

2007-06-12T11:37:00.000-04:00

david foster wallace. say what you will about him (and people do, since it's fairly easy to think of his writing as pompous or arrogant or deliberately obtuse), but come on, the guy won a freaking genius grant back before winning a genius grant was even cool. except that getting a genius grant has always been pretty cool, and lawyers do get them from time to time, so i've still got a chance...

anyway, yeah. i've been reading DFW lately, because of the eight DFW books i own, only two of them are novels, and devoting my fleeting bouts of attention to short stories and essays is about the best i can do lately... i think he's so effing brilliant and hilarious and i would so happily bear his children, even though i don't even want children and the thought of birthing them scares the hell out of me, but there's a whole greater-good justification for bringing as many DFW spawn into the world as possible, you know, for the sake of the future...

this morning i came across this. it's a commencement address that DFW delivered at kenyon in 2005. i wish with all the wishingability in my being that we, the fine pitt law grads of 2007, had gotten a commencement speech like that. here's the best part:

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

david foster wallace, if only we could hang out for, like, half an hour, you would have such a crush on me, too. sigh...

the sleepless whatifs...

2007-06-12T00:26:00.000-04:00

i dunno what it is*, but lately i've got the insomnia something fierce. no matter how tired i am, as soon as i climb into bed and turn out the lights, i'm wide awake. without fail. or, i'll fall asleep, but right around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, my eyes spring open and refuse to find sleep, even though my body is still very tired.

the worst part? while this awful sleeplessness is going on, my mind wanders from terrible topic to terrible topic. this parade of horribles goes like this:
what if i can't find a job?
what if i fail the bar exam?
what if i never fall in love again?
what if i run out of money?
what if i have ovarian cysts?
what if i never feel like i have my shit together?
what if something happens to my dad/brother/sister?
where the hell do i want to be in august?
pittsburgh or philadelphia?
pittsburgh or philadelphia?
pittsburgh or philadelphia?
pittsburgh or philadelphia?
pittsburgh or philadelphia?

ugh...

*this isn't entirely true -- i might just be a little bit stressed out these days. i bet that's to blame.

the sopranos: RIP...

2007-06-10T22:37:00.001-04:00

i have this to say about the series finale of the sopranos:

fucking. PERFECT!

that, and david chase is way way smarter than the rest of us.

bravo!

too close to home...

2007-06-10T13:14:00.000-04:00

yesterday krista and i went to a two hour vinyasa intensive class at our favorite neighborhood yoga studio. both of us were a little apprehensive beforehand -- could we do it? are we hardcore enough for a two hour class? were we hydrated enough? you see, amazing yoga does hot yoga, the kind where the heat is about 100 degrees and the humidity is above 90% -- it's kinda like doing yoga in a sauna. i typically drink two full 32 oz nalgene bottles in a 75 minute class, and by the end of the class my towel is drenched with sweat. sound gross? yep! and completely awesome.

yesterday's class was indeed intense. it was hot as hell in the studio, and hot as hell outside. the class was tough. and fantastic. i'm really glad that we went. even with those ten minutes in frog position, which is easily the least comfortable position ever of all times.

but all of that is context. here's what i want to blog about:

about an hour into the class, a girl toward the front of the room fell over and started to seize. i'm sure the heat was largely to blame, and honestly, given how hot it gets in the room and how challenging some of the postures are, i'm surprised that i haven't seen people pass out before. the scary thing was that i've never in my life seen someone have a seizure before. and immediately, in my mind, it was me on the floor. it was awful. she was curled up on the ground, convulsing... and of course everybody in the class was shocked and nobody knew what to do.

the instructor and his wife (also an instructor, and both of them are the owners) handled it well -- the girl was only out for a second, and when she came to, they helped her outside and made sure she was okay. but everyone in the class was a little on edge.

as for me and my silly self-absorbed, damaged-goods, neurologically-sensitive self? well, i was a little terrified. and embarrassed. and afraid. so that's what i looked like when i've had seizures? that's how it feels to watch someone go through that? it's almost better to be the one who passes out -- at least then you're not aware of how horrible the ordeal looks. it frankly scared the hell out of me. it flooded my head with all the thoughts and emotions and memories of the days when i thought i had a brain tumor, the days when every little blip in my body felt like the prelude to a grand mal.

my god. how haunting is the past? it's like a shadow -- it's always there, it just takes a certain cast of light to see it.

down with phil leotardo!!!

2007-06-07T13:30:00.000-04:00

so after bar school today i went to my friend katie's house to watch last weekend's episode of the sopranos. now, maybe my absolute fervor right now is due in part to way too much morning caffeine in my system, but OMGWTFAYFKM?!?!?! my little brain is all a-flutter right now trying to put together what is going to happen in this sunday's episode! and this sunday's episode, for those of you who aren't paying attention, is the LAST episode EVER!

so, if it matters to you, beware, because in the coming sentences there are gonna be (i can't believe i'm saying this on my blog -- i should be ashamed!) spoilers...

first of all, melfi dumped tony as a patient, bobby's dead, silvio is "unlikely to regain consciousness", and tony is in hiding. why? because of that sonuvabitch phil leotardo! ...who is a complete asshole. not that tony's not also a complete asshole, of course, but phil is a goddamn crazy bastard, too.

drawing on the training i got for my BA in english, here are my predictions of things that HAVE to be dealt with:
1. paulie. he's the only one of the soprano family who has been around since the very beginning. and paulie may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's stubborn and self-preserving. i haven't trusted paulie for a while. i think he's gonna do something big.
2. little carmine. he went with tony to talk to phil (in that fantastic scene with phil yelling out the attic window to tony and carmine on the street) and he's never been a fan of phil's leadership. is he poised for the throne? i dunno, nor do i think he's the right guy for the job, but we'll see...
3. phil. needs to die. just like how tony needs to die. they should both die. because i say so.
4. the fibbies. what's with this whole tony and the FBI guy back-and-forth at satriale's? at this point, the only way i can see that tony can get out of this alive is if he flips on phil and the new york family and gets himself into the witness protection program. tony's got nothing left.

stuff that, in my opinion, i hope has already been finished:
1. a.j. the show has already turned him into an extreme version of all the things that are wrong with tony (the depression, the self-destruction, the cowardice), and i don't think he's got any more of a role to play than that.
2. uncle junior. crazy old uncle jun is gonna go rot in a state mental hospital because all of his money is gone. bye bye uncle jun! you've been awesome!
3. silvio. i love silvio. LOVE him. but if he's been shot up so badly he's in a perma-coma in the hospital, it's highly unlikely he's going to have any function in the plot. besides, having tony's right-hand paralyzed rather than cut off has a nice little bit of poetry to it.

there you go. and we shall see!

oh, and if any of you are sopranos fans, you should definitely check out the running commentary on slate.com about the series. joshua turned me on to it. it's written by jeffrey goldberg (from the new yorker -- i totally have a crush on jeffrey goldberg), timothy noah (from slate), brian williams (yes, brian williams -- the fantastic NBC nightly news anchor), and, towards the end of season 6, terry winter (one of the writers on the sopranos). brilliant!

just in case you need a distraction...

2007-06-06T19:52:00.000-04:00

so, sandy told me about this. it's mindy kaling's blog. mindy kaling is one of the writers on _the office_ (she also plays kelly in the show, the chatty one who dates ryan the temp).

the blog is called "things i've bought that i love" and it's basically about stuff she's purchased with her disposable income, since she's young and unmarried and has an awesome job. she's a total girly girl, and a lot of the posts are about cosmetics or clothes or accessories. now, i know what you're thinking -- you're wondering what i could possibly find redeeming in a blog written by a girl who spends all of her time in NYC or LA and spends a lot of cash on girly stuff. but let me just say, kaling is hilarious! and i want to be friends with her!

also, she's got some other writers along for the ride, and while kaling posts most, the other posts by contributors about things they've bought that they love are good, too.

enjoy!

not bad for a saturday...

2007-06-03T00:20:00.000-04:00

you know what's nice?

when you spend all day feeling like you can't bear to study for the bar exam, so you decide that doing some sewing while listening to evidence CDs will suffice. and you end up making a not-too-shabby skirt on your sewing machine that was a pretty good salvage from your earlier mistake of cutting the fabric you intended to use for a wrap-around skirt too short. and you wear your new skirt, which is kinda cheerleader-esque, in the sense that it's navy blue panels with yellow pleated sections, to go have a drink with one of your friends and no sooner do you walk into the bar but a woman says to you, "hey, i really like your skirt!" and when you remark that you made it yourself, she tells you that you should sell them.

and then you proceed to have a really nice time with one of your fellow single girlfriends, including several giggles because at a table next to you is a guy you went out with once and only once like a year and a half ago (and to whom you said you'd call but you never did) and you know he recognizes you because you AND your friend note that he's talking really loudly, the way people talk when they want others to hear what they're saying.

so, yeah. lately i've needed an ego boost. tonight did just fine.

juris doctored...

2007-05-30T18:45:00.001-04:00

good grief! it's been one hell of a week. i had eight family members in town, i graduated from law school, and i finally (FINALLY!) got this done:

which comes from this:

which has a story that i've told too many times in the past week to bring myself to tell again. but that's not the point.

the point is that all of a sudden here i am, with some more letters after my name, and things seem, well, different and the same and a little dizzying.

and it's not just because i had my brother, my sister, my dad, my step-mom, two aunts, an uncle, and a cousin in town for several days. this weekend was a major terminus in my life and it brought with it a lot of complicated emotions. when i saw everybody off at the airport at the end of the weekend, i stood at the airport watching them go through security and until they vanished from sight and i sobbed. cry cry cried like a cliche. and then i walked back to the car and just lost it.

and graduation was so anticlimactic... the ceremony was pretty lackluster. there were cameras flashing all over the place -- proud parents documenting the experience. but i did have a nice little cheering section when i got to walk across the stage with my fancy juris doctor hood -- that's the benefit of having lots of family in town.

i had a rare and wonderful successful family weekend. it was amazing being with daniel and caitlin, even though they got to stay up later than me because i had to get up and go to bar exam school. and dad? dad was so proud of me! it was nice.

and now that they're gone and the regalia is turned in and i'm left with my bar exam books and a degree.

so why do i feel kinda sad?

emily, this is your life...

2007-05-22T19:07:00.001-04:00

here you go! welcome to the next two months of my life, courtesy of youtube (and krista, who found this and sent it to me!)

countdown...

2007-05-21T23:28:00.000-04:00

on wednesday, my brother and sister are coming to town. on thursday, my dad, my step-mom, two aunts, an uncle, and a cousin will be here. why? because on saturday i'm graduating!!!

...which is kinda fantastic in a lot of ways, most of them of the whole accomplishment/celebration/all-the-hard-work-has-paid-off kind, but let's just say that having eight family members in town is a little bit nerve-wracking.

...which is basically the understatement of the year. i am afflicted with major hostess anxiety in general, and i'm feeling a ridiculous amount of stress at being cruise director this weekend. plus, my friends and i have that big picnic/cookout thing on friday that has been in the works for months. which reminds me, i need to get a keg...

i called my dad earlier to find out what kinds of things they wanted to do in the downtime. he cautioned me not to overplan, but given that visits from dad in the past have met with disaster when there weren't things to do, i'm not sure that overplanning is such a bad idea. better to have things to do and choose not to do them than not to have enough to do, right?

i'm tired. i just cleaned my bathroom, i have laundry in the dryer. tomorrow i'll take care of the sweeping and dusting and vacuuming. and the dishes. for now, i think i'll play some super paper mario for a bit...

woke up this mo'nin...

2007-05-20T22:50:00.000-04:00

okay, so here's something that i don't think i've dealt with on this blog -- i'm kind of obsessed with _the sopranos_.

it all started only a few months ago. carson and i watched all of them so i could get all caught up before this last season. and now there are only two episodes left in the series and i'm a little sad about it. because even though none of the characters are really likable (well, i do love silvio), and the stories are filled with death and blood and betrayal and deception, there's something about the show that has got me completely hooked, and i just can't stop watching!

i had missed last sunday's episode, so before tonight's show i got caught up. and omigoodnessholycrap!

so, yeah, two episodes left. looks like it's the NYC vs NJ mob families, in ultimate deathmatch style!

dear torts professor, my apologies...

2007-05-18T16:35:00.000-04:00

so the torts portion of my bar exam preparation course is over, and i'm left with the overwhelming sense that my first year torts professor did a much better job of teaching us torts than we've been giving him credit for these past couple of years.

see, where other torts classes were reading over a hundred cases and going over all of the elements of the intentional torts, we read about 25 cases and focused on the elements of negligence -- duty, breach, causation, and damages. and for each of those cases we broke down the rationale of the opinions and offered the best critiques of that rationale that our green, rigid, not-yet-lawschooled brains could muster.

and we did a lot of bitching (as if we actually knew enough to do so!) because we weren't learning about battery or assault or defamation or trespass, but based on the stuff we covered in the bar prep class, i really do think we got a damn fine torts experience. and a much less boring one than some of our colleagues.

also, this bar prep stuff has got me feeling like a 1L again. suddenly, things like res ipsa loquitur and fee tail are funny again, and i'm well aware of how little substantive law one needs to know in order to be a decent lawyer.

"so you reach into your jacket and pull out your gun, the one you carry for the purpose of all torts hypotheticals..."

2007-05-17T20:28:00.001-04:00

today was the first day of the rest of my life...

okay, so it's not _that_ dramatic. but i did start my bar exam preparation course today, and i was overwhelmed. i think i felt my stomach move from my throat down into my guts at least four times this morning. gulp-o-rama! but this is all part of the madness, and at least now i know what an intentional tort is.

oh, and can anybody recommend a restaurant in pittsburgh where i can take nine of my family members for dinner next saturday after graduation?

i made a monkey!

2007-05-14T19:45:00.000-04:00

see? he's a little, well, imperfect, but who isn't? he's also a prototype. i wanted to make something for my friend dave's daughter charlotte, but this one was my draft version.

i told caitlin about this little monkey's mismatched ears and she said she thinks she'd like to have a monkey like that, so when she's here for my graduation in a couple of weeks, he's all hers!

green thumbs up...

2007-05-14T14:30:00.000-04:00

ta da! it's my roof garden! isn't it lovely? i put up a picture of it now because it's only a matter of time before it either dies of its own accord or the birds eat it. but i love it and i will do my damnedest to keep it alive.

the cast of characters is, from left to right, arugula, tomatoes, lettuce, more lettuce and some just-sprouting beans, peas (i LOVE the way the peas grow, btw), green and lima beans, and peppers. grow your hearts out, little guys!!!

and before any of you so-and-sos go and tell me that i'm gonna need bigger containers and more dirt and all, I KNOW!!! i'm working on it.

emily's mii minion army...

2007-05-14T14:09:00.000-04:00

so part of the fun of having a wii is that you get to make miis, little people that you can use when you play certain games. here's my mii:

isn't she awesome?

but it doesn't stop there. i have begun to create an entire universe of miis. i have a mii for milo, one for kenobi, one for sufjan stevens, one for ramon fernandez (from wallace stevens lore, and also what i've named my ipod). i also have a goth mii and an emo mii, and greg and andrew made miis when they were here the other night. soon my miis will take over the world!

btw, i'm planning to make a series of supreme court justice miis next. stay tuned!

the sum of all things...

2007-05-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

in a nice occurrence of serendipity (i'm not sure this is the right word for this, but whatev), i got a phone call yesterday from one of my favorite college friends. this is a woman that i think is so fantastic, and i really don't talk to her nearly enough anymore.

she called, we chatted, and then we got on the topic of how she's in a relationship that she needs to get out of. it's not a bad relationship. it's not unhealthy. it's just not what she wants and it's making her sad. and she's gone on like this for a while. so we talked and we talked, and we agreed that "the kind of guy that every nice girl in her 30s should want to marry" really isn't what either of us is looking for.

and oddly, having this conversation with my friend about a breakup after just having been broken up with was fantastically therapeutic for me. and i realized something about what i had just gone through -- that two people can be at the same point with things, but the way that manifests itself through the individual personalities can be very different. and there's more, but no need to go into that. and so i got it, i understood, and if i'm correct (and i really don't need to know whether i am or not) then i might have just attained the seldom attainable moment of clarity about the end of a relationship.

huh. and so it goes.

family stuff...

2007-05-12T12:33:00.000-04:00

last night i called my dad, trying to track down my brother. you see, this weekend my sister is moving back home from college for the summer and my dad and brother are driving up to fetch her. hence the calling-dad-to-find-daniel. daniel wasn't there -- my dad was going to pick him up this morning.

dad could tell i was upset, he could hear it in my voice. but it was 11:00 at night (my time), all i could hear in the background through my dad's end of the phone was the television at what seemed like a volume appropriate for old people who are hard of hearing, and my step-mother's voice talking to my dad. and the thought of explaining what had happened was just about the last thing i wanted to do, given all of that. so i was kinda short with my dad, told him i didn't want to talk, told him i'd talk to him later.

so just now i called him back to apologize and explain. and i'll say this -- sometimes my father drives me absolutely insane, sometimes he's the last person on earth i want to deal with, but when i need him or in those moments when i'm at my worst, he's absolutely amazing. i think he's got some sort of superpower when it comes to helping his children when we're not feeling so hot about things. and that makes me feel like the luckiest daughter ever.

sadface...

2007-05-11T23:08:00.000-04:00

so, when i got up this morning i intended to post something about how greg and andrew and i had a silly night of sangria and wii sports, but then i got dumped. so i kinda didn't feel like writing about the goodtimes anymore.

i went over to krista and paul's place tonight. at one point i kinda just blurted out, "i'm just so tired of being single." and i meant it -- i don't want to be married or anything. but i want to be in that nice settled stage of a relationship when you're past all the drama and the hesitation and you've reached the point where things feel stable and nice and you know that you're with someone who loves you with all of your imperfections. unfortunately, you don't get that until you go through all the ups and downs of the early stuff. it seems, though, that most of the time you don't get past the early stuff.

i don't care where i am in my life or what's going on, breakups are always gonna suck. there's always gonna be that feeling of unfairness and misunderstanding and wanting to talk until you're blue in the face when you know that somebody's mind was made up long before the break up actually happened. and the way that mind got made up never ever ever will make sense to the other person. and there's the anger and the frustration and the sadness. and the only thing that can make it better is time.

so, yeah. there you go. i'm not on the appalachian trail as planned, i've had a real crap-fest of a day, and this phase between the end of finals and the beginning of my bar exam preparation class (that starts on the 17th) isn't turning out to be the much-needed rest and relaxation that i had wanted. but what can you do?

harrumph...

true to form...

2007-05-07T23:39:00.000-04:00

yup. it wouldn't be the night before a paper is due without some stupid blog post. here i am, 11:40 p.m., 12 hours and 20 minutes before deadline time, and i'm sitting on my bed, surrounded by my computer and all of my seminar paper research. you're right -- i should be sitting at a desk or a table or something more, um, conducive to writing. but i don't really have a desk, and my table is covered in clutter.

i was just thinking about dyeing my hair. i know that i shouldn't. it's just that i've now gone a whole year without changing its color, which basically means the stuff on my head right now is the color that nature gave me. but, you see, there may be some grey in there. i can't be sure, but when i look in the mirror, it looks like i've got these stark white hairs contrasting with the normal dark stuff. however, when i pull the hairs out of my head (of course i do!) and hold them against something light in color, they just look blonde. not grey -- just lighter versions of the rest of the pigmented stuff. huh. but i'm 30. it's time for grey, right?

but it's not the grey i want to hide. i think i'm on the verge of a serious oh-holy-crap-this-is-my-life crisis, in which i freak out about having just quadrupled my debt and having wasted the best childrearing years of my life with my nose in a casebook.

oh wait, i don't want kids.

that's not the point, either. the point is that i will never skip another class, write another ridiculous paper that involves fidgeting with fonts and margins to get to a desired page length. i'll never take another job for credit. i'll never wait anxiously for another student loan refund check at the beginning of a term so that i can pay the rent. i'll never keep old notebooks and a bunch of stuff i never use in a locker. i'll never have an annual income that is too low to qualify for federal taxes (please oh please oh please oh please let this part be true!). i'll never get to wear jeans and t-shirts and my blue adidas gazelles in my, erm, "professional" life again. i'll never get another report card. i'll never be a student.

i had to proctor a couple of exams today -- civil procedure for the first years in the morning; russian law and mental health law for the upperclassmen in the afternoon. both exams were in room 113, which worked out nicely for me, because i could spread out all of my seminar paper stuff and not have to move it midday. at the end of that last final, with only about 3 minutes to go, i was watching the clock, watching the second hand move around the clockface and allofasudden the second hand stopped...

STOPPED!

and there was this part of me that thought, "YES! I don't have to go through with this!" as if maybe the horrible weight of all the uncertainty in the coming months had just lifted and i could stay where i'm comfortable, i could continue this beautiful semi-transient life that's measured in semesters. i could become the consummate mentee, floating from professor to professor until i truly feel comfortable with all of the things that i feel like i didn't get the first time around... maybe!

but a few brief timeless moments later, that second hand cruelly jerked itself to attention and continued its journey. as if it had only been temporarily distracted from its duties, lost itself in a reverie... i know the feeling. losing myself in various reveries is something at which i particularly excel.

time went on, the exam was over, the academic cycle draws to its close so that a new cycle may begin right away... sigh... i was so close... thisclose... almost...

and after i had collected all of the exams and put them in order for the registrar's office, after i put my backpack on my back and moved the chair i had been using back to where it belonged, as i headed for the door, i paused and turned around and looked at room 113...

during my first year, room 113 was property law and constitutional law. i was so little then, knew so little, less cynical, less confident. i realized as i stood in that room today that as soon as i walked out that door, i really had no reason to ever re-enter room 113. that was it. time keeps going. i had to leave it for the next class of students.

and my heart broke a little bit...

but what could i do? i turned back to face the door, went where my feet knew to take me, closed the door behind me, and kept going.

it feels like too much. right now, it's just a little too much.

here at the end of all things...

2007-05-05T21:44:00.000-04:00

the only thing i have left before i'm officially done with law school is to finish up my seminar paper. it's due at noon on tuesday. i'm working on it at a snail's pace. why? maybe it's regular old procrastination. but maybe it's a hesitancy for this to be over.

last night a bunch of us got together over at harris grill to celebrate the end. kelly is leaving for alaska tomorrow. oliver left for philly today. josh is headed to ohio after graduation. aubrey will also be in philly. sandy will be in wheeling (but she's gonna see lots of me whether she likes it or not!). andrew's gonna be in delaware. ed will be in philly. george will be in germany. me? i'll be here at least until the bar exam in july -- let's hope that there will be a job for me to begin in august...

these people have been incredibly important to me in the past three years. add to that list above krista and katy and laura and elizabeth and grant and greg and chris and donny and tom and tom -- my experience at pitt law wouldn't have been nearly as rich and wonderful had it not been for my relationships with these people. what to say? i know that this is only the end of law school, not the end of those relationships. but i've been through enough goodbyes and transitions to know that maintaining contact will become more difficult as time and distance accrue. despite the inevitable rough patches along the way, i am very fond of all of these people. they are brave and brilliant, strong and supportive, funny and insightful, compassionate and real. i've grown as a result of knowing them, and i'm grateful for all of the memories i carry with me as a result.

andrew posted some really kind words. i link to his page because i think his post is beautiful, and also as a bit of a tribute -- andrew can be a pain in the ass (and i'm sure he'd gladly say the same about me), but it has been very important to me that we've reconnected over the past few months. it's a nice little reminder that good things do happen with good people.

i wish a billionty good things for all of the good people i've been so fortunate to know. these folks are gonna contribute to the undoing of those ugly stereotypes about lawyers. if we are judged by the company we keep, then things look good for me, too. i'm truly honored to have been surrounded by such amazing folks.

i love you all! and i'll see you soon!

ohiopyled...

2007-05-03T09:23:00.000-04:00

i had no proctoring obligations yesterday, so carson and i went down to ohiopyle state park for a little hiking, you know, as practice for the big AT venture.

now, here's the point where i admit that i've never really gone hiking before. i mean, sure i've gone "hiking", like when you take big walks in the woods and stuff. but as far as the hiking boots and the packs and the carrying lots of water and gear? never done that. so yesterday i filled my pack with 5 liters of water (in containers -- i didn't just turn the faucet on into the main compartment) and a bunch more stuff than i needed as an exercise in hiking with a good amount of weight on my back.

the whole hike was really awesome. ohiopyle is freaking beautiful:

see?

and take a look at this:

it's a tree that carson and i happened upon along one of the trails. i made carson stand in the picture for scale's sake.

i kinda loved the whole trekking bit. carson and i both found some terrific sticks to aid our walking (and i realized that there's no reason to throw a ton of cash at fancy trekking poles when there are awesome sticks all over the woods to use). i realized that i'd much rather go uphill with a pack on my back than downhill -- downhill there's too much potential for falling, erm, ass over teakettle. [i only fell down (like really fell down) once.]

also, we did a bit of fjording (me with shoes off, carson with shoes on), drank some river water, saw some awesome rapids, wore lots of sunscreen and bug repellant, and passed a lot of local teenagers who looked like they came to the woods to smoke the pot.

and as a little side adventure, since it was on the way to ohiopyle, we stopped off to walk around the grounds of this place:

look familiar? so, yeah, we had a really nice day, it was fantastic to be in the woods and away from law school -- i'm really looking forward to the AT hike.

i'm the luckiest girl ever!!!

2007-05-01T16:05:00.000-04:00

i'm officially the proud owner of a brand new nintendo wii!!!

now, i'm not sure if you guys have been paying attention, but although the wii was released in november, nintendo has been way stingy with making them widely available. what this has meant is that if you want a wii, either you suck it up and pay almost double on sites like ebay or through amazon resellers, or you try your luck at stores all over town in the hopes that you'll be there on the day that they happened to receive an order of like 4 of them.

but have you PLAYED a wii? so much fun! and not all techno-gamer-y, either. it's a gaming system for us regular folk. and i decided that for my law school graduation, i was going to reward myself for 3 years of hard work and stress with a wii.

...which created the problem of how exactly i was gonna get my hands on one. i refused to order one online -- the wiis retail for $249. that's expensive enough, without having to also deal with higher prices due to the demand and shipping costs. so i've been asking all over the place for weeks. and always i get the, "no, but we had some in the other day." why even bother to tell me that there WERE some in stock? obviously that helps me none. ugh...

but today i had a wild idea that i should drive to target at the waterfront to see. i have this theory (which may be totally wrong) that shipments come in on tuesdays (because CDs and DVDs and games are released on tuesdays), and i thought maybe in the middle of the day on an odd tuesday, i just might get lucky. so i parked the car (erm, carson's car), headed into target, and made a beeline for the electronics section.

and there they were!!! in the locked gaming case were several wii boxes!!! but the boxes themselves can be tricky, because on my quest to find a wii i've learned that lots of stores use empty boxes as displays. so i scanned the department for someone in a red target employee shirt. i found her in the back, helping a guy with a broken arm get a television into his shopping cart. so i waited until she was done, and then the following dialogue ensued:

me: um, hi. um, are those wii boxes just boxes? or are they real wiis?
adorably nerdy target employee: they're real wiis!
me: (gasp!!!) can i have one?!
a.n.t.e.: you certainly can!
me: omigoodnessi'msoexcited!!!
a.n.t.e.: we got 12 of them in like an hour ago. your timing is perfect!
me: i've been looking for one forever!
a.n.t.e.: [gets wii out of case] here you go! you've found one!
me: can i get a paper mario, too?*
a.n.t.e.: of course!
me: omigoodnessi'msoexcitedaboutthis!!!
a.n.t.e.: you have a wii!!!

and the conversation carried on like that for a while, and i found out that she's graduating art school and she designs video game art and while i opted not to purchase the three year warranty right now, i can do so within 90 days with my receipt.

I HAVE A WII!!!

but here's the catch -- see, this wii is my gift to myself for having finished law school, and with that 20 page externship writing requirement and my seminar paper still to complete, i technically haven't finished law school. so i am not going to allow myself to take the wii out of its box until those things are finished and turned in. think i can do it? i haven't had a cigarette in months. if i can survive that, i can totally go a few more days until the wii!

huzzah!!!

*super paper mario is a wii game. duh.

adventures in proctoring...

2007-05-01T09:27:00.000-04:00

the registrar's office asks students who are already on the law school payroll to proctor finals. i'm a TA, and although my measly $140/month barely qualifies, i am officially on the payroll. and since my only two exams this time around happened to occur on the second day of the finals period, i signed up for lots of proctoring.

so far i've done two days. but i also proctored last semester. i'm gonna make a bold statement here: first year law students are better test takers than are second and third years. they follow directions better, ask more intelligent questions about the administration of the test, and seem to be more respectful of each other during the test time.

now, i've been lucky -- the first year finals i've proctored have been disaster-free. i don't know what would happen if a 1L's computer were to freeze in the middle of an essay, but it's not a stretch to imagine an occurrence of mass hysteria. when bad things happen, i would bet that generally, the upperclassmen have the upper hand. at least they've heard the horror stories about so-and-so whose computer started emitting sparks and smoke halfway through the property final and nonetheless what had been written was recoverable. the upperclassmen have all seen somebody from the IT department come in during the finals to save the day for a computer that called it quits.

still, i like the first years. a lot better than the second years. is this because i've never had classes with the first years and i have no knowledge of what percentage of them are insufferable gunners? is this because i had a really good experience with my first year writing students? is this because i'm graduating at the end of the month and i'm sickly nostalgic for the good old early days of law school? i dunno...

but yeah, i'd rather proctor the first year finals. they're so earnest and dedicated! i miss that...

chiming in on the virginia tech issue...

2007-04-26T20:07:00.000-04:00

yes, i know i'm a little late on this, but a conversation with my friend kelly the other day got me thinking...

did you guys know that only two days after the tragic shooting spree at virginia tech, five bombings in baghdad killed about 170 people??? i sure as hell didn't know until my conversation with kelly, and she didn't know until a friend of hers who lives in europe pointed it out to her.

i have two primary and related thoughts about this. you may not like what i'm saying in this post. but i'm okay with that.

1. is the american news media so sensationalist that it becomes consumed and obsessed with mass tragedy when it happens on US soil?

2. are we so desensitized to violence in the middle east that we no longer consider it violent?

forgive the geek reference, but the american news machine is like the eye of sauron -- it's incapable of focusing on more than one thing. as soon as something awful happens on home turf, any other bad stuff that happens elsewhere no longer matters. and the media circus moves at breakneck speed to broadcast every single detail -- public and private -- about the lives involved. it's like those gaudy human-interest segments of the olympics -- a hundred million media hands grasping for the heartstrings of the folks huddled around their television sets. why? what purpose does this serve?

lots of things happened that week -- the senate judiciary committee made mincemeat of alberto gonzales, for example. is this less newsworthy than the virginia tech massacre? oh, and the supreme court upheld a late-term abortion ban in gonzales v. carhart. are the ramifications of this not enough to stop the presses???

the sad thing is that i just listed the significant stories, the ones that did make the news alongside the coverage of virginia tech. but the number of stories and articles and soundbytes devoted to seung-hui cho's mental state and his "multimedia manifesto" seemed to far outweigh any other current event of the time.

america is not immortal. america is not above brutality and terrorism. i truly do not mean to be incendiary by saying this, but it seems to me to be incredibly naive to think that the events of 9/11 were not in some way inevitable. by that i don't mean that the united states had it coming -- i'm not THAT cynical. what i mean is that horrible horrible things happen every day all over the world. it was only a matter of time before it happened here, too.

you know what the virginia tech massacre makes me think? it makes me think that we're damn fortunate. we live in a world where things like this generate so much attention because they just don't happen. we should thank our lucky stars.

but you know what the 170 deaths in baghdad make me think? it makes me incredibly sad and outraged that we've become so accustomed to stories about suicide bombings and civilian deaths in iraq that we no longer bat an eye.

i wonder, would we have cared as much about what happened at virginia tech if it had taken place in afghanistan?

one hundred seventy people. that's almost my whole law school class. that's bigger than my entire high school. imagine if my law school class or the student body of my high school got obliterated by four car bombs and another explosion. now imagine that in the ensuing chaos, a crazy sniper took out somebody else and wounded two others. because that's what happened last week in baghdad.

please don't misconstrue these thoughts as belittling the horror and devastation of what happened to those 32 students at virginia tech -- i would never want to suggest that those lives aren't worth recognition or attention. but i only ask that we put it in perspective. 32 deaths. 33, including the gunman. this was the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. well, today alone, nine iraqi soldiers were killed and fifteen other people were wounded in another baghdad car bombing. are those nine lives, or the 170 that were lost last week, any less valuable than the 33 in blacksburg?

we should all be outraged. we should all pay closer attention. just because it doesn't happen in our own backyards doesn't make it any less wrong.

trail name...

2007-04-26T15:14:00.000-04:00

so, my friend adrian (who has thru-hiked the appalachian trail) tells me i need a trail name for my journeys on the AT. he suggested "sue esponte" (as in sua sponte*). but "sua" is a dumb first name. i could go with "sue esponte", but that sounds hispanic, and nobody's gonna see my pale skin and green eyes and confuse me for a latina.

i have decided to use "jackie argon" as my trail name.

a few years ago, my friends joe, joe, brad, and katey, who were all housemates in philadelphia, came up with an idea for a television drama/mystery/espionage/crime-fighting series called "bird squad seven". the whole thing was fantastic. the four of them were the stars -- they were the bird squad 7. joe g was allen skinnypants and he ran an old bookstore with the help of a monkey named norman mailer, katey was a plain-by-day, smokin'-hot-by-night librarian named barbara mcgillicuddy (i'm pretty sure that was the name of her high school librarian), brad was james fangers, the leader of the squad, and good gracious i can't remember joe t's name (i'm really hoping katey still checks in on this blog and can fill in the missing pieces here).

so the four of them solved mysteries and saved the world and carried out all kinds of of 70s-and-80s-television-show-inspired plot lines. and sometimes they needed a little help from their friends, the supporting cast. i was one of those supporting cast members. my name was jackie argon. i specialized in chemistry and computers, and i lived in a bubble. i also wore a headgear and a prom dress. despite all of my pleadings, joe and joe and brad and katey would not change their minds about jackie argon wearing a headgear and a prom dress. nonetheless, she was very intelligent.

so there you go. my trail name? jackie argon.

* sua sponte: (sooh-uh spahn-tay) adj. Latin for "of one's own will," meaning on one's own volition, usually referring to a judge's order made without a request by any party tot eh case. These include an order transferring a case to another judge due to a conflict of interest or the judge's determination that his/her court does not have jurisdiction over the case.