No one should be surprised

I broke my toe. 5 weeks into training for a half-marathon.

And I didn't do it playing a sport this time, which makes it even sadder. Instead I accidentally ran into/kicked a free weight on my living room floor. That's what I get for keeping weights in my apartment :(

Existential crisis

Ok, not a real existential crisis. More like a mini-crisis.

I realized today that this is the first time since I was 3 years old that I have not been part of the "back to school" craze. I'm feeling a little weird about the whole thing.

That's all. More to come when I figure out how I feel about this mini-crisis.

Faux blast from the past

For those of you who are familiar with my escapades of law school, you will recognize the following name: Cheeks.

For those of you who don't, lets just say this particular boy lead to an amazingly awkward situation between my roommate 1L year and myself...partially due to the boys behavior and partially due to the extraordinarily thin walls of Fischer Graduate Residence. On the upside, this particular situation did solidify my friendship with Bagel.*

So M and I walk into a bar and sit down to have our import beer (gotta love Charlie Hoopers import night). Its all going fine for the first hour or so; we're chatting and carrying on. And then all the sudden this guy comes up to the table, sets his beer down, and inserts himself into the conversation. At first we found boy (who I shall call Faux Cheeks) slightly amusing, in an "ok, you're a little annoying but we'll laugh at your jokes anyway". I swear, this guy was a dead ringer for Cheeks. So much so that I spent the first 5 minutes of the conversation doing a double take. Not a particularly noteworthy experience except for the following comments/scenarios:

1. Faux cheeks referred to himself as "daddy", while referencing his two dogs. Creepy. Super-creepy.

2. Faux cheeks kept doing what can only be called making his biceps dance. No joke, every couple of minute he would make his biceps twitch. I'm all for working out if you want to, but I had to work REALLY hard not to laugh out loud. I only sort of succeeded. And by sort of, I mean not at all.

3. When Faux cheeks engaged the old (I'm talking post 45 years old) men behind us in a "who can kick higher" contest**

4. He engaged in what I like to call "excessive high-fiving"

5. I kid you not, the song "Save a horse, ride a cowboy" came on and Faux cheeks chugs the rest of his beer, slams it down on the table, and walks out of the bar...to the beat of the song...right at the end. Talk about feeling the need to make a high drama exit.

*And you thought you were in trouble ;)

**Enforcer, even I wasn't that bad.

And thank god, then he went home.

New Digs

Per the request of the Enforcer, I finally have picture of the new digs! You will note that I have not put up anything on the walls yet, but I will soon have the apartment decorated up to Bagel and my apartment standards.* Here's the play by play:

What I see when I walk in the front door (fabulous :)

Where I would eat if I was a classy person**

My kitchen, that I actually cook in

You can tell how old this kitchen and the appliances are by the stove controls....totally old school

The bathroom. Yes, that's right. Its pink***

Since the bathroom is so ugly I felt it deserved two pictures

My bedroom, big kid bed and all. And yes, that is a teddy bear on the bed. His name is Tattered Teddy. I'm not ashamed to admit that I still sleep with a stuffed bear :)

By far the weirdest/creepiest part of the apartment...there are 4 full length mirrors. My landlord seems to think this is a selling point and keeps saying "Well, you're a girl, don't you need mirrors?"****

There's also a pretty kick ass view from the apartment (I'm on the tenth floor and one wall is almost entirely windows), but I couldn't get a decent picture through the glass. I'll work on it cause its totally worth it!

The funniest part of the building I live in is that about 50-75% of the building is really old Jewish women and the building is quite possibly the ugliest baby-blue building there every was, which makes telling people where you live really easy cause everyone in KC knows where it is! Yesterday I got on the elevator with an older woman who lives on my floor, and I asked her how she was doing. Her response, "Good, I woke up this morning. When you're my age, that's all you can ask for!" I laughed pretty hard.

Overall I really like the new place and I'm getting use to have a real person schedule.***** So far I have 7 clients of my very own! I keep oscillating between the thoughts "My own clients, cool!" and a panicked "Oh my god, I'm actually in charge of these cases!" My co-workers are also really nice and I think I'm starting to make some friends at work, which is helpful. I'll write more about work when I can think of something witty to say :)

In other news, I'm running a half-marathon on November 22nd in Overland Park, Kansas. A half marathon in Kansas in November could be very interesting as far as weather is concerned. Stay tuned, however I promise this blog will not become about my training, but be prepared for some bitching about having to run farther than 3 miles, which as luck would have it starts tomorrow.

*Bagel, I may need that weird elephant hanging thing to make the place feel like home.

**I promise if any of you come visit (which you should, I'm a good hostess) I will eat with you at the kitchen table.

***I normally like pink, but this is a really strange shade of pink.

****Everyone who's walked in has made the comment that having that many mirrors in your bedroom is a little kinky. I have to say I agree with them, its a little creepy. And on a side note, no scandalous stories to go along with this apartment yet. There's a reason the blogs called "and then he went home" ;)

*****Bagel, I went to bed at 10PM once last week and it was glorious. I think you may have rubbed off on me...

The last thing I hope to ever say about the Bar Exam

Its over!!!

But it wouldn't be me if there wasn't a or two involved story involved

Story 1-Car trouble

I get to Jefferson city after a 5 1/2 hour drive, of which I only spent like 2 hours of it in panic, then I just sang along to my ipod :)  Anyway, I get to Jefferson City and check into a really bad hotel, which consequently is where I'm suppose to take the exam.  So I check in, only to find out that I'm in a separate building from where the exam actually is.  Mind you, I think the whole point of staying at the hotel where the bar is is to be in the same building as the bar exam.  Evidently I was wrong.  But I digress.  After I check in, I go back out to my car to drive over to my hotel room and I see fluid running out from under my car...this is the point where I start thinking, and saying "SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!"  So I drive the car over to my room and it makes squealing noises the whole way, call my dad and tell him what happened. 

He laughs at me.  Evidently my panic is amusing at times*.  So he tells me to call road side assistance, I do and they come out to look at the car.  As I'm talking to them they keep asking me what the color of the liquid is, which of course I can't get to so I can't tell what color it is on the black top.  Then a tow truck comes out and the driver, named Jim who is a kindly older gentleman hops down to come look at the car.  Mind you, he comes in a big red and yellow truck that takes up the entire parking lot, meaning that everyone at the hotel, who consequently are also taking the bar, is looking out their window thinking "Oh my god, I'm so glad I'm not that girl".

Jim goes up to the car and at this point the fluid had gotten to the point where you could reach it, so he runs his finger through it.  Looks at it.  Looks at me.  And says "Its water".....and I want to die of embarrassment, it was condensation off the damn air conditioner!  And of course, as soon as Jim gets in the car and drives it around, the squealing noise stops.  So not only do I look stupid, now I also look like I'm hallucinating.

Jim, being the kindly older gentleman that he is, gives me the card to a shop in town and tells me to get it looked at before I leave town because "there MAY be something wrong with one of the belts".  Poor Jim was trying to give me an out and make me feel less stupid.  And then Jim goes to leave, pats me on the shoulder and says "Good luck".  Even my tow truck friend pitied me!  

Don't worry it turns out that my car was just fine, although I didn't have it looked at before I left town... I made it back to Kansas City after the exam and that was good enough for me.

Story 2-Computer trouble

Of course, my computer has been just fine all year and it decides to freak out the day of the essay portion of the bar exam.  The first part went fine, then I tried to get it into exam mode for the second part, necessitating it shutting down, and my computer decides it wants to install FIFTY-ONE updates!  Keep in mind that I had 10 minutes at this point to get my computer into exam mode before they were going to make me handwrite it.  And you guys have seen my handwriting, you know how badly this would go.  I take the computer up to the tech support people who try to help me work it out.  They tell me to shut down the computer and let it reboot.  I do that, and partway through its start up, it shuts down randomly!  This again is the point in the day where I think "SHIT SHIT SHIT!" and everyone in the room is thinking "Oh my god, I'm so glad I'm not that girl".  But alas, the computer finally starts to behave and I can take the MPT on the computer.

And repeat that story for the afternoon session.  If I didn't need my computer so much that day I would have thrown it across the room.

Both stories turned out well thankfully, but needless to say I was really mad at my electronics and mechanical devices this week.

Congrats to everyone on being done!!!

Mr. Bankruptcy

So this story isn't really mine and its not a real fun boy story but I figure to keep people interested I ought to put something up!

M and I went out on Friday night only for M to be picked up by a man I shall dub "Mr. Bankruptcy".  Basically the way this went down was M and I were sitting at a table, drinking our draft beers and minding our own business and when we look up we are flanked on one side by people who pretty obviously are coming from a wedding rehearsal dinner (they just set the scene, nothing really to do with the story) and on the other by a group of guys, a couple of whom are "older".*  At any rate, that group evidently feels the need to take over our table and start setting glasses on it, leaning on it etc (which would be fine except for that its a 4 top table.  Not really room for extra people you don't know).  Anyway, then one of them sits down and starts talking to us, and pretty soon we're surrounded by the whole group.  A decent number of them left and we ended up with a set of brothers(enter Mr. Bankruptcy), one who is in his upper 20s (I'm going with 29) and one who just finished his junior year of college.

At any rate, Mr. Bankruptcy comes over and sits down next to me right as M says to another member of their group "Oh, she just graduated from law school".  Mr. Bankruptcy sits down and makes a snarky comment about my graduating from law school, prompting me to say "Let me guess, you're a lawyer?" Turns out I was right!  He is a lawyer, and a bankruptcy lawyer at that.  This is how the following conversation goes:

Mr. Bankruptcy: Where did you go to school?

Me: Up in Indiana.

Mr. Bankruptcy: Oh, Indiana University.

Me: No, Notre Dame.**

Mr. Bankruptcy: Oh. [enter a comment that I remember being a little mean spirited but not clever enough to remember since I was working on getting a little tipsy]

Mr. Bankruptcy: So, do you have a job?

Me: Yup, I'm working at Legal Aid.

Mr. Bankruptcy: Oh, I guess its a tough job market***

Me: No, I actually wanted to do public interest work.

Mr. Bankruptcy:  Oh, so you're one of the hundreds of people who apply to law school saying "I wanna help people"**** So, you actually work at Legal Aid?

Me: Yeah, and I like it!

[And then Mr. Bankruptcy gets up and leaves.  Evidently saying you work at Legal Aid is a good way to scare away bankruptcy attorneys.]

Needless to say I was happy to scare this one off.  Unfortunately he and M hit it off despite him being a jerk both to me, and then to her at the end of the evening.  So we shall see if I have anymore encounter's with Mr. Bankruptcy.  If I do, I will be sure to tell him that the only difference between his clients and my clients is that his clients actually had money to being with and then did stupid things with it (okay, I realize not everyone who goes bankrupt did stupid things to do it, but go with me here), whereas mine never had any money and then either couldn't survive off that amount of money (or did stupid things with it, that happens too).

And then (thankfully) he went home.

*Ok, to me older means 35-40s.  I hope this doesn't offend anyone.

**When I tell him ND immediately the "oh, so you're too good for a state school" antenna goes up.  This seems to be a pretty predominant attitude around here a lot of the time, which is unfortunate.  This is where people start to get defensive about their own schools.

***Yes, this is the point where things get interesting.

****Keep in mind that the first sentence of my admission essay to law school actually was "I want to help people".  No joke.

And then Hank went home

I have to report (in a bittersweet tone) that our beloved Hank now has new owners.  They're a very nice couple who are really really excited to have him, so I'm happy about that.  And I think they'll take good care of him.  Unfortunately I'm just not around enough to let the poor little guy out and even when I did, he hated being out on the tile floor.  At any rate he's got new owners, but then I realized a little later that they may be super religious...(indication is from a cross on a check they wrote me for an adoption fee*)  At any rate, its a little weird because I keep coming home and saying "Hi Hank" only to realize that he's not there

*The adoption fee was so that Hank didn't go to people who would feed him to a snake.  Evidently that's what happens when you give a bunny away for free.  So no worries, no being snake food for Hank.