How Bizarre

Maybe this is campus-preparedness in the wake of Va Tech, etc... but Wednesday the whole campus gets an email about an emergency, there's a guy with a gun running around threatening suicide by cop. Campus buildings go on lock down, they cancel evening classes and a soccer game. Later that night, they email again, telling us... uh... we can't find him... so... uh.... we don't think he is a threat anymore, please go about your business normally. Today he was caught in San Diego and may have been there the whole time. Also today, we get a new campus-wide email about an armed robber who was sighted going into an administrative building and the dorms next to it have been locked down. This is also a couple blocks from my house... but... anyway. What the hell? This seems like a strange week in Madison. Unless this was happening all the time and they didn't feel the need to tell us about it before? I am going to avoid everyone. Just to be safe.

Update 1:44pm: "The incident involving an armed robbery on the campus border has been resolved. A suspect has been taken into custody, and the area can return to normal operations."

Oh good, and just in time for class.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Yesterday

I went to prison. At prison, I met the Director of the whole shebang (this guy). And also a delegation from Malawi that included the president, some supreme court justices and the attorney general. Or something. It was a really big day at prison.

Not to be outdone by the attorney general of Malawi, Erin showed up last night for her second one-night engagement in Madison in a month. We ate many kinds of meat and drank many beers. E. and C. each a hamburger, with a bratwurst patty on it, bacon and cheese on a pretzel roll. I had chicken sitting on jalapeno mashed potatoes, smothered in a sauce that included andouille sausage and shrimp. The more meats the better. Oh, and we ordered chicken wings. The waitress was shocked and couldn't help but visibly judge us. Delicious.

Ay, Kiefer, I hardly knew ye...

Jack may have been driving drunk. But he wouldn't have let them stop him. And if he had, he totally could have recited the alphabet backwards.

Based on my recent rentals, Netflix think I'd Enjoy:

I'll try not to be offended-- I am simultaneously a huge dork and a huge airhead.

Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided (3-Disc Series)

An unlikely couple, Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd came from vastly different backgrounds -- he the son of a dirt farmer, she the daughter of wealthy ... Read More

Rumor Has It Jennifer Aniston leads an all-star cast in this romantic comedy from director Rob Reiner. Recently engaged, aspiring journalist Sarah Huttinger ... Read More

The Presidents (3-Disc Series) Based on the book To the Best of My Ability, this series profiles those who've held office as president of the United States across a 215-year span. ... Read More

Raising Helen Young modeling-agency assistant Helen (Kate Hudson) has a powerful boss (Helen Mirren) and a career that's right on track. But just as she's about ... Read More

You, Me and Dupree After standing in as best man for his longtime friend Carl Petersen (Matt Dillon), Randy Dupree (Owen Wilson) loses his job, becomes a barfly and ... Read More

Teddy Roosevelt: An American Lion (2-Disc Series)

He was the living embodiment of the nation, a powerhouse politician whose straight-ahead style made him one of the most influential presidents in ... Read More

If you want to hang out with me this semester...

You gotta catch me on Saturday afternoon. Since apparently I will always be drunk then and it will be the one time per week that I "hang." Yesterday I started drinking with bloody marys at 11am brunch and continued until 2am. With only a 2 hour nap from 7-9pm. Not surprisingly, I've felt better. Then again, I've felt much worse. Party on, Wayne!

We're great, if you can wait.

I've been to a number of student-training type clinics in my day-- from the bumble & bumble free haircut school in NYC to the Aveda Institute $14 haircut in Minneapolis to, most recently, the technical college in town this morning to get my teeth cleaned. For $25! A common thread here is saving money. Since I work in the legal equivalent of these, I have started to feel a kind of kinship. "No, I'm not an attorney... but we're very thorough and all of my work is checked by an attorney!" So I was willing to scheduled 3.5 hours of the day, from 7:30-11 this morning so a nice girl named Michelle could learn how to be a dental hygienist on me. As they say around my clinic, "we do great work, if you can wait."

What was funniest about it was how similar it was to going to university health services for gyno exams. Bear with me. See, if you're in the real world and you're totally honest with your doctor, sometimes they lecture you. Like the one who asked me if I was pregnant and I said, "No, I don't think so." "Well, how do you know?" "Uh... well, my period ended yesterday." "That doesn't mean anything." Ok, lady, maybe I don't understand how this works... but see... I thought it did. But at health services they say, "You're not having unprotected sex with 10-15 people at a time most nights per week? Congratulations! That's fantastic! The picture of health!"

Segue to the dental clinic. Last year the dental hygienist asked me if I floss every day. I said, honestly, "well, probably 5 days a week." (which, btw, is probably about as regularly as you're going to get me to do anything I'm supposed to...) They said I was a bad flosser and had to do it every day. This morning, they couldn't stop raving. First, they couldn't even feel my lymph nodes. Awesome! Then my gums were so tight and healthy. Great work! Then they learned I floss 5 days/week. That's really commendable! We talked about my having had braces. Looks good! And who did these fillings? Beautiful work!

I felt a little awkward about it, only because it's a total class thing. Yeah, my teeth are in good shape because we had dental insurance and I went to Dr. Odegaard twice a year for 22 years! And so, I'm sure my mouth is much "cleaner" than most other people who pay $25 for a student to clean their teeth...

Tangentially and kind of weirdly, it made me think of a show like CSI and how when they found my body, before identifying me, they'd know I was some bourgeoisie girl. They take one look at those fillings and those healthy, tight gums and start calling the country clubs.

Yeah, so...

Apparently I am not a complete moron among these PhDs, after all.

Not only did I talk plenty today (although, sadly, we were discussing the professor's book and so he was out of the room almost the whole time) but someone else, a PhD herself, got the "uh... yeah... we kind of covered that...." and I got "that's a really good point" from a classmate. And then I got our first mini-paper back and got "good idea" "good observation" AND "good point." Hmmm. Good point, indeed.

My Whole Body Hurts So Much

There are a lot of things I am not doing very well this semester. Like feeling sane. And some that I am doing well, like bringing my lunch and, as of the past week or so, working out regularly again. Not only does the working out (potentially--so far, no results) help with the feeling sane, but also with the difficulty sleeping on account of stress and the newly-bared floors meeting elephantine upstairs neighbors. (I hate them and just wrote a letter to my management company. The follow-up letter will include the case law about their breach of the covenant of quiet enjoyment I've been digging up. It is kind of funny, but for another, much nerdier post.) This post is about being sensible.

Working out regularly is sensible, because aside from the health benefits (physical and psychological. As well as the health benefit of not being incarcerated when I am overtired and finally snap and bludgeon the upstairs neighbors) it is sensible because for some reason, since about May... most of my pants don't fit. Now we can attribute this to whatever we like-- overzealous dryer shrinking them, the finals diet of trader joe's pizza not being the ALLI-without-the-nasty-side-effects it appeared to be in December. Whatever. Short answer, it's not about vanity. It's about being a girl on a budget with the seasons turning. I need pants that fit and I need to not spend money on them. Voila! The gym.

The gym is huge. It costs $30/yr to rent a locker. And $30/yr to take all the classes you want. Funny how I used to pay $72/mo for NYSC. Now, I borrow $30,000/yr to go the gym. And they throw in these nifty JDs and MAs as membership bonuses. At NYSC, the class was called Club Strength. At the UW gym, it's called Group Strength. It's actually way easier, but challenging enough for a girl who is just in it to save money.

Which brings me back to: my whole body hurts so much.

Last Refuge of the Feeble-minded

My supervising attorney/clinical professor from this summer had us do this reading in the beginning of the summer, it was basically about how law school f's you up and why lawyers are bad writers. Especially why law students are bad writers. It's the whole interesting theory about when you're put into a new environment and learning things quickly, you revert. It's a kind of defense mechanism. Which explains why I am a worse speller than... well, I have ever been. And why I am never sure of a single grammar or punctuation rule. Ok, so the effect is supposed to be wearing off by now... but stay with me.
So I am in this seminar with 20 or so graduate students, PhDs in Sociology and Latin American History, some Education. And I really haven't felt this useless for awhile. Granted, we've only had two classes... but I am sooo out of practice. When the Argentine education PhD refers to Foucault's theory of Power... my blood runs cold. Not because I've never heard of this, but because I have... but... goddamn it... it seems so long ago... and my head is so full of eminent domain and supremacy clause and consideration and jurisdiction. Tort! Tort! And all three times I've spoken, I've gotten the distinct feeling they're all humoring me. "Uhhhh.... huh...." It's kind of a raw deal, because they can all bring up whatever they've been writing dissertations on... and out of fear of being "law girl," I kept quiet when I actually knew something they didn't about International Law. Damn them.
Anyway, I am hoping this is another case of being torn down before being put back together and the feeling will pass. Because, my god, if I am going to feel like I waste of space every Friday from 2:30-5pm... it should be because I am hungover.

Badger Football or Blood-Thirsty cult?

If you were to reenact my weekend, it would go like this:

0. Have class until 5pm on Friday.

1. Host outdoor social on coldest, windiest night yet. Tell folks they can find us by looking for balloons. Arrive to see International Music festival is going on. Balloons everywhere.

2. Spend Friday night watching a documentary about the framing of the Constitution. Feel lucky to be dating someone who will do with me what I would otherwise be doing alone.

3. Wake up 7:45 Saturday. Start drinking. Be drunk by 11am gametime.

4. Get sunburned. And dehydrated. Get headache that will last until Sunday morning.

5. Nap. 3.5 hours. Otherwise known as half a night's sleep.

6. Continue to have headache. Meet friends for an hour. Come home and watch "Without a Trace." Go to bed.

7. Wake up and make delicious breakfast. Write a cover letter. "Read" the rest of the day, at 5:40pm realize how little you've done. But how much NPR you've listened to...

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Things that have conspired to make my reading of non-fiction history books go much more slowly than it did in college:

1. The having of a laptop computer.

2. The having gotten used to reading cases. Very. Carefully. Mostly.

3. The advent of wireless internet.

Damn, I used to be good at this. And so much faster.

Partners

So after reaching a certain age we have probably all come to the conclusion that you can't get everything you need from one person. This isn't cynical, I don't think, but more the realization that we're complex creatures and we need all kinds of things and finding one person who can provide all of them is an impossible task... that being said, I spent an hour this morning, naked with a man and paid him for it.

It was a massage through health services and it was fantastic. I would highly recommend it. And since I have yet to find a romantic partner who is willing to rub my back and feet for 50 minutes while playing soothing music and attending to my every relaxation need...* now I have Jonathan.

*this is not at all to diminish anyone in my life who I don't pay and their devotion to my relaxation or backrubbing... it's just... different.

Flipping the Script

I was debating whether to write about this, since it's possible the subjects may read it. More likely they won't. And, even if they do... it's true and I could use a reckoning.

So there is this group of people in my class who spent all of last year talking about "public interest" jobs and campaigning for a viable Loan Repayment Assistance Program. They held events, they circulated fliers debunking peoples' excuses for working at large firms. They worked in clinics like I did this summer.... and come late August, they donned black suits and started fighting tooth and nail for these large firm jobs. One, who is also a friend, told me today she thinks she wants to go in to copyright. Um. Excuse my french, but what the fuck? I can't imagine spending as much time as they did on public interest/LRAP stuff unless I felt passionately about it. I can't imagine abandoning something I felt passionately about at... well... the first opportunity.

The thing really isn't their working at a big firm, I have nothing against that. Ok, really I do, because I have this silly feeling like my life should have some social utility and want my job to reflect that. But honestly, there are plenty of people who have said big firms are where they want to be from day one and have reasons why. And that is really ok with me, I don't understand it, I don't agree with it for myself... but it's their prerogative and god bless.

The people that are irking me lately are the sneaky ones, the ones who have been dishonest somewhere along this route. The ones who told us not to work for firms and then suited up at first call. Perhaps they are the biggest gunners of all and we've been fooled by an elaborate hoax... ? Hmmm... I don't want to totally alienate them. I'll be toiling away at my silly social justice issues and using my law degree to improve peoples' lives... and maybe they'll take me out to dinner. I'll be so hungry. So very, very hungry.

5 year Plan

I've long been frustrated by the time-space continuum. No matter where I am, the bastard keeps me from being able to hang out with my favorite people. The t-s c is especially nasty here in Madison, I had been almost gaining on it in New York that first year... but I digress. I have often fantasized about all my friends moving to the same place. I was imagining Louisville for some reason, but based on some recent convos, there is a new plan:

Hear Ye, Hear Ye. We're all moving to Seattle. I realize you might be in the middle of something, so your presence will be expected there no later than 2012. Think on it.